The Bible shifted some Gears in my mind.

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Mickiel
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The Bible shifted some Gears in my mind.

Post by Mickiel »

Saint_;1293783 wrote:



Well join the club Mr. Self-Pity!

It's a wonderful life, eh?:-6




Well you may perceive it as self pity, I call it telling the truth. I don't personally know God, but I have learned some things about him, realistic things. One of the things I have learned, is that " God calls Many to him", and does not even choose all of them. Conversely that means that there are people that God does not call. I do not view it as " Self Pity", for me to realize that I am not one of those called by God. I am not insulted by him not calling me, and I need no self assumed pacification to rub my ego with. I have accepted my place in this life, I understand God not calling me, but I know that my day will come.

And I refuse to rush that day, or to try and manipulate my ego, into some fantasy calling. I consider that as foolish and dangerous.

Peace.
DusanS
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The Bible shifted some Gears in my mind.

Post by DusanS »

God, schmod...yana, yana, yana

It is nice to have imaginary friend,

if thats ya all make you happy, oh my dear "God", you kill innocent and guilty, young, and old, babies, and granpas, healthy, and sick, you make no difference, you kill who ever, and we all love you for that, since you are all mighty, and just, you do all for a" reason", we don't know why, but we love you, we don't know who are you, but our love for you is getting bigger and bigger, like erection, until our anuses explode...

we love you ahhh God....

you provide all the answers, we are so happy, what our life would be, without you, our dear God

And how dare you not to call my friend Mickiel, shame on you, what someone else is better suited than him? thats baloney, damn you, and don't invite me please, not interested, thank you.
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Mickiel
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Post by Mickiel »

DusanS;1293820 wrote: God, schmod...yana, yana, yana

It is nice to have imaginary friend,

if thats ya all make you happy, oh my dear "God", you kill innocent and guilty, young, and old, babies, and granpas, healthy, and sick, you make no difference, you kill who ever, and we all love you for that, since you are all mighty, and just, you do all for a" reason", we don't know why, but we love you, we don't know who are you, but our love for you is getting bigger and bigger, like erection, until our anuses explode...

we love you ahhh God....

you provide all the answers, we are so happy, what our life would be, without you, our dear God

And how dare you not to call my friend Mickiel, shame on you, what someone else is better suited than him? thats baloney, damn you, and don't invite me please, not interested, thank you.




You know there are times, as I swim in this darkness, that I imagine I am wrong and there is no God. But there are as many times that I am moved to believe there is. I was driving to work today, 6:30 am, and the Moon was just sitting out there as big as life! Clear and visable, majestic and regal. Another planet other than our own. And I just cannot, for the life of my accepting things, see this Moon as evolving from absolute nothing. Or even insult myself, my mind, my marvelous body, as being continous with the idiot hierarchies of speechless apes.

No, athieist beliefs has nothing to offer my pain, my pain is centered within my own beliefs, my own sense of things in reality. Although God does not call me, although he slays me, yet will I trust in him.

Peace.
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The Bible shifted some Gears in my mind.

Post by Saint_ »

DusanS;1293820 wrote: God, schmod...yana, yana, yana

It is nice to have imaginary friend,

if thats ya all make you happy, oh my dear "God", you kill innocent and guilty, young, and old, babies, and granpas, healthy, and sick, you make no difference, you kill who ever, and we all love you for that, since you are all mighty, and just, you do all for a" reason", we don't know why, but we love you, we don't know who are you, but our love for you is getting bigger and bigger, like erection, until our anuses explode...

we love you ahhh God....

you provide all the answers, we are so happy, what our life would be, without you, our dear God

And how dare you not to call my friend Mickiel, shame on you, what someone else is better suited than him? thats baloney, damn you, and don't invite me please, not interested, thank you.


Is that sarcasm? If not, life must be pretty bleak for you. No meaning, no greater purpose, just live an empty life then die.

I's say the same thing to you that I say to all atheists: How can you understand the intricate beauty, the mathematical symmetry of the Universe and think there is no Creator? Go outside, look up at the night sky and think again.:thinking:

Even if that weren't true, the very idea of God is infinitely comforting in a harsh world. Why make things harder on yourself? Unless you are a depressed masochist!:rolleyes:
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Post by Mickiel »

Mickiel;1293824 wrote: You know there are times, as I swim in this darkness, that I imagine I am wrong and there is no God. But there are as many times that I am moved to believe there is. I was driving to work today, 6:30 am, and the Moon was just sitting out there as big as life! Clear and visable, majestic and regal. Another planet other than our own. And I just cannot, for the life of my accepting things, see this Moon as evolving from absolute nothing. Or even insult myself, my mind, my marvelous body, as being continous with the idiot hierarchies of speechless apes.

No, athieist beliefs has nothing to offer my pain, my pain is centered within my own beliefs, my own sense of things in reality. Although God does not call me, although he slays me, yet will I trust in him.

Peace.




I have considered " The other choice", that of not believing in God, or one could label that as Athieism. Such a non belief is just not for me, barren and empty, cold and logical, devoid of any spiritual vision. Iconoclastic in imagination, yet blind in Spiritual comprehension. As many women as I have had the pleasure of having, I wouldnot even want a woman who has no spiritual vision. Its blane and useless, null and void, lacking clarity. They have surcommed to the pull of the Darkness, minds dipped into the Nothing. Worthless of the Wonder around them. Wells without water.

Whatever life will be in the future, there is no future in Atheism.

Peace.
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Post by Saint_ »

Mickiel;1293872 wrote: there is no future in Atheism.

Peace.


Amen to that!:-6
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Post by Mickiel »

In the bible, I have found a shifting of beliefs in my mind, my consciousness. Its a definte " Drawing of my Consciousness", it attracts me in intrest. As I consider how humanity came into being, I consider John 1:3 as the explination;" All things came into being by him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being." There is no evolution of things before creation, all things were created, they didnot create themselves.

People are arguing for all that is, to have come from nothing. The sheer gall of that is interesting. To assume and believe that the great human consciousness, came from things far lesser than it. To even think that we came from a big explosion out in space, which imploded from absolute nothing, then suddenly planets appeared from this, then chemicals created themselves, then the right combination of chemicals fell to the earth, then over time these chemicals combined and life created itself. Then that life evolved into some kind of tadpole, which eventually crawled out of this water that created itself, then in time it evolved into walking animals, which evolved into speechless apes, which eventually evolved into humans, I think is totally absurd!

And people accept this absurdity, rather than accepting creation.

The world of humanity has gone mad!

Peace.
DusanS
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Post by DusanS »

Well, first, don't insult our poor speechless apes, they are just perfect in their own world, and they are not speechless, they can comunicate between themselves very well, thank you, as much as we are "perfect" in our world, and we are all part of animal kingdom, you like it or not, we have very same characteristics as other animals, we live, fuk, and die, like other animals, we have urges, and instintcs like animals, now, what makes us different from them is measly 5%-10% of our brains that evolved into intelligent, spiritual thing that I believe we got from some alien forms long ago, or we just mutated over million of years of incredibly slow evolution.

If "we are created" we would be created like we are today long time ago, but I guess GOD created first CAVE MEN, for some reason, I don't know WHY, he created cave men first...hmmmm...

Why did he created cave men?

"There is no evolution?" so why did we evolved into clothes wearing, cell phone talking pricks?

This planet in entire universe means nothing! it is a speck of dust in big empty nothingness...we are like little worthless worms on big pile of garbage being happy that we got created by God...

Common, you don't believe in that?

And so what IF we ARE created?

what would be the point?

why?

to extend out species to next generation? and again, and again, until we all go to paradise???

hahahaha

Look at big picture people

I know that being realistic, I must be mascohist, its a miserable life, but believe me, I prayed, ahh God knows how much I prayed for my mother's health, until my mother died, now...my eyes got open, everything became so realistic,

Fuk everything, look at earthquake in Haiti, hundreds of thousands women, children GOD killed them all, altogether with their archbishop....

Even Devil could not do that job so damn good, like God...

The point is, that there is no point....to anything.

I am not atheist, I wish not to belong to any category, just some things makes no sense any more, when people long time ago encountered thunderstorms, and lighting, they thought it's God, being mad, I believe we are past those things, and our everyday life, and this meaningless existence we must fulfill with something more meaningfull than that.
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Post by freethinkingthuthseeker »

Dear Dusan

I pray for you you poor soul. most of the worlds evils are done by man and fuelled by evil spirits, how else to explain psychopaths, peadaphiles, serial rapists and all the slavery in the world today under the guise of sexual services of young girls and boys?

God gace us free will to choose how to live our lives,

Peace be upon you
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Post by Mickiel »

DusanS;1294106 wrote: Well, first, don't insult our poor speechless apes, they are just perfect in their own world, and they are not speechless, they can comunicate between themselves very well, thank you, Quote



Well I disagree, apes cannot speak. I agree that they can communicate between themselves, but it is not veral speaking communication.

.Quote

If "we are created" we would be created like we are today long time ago, but I guess GOD created first CAVE MEN, for some reason, I don't know WHY, he created cave men first...hmmmm...

Why did he created cave men?

".




I am attempting to figure that one out, why he created cavemen first. You can refer to my post on Consciousness and cavemen, I go into it some. But I think he created them first, to study them. To be a test run on human behavior, but he didnot want to judge these humans, which is why I believe he placed no Consciousness within them.

But listen, I can only quess at it, I just don't know why. I wish I did, I think it could unfold many answers that I seek. I myself have many unanswered questions for God, but he does not talk to me. So the next best thing is to observe what he has inspired to be written, the Bible, its all we have to go on.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

"most of the worlds evils are done by man and fuelled by evil spirits,"...

Hmmm...is that why we had earthquake in Haiti, for example?

earthquake is done by man, and evil spirits?

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe, I think it is just God, being himself, being bored, playing his games...

Now, creation of cave men was prototype of future humans?

First he created Adam, and Eve....I thought that was prototype...

After he created Adam, and Eve, he created cave men?

I think Adam and Eve were better looking, less hairy, less smelly...

Don't worry if God doesn't talk to you, I know one person that God does talk to, but also he said that Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington were also talking to him, last time I saw him was in gun store, his eye twiching, he wanted to buy semi automatic...
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Post by Mickiel »

DusanS;1294396 wrote: "most of the worlds evils are done by man and fuelled by evil spirits,"...

Hmmm...is that why we had earthquake in Haiti, for example?

earthquake is done by man, and evil spirits?

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe, I think it is just God, being himself, being bored, playing his games...

Now, creation of cave men was prototype of future humans?

First he created Adam, and Eve....I thought that was prototype...

After he created Adam, and Eve, he created cave men?

I think Adam and Eve were better looking, less hairy, less smelly...

Don't worry if God doesn't talk to you, I know one person that God does talk to, but also he said that Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington were also talking to him, last time I saw him was in gun store, his eye twiching, he wanted to buy semi automatic...




God didnot create Adam first, he created neanderthals first. Adam was created perhaps some 15,000 years ago , possibily more. He was created before Egypt was born.

Peace.
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Post by Mickiel »

I just want to say something. The " Reason" I post, is more like " A Sharing", I am offering my views only for them to be examined, I am in no manner trying to convince others of anything. I am not trying to change anyones views, I am not trying to " Convert" anyone, I am not converted myself! I repesent no Religion, I am not a Religious man myself. As I interact with others on Post, I do so ONLY as an exchange of Views.

If someone has a nasty aittitude about God, thats their business. If another does not believe, thats their way, I hold no problem with that.

My very Mind has shifted into some heavy gears concerning God, and I can understand why many people are frustrated with God. There is the human emotion of " Wanting instant results", we want it and we want it now! But God is not bulging man, hes just going to give results as he sees fit, in his own time. And thats causing many to not believe in him, and he knows this! God must be a VERY Patient being, he just must be! I mean hes taking his sweet time with this thing we know as Life!

So let me take a shift of Gears here, and go into just what God is really like.

Peace.
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Post by Mickiel »

[QUOTE=Mickiel;

So let me take a shift of Gears here, and go into just what God is really like.

Peace.


You know I grow tired of these baseless emotional views of God. These views, affected by the endless public influence of all religions and their interpitations of God. Its a mess, and it unfairly constructs a very false view of the real God. Listen; in Galations 5:22-23, the REAL description of God is given. God is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Selfcontrol, and there is no law against these ways of his being, which he has set up to change. I mean this is how God really is.

And these ways of HIS being, IS why we ALL will be saved!

They all add up to the complette and total rehabilitation of ALL of mankind!

Each fruit of these ARE the actual Characther of God! Its how he is! Its how he Thinks, and ALL he does, or plans on doing, is based on these ways of his being. THATS why I KNOW, and sense we are actually safe, even while we suffer with evil and experience the rush of sin.

When God goes on the offensive to totally destroy evil, he will wipe it out by HIS Goodness!

Why would a being like this, create evil, create humans, CAUSE them to be effected by it, only to destroy us in the interim, and foolishly select only a few of us to survive, according to how we lived under this immense pressure called evil?

And I want to go into that.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

You are absolutely right, we are not here to convert, or being converted, just to exchange opinions about great unknown...

There is a strange paralel between believers, and non believers, and that is, everybody has questions, great questions of why are we here, where are we going when we die, how we became...etc.

Religion is just trying to give its own version of answers to questions that has no answers, now believers, they strongly believe those are the answers, non believers strongly believe that all that is pile of crap...

We can take sides if we want, and be happy about it, but that is not a solution.

The truth is, that some questions has no answers, and that we should be satisfied with that algorithm, and move on with our lives.

The point is also that there is no point.

And we should be satisfied with that, and leave it alone.

Science went much deeper into the subject, than religion, but even a science just scrached the surface, it could be all just an accident that we happen to be, or it could be alien third kind intervention, or it could be God.

Everything is possible, but nothing should be ruled out.

And that is another truth.

We are intelligent, and spiritual, curious, and that is why we ask so many questions, and wonder about so many things, and then we fight over which version is more truthfull.

No matter how many versions we hear throughout history, how many books we study, at the end of day, we will still ask same old questions, sometimes doubt ourselves, or give different version of answers, or go back and read bible again, if we are dumb we will stick with one version for the rest of our lifes, if we are smarter, we will constantly examine new versions to age old questions, but if we are really, really smart, we will just stop thinking about that thing alltogether, and use that energy to improve this short period of life we have on this planet.
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Post by Saint_ »

Mickiel;1294522 wrote: God didnot create Adam first, he created neanderthals first. Adam was created perhaps some 15,000 years ago , possibily more. He was created before Egypt was born.

Peace.


Actually, God created mammals first, no wait, reptiles, no wait, fish, no wait, single-celled plants first, no wait, self-replicating DNA strands...

One of those was "Adam.";)
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Post by DusanS »

Nooo... God created Egypt first, long after cave men, and then Adam and Eve, but there were not apple trees there, so he moved them to some greener pastures, let them eat the damn apple, and got disapointed, and scrap the whole project.

Then Jesus came, 15 000 years later, and you know the rest of the story...

but, but...wait, why did Jesus came after such a long time after Adam???

And... are people better off before Jesus, or after Jesus?
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Post by Mickiel »

DusanS;1294681 wrote: Nooo... God created Egypt first, long after cave men, and then Adam and Eve, but there were not apple trees there, so he moved them to some greener pastures, let them eat the damn apple, and got disapointed, and scrap the whole project.

Then Jesus came, 15 000 years later, and you know the rest of the story...

but, but...wait, why did Jesus came after such a long time after Adam???

And... are people better off before Jesus, or after Jesus?




No DusanS, Adam was created before Egypt. Moses was a son of Egypt, you are believing that Moses came before Adam. Moses came from the bloodline of Joseph, who came from the bloodline of Jacob who came from Esau Who came from Abraham who came from Noah, who came from Enosh, who came from Seth, who came from Adam.

But now if you reject the biblical account, then you must construct your own account.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

I don't reject anything, I am just confused...
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Post by Mickiel »

DusanS;1294790 wrote: I don't reject anything, I am just confused...


Then in your confusion, you should reason out what I am sharing. The bloodline is there. Egypt lasted only 3,000 years, then God discontinued them. That within itself speaks volumes. He discontinued primordal man. Evolution protens that things evolve and continue, God protends that he will control the flow of life, and he has done that. Adam is the real father of egypt, he was the first man of consciousness, the progenitor of us all.

Peace.
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Post by Mickiel »

Mickiel;1294802 wrote: Then in your confusion, you should reason out what I am sharing. The bloodline is there. Egypt lasted only 3,000 years, then God discontinued them. That within itself speaks volumes. He discontinued primordal man. Evolution protens that things evolve and continue, God protends that he will control the flow of life, and he has done that. Adam is the real father of egypt, he was the first man of consciousness, the progenitor of us all.

Peace.




In your rage against life, your mind is considering. Yet if one would dare to consider God, you must open your mind or your closed closets will conjest you. If you can keep your head, when all about you are loosing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust your consciousness and what its trying to tell you, then God is around the corner from there. Baiting you, testing your mind.

He's setting you up, setting us all up for the kill.

And after the kill, we will all experience real Life.

But now we cook, and its death in the pot.

Peace.
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Post by Mickiel »

As I share, I know that what I share, is not according to the norm. People have waxed to the negative, blaming God for this and that, and I understand that. We desire closure, a quick fix, but God is having none of that! He, in his devine wisdom, has already " Fixed things", to unfold as he wills. Theres nothing we can do about that, absolutely nothing!

In our desire to take control from him, we exact control unto ourselves, bake things into our own minds, and human bitterness seeps into that. As we consider, we are infected by our human emotion, and judge from that standpoint. This is the sour taste that created Atheist thinking, its rual outlook and bland reasoning. Devoid of God, taking control of intelligence, clearing our consciousness and creating ourselves.

I find in that, a way of " Filling the hole", the missing dimesion of the human mind.

And I want to go into that.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

Those things can not be reasoned out Mickiel, it is just an object of your conviction, and you must know that out of about seven billion people that live on this planet, just a fraction believes in Jesus, Adam, and other figures...

Your believs could not be further from the truth for billions other people, China, India, Africa, Asia, middle east, it is mind boggling that you would push hard headedly open propaganda of how man became, and impose that conviction upon others without any, ANY proof of what are you saying.

Bible is NOT an evidence, but it is a source of all those stories, written by humans, and they are nothing else but just stories, no one ever proved existence of any of those individuals you mentioned.

I believe they are product of some people imagination, supported by corrupted church officials in need for greed.

When you read bible, you will notice personalities of people who wrote it, and rules imposed by bible reflect time when bible was written, and does not help in modern times, for example "God said men should be circumsized", that is most stupidest, and idiotic thing that God would say...

No evidence, no proof, just empty stories...
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Post by DusanS »

If you want to see God, look at mirror, with all our unperfections, we are closest you will ever see "God"...

Believe in yourself
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Post by Saint_ »

Mickiel;1294802 wrote: . Evolution protens that things evolve and continue, God protends that he will control the flow of life, and he has done that.


Hasn't God "controlled the flow of life" through evolution?:rolleyes:
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Post by freethinkingthuthseeker »

Dear Brothers

After the amazing worship service I experienced today, You would surely lose all confusion and doubt.

When you re part of a group worshiping god with your heart, the holy spirit comes to you and it is so amazing it truely feels awesome

God Bless you
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Post by DusanS »

No comment...
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Post by DusanS »

Fresh news about new religious wars:

march, 06. 2010.

JOS, Nigeria (AFP) – Nigerian troops were patrolling villages near the northern city of Jos Tuesday after the massacre of more than 500 Christians there that sparked international shock and outrage.

But survivors of the latest wave of inter-religious violence, in which women and children were hacked to death or burned alive in their homes, denounced the authorities for having failed to intervene in time.

Relatives of the dead meanwhile attended funerals Monday for the victims of the three-hour orgy of violence in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos. Related article: Survivors wail as children, women buried in Nigeria

Witnesses have blamed the massacre on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group, and according to media reports Muslims villagers were warned two days before attack via text messages to their phones.

The security forces said they had detained 95 suspects in the violence.

"We have over 500 killed in three villages and the survivors are busy burying their dead," said state information commissioner Gregory Yenlong.

"People were attacked with axes, daggers and cutlasses -- many of them children, the aged and pregnant women."

Around 200 people were being treated in hospital, said the information ministry.

Much of the violence was centred around the village of Dogo Nahawa, where gangs set fire to straw-thatched mud huts as they went on their rampage.

The explosion of violence was just the latest between rival ethnic and religious groups.

In January, 326 people died in clashes in and around Jos, according to police although rights activists put the overall toll at more than 550.

yahoo.com news.
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Post by DusanS »

"... You think people wanna die?

I had a great time being alive, I fuking loved it!

I love women,

I told a hooker once that I loved her, and God damn it, I meant it!

and I love this forum, , but most of forum, I love being alive.

You better find someone to be happy with, because, if you keep hanging around with you, you gonna wanna kill yourself"
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Post by freethinkingthuthseeker »

Dusan,

I have no fear of death as it will just be like being asleep before I am reborn in a much richer and much more amazing earth.
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Post by freethinkingthuthseeker »

Saint_;1295045 wrote: Hasn't God "controlled the flow of life" through evolution?:rolleyes:


I do believe in evolution in small oragnisms but not in larger life forms and there is still no conclusive proof of this at the larger than micro scale after 150 years of fossil gathering.
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Post by DusanS »

I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens...
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Post by Mickiel »

Saint_;1295045 wrote: Hasn't God "controlled the flow of life" through evolution?:rolleyes:




No, he has controlled the flow of life through " Reproduction." Evolution is life evolving from nothing, then it continues to evolve into greater things than it was before. Reproduction is life comming from life and maintaining lifes cycle.



There really is no room for evolution in reality, but humans choose not to live in reality in many of their thought processes.



Peace.
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Post by Saint_ »

Mickiel;1296701 wrote: No, he has controlled the flow of life through " Reproduction."


It's funny your should pick that since mankind's reproduction is totally out of control.

Evolution is life evolving from nothing, then it continues to evolve into greater things than it was before.


Not "nothing." Evolution is life evolving from self-replicating molecules and gaining more complexity through natural selection.



Reproduction is life comming from life and maintaining lifes cycle.


Kind of the "chicken and the egg" thing, huh? Well then, where did the original life come from?

There really is no room for evolution in reality, but humans choose not to live in reality in many of their thought processes.


When intelligent people turn their minds away from scientific fact, it distresses me. Do you believe the world is flat too? And that if man was meant to fly we'd have been given wings? Evolution is a proven fact, we only call it a theory because we haven't been able to test it on all planets and condition in the Universe.

The Pythagorean Theorum is exactly the same. But you wouldn't dispute that, would you?



Peace.


Yes, the peace of denial and narrow, self-serving views. But that isn't what has marked the upward surge of mankind. It was the exact opposite.:-5
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Post by Mickiel »

Saint_;1296784 wrote:

Yes, the peace of denial and narrow, self-serving views. But that isn't what has marked the upward surge of mankind. It was the exact opposite.:-5


You may call my views as you see them, and think that they only serve myself. Yet I know differently, everywhere I share my views, they garner great intrest. And the intrest always grows. I receive countless e-mails that prove to me that my views are not just self serving. And the intrest at this website has always been high, and many people from here have contacted me. And they don't think my views are just self serving.

And it matters not to me whatelse you may think of me.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

We don't think anything of you, personally, your opinions are your personal convictions, and you share it with others of similar interest, on this site, but convictions, no matter how crazy they are, serve you no particullar purpose, besides gratification for self pitty...

On the end of day, you will depend much more on your legs to take you outside your apartment, your mind to help you make salary, eyes to help you cross the street....

If you sit home, and wait for God, you will my friend wait a long time...you will die of hunger, thirst, and your carcass will attract flies of all kind at the end....

But God will never knock on a door...

You, like everybody else, will be on your own.

Take my advice.... when you wake up in the morning, look at mirror, think, use mind, and you will see God, in your image, trust in yourself, and YOU will take a lead of your life...

If you expect some higher power will intervene, they usually do, but only in disasters, for any good, not likely...

You, a human, you are imperative, you are alfa, and omega, it is all you, human, and there is no other kind like it...on this world, or any other....
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Post by freethinkingthuthseeker »

Evolution is a proven fact, we only call it a theory because we haven't been able to test it on all planets and condition in the Universe.

Dear Saint, can you point me o any "Proof" that evolution is fact based even among the major anumal groups such as mammels amphibians, fish, fowl and reptiles?

I would be delighted to study these

Peace and respect

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Was Darwin Wrong?

By David Quammen











Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally—taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.



The rest of us generally agree. We plug our televisions into little wall sockets, measure a year by the length of Earth's orbit, and in many other ways live our lives based on the trusted reality of those theories.



Evolutionary theory, though, is a bit different. It's such a dangerously wonderful and far-reaching view of life that some people find it unacceptable, despite the vast body of supporting evidence. As applied to our own species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening still. Many fundamentalist Christians and ultraorthodox Jews take alarm at the thought that human descent from earlier primates contradicts a strict reading of the Book of Genesis. Their discomfort is paralleled by Islamic creationists such as Harun Yahya, author of a recent volume titled The Evolution Deceit, who points to the six-day creation story in the Koran as literal truth and calls the theory of evolution "nothing but a deception imposed on us by the dominators of the world system." The late Srila Prabhupada, of the Hare Krishna movement, explained that God created "the 8,400,000 species of life from the very beginning," in order to establish multiple tiers of reincarnation for rising souls. Although souls ascend, the species themselves don't change, he insisted, dismissing "Darwin's nonsensical theory."



Other people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews conducted in February 2001, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.



Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin—that is, divine initiative to get things started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.) Still fewer Americans, only 12 percent, believed that humans evolved from other life-forms without any involvement of a god.



The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewers posed exactly the same choices in 1982, 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creationist conviction—that God alone, and not evolution, produced humans—has never drawn less than 44 percent. In other words, nearly half the American populace prefers to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong where it mattered most.



Why are there so many antievolutionists? Scriptural literalism can only be part of the answer. The American public certainly includes a large segment of scriptural literalists—but not that large, not 44 percent. Creationist proselytizers and political activists, working hard to interfere with the teaching of evolutionary biology in public schools, are another part. Honest confusion and ignorance, among millions of adult Americans, must be still another. Many people have never taken a biology course that dealt with evolution nor read a book in which the theory was lucidly explained. Sure, we've all heard of Charles Darwin, and of a vague, somber notion about struggle and survival that sometimes goes by the catchall label "Darwinism." But the main sources of information from which most Americans have drawn their awareness of this subject, it seems, are haphazard ones at best: cultural osmosis, newspaper and magazine references, half-baked nature documentaries on the tube, and hearsay.



Evolution is both a beautiful concept and an important one, more crucial nowadays to human welfare, to medical science, and to our understanding of the world than ever before. It's also deeply persuasive—a theory you can take to the bank. The essential points are slightly more complicated than most people assume, but not so complicated that they can't be comprehended by any attentive person. Furthermore, the supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies. No one needs to, and no one should, accept evolution merely as a matter of faith.



Two big ideas, not just one, are at issue: the evolution of all species, as a historical phenomenon, and natural selection, as the main mechanism causing that phenomenon. The first is a question of what happened. The second is a question of how. The idea that all species are descended from common ancestors had been suggested by other thinkers, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, long before Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. What made Darwin's book so remarkable when it appeared, and so influential in the long run, was that it offered a rational explanation of how evolution must occur. The same insight came independently to Alfred Russel Wallace, a young naturalist doing fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago during the late 1850s. In historical annals, if not in the popular awareness, Wallace and Darwin share the kudos for having discovered natural selection.

The gist of the concept is that small, random, heritable differences among individuals result in different chances of survival and reproduction—success for some, death without offspring for others—and that this natural culling leads to significant changes in shape, size, strength, armament, color, biochemistry, and behavior among the descendants. Excess population growth drives the competitive struggle. Because less successful competitors produce fewer surviving offspring, the useless or negative variations tend to disappear, whereas the useful variations tend to be perpetuated and gradually magnified throughout a population.



So much for one part of the evolutionary process, known as anagenesis, during which a single species is transformed. But there's also a second part, known as speciation. Genetic changes sometimes accumulate within an isolated segment of a species, but not throughout the whole, as that isolated population adapts to its local conditions. Gradually it goes its own way, seizing a new ecological niche. At a certain point it becomes irreversibly distinct—that is, so different that its members can't interbreed with the rest. Two species now exist where formerly there was one. Darwin called that splitting-and-specializing phenomenon the "principle of divergence." It was an important part of his theory, explaining the overall diversity of life as well as the adaptation of individual species.



This thrilling and radical assemblage of concepts came from an unlikely source. Charles Darwin was shy and meticulous, a wealthy landowner with close friends among the Anglican clergy. He had a gentle, unassuming manner, a strong need for privacy, and an extraordinary commitment to intellectual honesty. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he had studied halfheartedly toward becoming a clergyman himself, before he discovered his real vocation as a scientist. Later, having established a good but conventional reputation in natural history, he spent 22 years secretly gathering evidence and pondering arguments—both for and against his theory—because he didn't want to flame out in a burst of unpersuasive notoriety. He may have delayed, too, because of his anxiety about announcing a theory that seemed to challenge conventional religious beliefs—in particular, the Christian beliefs of his wife, Emma. Darwin himself quietly renounced Christianity during his middle age, and later described himself as an agnostic. He continued to believe in a distant, impersonal deity of some sort, a greater entity that had set the universe and its laws into motion, but not in a personal God who had chosen humanity as a specially favored species. Darwin avoided flaunting his lack of religious faith, at least partly in deference to Emma. And she prayed for his soul.

In 1859 he finally delivered his revolutionary book. Although it was hefty and substantive at 490 pages, he considered The Origin of Species just a quick-and-dirty "abstract" of the huge volume he had been working on until interrupted by an alarming event. (In fact, he'd wanted to title it An Abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties Through Natural Selection, but his publisher found that insufficiently catchy.) The alarming event was his receiving a letter and an enclosed manuscript from Alfred Wallace, whom he knew only as a distant pen pal. Wallace's manuscript sketched out the same great idea—evolution by natural selection—that Darwin considered his own. Wallace had scribbled this paper and (unaware of Darwin's own evolutionary thinking, which so far had been kept private) mailed it to him from the Malay Archipelago, along with a request for reaction and help. Darwin was horrified. After two decades of painstaking effort, now he'd be scooped. Or maybe not quite. He forwarded Wallace's paper toward publication, though managing also to assert his own prior claim by releasing two excerpts from his unpublished work. Then he dashed off The Origin, his "abstract" on the subject. Unlike Wallace, who was younger and less meticulous, Darwin recognized the importance of providing an edifice of supporting evidence and logic.

The evidence, as he presented it, mostly fell within four categories: biogeography, paleontology, embryology, and morphology. Biogeography is the study of the geographical distribution of living creatures—that is, which species inhabit which parts of the planet and why. Paleontology investigates extinct life-forms, as revealed in the fossil record. Embryology examines the revealing stages of development (echoing earlier stages of evolutionary history) that embryos pass through before birth or hatching; at a stretch, embryology also concerns the immature forms of animals that metamorphose, such as the larvae of insects. Morphology is the science of anatomical shape and design. Darwin devoted sizable sections of The Origin of Species to these categories.



Biogeography, for instance, offered a great pageant of peculiar facts and patterns. Anyone who considers the biogeographical data, Darwin wrote, must be struck by the mysterious clustering pattern among what he called "closely allied" species—that is, similar creatures sharing roughly the same body plan. Such closely allied species tend to be found on the same continent (several species of zebras in Africa) or within the same group of oceanic islands (dozens of species of honeycreepers in Hawaii, 13 species of Galápagos finch), despite their species-by-species preferences for different habitats, food sources, or conditions of climate. Adjacent areas of South America, Darwin noted, are occupied by two similar species of large, flightless birds (the rheas, Rhea americana and Pterocnemia pennata), not by ostriches as in Africa or emus as in Australia. South America also has agoutis and viscachas (small rodents) in terrestrial habitats, plus coypus and capybaras in the wetlands, not—as Darwin wrote—hares and rabbits in terrestrial habitats or beavers and muskrats in the wetlands. During his own youthful visit to the Galápagos, aboard the survey ship Beagle, Darwin himself had discovered three very similar forms of mockingbird, each on a different island.



Why should "closely allied" species inhabit neighboring patches of habitat? And why should similar habitat on different continents be occupied by species that aren't so closely allied? "We see in these facts some deep organic bond, prevailing throughout space and time," Darwin wrote. "This bond, on my theory, is simply inheritance." Similar species occur nearby in space because they have descended from common ancestors.



Paleontology reveals a similar clustering pattern in the dimension of time. The vertical column of geologic strata, laid down by sedimentary processes over the eons, lightly peppered with fossils, represents a tangible record showing which species lived when. Less ancient layers of rock lie atop more ancient ones (except where geologic forces have tipped or shuffled them), and likewise with the animal and plant fossils that the strata contain. What Darwin noticed about this record is that closely allied species tend to be found adjacent to one another in successive strata. One species endures for millions of years and then makes its last appearance in, say, the middle Eocene epoch; just above, a similar but not identical species replaces it. In North America, for example, a vaguely horselike creature known as Hyracotherium was succeeded by Orohippus, then Epihippus, then Mesohippus, which in turn were succeeded by a variety of horsey American critters. Some of them even galloped across the Bering land bridge into Asia, then onward to Europe and Africa. By five million years ago they had nearly all disappeared, leaving behind Dinohippus, which was succeeded by Equus, the modern genus of horse. Not all these fossil links had been unearthed in Darwin's day, but he captured the essence of the matter anyway. Again, were such sequences just coincidental? No, Darwin argued. Closely allied species succeed one another in time, as well as living nearby in space, because they're related through evolutionary descent.



Embryology too involved patterns that couldn't be explained by coincidence. Why does the embryo of a mammal pass through stages resembling stages of the embryo of a reptile? Why is one of the larval forms of a barnacle, before metamorphosis, so similar to the larval form of a shrimp? Why do the larvae of moths, flies, and beetles resemble one another more than any of them resemble their respective adults? Because, Darwin wrote, "the embryo is the animal in its less modified state" and that state "reveals the structure of its progenitor."



Morphology, his fourth category of evidence, was the "very soul" of natural history, according to Darwin. Even today it's on display in the layout and organization of any zoo. Here are the monkeys, there are the big cats, and in that building are the alligators and crocodiles. Birds in the aviary, fish in the aquarium. Living creatures can be easily sorted into a hierarchy of categories—not just species but genera, families, orders, whole kingdoms—based on which anatomical characters they share and which they don't.



All vertebrate animals have backbones. Among vertebrates, birds have feathers, whereas reptiles have scales. Mammals have fur and mammary glands, not feathers or scales. Among mammals, some have pouches in which they nurse their tiny young. Among these species, the marsupials, some have huge rear legs and strong tails by which they go hopping across miles of arid outback; we call them kangaroos. Bring in modern microscopic and molecular evidence, and you can trace the similarities still further back. All plants and fungi, as well as animals, have nuclei within their cells. All living organisms contain DNA and RNA (except some viruses with RNA only), two related forms of information-coding molecules.

Such a pattern of tiered resemblances—groups of similar species nested within broader groupings, and all descending from a single source—isn't naturally present among other collections of items. You won't find anything equivalent if you try to categorize rocks, or musical instruments, or jewelry. Why not? Because rock types and styles of jewelry don't reflect unbroken descent from common ancestors. Biological diversity does. The number of shared characteristics between any one species and another indicates how recently those two species have diverged from a shared lineage.

That insight gave new meaning to the task of taxonomic classification, which had been founded in its modern form back in 1735 by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus. Linnaeus showed how species could be systematically classified, according to their shared similarities, but he worked from creationist assumptions that offered no material explanation for the nested pattern he found. In the early and middle 19th century, morphologists such as Georges Cuvier and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in France and Richard Owen in England improved classification with their meticulous studies of internal as well as external anatomies, and tried to make sense of what the ultimate source of these patterned similarities could be. Not even Owen, a contemporary and onetime friend of Darwin's (later in life they had a bitter falling out), took the full step to an evolutionary vision before The Origin of Species was published. Owen made a major contribution, though, by advancing the concept of homologues—that is, superficially different but fundamentally similar versions of a single organ or trait, shared by dissimilar species.



For instance, the five-digit skeletal structure of the vertebrate hand appears not just in humans and apes and raccoons and bears but also, variously modified, in cats and bats and porpoises and lizards and turtles. The paired bones of our lower leg, the tibia and the fibula, are also represented by homologous bones in other mammals and in reptiles, and even in the long-extinct bird-reptile Archaeopteryx. What's the reason behind such varied recurrence of a few basic designs? Darwin, with a nod to Owen's "most interesting work," supplied the answer: common descent, as shaped by natural selection, modifying the inherited basics for different circumstances.

Vestigial characteristics are still another form of morphological evidence, illuminating to contemplate because they show that the living world is full of small, tolerable imperfections. Why do male mammals (including human males) have nipples? Why do some snakes (notably boa constrictors) carry the rudiments of a pelvis and tiny legs buried inside their sleek profiles? Why do certain species of flightless beetle have wings, sealed beneath wing covers that never open? Darwin raised all these questions, and answered them, in The Origin of Species. Vestigial structures stand as remnants of the evolutionary history of a lineage.



Today the same four branches of biological science from which Darwin drew—biogeography, paleontology, embryology, morphology—embrace an ever growing body of supporting data. In addition to those categories we now have others: population genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and, most recently, the whiz-bang field of machine-driven genetic sequencing known as genomics. These new forms of knowledge overlap one another seamlessly and intersect with the older forms, strengthening the whole edifice, contributing further to the certainty that Darwin was right.



He was right about evolution, that is. He wasn't right about everything. Being a restless explainer, Darwin floated a number of theoretical notions during his long working life, some of which were mistaken and illusory. He was wrong about what causes variation within a species. He was wrong about a famous geologic mystery, the parallel shelves along a Scottish valley called Glen Roy. Most notably, his theory of inheritance—which he labeled pangenesis and cherished despite its poor reception among his biologist colleagues—turned out to be dead wrong. Fortunately for Darwin, the correctness of his most famous good idea stood independent of that particular bad idea. Evolution by natural selection represented Darwin at his best—which is to say, scientific observation and careful thinking at its best.



Douglas Futuyma is a highly respected evolutionary biologist, author of textbooks as well as influential research papers. His office, at the University of Michigan, is a long narrow room in the natural sciences building, well stocked with journals and books, including volumes about the conflict between creationism and evolution. I arrived carrying a well-thumbed copy of his own book on that subject, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. Killing time in the corridor before our appointment, I noticed a blue flyer on a departmental bulletin board, seeming oddly placed there amid the announcements of career opportunities for graduate students. "Creation vs. evolution," it said. "A series of messages challenging popular thought with Biblical truth and scientific evidences." A traveling lecturer from something called the Origins Research Association would deliver these messages at a local Baptist church. Beside the lecturer's photo was a drawing of a dinosaur. "Free pizza following the evening service," said a small line at the bottom. Dinosaurs, biblical truth, and pizza: something for everybody.



In response to my questions about evidence, Dr. Futuyma moved quickly through the traditional categories—paleontology, biogeography—and talked mostly about modern genetics. He pulled out his heavily marked copy of the journal Nature for February 15, 2001, a historic issue, fat with articles reporting and analyzing the results of the Human Genome Project. Beside it he slapped down a more recent issue of Nature, this one devoted to the sequenced genome of the house mouse, Mus musculus. The headline of the lead editorial announced: "HUMAN BIOLOGY BY PROXY." The mouse genome effort, according to Nature's editors, had revealed "about 30,000 genes, with 99% having direct counterparts in humans."

The resemblance between our 30,000 human genes and those 30,000 mousy counterparts, Futuyma explained, represents another form of homology, like the resemblance between a five-fingered hand and a five-toed paw. Such genetic homology is what gives meaning to biomedical research using mice and other animals, including chimpanzees, which (to their sad misfortune) are our closest living relatives.



No aspect of biomedical research seems more urgent today than the study of microbial diseases. And the dynamics of those microbes within human bodies, within human populations, can only be understood in terms of evolution.

Nightmarish illnesses caused by microbes include both the infectious sort (AIDS, Ebola, SARS) that spread directly from person to person and the sort (malaria, West Nile fever) delivered to us by biting insects or other intermediaries. The capacity for quick change among disease-causing microbes is what makes them so dangerous to large numbers of people and so difficult and expensive to treat. They leap from wildlife or domestic animals into humans, adapting to new circumstances as they go. Their inherent variability allows them to find new ways of evading and defeating human immune systems. By natural selection they acquire resistance to drugs that should kill them. They evolve. There's no better or more immediate evidence supporting the Darwinian theory than this process of forced transformation among our inimical germs.



Take the common bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, which lurks in hospitals and causes serious infections, especially among surgery patients. Penicillin, becoming available in 1943, proved almost miraculously effective in fighting staphylococcus infections. Its deployment marked a new phase in the old war between humans and disease microbes, a phase in which humans invent new killer drugs and microbes find new ways to be unkillable. The supreme potency of penicillin didn't last long. The first resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were reported in 1947. A newer staph-killing drug, methicillin, came into use during the 1960s, but methicillin-resistant strains appeared soon, and by the 1980s those strains were widespread. Vancomycin became the next great weapon against staph, and the first vancomycin-resistant strain emerged in 2002. These antibiotic-resistant strains represent an evolutionary series, not much different in principle from the fossil series tracing horse evolution from Hyracotherium to Equus. They make evolution a very practical problem by adding expense, as well as misery and danger, to the challenge of coping with staph.

The biologist Stephen Palumbi has calculated the cost of treating penicillin-resistant and methicillin-resistant staph infections, just in the United States, at 30 billion dollars a year. "Antibiotics exert a powerful evolutionary force," he wrote last year, "driving infectious bacteria to evolve powerful defenses against all but the most recently invented drugs." As reflected in their DNA, which uses the same genetic code found in humans and horses and hagfish and honeysuckle, bacteria are part of the continuum of life, all shaped and diversified by evolutionary forces.



Even viruses belong to that continuum. Some viruses evolve quickly, some slowly. Among the fastest is HIV, because its method of replicating itself involves a high rate of mutation, and those mutations allow the virus to assume new forms. After just a few years of infection and drug treatment, each HIV patient carries a unique version of the virus. Isolation within one infected person, plus differing conditions and the struggle to survive, forces each version of HIV to evolve independently. It's nothing but a speeded up and microscopic case of what Darwin saw in the Galápagos—except that each human body is an island, and the newly evolved forms aren't so charming as finches or mockingbirds.

Understanding how quickly HIV acquires resistance to antiviral drugs, such as AZT, has been crucial to improving treatment by way of multiple drug cocktails. "This approach has reduced deaths due to HIV by severalfold since 1996," according to Palumbi, "and it has greatly slowed the evolution of this disease within patients."



Insects and weeds acquire resistance to our insecticides and herbicides through the same process. As we humans try to poison them, evolution by natural selection transforms the population of a mosquito or thistle into a new sort of creature, less vulnerable to that particular poison. So we invent another poison, then another. It's a futile effort. Even DDT, with its ferocious and long-lasting effects throughout ecosystems, produced resistant house flies within a decade of its discovery in 1939. By 1990 more than 500 species (including 114 kinds of mosquitoes) had acquired resistance to at least one pesticide. Based on these undesired results, Stephen Palumbi has commented glumly, "humans may be the world's dominant evolutionary force."

Among most forms of living creatures, evolution proceeds slowly—too slowly to be observed by a single scientist within a research lifetime. But science functions by inference, not just by direct observation, and the inferential sorts of evidence such as paleontology and biogeography are no less cogent simply because they're indirect. Still, skeptics of evolutionary theory ask: Can we see evolution in action? Can it be observed in the wild? Can it be measured in the laboratory?



The answer is yes. Peter and Rosemary Grant, two British-born researchers who have spent decades where Charles Darwin spent weeks, have captured a glimpse of evolution with their long-term studies of beak size among Galápagos finches. William R. Rice and George W. Salt achieved something similar in their lab, through an experiment involving 35 generations of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Richard E. Lenski and his colleagues at Michigan State University have done it too, tracking 20,000 generations of evolution in the bacterium Escherichia coli. Such field studies and lab experiments document anagenesis—that is, slow evolutionary change within a single, unsplit lineage. With patience it can be seen, like the movement of a minute hand on a clock.

Speciation, when a lineage splits into two species, is the other major phase of evolutionary change, making possible the divergence between lineages about which Darwin wrote. It's rarer and more elusive even than anagenesis. Many individual mutations must accumulate (in most cases, anyway, with certain exceptions among plants) before two populations become irrevocably separated. The process is spread across thousands of generations, yet it may finish abruptly—like a door going slam!—when the last critical changes occur. Therefore it's much harder to witness. Despite the difficulties, Rice and Salt seem to have recorded a speciation event, or very nearly so, in their extended experiment on fruit flies. From a small stock of mated females they eventually produced two distinct fly populations adapted to different habitat conditions, which the researchers judged "incipient species."



After my visit with Douglas Futuyma in Ann Arbor, I spent two hours at the university museum there with Philip D. Gingerich, a paleontologist well-known for his work on the ancestry of whales. As we talked, Gingerich guided me through an exhibit of ancient cetaceans on the museum's second floor. Amid weird skeletal shapes that seemed almost chimerical (some hanging overhead, some in glass cases) he pointed out significant features and described the progress of thinking about whale evolution. A burly man with a broad open face and the gentle manner of a scoutmaster, Gingerich combines intellectual passion and solid expertise with one other trait that's valuable in a scientist: a willingness to admit when he's wrong.



Since the late 1970s Gingerich has collected fossil specimens of early whales from remote digs in Egypt and Pakistan. Working with Pakistani colleagues, he discovered Pakicetus, a terrestrial mammal dating from 50 million years ago, whose ear bones reflect its membership in the whale lineage but whose skull looks almost doglike. A former student of Gingerich's, Hans Thewissen, found a slightly more recent form with webbed feet, legs suitable for either walking or swimming, and a long toothy snout. Thewissen called it Ambulocetus natans, or the "walking-and-swimming whale." Gingerich and his team turned up several more, including Rodhocetus balochistanensis, which was fully a sea creature, its legs more like flippers, its nostrils shifted backward on the snout, halfway to the blowhole position on a modern whale. The sequence of known forms was becoming more and more complete. And all along, Gingerich told me, he leaned toward believing that whales had descended from a group of carnivorous Eocene mammals known as mesonychids, with cheek teeth useful for chewing meat and bone. Just a bit more evidence, he thought, would confirm that relationship. By the end of the 1990s most paleontologists agreed.

Meanwhile, molecular biologists had explored the same question and arrived at a different answer. No, the match to those Eocene carnivores might be close, but not close enough. DNA hybridization and other tests suggested that whales had descended from artiodactyls (that is, even-toed herbivores, such as antelopes and hippos), not from meat-eating mesonychids.

In the year 2000 Gingerich chose a new field site in Pakistan, where one of his students found a single piece of fossil that changed the prevailing view in paleontology. It was half of a pulley-shaped anklebone, known as an astragalus, belonging to another new species of whale.



A Pakistani colleague found the fragment's other half. When Gingerich fitted the two pieces together, he had a moment of humbling recognition: The molecular biologists were right. Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale dating back 47 million years, that closely resembled the homologus anklebone in an artiodactyls. Suddenly he realized how closely whales are related to antelopes.

This is how science is supposed to work. Ideas come and go, but the fittest survive. Downstairs in his office Phil Gingerich opened a specimen drawer, showing me some of the actual fossils from which the display skeletons upstairs were modeled. He put a small lump of petrified bone, no longer than a lug nut, into my hand. It was the famous astragalus, from the species he had eventually named Artiocetus clavis. It felt solid and heavy as truth.

Seeing me to the door, Gingerich volunteered something personal: "I grew up in a conservative church in the Midwest and was not taught anything about evolution. The subject was clearly skirted. That helps me understand the people who are skeptical about it. Because I come from that tradition myself." He shares the same skeptical instinct. Tell him that there's an ancestral connection between land animals and whales, and his reaction is: Fine, maybe. But show me the intermediate stages. Like Charles Darwin, the onetime divinity student, who joined that round-the –world voyage aboard the Beagle instead of becoming a country parson, and whose grand view of life on Earth was shaped by attention to small facts, Phil Gingerich is a reverant empiricist. He's not satisfied until he sees solid data. That's what excites his so much about pulling shale fossils out of the ground. In 30 years he has seen enough to be satisfied. For him, Gingerich said, it's "a spiritual experience."

"The evidence is there," he added. "It's buried in the rocks of ages."
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Post by Saint_ »

and human evolution is just as recent....MACRO-STYLE!:thinking:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ution.html
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Post by DusanS »

Another thought....

IF there is NO evolution, we would not evolve from CAVE MEN to humans today, right?

we would stay cave men, or for that matter, we would stay, what was BEFORE cave men...

Evolution would also not be possible without reproduction, all living things, creatures, plants, bugs, humans, are born, and they die, they reproduce, then they die, and again, and again, circle of life, and at the same time, they evolve...

We, and all living things, on this planet, carry seeds for reproduction, and urge to reproduce before we die...

Throughout million of years, all things get born, then die, all the while evolving slowly, it is extremely slow process... what we are today is a "product" of million years of slow, slow evolution, and we are still evolving as we speak...but it is like watching hair grow, but much, much slower...
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Post by Mickiel »

DusanS;1296870 wrote: .

Take my advice.... ....


Take your own advice, I hold no need for it. There is no better counselor for me,

Than myself.

Peace.
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Post by Saint_ »

Mickiel;1297058 wrote: Take your own advice, I hold no need for it. There is no better counselor for me,

Than myself.

Peace.


See? That's what I'm talking about. When someone puts forth another view, even a logical, fact-based one, that conflicts with your views... you clam up.

It's the psychic equivalent of putting your hands to your ears and singing "lalalalalalala."

For any information you want on evolution, just google, "National Geographic.":thinking:
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Post by Mickiel »

Saint_;1297065 wrote: See? That's what I'm talking about. When someone puts forth another view, even a logical, fact-based one, that conflicts with your views... you clam up.

It's the psychic equivalent of putting your hands to your ears and singing "lalalalalalala."

For any information you want on evolution, just google, "National Geographic.":thinking:




I don't want any information on evolution, I had enough of its foolishness when I studied it 40 years ago, it did nothing for me then, and does nothing for me now. I am not blind in my thinking concerning how humans got here, we were created, period! Evolution is a plaster that empty people need to fill in their search for how we got here.

I don't " Clam up" when faced with differing views, thats just your judgement of me. Magnificent design demands a magnificent designer, thats how I think. I don't need the creation of evolution to replace the creation of God. Evolution itself is a Clam up of Truth." A distortion of design.

I live in Warren , Michigan, outside of Detroit. 200 miles away is Clevland ,Ohio. There are Spiders that can jump off the top of an apartment building in Clevland, cast a single strand of silk thread into the breeze, and ride wind currents over a sea of water and colonise in Detroit hundreds of miles away. They cast a " Dragline" and ballon over long distances, they contort and twist with the breeze, turn with the turbulence, and have aerodynamic properties.

My mind will NEVER, get this, NEVER stoop so low as to believe that this miricle of marvelous design, just developed itself.

NEVER!

God did it!

And I believe thats the only way it could have occured. Evolution is meaningless to me, God is meaningful to me.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

When you say "Magnificent design", I got a news flash for you, we are NOT in any way "magnificent", we have too many faults, design faults, and any other, especially for example, lower back pain that most people have, reason for lower back pain is that humans were not designed to walk upright, their feet evolved faster than lower back, and we got stuck in between "development" or evolution of lower back...

We can say we are "fair" design, but in comparison to other species on this planet, we are most advanced, intelligently, and spiritually, but our bodies are far from magnificent, some credits, but some complaints also, to that "misterious designer"...

Advice to designer, hey genius why did you create monkeys first, before us?
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Post by Mickiel »

[QUOTE=DusanS;1297104]When you say "Magnificent design", I got a news flash for you, we are NOT in any way "magnificent",QUOTE]



Thats your view, certainly not mine. The human body is magnificent design, extraordinary genuis. The eye alone is a magnificent design. The nostrils, the brain, the human ear, all are extraordinary magnificence!

The human eye;

Although accounting for just 1/4th-thousandths of an adults weight, it is the medium which processes some 80% of the information received by its owner, from the outside world. The Retina contains about 130 million rod-shaped cells, which detect light intensity and transmit impulses to the visual cortex of the brain by means of some 1,000,000 nerve fibers, while nearly 6 million cone-shaped cells do the same job, but respond specifically to colour variation. This is sure design.

The eyes can handle 500,000 messages simultaneously, and are kept clear by ducts producing just the right amount of fluid with which the lids clean both eyes simultaneously in one- five thousandths of a second. It is impossible for evolution or natural selection to achieve this.

And I want to go into why.

Peace.
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Post by Mickiel »

To suppose that the human eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and Chromatic Aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, is absurd in the highest possible degree. It shows that the " Theory" of evolution, and its still a theory, has no brain, no real mind behind its dogma. Its pure subjecture.

The retina is " Inverted", put together backwards, that is purposeful consideration in design of the very high energy demands of the " Photoreceptor Cells" in the veterbrate retina, the photoreceptor cells are aimed backwards, away from the light source. A sure relevation of a sure designer, awesome pattern of a planner.

And I want to continue of that.

Peace.
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Post by Mickiel »

I am impressed with how God designed the lens of our eyes, they vary in density so that all rays are bought into focus, something natural selection couldnot do over time. Even outside of natural selection , this cannot be duplicated by any homogerous physical substance, such as glass. And its simply foolish conjecture to give such design over to evolution " Over time". All the marvelous adjustments of the lens, rods, cones, nerves and allelse must have " Occurred Simultaneously". Before each of them was created complette, sight is impossible! How could one of these factors know and adjust itself to each of the requirements of the others? Nature would have had a serious problem developing the science of Optics. Evolution cannot account for the eye purely on the basics of successive slight modifications. Before each modification God made was complette, sight was impossible.

Peace.
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Post by DusanS »

The evolution of the eye has been a subject of significant study, as a distinctive example of a homologous organ present in a wide variety of taxa. Certain components of the eye, such as the visual pigments, appear to have a common ancestry – that is, they evolved once, before the animals radiated. However, complex, image-forming eyes evolved some 50 to 100 times – using many of the same proteins and genetic toolkits in their construction.

Complex eyes appear to have first evolved within a few million years, in the rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian explosion. There is no evidence of eyes before the Cambrian, but a wide range of diversity is evident in the Middle Cambrian Burgess shale.

Eyes show a wide range of adaptations to meet the requirements of the organisms which bear them. Eyes may vary in their acuity, the range of wavelengths they can detect, their sensitivity in low light levels, their ability to detect motion or resolve objects, and whether they can discriminate colours.

The human eye, demonstrating the iris.

Since 1802, the evolution of a structure as complex as the projecting eye by natural selection has been said to be difficult to explain. Charles Darwin himself wrote, in his Origin of Species, that the evolution of the eye by natural selection at first glance seemed "absurd in the highest possible degree". However, he went on to explain that despite the difficulty in imagining it, it was perfectly feasible:

...if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.

He suggested a gradation from "an optic nerve merely coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism" to "a moderately high stage of perfection", giving examples of extant intermediate grades of evolution.

Darwin's suggestions were soon shown to be correct, and current research is investigating the genetic mechanisms responsible for eye development and evolution.

The first fossils of eyes appeared during the lower Cambrian period (about 540 million years ago). This period saw a burst of apparently rapid evolution, dubbed the "Cambrian explosion". One of the many hypotheses for "causes" of this diversification, the "Light Switch" theory of Andrew Parker holds that the evolution of eyes initiated an arms race that led to a rapid spate of evolution. Earlier than this, organisms may have had use for light sensitivity, but not for fast locomotion and navigation by vision.

Since the fossil record, particularly of the Early Cambrian, is so poor, it is difficult to estimate the rate of eye evolution. Simple modelling, invoking small mutations exposed to natural selection, demonstrates that a primitive optical sense organ based upon efficient photopigments could evolve into a complex human-like eye in approximately 400,000 years.

It is a matter of debate whether the "eye" evolved once, or independently in many clades. The genetic machinery employed in eye development is common to all eyed organisms. The only unique prerequisite for vision is the use of vitamin-A-related chromophores in the visual pigment, and this is also found in bacteria. Even photoreceptor cells may have evolved more than once from molecularly similar chemoreceptors, and photosensitive cells probably existed long before the Cambrian explosion.

All light-sensitive organs rely on photoreceptor systems employing a family of proteins called opsins. All seven sub-families of opsin were already present in the last common ancestor of animals. Further, the genetic toolkit for positioning eyes is common to all animals: the PAX6 gene controls where the eye develops in organisms ranging from mice to humans to fruit flies. However, these master control genes would be much older than many of the structures they control in modern animals, and were probably co-opted for a different purpose.

Sensory organs probably evolved before the brain did—there is no need for an information-processing organ (brain) before there is information to process.

The stigma of the euglena hides a light-sensitive spot.

The earliest predecessors of the eye were photoreceptor proteins that sense light, found even in unicellular organisms, called "eyespots". Eyespots can only sense ambient brightness: they can distinguish light from dark, sufficient for photoperiodism and daily synchronization of circadian rhythms. They are insufficient for vision, as they can not distinguish shapes or determine the direction light is coming from. Eyespots are found in nearly all major animal groups, and are common among unicellular organisms, including euglena. The euglena's eyespot, called a stigma, is located at its anterior end. It is a small splotch of red pigment which shades a collection of light sensitive crystals. Together with the leading flagellum, the eyespot allows the organism to move in response to light, often toward the light to assist in photosynthesis, and to predict day and night, the primary function of circadian rhythms. Visual pigments are located in the brains of more complex organisms, and are thought to have a role in synchronising spawning with lunar cycles. By detecting the subtle changes in night-time illumination, organisms could synchronise the release of sperm and eggs to maximise the probability of fertilisation.

Vision itself relies on a basic biochemistry which is common to all eyes. However, how this biochemical toolkit is used to interpret an organism's environment varies widely: eyes have a wide range of structures and forms, all of which have evolved quite late relative to the underlying proteins and molecules.

At a cellular level, there appear to be two main "designs" of eyes, one possessed by the protostomes (molluscs, annelid worms and arthropods), the other by the deuterostomes (chordates and echinoderms).

The functional unit of the eye is the receptor cell, which contains the opsin proteins and responds to light by initiating a nerve impulse. The light sensitive opsins are borne on a hairy layer, to maximise the surface area. The nature of these "hairs" differs: in the protostomes, they are microvilli: extensions or protrusions of the cellular membrane. But in the deuterostomes, they are derived from cilia, which are separate structures.

This now looks like something of a simplification, as some microvilli contain traces of cilia – but other observations appear to support a fundamental difference between protostomes and deuterostomes.These considerations centre on the response of the cells to light – some use sodium to cause the electric signal that will form a nerve impulse, and others use potassium; further, protostomes on the whole construct a signal by allowing more sodium to pass through their cell walls, whereas deuterostomes allow less through.

This suggests that when the two lineages diverged in the Precambrian, they had only very primitive light receptors, which developed into more complex eyes independently.
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Post by DusanS »

Although it is commonly believed that dogs and cats see only in black and white, recent evidence suggests that animals may have some degree of useful color vision. The perception of color is determined by the presence of cone photoreceptors within the retina. These cone cells function in bright light conditions and comprise approximately 20% of the photoreceptors in the central retina of the dog. In humans, the central retina (macula) is 100% cones. Behavioral tests in dogs suggest that they can distinguish red and blue colors but often confuse green and red.

There are these butterflies in central America, they are blue, and orange and yellow, and they have poison in their wings, just enough poison to stop birds heart, but the birds knew somehow, so they don't eat them, but there are other ones, butterflies, they are orange, blue, and yellow too, but no poison wings, they are just flying around looking dangerous, getting by on their looks...

When polar bears hunt, they crouch down by the hole in the ice, and wait for the seal to pop up, they keep one paw over their nose so they blend in, because they got those black noses, they've blend perfectly if not for the nose, so the question is... how do they know their nose is black?, from looking at other polar bears?, do they see their reflections in the water, and think "I would be invincible if not for that", that seems a lot of thinking for a bear...
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Post by Mickiel »

40 years ago I saw the continual collapse of the evolution theory itself. Many evolutionist have tried to argue that humans are 99% similar chemically to apes, and blood precipitation test do indicate that the chimpanzee is our closest relative. But let me show you why this science is not reliable: observe the following fact findings also;

Milk chemistry indicates that the donkey is mans closest relative.

Cholesterol level test indicate that the gartersnake is mans closest relative.

Tear enzyme chemistry indicates that the chicken is mans closest relative.

On the basis of another test I once observed its data of blood chemistry types, the butter bean is mans closest relative.

Peace.
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