Interesting Stuff Thread

Overblood

How many people have been killed by Christians since Biblical times?

darjeeling

BBC Radio 4 In Our Time religion archive - here.

Series of archived 45-min discussions on the history of religions, particularly Christianity.

Over the years, the programme has looked at how people came to believe in gods, miracles, heavens, hells, angels and devils, and how doctrine has been developed and applied to society for good and ill.

(The programme also looks at science, secular history, philosophy and more)

robindch

darjeeling wrote: »

BBC Radio 4 In Our Time religion archive - here.

Seconded -- In Our Time is excellent. MP3 podcast available from:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot/

While I'm at it, I can also heartily recommend The News Quiz, arguably the funniest radio program in existence. Stuffed with atheists and other not-fully-humans too. MP3 podcast available from here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fricomedy

Coriolanus

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com

Basically takes the King James Bible and sentence by sentence, book by book goes throughout the entire work attaching "tags" and comments to relevant sections.
For example you can do a search of all violent references in the Book of Job, or all the references to "good" things in the book of Matthew. Particularly good is the cross-referencing of contradictions.
The author also annotates individual words and sentences with a, perhaps not very unbiased, modern interpretation of sometimes archaic wordings.

Includes the Koran and Book of Mormon too, similarly annotated and divided into subject/theme.

bogwalrus

the four horsemen


http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ewsfp99a9w

silent sage

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Iron Chariots is intended to provide information on apologetics and counter-apologetics. We'll be collecting common arguments and providing responses, information and resources to help counter the glut of misinformation and poor arguments which masquerade as "evidence" for religious claims.
The complexity of issues surrounding religion ensures that any proper assessment requires us to delve into a number of philosophical, historical and sociological topics. Our ultimate goal is to provide a robust and definitive resource for:

• atheists seeking responses to common apologetic arguments
• theists who are questioning the efficacy of their beliefs
• apologists who feel that their "pet" argument is above reproach
• individuals of any philosophical ideal who have an interest in religious studies

http://www.talkorigins.org/

[URL="news:talk.origins"]Talk.origins[/URL] is a Usenet newsgroup devoted to the discussion and debate of biological and physical origins. Most discussions in the newsgroup center on the creation/evolution controversy, but other topics of discussion include the origin of life, geology, biology, catastrophism, cosmology and theology.
The TalkOrigins Archive is a collection of articles and essays, most of which have appeared in talk.origins at one time or another. The primary reason for this archive's existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences.

darjeeling

I know we're not meant to talk about goings on the other side of the fence ...but... I can't believe they've actually done it! They've locked the creationism thread! :eek:

Is this the end of creationism on boards? Where will JC go now? Where will PDN sweep all the nasty science cluttering up his forum?

Fanny Cradock: "Après moi, pas de déluge"

Edit: Wed 24 - unlocked again!

Mena

I think it's for the best really, however I do fear JC and Co. will meander their way over this side. Circle the wagons!

toiletduck

Locked, why?

T'was one of the most entertaining and enlightening threads I think I've ever seen on boards.

Dades

Thanks for the heads-up, although if people are only noticing now it's hardly a tragedy.

Now, let's not venture down that road of double-guessing the Christianity mods decisions. That belongs in PM to them or feedback. We don't want this thread locked, now do we.

darjeeling

Dades wrote: »

Now, let's not venture down that road of double-guessing the Christianity mods decisions. That belongs in PM to them or feedback. We don't want this thread locked, now do we.

Absolutely. Just wanted to mark a bit of boards history: BC&P, 2005-2009, RIP.

Goduznt Xzst

toiletduck wrote: »

Locked, why?

T'was one of the most entertaining and enlightening threads I think I've ever seen on boards.

Agreed. It certainly made evolution a lot clearer in my eyes when I found it first. I'd lurked these forums for a while when I was still questioning a lot of the beliefs I was raised with and that thread was an invaluable help in providing a lot of answers.

Still I guess the thread has begun to break the charter, specifically the recent additions by PDN, so I can understand that there is no reason to give it special preference.

Mickeroo

I always wondered why a thread with that many replies wasn't Sticky!

Galvasean

A study has now challenged the idea that chimps are our closest living relatives. Instead they reckon it may be the orangutan:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090623-humans-chimps-related.html

Dades

http://www.countmeout.ie/

New site with info for those who wish to officially leave the Catholic Church.

Overblood

The entire cosmos series can now be watched online here:

http://www.cosmolearning.com/astronomy/documentaries/cosmos/

Galvasean

Good old Kevin Myers was having a good ramble today, about how the concept of natural selection being capable of bringing about the diversity of life on Earth is as far fetched as the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree stump.

*sigh*

Thank goodness they give Ian O' Doherty equal space to balance out this kind of tripe.

Sam Vimes

Galvasean wrote: »

Good old Kevin Myers was having a good ramble today, about how the concept of natural selection being capable of bringing about the diversity of life on Earth is as far fetched as the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree stump.

*sigh*

/facepalm. I don't agree with a lot of what that guy says but I've never seen him say something as ridiculous as that

Galvasean

Sam Vimes wrote: »

/facepalm. I don't agree with a lot of what that guy says but I've never seen him say something as ridiculous as that

He went out of his way to say he wasn't a creationist at the start of the article. He seemed to be leaning towards 'evolution must have been guided by God', but never flat out said it. Basically, he doesn't think 4bilion odd years was long enough for it to all happen by random chance.

Here's the article in full:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/how-does-reducing-ones-ability-to-find-a-mate-confer-any-kind-of-genetic-advantage-1820300.html

Kevin Myers wrote:

The image of the Virgin Mary is reported to have been seen on a tree stump in the village of Rathkeale, and thousands of people have flocked there. And yes, this is quite absurd. But is it more preposterous to believe that that piece of timber, and the willow tree from which it came, and the eye that beheld the wood, arrived in this world entirely by accident? For in this, the 150th anniversary of the publication of 'The Origin of Species', that is what we've been endlessly told this year.

Before Darwinian dogmatists sneer the words "intelligent design" and "creationism", let me declare that I embrace neither concept. But nor do I reject them. I've been reading up on this subject recently, especially Ernst Mayr, Dawkins and Darwin, and what strikes me most is the sheer act of Darwinian faith which is required for us to accept that natural selection was the prime engine that conjured the vast complexity of modern life from its birthplace in the methanogenic oceans of the pre-Cambrian.

It's far too easy to look back and postulate a route to where we are today, deducing it from whatever evidence archaeologists and palaeontologists have found. Instead, we should be taking the teleological approach, and viewing the problem the other way round. How can life naturally progress forward from those evil seas to our modern world, but without having the least idea where it is going?

Now life as we know it depends on proteins. But even a relatively simple molecule such as insulin, consists of 51 conjoined amino-acids, with a molecular weight of 5808: nearly 6,000 times the weight of a hydrogen atom. And an average living cell contains 100 million protein molecules, involving perhaps 20,000 varieties of protein. Moreover, there are several hundred thousand types of protein, all of them impossibly complex. How were these made by accident? To say that such order is implicit in all of nature -- as some scientists do -- is begging the question, the equivalent of saying matter is intrinsic to materials.

Time, you might add; time will enable these molecules to be assembled, bit by bit. Indeed, given enough time, you will be able to explain everything that has occurred from the first genetic trick at the dawn of existence. But has there been enough time? Would a mathematician looking at the random ingredients of those ancient, poisonous seas be able to propose that, actuarially, enough molecular encounters would sooner or later result in the first spark of life (whatever that might be) leading to us, just four billion (or so) years later? That's not an awful lot of time, considering all the random accidents that could not merely have started proto-life, but also wiped it out.

This logically means that there must have been many competing proto-life forms. Just one -- apparently the one that depends upon DNA -- survived. But how did the dear old double helix come into existence? For DNA doesn't function at all unless complete. It's either the final, impossibly complex but useful article, or it's incomplete and utterly useless. So, no simple evolution here.

But that's the way with so much of "natural selection". It often doesn't tolerate halfway houses. The swallow that doesn't make it from Africa to Europe simply doesn't survive to reproduce its genes. That's it: line extinct. Or put it another way. I drop you and your family in an unpopulated Africa, without telling you where you are, or giving you a map or a compass, and I then tell you to find your way back to your sitting room. You couldn't do it. You'd die on the way. Your children, neither knowing your fate, nor what NOT to do, (because evolution is about numbers, not about learning) would follow, to a similar fate. And their children, also.

Granted -- with enough species types, and enough genetic mutation, sooner or later, someone will get back to the right room in Ireland, and then return to the right desert in Africa.

But is there enough of the vital dimension, TIME, to enable the right gene to emerge and triumph, out of all these ghastly accidents?

Or -- even more absurd -- did the complete navigation gene simply arrive out of nowhere?

Even the title of Darwin's book hasn't been answered adequately. How do separate species emerge, in the process of "speciation"? How do outwardly identical, but reproductively-discrete species emerge alongside one another in the same ecological niche, as many kinds of fish have done? This is counter-intuitive. For how does reducing one's ability to find a mate confer any kind of genetic advantage? Conversely, not one single species of domesticated animal is unable to mate with its remote relatives.

Human-triggered speciation has never occurred, despite separations of thousands of years. The dingo of the Australian desert is five millennia removed the Arctic wolf; yet they can still interbreed. Similarly, Northern Dancer could have bred with a Connemara.

So, is speciation naturally pre-ordained? If so, is it unreasonable to ask how, by whom and why?

And are such questions more or less absurd than ones about the stump in Rathkeale?

pts

Galvasean wrote: »

Good old Kevin Myers was having a good ramble today, about how the concept of natural selection being capable of bringing about the diversity of life on Earth is as far fetched as the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree stump.

*sigh*

Thank goodness they give Ian O' Doherty equal space to balance out this kind of tripe.

That annoyed me on so many levels (link for anyone looking for it)

He uses all the common arguments:

• The "Odds" of us being here
  evolution isn't random!
• Irreducible complexity
  this argument was shown to be wrong in the Dover trial
• How does natural selection explain Abiogenesis
  it doesn't they are two separate things!!

Then some crappy analogy about dropping families off in Africa, which again seems to argue that evolution is completely random.

He says he has read about evolution (even read some Dawkins!) yet he fails to grasp even the simplest concepts.

Galvasean

pts wrote: »

He says he has read about evolution (even read some Dawkins!) yet he fails to grasp even the simplest concepts.

Story of his career.

Mark Hamill

pts wrote: »

That annoyed be on so many levels (link for anyone looking for it)

He uses all the common arguments:

• The "Odds" of use being here
  evolution isn't random!
• Irreducible complexity
  this argument was shown to be wrong in the Dover trial
• How does natural selection explain Abiogenesis
  it doesn't they are two separate things!!

Then some crappy analogy about dropping families off in Africa, which again seems to argue that evolution is completely random.

He says he has read about evolution (even read some Dawkins!) yet he fails to grasp even the simplest concepts.

I stopped reading at this point:

Kevin Myers wrote:

It's far too easy to look back and postulate a route to where we are today, deducing it from whatever evidence archaeologists and palaeontologists have found. Instead, we should be taking the teleological approach, and viewing the problem the other way round. How can life naturally progress forward from those evil seas to our modern world, but without having the least idea where it is going?

Essentially this says: its too easy for people to prove evolution by using archaeological and palaeontological evidence, instead they need to prove it using the nonsense presuposition that evolution had to end up with life as it is now. Ridiculous :rolleyes:.

Sam Vimes

Galvasean wrote: »

He went out of his way to say he wasn't a creationist at the start of the article. He seemed to be leaning towards 'evolution must have been guided by God', but never flat out said it. Basically, he doesn't think 4bilion odd years was long enough for it to all happen by random chance.

He knows evolution isn't random chance right?

Galvasean

Sam Vimes wrote: »

He knows evolution isn't random chance right?

According to what he said in the article, no he does not.
Maybe we should tell him?

Dades

Mark Hamill wrote: »

instead they need to prove it using the nonsense presuposition that evolution had to end up with life as it is now. Ridiculous :rolleyes:.

That seems to be his understanding, alright. As if humans are some sort of perfect, end-result to the process, as opposed to relatively more intelligent meatsacks.

Throw him in a tank with a shark and see how far we've yet to go.

Galvasean

Dades wrote: »

That seems to be his understanding, alright. As if humans are some sort of perfect, end-result to the process, as opposed to relatively more intelligent meatsacks.

Yeah, it's as if he doesn't realise that life is still evolving.

Dave!

Oh wow, I couldn't want to punch Kevin Myers any more right now.....

Tyler MacDurden

Kev's at it again, remember his eulogy of Harun Yaha's Atlas Of Creation about 18 months back? I hope someone emailed him the infamous fishing lure photo. :rolleyes:

I must confess an admiration for Myers' work, even though I disagree fundamentally with him on some issues (mainly Europe and Evolution). On occasion however, his writing seems to be fuelled by emotion rather than research, today being a case in point. He can't have read too deeply on the subject, despite his claims to the contrary. There are some pretty poor lines of reasoning in there.

darjeeling

Kevin Myers wrote:

It's far too easy to look back and postulate a route to where we are today, deducing it from whatever evidence archaeologists and palaeontologists have found. Instead, we should be taking the teleological approach, and viewing the problem the other way round. How can life naturally progress forward from those evil seas to our modern world, but without having the least idea where it is going?

'Take the teleological approach'? No, no no! Why ever should we do that? What good reason could there possibly be?

'Progress', 'forward', 'modern'? Kevin has got the whole thing arseways.

Would a newspaper editor commission an uniformed commentator to parade his ignorance of quantum mechanics? I doubt it. Why, then, let Myers loose on evolution?

.

2Scoops

darjeeling wrote: »

Why, then, let Myers loose on evolution?

He's writes essentially the same article on evolution once a year or more, whips up the atheist rationalist rabble into a frenzy, and generates some column inches on the letters page. It's his way of appearing controversial and relevant.