War will be waged on #ISIS, #ISIL and all #Islamic extremists. This war will involve every American and Westerner and peaceful Muslims. It will be an ongoing war 24/7. It will be a war for all freedoms. For survival. Lives will be lost but others will be saved.
Every American, Westerner and many others must stand up against this threat. Sacrifices must be made. Martyrs too.
The #IslamicState is pig manure. It means nothing. It is nothing. It will be nothing. #Death to #ISIL. #Ametica will survive this #jihad and become stronger then ever before.
Condolences to #Orlando and all #LGBT's. Shame on the #NRA.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Mayr on Evolution
EVIDENCE OF COMMON ANCESTORY AND GAIA PROGRAMMING?
"... This interaction sometimes results in such a balanced steady state that some authors have proposed a Gaia hypothesis, according to which the Earth's inanimate and living worlds together form a well-balanced and programmed system."
"... seven competing theories for the origin of life have been proposed. Although no fully satisfactory theory has yet emerged, the problem no longer seems as formidable as at the beginning of the twentieth century. One is justified to claim that there are now a number of feasible scenarios of how life could have originated from inanimate matter. To understand these various theories requires a good deal of technical knowledge of biochemistry. To avoid burdening this volume with such detail, I refer the reader to the special literature dealing with the origin of life (Schopf 1999; Brack 1999; Oparin 1938; Zubbay 2000)".
"...the same reason why all terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods) develop gill arches at a certain stage in their ontogeny. These gill-like structures are never used for breathing, but instead are drastically restructured during the later ontogeny and give rise to many structures in the neck region of reptiles, birds, and mammals. The evident explanation is that the genetic developmental program has no way of eliminating the ancestral stages of development and is forced to modify them during the subsequent steps of development in order to make them suitable for the new life-form of the organism. The anlage of the ancestral organ now serves as a somatic program for the ensuing development of the restructured organ (Mayr 1994). What is recapitulated are always particular structures, but never the whole adult form of the ancestor.
Vestigial Structures. Many organisms have structures that are not fully functional or not functional at all. The human caecal appendix is an example (sometimes has to be removed from acute appendicitis) and so are the teeth in baleen whale embryos and the eyes in many cave animals. Such vestigial structures are the remnants of structures that had been fully functional in their ancestors but are now ready reduced owing to a change in niche utilization. When these structures lose their function owing to a shift in lifestyle, they are no longer protected by natural selection and are gradually deconstructed. They are informative by showing the previous course of evolution.
These three phenomena: embryonic similarities, recapitulation, and vestigial structures raise insurmountable difficulties for a creationist explanation, but are fully compatible with an evolutionary explanation based on common descent, variation, and selection."
"Biogeography. Evolution also helped to explain another great puzzle of biology, namely, the reasons for the geographic distribution of animals and plants. Why are the faunas of Europe and North America on both sides of the North Atlantic so relatively similar, whereas those of Africa and South America on both sides of the South Atlantic are so very different? Why is the fauna of Australia so strikingly different from that of all other continents?
Why are there normally no mammals on oceanic islands? Could these seemingly capricious patterns of distribution be explained as the product of creation? Not easily. Darwin, however, showed that the present distribution of animals and plants is due to the history of their dispersal from their original points of origin. The longer that two continents were isolated from each other, the more different their biota became."
... the reasons for the similarity of the fauna of Europe and of North America were not fully understood until it was discovered that in the early Tertiary (40 million years ago) there was a broad land connection across the north Atlantic between the two now-separated continents. This permitted an active faunal exchange. By contrast, Africa and South America were separated by continental drift 80 million years ago and their biota diverged greatly during their long isolation. Again and again, puzzling distribution patterns can be explained as the result of common descent and sometimes subsequent extinction. Thus evolution continues to provide the answer to many previously puzzling observations."
For a creationist there is no rational explanation for distributional irregularities, but they are completely compatible with a historical evolutionary explanation."
... "different kinds of molecules have different rates of evolutionary change. Some change very rapidly, like the fibrinopeptides, and others change very slowly, like the histones. Even though the lineages of man and chimpanzee separated at least 6 million years ago, the highly complex molecules of the hemoglobins of these two species are still virtually identical. What is gratifying is the fact that when a phylogeny based on morphological or behavioral characteristics is established, it is usually found to be essentially the same as a phylogeny based exclusively on molecular characteristics. The extremely close relationship of man to the chimpanzee and to the other anthropoid apes is as convincingly documented by molecular as by structural characters."
Taken from: Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2001
"... This interaction sometimes results in such a balanced steady state that some authors have proposed a Gaia hypothesis, according to which the Earth's inanimate and living worlds together form a well-balanced and programmed system."
"... seven competing theories for the origin of life have been proposed. Although no fully satisfactory theory has yet emerged, the problem no longer seems as formidable as at the beginning of the twentieth century. One is justified to claim that there are now a number of feasible scenarios of how life could have originated from inanimate matter. To understand these various theories requires a good deal of technical knowledge of biochemistry. To avoid burdening this volume with such detail, I refer the reader to the special literature dealing with the origin of life (Schopf 1999; Brack 1999; Oparin 1938; Zubbay 2000)".
"...the same reason why all terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods) develop gill arches at a certain stage in their ontogeny. These gill-like structures are never used for breathing, but instead are drastically restructured during the later ontogeny and give rise to many structures in the neck region of reptiles, birds, and mammals. The evident explanation is that the genetic developmental program has no way of eliminating the ancestral stages of development and is forced to modify them during the subsequent steps of development in order to make them suitable for the new life-form of the organism. The anlage of the ancestral organ now serves as a somatic program for the ensuing development of the restructured organ (Mayr 1994). What is recapitulated are always particular structures, but never the whole adult form of the ancestor.
Vestigial Structures. Many organisms have structures that are not fully functional or not functional at all. The human caecal appendix is an example (sometimes has to be removed from acute appendicitis) and so are the teeth in baleen whale embryos and the eyes in many cave animals. Such vestigial structures are the remnants of structures that had been fully functional in their ancestors but are now ready reduced owing to a change in niche utilization. When these structures lose their function owing to a shift in lifestyle, they are no longer protected by natural selection and are gradually deconstructed. They are informative by showing the previous course of evolution.
These three phenomena: embryonic similarities, recapitulation, and vestigial structures raise insurmountable difficulties for a creationist explanation, but are fully compatible with an evolutionary explanation based on common descent, variation, and selection."
"Biogeography. Evolution also helped to explain another great puzzle of biology, namely, the reasons for the geographic distribution of animals and plants. Why are the faunas of Europe and North America on both sides of the North Atlantic so relatively similar, whereas those of Africa and South America on both sides of the South Atlantic are so very different? Why is the fauna of Australia so strikingly different from that of all other continents?
Why are there normally no mammals on oceanic islands? Could these seemingly capricious patterns of distribution be explained as the product of creation? Not easily. Darwin, however, showed that the present distribution of animals and plants is due to the history of their dispersal from their original points of origin. The longer that two continents were isolated from each other, the more different their biota became."
... the reasons for the similarity of the fauna of Europe and of North America were not fully understood until it was discovered that in the early Tertiary (40 million years ago) there was a broad land connection across the north Atlantic between the two now-separated continents. This permitted an active faunal exchange. By contrast, Africa and South America were separated by continental drift 80 million years ago and their biota diverged greatly during their long isolation. Again and again, puzzling distribution patterns can be explained as the result of common descent and sometimes subsequent extinction. Thus evolution continues to provide the answer to many previously puzzling observations."
For a creationist there is no rational explanation for distributional irregularities, but they are completely compatible with a historical evolutionary explanation."
... "different kinds of molecules have different rates of evolutionary change. Some change very rapidly, like the fibrinopeptides, and others change very slowly, like the histones. Even though the lineages of man and chimpanzee separated at least 6 million years ago, the highly complex molecules of the hemoglobins of these two species are still virtually identical. What is gratifying is the fact that when a phylogeny based on morphological or behavioral characteristics is established, it is usually found to be essentially the same as a phylogeny based exclusively on molecular characteristics. The extremely close relationship of man to the chimpanzee and to the other anthropoid apes is as convincingly documented by molecular as by structural characters."
Taken from: Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2001
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Evolution Will Always Be
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Paul
, as in Paul’s vision, God will in the end be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor. 15:28), then nothing present and nothing past is excluded. We are told that in the fulfilment of the times all things will be united in Christ, things in heaven and things in earth’ (Eph. 1:10) and ‘all things reconciled to him, whether on earth or in heaven’ (Col. 1:20), because ‘all things were created through him’ (Col. 1:16); and if this is so, we have to talk about the universality of God’s grace. ‘Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil. 2:11). Then ‘universal reconciliation’ can no longer be a heresy and a reproach. It is an expression of hope and of trust in God’s goodness. But the decision is God’s alone" Moltmann ☀
Jesus Anyone?
“Who was challenged by Jesus? Who did he come into conflict with? Who was willing to have him killed? We need to answer these questions to know whether or not we’re engaging our culture in a way that honors the Gospel. So if we’re truly like Jesus, who are going to be pissing off?" Is the Church Pissing Off the Right People? ☀
Sunday, October 4, 2015
The People's Pope
“The Pope welcomes everyone: people who are disfigured or sick, people who are young and old. Pope Francis is able to express joy and radiate compassion and empathy for others. This may be due to his experiences of pain and weariness. He rose quickly within the ranks of the Society of Jesus and this caused tensions which caused enough Jesuits to despise his leadership. As a result, when he was just 50 years old, his Jesuit community stripped him of all responsibility and he was exiled to Cordoba, Argentina. That experience was humiliating and also humbling. It eventually made him more merciful and kind as he experienced what is sometimes called a “dark night of the soul.” Because he knows deep pain and despair too well, Pope Francis is able to emulate and embody the compassion and love that Jesus showed. We are all broken and in need of compassion, understanding and love. This draws thousands to listen to and meet the Pope as he stands in solidarity with those who suffer and are in need of hope, mercy and grace." The People’s Pope: Our Attraction and Fascination with the Pope ☀
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Romans 1:26-7 - The Bible Says That Homosexuality Is A Sin?
"The bible says” is often the excuse employed by homophobic Christians who believe scripture requires a condemnation of homosexuality. The bible is a neutral object. It only “says” something when we act upon it. This is why we as actors must use this prop in a Shakespearean manner and not improv it as so many do today.
In the last several decades, the use of classical rhetoric as a tool to examine the Pauline epistles has become something of an institution among New Testament scholars. Because of this, we are able to wield scripture more effectively. Equally so, there is push back from fundamentalists and conservatives who would read scripture as if they were the ones writing it, divorced from its first century Greco-Roman-Hellenistic context. It is because of this insistence we read scripture as a modern how-to guide that those who use it are likely to do so not only in error but to the harm of others as well.
A case in point is the often (mis)used passage, Romans 1.18-32. It does not take long in a discussion on scripture and homosexuality for the more traditional defender to take this out of his or her arsenal, as if it is the “nuclear option.” Jesus may not have spoken directly about homosexuality, but Paul did, we are assured. However, and I relish this role as the bearer of bad news, this passage is not about condemning homosexuality, but about condemning those who condemn others."
Romans 1:26-7 - The Bible Says That Homosexuality Is A Sin? Via azspot.net
I strongly agree with this.
In the last several decades, the use of classical rhetoric as a tool to examine the Pauline epistles has become something of an institution among New Testament scholars. Because of this, we are able to wield scripture more effectively. Equally so, there is push back from fundamentalists and conservatives who would read scripture as if they were the ones writing it, divorced from its first century Greco-Roman-Hellenistic context. It is because of this insistence we read scripture as a modern how-to guide that those who use it are likely to do so not only in error but to the harm of others as well.
A case in point is the often (mis)used passage, Romans 1.18-32. It does not take long in a discussion on scripture and homosexuality for the more traditional defender to take this out of his or her arsenal, as if it is the “nuclear option.” Jesus may not have spoken directly about homosexuality, but Paul did, we are assured. However, and I relish this role as the bearer of bad news, this passage is not about condemning homosexuality, but about condemning those who condemn others."
Romans 1:26-7 - The Bible Says That Homosexuality Is A Sin? Via azspot.net
I strongly agree with this.
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