A powerful argument for Creationism.

[jobycom]

I am not anti evolution nor trying to prove creationism but I rather listen to solid scientific debates not a political speech!some of these authors talk about evolution in the way you hear a priest talks about bible,by the way your reasoning is poor,I have heared much better speeches about evolution or read about it,they say the best you can defeat something is bad defense,by that example about dogs you actually are proving creationism because first nobody has taken cat out of dogs they breed new types of dogs but they are always dogs they dont evolve into new species and behind the scene of interbreeding dogs and making them fluffy or short or fat is human inteligence .dogs themselves dont interbreed like that in nature perhaps the main reason is the geographical distances and beside to get results like human does blind dog interbreeds doesnt seem sufficient . it is human that brings them to each other,in this exmaple a smart director which is human is directing the show so if you want to use getting new types of dogs by interbreeding among them as a proof for evolution then you have to have a director for it in nature which is ....god!see?you are a bad author and have even worse reasoning!i recommend author of this book learns more about scientific reasoning,scinece my friend not sentimental speeches!

---------------

This was posted as a review of Richard Dawkins's "The Greatest Show on Earth." Dawkins has been pwned!1 :rofl:

I don't want to kill the review site so I won't post the URL.

In case you can't follow the part about dogs and cats, Dawkins uses dog breeding to demonstrate artificial selection before moving on to natural selection. He doesn't use it to prove evolution, as the "author" of this criticism believes.

(On edit--I hate to do this, but I will add a :sarcasm: here just because nothing is so obvious that someone won't misunderstand it if it isn't spelled out.)

[Orrex]

1. When people refer to the bible as "bible," it makes me have to vomit copiously

[jobycom]

4. Given the rest of the "lesson," he may have just forgot the the.

[Orrex]

5. Maybe, but elsewhere I see and hear it all the time

CSPAN callers do it a lot, and a lot of religious radio call-in shows are guilty as well.

:puke:

[Bucky]

7. It sounds like Buster Bluth saying he was "in army" instead of "in the army"

But really... vomiting? I think you exaggerate.

[Orrex]

10. Nope. Actual vomit.

It's really embarrassing if it happens when I'm at the grocery store or something.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

12. why should one say "the bible"

and/or Not:

"the wal-mart" or "the DU"?

is there a grammar rule concerning which pronouns are to be prefaced with "the" ?

[Orrex]

13. Not a hard and fast rule, no

But when it comes off as a deliberate and pretentious affectation--which it does--then it's a problem. If those same people say "I'm going to look that up in dictionary" or "find his number in phonebook," then I'll believe that they really do refer to the bible that way.


Let's be up front about this and acknowledge that it's going to be one of those "have a blessed day" issues. Some people will recognize it as a smug, underhanded bit of religious dominance, while others will see it simply as a benevolent greeting. Who's right? Both, probably. But I can tell you that I've never heard the phrase uttered by anyone other than wear-it-on-your-sleeve Christian who wants to remind everyone that his God is an awesome god. So maybe some people really and sincerely refer to "bible" without meaning anything deeper.

But I haven't met those people.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

14. I don't think I have ever heard anyone say "bible" without prefacing

it with "the"

maybe, I live a sheltered life after all :shrug:

I also think intonation and nuance affect the saying "Have a blessed day"

I have found that it is not so much What is said as How it is said.

[Orrex]

15. That is 100% correct

I have found that it is not so much What is said as How it is said.

To "intonation and nuance" I would also add context, because that goes a long way, too.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

16. yes, context. Indeed!

:toast:

[immoderate]

28. When I hear "The Bible" I think of...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517QBZmNrNL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

You're not from The Bronx, are you?

--imm

[jobycom]

18. Well, I've got bad news for you. You have now heard the phrase from someone other than

a wear-it-on-your-sleeve Christian who etc, etc... This poster is a Muslim.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

22. if he is Muslim then isn't there a chance of a language translation issue

possiblity here?

[jobycom]

24. I don't think it's a translation issue. The English is sound enough, it's more

the punctuation and capitalization that's a mess. It reads more like a native speaker who never learned to write well than someone who doesn't understand English. Or maybe he wrote it on a phone keypad and didn't want to bother with editing.

[Orrex]

27. Well, he's a statistical anomaly

Doesn't change the overall truth of the complaint, though.

[jobycom]

20. It was a common noun that evolved (or was created) into a proper noun.

Bible meant a collection of books (I'll skip the etymology, but it was borrowed by Latin from Greek), and through the Middle Ages, even though it was used specifically to mean the Holy Books, it was still not a real proper noun. The individual books of the Bible were usually written out individually and often collected individually, or in smaller groupings like the Gospels or the Epistles or the Pentateuch.

The individual books had proper names (Genesis, Exodus, etc), but the collection was "The Bible," meaning "The collection of sacred books." There was no "the" in Latin, but the sense was there when it developed into English.

Through the early Middle Ages the Bible was even called "bibliotecha," (or something like that), meaning roughly the container that held the books. It wasn't until modern times that it became a proper noun referring to one book instead of a collection of books. Think "The Encyclopaedia Brittanica."

A similar thing happened to the name of our country. We don't say "The Brazil," but we do say "The United States."

[pokerfan]

2. I have only this to say about that

[LynzM]

6. +1

Wow. The irony of the things he says, holy shit. Hard to believe someone is actually that illogical.

[EastTennesseeDem]

3. When I first read that, I thought he had a good point.

Of course, I was on acid at the time.

[Bucky]

8. what a great exmaple of how scinece people are'nt as smart as they say they are, stupid smarties

But you should know that by adding the sarcasm smily, you're guilty of pandering to nitwits.

[jobycom]

9. Just giving

nitwits less to hide behind.

[TZ]

11. Damn! I wish I could recommend this!

Having recently gotten into a long argument about Evolution with a Fundie on Facebook, this kind of "logic" does not surprise!

[Rosie1223]

17. I read this 3 times and all I can think of is

that scene from Ghostbusters "Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria"

Is it an earworm when it is a movie scene stuck in your head? :shrug:

Thanks, Joby.

[pokerfan]

21. Then this won't help

http://www.moviewavs.com/0085412111/MP3S/Movies/Ghostbusters/disaster.mp3

[surrealAmerican]

19. This is what happens when you put god in charge ...

... of punctuation and grammar. That was nearly incomprehensible.

The writer seems to be saying that because people can selectively breed dogs, that that is the only way dogs can breed.

[jobycom]

23. What he was saying

was that dog breeding isn't proof of Evolution Theory because breeding only alters the dog, but doesn't evolve into a different species, like a cat, and that dog breeding is done deliberately by a master planner, so it proves Intelligent Design by God rather than evolution by natural selection.

He misunderstood the point of that section of the book. Dawkins used dog breeding as one example of how genes can be manipulated through a selection process to cause dramatic changes in a species. He called this artificial selection, since the changes were being manipulated by an outside force trying to create a specific outcome, but then explained how natural selection worked to manipulate genes in the same way using "survival of the fittest" as the selector of genes. Actually he was much more specific, showing how in some cases predators were the selectors by eliminating genes that didn't protect a species well, and sometimes the weather or diet was the selector, etc. After this the book goes on to explain the evidence that shows evolution into different species, and to refer specifically to the objections that one animal doesn't evolve into another (dogs into cats, in this case).

The reviewer either didn't read far into the book, or as I suspect, didn't even read the book but read someone stock evangelical criticism of it. If he read the part about dog breeding, he certainly didn't understand its point.

[KamaAina]

25. Where's "human inteligence" when you need it?

:dunce:

[jobycom]

26. Maybe the extra letter was unnecessary, so natural selection eliminated it.

:)

[Kali]

29. Just finished the big featured article in Science on Ardipithecus

great work and new insights on our ancestors and how/when the ape/monkey/hominid divergence occurred.

Interesting contrast between the real writing and your fine example of the ignorance that too many are soaking in.

[la_chupa]

30. our educational system has obviously failed

but then again you can lead a horse to water...

[Fire Walk With Me]

31. I can't even READ that!

wtf?