New Book of Rules
in [Design]
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From: John Woodgate on 20 Aug 2006 12:14 In message <C10DCD14.3FB89%dbowey(a)comcast.net>, dated Sun, 20 Aug 2006, Don Bowey <dbowey(a)comcast.net> writes >What was the length of a week at the time of the big bang, compared to >the length of a week as we define it now? No problem. It was 3.773 US pints longer. -- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
From: bill.sloman on 20 Aug 2006 13:23 John Larkin wrote: > On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:28:18 GMT, Rich Grise <rich(a)example.net> wrote: > > >On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:42:33 +0100, John Woodgate wrote: > > > >> In message <j329e2t9dc055hbcl7iip1lp8j43fo9fnp(a)4ax.com>, dated Thu, 17 > >> Aug 2006, John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> > >> writes > >>>I certainly am confused. I've been informed that one or more comets > >>>killed off everything over a few kilograms, and that all available > >>>ecological niches were filled a few million years later. So giraffes > >>>and walruses and mastadons evolved from rabbit-sized critters in a few > >>>million years. > >>> > >>>Have I got it right at last? > >> > >> Yes, for sometimes quite large values of 'few'. > > > >Well, would all of the sea critters have got wiped out too? > > > >I've never been able to grasp how cetaceans evolved from land critters - > >when did their nose move to the back of their neck? ?:-/ > > > > There are thousands, millions, of astonishing biological structures, > many deeply interlocked such that no part of a complex system could > function until all of it is in place. This is a standard creationist argument. In fact, when people difg into these complex systems they seem to be able to explain how they evolved from simpler systems which often did something rather different. This is Bishop Paley's "God the watchmaker" argument. Richard Dawkins' 1986 book "The Blind Watchmaker" ISBN: 0393315703 deals with it at length. It remains popular (#2,598 on Amazon) and is requied reading for anybody who wants to get involved in this argument. > And there are people who > continue to insist that these structures resulted from random mutation > and natural selection. With loads of - very convincing - evidence. > Just consider how a worm might decide to only be able to reproduce in > the form of a butterfly. Not a decision that a worm - I think you mean caterpillar - can make. Our ancestors - speaking for all of the vertebrates - do seem to have suffered some kind of interesting mutation that meant that the free-living larval form of some sessile filter feeder could become a sexually mature.jawless fish. The axolotl is a more modern example of the same trick. The species I was taught about in first year biology needed iodine in the water to switch from the acquatic larval form - a sort of tadpole - into the salamander like adult form. No iodine, and the larval form eventually becmes sexually mature. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: bill.sloman on 20 Aug 2006 13:33 John Fields wrote: > On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 02:55:52 +0100, Eeyore > <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)REMOVETHIS.hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > >John Larkin wrote: > > >> There are thousands, millions, of astonishing biological structures, > >> many deeply interlocked such that no part of a complex system could > >> function until all of it is in place. And there are people who > >> continue to insist that these structures resulted from random mutation > >> and natural selection. > >> > >> Just consider how a worm might decide to only be able to reproduce in > >> the form of a butterfly. > > > >What puzzles me even more is that anyone could imagine how a 'supreme being' > >could have come up with all of this in a week too ! > > --- > Time, and its restrictions as we know them, don't exist for a > supreme being. You've got that the wrong way around. Nobody has any time for discussions involving a supreme being, because his, her or its' existence involves too many logical fallacies to allow useful discussion. Worship as many supreme being as you like - I know that they can only be one, by definition, but deists haven't yet got together to work which of their conceptions of this logicall fallacy is the right one - but don't go around parroting what his/her/its' self-appointed local representative claims to be "the truth" because none of the "truths" are even self-consistent, let alone consistent with the real world. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: John Woodgate on 20 Aug 2006 14:12 In message <1156095216.284861.175260(a)m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>, dated Sun, 20 Aug 2006, bill.sloman(a)ieee.org writes >You've got that the wrong way around. Nobody has any time for >discussions involving a supreme being No, Bill, that's the problem. Too many people DO have time. >, because his, her or its' existence involves too many logical >fallacies to allow useful discussion. That's partly because they envisage something like a Greek god, with human emotions and other characteristics, totally underestimating the powers such a being must have. It's practically blasphemy! IF an omnipotent, omnipresent Supreme Being (or several) exists, it MUST be not subject to time, which is, after all, just another dimension, one which we perceive to have peculiar properties, maybe because we (all matter) travel through it (whatever 'travel through it' means in a one-dimensional system) at the speed of light, just as photons travel through the spatial dimensions at that speed. -- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
From: Eeyore on 20 Aug 2006 15:15
John Woodgate wrote: > In message <44E7C128.48069E3E(a)REMOVETHIS.hotmail.com>, dated Sun, 20 Aug > 2006, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)REMOVETHIS.hotmail.com> writes > > >> There are thousands, millions, of astonishing biological structures, > >> many deeply interlocked such that no part of a complex system could > >> function until all of it is in place. And there are people who > >> continue to insist that these structures resulted from random mutation > >> and natural selection. > >> > >> Just consider how a worm might decide to only be able to reproduce in > >> the form of a butterfly. > > > >What puzzles me even more is that anyone could imagine how a 'supreme > >being' could have come up with all of this in a week too ! > > It's a poem; it was not intended to be taken literally. Using a literal > interpretation to devalue it isn't playing fair. Interesting that you should say that. Were you taught to understand the bible like this or was it something you became aware of later ? I was taught a literal interpreation you see and that's one reason that age around 9 I concluded that religion was hokum. > Of course, the > creationists don't play fair, but we have to live with that. > > If you take Genesis 1 literally, you must accept that 'Jerusalem' is an > incitement to holy war. Indeed. Graham |