“These are sensational fossils, extraordinarily well preserved,” says Dirk Fuchs of the Freie University Berlin, lead author of the report. But what surprised the scientists most was how similar the specimens are to modern octopus: “these things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species.” This provides important evolutionary information.
Indeed: it provides information that none has occured.
Religion has Osama Bin Laden*, politics has it’s fair share of Stalins and Hitlers, Atheism has Auvinen, Sport has hooligans and Hollywood has Uwe Boll (just kidding). What about Science?
Rather than answer the question, Dawkins makes the presumption that the young lady in question is “brought up” in a Christian home and then turns the question back on her.
I’d love to see how Dawkins addresses someone like me who was brought up without beliefs, dabbled in the occult, rejecting the faith of Jehova’s Witnesses, going from atheist to agnostic and opened myself up to whatever kind of higher power or beings were out there before becoming a Christian.
I don’t know why supposed intellectual people cheer for someone who so obviously doesn’t want to accept the possibility of being wrong.
However it appears that Dawkins has softened his stance on the existence of a higher power himself more recently, as Mattghg writes.
It seems Dawkins, though tirelessly never to admit he is wrong, considers there may be something “grander and more mysterious” than God out there after all. Of course by suggesting this we get in to all sort of ad infinitum arguments, and I’m surprised he would take it upon himself to answer the the old atheist chesnut “Who created God?”.
Maybe if Dawkins’ only personal objection to God is that the idea of ‘God’ for him is… boring.
Watching news reports this week, it is appearing the man on the street that, as I predicted, global warming theory (uh, sorry, it’s a fact, because theory in science means fact… y’know like there is no word for speculation in science it’s all Feoryact) doesn’t have the ring of consistency to it as is being propagated, even before the recent snow storms.
Recent snowfall in the UK has perhaps helped the middle classes to stop and question something they are being told to believe in without question. The snowfall has managed to shut up even the loudest uninformed global alarming peddler, but it hasn’t prevented the more astute to start pedding two specific reasons, or rather, excuses for the snow.
The first one is an easy debunker. “Global Warming doesn’t mean it always gets hotter, it means more extreme types of weather!” Can anyone tell me what is so wrong with this argument? Well for starters it’s a catch all.. if you think about it, any type of extreme weather means global warming, hot or cold, dry or wet, delightful or devastating. If you’re trying to debate this logic intelligently you won’t win. Global Warming is essentially happening, regardless of the actual state of the environment.
The second one is this: Snowfall used to be much more common, but the Global Warming trend means that it’s occurring every 20 years (instead of, say, every year).
OK this is a bit more tricky, sounds believable right? But the remarkable thing about this argument is that it’s, like, almost dead on. We’re not talking about 25 years here, or 15 years, but we’re actually talking approximately 20 years. How are scientists able to predict this so accurately? Is it down to data provided by studying the global warming phenomenon or is it more like… the Zany Ones?!
Could it be scientists are stating 20 years, because, well, snow like this fell 20 years ago! A bit like if I told you house prices are going to rise this year because they’ve been rising since 1996?
a) When we have succeeded in our mission to cool the earth down? and b) If we actually do enter a Global Cooling period?
Perhaps if we start experiencing lots of freak heatwaves, this will be an indicator that we are in danger of Global Cooling and need to act fast to warm the earth up?!
Before I begin this second post I must issue a clarification on the subject of ‘evolution’. It appears to me there is a lot of ignorance and omission from both evolutionists and creationists when debating this subject. I include myself when I say ignorance but perhaps it is more lazy thinking.
The problem is that the whole ‘Evolution vs Creationism’ debate is framed wrong. When the term ‘evolution’ is used, it’s far too indefinite and absolute. Thus creationists (who believe God created the universe) easily fall into the trap of arguing against the whole theory and appearing quite stupid. Creationists should not be arguing against ‘evolution’. They should study it and argue on the specifics.
There seems to be a wave of anti-theism spreading across the interweb these days. Either that or I’m just reading the wrong sites. Regardless, it’s inspired me to recount my own conversion from being an enlightened, smart, intelligent being, to an unenlightened, stupid, dumb theist.
Anti-theism can come in other forms but it usually takes the form of evolutionism. So I will try not to point out the obvious irony that Creationists consider human beings to be of higher intellect, value and potential whereas evolutionists consider human beings to have evolved from less intelligent species. This will be the first part of a series.
As a Christian, I believe that scientifically, life starts at conception. In fact I kind of believe that life doesn’t start there, since the tissue is always ‘alive’ though egg and sperm are separate. But of course I have trouble with that theory, since, if you follow it to it’s logical conclusion then you’re basically committing genocide every time you spank the monkey.
So then I kind of also think that life starts not just with the biological, but the soul. Since I believe the soul does not end with death, then why should the soul simply start with conceived life? Indeed, the bible itself testifies the fact that “Long before [God] laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind…” (Eph 1:4 Message).
So it seems to me that our bodies are just a temporary vessel, condemned to death, but we are not without hope of eternal life.
I guess this puts me slightly in the ‘pro-choice’ camp. However, I have given this a lot of thought and I’ve come up with a solution to the whole debate, as well as getting around the controversy over the age of the fetus.
It’s simple. If a woman is considering an abortion, give her the option to wait until the fetus is born, then she can be free to decide if she still wants to abort. They could extend this to maybe 5 years after birth, just in case it doesn’t work out with the fetus.
By the way, no apologies for the image. Reality is often sick, and the truth can be pretty ugly.
“I heard a little while back (sorry no sources- top of my head) that some Christian activists had registered a patent for human-mice chimera.
It was actually a well-calculated move to force the governments hand and stimulate a debate. It was borne of a concern that if we don’t debate these things now, we will slowly fall into these things as a society unaware.
I would guess that this one is probably someones thesis that has been passed on by word of mouth and become itself a sort of mutation.
Mice, rice whatever, I think scientific experiments need to have 2 things in place – a purpose and sanctity of human life.”
To which the Councillor replied:
“I agree that we need to have a debate! Inevitably, though, I don’t agree with the need for a purpose.
Much experimentation that has led to world-changing discoveries have no purpose. Trips to Titan, for example, have no purpose at all — they burn through lots of money and find out fascinating stuff, but there’s nothing out there we could remotely use.
I also am not sure about the “sanctity of human life”. Yes life is special, but human life is no more so. I can see massive societal problems were we able to make all children of similar [insert criteria here] and the idea of fully developing a chimera (which at the moment is not proposed or possible) should send a shudder down anyone’s spine…
But at the same time, we shouldn’t think that same-species genetic modification is significantly different to forced hybridisation or selective breeding (it isn’t) and we shouldn’t be afraid of things without good reason… Going faster than 50mph, remember, will suffocate you!”
I do not want to be drawn out into a lengthy debate and assume neither does Gavin, for which I have utmost respect. So instead I’m simply going to offer some examples:
What happens when science (research) does not have a purpose?
What happens when science doesn’t have a conscience (respecting sanctity of human life)?
Abandon All Fear 