Questions for creationists

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Adalbertus


Its either the JW's or you who didn't properly read the Bible (and I suspect it's the JW's)

Cited from King James' Bible:


The 144000 are Jews.



So, there are more, and



There is also salvation for numerous others. (In many places, early Christianity had a special role for Christians of Jewish origin.)

Jehovah's Witnesses dont believe that only 144,000 will can be saved.
look here if you want to see for your self.
link

Lets get back on topic please.

[faded glory]

The 144,000 are prophets. The 'multitude' in heaven are those saved

[faded glory]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Actually, many of them do NOT know that the Earth goes around the Sun. Some YEC's are geocentrists.

EARTH is not a PLANET !

Despite proof to the contrary. If you take a picture of Earth..it still looks flat does it not?

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Ethelred


No I don't want a copy. The Watchtower has predicted the end of the world seven times. Last time they decided to predict the end they said it wasn't official. But only because there were getting embarrased about all the other mistakes.

They even postponed that 'unoficial' prediction once. I still didn't notice the world ending the second time either. That was in the 70's.

Unoficial but still in the oficial Watchtower paper.

So now I know why you don't believe in the Trinity. I suspect you will not be on this thread any longer. I have only seen one JW stick it out after the failed predictions are mentioned.

Then there is JW's teaching that its OK to lie to non JW's. They don't like that one mentioned either. Makes them vanish.

I do wonder why they bother recruiting new believers. Since only 144,000 are going to be saved I would think that would be an inherent limit to the number of JW's.

Can you tell I have a particular lack of respect at all for the Watchtower? Any religion that lets children die rather have a transfusion is not one I am going to respect at all. If the adults are that stupid well you have an excelent example there of how evolution works. Letting the children die before they can decide for themselves is unconsionable.

I don’t really care if you want one or not. Just telling you how to get a copy. If you don’t want to read it, fine. I am not trying to get you to read.
They have not predicted end of the world 7 times. Were do you get this stuff? Never heard of this. The only one I know of is that many in 1970's though that the world was going to end because that there according to the Bible it would have been 6,000 years since the first man was created, but this was never official teaching.
This its ok to lie to non-JW stuff, again were do you get this stuff???

With refusal of blood, they dent refuse all medical treatment first off. They are lots of alternate treatments for blood transfusions. Organ transplants have been done with no blood transfusions.
this is the offical website for Jehovah's Witnesses. Please lets get back on the topic at hand.

[Jack_www]

I am very tolerant of beliefs that are different then mine. I suppose there is a possibility that living things evolve, or change over time. But please get facts straight about what other people believe.

[-=Vagrant=-]

Originally posted by Jack_www
I am very tolerant of beliefs that are different then mine. I suppose there is a possibility that living things evolve, or change over time

Do you suppose that Earth goes around the Sun or the other way? If you think Earth goes around the Sun, why do you know it but don't accept evolution?

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Adalbertus

Its either the JW's or you who didn't properly read the Bible (and I suspect it's the JW's)

I didn't come up with it. Its a Watchtower belief although there are other christian groups that have similar ideas about a fixed limit to the number that will enter heaven.

[Lung]

Originally posted by faded glory



Despite proof to the contrary. If you take a picture of Earth..it still looks flat does it not?

Er, what are you saying here, FG? You're not saying that the earth is flat, are you? Please clarify.

Correction. Sober up, then clarify

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Jack_www


Jehovah's Witnesses dont believe that only 144,000 will can be saved.
look here if you want to see for your self.
link

Lets get back on topic please.

How about we get the details right on this though. I may have misunderstood what I read on this.

From http://www.religioustolerance.org/witness3.htm


The Heavenly Kingdom took effect in 1914 with the invisible enthronement of Christ as King. It is currently occupied by a little flock or Anointed Class of about 135,400 people. All were selected after Christ's ascension into heaven at Pentecost (33 CE) and during subsequent centuries. The selection of the full complement of 144,000 was completed in 1935. Some 8,600 are still living on earth. They will spend eternity with God and Christ as spirit creatures. The latter number increases slightly from time to time as anointed but unfaithful members are replaced.

Now since the Heaven and the Heavenly Kingdom are the same to most christians. And I don't see anything about anyothers going to this Heavenly Kingdom ever. And the JW's believe the others will be resurrected apparently on Earth therefor I will stick by what I said although there is more to the JW's beliefs about an afterlife than those that go to Heaven.

Do I have that right? 144,000 go the Heavenly Kingdom and the rest of humanity will either be obliterated in some way or resurrected but not in Heaven.

I think I did pretty good on the original post. You only disagreed with one thing and it appears to be more a matter of interpretation.

OK I will leave it alone after this. On this thread anyway.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Jack_www
I am not trying to get you to read.

I read other things quite well.

They have not predicted end of the world 7 times. Were do you get this stuff? Never heard of this.

Five times officially. In 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, and 1941. Plus they implied one in 1975. There was a belief by JW's that the end would come 1994 but that one wasn't even close to official. So I am off by one but barely off. Its six not seven, more like six and half realy.

A page on this by an ex-Witness.

http://members.aol.com/beyondjw/quikhist.htm

However that was not the source I was using. I was using Religious Tolerance.org

The only one I know of is that many in 1970's though that the world was going to end because that there according to the Bible it would have been 6,000 years since the first man was created, but this was never official teaching.

That is the implied one. The one I said was postponed once in my original post. I am still pretty sure on the postponement but its in my head I haven't a link unless it is on the site above. I didn't read everything on it as the site is really for JW's.

You haven't heard about the others because your religion is not in the habit of telling all its members everything. Especially the mistakes.

This its ok to lie to non-JW stuff, again were do you get this stuff???

I didn't lie. I don't lie. Lying is for life and death. OK I exaggerate for jokes sometimes. I wasn't making any jokes about the JW's though. I may have made a mistake or two on the details. However its clear I know more about this than you have been told.

My source for that is

http://www.religioustolerance.org/witness.htm

Its a good site for information on all relgions and it isn't in the habit of making things up. If you want you can find links in that article for more information including the official Watchtower site.

Here is the home page for the site I listed above.

The site has been checked by JW's. The errors found were few and far between even when he started the site. Typos mostly. The errors have been corrected. So if you don't know the things on the site you might consider that the information has been deliberatly withheld from you just like the information on the failed predictions about the end of the world.

http://www.beyondjw.com/

With refusal of blood, they dent refuse all medical treatment first off. They are lots of alternate treatments for blood transfusions.

I didn't say they refuse all treatment. However some times the only way to save a life is to give a transfusion even with all the techniques that have been devolped soley to aid JW's like hyperbaric chambers for instance.

I don't have a lot of respect the Christian Scientists ideas on medicine either so you needn't feel I am just picking on the JW's.

Organ transplants have been done with no blood transfusions.
this is the offical website for Jehovah's Witnesses. Please lets get back on the topic at hand.

I was going to then I saw this post. I am sorry you find the truth disturbing but the fact is your religion has predicted the end of the world many times. You may have noticed that you are still around. That means they were wrong. They still feel Armegeddon is coming soon but after embarassing themselves so many times they have simply stopped giving dates.

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by faded glory



Despite proof to the contrary. If you take a picture of Earth..it still looks flat does it not?

I'm assuming your trolling- so the quick answer:

1.) Earth is not flat because of the horizon, notice how things get larger as you approach them and they seem to creep ovwer the horizon.

2.) Satellite imaging, fool.

3.) If the earth was flat, then there would only be 2 dimensions.

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by faded glory
evolution is crap. To think you can make nothing outta somthing is absurd. If nothing is there, nothing is there. You dont have a sterilized world, then one day its teaming with bacteria.

ah, faded glory- evolution is not crap- new species are constantly forming and cross breeding- how do you explain mutations, genetic and otherwise. How do you explain the variation of the human race? How do you explain the cross breeded insects such as the yellow jacket and the praying mantis who mate and produce some sort of insect (some scientist help me here please with the name)

Fish dont hop out of the ocean 30 million years after there appearance, later cause they decide they wanted to one day breathe on land

What about flying fish? they can go above the sea.
What about reptiles?
Things evolved to be better suited to their environments.

How do you explain dinosaur bones?
How do you explain the ancient geological oil deposits- they must have come from somewhere? dead bones.

Do you discount carbon dating? If not, then how do you explain the evolution of humans- there is no missing link- the evolution of human skulls is well portrayed.

[Ethelred]

Lung allready did a good job on the large post by Jack. I said would respond to it today though so I will go ahead and go over it even though he covered it quite well.

Evolutionists say that various changes inside the nucleus of the cell play their part. And foremost among these are the “accidental” changes known as mutations. It is believed that the particular parts involved in these mutational changes are the genes and chromosomes in sex cells, since mutations in them can be passed along to one’s descendants.

Not mere belief. Tested and proven in biology labs all across the world. Its important to make this clear. Mutations are real and they are passed on. They are NOT repaired as repaired damage is not a mutation. Not all changes can be repaired. Nor is mutation the only cause of evolution but it is the only way new species can be formed.

2 “Mutations . . . are the basis of evolution,” states The World Book Encyclopedia.

Such a great source. Its for kids not science. Its not authoritative and I have never seen an encylopedia that wasn't riddeled with simplifications and often just plain wrong information.

3 However, it is not just any kind of mutation that evolution requires. Robert Jastrow pointed to the need for “a slow accumulation of favorable mutations.”

That IS any kind of mutation. Jastrow is not a biologist by the way. In fact few of the people quoted are biologists. Jastrow is a physicist. Asimov was a bio-chemist 50 years ago and never did any research. Sagan was an astronomer. Gliedman is a psychologist.

The quote from Colin Patterson (paleontologist NOT zoologist) is likely from a transcript by an anonomous creationist. From 20 years ago. We DO know about at least some of the master genes NOW. Those are the homeobox genes.

This is a typical mix and match creationist manuever. Take out of context quotes from different people and assemble them as if they were quotes from the Bible.

Considering this person is even using the World Book as a source I think its clear the author knows nothing of science.

But aside from such speculations, it is generally accepted that the mutations supposedly involved in evolution are small accidental changes that accumulate over a long period of time.

True and what follows in the article is an attempt to claim that it can't happen that way. That is what I will be primarily dealing with.

The reproduction of genetic material in the cell is remarkably consistent. Relatively speaking, considering the number of cells that divide in a living thing, mutations do not occur very often.

True as far as it goes. They happen to many cells however as can be seen by how people die from tumors that got started by a mutation. And it ignores the effects of sexual reproduction which increases the chances of mutation.

We are ALL mutatants. We all have changes in our genome.

As the Encyclopedia Americana commented, the reproducing “of the DNA chains composing a gene is remarkably accurate. Misprints or miscopying are infrequent accidents.” 7

Back to kiddy books again. Infrequent on a nucleotide basis. About one a billion. Sounds rare eh? Except that we have 3 billion nucleotides. So that results in three mutations each without taking sexual reproduction into account which increases the error rate.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/ridley-gene.html

It was found in experiments that, for every successful or useful mutation, there are many thousands which are harmful.” 9

Well each one that is noticable. And the mutations were artificially induced with insects where the high rate of reproduction is offset by an almost equally high death rate.

But do they? Would any process that resulted in harm more than 999 times out of 1,000 be considered beneficial? If you wanted a house built, would you hire a builder who, for every correct piece of work, turned out thousands that were defective? If a driver of an automobile made thousands of bad decisions for every good one when driving, would you want to ride with him?

Not to the dead but they don't count. Only the survivors count. They are ones with the benificial changes. Such changes enhance their rate of reproduction. That means that over time they will replace the inferior genes simply by having more offspring that those with the original version of the gene.

These guys just don't understand the time involved. They are always thinking ONE geration. A gene that gives a mere one percent advantage will take over the gene pool in just 100 generations.

If one individual in ten dies from bad mutations then even a thousand bad to one good that means one individual in 10,000 has a gene that is good. It doesn't take long for that good gene to become the one that every individual has.

Does it seem reasonable that all the amazingly complex cells, organs, limbs and processes that exist in living things were built up by a procedure that tears down?

Well since we aren't talking about such a procedure the question has no meaning. The dead don't contribute to the next generation so they aren't tearing anything down in a species.

Its unfortunate for the dead but that is only one individual.

Even if all mutations were beneficial, could they produce anything new? No, they could not. A mutation could only result in a variation of a trait that is already there. It provides variety, but never anything new.

Notice how that claim is only the authors. Nothing at all to support it. Not suprising since its false.

This another thing that shows the author is just plain ignorant about genetics.

Variations can lead to NEW traits. How? Genes get copied twice sometimes. Whole chromosomes can be duplicated or even lost. What that means is that there are two copies of the same gene. Sometimes that will help by causing an increase in the production of a specific protein. Normally that would be neither harmfull nor benificial.

The key though is that it means ONE copy can be retained to produce the needed original protein. The other copy is then free to change as long as the change isn't very bad the original will still be doing the needed job. The extra copy can change to do something entirely new over time.

In PC terms its feature creep. Doubling of genes allows new features to evolve without losing the old ones.

Much of the rest is just attempt to claim examples of real evolution aren't even though they are. It the usual KIND dodge. Odd for an old earth creationist to go that route. I guess he simply doesn't understand what an old earth really means. Billions of years is what it means. Billions of generations not just one.

The finches were still finches. They were not turning into something else, and they never would.

Thats an example of the obfuscation. They DID turn into something else. They became entirely new kinds of finches. KIND is just a dodge. The real world and evolutionary theory deals with species. Once the ancestors of finches weren't birds.

Jack I pointed the flying squirel out to you TWICE now. You have completely evaded it twice. Clearly you can't handle it. It is changing KIND. It is going from a non-flyer to a flyer.

You ask question and you get answers. You have consistently evaded dealing with answers especially if you don't like them because the clearly show you wrong.

How about THIS time you say something about the squirells?

What you have doing is evading the truth and pleading that we become ignorant of science since it is inconvenient. We ask for proof and you give a page of obfuscation, out of context quotes, usupported conclusions, claims of ignorance based on old sources, and the use of encyclopedias as a major source like a kid in elementary school.

[Jack_www]

Some final thougts

Not anther double post!!!!!!

[Jack_www]

Some final thougts

First off, Jehovah's Witnesses do not claim to be prefect and freely admit their mistakes. Members have sometimes though the end was near, but was never official teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Blood transfusions are not without risks. And because of this there are many who do not want blood transfusions because of this. I think Ethelred that you have missunderstood the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses, but cant really tell for sure.

I wont deny that living things change. I also have not tried to evade the flying squirrels issue. There are many things that I have hard time believing could have happened. How could self-reproducing molecules become "alive?" How could they become some sort of DNA then to cell? Also even if the mutations occurred over a long period of time or all at once, how could they have all by chance get the right mutations to produce life as we know it today, to me it seems that natural selection would only weed out bad mutations and even this would not be make it a sure thing. This seems impossible, the odds too great. Seems more reasonable to me that life was created, not that it somehow happened on its own. In addition, there are the physical laws of the Universe, were did these come form? Many scientists think that someone was behind these laws, but I will note most of them are not biologists. When the Universe was at single point of infinite density, were did the energy come from to get the Universe to start to expand, and to be still expanding today? The Universe is also highly organized, lots of energy was needed to put the Universe and all the matter into this state, were did it come form? To me the most reasonable answer would be that a creator is behind it.

Times like this is were I wish I was a biologist, then I could research this subject on my own and look at the evidence directly, instead of having to really on other people. Each day I can see even more clearly that, I have still a lot to learn. I am also going to do some more research into this subject. Well I think that I am done with this subject for now. To really debate this with someone I need to do more research. I am not a biologist; most of my knowledge of science lies in the field of physics, not life sciences. This is not an attempt to evade anything, but I really need to be more prepared and more knowledge when arguing this subject. Knowledge never hurt anyone. Maybe in the future we could start this up again and get someone to judge, like there would be in a real debate. I think that would be neat if we could pull it off.

Bye all.