Evolution, Christian Darwin's Theory, Now Proven Wrong

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鬼殺し wrote:
There's a reason the most popular religions in the world have a rigid balance between 'punishment' and 'reward'. That stuff is easy for simple people to follow, and if they follow it, they get into Heaven/Paradise/whatever. Don't, and they suffer for an unimaginable duration (we are not really equipped to conceive of eternity as anything but an abstract). But in the end that's just a spiritual version of some of our earliest lessons as a child, notably cause and effect. Action and consequence. Why can't I do this thing I want to do now? Because it will be bad for you later. Not because it's wrong. Not because we have some inner guiding empathy or innate sense of morals. Those come later. But not too much later -- the moment we understand that hurting someone else feels the same way, give or take, as it feels when we are hurt, we *typically* become less inclined to squeeze hands so hard or bite or whatever.

Do unto others and all that.
I am not sure whether you mean the part I bolded in the specific context of the mentality of an immature child or in the larger context of our complicated reality as it truly is. In the latter context, I assert that there is no difference between that which will be bad for one's bloodline and/or the preservation of our species later, and that which is morally wrong.

Of course, the difference between the ignorant and the wise here is a matter of how far one looks into the future, to include beyond one's individual death. Understandably, most of us are closer to infants than we are to Hari Seldon; therefore, most of us are better served by a code of ethics given to us by an expert than we are by a code of ethics we develop ourselves. The difficulty is in simultaneously having the many trust this code while still having it validated by critical peer review.
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鬼殺し wrote:
And of course earthly punishments can only go so far -- death, typically. To the pain, and then maybe to the death. And they're not really efficient. Or particularly enforceable half the time. Wouldn't it be easier just to make people believe they'll suffer intense consequences if they do the wrong thing, not from their fellow, fallible, limited-resource humans but an omnipotent entity? Hm, better make that an omnipotent entity and his (of course it's his!) shadow, his almost-as-powerful enforcer. Let's make the first one 'good', the second 'bad'. Everyone wants to be on the winning side, so of course we'll make the strongest guy the good guy. Now...what sort of laws should we come up with ensure people follow the good guy? Obvious ones: anything we don't want people doing to each other. Murder, theft, lying, that kinda thing. Done. Oh, and better throw in a vague 'don't insult the big man' law, just to reinforce things...
As I said before, the good and the practical only seem different when you adopt a limited timeframe. If one were to personify Time as a clockwork deity of sorts, my own atheistic views wouldn't be that dissimilar from the afterlife-belief you're describing. Do the right things, and the future becomes more heavenly; do the wrong things, and the future is a hellscape. The wages of sin is death.
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鬼殺し wrote:
Jesus wasn't definable as Christian. He was a Jew. Whatever he preached, whatever he taught, it wasn't called Christianity until he was no longer around to teach or preach it, or to tell people 'please don't call it that, don't call it anything at all okay?'. And even by then the strongest messages of charity and love were being incorporated into much more useful packages for various post-Jewish sects. 'Love thy neighbour' and 'turn the other cheek' are lovely concepts but fucking useless outside of hippy-dippy love-ins on a mount or at a wedding. In the real world, we still need cause and effect. We still need laws. Look, it's great that Jesus came and told us that God isn't all wrath and judgment and that he loves us a lot but you can't just have a situation where we 'forgive' the sinners unconditionally as long as they say 'I love and follow Jesus' and 'punish' the rich just because they work hard or just happen to be priests people like to give money to. Come on, that's...just weird. Right guys? Right? That's just not a church that Gets Shit Done...
The early Church did not get things done, unless that thing was spread and lead societies to ruin as they forsook all worldly possessions and welcomed the worldly death that would take them to Heaven. Taken pure and at maximum New Testament literalism, Christianity is a cyanide pill with a pleasant-tasting holier-than-thou coating, not dissimilar from the type of modern-day cult that poisons its own Kool-Aid and drinks it at the prophesied time.
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鬼殺し wrote:
So with Christianity in particular, we have this reaaaaaally weird combination of charity, love, judgment, damnation, equality, tribalism...and let's be honest, a hell of a lot of frustrated hypocrisy. Anyone who's met a staunch Catholic will know all about that. The cleansing power of Confession. That moment of unfettered realisation: holy shit, I'm human, I'm gonna fuck up, but if I tell this guy here, God's listening and he says, it's okay, just say these things and you're good to go. Which is utterly ridiculous but it manages to tie together the strange and almost incompatible tenets of Christianity as a religion spawned from Fundamental Judaism by a guy who said 'fuck fundamental judaism' (with a bit of Greco-Roman Goddess worship thrown into the mix): God forgives all, do as you're told, ritual is important, but in the end we know you're just another fallible human so don't tie yourself in knots trying to be good all the time. Oh, and just to make sure you know who's boss, we're going to take some money from you on the regular. It's going to a good cause, trust me.
I think the anti-perfectionist lowering of expectations that you are talking about is absolutely pivotal to any distributed morality of the type I was discussing earlier -- that is, any where experts prescribe ethics onto laymen. Without something like the Book of Ecclesiastes in such a "product," the "customer" goes all zealot mode and, due to differences in intelligence and interpretation, all of a sudden you have heresy everywhere. Not to say there aren't ways to deal with heresy in a constructive manner -- that's what free speech is -- but there is the problem of the idiot interrupting the two gentlemen engaged in constructive debate.
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鬼殺し wrote:
Here's the big secret, and I'd wager at least some of you learned it quite young and wondered why it was a secret at all: you don't need to act like a Christian to be Christian. You don't need to go to Church, because the first thing we're taught about the big man is he can hear you anywhere. Aaaaaanywhere. Everywhere. You don't need to preach about God or doing good things or anything. You only need one thing to be a Christian and that's access to a Bible to read whatever we have left of Jesus' teachings and follow them. Believe in them. For the most part, they're a pretty good guideline for decent human behaviour. And if you can go from there to accepting all the spiritual baggage that comes with it (heaven, hell, god, satan, Jesus' sacrifice, etc), really accepting it and living your life under that belief structure...then you're a Christian. Congrats. Just don't go around telling any self-professed Christians about this because they'll be trying to recruit you for their tribe before long. Their church.
Funny thing: one of my closest friends in high school was a devout Christian who hated churches. Well, in the conventional sense, anyway; he would cite that "wherever two or more are gathered in My Name, I am there," then he'd spend his Sundays walking through malls asking random people what they thought about Jesus and tried to start actual conversations about it. That was his idea of keeping the Sabbath. I always argued for atheism, but I found myself often (but not always) tagging along, because three-ways are better. So I agree totally.

Although since then he's become a pastor of his own church. Meh.
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鬼殺し wrote:
I'm also convinced we don't need Christianity to be law-abiding. The much more practical basic laws of Judaism are the ones that have stuck. Christianity doesn't form the basis of Western civility, Judaism does. If anything, Christianity just confuses it by trying to carry Moses' torch without all that other Leviticus rigmarole and some vague message of love not war. And while those big laws are Jewish in origin, they're certainly not Jewish anymore. To me, failing to see just how secular originally religious laws have become is like relying on lightning for fire. You're not insulting the lightning every time you strike a match, because it's the fire that's sacred. Or as close to sacred as we moral knuckle-draggers might ever get.
In terms of law and order, yes, I'd agree with you. However, as far as the welfare state is concerned, or the US foreign policy of giving massive amounts of money to other nations, I think you're wrong. I do, however, find it funny that those on the Right are generally against the elements of government that seem most inspired by Christianity and generally for those most inspired by the Old Testament of the Jews (hilariously funny in the case of the notoriously antisemitic /pol/ board on 4chan). I guess to some extent such hatred is semilogical, as Burger King might hate McDonald's for how well it makes cheeseburgers -- no one likes a competitor eating up their marketshare, even if one's business is charity.

Regarding your lightning: I don't see it the same way. Yes, it's true that "you're not insulting the lightning every time you strike a match," but some do insult the lightning. And that insult only makes sense so long as one is justified to have the utmost confidence in the quantity and quality of one's matches. I might be paranoid, but I worry about such things quite a bit. Not that I'm at all worried in the cases where the match is good and present; I worry about when the only matches on hand are duds that won't light.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
@Charan, your wall of text was an interesting read. I'm more than a little envious at your artistic bent with words.

I have to agree with you on some stuff, like the very fundamental difference between religion and faith and that megachurches are evil :)

Quite some time ago I went through something of a spiritual crisis. Had to believe I know. I got my hands on pretty much every religious text transcribed into English that I could and read them all. I found faith, but not religion. How? Well, when Blake wrote 'To see a World in a Grain of Sand. And a Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand. And Eternity in an hour' he wasn't wrong. Only for me its the night sky :) You could call me an agnostic I guess.

What I've taken away from all that is actually pretty simple.

Just don't be a dick. Yeah ... don't be a dick. They all say that. I think it has something to do with our nature as individuals to be narcissistic and quite nasty, yet manage collectively to come together and do pretty amazing things. Look no further than the number of expert divers that are flying in from over the world to help rescue a bunch of kids trapped in cave. I really want to believe that we can move away more from this mine/yours delineation towards an 'ours' model but that is something that the left/right politics will argue forever as both are invested in maintaining their status quo. More people just need to stop being dicks.

As for why churches were formed, id say in a word control. Its very easy once you start on a slippery slope to move away from benevolence and into the realm of governance. That's just the nature of people. And for the uneducated the belief that there is some guiding spirit to make everything better, that's powerful stuff and alas power tends to corrupt. Its also the kind of stuff that makes some people very vulnerable to suggestion and also happens to be the root cause, IMHO, for the dark ages. Thats 400 years of wasted scientific advancement (so much for my hover-board). To maintain that control however needs a set of rules to follow which is where our laws come from....

Damn.. i swear somewhere out there is another tablet labeled 'commandment 11' which reads 'don't be a dick' in ancient ameriac.

Yeah, really don't like organised religions, sorry.

Cheers,
Matt.
There are 10 types of people. Those that know binary, and those that dont.
When fossil records refuse to prove evolution real, and when genetic coding is discovered which further destroys the comedy of evolution fake science...

when all else fails, just start whining about the most powerful and successful group of people the world has ever known?

hahaha, wth seriously this thread brings out some funny ideas in some of you.



I wonder if somewhere a guy is playing video games and has just "evolved" extra fingers out of a need to hit keys faster.

Oh the pathetic joke of evolutionary science.

So thankful God created us to have a choice mentally, as to whether to believe such nonsense.

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Templar_G wrote:
when all else fails, just start whining about the most powerful and successful group of people the world has ever known?
I didn't much complain about the brigade I served in while in Afghanistan. 1500+ confirmed kills, 2 combat deaths. That's what I call a kill ratio.

Get fucked, Leonidas.

Oh, were you talking about Christians? LOL
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 7, 2018, 3:50:58 PM
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Templar_G wrote:
I wonder if somewhere a guy is playing video games and has just "evolved" extra fingers out of a need to hit keys faster.


Thats funny idea, I would like to see that too :).

Curiosity: surgeons who play computer games (gamepad control especially) are better in their jobs than those who do not play.
Last edited by Rexeos on Jul 7, 2018, 5:27:11 PM
Quite right, Charan, on faith/religion. I was conflating them in picturing slaves with a fervent belief in something better in the afterlife. Nimrod of course wasn't literal, I just couldn't go past that descriptive passage with the vultures.

I do like how you picked up on tribalism, and would like to tie this element of religion back into the evolutionary thread. One of the problems with Christianity that many have identified, and I agree with as being problematic, is the Dominion Mandate.

A common position amongst young-earth creationists, and even the wider evangelical community, is that mankind has dominion on earth. This means that mankind has been given a special authority and rule over the creatures and the Creation. This concept is so widely applied and held that it has even earned a special doctrinal name, which is the dominion mandate.

From this concept, it has been inferred by many that a command was given to Adam, and all of his descendants, to have dominion and rule over all the animal kind, and the Creation. Therefore, all of humanity are recipients of this perceived Adamic dominion.

The dominion mandate, itself, is not named nor defined in Scripture, and so offering a deeper definition, which everyone can agree on, is not possible. However, it is possible to locate where the idea of the dominion mandate stems from. It is the biblical passage in Genesis 1:26–28...


When in fact, everything is connected and interdependent. We can learn from other species, and assume a more realistic and long-viewed place in the world, if we just could see that we are not other than animal. This dominion idea is not exclusively Christian, but as we are discussing Christianity and Evolution, there it is. Feel free to point out where the idea is in other societies and why.

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Close but not too close

Genetic evidence suggests the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees diverged roughly 4 million years ago. The relative size of the chimp brain matches most of our extinct relatives, for a long time suggesting our ape cousin might be an ideal place to glimpse humanity's origins.

New evidence suggests, however, that our last common ancestor may not have looked as chimp-like as before thought. The fossil Ardipithecus ramidus, dating 4.4 million years old, which may very well be ancestral to both human and chimpanzee lineages, walked neither like us or chimps, possessing instead an intermediate form of walking.

In addition, Ardipithecus seemed to have possessed canines that are reduced in size, while male chimps have large tusk-like canines used as weapons for threatening and sometimes attacking other males. This may suggest that chimpanzees behaved significantly differently from our last common ancestor.

Still close enough

Nevertheless, humans keep much in common with chimpanzees.

"Emotionally and socially, the psychology of chimps is very similar to humans," said primatologist Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta.

For instance, he noted, chimps have shown they can help unrelated chimps and human strangers at personal cost without apparent expectation of personal gain, a level of selfless behavior often claimed as unique to humans. They also display what many scientists dub culture, with groups of chimpanzees socially passing on dozens of behaviors such as tool kits from generation to generation that are distinct from ones seen in other groups.

"The big difference I see going for us is language," de Waal said. "They can learn a few symbols in labs, but it's not impressive in my opinion compared to what even a young child can do. They don't really symbolize like we do, and language is a big difference that influences everything else that you do — how you communicate, basic social interactions, all these become far more complex."

Make love, not war?

As gentle as our closest living relatives can be, chimps also can be quite violent in the wild, raping, killing and warring against their rivals. "They don't like cooperating with strangers, that's for sure," de Waal said.

Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham has suggested this pattern of violence may have been part of humanity's legacy as well for millions of years. However, de Waal noted that based what the canines of Ardipithecus suggest, "chimpanzees may be specialized in that regard. It's only with the special recent human conditions of settlement and agriculture that gave us the incentive to worry about wealth, leading us to become warriors that way."

Instead, de Waal suggests looking at our other close relative, the bonobos, the chimpanzee-like great apes once dubbed "pygmy chimpanzees" that are more playful, often resolving conflicts with sex instead of violence. "Other scientists have speculated that bonobos may be the more ancestral type," he said.

Father figures

In the case of either chimpanzees or bonobos, humans are distinct in that fathers are often involved in child care. "Gorilla males protect the females and offspring, but that's pretty much it," de Waal said.

"That's what's very special about human society — the males are involved in caring for offspring," he added. "It's possible this is because we moved from the forests, where if a predator comes along, you can just climb a tree. There's more danger to deal with when we came down from the trees, and so that might have been the trigger for males to get involved."


As they leave their core zone, the patrol goes silent...

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The chimpanzees exhibited 152 killings, including 58 that the scientists observed, 41 that were inferred and 53 suspected killings in 15 communities, the researchers said. The bonobos had one suspected killing, the researchers said. The different acts of violence did not depend on human impacts, Wilson said.

Instead, attacks were more common at sites with many males and high population densities. Also, chimpanzees in East Africa killed more frequently than did chimps in West Africa, the study found.

Unsurprisingly, the bonobos showed little violence. "We didn't find any definite cases of killing by bonobos, though there was one case of a male bonobo who was severely attacked by members of his own group and never seen again," Wilson said.




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Templar_G wrote:

It also amuses me how people can believe evolution happens, but somehow some creatures have been around for millions of years almost unchanged.

"It just happens, over millions of years", aka Fake Science.

Except when evolution doesn't happen at all over those millions of years.


"Living fossils"

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So it seems we have been misled into thinking that these animals are unchanged. Partly it's our nature. Humans are visual animals, and good at recognising shapes, says Gómez. It is "hard to look beyond that" and see that there might be something different going on 'under the hood'.

Why on earth are they called living fossils?

Some supposed living fossils aren't even as old as we previously thought. For instance, cycad plants are said to have lived alongside the dinosaurs. No doubt some cycads did, but the DNA of modern cycads shows that they only evolved 12 million years ago.

"They have been evolving non-stop and speciating and radiating, so why on earth are they called living fossils?" asks Gómez.

Still, the overall look of each living fossil has stayed more or less the same. So while they are clearly evolving, perhaps they are doing so more slowly than everything else.

Though it might seem that these species have stagnated, they are changing...


The full article is here



The Israelites didn't do too badly, given they were a desert nomad group without a library.



embiggened ^

The hands comment will remain ever a mystery...
Last edited by erdelyii on Jul 7, 2018, 8:33:18 PM
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Templar_G wrote:
When fossil records refuse to prove evolution real, and when genetic coding is discovered which further destroys the comedy of evolution fake science...



Evolution has already been observed to happen in labs with viruses and diseases. It's also a proven fact that viruses can alter and mutate genes. And that's just one of many factors that can influence evolution. Or devolution. All these various breeds of dogs that people keep as pets, very few developed those traits in the wild and are purely products of natural selection by human breeders. But natural selection can happen in nature, and without human intervention.

The biggest bear in his neck of the woods will get most of the mates. Because he's able to run off smaller bears. His genes survive in his successors, and less dominant males cease to exist. But if there is a shortage of food, the bigger bear needs to eat more, in which case the environment would be preferable to smaller bears. These are processes that have been happening for billions of years.
Last edited by MrSmiley21 on Jul 7, 2018, 9:33:11 PM
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鬼殺し wrote:
I'm a bad person, erd. I let you do all the legwork and just throw in my stab-in-the-dark insights here and there. I'm not always right but I'm usually close enough to get people talking and thinking. That's really all I aspire for in life. Somewhere along the way I decided this was a noble usage of my laziness and natural ability to connect others' dots.

Sorry about that...and thank you, as always, for going that extra distance to create entertaining, informative posts.


Not at all, Charan. I'm pretty sure if you weren't doing what you do, and riffing off my collations (as I don't like riffing at length on anything I haven't checked, and I enjoy researching) they wouldn't happen. So thank you.

I mean, yes, you are a terrible person. Zounds!

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Charan wrote:
I think I unwittingly touched on some of the Dominion Mandate in my response to Scrotes actually. I despise this idea that we have 'dominion' over anything. We're users and abusers, nothing more. We will NEVER give back all that we have taken, not in this form anyway. There will never be 'paradise on Earth' because I think the smartest thing we'll ever do is figure out how to leave it. I've always liked the term 'Mother Earth' not because mothers are nurturing and forgiving but because every child has to learn how to live independent of their mother eventually. Doesn't mean we can't still talk and hang out but I crave the day when we get our own crib. I don't think it'll be in our lifetime though.


But motherhood is a chain, and those who leave return in the journey when they become mothers.

I think everything is connected, and have always liked the idea that we are made of stars.

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The theory that everyone and everything on Earth contains minuscule star particles dates back further than Moby's popular 2002 song "We Are All Made of Stars."

In the early 1980s, astronomer Carl Sagan hosted and narrated a 13-part television series called "Cosmos" that aired on PBS. On the show, Sagan thoroughly explained many science-related topics, including Earth's history, evolution, the origin of life and the solar system.

"We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff," Sagan famously stated in one episode.

His statement sums up the fact that the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our bodies, as well as atoms of all other heavy elements, were created in previous generations of stars over 4.5 billion years ago. Because humans and every other animal as well as most of the matter on Earth contain these elements, we are literally made of star stuff, said Chris Impey, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

"All organic matter containing carbon was produced originally in stars," Impey told Life's Little Mysteries. "The universe was originally hydrogen and helium, the carbon was made subsequently, over billions of years."


So maybe, we are returning home by going to the stars. Earth will end. I hope we evolve our ideas to the point we take other life with us not to use, but to co-exist with.

Where that leaves "mothership", I'm not sure.

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Charan wrote:
In short, Earth isn't sacred to me and anyone who believes in Creationism, in an ancient allegory as quantifiable, actual history, can't not think of Earth as sacred since God made it for them, give or take. This is an irreconcilable difference.

I find it interesting that even most fundamentalists accept heliocentrism as fact but many can't use that as a convenient model for their own geo/egocentric beliefs. God does not revolve around them. If there is a God, *we* all orbit it.


It seems that the interpretation of this is not that the earth is sacred, but that the earth is a tool, a toy, a zoo, a temporary [temporal]...

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temporal (adj.)
late 14c., "worldly, secular;" also "terrestrial, earthly; temporary, lasting only for a time," from Old French temporal "earthly," and directly from Latin temporalis "of time, denoting time; but for a time, temporary," from tempus (genitive temporis) "time, season, moment, proper time or season," from Proto-Italic *tempos- "stretch, measure," which according to de Vaan is from PIE *temp-os "stretched," from root *ten- "to stretch," the notion being "stretch of time." Related: Temporally.


Yeah, that.

Heaven is sacred.

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Mr_Smiley wrote:
The biggest bear in his neck of the woods will get most of the mates. Because he's able to run off smaller bears. His genes survive in his successors, and less dominant males cease to exist. But if there is a shortage of food, the bigger bear needs to eat more, in which case the environment would be preferable to smaller bears. These are processes that have been happening for billions of years.


Maybe Templar_G will parse that and ponder. It's super clear.







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erdelyii wrote:
Quite right, Charan, on faith/religion. I was conflating them in picturing slaves with a fervent belief in something better in the afterlife. Nimrod of course wasn't literal, I just couldn't go past that descriptive passage with the vultures.

I do like how you picked up on tribalism, and would like to tie this element of religion back into the evolutionary thread. One of the problems with Christianity that many have identified, and I agree with as being problematic, is the Dominion Mandate.

A common position amongst young-earth creationists, and even the wider evangelical community, is that mankind has dominion on earth. This means that mankind has been given a special authority and rule over the creatures and the Creation. This concept is so widely applied and held that it has even earned a special doctrinal name, which is the dominion mandate.

From this concept, it has been inferred by many that a command was given to Adam, and all of his descendants, to have dominion and rule over all the animal kind, and the Creation. Therefore, all of humanity are recipients of this perceived Adamic dominion.

The dominion mandate, itself, is not named nor defined in Scripture, and so offering a deeper definition, which everyone can agree on, is not possible. However, it is possible to locate where the idea of the dominion mandate stems from. It is the biblical passage in Genesis 1:26–28...


When in fact, everything is connected and interdependent. We can learn from other species, and assume a more realistic and long-viewed place in the world, if we just could see that we are not other than animal. This dominion idea is not exclusively Christian, but as we are discussing Christianity and Evolution, there it is. Feel free to point out where the idea is in other societies and why.



You know I find that concept rather perplexing.

If you really want to know who has dominion, its these buggers.

Spoiler


Cheers,
Matt
There are 10 types of people. Those that know binary, and those that dont.
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erdelyii wrote:


But motherhood is a chain, and those who leave return in the journey when they become mothers.

I think everything is connected, and have always liked the idea that we are made of stars.



This concept is probably the most mind blowing to all my year 10 students when I teach year 10 astronomy as part of their physics course. Its something that still, to this day blows my mind. So much so that i'm doing my masters in Astronomy/Astrophysics. But just to be clear - the really heavy elements arn't made in a star during its normal life, they are made when the star goes supernova (mostly).

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erdelyii wrote:

Maybe Templar_G will parse that and ponder. It's super clear.


I find that unlikely, too many words, sorry.

Cheers,
Matt.
There are 10 types of people. Those that know binary, and those that dont.

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