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Emma Watson is Dangerous!

Kofi says...

I get the feeling that if you grew up with the Harry Potter paradigm then she was someone you had a crush on. Now that she is grown up it's legitimate to sexualize her. No doubt she is pretty but she still seems like a 12 year old to me. Cute, yes. Sexy? Nope. >> ^ForgedReality:

I honestly don't understand the big deal about her...

Ocarina of Thrones

Cast of Harry Potter speaks the Freedom Language (american)

Harry Potter Cast Tries Talking with American Accents

Harry Potter Cast Tries Talking with American Accents

Harry Potter Cast Tries Talking with American Accents

Harry Potter Cast Tries Talking with American Accents

I'm Harry Potter - I just play a guy called Daniel Radcliffe

The Worst Craft Idea Ever

mintbbb says...

This just made me see red when I fist saw it. I have always loved books and reading. I used to get most of my reading from the library, and if I fell in love with the book, I bought it.

Unfortunaterly most of my books are paperback. They do feel cheap and are uncomfortable to read, especially if they are thick. If I get a hardcover book, I either really, REALLY loved it (like my 'Lord of the Rings' set, back in the 80's), or I was eager to read it and didn't want to wait for the softcover (I admit, Harry Potters, Sookie Stackhouse and Hunger Games are some of the series that I have hardcover books).

Anyway! If you are not going to read your book more than once, get it from the library, or buy softcover. Do not buy hardcovers and then have so little of respect for them that you can just chop them up to be a storage box.

Maybe Lauren Conrad is rich enough to just buy whatever she wants and toss it away after one use. I hope not.

Books are precious.

xxovercastxx (Member Profile)

Why Christians Can Not Honestly Believe in Evolution

shinyblurry says...

>> ^shveddy:
@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.
@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).
If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.


Hmm, your statement is littered with all sorts of inaccurate information.

Okay, first of all, this idea of "junk dna" is dying a slow death:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/

Contrary to your assertion, so-called junk dna is functional. And the idea of viral DNA insertions is completely ruled out when this "random" DNA turns out not to be so random after all, and serving very specific purposes. The idea, created in ignorance, exists mainly as a fudge factor for the evolutionary paradigm. The problem for evolutionists is that natural selection cannot produce enough mutations to account for the millions it needs in the 300,000 generations it took for humans to evolve. It's a lot easier to come up those numbers when 95 percent of the genome is "junk".

Second, molecular and morphological phylogenies are often wildly divergent. This is from an Article in nature magazine subtitled:

"Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled, asks Trisha Gura"

"When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’, they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history. . . .

Battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life. Perhaps the most intense are in vertebrate systematics, where molecular biologists are challenging a tradition that relies on studies of fossil skeletons and the bones and soft tissue of living species. . . .

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date"

They are so divergent that two camps have emerged in systematics, each claiming their phylogenies are more accurate. So your claim that Cytochrome C matches "scores" of different phylogenies is patently false, since hardly any of them agree. If want to say that isn't true, please provide the evidence. Note that "scores" means at least 40.

Third, creation theory predicts a hierarchical pattern, so finding one isn't going to falsify creationism or prove common descent. Especially in the case of the phylogeny of Cytochrome C, which has no intermediates or transitionals to be found. You do also realize that a common design can be explained by a common designer? It could simply be the case that Cytochrome C was tailored for different groups according to individual specifications, which then diverged futher by mutations. If your response is that Cytochrome C functions the same way in all life, my response is that the differences could be for coding other proteins.

Before I go any further, I would ask you to support your claims. Show me the specific data you're talking about so I can rebut it.

Why Christians Can Not Honestly Believe in Evolution

HadouKen24 says...

Not only do I live in the US, but I live Oklahoma, one of the most religiously conservative states. I don't have a great deal of respect for that brand of religion, for sure. Which is precisely why it's so galling to see a video that suggests that's just what Christians have to be like--that Christians who reject the Bibliolatry and hermeneutic cutting and pasting of those idiots somehow aren't real Christians, that rejecting the sheep-like credulity of these so-called faithful means that the thoughtful ones haven't actually thought it through. And somehow it is averred that those who cling to the ancient traditions of Biblical understanding are inauthentically Christian, since they don't accept the quasi-heretical doctrines of 19th century upstarts.

Clearly false. Yet that's the whole thrust of the video!



With regard to your last two paragraphs, I think we're starting to move away from straightforward commentary on the video. But that's alright with me, if it's okay with you.

As far as dogmatic authority goes, I think that you're partly right about some religions. Specifically, the big Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It's important to remember that this is not the entire world of religion (even if they are important), so there are a number of statements about them that will be incorrect about other religions--in fact, most other religions.

It's true that the Big Three do indeed seem to require acceding to the truth of certain propositions in order to remain in their historical form: e.g., that the Torah was revealed by God, that Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead, and that Mohammad received the Qur'an from Michael. (for each religion respectively) There is certainly an important sense in which certain very liberal theologians are still Christian, but this is something very different than historical Christianity.

Nonetheless, this is something separate from moral authority. One may deny that there is anything correct about the metaphysical pronouncements of the Bible, and still accept that its moral teachings are profoundly important. This is precisely what philosophy Slavoj Zizek has done.

For most other religions, the number of specific propositions that must be accepted is few to none. Pronouncements about gods or salvation are amenable to multiple interpretations. The ancient Greek philosophers, for instance, were quite religious on the whole. Yet read a book on Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Platonism, and tell me what proposition about the gods that they agree on. You'll find it quite difficult.

The same can be said of Shinto, Hinduism, Buddhism, Western Pagan revivals, etc.

Moreover, I myself don't think that moral authority is actually essential to religion. It's certainly related to religion, but as I'm sure you've observed--there's not much of a correlation between religious belief and moral behavior. Simple observation shows most Christians to be liars. Morality is not why they are Christian.

Instead, I think it's something else--transcendence, and the promise of new states of being. Morality has almost nothing to do with this. The same man can be capable of the most holy ecstasies and raptures before the beauty of the God or gods that he prays to, a writer of the most delicately beautiful hymns and homilies--and the worst bastard on earth outside of church. Cardinal Richilieu was just such a person.

This is why we'll never get rid of religion, of course. But it's also why the monotheistic religions can be so dangerous. They incorrectly tie the ecstasies of the spirit to crude and intolerant dogmas, then demand that all others agree or face the sword or the pyre.

>> ^shveddy:

@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.


Why Christians Can Not Honestly Believe in Evolution

shveddy says...

@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.

When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.

Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.

@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).

If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.

Sharing a Name with Someone Famous Sucks

Sharing a Name with Someone Famous Sucks



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