Summations Only

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean he knows anything more about god than I do, or that he wasn't completely deluded.

Well the fact is that he did and you're the deluded one.

I agree, but I think that grown-ups believing in imaginary, invisible, all-powerful beings who despite being all powerful cannot communicate with all of us is dangerous.When it leads believers to deny evidence that everyone can see because it demonstrates that their interpretation of the bible is not true I see as having no positive benefit for humanity.

"...cannot communicate with all of us?" Where do you guys get such stuff?

Science is overrated and subject to delusion.

SIFTER = Statistical Inference of Function Through Evolutionary Relationships. Nice try, but no cigar ... I will bet my bottom dollar that "Evolutionary" refers to principles of microevolution (that all creationists accept) and is not in any way dependent on the theory that all life on earth shares a common ancestor.

Science does quite well for itself. It may make errors but it has mechanisms built in to correct those errors.Religions, on the other hand, are subject to many delusions (talking snakes, young earth, global flood to name just three) as well as competing beliefs. Religions have no error correcting mechanism, which is why there are so many different religions and denominations--with no way to evaluate competing beliefs, internecine disagreements lead more often to schisms than to agreement.So don't be badmouthing science until you can do as well or better.

Yes, those are examples of misusing and abusing religion. When they believe that they have the complete truth and know and understand what "God" is, then they have actually lost their way, just as I had quoted St. Augustine in Message 792:

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"God is not what you imagine, or what you think you understand. For if you understand, you have failed."

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Their arrogance blinds them to their own plight. We see that over and over again in Faith's posts.To question is the answer. But they cannot see that.

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"Don't do what the voices tell you to do! They are not your friend!"
Reese to his younger brother, Dewey

That's true. Lasers were initially useless. But Darwinism has been useless for more than 150 years. In another 150 years it will still be useless. (Note: The hallmark of a false theory is uselessness.) Actually, within 150 years, the science of genetics will prove that evolution is impossible ... and useless.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

For 150 years creationists have been nipping at the heels of evolution like an overzealous Chihuahua, all to no effect.Science is just getting stronger all the time, while creationist arguments are increasingly tenuous or disproved.I'm not worried.

"Universal common descent is the hypothesis that all known living terrestrial, organisms are genealogically related." - Talk Origins. (emphasis mine).Anyhow, all these evolution words games is like debating the colour of the Tooth Fairy's hair. Thank you for your concern, but the team of psychiatrists who look after me assure me that I'm no madder than I was at my last check-up. How did you know my OIR (Official Insanity Rating) is RF (Real Fruitcake)?Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

All human endeavors are subject to delusion. Including religion. That is one reason why I can never be a Christian (especially of the fundamentalist variety), because it requires me to believe in human infallibility and that is a camel that is just too impossible for me to swallow.The thing with science is that its findings can be tested, so if errors creep in as they inevitably must, then those errors can be detected and corrected.What about religion? When errors creep into religion as they inevitably must, how does religion handle them? It doesn't! Religion has no protocol for testing, error-detection, nor error-correcting. It just careens more and more off-course. Of course, the Protestant way of handling it is to splinter even further and form new churches, but they still carry those theological errors with them, still failing to make the necessary corrections.Ah, you protest that you have Revelation so your knowledge is perfect. Not so. An online Christian friend once asked me what I believe (I am an atheist and have been for over half a century, but I am not a Christian atheist). I HTML'ized my response and posted it on my site at DWise1's Religion Pages: What I believe. About Revelation I wrote:

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Ah, but what of receiving information about the supernatural through Revelation? I tend to agree with Thomas Paine's observation that Revelation is Revelation only to that one individual who receives it. When he tells another about it, then it becomes hear-say, and when that person tells yet another, then it becomes hear-say upon hear-say, and so forth, many hundreds of times over. But I believe that Paine was too optimistic and understated the situation. Having spent my first seven years of college as a language major (German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Old English), I understand something about the effects of language on the mind and on the structuring of thought, even on a pre-verbal level. I would correct Paine's statement by saying that Revelation is not even Revelation to that person directly receiving it, but rather it would have become hear-say as soon as he began to think about it, because his mind would have started filtering and interpreting it. Revelation cannot be improved upon; it can only hope to be transmitted perfectly. Perfect transmission of Revelation within the human mind and from one human mind to another is impossible; our minds and our means of information transfer -- eg, language -- are far too imperfect to be up to the job. Therefore, in human hands and minds and through human means, Revelation can only be degraded. The only way I can see for an individual to access Revelation is for that individual to receive It himself, even though even then it would be degraded by his mind and by his cultural filters, including what he has been taught by his religion to expect of Revelation. Ironically, I believe that that would make me something of a mystic.

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So then, that is the dilemma for religion. Even if somebody had received perfect Revelation 2000 years ago, every time it got transmitted from one human to another it became degraded, kind of like that party game of "Telegraph" (or "Telephone") where you line everybody up and whisper something into the first person's ear, who then passes it on to the next person and so on until the last person ends up hearing something very different than the original message. Your Holy Ghost story does nothing to help, because everybody that spook helps still ends up getting a different story.So, to reiterate, how exactly does religion deal with its own delusions and errors?

Already happened in the early 20th Century, only to have genetics actually supporting evolution by the 1940's.Surely you have encountered lists of quotemining of scientists declaring Darwinism to be proven wrong. Checking the dates on those quotes you should have noticed them being from the first half of the 20th century. Well, here's the story on that.One of the problems that Darwin could not solve was how inheritance worked and how new traits could arise. As a result, he worked out his "pangenetic theory" which ironically dragged him back to a form of Lamarckism. Equally ironic, he had a copy of Mendel's monograph on genetics in his library, but apparently had never gotten around to reading it.Then around 1900, Mendel's work resurfaced and biologists discovered mutations and started studying them, especially in fruit fly populations because of the short generation times. Well, that resulted in those scientists declaring that Darwin had been disproven, but they were talking about his pangenetic theory, not natural selection, but creationist quoteminers don't care about such distinctions.Then in the 1930's and 1940's, scientists such as Fischer realized that genetics and mutation were the answer to Darwin's problems with how inheritance worked and out that Grand Synthesis came neo-Darwinism which combined classic Darwinism with genetics and population genetics.So, genetics actually support evolution.

In the wild, 99.9999% of budgerigars are coloured green and yellow. But breeders have produced budgies in many different colours, including white, blue, green, yellow, grey, violet and Pied. The potential for these "new" colours always existed. I suspect that the same potential for different coloured Pepperd Moths always existed. And Chicko agrees with me.

... otherwise known as natural selection.