[Billthegravedigger]

John, I have to say we have our differences and all, but you can come up with some very interesting points sometimes. That is one reason why I like conversing with you.

[johnleeknoefler]

Originally Posted by Dynamo47 ↗

Interesting. My 10 year old son and I had an interesting conversation last night about evolution. I basically told him that fossil records clearly show there is a distinct line of evolution from primates to modern man.

He is in the gifted program at school so he can have a pretty mature conversation. He asked a lot of questions about basically why did humans evolve. I told him all animal species are constantly evolving to their environment.

I am waiting for the call from my Ex-Wife when he goes to CCD next Tuesday night!

fossil records clearly show there is a distinct line of evolution from primates to modern man.

Really?
Did you tell him about the Piltdown Man? I hear that is always a good place to begin training children in the facts about evolution of humans.

The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the specimen. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax ever. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

I love this "missing link"

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2010) — A fossil that was celebrated last year as a possible "missing link" between humans and early primates is actually a forebearer of modern-day lemurs and lorises, according to two papers by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, Duke University and the University of Chicago.

In an article now available online in the Journal of Human Evolution, four scientists present evidence that the 47-million-year-old Darwinius masillae is not a haplorhine primate like humans, apes and monkeys, as the 2009 research claimed.

They also note that the article on Darwinius published last year in the journal PLoS ONE ignores two decades of published research showing that similar fossils are actually strepsirrhines, the primate group that includes lemurs and lorises.

"Many lines of evidence indicate that Darwinius has nothing at all to do with human evolution," says Chris Kirk, associate professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin.

Not that I am a bible thumper Christian but when these highly educated asses go out on a limb with their missing links it's a creationists' wetdream come true.
There is a reason these things are called the "missing link". They are sadly missing from the fossil record.

Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved ancient primate fossil that they believe forms a crucial "missing link" between our own evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom.

The 47m-year-old primate – named Ida – has been hailed as the fossil equivalent of a "Rosetta Stone" for understanding the critical early stages of primate evolution.

The top-level international research team, who have studied her in secret for the past two years, believe she is the most complete and best preserved primate fossil ever uncovered. The skeleton is 95% complete and thanks to the unique location where she died, it is possible to see individual hairs covering her body and even the make-up of her final meal – a last vegetarian snack.

"This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals; with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters," said Sir David Attenborough who is narrating a BBC documentary on the find. "The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...l-missing-link

In case anyone missed it....

The top-level international research team, who have studied her in secret for the past two years, believe she is the most complete and best preserved primate fossil ever uncovered

Wait.....What was that?

who have studied her in secret for the past two years

....once more again?...

who have studied her in secret

...WTF?....

in secret

Hmmm? And why would they study in secret? Why?
Since you say you were once a Catholic I am surprised you do not remember your studies. Or don't Catholics even read the bible?
Well did the prophet say of these liars:"we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves"
And even better is the answer of Elohym:"17Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. "
Funny how these things work out and liars are exposed. Some sooner and some later. And like all cockroaches they run and hide again while they dream up new lies to cover their faces.
The Sheffield Park find

In 1915, Dawson claimed to have found three fragments of a second skull (Piltdown II) at a new site about two miles away from the original finds.[1] Woodward attempted several times to elicit the location from Dawson but was unsuccessful. So far as is known the site has never been identified and the finds appear to be largely undocumented. Woodward did not present the new finds to the Society until five months after Dawson's death in August 1916 and deliberately implied that he knew where they had been found. In 1921, Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, examined the Piltdown and Sheffield Park finds and declared that the jaw and skull belonged together "without question" and that the Sheffield Park fragments "were exactly those which we should have selected to confirm the comparison with the original type".

The Sheffield Park find established the authenticity of the discoveries. It may have been chance that brought an ape's jaw and a human skull together but the odds of it happening twice verged on mathematical impossibility and opponents gradually gave up and admitted that they were wrong.

On 23 July 1938, at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson. Sir Arthur finished his speech saying:

So long as man is interested in his long past history, in the vicissitudes which our early forerunners passed through, and the varying fare which overtook them, the name of Charles Dawson is certain of remembrance. We do well to link his name to this picturesque corner of Sussex–the scene of his discovery. I have now the honour of unveiling this monolith dedicated to his memory.

The inscription on the memorial stone reads:

Here in the old river gravel Mr Charles Dawson, FSA found the fossil skull of Piltdown Man, 1912–1913, The discovery was described by Mr Charles Dawson and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1913–15

Piltdown Memorial

Looks alot like a stone cock.... But will forever be a memorial to hoaxes the world over since no evolutionist has yet found it in their heart to tear out this memorial to their mendacity.

Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis Hoax:

Fake Dinosaur-bird ancestor

The most recent evolution fraud was committed in China and published in 1999 in the journal National Geographic 196:98-107, November 1999. Dinosaur bones were put together with the bones of a newer species of bird and they tried to pass it off as a very important new evolutionary intermediate.

"Feathers For T-Rex?", Christopher P. Sloan, National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 196, No. 5, November, 1999, pp.99,100,105

"National Geographic has reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism" Storrs L. Olson, Smithsonian Institution

from National Geographic

With arms of a primitive bird and the tail of a dinosaur, this creature found in Liaoning Province, China, is a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds. Scientists funded by National Geographic studied the animal, named Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, under ultraviolet light and used CT scans to view parts of the animal obscured by rock.


The article went on to say that, “This fossil is perhaps the best evidence since Archaeopteryx that birds did, in fact, evolve from certain types of carnivorous dinosaurs.”

Check out this conversation with a geneticist:
"The Biologist"

One of the best aspects of my wife JoAnne’s Bed and Breakfast is the chance for a great conversation with an interesting guest. People fascinate me, and the laid-back atmosphere of the bed and breakfast allows me to get to know our guests well. I was with a congressman the moment the Monica Lewinsky story broke, and discussed the possible impeachment. I enjoyed visiting with a Russian attorney who wrote the post-communism Russian Constitution. But all our guests have good stories, and I like to hear them all. I ‘replay’ them later, and I have the ability to remember conversations nearly word for word. That memory skill comes from either thirty years as a financial planner, or six years as a touring musician.

One of the most interesting, and disturbing conversations, was with a molecular biologist working in genetic research. Jeff and his wife were in from New York to celebrate the 2000 New Year. I think they just wanted out of New York City, and Lynchburg is about as "out" as he could get! Jeff described himself as a "secular Jew," which meant that he was not into practicing his religion. (There seems to be a lot of secular Jews and secular Christians around these days.) I asked Jeff about his profession and he told me that he was a molecular biologist, specializing in genetic research. He and his team were scientific "detectives" tracking down the cause of disease.

Our conversation went something like this:

G: "Sounds like pretty complicated work."

J: "You can’t imagine how complicated!"

G: "Try me."

J: "I’m a bit like an editor, trying to find a spelling mistake inside a document larger than four complete sets of Encyclopedia Britanica. One hundred volumes, thousands and thousands of pages of small print words."

G: "With the computer, you can just use ‘spell check’!"

J: "There is no ‘spell check’ because we don’t know yet how the words are supposed to be spelled. We don’t even know for sure which language. And it’s not just the ‘spelling error’ we’re looking for. If any of the punctuation is out of place, or a space out of place, or a grammatical error, we have a mutation that will cause a disease."

G: "So how do you do it?"

J: "We are learning as we go. We have already ‘read’ about two articles in that encyclopedia, and located some ‘typo’s’. It should get easier as time goes by." G: "How did all that genetic information get there?" J: "Do you mean, did it just happen? Did it evolve?"

G: "Bingo. Do you believe that the information evolved?"

J: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by ‘genius beyond genius,’ and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

G: "Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?"

J: "No. It just evolved."

G: "What? You just told me ---?"

J: "Just stop right there. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold on to two insanities at all times. One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself. Two, it would be insane to say you don’t believe in evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures - everything would stop. I’d be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn’t earn a decent living."

G: "I hate to say it, Jeff, but that sounds intellectually dishonest."

J: "The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind’s worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the ‘elephant in the living room’."

G: "What elephant?"

J: "Creation design. It’s like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up an enormous amount of space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn’t there!"

I didn’t use Jeff’s family name, although I doubt many New Yorkers read the "Ledger." After all, Jeff is a good man who deserves to earn a good living. I am just a bit angry that we allow him to be bullied by evolutionists. It makes me yearn for the day when all molecular biologists will be able to say: "Hey, there’s an elephant in our living room! Maybe we can make friends with it!"

Caylor is a syndicated writer with Press Media Group, LLC.

"why did humans evolve" Because they got tired for swinging in trees?

"I told him all animal species are constantly evolving to their environment."
That's called natural selection. Not evolution.

Here's a question for you. If humans are evolved from lower life forms, then why do those lower life forms have more chromosomes? Wouldn't a higher life form need to ADD information to it's genome to evolve rather than subtract information? Actually there is an answer to this question but I find it entertaining to watch the unwary wrestle with the problem.

A notable case of a scientists using fraudulent material to promote the theory of evolution was the work of German scientist and atheist Ernst Haeckel. Noted evolutionist Stephen Gould wrote the following regarding Ernst Haeckel's work in a March 2000 issue of Natural History:

"Haeckel’s forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin…in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution... Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases — in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent — simply copied the same figure over and over again.…Haeckel’s drawings never fooled expert embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. Haeckel’s drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology... Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because…textbooks copy from previous texts.... We do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!"

The evolution theory has enough holes to make it meaningless and absurd.

[dankboosh]

Originally Posted by johnleeknoefler ↗

The problem with religions of the world is that their believers fail to note the difference between their ideological and doctrinal beliefs and reality. Then when their followers sometimes see some irrationality in the religion and drop out those dropouts go to the other extreme and out of ignorance bash religion in general without doing a personal study on their own. Then the critiques devolve into stereotypical generalizations based on gross ignorance.

I see your point, but I'm not sure if you're saying I'm one of those people. I don't express strong opinions on anything without having knowledge about the topic. I don't know anything about the bible code, which is why I haven't said anything about it. But I know about the bible and religion, enough to believe that it's a total joke. It's the people that have read and studied the bible and actually believe in it that are the ignorant ones.

[johnleeknoefler]

Looks like I posted the same thing twice so I have deleted this post.

[johnleeknoefler]

Originally Posted by Billthegravedigger ↗

John, I have to say we have our differences and all, but you can come up with some very interesting points sometimes. That is one reason why I like conversing with you.

Fair enough. I hate always being the "disagreeable one" so tell me when you ever think I am on target.
By the way... just because I hate being disagreeable doesn't mean I will go against what I actually believe. If I take a position it's because I really do believe it. If I am actually wrong, or think I am wrong I will fess up.

On religion... I have studied alot growing up in a "Christian" Seventh Day Adventist church group. I must say they have alot of things that are good. But then...a good lot of them are self righteous pompous windbags that are big on church doctrines and know little of actual scriptures. I was always endlessly arguing with them. By the time I was out of highschool I was very frustrated with the church doctrine. Then going through a nasty divorce the church betrayed me again. I gave up for many years even being interested in religion. Then later during some personal problems I began to study on my own. When I began to use the internet to do scripture studies and realized I could also study the Hebrew culture and background I began to learn much more. Then I went back and compared church doctrines to the scriptures and realized there were many problems with what I had grown up with. When I would go back to the churches and show things to pastors they began to argue with me and make accusations much like people do here with poor reasoning and lack of factual understandings. I studied more Jehovah Witness techniques and reasoning. Also Mormonism. And The Koran. I found things that many of them have in common. The Seventh Day Adventist church has regularly critiqued the Catholic church as being the Biblical Harlot described in Revelation. They are not wrong on that I think. But then they fail to realize that the prophesy speaks of this Harlot as being the mother of all harlots in that the daughter churches share false unbiblical doctrines. I found many doctrines in the Seventh Day Adventist Church that are directly from Catholic writings and are not biblical. I showed these things to my family and the hell started. Showed it to Adventist Pastors and was accused of all sorts of things I never ever said. When I was at my tax accountants office I noticed a Menorah. I realized he was Jewish. I told him my beliefs and what I had argued about in the churches. He began to smile. He never said much except I was on a great journey and he hoped I found all that I was looking for. I found out that the Jews in his synagogue were believers in the Messiah of the New Testement. But they kept all the Jewish holidays and customs. No one advertised for the Synagogue. Jews just driving by would stop and ask questions and come in for services. Anyone could speak and even I was invited to teach what I thought. I declined since I am still researching Torah Law. But I did give the Shabbat Blessing for the Children in English since the Kids don't speak Russian very well and have no Hebrew training. So for the first time I was able to go to a congregation where my views were not mocked. Where my personal study was not attacked but encouraged and where there was no arguing about biblical views. There was no set doctrine other than what a person could read and comment on from the scriptures.

As for Gematria and these Bible codes.... I can't say whether this is real or not. I suspect it could be something that you could do with any book but then I don't have any way to prove it. And I am not one to mock what I don't know. That's a dangerous path to take.
I will say that it is far more interesting to read the actual prophesies. Many of them that have not yet occured are startling. And the ones that have occurred happened in a chilling way. I posted the prophesy concerning Herod and the history of how he actually died. That was horrific.

[johnleeknoefler]

Originally Posted by dankboosh ↗

I see your point, but I'm not sure if you're saying I'm one of those people. I don't express strong opinions on anything without having knowledge about the topic. I don't know anything about the bible code, which is why I haven't said anything about it. But I know about the bible and religion, enough to believe that it's a total joke. It's the people that have read and studied the bible and actually believe in it that are the ignorant ones.

It's the people that have read and studied the bible and actually believe in it that are the ignorant ones

Really? Can you post an example of what is so stupid about the "Bible"? I would love to tear into that one. I have found it to be very factual and accurate. So maybe I am the ignorant one. Lets have this conversation.

know about the bible and religion, enough to believe that it's a total joke.

Would love to see what you know... Can't wait.

[Spiffyfable]

Not my thing...

[dankboosh]

Originally Posted by johnleeknoefler ↗

Really? Can you post an example of what is so stupid about the "Bible"? I would love to tear into that one. I have found it to be very factual and accurate. So maybe I am the ignorant one. Lets have this conversation.


Would love to see what you know... Can't wait.

It seems as though you get off on talking down to people with your perceived superior intelligence, but I suppose I can tread those waters.

There are many stupid things in the bible I could mention, but let's start with the most glaring one. The Virgin Mary. A virgin getting pregnant. Explain that one.

[xstunt1ngx]

Originally Posted by dankboosh ↗

There are many stupid things in the bible I could mention, but let's start with the most glaring one. The Virgin Mary. A virgin getting pregnant. Explain that one.

God.

Next.

[dankboosh]

Originally Posted by xstunt1ngx ↗

God.

Next.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not... because that's the answer a lot of christians would give.