Message 151 of 213 (482780) 09-17-2008 11:57 PM

Reply to: Message 148 by Agobot 09-17-2008 6:19 PM

You are funny. First of all, you are completely swayed by bias. Second of all, you have not presented a single shred of evidence to disprove the existence of G-d. All any atheist will ever say is that there is no evidence for a god. This does not make any evidence against a god. Third of all, there are many people in the world with more brains than you have, that continue to practice their religions. If you really had such a strong case, why are so many religious people so smart. I have already explained to you that atheism has been around for longer than you want to believe. If it was so clear to everyone else as it is to you, most of the major world religions would never have come into existence in the first place. Unfortunately, it is your bias and comfort that lead you to deny G-d, and not your brain. Show me an unbiased atheist and I will show you anything you wish for.

Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

Message 152 of 213 (482781) 09-18-2008 12:05 AM

Reply to: Message 149 by Granny Magda 09-17-2008 10:43 PM

You did not ask for a proof of G-d's existence. All you asked for was evidence. Therefore, I have told you that everything that exists in the world is evidence of G-d. Theoretically, if nothing existed than there would be no evidence of G-d. You have interpreted the evidence to mean something else. But, this does not change the evidence.

Message 155 of 213 (482787) 09-18-2008 12:22 AM

Reply to: Message 142 by Modulous 09-17-2008 3:41 PM

Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

Message 156 of 213 (482805) 09-18-2008 2:43 AM

Reply to: Message 155 by Open MInd 09-18-2008 12:22 AM

Correct.

Agreed, more or less.

OK, so what testimony? The testimony recorded in Exodus does not count, so what testimony do you refer to?

What testimony? Numbers? No, Jews are one of the smallest well known religions - Hinduism has it beat. Age? Hinduism at least matches it.

You haven't provided evidence that exists outside of the Bible that YHWH is the Creator.

You have provided evidence that may or may not argue that a Creator exists and that Judaism is one of the longest surviving religions. Outside of the Bible, how does you propose this demonstrates that YHWH is the creator?

Message 157 of 213 (482814) 09-18-2008 5:54 AM

Reply to: Message 152 by Open MInd 09-18-2008 12:05 AM

That is not evidence but still blind faith. One could as esily say that it was evidence of Zeus or Ra or any other deity. It would still be faith not evidence.

As modulous states there is no confirming evidence only ~3000 year old writings.

Message 158 of 213 (482824) 09-18-2008 7:19 AM

Reply to: Message 151 by Open MInd 09-17-2008 11:57 PM

"Greedy molecules could be behind the emergence of life

Artificial system shows how a molecular soup could be exploited by a single self-replicating complex.

Katharine Sanderson
soup
Imagine adding a pea that turned all the carrots, cauliflower and leeks into more peas ...Punchstock

A molecule can ensure that copies of itself — rather than any other possible reaction products — are produced from a soup of smaller molecules. This demonstrates that complex structures could have evolved from a pool of simple molecules billions of years ago, its developers claim.

Douglas Philp, a chemist at the University of St Andrews, UK, has previously shown that a molecule made of two halves that recognise and bind to one another can then act as a template for its own replication1. Along with his colleague Jan Sadownik, he has now discovered that this template molecule can drive its own formation in a bigger pool of many more reactants, quickly taking over the processes in that pool and dominating the system so that almost no other products have a chance to form.

This kind of self-replicating system has been proposed as an explanation to how complex molecules such as DNA could have formed, ultimately triggering the emergence of life. Artificial versions of these systems, however, have remained elusive.
Strange brew

Philp's system relies on a soup of 25 different molecules, built up from various combinations of a few simple components — different aldehydes, some with an amidopyridine group, and a maleimide. The resulting 25 molecules in the soup can all interconvert with each other.

There is nothing special about this mixture until a slightly different maleimide is used. That gives just one of the resulting 25 products exactly the right building blocks to become the special self-replicating molecule that Philp's lab developed previously.

“This shows that you can bring order from chaos”

Douglas Philp
University of St Andrews, UK

Once this template molecule is formed as one of the 25 soup ingredients, it can grab its constituent parts out of the mixture and bring them together to create a complementary copy of itself. The template molecules subsequently grab more of their constituents, and the process repeats itself. Because the original mixture of molecules can all interconvert, the equilibrium in the soup changes so that the reactant pool feeds the self-replicating molecule's formation. The end result is that 93% of the mixture becomes the template molecule.

"Despite the fact this system can make goodness know how many compounds, you get one product," says Philp. "This shows that you can bring order from chaos."
Love and marriage

The process will work as soon as the correct maleimide is added, but it can be speeded up by adding a tiny amount of the complete template molecule. Philp presented his work last week at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Philp hasn't got a practical use for his system yet. But that's not the point, says Eric Anslyn, a supramolecular chemist from the University of Texas at Austin. Demonstrating a system similar to that which might have created life is enough, he says, and it might well inspire other chemists to find a more practical use. "The cleverness in his initial design might spark many other clever designs," he says.

Still, Philp envisages a time when a self-replicating system could be used to make, on demand, a range of different compounds, depending on the template you throw in at the start.

"Artificial self-replicating systems represent amongst some of the most intellectually challenging and stimulating of topics in contemporary chemistry today," says Fraser Stoddart, a chemist from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

"Who knows" whether Philp's work can help to explain how life began, says Stoddart, but, he says, "life processes and self-replication go together like a horse and carriage, or love and marriage. You can't have one without the other.""

Full text here:

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080826/full/news.2008.1062.html

Message 159 of 213 (482839) 09-18-2008 10:40 AM

Reply to: Message 151 by Open MInd 09-17-2008 11:57 PM

"VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said on Tuesday the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held next March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

Christian churches were long hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation. Earlier this week, a leading Anglican churchman, Rev. Malcolm Brown, said the Church of England owed Darwin an apology for the way his ideas were received by Anglicans in Britain..."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26747166/

Message 160 of 213 (482873) 09-18-2008 3:11 PM

Reply to: Message 152 by Open MInd 09-18-2008 12:05 AM

No I didn't. That would as silly as claiming that I had proof of God's non-existence.

That is nothing more than a massive cop-out. You can't just assert something like that in so vague and unsupported a way. A statement like that effectively says nothing at all. You have merely created an astonishingly crude false dichotomy, that runs something like "If there was nothing there would be no evidence for God, but something does exist, therefore there is evidence for God.", which is a total non-sequitur.

OK, so how about you explain how your interpretation works. The key point here is how your interpretation of observed reality supports the God hypothesis. It is not enough to merely claim that something (or indeed, everything) is evidence, you need to explain why it is evidence and also demonstrate that your explanation has greater explanatory power than rival interpretations.

Also, it might not hurt to try replying with more than a single paragraph...

Mutate and Survive

Message 161 of 213 (482874) 09-18-2008 3:17 PM

Reply to: Message 151 by Open MInd 09-17-2008 11:57 PM

There is no way to disprove a negative, you should know that. But what does the Torah say about the dinosaurs? Did God kill them?
What do you think of the idea that an asteroid hit the Yukatan peninsula 65mln years ago and wiped them out, leaving a 300 km crater.
Care to look at an even bigger 340km crater on the Moon?

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976JBAA...86..471R

Does it sound plausible that such an impact could wipe out the dinosaurs? Do 100 terra tons of TNT sound enough, when you consider the fact that it makes a force equal to 100 000 nuclear bombs? Do you need God to explain their extinction? No, you don't. You don't see a gap here, that's why you creationists don't abuse this topic.

Why is the axis of the Earth tilted? Did God do it only to Earth? Nah, science says there was a big crash between Earth and a fairly large celestial body billions of years ago. As a result of the impact the Earth got tilted(the only planet in the Solar system) and lost a significant part of its volume in the form of dust, some of which got trapped and is still trapped in orbit in the form of a Moon. Could the Torah explain this in a more logical way? Do we need God to explain this perplexing task? No we don't. You won't find gaps here, so it's of no use for you creationists.

What does the Torah say about the Australopithecus in my avatar? Did they have souls and did God send them to Heaven and Hell, or did souls emerge later on?

And so on and so forth, the discoveries of science are virtually endless.

What does the Torah give you besides the obvious comfort of the idea of an eternal life?

Everything about what sciencce has discovered about the creation of the Earth and its history fits so nicely, it's frightening.You just have to open your eyes and be open-minded as your alias states. You may not quite like the truth about reality though.

Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Message 162 of 213 (482883) 09-18-2008 4:49 PM

Reply to: Message 157 by bluescat48 09-18-2008 5:54 AM

Being pedantic here :D but their writings are only a little over 2000 years, abd all of them are anonymous.

I dare say that there did exist at one time older writings but we have no way of knowing how simmilar/different they were from the DSS.

Message 165 of 213 (482903) 09-18-2008 6:38 PM

Reply to: Message 163 by Open MInd 09-18-2008 6:06 PM

All 3 examples were of critical events from Earth's ancient history , not really evolution(the extinction of the dinosaurs, the formtaion of the Moon and the emergence of hominids). All of them being painful, unexplained white spots in the ancient holy books. Miraculously all three being explained by science.

IN FACT, IN THE VERY UNLIKELY EVENT THERE IS A GOD, I CAN BET $1000 THAT SCIENCE WILL DISCOVER EVIDENCE WAY BEFORE ANY OF YOU THEISTS CAN COME UP WITH ANYTHING. In fact, for the last 4 000 years you haven't found any, not even a smell of evidence. This will likely continue into eternity.

Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.