The Origin of Specious Nonsense. Twelve years on. Still going. Answer soon.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

He's probably referring to the fact that the Tiger's front teeth got so big that they couldn't properly use their jaws to digest their food, because a) they couldn't get the food in, and b) they didn't have enough power to properly chew. There are other evolutionary factors why increasing teeth size as a weapon is eventually a dead end, but all of them make his use of the sabre toothed tiger an extremely bad analogy for what he is trying to prove (not that there are any analogies better for him to use), for the following reasons:
1) He is using an evolutionary process to try and prove creationism!

I'm using a NS argument ... the sabre tooth is extinct ... and probably due to reason you have cited.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

2) The problems faced by that and other feline species (the sabre tooth wasn't the only hunter to fall into the bigger teeth trap) with their teeth are magnified if they are herbivores, because now you not alone have the problems above, you've got the wrong set of teeth eating plant matter. That is why digging herbivores have claws for that purpose.

OK ... this all started when, in response to a question, I stated that the Sabre-tooth Tiger (in common with all other animals) was originally vegetarian (before the Fall) ... and somebody asked me to explain the prominent canines, if they were vegetarians ... so I'll 'cut to the chase' and simply refer you to this vegetarian creature that is alive today which also has prominent canines (it's a Chinese Water Deer) ... and I wouldn't wrestle with this particular 'bambi' in a tight corner!!! ...
... and I'll leave you to explain why it has canines that are every bit as prominent and dangerous as a young sabre tooth tiger:):-



Here is the skull (of the deer and not the tiger) in all it's glory
https://www.boneroom.com/img/idPics/3227_1large.jpg

J C wrote: »

Probably to allow them defend themselves after the Fall ... and to allow them to root up plant food both before and after the Fall.:cool:

The views of an extremist Christian are quite interesting .
How do you convince yourself that science supports your views ?
How do you explain fossils which date back to before the beginning of the bible?i.e dinosaur fossils

J C wrote: »

Your 'interest' is mis-placed then ... because I'm not an 'extremist' on anything ... I'm a moderate liberal Christian that loves and respects all persons of all faiths and none ... and I'd suggest that you should adopt this approach as well.:)

Why do you say they date back before Genesis?
It all began (including dinosaurs) with the Creation Account in Genesis ... and dinosaur fossils, just like most other fossils, were produced during Noah's Flood.

Ok ,
How old is the earth in your opinion ?

J C wrote: »

Less than 10,000 sideral years.

So what about fossils which we date to be older than 10 000 years ?
Is science broken ? Did god make the world to look old?

Also your views are extremist .
Moderate Christians don't take the bible this literally . They believe that god allowed the science to happen etc and that the bible is metaphorical .
That these stories didn't necessarily happen and were use to explain to uneducated people .

Also addressing your earlier comments .
The bible is hypocritical .
The Catholic Church is abusive .
The Catholic Church is corrupt.
Christianity is a cult-cult
kʌlt/
noun
1.
a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object.
"the cult of St Olaf"
a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular thing."

This isn't me selecting definitions. They are the first things to come up when you google cult .

J C wrote: »

The Fall 're-wired' many things ... by introducing death and disease ... it would undoubtedly have had significant effects on the usage to which previously innocuous structures were now put to.
Venom, for example could have been used to digest plant material before the fall ... and then was used to kill other animals afterwards.
Similarly, sharp teeth are no burden when it comes to eating plants ... and the sabre-toothed tiger's teeth seem to have become a bit of a liability when the switch occurred from rooting out plant bulbs ... to trying to kill animals.

I am starting to see a pattern here! When faced with the impossible, simply make up something to patch up your badly damaged hypothesis, and pre-face it with "Could have"

Never mind with any evidence, or how staggeringly unlikely your proposed solution is (plant cells, for example are much, MUCH harder to break down and spider venom is not very good at doing so. Nor would the result be much good to a spider!)... you have the magical "could have" card, which magically suspends all the rules of rationality in the same way as people here seem to think the hazard lights on a car suspend the rules of the road. Do we see arctic creatures in tropical areas? There could have been a cloud, and the animals could have been different! Carnivorous dentition? Could have been for eating plants!

But hey! Why stop here? We could say that scarred dinosaur bones could be evidence of the struggle between Tiamat and Marduk! Unfettered by any need to support what we say, we can say mammoth fossils could be proof that there was a heroic age in Greece and that they are the remains of giants and larger-than-life heroes! Mitochondrial eve? Could be proof that we are all descended from Deukalion and his wife!

Do we only see sea-based life when we look into the deep past? Could be evidence of the state of the world before Ilmatar created Vainamonen! Also, the small stature of some early hominids and the fact that we often find their remains in caves could be clear evidence of the validity of old nordic belief in dwarves and trolls.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I'm just after noticing the typo in the title. Or does English also work on evolutionary lines?

"The Origin of Specious Nonsense. Nine years on. Still going stong."
Typo?
Wait, Is it that the Title Case has been incorrectly applied? Hmmm maybe the punctuation could use some work?
"The Origin of Specious Nonsense: Nine Years on, Still Going Stong."

Is it that you feel the nonsense is more ridiculous than specious?

"The Continuation of Ridiculous Nonsense: Nine of J C Confusing Newbies, Let's all get Some Brewskies."

EDIT: I finally saw it! Only when I looked at it in my own post did I see the fecking typo. Argh. I triple checked it before making this post to make a cheap fecking brewskies joke...

Before the fall, English was probably used for different purposes such as drowning out the frustrated cries of Tyrannosaurs as they tried to masticate leaves without grinding molars.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I'm just after noticing the typo in the title. Or does English also work on evolutionary lines?

... this is an example of a loss of CFSI ... so it is indeed working along evolutionary lines.:)

... if you needed something to be strong ... it would be pretty useless if it was only stong allright!!!

PopePalpatine wrote: »

If English evolved from German, how come there's still German-speakers? :pac:

There is no problem with English evolving from combining the dialects of of the Angles, Saxons, Frisii and Jutes ... as there were vast inputs of Human Intelligence involved in the process.

J C wrote: »

The dating systems are faulty and use circular logic.

Can you expand on this. It sounds intriguing.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

Yes but how may people here belong to a cult and how many of us idolise other atheists ?
I certainly don't .

I agree with you on that point ... so can you look at it from my point of view when you made the baseless charge that Christianity is a cult.
This would be equivalent to me saying that all atheists are cultists ... when they most certainly are not.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

Christianity is hypocritical aswell .
Don't worship idols, So you worship jesus .
Jesus is an idol right ?

Jesus Christ is God ... and only God is deserving of worship ... all the rest is His Creation ... and no more deserving of worship than I am myself.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

Does that not make God an idol then though ?

God is God ... and an idol is some part of Gods creation that is being treated as God ... when it's obviously not.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

So in your opinion , you don't belong to a cult ?

I certainly don't belong to a cult ... no more than you do, I'm sure.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

Is the definition of cult wrong then ?

Cult - a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object.

You are devoted to a particular figure (god).

God is God ... figures are parts of His Creation.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

Christianity is a system comprised of different levels of hierarchy and lay people .

Some parts of Christianity differentiate between hierarchy and laity ... other churches don't ... ultimately we will all stand before our God ... with nobody between us and Him ... and we cannot blame hierarchies if we aren't Saved ... nor do we need to praise them if we are.
Salvation is strictly a matter between each one of us and Jesus Christ.

EoghanIRL wrote: »

The part in bold confuses me jc. Is the figure that Christians are devoted to not god ? Is there some other figure you are devoted to ? However that would be idolism. I'm just not grasping it .

I think your point depends on your definition of 'a figure'. I'm sure JC would point out that God (the capital G one, as opposed to the lower case g ones) is not 'a' anything; he/she/it is God, practically the definition of unique, so not a figure, especially in the sense that I suspect JC is taking it, which is a representation of something, or simply another way of saying idol.

On the other hand, I imagine JC is more likely to be objecting to Christianity being defined as a cult in the more modern, pejorative sense of the word, rather than the original more catholic sense, which was simply a word that described all organised forms of religious worship, denoting a structured way of paying homage to a divinity (notwithstanding the obvious proviso that it would necessarily be the only true cult of the divinity).