Posted on 04/14/2002 12:31:25 AM PDT by sourcery
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A huge, complex, recursive system of the sort I propose for modelling fitness looks even more like the most refined and abstract results of human design---computer programs---than a living organism looks like any kind of artifact.
Of course once design resides in the overall system (cf. the anthropic principle in cosmology) one can always deny it by saying that every possible system (even ones which attain stasis in short order and onew which produce such random or chaotic results that nothing like life is present in them) actually occur, say in parallel universes. To do so, however, violates Occam's razor--a single designer is more parsimonious (and equally unfalsifiable) to an infinitude of parallel universes all with different physics, and consquently different chemistries (if the physics allows it) and different biologies (if the chemistry allows it).
Like the best history professor I've ever known said (and he was a conservative) "Fundamentalism on any side is the greatest danger to civilization today. Muslim, Christian or Hare Krishna, it doesn't matter -- they're dangerous."
And that the betrayal, murder and subsequent reincarnation of the god happened long before those Bible prophesies?
Just read about religions around in those days in that area. There were a lot of them, and the virgin mother idea appeared prominently in many far before and during Christ's time.
Prior to and during. When seen objectively, this is not a bad thing. The Christians took the most beloved of symbols, with all positive connotations, as their own. Knowing that no religion grows in a vacuum (look at the parts of Islam founded on Christianity, and the parts of Christianity founded on Judaism for clear examples) it's not surprising.
Just the kind of broad-sweeping indictment of religious beliefs and indoctrination I would expect from the "anointed" purveyors of "truth" -- the synapse-challanged U.S. [re]education industry. Dr. Goebbells had nothing on them.
Anyone who would attempt to equate Christians who believe that the Bible is the absolute word of God, with Islam and the Koran is either ignorant, OR masqerading as a "teacher", Q.
Which stories can you document regarding these claims and where? Or perhaps I am misunderstanding your post?
You'd find the book of Isaiah is pretty explicit about addressing prophecies about Christ in detail, of which 600-700 years later were in fact fullfilled totally. And BTW, Christ wasn't "reincarnated", but was "resurrected."
True, Christians adopted many pagan symbols as their own, and especially Catholicism to a fault IMO. Additionally "idol worship" is clearly forbidden by the Bible, but I'd digress if I went any further on the subject.
As to you assertion of the linkage of the afore mentioned "major" religions, that also is true. However, neither "religion" has accepted THE crucial element and difference -- the Christ mentioned in the Biblical prophecies AND ergo fullfillment of those prophecies as "Saviour" or "redeemer" of the believer's soul.
I think the Muslims borrowed the ban on idol worship from you. But they're doing a bit better at it. :)
Nostradamus predicted a lot of stuff, too. Sorry about "reincarnated." Wrong word. The previous gods were resurrected.
This particular professor is German, and I don't know if he's ever been in the U.S.
So, if there were no more fundamentalism in the world, would 9/11 have happened? BTW, he said this about five years ago, and was predicting that fundamentalism was getting too strong, and that something very big would eventually have to happen.
Christians who believe that the Bible is the absolute word of God, with Islam and the Koran is either ignorant,
But the Koran is the absolute word of God too. At least that's what about 100 million or more people think.
But herein lies THE difference: NONE of ANY Biblical prophecies have failed to come true thus far. The same cannot be said of Nostradamus. OR Jeanne Dixon, for that matter. ;-)
Sloppy and absurd posit. Shall we also be asking the Professor: "If there were no 'Nazism' in Germany in 1933, would WWII have occurred? And were all Germans, Nazis??"
Ok Q, let us briefly first define "fundamentalism". Is it fair to say "fundamentalism" is based upon a strict, literal and absolute belief of a particular philosophy, and thus not subject to change? If so, is there such a thing as a U.S. Constitutional "Fundamentalist"? Mathematical "Fundamentalist"? Bad things? Is there is any word that has been subverted and coded more by the Left than "Fundamentalism"?? Oh year -- there is the word, "discriminate".
Anyway, taken in the context of its absolute, "fundamentally" speaking, the Koran clearly addresses "Infidels" as an entity subject to "elimination" at worst, while Christian "fundamentalism" teaches the quite the opposite, unless your "conservative German" professor could prove otherwise scripturally. But perhaps it is easier for the Professor to lump all "Fundamentalists" of the world together, as they though they were ONE BIG CAMP. If so, that is a very sloppy understanding and teaching of the word "fundamentalism."
Mainly brush up on your Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian and Mediterranean religion starting from far before the Jews. For betrayal, death and resurrection, Osiris is an easy pick.
A simple quick search shows one down. I especially like about the coming of the prophet "...Micah 5:6, which says: '...thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian when he cometh into our land,....'" I didn't know Christ freed them from the Assyrians, who had perished c. 600 BCE.
Sorry again, my misquote, should be "religious fundamentalism."
But perhaps it is easier for the Professor to lump all "Fundamentalists" of the world together, as they though they were ONE BIG CAMP
Of course Christian fundamentalists aren't dangerous. No Nuernburg Files, no dead abortion clinic workers. His main fear is that, unlike others, fundamentalists are free to do any atrocity because their strict interpretation of the holy books told them it was okay. No law or societal norm of man can supersede the holy word. And you can find lots of justified killings, even genocide, in the Bible. It's all there for someone who wants to use it, all you need is for the verse to match with a particular current cause.
Congratulations. With these silly ameobic statements you have null and voided any shred of brain-cell activity I thought you may have had.
Therefore, by all means carry on with your curiously paranoid and delusional life that Christian fundamentalists armed with AK47s are out to get you, humanity has been spawned by the weight of a mathematically impossible one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000+ random chance, and Gaia herself is alive and well.
So you believe that religious fundamentalism is good? From my point of view you are just several religions jockeying for supremacy. From your point of view, Islam is the competition, somehow a lesser religion than yours. That's fine, as looking down on other religions is pretty much a standard creed in most religions.
For the most part, you all have your good and bad adherents, your benign and downright dangerous sects and proponents (for the record, Christians truly following Christ as I see him I regard as quite benign). Some sects in Christianity, as well as in Islam are dangerous, you can't deny that. They have suicide bombers, you have abortion clinic bombers, all because some warped sense that murder is justified by God.
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n the last decade or so, creationism has grown sophisticated. Oh, the old-fashioned creationists are still around, especially in the Bible Belt. They're the ones who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that God created it and all its inhabitants in six days and that fossils are a product of Noah's flood. In the early 1990's, however, a new breed of creationists appeared. These ''neo-creos,'' as they have been called, are no Dogpatch hayseeds. They have Ph.D.'s and occupy positions at some of the better universities. The case they make against Darwinism does not rest on the authority of Scripture; rather, it proceeds from premises that are scientific and philosophical, invoking esoteric ideas in molecular biology, information theory and the logic of hypothesis testing. 