>> ^Sarzy:

>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^dannym3141:
Please don't be ruined by PG bullshit this time! Last one could have been so much better but for trying to get a good certificate.

Some f-bombs and squibs would have been nice, but their absence was the least of that movie's concerns. It was bad for reasons that ran far deeper than the lack of an R rating.

Respectfully disagree sir, though i accept your opinion. A desire to improve rating doesn't just mean they take away squibs and f-words.

The decision to make the movie PG-13 instead of R was made after production was well underway. There actually is an R rated cut on the DVD. It's the same movie, with CGI blood and more profanity. I don't have time to get into it right now, but that movie sucked because John McClane wasn't the same guy we knew from the first one (and the two sequels, to a lesser extent), the overblown action was generic and unexciting, and because of Len Wiseman's slick, uninspired direction, among other things. Again, the lack of an R rating sucked but it was the least of that movie's concerns.


Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and it's very easy to watch a "cut" on a dvd (which is probably just money for old rope anyway) and think "hey this stinks too".

I say that the desire to hold back a bit can affect the flow and atmosphere which are quite hard things to quantify. I'll agree to disagree though.

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^dannym3141:
Please don't be ruined by PG bullshit this time! Last one could have been so much better but for trying to get a good certificate.

Some f-bombs and squibs would have been nice, but their absence was the least of that movie's concerns. It was bad for reasons that ran far deeper than the lack of an R rating.

Respectfully disagree sir, though i accept your opinion. A desire to improve rating doesn't just mean they take away squibs and f-words.


The decision to make the movie PG-13 instead of R was made after production was well underway. There actually is an R rated cut on the DVD. It's the same movie, with CGI blood and more profanity. I don't have time to get into it right now, but that movie sucked because John McClane wasn't the same guy we knew from the first one (and the two sequels, to a lesser extent), the overblown action was generic and unexciting, and because of Len Wiseman's slick, uninspired direction, among other things. Again, the lack of an R rating sucked but it was the least of that movie's concerns.

I thought this looked alright up to the point where the CGI camera artificially wooshed in and out (that is the technical filmmaking term, BTW) while Colin Ferrell took out super fake looking CGI soldiers. CGI can be awesome when used well; Len Wiseman does not know how to use it well.

Again with the remakes... jesus, get some originality, hollywood. Granted the original movie was an adaptation but it was it's own unique Verhoven/Arny masterpiece. This'll no doubt be some Len Wiseman/Colin Farrell dreck

@TheGenk @Skeeve @Boise_Lib @gwiz665 @packo @IronDwarf @MaxWilder @westy @BicycleRepairMan @shuac @KnivesOut

Evolution is pseudo-science. It exists in the realm of imagination, and cannot be scientifically verified. At best, evolution science is forensic science, and what has been found not only does not support it, but entirely rules it out. I don't think any of you realize how weak the case for evolution really is. None of them quotes, as far as I know, are from creation scientists btw

No true transitional forms in the fossil record:

Darwins theory proposed that slow change over a great deal of time could evolve one kind of thing into another. Such as reptiles to birds. The theory proposed that we should see in the fossil records billions of these transitional forms, yet we have found none. When the theory was first proposed, darwinists pleaded poverty in the fossil record, claiming the missing links were yet to be found. It was then claimed that the links were missing because conditions conspired against fossilizing them, or that they had been eroded or destroyed in subsequent fossilization.

120 years have gone by since then. We have uncovered an extremely rich fossil record with billions of fossils, a record which has completely failed to produce the expected transitions. It has become obvious that there was no process that could have miraculously destroyed the transitionals yet left the terminal forms intact.

The next theory proposed was "hopeful monster" theory, which states that evolution occurs in large leaps instead of small ones. Some even suggested that a bird could have hatched from a reptile egg. This is against all genetic evidence, and has never been observed.

The complete lack of transitional forms is not even the worst problem for evolution, considering the big gaps between the higher categories, and the systemic absence of transitional forms between families classes orders and phyla.

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?"

Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History (and a hardcore evolutionist), in a letter to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979 admitting no transitional forms exist.

"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory."

Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216

"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?"

-Charles Darwin

"In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

-Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University

Fossil record disputes evolutionary theory:

According to evolutionary theory we should see an evolutionary tree of organisms starting from the least complex to the most complex. Instead, what we do see in the fossil record is the very sudden appearance of fully-formed and fully-functional complex life.

If you examine the fossil record, you see all kinds of complex life suddenly jumping into existence during a period that evolutionists refer to as the "Cambrian explosion".

None of the fossilized life forms found in the "Cambrian period" have any predecessors prior to that time. In essence, the "Cambrian period" represents a "sudden explosion of life" in geological terms.

Evolutionists try to disprove this by stretching it over a period of 50 million years, but they have no transitional fossils to prove that theory before or during.

"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed"

-Paleontologist George Gaylord

What disturbs evolutionists greatly is that complex life just appears in the fossil record out of nowhere, fully functional and formed.

A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.

-Paleontologist Mark Czarnecki (an evolutionist)

"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and both reject this alternative."

-Richard Dawkins, 'The Blind Watchmaker', W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, pp. 229-230

Evolution can't explain the addition of information that turns one kind into another kind

There is no example recorded of functional information being added to any creature, ever.

"The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus)."

Species just don't change. Kind only produces kind:

"Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible distress. ....They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it."

Evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University

Not enough bones:

Today the population grows at 2% per year. If we set the population growth rate at just 0.5% per year, then total population reduces to zero at about 4500 years ago. If the first humans lived 1,000,000 years ago, then at this 0.5% growth rate, we would have 10^2100 (ten with 2100 zeroes following it) people right now. If the present population was a result of 1,000,000 years of human history, then several trillion people must have lived and died since the emergence of our species. Where are all the bones? And finally, if the population was sufficiently small until only recently, then how could a correspondingly infinitesimally small number of mutations have evolved the human race?

"Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."

-Professor Louis Bounoure, past president of the Biological Society of Strassbourg, Director of the Strassbourg Zoological Museum and Director of Research at the French National Center of Scientific Research.

Try to debunk this if you can
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=tYLHxcqJmoM&feature=PlayList&p=C805D4953D9DEC66&index=0&playnext=1

More fun facts:

There are no records of any human civilization past 4000 BC

"The research in the development of the [radiocarbon] dating technique consisted of two stages—dating of samples from the historic and prehistoric epochs, respectively. Arnold [a co-worker] and I had our first shock when our advisors informed us that history extended back only for 5,000 years . . You read statements to the effect that such and such a society or archeological site is 20,000 years old. We learned rather that these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately; in fact, the earliest historical date that has been established with any degree of certainty is about the time of the First Dynasty of Egypt."—*Willard Libby, Science, March 3, 1961, p. 624.

Prior to a certain point several thousand years ago, there was no trace of man having ever existed. After that point, civilization, writing, language, agriculture, domestication, and all the rest—suddenly exploded into intense activity!

"No more surprising fact has been discovered, by recent excavation, than the suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. This discovery is the very opposite to that anticipated. It was expected that the more ancient the period, the more primitive would excavators find it to be, until traces of civilization ceased altogether and aboriginal man appeared. Neither in Babylonia nor Egypt, the lands of the oldest known habitations of man, has this been the case."—P.J. Wiseman, New Discoveries, in Babylonia, about Genesis (1949 ), p. 28.

Oldest people/language recorded in c. 3000 B.C., and were located in Mesopotamia.

The various radiodating techniques could be so inaccurate that mankind has only been on earth a few thousand years.

"Dates determined by radioactive decay may be off—not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude . . Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand."—*Robert Gannon, "How Old Is It?" Popular Science, November 1979, p. 81.

Moonwalk disproves age of moon:

The moon is constantly being bombarded by cosmic dust particles. Scientists were able to measure the rate at which these particles would accumulate. Using their estimates according to their understanding that the age of the Earth was billions of years, their most conservative estimate predicted a dust layer 54 feet deep. This is why the lander had those huge balloon tires, to be prepared to land on a sea of dust. Neil Armstrong, after saying those famous words, uttered two more which disproved the age of the moon entirely "its solid!". Far from being 54 feet, they found the dust was 3/4 of an inch.

Evolution is a fairy tale that modern civilization has bought, hook line and sinker. Humorously, atheists accuse creationists of beiieving in myths without any evidence..when they place their entire faith in an unproven theory even evolutionists know is fatally flawed and invalid. Evolution is a meta physical belief that requires faith. Period.

Evolution is false, science affirms a divine Creator
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Books,%20Tracts%20&%20Preaching/Tracts/big_daddy.htm

Though most of this is undisputable, I'm just getting started..

@bmacs27 That's his interpretation, but one that is difficult to prove wrong. The only way to empirically test it would be to go back in time and try both ways (praying and not praying) and recording the results. If we could do that the case would be settled, I suppose.

@criticalthud That's actually many sects of Buddhism's view.

@dystopianfuturetoday I've read the study. That article you cited is incredibly misleading. The researchers involved in the study say the result regarding complications is likely a chance finding due to the numbers (59% prayed for getting complications and 51% un-prayed for getting complications) being so close. In other words, in a repeated study with a larger sample size they expected it to be even. See the NY Times article as a reference.

One possibility the researchers cited is that people who've been told strangers are praying for them think maybe their condition might be worse than the doctors are telling them (thus leading them to freak out a bit and impede their own recovery). That wouldn't be evidence of prayer causing damage, though (a conclusion which by the way actually implicitly suggests prayer works--just not in the manner people think), and the researchers specifically stated (see the NY Times article) that you can't use the results to draw any conclusions about people who ask to be prayed for or prayer offered among family members and friends since the study was only concerned with praying for strangers.

And finally, that study treats prayer as if it is a "wish machine" (see my comments to raverman). It starts with the assumption that everyone who gets prayed for has their prayer answered in the affirmative and in exactly the way they phrase it--which isn't how any of the major religions defines prayer, as far as I know.

It would be really interesting to search through the results of that study and look at the outliers, in my opinion. Were there differences in the number of people who made unexpected recoveries in the groups? How about the opposite--unexpected deaths? I don't know if they kept such information. But even if they did I don't see how they could link these things to supernatural effects one way or the other. The way the study is designed, there doesn't seem to be a way to separate supernatural effects from chance natural effects.

Just to make it clear, I'm not a theist in any way, shape, or form. I'm just pointing out the difficulties in studying supposedly supernatural events "scientifically." I personally don't think either side can prove their case using science although that certainly hasn't stopped people from trying. My view on prayer is that it could help (people feel better knowing someone is praying for them), it could do nothing, or it could be harmful (parents decide not to take their child to the doctor and leave it in "God's hands")... it really depends on the circumstances. However, I think that most of the time for the overwhelming majority of people in the world, prayer is beneficial, for probably the same reasons that Wiseman (see previous comment) found for people who feel they are lucky. That doesn't mean prayer has a supernatural basis. But it also does suggest that prayer is neither pointless nor meaningless.

@mgittle
@shagen454
@raverman

I think prayer may have more benefits than you guys admit. And I do think prayers can affect reality, just not in the way you guys are describing.

Richard Wiseman did a 10-year study of luck that found that lucky people did indeed have better things happen to them. From the article:

Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prohesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I'm not aware of any studies that have investigated prayer in a similar manner, but probably people who believe prayer works benefit from almost the same exact effects. Also, if such a study were conducted and such evidence were found, it wouldn't necessarily disprove the tangible effects of prayer as a supernatural phenomenon but it would strongly suggest there are alternative explanations.

Also, @raverman, I don't think your study would be very convincing to most people because no religions I know of describe prayer as a "wish machine." Most religious people would say that just because someone prays for something doesn't mean it will automatically or always be answered. Some would go so far as to say if the prayer isn't answered then clearly the answer is "no." This makes scientific investigation in the form your describing nigh impossible. At science's core is the idea that there are rules to how the phenomenom being studied work and that through observation we can observe these rules. While the effects of arbitrary decisions (i.e. someone who got prayed for gets better) can be observed, it is probably impossible to figure out how those decisions were made through observation only and without asking the decider directly.

I found this on Yahoo News a few days ago.

"As financial workers suffer through tumultuous times on Wall Street, some are turning to an old source of solace: religion."

The entire purpose of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent father figure is to be the Superman. We are mortal, he's immortal. We fear, he's fearless. We make mistakes, he's perfect. He is everything we cannot be, and it's so obvious why that is. I can't understand why more people don't see that.

In reply to this comment by Raigen:
I quote from Quirkology by Richard Wiseman (an awesome read, by the way): Chapter 3 "Believing six impossible things before breakfast: Psychology enters the twilight zone.", pg 102-103

[...]

When times are hard, which I'm sure they are in some of the countries used in the study conducted which is discussed in the video, more people will want some sort of "control" in their out-of-control lives. They find that sense of "comfort" in handing control over to forces they believe to be "more powerful" than just mortal men and women.

>> ^Psychologic:
Wouldn't it be more likely that high crime and poor living conditions would cause more religious faith rather than the faith causing the crime? Hardship is a very strong reason for seeking a blissful afterlife.
That would certainly fit the findings of the study. He never really suggested causation.



I quote from Quirkology by Richard Wiseman (an awesome read, by the way): Chapter 3 "Believing six impossible things before breakfast: Psychology enters the twilight zone.", pg 102-103

"By the middle 1920s, inflation in Germany was so high that paper money was carried in shopping bags, and people were eager to spend any money the moment that they had it, for fear that it would be severely devalued the following day. By 1932, almost half of the population were unemployed. In 1982, Vernon Padgett from Marshall Universty and Dale Jorgenson from the California State University published a paper comparing the number of articles on astrology, mysticism, and cults, appearing in the major German magazines and newspapers between the two world wars, and the degree of economic threat each year.* Articles on gardening and cooking were also counted as controls. An index of economic threat was calculated on the basis of wages, percentage of unemployed trade union members, and industrial production. When people were suffering an economic downturn, the number of articles on superstition increased. When things were going better, they decreased. The strong relationship between the two factors caused the authors to conclude that:

'... just as Trobriand islanders surrounded their more dangerous deep sea fishing with superstitions, Germans in the 1920s and 1930s became more superstitious during times of economic threat.'

The authors link their findings with much broader social issues, noting that in times of increased uncertainty, people look for a sense of certaintity and this need can cause them to support strong leadership regimes, and believe in various irrational determinants of their fate, such as superstition and mysticism."

*V.R. Padgett & D.O. Jorgenson - 'Superstition and economic threat: Germany, 1918-1940', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin #8, pages 736-74. 1982.

I guess you could look at the above study, and then look at what may occur within areas of the United States during this coming time of harsh economic crisis as well. Will it create an increase in religious belief/ferver and a higher degree of trust into other areas of superstition, the supernatural, and mysticism?

When times are hard, which I'm sure they are in some of the countries used in the study conducted which is discussed in the video, more people will want some sort of "control" in their out-of-control lives. They find that sense of "comfort" in handing control over to forces they believe to be "more powerful" than just mortal men and women.