Ed and God

timsinclair wrote:

I had a feeling Collin and cate might have some disagreements about what atheism should look like, it has been pretty clear that Collin is a bit more...shall we say..'fundamentalist' in his atheism than Cate. By the way thats not a criticism Collin, on the contrary, you have thought through the implications of the theory and consistently applied them to you life and I respect you for that. I think Collin has percieved and embraced the central philosophy of Evolution: naturalism/materialism, which is both the foundation and the life-orientating implication of the theory, whilst Cate has not. This is why Collin, despite the strength of his feelings of love toward his good lady, KNOWS that 'love' does not exist, it is just a particular sequence of neurons firing and a particular type of hormones being released in his brain. Whilst Cate has not yet reached this stage, I suggest that if she fully embraces neo-Darwinism, she will end up in the same condition. Not that that's necesarily a bad thing of course, if Darwinism is the truth it is quite an achievment, but what if Darwin was wrong?

timsinclair wrote:

The reason most people think it is a fairy tale is cos there only knowledge of it comes from the pictures of a little wooden boat so small that the giraffes have to stick their necks out of the windows. You'd better show me the holes so I can plug them up, dont wanna sink.

grazman wrote:

Hi Tim, okay here goes, plug some holes for me about Noah's Ark, and if you could explain in the simplest terms you can because my vocabs not as good as yours (i am from Yorkshire, England after all).

So to sum up, around 2500 BC, God wanted to flood the earth and all living things on it apart from Noah and his family (8 people in all) and so God told him to build an Ark and save 2 of each animal. From what i understand, all the animals came to the ark, noah and his family didnt go to the four corners of the world and collect them. right?

Well, HOLE #1 - Collecting The Animals. Most animals that live where they do in the world live there because thats where their food grows and cant move beyond the range of their food source because they've got nothing to eat. How do they travel from far off places (assuming they can walk that far) what do they eat on the way? Also, the climate alone will stop animals that live in one part of the world travelling and living in another part of the world, penguins for example are not going to travel through the desert to get to the middle east. What about all the predators on the way as these animals are walking thousands and thousands of miles to get to the ark? So my question to you is how did all the animals get to the ark from around the world.

HOLE #2 The Size of the ark. There are thousands and thousands of species of animal in the world and noah had to take 2 of every species. Thats alot of animals isn't it to fill the ark, which will take up alot of room. Then we've got the dinosaurs, which are huuuuuuuuuge. Have you seen the size of a brontosaurus and a TRex (2 of them)?

HOLE #3 Food. Noah was floating about on the ocean for about a year, so noah had to take enough food on board for a year for his family and the 10's of thousands of animals that were on the ark. Thats a hell of a lot of food innit. Every animal needs a special diet. Insects live on particular kinds of plant, Koala bears live on eucalyptus leaves etc. So Noah aswell as gathering every different species of animal in the world, had to gather every different plant in the world. How did he grow all these plants in the ark (which had just a single window for the sunlight to get in). Some animals can only eat live food, spiders, insects, snakes etc. How did Noah keep all the food fresh?

HOLE #4 Caring For the Animals. 8 people in all I believe. How did Noah and his family care for all the animals. Imagine thousands and thousands of animals every day crapping and peeing in the ark, all the waste they create, then they have to feed them all and exercise them. If they dont exercise, their muscles start wasting away. Did he put a big collar on the Tyrannosaurus Rex and run him up and down the boat? Could 8 people do all this? hmmmmmm

Okay, theres my first holes for you to fill, hope you can give me some answers.

grazman wrote:

No, dinosaurs were on the ark i'm afraid. The great flood which apparently can be seen in fossil evidence showed remains of dinosaurs so apart from the lucky few who got a trip on the ark all the rest of the dino family were drowned when the flood happened....2500 BC by the way (cough!)

I didn't know some were 7, phew...this arks getting bigger and bigger.

and it was a year because thats how long it took the water to subside....apparently

grazman wrote:

right, i stand corrected on the year on the water, although Tim will put us both right.

I think dinosaurs are very clean animals, so are we talking 7 brontosaurus's now then. I feel sorry for the family who has to clear up the dung every day.

Unicorns, o yes forgot about them, and dont forget the 200 foot Cyclops from Jason and the Argonauts.

timsinclair wrote:

Now Collin, this is stretching credulity a bit far. Yes I know that Darwin did not propose Eugenics, as I have said, it was his cousin Francis Galton. However, Galton's work was a straightforward application of Darwin's theory to humankind. Darwin did not say all that much about Eugenics (probably didn't want to step on his cousins toes) but he certainly didn't oppose it. In fact he made quite a few comments that endorse Galton's work. for example in Descent of Man, Darwin said:

'Natural Selection as affecting civilized nations. ... But some remarks on the action of Natural Selection on civilized nations may be worth adding. This subject has been ably discussed by Mr W.R.Greg, and previously by Mr Wallace and Mr Galton. Most of my remarks are taken from these three authors. With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the mained, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. (133-4/138-9;

If this is not agreement with Galton's eugenics I dont know what is.