Forums Index >> General >> History of the world question......
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Interesting choice of words Gnomie.
Ah yes, life the universe and everything, that was it.
I recommend our other tank Celebrity Zaphod... As in Beeblebrox.
@Gnomie... I can give you the answer... 42... OK the Earth was a giant computer to determine the exact question to the answer 42. Damb that intergalactic hwy. Went in just before the program could complete the question.... It is all there in the HitchHickers Guide to the Universe...
Guess we don't have many science fiction readers... Some of use knew the history of the world...
Last edited: Sunday, April 11, 2004 at 2:20:12 PM
CarL Segan showed the world how life began way back in the 1980's. Very interesting too because he showed us in "real time" on TV. He proved (and showed us) that if you take the known gasses that surrounded our cooling earth, and applied electricity (lightning), a green sludge would form after a short period of time. Microscopic examination of the sludge showed that simple organisms had been "manufactured" by the process. Life had been created in a laboratory with a variety of natural gasses and a blast of electricity. Months later, the organisms had created colonies that were extending up the sides of the container. Upon closer examination of the organisms, they showed that they included all of the building blocks required to create more complex organisms.
Make of this what you will, but it is very interesting, factual, repeatable, and scientifically valid.
@UF Tankster,
Ummmm, why are you coming into my thread and insulting me? Go away if you don't care to read my diatribes, but don't come here and tell me that I am writing too much.
Shh, whisper it, but I think those were amino acids that Carl Sagan produced in his bottle of lightning. Chemical building blocks for proteins and everything that's alive, but not alive in themselves.
KBC, Prey - yes indeedy, THHGTTG is the best 5-book trilogy ever written IMHO, and by an Englishman too, how about that.
The Babel fish... Is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on the brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, 'Well That About Wraps It Up for God.'
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Last edited: Sunday, April 11, 2004 at 4:18:41 PM
Listen close for the answer to life, the universe and everything
Since this has briefly turned into the "what's your favorite British sci-fi?" thread, whatever happened to the crew of the Red Dwarf? All the websites I've seen can't seem to agree on wether or not it's still on the air. I've also seen confusing info on a movie. It looks like they're either making, or have already made one. Has it been released yet? I gneed to gknow! For years I thought "smeg" was a real swear word over there. Then I saw a behind the scenes show and realized they made the word up! It just sounds nasty. XD
Anyway, what was the question? Serious discusions about...?....hmmm, I suppose TG wants her thread back.
BTW, since the answer is 42, the 42nd post HAS to be correct:
Tally Ho; HOLY CRAP! THE SERVER IS JUST OUT OF CONTROL! THREAD DUPLICATION AT PLAGUE LEVELS!
>>> must eradicate.
LOL KBC XD Smeggin' hilarious. I dunno, I'm pretty sure it's not being made any more and that the film fell through, but I may be wrong. Craig Charles got involved in an unfortunate court case and dropped out of favour for a while, when he reappeared it was presenting Robot Wars, not a step up really. Likewise Robert Llewellyn now presents cheapo shows. Chris Barrie had his own sitcom for a while, but now he seems to have disappeared. As for the writers, I dunno. At it's best it had some of the finest comedy writing ever I reckon, must get some DVDs.
Hitchhikers guide the the galaxy I thought....been a while but the meaning of life is 42.....good book...
B
Olo
*just finishing Bolo's signature. Think he dozed off... Or just plain lost interest.
Now you know why "42" is in my e-mail address. :)
@Gnomie - I think we're starting to get somewhere in the exchange of ideas and I'm glad for it. Your characterization of creationists is still a bit...inflamatory. You wrote...
To accept the Creationist view I have to take seriously the ravings and campfire tales of a desert tribe thousands of years ago, or I have to have my own revelation.
Ravings??? Have you ever read Genesis? It's a narrative, not a rave. But, let's look at it this way. You don't have to immediately take it seriously, but you shouldn't just close your mind to the possibility of God creating things either. It's just a question of are we able to look at the same evidence that is used to support evolution and present another idea on what it may mean? Evolution looks at the evidence with the predisposition that only naturalistic forces were involved. Creation looks at it from the POV that God was involved. That's why I brought up Noah's Flood. Evolution teaches that the dinos were accidentally buried over millions of years as the sediments were laid down over the centuries. Creationist present the idea that dinos were buried during the flood as they sunk to the bottom and into the mud beneath. No ravings, just a different idea.
I read an article on how the lava dome at Mt. St. Helens was dated to be 340K to 2.8 million of years old though we all know the eruption event happened back in the 80's. An evolutionist might say the samples were contaminated. The creationist might say the dating was accurate, but is being ignored as a result of a bias in favor of evolution and it's timescale.
I read another article concerning an expedition to recover some WWII aircraft lost in the north. The planes weren't just a few inches deep covered by snow, but around down 250 ft in the ice. The point being glaciers may not take thousands of years to develop, but MUCH less time thux throwing off the "Millions and millions" of years needed for evolution.
So I'm not asking people to just believe in creation. If they need additional evidence, there are alternatives to evolution's interpretation of the data.
Rabban - Ravings? I thought I was choosing my words carefully! The Israelites may have had a most magnificent set of campfire tales, but then so did every other culture, and all of them to be taken with huge bags of salt. Nobody takes Celtic or Norse or Greek mythology seriously, apart from maybe enjoying the poetry - so why should the ravings of the Israelites be treated any differently?
Back at creation - suppose someone who had never heard of God looked at the universe as we currently understand it. I don't think they'd say "Ah yes, lots of mysteries here, obviously the whole shebang was created by a Supernatural Being, it's the only possible explanation!". Hopefully they'd say "Ah yes, lots of mysteries here, we need to fund universities!". Creationism is just a rearguard attempt to defend the religious point of view in the face of our increasing scepticism. Personally I think the teaching of Creationism in schools should be seen as a criminal act, the corruption of young minds with very dubious and dangerous material indeed.
I haven't read anything about either of the cases you mention, and I'm afraid I don't trust that web site (nor most others). But this is clutching at straws somewhat I feel, the site doesn't cover all the cases where the science worked out just fine. I'm sure peculiar things like that do happen from time to time, science doesn't understand everything, and doesn't pretend to. But I don't think there's a scientific conspiracy, that brushes all the inconvenient data under the carpet. There is a Creationist conspiracy though, that attempts to whitewash over four centuries of progress, and comes up with nonsense like dinosaurs perishing in the Flood - and on current showing you're a part of it. Read some real books Rabban, and give your Bible a rest. I'd recommend anything by Richard Fortey. There may be hope for your soul yet.
Gnomie, Rabban, chilllll, men.
We all need to go out for some chow at the Big Bang Burger Bar.
Asterisk
Subtitled "The Evil One", but I can't for the life of me imagine why
Him and rabban make sense most others dont ge0rge life could be somewhere else just not very likely the bible was most likely created on earth
Jacob
Pray to GOD for him to reveal himself to you.
Jesus, what's that sticking out of my trousers! I hadn't gnoticed that before. Hopefully some kind of hook to hang your keys on or something. Either that, or this has somehow got mixed up with the TG picture thread.
The internet is one big mystery to me.....how does god do it? I can't find an explanation for it in the bible....don't supposed its based on science and technology, do you? Clearly not possible....science is just poo-poo....scientists are just heathen bufoons making stuff up....there's no evidence for the validity of science and technology...take the internet for example....clearly a modern miracle bestowed upon us by god.....
I'd kill for god.....how bout you?
LOL :)
Don't you know the Internet spontaneously generated over that past few million years? The cables, routers, bridges, servers and clients all developed independently, yet symbiotically to evolve into the Internet. The larger, dinosaurs of ENIACator and VAXosaurus eventually turned into HPman and DELLasapiens. The unfit TRS-80rex and Apple-II-egon died out along the way. Its amazing what can happen when you just leave copper and plastic alone in a dark room for a long enough time.
Unless, of course, you believe, In the beginning, Gore created. ;)
Last edited: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 at 10:58:18 AM
Actually the internet was around in the 60's when VAX was commonplace and not so many years after the ENIAC.
B
@Gnomie
I haven't read anything about either of the cases you mention, and I'm afraid I don't trust that web site (nor most others).
...
But I don't think there's a scientific conspiracy, that brushes all the inconvenient data under the carpet.
So you won't even visit the site to see what it has to say just because you don't trust them? But I'm just supposed to trust the books and websites you might mention? If we're going to exchange ideas here, it would seem that we would have to give one another the benefit of the doubt and try to learn where the other's coming from. In this case I would think you would be at a disadvantage since I did go to public schools for 17 yrs, so I've had plenty of opportunities to hear and read about evolution while I doubt you've really looked into creationist theories.
I also don't think there's an organized scientific conspiracy sweeping data under the carpet, but from what I understand any item that's sent in for dating is accompanied by an expected date. So when an item produces several dates, those that are off the expected date are discarded. So younger dates would be ignored since the scientist is expecting an older date. Also, the evolutionary data in general is assumed to have occurred with out the intervention of God, so there's a bias against any data that might actually point to His involvement. The good news is there's a movement that's starting to consider the possibilities of Intelligent Design which doesn't have a particular religious affliliation, but is open to God creating the universe.
Last edited: Monday, April 26, 2004 at 10:49:42 AM
@gnomie, if your don't trust websites, how about some direct quotes
"If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all came from slime. When we died, you know , that was it, there is nothing..."
-That is from Jeffrey Dahmer
The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent
With gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change
During their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking
Much the same as when they disappear... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any
Local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady
Transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully
Formed'."
Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of
Such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such
Finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious
And gravest objection which can be urged against my theory (of
Evolution).
The Origin of Species
Even Darwin himself knew there were problems with it. And don't forget about taking it to the extreme and creating a whole governement based on Evolutionary theory like the Nazi's and Hitler did.
Is the server database cloning threads again?
BTW, SJ Gould presents arguments the proper way, by addressing what counterpoints would be. As such, I think the way he's being used above is probably slightly inappropriate. Where's your inclusion of the counterpoint to that which argues the contrary?
Regardless, read closely. If I remember correctly, the flaws with "gradualism" are not necessarily support for creationism, but rather something more complicated than what the bird fellow presumed. If you WANT to read creation in that unexplored space, you have already decided what the complication is. SJ Gould wrote a little bit about a priori conclusions and how they cause bad science in the mismeasure of man.
Great read, check it out.
Rabban post should have been directed at someone else. I didnt say any of the stuff u quoted. Get it right
B
So, has this thread evolved at all after its creation ? :P
Ah, that was pointless. Chalk it up to posting when I'm too tired. Good night!
- BombJames Bomb
@Bolo, Whoops! Sorry man. Guess I've just had you on the brain lately. %)
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This thread has been locked
OK, it is also a bit of a religious question.. Not an attack on religion, just a query for something I am confused about.
I was just reading about the extinction of the dinosaurs and began wondering where the dinosaurs fall into the whole creationism scheme-o-things. I guess along those same lines, how about evolution in general? Where does scientifically proven elements of our evolution fit in with the creationism ideals? I recognize that creationism vs evolution is a beat-to-death topic, but I don't know the details on the side of religion. Can someone educate me how your religion answers questions of evolution?
(I dare ya :) )
NOTE: If your reply is going to be a complaint about this topic, please put SQUARE brackets around your gripe so we can file the complaint properly.