No, lets not. I provided counter evidence to one absurd baseless assertion of yours , that "information" only comes from "minds", you have not provided any basis on which to defend your original position.

Actually, I did. I pointed out that your simulation doesn't do what you said it does, even in a trivial way. I said information only comes from minds, so you provide a simulation programmed by a mind. I stated this only illustrates my point, but you insisted the output proved information doesn't have to come from minds. I just got finished pointing out that the whole thing is analogous to randomly piecing together letters of an existing language until you get a new word by chance. You still need the language for the word to mean anything, otherwise it is just nonsense. And you don't get the word without the language in the first place. If the boxcar simulation could produce helicopters, that might be something, but you're still dealing with the chicken and the egg problem. A system created by information which outputs information by design is not doing so without the involvement of a mind. A mind was behind the entire process and none of it could have happened without a mind so it doesn't count as an example. You can't use a design to prove there is no design needed. That's like saying you can prove you don't need a factory to build a car but you buy all of your parts to build the car from the factory.

Your "this is going badly, let's start over" tactic is cute, don't get me wrong, but you insist that your ideological position be taken seriously, and I intend to do so, until it lies in tattered shreds on the floor.

What I insist is that you substantiate your claims, which you have failed to do. Your overconfidence is amusing, but misplaced; the facts are not on your side. Abiogenesis is purely metaphysics and unproven.

So you acknowledge that information is trivially synthesized, by
non-minds? That's the opposite of your original claim. Is that a
retraction?

No, see above.

So now you accept that once you have atoms, gravity, time,
electromagnetism, you inevitably have the possibility of self
replicating molecular systems, and therefor "life"?

Nope, see above.

You seem to have decided that life is a magical barrier, but this distinction is false.

There most certainly is a barrier. Again, abiogenesis is pure metaphysics; it doesn't happen in the real world. Life doesn't come from non-life. Pasteurization, and the food supply in general, relies upon this fact.

The distinction between "life" and "non-life" does not exist.

So there is no difference between you and a rock? I can admit I see similarities, heart wise..:)

Let's see some evidence for your claim that there is no difference between life and non-life.

You acknowledge that once a mechanism for inheritance exists the rest
is inevitable, I agree, you simply lack the sense of scale on which
the universe operates, which makes the preceding step entirely
plausible.

No, I admit that if you don't have to do the work to get wheels and bodies, and you have a design that churns them out, boxcars are inevitable. If you already have the materials, and the blueprints, of course you're able to build the house. Without any of those things, it is an impossible proposition.

This is simply false. RNA codes for proteins, but RNA requires no
proteins for it's own replication, it is entirely plausible, arguably
likely, that once you have RNA, DNA would get a chance to compete.

It's not false. This is your pathway to DNA: RNA - (MAGIC) - DNA This is your pathway to RNA: ROCKS - (MAGIC) - RNA Just because you can get RNA to self-replicate doesn't automatically mean it is either likely or plausible this could happen.

You assume that the argument is Random -> RNA -> DNA, but it is not. There are many simpler organic self replicators that, in the absence of an RNA ecosystem, would be able to prime the pump, by converting simple molecules into those more likely to contribute to spontaneous RNA synthesis, very much in the same way that cells work by creating conditions where the high concentration of particular ingredients allows proteins to replicate DNA, which proteins would not be able to do in the wild.

The best science has been able to do is create some amino acids which is worlds away from a complex molecule like RNA. The difficulties are legion and many are just intractable. There is no proof that RNA could even survive in that kind of environment, because it is extremely fragile.

ID is not even a postulation, much less a hypothesis, it provides no information, illuminates nothing, it is theology dressed up in the garb of science. It's only science if it reliably predicts things, ID fails at this basic task, because, like all theology, it is useless
.

It most certainly is a theory and it is not theology; intelligent design only needs an intelligent designer, not an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity. It is a theory which states that certain elements and features of the Universe are better explained by intelligent causation than an undirected process like natural selection. It is an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent" design in nature, which biologists acknowledge, is actual design. It is only useless to you because you have ruled out design apriori, which is just simply ignorant.

>> ^dgandhi:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Let's start over because you're just going all over the place

No, lets not. I provided counter evidence to one absurd baseless assertion of yours , that "information" only comes from "minds", you have not provided any basis on which to defend your original position.
Your "this is going badly, let's start over" tactic is cute, don't get me wrong, but you insist that your ideological position be taken seriously, and I intend to do so, until it lies in tattered shreds on the floor.
>> ^shinyblurry:
This is the point: Your entire example is irrelevent. Yeah, you can generate all sorts of stuff when a system is already in place, when you have a preprogrammed design that itself generates designs. If you already have wheels and a chassis, you can build a boxcar pretty easily. Boxcars are inevitable at this point.

So you acknowledge that information is trivially synthesized, by non-minds? That's the opposite of your original claim. Is that a retraction?
So now you accept that once you have atoms, gravity, time, electromagnetism, you inevitably have the possibility of self replicating molecular systems, and therefor "life"? You seem to have decided that life is a magical barrier, but this distinction is false. The distinction between "life" and "non-life" does not exist.
You acknowledge that once a mechanism for inheritance exists the rest is inevitable, I agree, you simply lack the sense of scale on which the universe operates, which makes the preceding step entirely plausible.
>> ^shinyblurry:
You have to have proteins to create DNA and you have to have DNA to create proteins.

This is simply false. RNA codes for proteins, but RNA requires no proteins for it's own replication, it is entirely plausible, arguably likely, that once you have RNA, DNA would get a chance to compete.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Science has attempted to solve this problem by saying that RNA molecules evolved from the soup, yet there is no logical pathway for this to happen, because natural selection and mutation cannot account for it.

You assume that the argument is Random -> RNA -> DNA, but it is not. There are many simpler organic self replicators that, in the absence of an RNA ecosystem, would be able to prime the pump, by converting simple molecules into those more likely to contribute to spontaneous RNA synthesis, very much in the same way that cells work by creating conditions where the high concentration of particular ingredients allows proteins to replicate DNA, which proteins would not be able to do in the wild.
>> ^shinyblurry:
The problems are far too vast to overcome, and experiment has yieled no conclusive results. So, my point stands, that intelligent design is a better explanation for the complex coded information in DNA, which naturalistic processes cannot account for.

ID is not even a postulation, much less a hypothesis, it provides no information, illuminates nothing, it is theology dressed up in the garb of science. It's only science if it reliably predicts things, ID fails at this basic task, because, like all theology, it is useless.

>> ^shinyblurry:
Let's start over because you're just going all over the place


No, lets not. I provided counter evidence to one absurd baseless assertion of yours , that "information" only comes from "minds", you have not provided any basis on which to defend your original position.

Your "this is going badly, let's start over" tactic is cute, don't get me wrong, but you insist that your ideological position be taken seriously, and I intend to do so, until it lies in tattered shreds on the floor.

>> ^shinyblurry:


This is the point: Your entire example is irrelevent. Yeah, you can generate all sorts of stuff when a system is already in place, when you have a preprogrammed design that itself generates designs. If you already have wheels and a chassis, you can build a boxcar pretty easily. Boxcars are inevitable at this point.


So you acknowledge that information is trivially synthesized, by non-minds? That's the opposite of your original claim. Is that a retraction?

So now you accept that once you have atoms, gravity, time, electromagnetism, you inevitably have the possibility of self replicating molecular systems, and therefor "life"? You seem to have decided that life is a magical barrier, but this distinction is false. The distinction between "life" and "non-life" does not exist.

You acknowledge that once a mechanism for inheritance exists the rest is inevitable, I agree, you simply lack the sense of scale on which the universe operates, which makes the preceding step entirely plausible.

>> ^shinyblurry:
You have to have proteins to create DNA and you have to have DNA to create proteins.


This is simply false. RNA codes for proteins, but RNA requires no proteins for it's own replication, it is entirely plausible, arguably likely, that once you have RNA, DNA would get a chance to compete.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Science has attempted to solve this problem by saying that RNA molecules evolved from the soup, yet there is no logical pathway for this to happen, because natural selection and mutation cannot account for it.


You assume that the argument is Random -> RNA -> DNA, but it is not. There are many simpler organic self replicators that, in the absence of an RNA ecosystem, would be able to prime the pump, by converting simple molecules into those more likely to contribute to spontaneous RNA synthesis, very much in the same way that cells work by creating conditions where the high concentration of particular ingredients allows proteins to replicate DNA, which proteins would not be able to do in the wild.

>> ^shinyblurry:

The problems are far too vast to overcome, and experiment has yieled no conclusive results. So, my point stands, that intelligent design is a better explanation for the complex coded information in DNA, which naturalistic processes cannot account for.


ID is not even a postulation, much less a hypothesis, it provides no information, illuminates nothing, it is theology dressed up in the garb of science. It's only science if it reliably predicts things, ID fails at this basic task, because, like all theology, it is useless.

I haven't conflated anything. You've simply misconstrued everything I've said because of your belief that RNA is simple, or could spontaneously evolve. You think your simulation demonstrates the creation of information which could lead to a system that creates cellular life. This is false; such a system could never generate RNA of cellular life. Even if it could generate RNA, to evolve the correct sequences of RNA nucleotides to form even one protein would be impossible to achieve even over billions of years, let alone enough proteins to create a cell. There is no experiment which has demonstrated that RNA can spontaneously evolve and be capable of creating life, now or ever. There is also no experiment which shows life evolving from non-living matter.

The information is what designed and built the simulation, and its structure generates different arrangements of that information based on certain preprogrammed variables which do not change. You are not making anything truly new, rather you are just shuffling things around. Such a simulation could never evolve on its own outside of programming. Just as DNA could never evolve on its own. The digital information it contains transcends its medium, just as a story transcends the paper and ink it is written on. Information only comes from minds, and that is what DNA code points to.

>> ^dgandhi:
>> ^shinyblurry:
You're just illustrating my point. That program was designed and coded by a mind. It is the coded digital information which makes it possible.

So you are claiming that the designs are placed in the simulation by the programmer, that they are deceiving you when they claim that the car is designed by genetic selection?
There is information in the simulation, the information is in the physics and the randomly generated track, just as in our universe the physical constraints create conditions that privilege certain patterns in both chemistry and behavior. Since the only non-random input to the system is physics based on our own, are you claiming that physics is a "mind" ?
>> ^shinyblurry:
It is the same story for DNA, and there isn't any naturalistic explanation for where the digital information came from; rather we know that information comes from minds, just if we see a message written in the sand we know a mind was behind it.

Here you conflate the data with the structure, you miss the basic fact that there are many, not terribly complex, chemicals that self replicate. You seem to be unaware that RNA ( referenced in your little puff piece apologetics video) is both self sorting and self replicating, requiring effectively no external mechanism to enable the creation of a system which synthesis information in the same manner as the simulation I linked.
Again you refuse to have a serious conversation, as you will not even address my points, you claim things without evidence, and then "support" them with hyperbole. If you are not claiming that physics is a mind, then you have not even bothered to comprehend the most basic explanation of that you claim to be arguing against, you are instead arguing against your own fever dream strawman, and not addressing any of us at all.
If you intend to navel gaze, please use your navel, the internet consist mostly of real people, Poe's law suggests you may even be one of them, so please at least attempt to seriously interact with us.

>> ^shinyblurry:

You're just illustrating my point. That program was designed and coded by a mind. It is the coded digital information which makes it possible.


So you are claiming that the designs are placed in the simulation by the programmer, that they are deceiving you when they claim that the car is designed by genetic selection?

There is information in the simulation, the information is in the physics and the randomly generated track, just as in our universe the physical constraints create conditions that privilege certain patterns in both chemistry and behavior. Since the only non-random input to the system is physics based on our own, are you claiming that physics is a "mind" ?

>> ^shinyblurry:

It is the same story for DNA, and there isn't any naturalistic explanation for where the digital information came from; rather we know that information comes from minds, just if we see a message written in the sand we know a mind was behind it.


Here you conflate the data with the structure, you miss the basic fact that there are many, not terribly complex, chemicals that self replicate. You seem to be unaware that RNA ( referenced in your little puff piece apologetics video) is both self sorting and self replicating, requiring effectively no external mechanism to enable the creation of a system which synthesis information in the same manner as the simulation I linked.

Again you refuse to have a serious conversation, as you will not even address my points, you claim things without evidence, and then "support" them with hyperbole. If you are not claiming that physics is a mind, then you have not even bothered to comprehend the most basic explanation of that you claim to be arguing against, you are instead arguing against your own fever dream strawman, and not addressing any of us at all.

If you intend to navel gaze, please use your navel, the internet consist mostly of real people, Poe's law suggests you may even be one of them, so please at least attempt to seriously interact with us.

@enoch & @IAmTheBlurr: Spiral dynamics is not for everyone... and there is very little empiricism to back it up because the bases upon which the different levels are concerned have not been qualitatively elucidated sufficiently enough to study them, to say nothing of the scientific method, itself, as being contingent upon certain assumptions within a given level of consciousness and not others.

However, if you were to adopt the philosopher, Hans Vaihinger's postulate of "As If," you may find a utility of the theoretical orientation which extends beyond its empirical accuracy. That is to say, "So what if it's bullshit, so long as it's useful?" This goes for many of the theories that are widely used in the social sciences, including Abe Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" among others.

That said, we should note that none of this "spiral dynamics" theory is very original. The concept of the "evolution of consciousness" is itself the basis of much of early Vedas in Hinduism which are nearly 5 thousand of years old.. However, the theory has become more codified in the 20th century by mystics and scholars such as Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Clare Graves, Edward Haskell, Arthur Young, Erich Jantsch, Jean Gebser, and, most recently, by Ken Wilber.

Of these, I'd have to say the following books are worth reading:

Aurobindo's The Life Divine & Synthesis of Yoga
de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man
Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin
Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

(partly because I haven't read the others' works)

Bloody hell Hamilton is creepy. His emo laden wording of things, his near god worshipping of her, his bizarre looks towards her.

'Premier exotic dance establishments'? Really, you're going to try to make it sound classy? It's a strip club for fuck's sake.

When she's asked how much she'd been exposed to drugs prior to the whole bunker thing, and says, virtually nothing... 'just pot, meth and cocain'... in who's world is that virtually nothing?

[edit]

Wow, and the beginning of the accompanying article is such dribble:
"There is no facile synthesis of the events that transpired at the Wamego missile silo between October 1 and November 4, 2000. The available information is a viscous solution of truths, half-lies, three-quarter truths, and outright lies, the fractionation of which yields no pure product. "

So you are saying Hitler contradicts himself constantly in his own book (if that's where your quotes came from, since most of them only site page numbers and not the source) much like the Bible? Sorry not buying it.

>> ^shinyblurry:

That's what we call propaganda. This is what Hitler really thought:
13th December, 1941, midnight:
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)

21st October, 1941, midday:
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)
14th December, 1941, midday:
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)
27th February, 1942, midday:
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 yearse will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)
Hitler on propaganda:
"To whom should propaganda be addressed? … It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses… The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. The whole art consists in doing this so skilfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself … its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect… it's soundness is to be measured exclusively by its effective result". (Main Kampf, Vol 1, Ch 6 and Ch 12)


>> ^Duckman33:
We can't explain how the tides work? You can't be serious.
Here Hitler uses the Bible and his Christianity in order to attack the Jews and uphold his anti-Semitism:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which Christianity was founded.)
"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this “tradition” up until the 20th century.)
"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common in war for one race to rape another so that they can “defile” the race and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.)
“The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present- day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.”–Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I can post more if you're still not convinced.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Well, we can't explain that.
The reply:
Bennett is completely correct. It’s an important conceptual point, and we blew it.
As far as the Holocaust goes, I wasn't originally intending to pin it on anyone, but since the topic has surfaced, Hitler may have claimed in his propaganda to be Christian, but his statements to the nazi party tells a much different story:
27th February, 1942, midday
"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie."
"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)
Doesn't sound like a Christian to me..
>> ^Duckman33:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Although there is no proof that the sun will rise tomorrow, you accept it on faith that it will.
IE, the holocaust.

That's what we call propaganda. This is what Hitler really thought:

13th December, 1941, midnight:

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)


21st October, 1941, midday:

Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer.... The decisive falsification of Jesus' doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation.... Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)

14th December, 1941, midday:

Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.... Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)

27th February, 1942, midday:

It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch Uin the next 200 yearse will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold ." (p 278)

Hitler on propaganda:

"To whom should propaganda be addressed? … It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses… The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. The whole art consists in doing this so skilfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself … its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect… it's soundness is to be measured exclusively by its effective result". (Main Kampf, Vol 1, Ch 6 and Ch 12)





>> ^Duckman33:
We can't explain how the tides work? You can't be serious.
Here Hitler uses the Bible and his Christianity in order to attack the Jews and uphold his anti-Semitism:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which Christianity was founded.)
"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this “tradition” up until the 20th century.)
"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common in war for one race to rape another so that they can “defile” the race and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.)
“The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present- day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.”–Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I can post more if you're still not convinced.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Well, we can't explain that.
The reply:
Bennett is completely correct. It’s an important conceptual point, and we blew it.
As far as the Holocaust goes, I wasn't originally intending to pin it on anyone, but since the topic has surfaced, Hitler may have claimed in his propaganda to be Christian, but his statements to the nazi party tells a much different story:
27th February, 1942, midday
"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie."
"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)
Doesn't sound like a Christian to me..
>> ^Duckman33:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Although there is no proof that the sun will rise tomorrow, you accept it on faith that it will.
IE, the holocaust.

Your refutations were (in order)

"This guy believes in evolution"

"We can never prove anything about the fossil record"

"this quote is old"

"this guy is crazy"

"this quote is old"

"this guy is a probable creationist"

Yeah, amazing refutations..which you got from a website, while calling me out on doing the same thing. Evolutionists, biologists, palentologists etc DO dispute the theory of evolution..you were right though..the ones I provided were kind of weak. You'll have an infinitely harder time refuting these:

"With the failure of these many efforts [to explain the origin of life] science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate.

After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort could not be proved to take place today, had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past."

Loren C. Eiseley,
Ph.D. Anthropology. "The Immense Journey". Random House, NY, p. 199

"We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain:

I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know it is bad, but because there isn't any other.

Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact, which is a first approximation."

Professor Jerome Lejeune,
Internationally recognised geneticist at a lecture given in Paris

"Considering its historic significance and the social and moral transformation it caused in western thought, one might have hoped that Darwinian theory ... a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth."

Michael Denton,
Molecular Biologist. "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". Adler and Adler, p. 358

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation-both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof."

L.Harrison Matthews,
British biologist

"[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature."


L. Harrison Matthews,
Introduction to 'Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life', p. xxii (1977 edition).


"I reject evolution because I deem it obsolete, because the knowledge, hard won since 1830, of anatomy, histology, cytology, and embryology, cannot be made to accord with its basic idea. The foundationless, fantastic edifice of the evolution doctrine would long ago have met with its long deserved fate were it not that the love of fairy tales is so deep-rooted in the hearts of man."

Dr Albert Fleischmann. Recorded in Scott M. Huse, "The Collapse of Evolution", Baker Book House: Grand Rapids (USA), 1983 p:120

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."


William B. Provine,
Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University, 'Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life', Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.


"The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers ? [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance."


Hubert Yockey,
"Information Theory and Molecular Biology", Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 257


"As I said, we shall all be embarrassed, in the fullness of time, by the naivete of our present evolutionary arguments. But some will be vastly more embarrassed than others."


Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Principal Research Associate of the Center for Cognitive Science at MIT, "Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds," John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1994, p195)


"In 10 million years, a human-like species could substitute no more than 25,000 expressed neutral mutations and this is merely 0.0007% of the genome ?nowhere near enough to account for human evolution. This is the trade secret of evolutionary geneticists."

Walter James ReMine,
The Biotic Message : Evolution versus Message Theory


"Today, a hundred and twenty-eight years after it was first promulgated, the Darwinian theory of evolution stands under attack as never before. ... The fact is that in recent times there has been increasing dissent on the issue within academic and professional ranks, and that a growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp. It is interesting, moreover, that for the most part these 'experts' have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances regretfully, as one could say. We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience'; but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists."


Wolfgang Smith,
Mathematician and Physicist. Prof. of Mathematics, Oregon State University. Former math instructor at MIT. Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of the Teachings of de Chardin. Tan Books & Publishers, pp. 1-2


"If there were a basic principle of matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its existence should easily be demonstrable in the laboratory. One could, for instance, take a swimming bath to represent the primordial soup. Fill it with any chemicals of a non-biological nature you please. Pump any gases over it, or through it, you please, and shine any kind of radiation on it that takes your fancy. Let the experiment proceed for a year and see how many of those 2,000 enzymes [proteins produced by living cells] have appeared in the bath. I will give the answer, and so save the time and trouble and expense of actually doing the experiment. You would find nothing at all, except possibly for a tarry sludge composed of amino acids and other simple organic chemicals.
How can I be so confident of this statement? Well, if it were otherwise, the experiment would long since have been done and would be well-known and famous throughout the world. The cost of it would be trivial compared to the cost of landing a man on the Moon.......In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth."


Sir Fred Hoyle,
British physicist and astronomer, The Intelligent Universe, Michael Joseph, London, pp. 20-21, 23.


"...(I)t should be apparent that the errors, overstatements and omissions that we have noted in these biology texts, all tend to enhance the plausibility of hypotheses that are presented. More importantly, the inclusion of outdated material and erroneous discussions is not trivial. The items noted mislead students and impede their acquisition of critical thinking skills. If we fail to teach students to examine data critically, looking for points both favoring and opposing hypotheses, we are selling our youth short and mortgaging the future of scientific inquiry itself."


Mills, Lancaster, Bradley,
'Origin of Life Evolution in Biology Textbooks - A Critique', The American Biology Teacher, Volume 55, No. 2, February, 1993, p. 83


"The salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange. And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred."


Wolfgang Smith,
Ph.D Mathematics , MS Physics Teilardism and the New Religion. Tan Books and Publishers, Inc.


"... as Darwinists and neo-Darwinists have become ever more adept at finding possible selective advantages for any trait one cares to mention, explanation in terms of the all-powerful force of natural selection has come more and more to resemble explanation in terms of the conscious design of the omnipotent Creator."


Mae-Wan Ho & Peter T. Saunders,
Biologist at The Open University, UK and Mathematician at University of London respectively


"In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be 'wrong'. A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?"


Tom S. Kemp,
'A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record', New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, pp. 66-67


"We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."


Niles Eldredge,
Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History, "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p144)


... by the fossil record and we are now about 120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much.
The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."


David M. Raup,
Curator of Geology. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology". Field Museum of Natural History. Vol. 50, No. 1, p. 25


"Thus all Darwin's premises are defective: there is no unlimited population growth in natural populations, no competition between individuals, and no new species producible by selecting for varietal differences. And if Darwin's premises are faulty, then his conclusion does not follow. This, of itself, does not mean that natural selection is false. It simply means that we cannot use Darwin's argument brilliant though it was, to establish natural selection as a means of explaining the origin of species."


Robert Augros & George Stanciu,
"The New Biology: Discovering the Wisdom in Nature", New Science Library, Shambhala: Boston, MA, 1987, p.160).







>> ^MaxWilder:
What the hell are you talking about? I refuted every one of your quotes point by point! I provided links to further information. The whole point was that your "evidence" of paleontologists speaking out against evolution was utter bullshit!
The only one where I discredited the source was from some no-name Swedish biologist that nobody takes seriously. Every other source was either out of context (meaning you are not understanding the words properly), or out of date (meaning that science has progressed a little since the '70s).
You have got your head so far up your ass that you are not even coherent now.
But you know what might change my mind? If you cut&paste some more out of context, out of date quotes. You got hendreds of 'em! </sarcasm>
>> ^shinyblurry:
So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source.

The gaps are fundemental..here are some more quotes:

"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Carroll, Robert L., "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion ...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. ...Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

"He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration...The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (George, T. Neville, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

"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. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

"It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions." (Wills, C., Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

"So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction." (Weinberg, S., Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p.

"We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology..." (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984.)

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood (Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

"As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)

"Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record." (Padian, K., The Origin of Turtles: One Fewer Problem for Creationists, 1991, p. 18.)

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163.)

"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

"One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged." (Ruse, "Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution," 1984, p.101.)

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 57.)

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.22.)

"To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis," 1983, p. 81.)

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163.)

"Gaps in the fossil record - particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution - are not surprising." (Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)

"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140.)

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)

"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)

"We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups." (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, "Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

>> ^Drax:
Shiny, it's kind of like you're saying,
Ok, we have: . -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and O
Then we find . -> o -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and o
or o and O
Basically, the more evidence we find.. the stronger your argument gets! <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/oh.gif">
ok, that last part's just a joke.. but seriously.. the other parts ARE your stance.
It's either that, or you're looking at o and e and expecting to find æ, which just doesn't happen.

>> ^davidraine:
Was that clip shot with a 6 aperture twin-filtering camera? The color resultivity is amazing! It looks like they used ZN Xenon-3 lighting for this scene too. You can see how it accentuates the shear shadows on that computer. NCIS is truly a triumph in videography.


Well whenever you have the footage shot with a dual-lyopholizing meta-synthesis generator, you're gonna get good results.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^bmacs27:
Frankly, arguing for "Keynesian economics" isn't what anyone is doing anymore. The monetarists laid that to rest years ago.
True, but a bit misleading. The monetarists laid "Old Keynesian" economics to rest, but that led to the neoclassical synthesis and New Keynesian economics.
In other words, the Keynesians did exactly what the Austrians refuse to do -- they looked at the new data, and the theories of other schools, and used both to formulate new and improved theories of economics that retained some of the insights of the old theory that still hold up to scrutiny (e.g. price stickiness).


They can't because they don't quantify anything. That's what I meant by "Often I find it's the Austrian schoolers that are unwilling to accept facts (read data) that call their theory into question." Coincidentally, it's the same weakness that makes it a poor school of economics for evaluating the consequences of policy decisions with respect to a stated objective.

>> ^bmacs27:
Frankly, arguing for "Keynesian economics" isn't what anyone is doing anymore. The monetarists laid that to rest years ago.

True, but a bit misleading. The monetarists laid "Old Keynesian" economics to rest, but that led to the neoclassical synthesis and New Keynesian economics.

In other words, the Keynesians did exactly what the Austrians refuse to do -- they looked at the new data, and the theories of other schools, and used both to formulate new and improved theories of economics that retained some of the insights of the old theory that still hold up to scrutiny (e.g. price stickiness).

8-bit?
Don't think so.
Depends on the sound card used. Hearing what appears to be both wavetable and PCM, I would say definitely 16-bit. The SoundBlaster Pro (16-bit) was released BEFORE the 1st release of Impulse Tracker, and I believe so was the AWE32.
Being wrong before, I could be again because, of course, all synthesis could be done in software using only 8-bits of the 16-bit registers of the 32-bit CPU on the 16-bit or 32-bit (or possibly 64-bit) bus in the 'puter.

This is also stating the obvious, but subsurface scattering, per-particle physics, lens synthesis, and all the photon tracing in the world won't get 3D out of the Uncanny Valley. This is very pretty, tho.