No, they are not the same thing, and they are not creationist terms.

Yes, they are in fact the same thing, and yes, I know creationists didnt come up with the terms, predictably, since they have never come up with a single useful term or idea in the history of everything. They can be useful terms to describe the short-term and long-term effect of evolution, but creationist use the term to shield themselves from admitting that they deny reality. Lets just take one example: genetic variation, according to creationists then, genetic variation is real and actually happens, your genes are slightly different from other human genes, ie: there is variations within a species.

But this is the same kind of variation there is BETWEEN species, its the SAME FREAKING THING, but when the difference is large enough, individual organism can no longer breed to produce fertile offspring. That is in fact the definition of "species". Conceptually, there is no difference between the genetic difference between you and me and the genetic difference between you and a tomato, its just MORE difference.

I honestly dont know how to respond to this time=miracle nonsense, the point is that because there is variation and mutations, speciation will happen over long stretches of time, now you might say "biologists sure needs lots of time for evolution to work" but the thing is that other, unrelated fields of study, like chemistry, physics and cosmology have independently reached conclusions about how old the universe is, and its billions of years old. We KNOW that, not from inventing a number large enough to allow evolution to work its "miracles", but because its the only logical conclusion based the available evidence.

The correlating data you are looking at is a hall of mirrors. Radiometric data is based on uniformitarian assumptions. The light travel time is based on similar assumptions. Embedded in all of the estimations of an old age are unprovable assumptions that have no empirical evidence to prove they are true. They are in fact unknowable.

Everything in that paragraph is wrong. These things are NOT based on assumptions, but empirical evidence, calculations and experiments. In fact, the knowledge has not only been confirmed by experiments and evidence, and as I tried to explain earlier, YOU ARE RELYING ON TECHNOLOGY BASED ON THAT KNOWLEGDE TO READ THIS SENTENCE. It is literally being proved right in front of your eyes.

I wonder what the offspring would look like.

I believe that by then the GOP would be something else; just like it was something else under Eisenhower and Lincoln. We are all moving forward; just at different paces. After all, we are just rivals in our way of thinking, not enemies. If for example, you get it and others don't so quickly, you shouldn't ridicule them for not jumping on your bandwagon so quickly. As long as we all have good intentions, the details will get sorted out with time.

>> ^st0nedeye:

In terms of the national presidential election, without major structural changes to the GOP they are finished.
Texas.
In 2020 to 2024, based on changing demographics, it will become blue. If/when it does, the GOP will lose 50+ electoral votes, and lose any chance to win a presidential race.

>> ^MonkeySpank:
I'd give the Republican party another 2 terms before it morphs into something else; obviously, extreme-right is not the answer, especially with a larger segment of the new voting population leaning center. You can see it today; Mitt cannot have a change unless he pretends he's a centrist. This not only goes for the general populace, but also for the republican registered voters themselves. It's no surprise Santorum didn't win the primaries. History books will look back at this era and reflect on the neo-conservative movement and its negative effect on American politics.
The great thing about the internet is that every video, document, public forum comment, and article can be stored permanently. Many people are on the wrong side of history, and their offspring will find that out.

In terms of the national presidential election, without major structural changes to the GOP they are finished.

Texas.

In 2020 to 2024, based on changing demographics, it will become blue. If/when it does, the GOP will lose 50+ electoral votes, and lose any chance to win a presidential race.



>> ^MonkeySpank:

I'd give the Republican party another 2 terms before it morphs into something else; obviously, extreme-right is not the answer, especially with a larger segment of the new voting population leaning center. You can see it today; Mitt cannot have a change unless he pretends he's a centrist. This not only goes for the general populace, but also for the republican registered voters themselves. It's no surprise Santorum didn't win the primaries. History books will look back at this era and reflect on the neo-conservative movement and its negative effect on American politics.
The great thing about the internet is that every video, document, public forum comment, and article can be stored permanently. Many people are on the wrong side of history, and their offspring will find that out.

I'd give the Republican party another 2 terms before it morphs into something else; obviously, extreme-right is not the answer, especially with a larger segment of the new voting population leaning center. You can see it today; Mitt cannot have a change unless he pretends he's a centrist. This not only goes for the general populace, but also for the republican registered voters themselves. It's no surprise Santorum didn't win the primaries. History books will look back at this era and reflect on the neo-conservative movement and its negative effect on American politics.

The great thing about the internet is that every video, document, public forum comment, and article can be stored permanently. Many people are on the wrong side of history, and their offspring will find that out.

>> ^renatojj:

That's how the media, left and right, treated him for the entirety of his campaign. Any respect and coverage he got was inversely proportional to his perceived chance of winning.


...And so it goes, each election more absurd than the next until who knows? Maybe some new, "New Deal" after all the cocka-roaches are gone, calling up the depressed Roosevelt-styley to help rebuild the infrastructure? I for one, hope it includes a beautification of the entire United States in the form of razing every strip-center and billboard for starters.
This includes my first act in office, criminalizing inherently evil entities too big for their britches like Walmart and Monsanto, and razing THEIR improvements on real estate assets while demanding the offspring of their CEO's to walk naked with sandwich board signs on a remote mangrove swamp with mock city streets resembling their home-towns, filled with CCTV cameras with a live feed for folks around the world to deride them for all eternity, amen.

I appreciate your tone. I really do. I just wanted to leave you with some suggested google scholar searches. If you haven't already, check out the recent research in gametic or transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. It'll be really jargony and difficult to understand. One take home is that the gametic accessibility of genetic material for transcription has been shown to have reliable effects on the phenotype of progeny in animal models. Further, human studies have shown transgenerational effects on the adult weight of offspring in response to the diet of the mother during pregnancy and even in response starvation events dating back further generations (although the mechanism is not necessarily known).

Anyway, nice chat.

But if the dad shows any compassion, he will look like a pussy and embarass his bully offspring.

By your rhetorical suggestion: God created us with free will, then he created laws for us because following them is good for us and he loves us, then he said there would be consequences for not following those laws to encourage us to follow them because he loves us, then he determined that the consequences would be the worst possible thing that could happen, far worse than the real-life consequences for breaking the rules… because he loves us? It doesn’t add up. Don't give me some reductionist "let all rapists go free" argument. There's no way to explain the extreme severity of the consequences for breaking the law if the law itself was created so we would be better off. See?

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve to be completely dependent on Him for everything. They relied upon God to make their decisions for them, and tell them what good and evil was. However, because He wanted His creatures to be free to love Him, ie just not just forced to obey Him, He gave them one command. That command was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told them that in the day they ate of it they would surely die.

What lay in the fruit of that tree for Adam and Eve was their own autonomy. The fruit represented an independence from God to decide on their own what is good and evil. Rather than sitting at Gods feet and learning from Him, they would become a law onto themselves through their own judgment. What eating this fruit did was destroy their innocence forever. It ruined the perfect relationship and fellowship they had with God by turning them into rebels who would make choices apart from God.

So, rather than the law being given for the reasons you are saying, it was given to offer them a choice between obedience to God and personal autonomy. The consequences of breaking that law not only changed their nature but brought sin and death into the world. God draws the line at His standard for goodness, which is perfection. It is a zero tolerance policy for rebellion, not only for moral guidance, but to maintain order in His kingdom.

What’s wrong with robots? You said elsewhere it’s because god wouldn’t want robots. How can he want anything? He’s perfect. Does his own existence not satisfy him? Is he lacking something? Was he bored and lonely? Are we his pets?

God created not out of need, but out of the abundance of His love. He regards us as His offspring, not His pets.

Act 17:22-31

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

But he forgave us all our sins through the sacrifice of his son. Was that a compromise of his integrity? It seems he does choose to forgive us, at least once every 4000 years or so.

No, because He laid all of our sin on His Son, who bore the punishment we deserve. It is not a compromise of His integrity so long as the sin has been paid for.

Romans 4:25

He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification

You didn’t answer my questions. I know the stated purpose of sending Jesus. My question is why the situation required exactly that. Surely God, at some point, decided, "Well, they’re bad, and I want to get closer, and the exact thing required is for me to have a son, for that son to be a perfect human, for him to preach for three years and then get executed by the other humans, and then we can be closer." God decided something like that. It’s a direct implication of saying that God created everything and that this was necessary.

Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Before the world began, God knew that He would need to send His Son.

If you want to know more about what it means in the image of God, read this:

http://www.gotquestions.org/image-of-God.html

It told me almost nothing. It says that the definition of "the image of God" is everything that makes us different from other animals, and everything intangible about us, as if that’s what God looks like. It compared naming pets and enjoying music to being God. Weird.

Because being in the image of God isn't about what God looks like, it is about being imbued with His personal attributes. We resemble Him in our better nature, not our appearance.

What I’m getting at is the arbitrariness of the consequences and why God would have created such random consequences. Look at them with a critical eye, if you can: Adam and Eve committed one sin, and for that their nature was changed forever, and that of their descendents forever, and they lost paradise. For one sin? You believe that God created such a heavy consequence for the first offence ever committed by innocent people – and people without "knowledge" mind you, because they hadn’t eaten the fruit yet. I cannot.

I understand what you're saying. You're not going to see the picture before you connect all of the dots. I'll keep supplying you the dots as I am able. I think I explained this particular question to you in more specific detail this time around, as to why the separation occurred.

God got to enjoy his creation for about 45 minutes before it screwed itself up, and from then on we’ve been a disappointment to him. Yet, as you’ve stated elsewhere, God created us for his pleasure. He knew what would happen, so he screwed up. He couldn’t even create himself a pleasing race of pets. Dogs have free will, understand good and bad, and are extremely pleasing as companions. Why couldn’t God create as good for himself as he did for humans? The whole story doesn’t hold water.

He knew before He created that His creation would rebel at some point, and He took the necessary steps to reconcile it back to Himself at the end of time. He didn't screw up, but He did create beings capable of screwing up. To allow for the real possibility of good, He also had to allow for the real possibility of evil.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

That's a defence mechanism against whatever the opposite of apologia is. Reason, maybe.

Or it's absolutely true.

The only consistent model is that God himself created sin and evil by creating the laws, because if he hadn't created the laws, there would be no sin or evil in the world. This understanding is consistent with your statement A and in spirit with C, if you understand C to mean, "We created evil by breaking his law".

Sorry, I should have clarified this a lot more. When scripture says "the law" what it is reffering to is the Mosaic law that was given at Mt Sinai. This law was given because of sin, and sin was already in the world at that time. This really goes back to the beginning with what I described earlier. What we had in the beginning was not a law, but simply a choice. It was given not to keep us from evil but to give us freedom to choose to obey Gods will. You can't freely obey someone if you don't have a choice not to do it. You can't love someone without the choice not to love. The law came into play after all of this, and that is a whole other discussion.

>> ^messenger:

stuff

As a marriage and family therapist, though his hypothesis is interesting, I couldn't disagree more.

We don't emote with the knowledge of our biology. The knowledge of what we have evolved from does not enter in to our minds when we are lusting over someone. Our biological understanding of our species doesn't sit in the forefront of our minds when we are choosing to commit to a person.

We react to infidelity as an emotional thing as a hit to our feelings of stability. Stability is a crucial part of our evolution. It helps stabilize the home front, ensuring that our offspring will have a better chance at survival and will learn the things we want them to learn. Sexual bonds with others is a symbolic way that we emotionally process as a threat to that very need of stability.

He is greatly underestimating the emotional bond that is created (I believe biologically) when we have sex with each other. Saying that "sex isn't a big deal" is his flawed assumption.

If you feel trapped in a relationship, I suggest that perhaps marriage isn't the thing for you.

@ReverendTed

Abortion is not murder, but that's not really the point. America, and by extension, the world, doesn't really have a problem with killing as a whole. We war with ourselves and kill fellow beings in the name of religion, politics, land and other resources. We kill criminals if they commit heinous enough crimes. We kill vast amounts of wildlife for fun and sport. We kill flies and other insects merely because they bother us. We step on insects without even knowing it.

We humans kill.
We are killers.
There is no escaping this fact.
Create the right conditions and anyone will kill...anyone.

The only thing you can do is: 1. Hopefully create a world in the future where we don't have to kill as much and 2. Hope that we are killing for the right reasons. Sometimes this will be true, sometimes it won't be. But that's life. That's the human condition. A law will change nothing other than whether or not abortions are performed safely or not. I choose to live in a world where if someone I know decides to have an abortion, that they do it safely with a doctor and not in some back alley. Abortions will happen REGARDLESS of what the law says. If we're going to end an unborn child's life, let's at least make sure the mother remains safe. Outlawing abortions just increases the chance that we'll have two ended lives instead of just one.

Abortion, by definition is the LAWFUL termination of an unborn child...LAWFUL. Murder is the UNLAWFUL termination of a life. Key distinction there.

This false morality that some people are somehow above and beyond the rest of us mere mortals and hold life to be irrevocably sacred just does not understand history or the human condition. These sorts of people seem to be the same people who would casually send us to war for religious or ideological reasons and thus condone the termination of more lives. The hypocrisy is glaring.

In regards to this notion that a person would go have an abortion just because a baby would be inconvenient is sad certainly, but when it comes right down to it....tough. Cost of living in a free society. people are going to things you don't approve of. deal with it. Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa. People who go have abortions out of convenience are in the minority. Quit worrying about what the minority does..especially with their own body. You and I don't get to decide what is right for someone else.

We don't live in a post-scarcity world yet. If every viable pregnancy ever was brought to term, we would have an even bigger resource shortage problem on our hands.

We live in a world where your quality of life (and your offspring) is directly related to your job. Until the quality of life of humanity becomes more equalized, We are going to continue to have situations where if someone gets pregnant it will directly affect their quality of life (and their child's) for the worse. So I really don't have a problem with someone terminating the pregnancy so that they go on to improve their quality of life so that they can have a kid later who will benefit from that better quality of life.

I too would ideally prefer adoption to abortion. But that's not exactly saying much. Adoption agencies have tons of kids and not enough parents to go around. As fertility science continues to improve, fewer and fewer parents are going to want adoption when they can just undergo a procedure and still have their own. This recently happened to a friend of mine who was having difficulty conceiving. She and her husband initially decided to adopt, but at some point, they changed their mind and pursued some massively costly fertility treatments so that they eventually did conceive. I was immensely happy for her, but at the same time, I personally felt they should have stuck with the adoption as those orphans are already here and need help now. But here's the thing. It's not my choice, it's hers and her husbands. So we can deal with the realities of the situation or continue to play hypotheticals. If everyone gave their kid up for adoption instead of abortion, we'd just have a different kind of problem and the quality of life of a vast amount of kids would be affected for the worse.

As for your big questions, They are best left to people far more educated on this subject than you and I. Of course there is some point in a pregnancy where abortion should no longer be an option. I don't think anyone is arguing this. As you say, the question is when. I simply don't know and am unqualified to make that judgement. No matter what is decided upon, it obviously won't satisfy everyone, but a decision has to be made and you can't please everyone.

>> ^direpickle:

>> ^criticalthud:
now if you are looking from a paleontologists point of view, the most aggressive section of the world in terms of active worldwide dominance and aggressive economic systems, has been europe/eurasia and it's offspring (the united states).

Citation needed.
>> ^criticalthud:
Hence in Europe, you have a place where prehistorically, the less advanced, less rational and more aggressive neanderthal inter-bred with the more advanced cro-magnon to a greater degree than anywhere else in the world.

Oh my god citation needed!


given man's propensity to stick his dick in whatever hole would have it, the burden is really on you to disprove the assertion.

>> ^criticalthud:

now if you are looking from a paleontologists point of view, the most aggressive section of the world in terms of active worldwide dominance and aggressive economic systems, has been europe/eurasia and it's offspring (the united states).

Citation needed.
>> ^criticalthud:

Hence in Europe, you have a place where prehistorically, the less advanced, less rational and more aggressive neanderthal inter-bred with the more advanced cro-magnon to a greater degree than anywhere else in the world.


Oh my god citation needed!

now if you are looking from a paleontologists point of view, the most aggressive section of the world in terms of active worldwide dominance and aggressive economic systems, has been europe/eurasia and it's offspring (the united states).

Hence in Europe, you have a place where prehistorically, the less advanced, less rational and more aggressive neanderthal inter-bred with the more advanced cro-magnon to a greater degree than anywhere else in the world.

Yeah ya fuckin' hippies, GET A LICENSE FOR PROCREATION WHY DON'T YA!!
Oh and you "no practical skills or common sense havin' ", PHd married to another Phd, hybrid-drivin', politically correct ,pretentious, offspring-polluting dingbats who think they are doing tHE world a fAvor creating another insect just like yourself???....yOU motherfuckers.....YOU ARE THE WORST!!