danielsangeo

Not quite. danielsangeo thinking: Aristotle and modern man have DIFFERENT levels of smartness. Aristotle, for instance, believed in the five elements. This has been, FACTUALLY, proven as wrong. Aristotle wasn't stupid; he was going by the evidence of the time, but he wasn't "smart" as we would say smart. Intelligence is derived from many different factors and we're not getting stupider as time progresses; in fact, we are getting smarter. It's just that, on the timescale required for evolution of the human species, Aristotle and us are almost identical. Try to read what one types instead of what you think one types and assuming. You got my post wrong so you might have gotten others' posts wrong, too. Like I said, you can't compare the two on the basis of technology. Aristotle couldn't use a computer without training and a modern scientist couldn't make bronze out of Bronze Age tools without training. Aristotle is no more stupid than today's scientists and today's scientists are no more stupid than Aristotle. However, *MORE* people on the planet are now smarter than their counterparts from Aristotle's age. More people have understanding of the fundamentals of the Earth now than they did back then, for example. We don't generally believe that sick people have demons in them that must be cast out by a ritualized ceremony of chanting and throwing water at people when all they really have is a mental disorder.

Atheism isn't a belief.

I was there when the user title order was reversed. It was reversed mostly as a joke. Also, no one expects you to religiously do research, but if you're asking questions that are on the FAQ page or just a quick jaunt through the Wiki (like going to a Half-Life forum asking what Gordon's last name is), then you will probably get a playful roasting. The problem arises not with the regulars but with the newbies who feel they are "expected" to crush anyone newer than them...even though they aren't expected to do anything of the sort. "I have an idea: Release the mod!" or "When will mod releese" won't be looked upon too kindly, though. These are questions that have been answered religiously and it takes less than one minute to find your answer (you don't even have to register to search and the latter question is answered ON THE FRONT PAGE)....a shorter amount of time than it takes to register and post. But mostly, it's playful roasting and if you can ride through it, you'll be fine on the Black Mesa forums.

Okay, take this to the Creation vs Evolution thread and please be specific because the topic is very broad.

If that question was directed to me, Osama only.

And how do you know that? What claims have I been making that I haven't provided evidence for?

What evidence did you ask for? I must have missed it.

I wasn't saying "Do you, Leif, believe that 2+2=4?". I was saying "Do you, everyone, believe that 2+2=4?" The royal "you". The group "you". I should really substitute "one" for that kind of "you", huh?

What evidence is that? I keep getting told that I don't accept their evidence but whenever I ask for evidence, I never get it.

Leif: Agreed. Also, I find the very notion of "believing in evolution" to be......well, weird. I don't know why the word "believe" has to be used. I always go back to math because it's the easiest to understand. Do you "believe" that 2+2=4? Math aside, do you "believe" that the sun will rise in the sky tomorrow? Do you "believe" that your cat is alive? Do you "believe" that a baseball is round? Do you "believe" that adhesives are sticky? Why doesn't anyone use the term 'believe' for these things but "believe in evolution" is?

Philosophically, I'm on the side of being glad that bin Laden is gone. I've had a couple people tell me that I'm a hypocrite for saying this; that I was against those that were purportedly glad that 9/11 happened. I don't buy this argument for one large reason: Osama bin Laden is not the same as people living in New York and DC just going about their daily lives. Scientifically, OBL and the people in NYC and DC are the same species, sure, but, OBL's actions make him different from the NYC/DC residents. As for the innocent deaths that America is responsible for (yes, there is the blood of many innocents on the hands of America), I believe that's a different subject entirely. Also, I'm not sure if we're actually "celebrated OBL's death" so much as celebrating a return to justice. OBL didn't go down without a fight; he didn't turn his back and put his hands behind his head and a bullet was put into his brain. OBL hid behind a human shield and engaged in a firefight (according to reports I've read).

Three words: Nylon Eating Bacteria

Koocka: It's a fair point and one I missed. Aristotle lived in the 300s BC. We're currently in the AD 2000s...only about 2300 years between us. Humans have been around for over 50,000 years if not 100,000 years. If you're looking at a clock from noon to midnight, where noon is the beginning of Homo sapiens and we're talking at midnight, Aristotle was at around 11:35-11:40PM (if my math is correct).

The way I see it, I see some people looking at a television set and wondering how the pictures get onto the screen and suggesting that light can't travel fast enough to replace the image on a screen at a quick enough speed as to simulate moving pictures; that the human eye would be able to see the "stuttering" between the pictures, even at 100FPS, and then claiming that there's an invisible man sitting in every TV painting the pictures for you and then demanding the "invisible man theory" to be taught in science class. Or, tl;dr: Argument from ignorance (aka "No way!") is no replacement for debunking evidence. (Oh, and Bear Grylls is a human.)

So, Bear Grylls is smarter than me?

I'm sorry to say this, but I think there are people today that are smarter than Aristotle. And it really depends on what you mean by "smarter". Aristotle would have a tough time with computers unless you taught him such. And could he understand deep space quasars? And let's not get started on modeling in Hammer.

I do know, actually. "Added information" is something creationists came up with to try to debunk evolution but they haven't been able to define it. When you try to nail them down on what they mean by "added information", they can't answer.

I've already researched this subject deeply and have heard many of the arguments and supposed "debunking" from people that have proven, time and again, to not know what they're talking about. How's that song go? "It's all been done before." Now, instead of going after me, provide evidence that evolutionary theory is wrong. This "must have 40 babies" thing is completely wrong.

I'm a fast reader.

[citation needed]

"These rates are simply too high for man to have evolved from anything, and if true would show that man must in fact be regressing." Why? "since there are no known examples where a mutation added information to the genome" Since these folks never give an example of what "added information" even looks like...............

The teacher had nothing to do with it, that is the only curriculum allowed in public schools here in the USA. I'm sorry, but my science teacher taught me things that had evidence for them....and he DEMANDED we quiz him and make sure that he's right. He required us to use critical thinking skills and experimentation to test hypotheses. In fact, he'd purposefully test us by giving us wrong answers and tried to get us to correct him. If he said that a specific liquid was an acid, we weren't supposed to just accept it as red that it was an acid; we had to test. Sometimes, it was an acid. Sometimes, it was a base. We were graded on whether we knew which was which. I remember, vividly, the teacher said Beaker A had an acid in it. I put my litmus paper into the liquid and it came up a base. I told the teacher that Beaker A was a base and he said "Correct" (telling the teacher that he was wrong) and gave me a positive mark on that test. He taught us to NOT simply accept what people say. That's what science is all about. Also, regarding your quip about it being the "only curriculum allowed", can we teach the controversy and state, in math class, that Pi=3 or that, perhaps, Pi=189,514?

Koocka: True, but atheists like it a lot....and there's not much in atheism to talk about. Atheism is just "don't believe in God". If it was just "atheism", then we don't need to go further than those four words.

Not quite. Unless you think that mathematics is also a "belief". Not quite. Science uses evidence and tries to falsify itself. Religion.........doesn't.

There are some times in the evolution of life that so-called "punctuated equilibrium" happens (generally over several thousand years). If there's a mutation that is very beneficial and this mutation leads to speciation and this new species wipes out the ancestor species, it could seem, from fossil records, that a species "suddenly" ends and a new species "begins"...but living in this "suddenly", it appears that there is a battle for dominance, but it's not like a single animal suddenly transmogrifies, werewolf-style, into a new animal (dog turning into a cat). That just doesn't happen. There are no "turtles with wings" or "giraffes with gills". That just doesn't happen and does not exist in the theory of evolution.