Up to:  Biker's CafeThis should be a good place for all purpose talks, better than interleaving our discussions with "Time Trial Champions" comments.
BikerBrian | PoliticsWow! I stirred up a hornets nest by bringing up politics. Sorry guys, you can blame me. 
Let me start by saying that I am in complete agreement with Vega's last post in the GC thread (this discussion has now been moved to its own thread).
As Kris said, we each have our own personal beliefs about political (and religious) issues, so there is no sense trying to persuade each other.
However, I do need to add my 2 cents to Xuzz's comments. Regarding taxes: Even under the current "Bush system", people who earn more still pay WAY more than anyone else (actual and percentage). The top 5% earn 31.99% of all wages, but pay 53.25% of all income taxes. The top 50% pay 96.03% of all income taxes. The bottom 50% are paying a tiny bit of the taxes (3.97%), so you can't give them much of a tax cut by definition. Yet these are the people that Democrats claim to want to give tax cuts. Remember this the next time you hear the "tax cuts for the rich" business. Understand that the so-called rich are about the only ones paying taxes anymore.
The tax cuts have been unfairly labeled by the media to imply that they only help the rich, but that's crap. The "rich" are just being allowed to keep more of their own money. As Vega so eloquently put it, the better off they (and their companies) are, the better off everyone else will be. It is a terrible idea to punish success. If taxes are raised on businesses and employers, they will simply pass this burden on to customers and employees.
As for this election, we will have to agree to disagree if you (Xuzz) think Obama (who has the most liberal record in the U.S. Senate -  http://nj.nationaljou rnal.com/voteratings/) is better suited to run our country and unite it than McCain (who has a proven track record of working together with members from both parties).
Either way, our votes in CA and TN won't matter anyway. Obama will get California's electoral votes and McCain will get Tennessee's. There will be very little campaign money spent in either state. |
| Xuzz |  |  | BB, even if you don't think GW is man made, CFL's are cheaper and safer in the long run....please the GW crowd and yourself  ! |
| | Mr.pickle. |  | | | Xuzz | | | Pickle, get on chat . BTW, CFL's are flourescent lights, not a Gasolene replacement... |
| | Mr.pickle. | | | | mike flips |  | | I wonder if Pickle saw the movie Religulous. It would be good for him |
| | Mr.pickle. | | | | Vega |  | | Be careful where you get your information and what you allow to influence your opinions. The vast majority of the time, the media portrays a markedly warped and skewed perspective. I kind of revere it as a phenomenon of human nature to twist right thinking based on selfish intentions.
Never forget to consider the source. Sloppy productions like Religulous are usually the result of sloppy thinking. It's pretty clear that the makers of this movie lack the intelligence to process reality correctly, therefore, in my personal opinion, I have no interest in ingesting any material that these people present as "factual". Sure, you can watch this for purposes of gaining a more "broadly educated perspective" on the opinion of stupid people, but unless you have a strong enough mind to separate factual representations from retarded manipulations, I'd steer clear of trashy productions such as Religulous. I absolutely refuse to let such close minded individuals cloud my thoughts with these lopsided insinuations. I would never proclaim to hate people who speak against my beliefs. (that’s counterproductive anyway). But I will not support or tolerate what their material represents, and I do not believe that this type of production does even a fractional ounce of good for this world. So I choose to fight against it.
Pretty simple 
|
| | Vega | | | | Mr.pickle. | | | well siad vega...Tho like I said I have never evan heard of the movie |
| | mike flips | | | a) the movie was pretty funny
b) obviously he looked for cases of religious extremism just to ridicule them and all he really did was point out some contradictions
c) pickle wouldnt be smart enough to get it! - thats why i didnt say "vega should see it" - i know you are above such things |
| | Mr.pickle. | | | | Vega | | | For me... there is only one team; Truth.
It's very intriguing to see things debated here that are so crystal clear in reality. I have personally seen, studied, and tediously picked apart the myths/facts/false presumptions/made up theories/undeniable truths of the whole evolution/creation debate. I even personally attended a 12 week course (and bought the CD collection and re-listened to it) from Miles McPherson, the Pastor of the Rock Church in San Diego and a close friend of my family. He is an very well studied on evolution and his presentation is incredible. I have also attended excellent seminars by Dr Kent E Hovind (Dr Dino). He is the foremost expert on planet earth on the subject of evolution. I have a nice library of his materials as well. These documentary style videos and books that talk about 44 billion years ago and 189 million years ago.. I’m like… What the heck??? AS IF we can measure that. It’s hogwash. It’s totally unsupported theory. It’s totally and completely BOGUS. And the whole world wants to swallow it, because a very very simple concept. Are you ready for it? Here it is folks. One sentence. Only one.
*** People want to disprove Christianity so badly because it frees their conscious of making immoral choices ***
If you want to find out about the roots and true history of our great country, look no further than Wallbuilders. I have personally attended a handful of live seminars and met Rick Green and David Barton, the leaders of that organization. If the average American's knowledge of our country's history is a grain of sand, then an expert's opinion might represent a jar full of sand or even a small sand box. Well then the wealth of knowledge that the folks at Wallbuilders have on the history and roots of America would represent 20 beaches full of sand. And I think I may be undercutting them there. They have many of the original documents in hand. Our leaders in modern day politics have drifted so incredibly far from the origins of America that it boggles the mind.
The $700B bailout? Rubbish. Possibly the only band aid at this point without having our entire country go into a disastrous tailspin, but I CANNOT STAND financial socialism. The fat cats have walked with mega millions. It's sad. It's wrong. It's a terrible reality. And it's all a result of bad decisions (anyone recall the posts I put in this forum about credit debt before the crap publicly hit the fan with the crisis?) Well guess who's working through the settlement process for a mountain of outstanding international trades from the Lehman Brothers mess? Yours truly. Nice of them to just leave everything behind and bail out with a nasty bankruptcy. Meanwhile, they were funneling all of their remaining assets (to the tune of literally billions) to their top execs. They are being fully investigated right now. Turns out, their CEO sent multiple emails and private messages promising that they would all still get their bonus payouts, even on the same day that he was asking the Treasury for a bailout!!!! Ridiculous. Why oh why do we allow this?
You want to talk about different religions. I have a storehouse of knowledge on that subject as well. I’ve spent hundreds of hours studying the difference of religious beliefs; studying facts. This is not a “Vega knows all” post. But I can’t help but wonder how people come to certain conclusions. This post may seem long to some… but these topics could easily require hundreds or even thousands of pages to cover correctly. I am just skimming the surface here. I spend countless hours studying the truth, and then I log onto this forum and see these assumptions backed mostly by the strong influence of negative media. It’s incredible.
It’s always amazing when people point out that Christianity insinuates that other religions hold to false beliefs and intentionally exposes their gods as untrue/unworthy of being recognized as God. The very basis of Christianity is built upon the fact the Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for all of our sins. All other “religions” that do not believe this by DEFAULT conflict with this belief. I have also personally attended a 8 week course on the beliefs of Islamic faith, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, blah blah blah. (so many more). I believe there is truth in every religion… pieces of truth.
But I ask this simple question? Can all of them be correct and true at the same time? They all contradict each other. So… naturally, there would be no debates of any kind if they all believed the same things… and there would be only 1 faith on earth. When people get all hot and bothered by conflicting debates, it quite funny to me. Because I think to myself, of course a Christian is going to have a viewpoint that varies heavily from a Muslim. Duh! Here’s another seemingly simple question for everyone (that many people don’t seem to grasp). Why is it that all other religions take offense to Christians negating their beliefs? The very fact that person A believes in Islamic faith and person B believes in Christianity will mean that they will have conflicting beliefs. What I don’t understand is that people attack my faith and then when I confront them on (their attack) and hammer out the facts, they get offended and say why don’t I just leave them be. “Why don’t you let me just believe what I want”… “What does it hurt?” “Why don’t you Christians just be more tolerant and mind your business?” My response is only logical. Hey!… you came at me, fool! Yes. I said fool. I respect everyone in their beliefs, as that is their free will. But I will not agree with something that disagrees with my own belief. And if confronted, I will stand.
Want the truth about evolution/creation?
http://www.drdino.com/
True history of America?
http://www.wallbuilders.com/
This info is readily available folks. Infact, there’s so much available that it’s staggering. Do your research before standing so strongly on being blindly opinionated.
|
| | Mr.pickle. | | | nicely put vega as usewall...
The main thing that anoys me about evolution is simply that in the goverment public school system it is presented as a FACT which it obviously is not... |
| | Xuzz | | | Vega:
It is not 44 Billion years ago. The universe didn't exist then . The earth was formed _AROUND_ 4.5 billion years ago.
About measuring how old the earth is, a quote from http://talkorigins.org :
"he generally accepted age for the Earth and the rest of the solar system is about 4.55 billion years (plus or minus about 1%). This value is derived from several different lines of evidence.
Unfortunately, the age cannot be computed directly from material that is solely from the Earth. There is evidence that energy from the Earth's accumulation caused the surface to be molten. Further, the processes of erosion and crustal recycling have apparently destroyed all of the earliest surface.
The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia.
While these values do not compute an age for the Earth, they do establish a lower limit (the Earth must be at least as old as any formation on it). This lower limit is at least concordant with the independently derived figure of 4.55 billion years for the Earth's actual age.
The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204). A plot is constructed of Pb-206/Pb-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204.
If the solar system formed from a common pool of matter, which was uniformly distributed in terms of Pb isotope ratios, then the initial plots for all objects from that pool of matter would fall on a single point.
Over time, the amounts of Pb-206 and Pb-207 will change in some samples, as these isotopes are decay end-products of uranium decay (U-238 decays to Pb-206, and U-235 decays to Pb-207). This causes the data points to separate from each other. The higher the uranium-to-lead ratio of a rock, the more the Pb-206/Pb-204 and Pb-207/Pb-204 values will change with time.
If the source of the solar system was also uniformly distributed with respect to uranium isotope ratios, then the data points will always fall on a single line. And from the slope of the line we can compute the amount of time which has passed since the pool of matter became separated into individual objects. See the Isochron Dating FAQ or Faure (1986, chapter 18) for technical detail.
A young-Earther would object to all of the "assumptions" listed above. However, the test for these assumptions is the plot of the data itself. The actual underlying assumption is that, if those requirements have not been met, there is no reason for the data points to fall on a line.
The resulting plot has data points for each of five meteorites that contain varying levels of uranium, a single data point for all meteorites that do not, and one (solid circle) data point for modern terrestrial sediments. It looks like this:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth/pb-iso.gif
"
There is no reason to stand your ground if someone challenges your beliefs (like pickle is doing RIGHT HERE by saying that other religions are WRONG)... |
| | Xuzz | | | | Mr.pickle. | | | Xuzz, Have you ever heard the question, "Which came first the chicken,or the egg?"
Have you ever heard one christian say that God created the earth with BABY trees all around, and seeds in the ground for grass?
OF COURSE NOT! God created things already matured, full grown trees, a man (Adam) not a boy. Hence he created things as already matured! evan sapposing those tests scientists run on things ARE actully relliable (I personally think they are not at all whatsoever)God could in fact have made the earth already matured so that all thos tests even if they were correct really do not counter the existance of God.
Vega is completly correct in that
"*** People want to disprove Christianity so badly because it frees their conscious of making immoral choices ***"
My opinion of the age testing devises evolutionists use.
There is in fact a true story about a man who burried his dead dog and dug him up 20 years later and took the most un-definable bone he could find to an evolutionist who tested it and it read something along the lines of 7.8 million years old
The way those devises are invented is by assuming that the earth is a gazzillion years old(Paraphrasing here) Therefore taking something they think is that old and adjusting it till it reads that that object is that old.
obviosly its a bit more complicated than that, but thats basicly how they do it, put in simplest terms.
Xuzz where are you getting that there is No reason to defend your faith? you are clearly defending your faith in evolution And in the proccess saying my,vega,and BB(others too but..)s faith is wrong Why are you allowed to do so but not me?
I would say this is a pretty good post for me, considering its length. Not to many spelling errors and I even used some capitilisation, I am improving |
| | mike flips | | | Well my religion would also state that there was a creation. But if you look at the facts like Xuzz did, its impossible to believe this. Its simple, you can measure certain things over time. If something has developed 3 inches in the last 100 years yet it is 50 feet long it is clear that it had to have that time to be developed. There are other planets out there and there is a whole universe that we live in and we really don't know if there is life anywhere else - we may never know.
The bottom line is that there are somethings that we can't deny. The continental drift theory. All the continents used to be connected into one land mass. Look at a picture of the world - you can not deny this fact. They have drifted apart at a certain rate - if this rate is any indication of the past then the world must be pretty damn old. To support this theory aside from all scientists is how the earth's plates have shifted as well as discovery of similar species on separate continents that would normally have been impossible.
Then you look at dinosaurs - they happened, the fossils are not fake. Human history has no mention of dinosaurs anywhere - you think that would pop up somewhere? But they dont anywhere. They simply came before humans.
So either - the world plopped outta nowhere a few thousand years ago and God made Adam and Eve and he put fossils in the ground to trick us. Or there really was a world here for a long time before that.
This is why I like my own view. I think that the 7 days of creation were not "days" but they were more periods of times. If you fuse together science and religion you get an understanding that could technically be possible.
Each day and each evene that occured took billions of years. So that means god could have created the earth, and then the sun and moon and so on, and this could have all spanned over a large period of time which would have allowed for the original land to shift into the continent we know today. Then animals and humans were created but it says animals first. That is why dinosaurs existed before humans. They werent too many years before humans but relative to the billions of years the earth needed to become what it is this story fits.
That just leaves the whole human / apes thing. Clearly god could not get everything going right away as he took 6 whole days to get everything the way he wanted when he could have just made it all happen in an instant. So why would humans have just become, they were perfected over time. When apes had evolved into the human form we see today - that is when god created man. (I just completely made that up but its plausible).
So both views can be right and this combines those with blind belief and those who have sound scientific fact.
The only thing that can be proven is what we can observe ourselves making science the only "truth." On the other hand, religion is a belief and it is true only because you were born that way. How many people on this forum were born a different faith and then learned about Jesus and converted. Everyone here has a ton of bias because that is how they were raised and it is just ingrained in their heads. Sure you can say you have studied other religions but no one here has LIVED and been BORN in another religion. You can pretend to know what it would be like to be born a Muslim but you really dont know. You can say you would have found Jesus and converted but we all know that is extremely unlikely and you would probably believe Mohammed is your prophet - and allah is god and you would be here on this forum saying why that is the right thing.
The bottom line is that we can never be sure about religion. Jesus claims he was god - there is no proof but hearsay that was documented well after he was born. We dont know if they are myth or fact but you believe becaause that is how you were born. Muhammad went into a cave and then came out and claimed he spoke to god. Who knows if thats true? There are a lot of ancient religions, for example, with men born of virgin mothers who walked around performing mircacles.
Again it comes down to the fact that science can be proven. Religion is based on faith. You can't say that your god is the right god - but you can say that you believe this to be true. Belief may be great but it pales in comparison to fact.
But on the other hand - I have studied a lot of the old testament. Unlike the new testament which is hearsay and there are a lot of contradictions and oddities, the old testament is completely cohesive and purely looking at it from a literary standpoint is one of the greatest "books" ever written. To sit there and say there is only evolution is hard to do when there can be this old testament that is so complex and solidly written that it is impossible to believe that a man could have written this with no outside help when there is no written texts today that come even close to it.
But then again theres the whole issue that there were two major translations of the old testament. The original translation did not have any statements that could possibly prophesize Jesus whereas the newer translation (Jerome did it) was changed slightly and included possible Jesus passages. The newer translation was gradually accepted. Facts like these make one want to question their beliefs. Can you really be certain that your religion is real. For a lot of people there is that doubt in the backs of their head which screams out "but what about the facts."
Anywho, just something i thought were interesting. |
| | Mr.pickle. | | | Working my way backwards up mikes post here.
Your right mike there is something in the back of my head yelling out"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FACTS?!" and then I remember the facts are the following
Look at the united states presently the most powerfull country in the world and has been for the past around......at least 80 years. Look where it started? who were the founding fathers? ALL OF THEM WERE CHRISTIANS? coincedence?
Look at Ronald Reagan, considerd by many the best presedent ever in USA. He made taxes go down, which let people have more money which eventually ended up giving the government MORE money,as well as stemulating the econamy(the opposite of what obama wants ,on a side note) which put the country at its peak! out of being about how it is right now! He created 21 million jobs! Yes he was a christian too.
Look at freakin wal-mart! The Biggest company in USA!look who started it? SAM WALTON! A CHRISTIAN!
Turns out the people who started most successful resturant chains were also christians. mcdonalds,burger king,cracker barrel,krispy cream donuts!(Love those things...!)and there is many more.
Then theres most succesful busnesses, all started,or presently run by christians. Ebay, Kmart,Sears,Walmart(again but..)jc penny,ect...
How can you say theres no proof of Jesus being god? Theres sooo many profacy's about it, the odds of one man fullfilling every single one? somewhere around...10 to the 367nth power! And yet he did it! every single one! Most scientists say if something is past 10 to the 50th power you may as well deem it impossible, Hence God.
Look at The christian faith in general, there is not one time throughout history when it dissapeared completly, it has always been here, back to the beginning of time, as far as we have documents reporting!(the oldest being good old genises 1:1) Gow many other religions can say that?
Christian faith has been through persecution, christmas was illegal for a while in there, but the christian faith survived, why? one word. GOD.
The facts mike? Thats them. thanks you, you have just reaffermed my faith in my creator, good freindly thing to do.
|
| | Mr.pickle. | | | Dinosours!
Love these giants! gotta do a post about them too i think
OK for one thing they are, in fact, mentiond in a historical document,which evan Mike admitted was VERY reliable.
Good old B-I-B-L-E (YES dats the book for me,I stand alone on the word of god the B-I-B-L-E!!!lol)
Looking into the book of Job. It mentions a creature called the "bohemeth"(I think I spelld it wrong but..) If you take a pencil and draw what Job describes there it ends up looking something like a dinosour. Therefore you cannot say that it doesent come up any in human history.
Heres my opinion on why dinosours no longer roam the earth.
Think of the rainforest. In that atmosphere animals get to be upto like 5 times there regular size(or more!) right?
Well before noahs flood (calling it that to prevent confusion, it was Gods flood) and btw most scientist are forced to belive that there was in fact a great flood that coverd the entire earth. Because of a large layer of ground where things are either mixed up, or simply nothing there at all.
Anyway, before the flood it had never rained right?
Well at least acoording to most schollars who have study'd it anyway.
That would mean that the earth would have had extra insulation right? All that water would be in the atmosphere.
This is also mentioned in the bible,
(also in job actully, and by the way, the book of job happend before the flood,acoording to most schollars,who have study'd it)
In job it mentions a "blanket" surrounding the earth.
That would make the atmosphere simular to that of a rainforest. Meaning the whole earth was basicly turned into a greenhouse.
So basicly the dinosours were regular lizards perhaps,but under the conditions(as the rainforest) they grew to be gigantic. Then after Noahs flood, that blanket around the earth was gone.. Meaning the atmosphere would have changed. Eventually the dinosours died out,because this new atmosphere was unable to support them.
Thats my theory on dinosours. I havent found any flaws in that one yet Tho I would rather not discuss that, as it is not really of much importance to this discussion, the point is that dinosours were mentiond in a historical doucument,BEFORE THE FLOOD. Therefore I can conclude that evolution is false At least from the standpoint that humans were not around at the same time as dinosours. |
| | Vega | | | Pickle: While there is some truth and good perspective within your posts, there is also some questionable stuff. You are just making some of those theories up. There are much better 'facts' than what you have listed above. People spend decades (some their entire life) studying these ideas and beliefs. However, it is unrealistic to think that we can cover the facts in this forum.
This is exactly why I provided the link to Dr Dino (as an example). I encourage anyone to buy just ONE of his videos and watch it. And no... he is not my Uncle. I am not connected to him monetarily.
Here is one link to a section of that site:
http://shopping.drdino.com/category-exec/category_id/35/nm/Creation
For evolution facts, most of the numbers and statistics about carbon dating and scientific data have been proven to be bogus. These dating methods have failed miserably on numerous occasions... and they always seem to just glaze over that.
Only several points need to be mentioned to completely deteriorate the validity of evolution of apes to humans.
First of all, why are monkeys not evolving anymore? Have we arrived? Humans are now the perfect specimen? When did that actually happen? 300 years ago? 1000 years ago? Yesterday?
Second: We cannot mate and reproduce with anything but humans. The DNA is incompatible. Why is that?
Third: The same is true for other species. Ever heard of a Liger? The biggest flippin cat in the world. It's a Tiger mixed with a Liger. This is the work of people, not the cats. I'm not really that die hard against it. Actually, I think it's kinda cool... but that may be because Tigers are absolutely my favorite animal. So whatever. My point here is that a Liger is so huge bcuz they mixed the correct combination of male/female. The female tiger has no growth inhibitor, so they use a male lion and a female tiger. They rigged the setup. Animals can only mate with their "like kind". Dogs with dogs. Cats with cats. etc. etc. No crossing.
Fourth: Where is the between time; the progression? Please...spare me the reference to the oh so famous pictograph of the hunchback ape standing upright to a regular human man. Because it's not factual. It's proposed.
Fifth: How could any intelligent person overlook the incredible depth of complexity and awesomeness of God's creations. The creatures of this world could not have just happened. "Natural Selection" can not produce the amazing physical attributes and intricate designs of all of these amazing land animals and beasts of the ocean. Ever seen Planet Earth? No further comment needed here.
....actually... replace fifth with this:
Fifth: Ever seen Planet Earth?
Sixth: How come soooooooooooo much has happened to our world in such a super concentrated time period over the last 1000+ years. Even the past 100 years. What from here? Are we going to keep evolving over the next 50-100 years into a purely robotic society (as some movies frightfully depict). Do we just happen to be living in the final few years of 4,500,000,000 years of earth? Do you know that the chances of this are, um... pretty low?
I don't know... I suppose people will believe what they want to believe. I believe that God created earth by design and that there is a purpose behind our existence. If we are all here by random chance particles, and there is no afterlife, then there is not one thing on planet earth that can be proven as a 'right' or 'wrong'. Morality is non-existent. Do anything imaginable to anyone or anything, so long as it's what you 'want' to do. So long as it makes you 'feel' good. We all know how disastrous that would be for this world. We have seen it in history and even today. It's destructive. It's chaotic. Whereas doing the right things in life is orderly and abundant with blessings. As I told Xuzz in a PM yesterday, I just care about the hearst and minds of people. Faith is vital folks. |
|
|
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth/pb-iso.gif
. If I ever have to make a right turn, I just take three lefts instead 