I wonder if Missionary is Sable Chicken:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDeQ6zbjUF4

lol- can't see anyone wanting to reproduce with that one

I'm reading The Ancestor's Tale at the moment, and The Seal's Tale* reminded me of this thread. Specifically it discusses the extreme sexual dimorphism in Elephant Seals and how it relates to the species polygyny. It seems that sexual dimorphism is a good indicator of the breeding system a species uses, for a further example it describes the much greater sexual dimorphism of gorillas (much larger male and polygynous) to gibbons (sexes are approximately equal in size and monogamous).

Human beings are slightly dimorphic, obviously. Not as much as gorillas but more than gibbons. Which suggests that the natural breeding system of early humans (before civilisation and culture became the important factors) was probably a somewhere between the polygyny of gorillas and the monogamy of gibbons.

That doesn't seem to fit with your belief highlighted above. If God wanted us to be monogamous, why are humans sexually dimorphic?

*(p171-177 of The Ancestor's Tale (hardback) by Richard Dawkins if anyone is interested)

grrrr don't you hate timestretching audio ?

Unfortunately, you're bringing up science. And if there is one thing Mish hates, it's actualy science.

Actually, it would be expected. Why wouldn't we be?

I just explained why it wouldn't be. Why don't you explain why you think it would be?

Ten other monogamous animals that God might therefore look like, and want to illustrate his relationship with:

Ducks
Eagles
Foxes
Geese
Gibbons
Lynx
Marmosets
Mountain lions
Swans
Wolves.

. . . However, all this is still evading the issue of how and why gender came about. As has been needlessly pointed out in this thread and broadly agreed by proponents of both sides of the argument, the great majority of animal life is split into two genders, whether they practise monogamy, polygamy or outright promiscuity. Ceremonial agreements and sexual fidelity among certain species have no bearing on that matter.

What exactly is the substance of your argument, Missionary? That God made two genders in all the higher species so that just one of them could have nice church weddings? What is God's purpose for (for example) Buddhist, pagan or humanist weddings — or unceremonied mutual partnership agreements?

And why does he turn out the occasional human hermaphrodite?

SSJ's post went about a mile over your head it appears.

And why did he make us think about stem cells and lead us to the research that would end with hermaphrodite world domination. From the Times of India

Most of you will not be assimilated.

:o

I do have long hair and am working on a pair of man-boobs. Does that count for anything?

antix, you have long hair? That's not very ant like of you.

It's funny. I know I saw an article just a month ago that said men plus stem cells were going to be the new mothers of the universe, but I can't find it anywhere.

He only said that to try to get me to brush his hair, too.

Dang, I've been found out. So uh... about that hair brushing...

I don't think that was intentional. That awful business with the snake and the apple was the thin end of a wedge. ;)

I had long hair for a while, but I had to cut it recently due to dress codes at work.

Well, then you weren't a true long hair. :bop:

Wow. Either you're really desperate, or you really like your job, or you're really submissive. I wouldn't cut my hair for the life of me!

Or he's really grown-up and mature and realizes that a career is more important than a hairstyle.

Hmm. I wonder what I would do if my bosses at work told me I had to cut my hair to keep my job? I suppose if I wasn't confident that I could land another job, I'd have to do as they demanded.

skribb,
You're saying that you would rather die than cut your hair?

I guess not. But my hair wasn't really that long, perhaps medium length. If you watch the TV show Smallville, my hairstyle was very similar to Tom Welling's, except a little longer.

What's wrong with being submissive?

Nothing.
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...Dominatrix.jpg

fapfapfapfapfap

Feel free to keep posting those Kate hahaha

I knew you would post something like that, and that's why I asked that question? See, I can control your mind Kate, mwahahahaha!

yes, but she can control you with stiletto heels and plastic tubing.......

Six have passed my doorstep bistro in as many months, though the fare is less expensive than tuna.

Do you not know the difference between "explaining away" and finding an equally likely (or more so) explanation for an event?

The following is not an example of explaining away: "Which is the more likely, that the creator of the universe impregnated an unmarried virgin or that a Palestinian tart lied?" CH

I know with mathematical certainty that God* cannot exist because His alleged attributes are contradictory. Neither I nor anyone else can so clearly prove that some generic god does not exist so, I honestly used the "probably" term to cover all gods. Such is not an admission of failure. In this instance, "probably does not exist" means "less likely than the president of the dominant society on Beta Lyrae Seven coming to Earth, on an Eighteenth-century open handcart, to be your school's next prom queen".

I am certain now that, if God existed, He was the author of my despair since that is the way He is said to often work; deprive a person of all dignity and humanity to force him or her to the pit of desperation so they will cry out to their last possible (and least likely) hope for succor. At the time I was completely open for whatever crumbs God would dribble on me.

A small problem with this: humans are members of the animal kingdom by sharing all of the indicative animal attributes. Your knowledge of biology is not improving, yet you continue to make biological statements. Jerk.

Your first premise is not in evidence. The most that you can say is "Everything whose beginning we have been able to examine, was a rearrangement of pre-existing material". The "creation" of a star, for example, is the condensation of existing material which process causes heat and eventual nuclear fusion, all under the universal law of gravitation.

From this we can infer that, as long as we lack the ability to examine the purported beginning of the universe, we cannot decide if there was a pre-existing state. We cannot even infer that, if the universe really did arise from absolutely nothing, that any agency was required to make it happen because there are no examples that can be tested or observed.

Concerning your second premise, many events at the quantum level are uncaused in the sense that, if an event is caused, its characteristics are determined by that cause and, for some subatomic events there is no determination. This is particularly important for your premise that God might be directing things from behind the curtain, so to speak. The actual statistical characteristics of these events eliminate a plan, a goal or any intelligent design.

In case you meant "self-caused" in your second premise, there is no reason that, if an object could be self-caused at all, it could not do so at any time and cease to exist at some later time, thus being completely finite in all particulars. There is currently no evidence against the possibility of a self-caused object from a single neutrino to a universe full of neutrinos. There is, indeed, evidence that some atoms may appear spontaneously in pairs and remain in the universe if they are separated from their partner by a black hole.

No supernatural realm or entity is shown to be necessary for the beginning of the universe. The tradition of attributing to God actions that do not belong to Him is not logically or scientifically valid.

Do you never tire of being comprehensively wrong, Bovina?

Mathematical models are not for explanation of a theory; they are for implementing the predictive capability of a theory. The theory is the explanation. The test of a theory is its ability to make predictions that pan out in real life. It might predict that Hydrogen and Oxygen will combine explosively or it might predict that fossils of a particular new kind might be found in a particular stratum in a particular geographic area.

Your understanding of science is dismal. It is still better than your purported understanding of the Bible that most Christians believe.

Watch where you step; Bovina has been this way recently.

What a wanker.

All your creator can want or require is something it does not have. That lack is not possible for a perfect entity. Either your God wants, wills, plans or designs nothing, or He is not perfect (by your own definition of perfection).

You do not know a great deal about reality yet you prefer, through bias and prior commitment, to ascribe what you do not know to a supernatural universe that you also do not know. By what criteria do you choose a supernatural (necessarily vague, untestable and unfalsifiable) explanation over a plausible, though currently unproven, necessarily concrete, testable and falsifiable natural explanation?

Plausibility is merely the closeness to reality of one possible explanation.

If an event was observed and verified which had a supernatural component, it would still be as welcome as any other natural fact and would be recorded as a natural fact and all relevant theories would have to accommodate it.

Many scientists would rejoice to find a bona-fide supernatural fact as it would open a whole new realm for objective observation, testing and theory-building. Possibly an entire technology, perhaps forthrightly called "Magic" could develop. What a boon to humanity it would be to harness all of those currently ill-employed demons, to power our factories and desalination units and farm equipment, not to mention cheap (free) transportation. It might even become possible to send a return-receipt message to God in place of this one-way situation.

Science, dealing in observation, does not reject any fact out of hand. It will rightly reject any observation, natural or super, that cannot be objectively verified. There is vanishingly small bias in this. If some scientist did discard information due to its supernatural origin, you can be sure that one of the Christian scientists that you all crow about so much, would grab it and make it known worldwide.

There is no evidence where you point so you have contributed exactly nil.
Point to the Bible ... nope, nothing valid in there. Perhaps creation is evidence for God ... nope, existence is only evidence of existence; it does not identify its cause, if any.

You are a net loss here, jerk. Shuffle off now, before you make Jesus appear even more of a clown for choosing you as a messenger.

Could it be that both the creator of the universe and Jesus were created by an itinerant uber-gott as the byproduct of a one-night-stand, with a slightly run-down, but once spiffy hyper-goddess, in this sleazy rural corner of the ultraverse?

Gap filled!

Happily, putty, glue and duct tape are all real and they are all effective. You would rather fill the gap with an invisible, immaterial, ineffective, inconceivable and noxious fantastic conceptual entity.

Existence is only evidence of existence, it does not identify its causes.

With a large hammer?

... and it grounds the historical event in a belief.

I am embarrassed that so many (2% or 6%) scientists permit their brains to be damaged by a whole irrational belief set. You just know that a good scientist who is also Christian (or any other religion that makes scientific claims) must realize the incompatibility involved and deliberately filter his or her faith out of the equations.

It is like the Christian Texas oil-man who thinks the world is 4+Billion years old when drilling for oil and that it is 6000 years old at all other times.

That's what she said.

One thing I can tell you about theist scientists is that their faith never shows up in their work. Astronomers do not posit theories of 6000 year old asteroid fields, and if they did they would be laughed out of town, and all the other astronomers would make fun of them. The fact is, scientists who believe in god leave their jeebus at home when they go to work. Those who don't don't have a problem, because they don't have jobs.

Or work at the Discovery Institute.

But then, calling them scientists is a stretch.

Excellent video!

Gives ample support for the dual notions, that one can sift the Bible for good and valuable ideas while eliminating the parts created for human spin and power agendas; the Bible was physically written by humans with, at most, the tiniest subtle dusting of influence by some kind of spirit.

In other words, the Bible might contain some words that God wants us to know and understand, but it is certainly not the "Word of God", complete and inerrant.

Bless those honest theologians who admit that earthly human desires are the substance of so much of the Bible.

Damn the clergy and the powerful who continue to teach children and others that the Bible is literal as if written by God Himself.

Thanks Vlad, good catch!

That might be true unless, for example, Zeus is who he says he is, in which case, Jesus takes a decidedly subordinate young upstart position. Even Mithras, if he is who he says he is, has seniority over Jesus.

Your oft-repeated "IF" still lacks merit, Bovina.

If I am who I say I am then all of my words are inspired and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

A failed condition yields a failed consequent. Jesus is thus not shown to be God or anything else.

Yeah, be sure you look up the Biblical references to tithing and the "widow's mite" in your quest for the actual claims of Christianity.

"God may be great, but He just can't handle money." Carlin

Paul, the early spreader of hearsay, never met Jesus either. His testimony concerning the testimony of other people just bears no weight.

Related question: if there was significant factual basis, wouldn't it be the science of Christ and not the religion of Christianity. Incidentally, wouldn't the textbook be revised at least every century or so to accommodate the influx of new facts?

"He created..." is not even a guess at HOW genderless creatures evolved gender, non-randomly, for no other reason than that doing so improved their survivability. If you knew even a jot of biology this would be much clearer and your opinions less ignorant. All of modern Biology is predicated on goal-free, undirected evolution.

Or a large cargo ship carrying chariots sank ...

Unintelligent questions that have, even so, been answered thousands, if not hundreds of times.

If the aggregate intelligence of one generation is slightly different than its parent generation and if intelligence is inherited and if intelligence improves species survivability, then intelligence will (has) evolve(d) from just smart enough to steer in the direction of food and away from signs of danger, to modern intellects and beyond. Evolution has not stopped for any living species.

The principles of physics do exist and, no, they do not suggest or imply anything about their origin. Like mathematics, they, in a corresponding form, might be co-existent with God and manifest in the universe without being created, just as mathematics were.

Bah, enough of this pounding sand down a rat-hole, willfully ignorant jerk.

So, you write a letter saying what a great war hero your grandfather was and that he received a personal commendation from Harry Truman. In a hundred years, the confirmed administration of Harry Truman adds exactly what credibility to your grandfather's good record? He might have been a traitorous deserter, but Harry Truman existed so your written crap must be true, right?

"Gone with the Wind" is an historical document because almost everything depicted in it is completely accurate about the people and places of the civil war. Anyone not recorded in the annals of that time must be true because the rest of the book is.

The way that confidence games ("cons") work is to meld a dollop of truth into the false story. Then the gullible fool believes it because it "makes sense" and some of it can be verified.

You are claiming that even the science comes from your farcical being.

Is the plank even around anymore? He seemed to vanish right after I brought up sexual dimorphism. Pfft.

You do love selective reading, don't you. Jericho was discovered and it had been ruined and abandoned more than a hundred years before Joshua is supposed to have arrived. All the best myths have a sprinkling of incidental truths just to make them believable. Similarly, Nazareth is a real place, but in Jesus' time it was a necropolis (grave city) that no Jew would think of living anywhere near. Similarly, Ai, supposedly completely destroyed and desolated forever in the Bible story, wasn't supposed to be discoverable, has been discovered and is a vibrant city/village with a substantial population.

Saying that the Bible is a reliable historical document is not only incorrect, it would not help the credibility of the Bible if it were accurate.

You contaminate the question immediately by asking "who" did something. You presume, without reason that everything was done by someone.

When you are pinned down as to just who that someone is for the creation of the universe, the best that you and your mental cohorts can suggest is
"the universe was created by that being who was capable of creating a universe." You seem to actually think that you have an answer and that you have proven the eternal existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

You repeat that science's current inability to explain the origin of the universe defaults to God.

I have a bag containing 100 pennies. Now, you tell me, who put them in the bag. I don't know who put them there and neither you nor I can find out (we do know that it was done long ago due to the dates on the coins) so it must have been God, right?

To quote a contemporary philosopher: "the very idea is preposterous and fantastically ignorant".

It is arrogant to say that you agree with the Creator. Stupidly arrogant if the Creator does not exist and pridefully arrogant, implying that you know fundamentally unknowable things about Him, if He does.

Then faith is a trust based on wishful dreams for His character, personal subjective unverifiable internal experience and the effects these dreams have had on mankind.

What's to know, is the scientific method and logic. You do not have it yet you pontificate on scientific issues, wanker.

If you spend some 13.6 Billion years contemplating your navel, pretty soon, you, too, will find yourself loving and building cities.

As expected, you are exactly wrong on all counts. I am not going to feed you this central information that forms the basis for all of modern biology. I will merely accept your admission that you know squat and I will remind you of your willful ignorance whenever you make a statement about anything in biology, including abiogenesis, jerk.

Incidentally, you just admitted that apes with no soul are still bound by morality since you say that they can commit sins, and therefore have a relationship with God that can be damaged. This helps your case because humans are apes. It harms your case because it shows souls are not necessary for a relationship with God.

In science, opinions, guesses and speculations are so labeled and the accurate information that explains known facts are called theories just so there is no confusion. You could learn the difference between fiction and speculation (hypothesis) before you embarrass yourself even more, jerk.

It is right if God* said so just as God* created all evil if He admitted His guilt for doing so.

Wanker