₦airaland Forum

JIL:
You must be stupid to assume that You touched a nerve. If there is any nerve that you touched, its your mother's clit. Brainless slowpoke. Fools like you should be used as specimen to determine the heritage of baboons.

I just acquired a new hobby; destroying atheists. I love it and am having fun.


  WORD OF THE DAY: Please do me a favour; shoot an atheist. I will take full responsibility. 

See the sort of people religions breed.

davidylan:
1. you hypocrite is addressing the wrong crowd. What have christians to do with 911, middle east crisis or darfur?

2. What have we to do with the war between Serbs, bosnians and croats?

3. Are christians killing muslims in nigeria?

Dude you hate religion . . . but pls address the right pple.

[size=18pt]David,  what are you gonna say to your co-religionist who wants to shoot atheist for fun.   You see the type of warped marality religions breed?[/size]


Obviously, he cannot win the battle of idea on the intellectual level (having no brain cells) and want to resort to violence. This is nothing new in the history of Christian, for whenever they have lost on the intellectual field they usually turn to violence.

What happened to "turn the other cheek" you hypocrite?

Image123:
@huxley
you've not answered my question or have you again deserted your thread to start many others?
Do you think if/whether/maybe God has hardened your own heart?

Is this not obvious to you that this is the most silly of questions?   I will leave god to harden the hearts of those he most wants to torture and decimate.  That is the sort of business he does, isn't it?

JIL:
Don't you have anything doing.  You waste all your life on nairaland making meaningless posts that make no difference whatsoever. You were created to irritate the world and to demostrate the epitome of foolishness. If my dog was half as stupid as you, I would happilly dash it to a Calabar man.  . Im my lifetime, I have met a lot of jobless people and also foolish ones but this is the first time I'm meeting someone who is both jobless and foolish. Be a real man and get a life.

WORD OF THE DAY: The only difference between a cow and an atheist is that the cow knows its stupid

Ah, Good Christian. I guess this is very complimentary to Calabar men. If you were half as intelligent as that dog (remember, "dog" is god spelt backward) you would attempt these questions, but just as I predicted you can't.

manmustwac:
@Daviddylan
I guess your trying to tell me to post it in the islamic section then?

I suppose so. I have opened up a great thread for him and his ilk in the islamic section. Here is it.

JIL:
Which video?What is the source? Who is the producer?

I wouldn't waste my time chasing a link given by a deranged fool.

Huxley2, or whatever you now call yourself, do you know that a dog is more intelligent than you. That is not an insult, it is even a compliment. A dog recognises its master but you fail to appreciate your maker.

Enough is enough for you and your type. You can not continue to abuse other people's faith and think you can go scot-free. Because you dont have a faith does not give you the right to abuse others. Coward. Come out and lets know who you are! Go F.u.*.k yourself and get a life. Brainless cadaver.


WORD OF THE DAY:An atheist is a fool who looks at himself in the mirror and says I dont exist, its only a mirror 

Looks like someone's feelings have been hurt here.  Did I touch a nerve?  I think I did.  Which means I am doing my job right.  GREAT.

OH,  yes.  I can insult your backward and barbaric religion and your obvious benightedness and get away free.  What are you gonna do about that?  What can you do?  C'mon, idiot, tell me. What can you do?

Yes, and you see the hypocricy in him.  He has the effronterie to swear and curse me.   Do you know what the notion of hypocrite is?  Does not your bible warns (of sorts) against such foul language and  yet you have the gall to poke your stinking arse at the injunction of the bible.

C'mon, go bury your smelly head in the cesspit of the bible and stick your stenchy arse out  to pollute the atmosphere in your home and churches, but don't bring that anywhere near the civilised world or company.

Have they taken the planks out of their eyes before pointing at the mountains in the eyes of the muslims?

This video settles the matter once and for all.

JIL:
@bindex
The funny thing about atheists is that they donot have the capacity to understand deep spiritual matters. Giving you an answer to the above is like forcing an ant to understand the answer to the Poincaré Conjecture. The answer that is within your capacity to understand is that my God created you, your parents and all your relatives.


WORD OF THE DAY: Save the world from insanity, convert an atheist today.

What are spiritual matters? Can you give us some examples?

Is God commanding parents to kill their disobedient children an example of a spiritual matter?

Is being credulous and gullibe required for siprituality?

See the photos here

It may not be immediately obvious to everyone, but one family are convinced they can see the face of Jesus on the lid of a jar of Marmite. Claire Allen, 36, said she was the first to notice the

image on the underside of the lid as she was putting the yeast spread on her son's toast. Her husband Gareth, 37, said he could not believe his eyes when he saw it. Mr Allen, of Ystrad,

Rhondda, said: "The kids are still eating it, but we kept the lid." He explained: "Claire saw it first and called her dad to come and take a photo of it.

"When I first looked at it I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought yeah, she's right - that's the image of Jesus.

People might think I'm nuts, but I like to think it's Jesus looking out for us.

Mrs Allen said her 14-year-old son Jamie had also remarked on the likeness. She told the South Wales Echo: "Straight away Jamie said 'that looks like God', and my other boys (Robbie, four, and Tomas, 11) even said they could see a face.

"People might think I'm nuts, but I like to think it's Jesus looking out for us.

"We've had a tough couple of months; my mum's been really ill and it's comforting to think that if he is there, he's watching over us."

Why do some religionist get so hot under their pants when evolution is mentioned? Is evolution a threat to religious belief?  If it is, why do they consider it a threat?  And what do detractors of evolution make of other religionists who accept evolution?  Do they think that their theology is wrong-headed?

Watch a very good Christian scientist who accepts and defends evolution here.

Promises to be a great video series and by a Christian scientist at that.  What here

pilgrim.1:
I'm surprised at your 'innocence' at face value that you're not aware of such, and yet you've heard of 'new atheism'. Will provide you some in due course.

Can't wait. I hope I am not disappointed.

pilgrim.1:
This is a joke and inconsequential. It's either you are playing hard at understanding simnple issues or simply choose to not understand - which would be magical. To make things simpler for you, my point was this: there's hardly any field of enquiry where diagreements do not occur. That was the plain point I made; and then asking me to provide you with one where it does not occur is simply funny.

Ah, I see you didn't even care to read. Please show me where you read in my responses the very thing you assumed by the highlight? It just seems you're stretching your query beyond what you read in my replies.

Now, you are joking. You referred to the Dawkins-Gould disagreeement to imply that;

1) As advocates for evolution, such disagreement would mean evolution was unproven or wrong, OR

2) Their disputes implies science was wrong-headed

Dispute in science is nothing new and it is hardly worth mentioning. And such disputes usually gets mentioned by detractors of science when they want to denigrate science, rather than to refer to it as evidence that there is health debate in the subject.

Did you refer to the Dawkins-Gould debates as evidence for the health of science or to detract from the process of science?


I invited you many times to show examples in science where such debates are not rife, but you failed to avail.


You are a Christian, a Christian converted from Islam. What objective evidence have you got that Christianity is true and that Islam by implication is false? OR are they both true?

pilgrim.1:
@huxley2,

You need not be disappointed. Perhaps you're only being reactionary, which again is unnecessary. I've often stated that the disagreements that people imagine are only peculiar to religious folks are also very present in other fields of enquiry - and your statement above (especially the highlighted) only buttresses my point. I earlier in this thread said: "it's also interesting that such occurences are not unique to religious institutions", and in another thread which you opened I've also made the point, such as in this one where I opined that - [list][/list]
You could skim through several of my posts in the past where I've repeatedly made the same observation, so I don't think your reaction was necessary.

I asked for a branch or area of science for which there has not been disagreements and sometimes unfriendly disputes.  And I am still waiting.

In fact, science thrive with these disputes, for without this disputes science would not advance.  I do not know of any good scientist who would not change their position were they to be given uncontrovertible evidence that refutes their position.

Religion, on the other hand does not operate like this.  Religion and science are methodologically different is their approach;

Religions is founded on methodological revelation and faith, while science is founded on reason, objectivity, verifiability, repeatability and methodological naturalism.

Take for instance the bloody dispute over the nature of Jesus in the 4th century, ie the Arian Controversy.  Was it settle by objective means?  What is the evidence that swayed the victors of that particular debate?

How can we show objectively that Christian doctrine is true and others are by implication false?

pilgrim.1:
Lol, when I read such enquiries especially from you, it makes me wonder if you're only teasing and pretending to not know, just so it could be taken for granted by the uninformed that such things never occur. Let me ask: have you never heard the term "new atheism"? That's just a starting point, and depneding on your response, I'd know if you're just teasing or serious.

Of course, I am familiar with the term "new atheists", which incidentally I disagree with. But the media like to give a name to everything, so we are stuck this this rather unfortunate misnomer.

The point was that you accused the "new atheists" of quoting and taking things out of context, and I asked you for some examples. And I would like to see some because, I am not aware of such. Note that I did not say that they did or did not. Only that I really LOVE facts and evidence rather than empty assertions.

pilgrim.1:
There's nothing 'intellectually honest' in "admitting" to ignorance while at the same time arguing to negate meaning about existence.

Atheists (particularly the 'new atheists') have done this same thing, so what's intellectually honest in Sam Harris' complaints?

Would be nice to see some examples rather than make empty assertions. Who have the "new" atheists being quoting out of context?

pilgrim.1:
Then I don't consider your initial question was necessary.

Your query was this:
[list][/list]

. . .whereas, my point was about their disagreeing on intricacies:
It's interesting that the initial report has some theists polarised towards evolution; and yet, that is not a comforting thought to atheists. The point in my reply was that even atheists who are inclined towards evolution are not all agreed on the intricacies of their cherished belief. I thought you'd already have known that, for it was not only those two (Richard Dawkins and late Stephen J. Gould) that were at odds, but a handful of atheist evolutionary biologists. I hope this clears things up for you.

Can you show me any branch of science over which there has not been controversy and massive disagreements? Does that make their disputants position a "cherished belief system"? Oh dear, I am disappointed each time we get to this level of cuddling.

pilgrim.1:
Hi again huxley2,

I wonder if you seem to be of the opinion that they were both in perfect agreement?

Whatever difference they might have had, it is secondary to what the evidence or facts say. Whether they were in agreement or not matters less in science.

[size=18pt] The Language of Ignorance[/size]

By Sam Harris:

Reposted from here


In this essay, the bestselling secularist author of “The End of Faith” delivers a scathing review of “The Language of God,” a new book by Human Genome Project head Francis Collins that attempts to demonstrate a harmony between science and evangelical Christianity.

Francis Collins—physical chemist, medical geneticist and head of the Human Genome Project—has written a book entitled “The Language of God.” In it, he attempts to demonstrate that there is “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and evangelical Christianity. To say that he fails at his task does not quite get at the inadequacy of his efforts. He fails the way a surgeon would fail if he attempted to operate using only his toes. His failure is predictable, spectacular and vile. “The Language of God” reads like a hoax text, and the knowledge that it is not a hoax should be disturbing to anyone who cares about the future of intellectual and political discourse in the United States.
Collins’ book reveals that a stellar career in science offers no guarantee of a scientific frame of mind.

Most reviewers of “The Language of God” seem quite overawed by its author’s scientific credentials. This is understandable. As director of the Human Genome Project, Collins participated in one of the greatest scientific achievements in human history. His book, however, reveals that a stellar career in science offers no guarantee of a scientific frame of mind. Lest we think that one man can do no lasting harm to our discourse, consider the fact that the year is 2006, half of the American population believes that the universe is 6,000 years old, our president has just used his first veto to block federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research on religious grounds, and one of the foremost scientists in the land has this to say, straight from the heart (if not the brain):

As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you are right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted….

God, who is not limited to space and time, created the universe and established natural laws that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him. He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to disobey the Moral Law.

According to Collins, belief in the God of Abraham is the most rational response to the data of physics and biology, while “of all the possible worldviews, atheism is the least rational.” Taken at face value, these claims suggest that “The Language of God” will mark an unprecedented breakthrough in the history of ideas. Once Collins gets going, however, we realize that the book represents a breakthrough of another kind.

After finding himself powerless to detect any errors in the philosophizing of C.S. Lewis (a truly ominous sign), Collins describes the moment that he, as a scientist, finally became convinced of the divinity of Jesus Christ:

On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains … the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.

If this account of field research seems a little thin, don’t worry—a recent profile of Collins in Time magazine offers supplementary data. Here, we learn that the waterfall was frozen in three streams, which put the good doctor in mind of the Trinity…
It is at this point that thoughts of suicide might occur to any reader who has placed undue trust in the intellectual integrity of his fellow human beings. One would hope that it would be immediately obvious to Collins that there is nothing about seeing a frozen waterfall (no matter how frozen) that offers the slightest corroboration of the doctrine of Christianity. But it was not obvious to him as he “knelt in the dewy grass,” and it is not obvious to him now. Indeed, I fear that it will not be obvious to many of his readers.

If the beauty of nature can mean that Jesus really is the son of God, then anything can mean anything. Let us say that I saw the same waterfall, and its three streams reminded me of Romulus, Remus and the She-wolf, the mythical founders of Rome. How reasonable would it be for me to know, from that moment forward, that Italy would one day win the World Cup? This epiphany, while perfectly psychotic, would actually put me on firmer ground than Collins—because Italy did win the World Cup. Collins’ alpine conversion would be a ludicrous non sequitur even if Jesus does return to Earth trailing clouds of glory.

While the mere sighting of a waterfall appears to have been sufficient to answer all important questions of theology for Collins, he imagines himself to be in possession of further evidence attesting to the divinity of Jesus, the omnipotence of God and the divine origin of the Bible. The most compelling of these data, in his view, is the fact that human beings have a sense of right and wrong. Collins follows Lewis here, as faithfully as if he were on a leash, and declares that the “moral law” is so inscrutable a thing as to admit of only a supernatural explanation. According to Collins, the moral law applies exclusively to human beings:

Though other animals may at times appear to show glimmerings of a moral sense, they are certainly not widespread, and in many instances other species’ behavior seems to be in dramatic contrast to any sense of universal rightness.

One wonders if the author has ever read a newspaper. The behavior of humans offers no such “dramatic contrast.” How badly must human beings behave to put this “sense of universal rightness” in doubt? And just how widespread must “glimmerings” of morality be among other animals before Collins—who, after all, knows a thing or two about genes—begins to wonder whether our moral sense has evolutionary precursors in the natural world? What if mice showed greater distress at the suffering of familiar mice than unfamiliar ones? (They do.) What if monkeys will starve themselves to prevent their cage-mates from receiving painful shocks? (They will.) What if chimps have a demonstrable sense of fairness when receiving food rewards? (They have.) Wouldn’t these be precisely the sorts of findings one would expect if our morality were the product of evolution?
If one didn’t know better, one might be tempted to conclude that religious dogmatism presents an obstacle to scientific reasoning.

Collins’ case for the supernatural origin of morality rests on the further assertion that there can be no evolutionary explanation for genuine altruism. Because self-sacrifice cannot increase the likelihood that an individual creature will survive and reproduce, truly self-sacrificing behavior stands as a primordial rejoinder to any biological account of morality. In Collins’ view, therefore, the mere existence of altruism offers compelling evidence of a personal God. (Here, Collins performs a risible sprint past ideas in biology like “kin selection” that plausibly explain altruism and self-sacrifice in evolutionary terms.) A moment’s thought reveals, however, that if we were to accept this neutered biology, almost everything about us would be bathed in the warm glow of religious mystery. Forget morality—how did nature select for the ability to write sonnets, solder circuit boards or swing a golf club? Clearly, such abilities could never be the product of evolution. Might they have been placed in us by God? Smoking cigarettes isn’t a healthy habit and is unlikely to offer an adaptive advantage—and there were no cigarettes in the Paleolithic—but this habit is very widespread and compelling. Is God, by any chance, a tobacco farmer? Collins can’t seem to see that human morality and selfless love may be derivative of more basic biological and psychological traits, which were themselves products of evolution. It is hard to interpret this oversight in light of his scientific training. If one didn’t know better, one might be tempted to conclude that religious dogmatism presents an obstacle to scientific reasoning.

Having established that our moral sensitivities are God-given, Collins finds himself in a position to infer the nature of our Creator:

And if that were so, what kind of God would this be? Would this be a deist God, who invented physics and mathematics and started the universe in motion about 14 billion years ago, then wandered off to deal with other, more important matters, as Einstein thought? No, this God, if I was perceiving him at all, must be a theist God, who desires some kind of relationship with those special creatures called human beings, and has therefore instilled this special glimpse of Himself into each one of us. This might be the God of Abraham, but it was certainly not the God of Einstein…. Judging by the incredibly high standards of the Moral Law … this was a God who was holy and righteous. He would have to be the embodiment of goodness…. Faith in God now seemed more rational than disbelief.

I hope the reader will share my amazement that passages like this have come from one of the most celebrated scientists in the United States. I find that my own sense of the moral law requires that I provide a few more examples of Collins’ skill as a philosopher and theologian…


On the question of why God simply doesn’t provide better evidence for his existence:

If the case in favor of belief in God were utterly airtight, then the world would be full of confident practitioners of a single faith. But imagine such a world, where the opportunity to make a free choice about belief was taken away by the certainty of the evidence. How interesting would that be?

One is tempted to say that it might be more “interesting” than a world unnecessarily shattered by competing religious orthodoxies and religious war, only to be followed by an eternity in hell for all those who believe the wrong things about God. But, to each his own.

How does Collins settle the problem of theodicy—the mystery of why there is evil and misfortune in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly benevolent God? He takes it very much in stride:

Science reveals that the universe, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evolutionary process. The consequences of that can include the unpredictability of the weather, the slippage of a tectonic plate, or the misspelling of a cancer gene in the normal process of cell division. If at the beginning of time God chose to use these forces to create human beings, then the inevitability of these other painful consequences was also assured. Frequent miraculous interventions would be at least as chaotic in the physical realm as they would be in interfering with human acts of free will.

Any intellectually honest person must admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Secular scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point. Believers like Collins do not.

But why was God obliged to make cell division susceptible to the perversity of cancer? And why couldn’t an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly benevolent God perform as many miracles as He wanted? There isn’t time to entertain such questions, however, as Collins must solve all outstanding problems in the science of cosmology:

The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning. I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.

It is worth pointing out the term “supernatural,” which Collins uses freely throughout his book, is semantically indistinguishable from the term “magical.” Reading his text with this substitution in mind is rather instructive. In any case, even if we accepted that our universe simply had to be created by an intelligent being, this would not suggest that this being is the God of the Bible, or even particularly magical. If intelligently designed, our universe could be running as a simulation on an alien supercomputer. As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a Creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To insert an inscrutable God at the origin of the universe explains absolutely nothing. And to say that God, by definition, is uncreated, simply begs the question. (Why can’t I say that the universe, by definition, is uncreated?) Any being capable of creating our world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed with untiring eloquence, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.

[size=18pt]Any intellectually honest person must admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Secular scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point. Believers like Collins do not.[/size]

The major and inescapable flaw of … [the] claim that science demands of atheism is that it goes beyond the evidence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.

Is disbelief in Zeus or Thor also a form of “blind faith”? Must we really “disprove” the existence of every imaginary friend? The burden of producing evidence falls on those making extravagant claims about miracles and invisible realities. What is more, there is an enormous difference between acquiring a picture of the world through dispassionate, scientific study and acquiring it through patent emotionality and wishful thinking—and only then looking to see if it can survive contact with science.


[size=18pt]Somewhere during the course of his scientific career, Collins acquired the revolting habit of quoting eminent scientists out of context to give an entirely false impression of their religious beliefs.[/size]

Consider the following fact: Ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. There are two very different questions one could ask about a fact of this sort, if one wanted to assess the reasonableness of believing in God. One could ask, “Is this fact compatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God?” Or, one could ask, “Does this fact, alone or in combination with other facts, suggest that an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God exists?” The answer to the first question is always, “Well, yes—provided you add that God’s will is utterly mysterious.” (In the present case, He may have wanted to destroy 99% of his creatures for some very good reason that surpasses our understanding.) The answer to the second question is “absolutely not.” The problem for Collins is that only the second question is relevant to our arriving at a rational understanding of the universe. The fact that a bowdlerized evangelical Christianity can still be rendered compatible with science (because of the gaps in science and the elasticity of religious thinking) does not mean that there are scientific reasons for being an evangelical Christian.

Collins’ sins against reasonableness do not end here. Somewhere during the course of his scientific career, he acquired the revolting habit of quoting eminent scientists out of context to give an entirely false impression of their religious beliefs. Misappropriation of Einstein and Hawking, while common enough in popular religious discourse, rises to level of intellectual misconduct when perpetrated by a scientist like Collins. Where either of these physicists uses the term “God”—as in Einstein’s famous “God does not play dice…”—he uses it metaphorically. Any honest engagement with their work reveals that both Einstein and Hawking reject the notion of Collins’ God as fully as any atheist. Collins suggests otherwise at every opportunity.

In his role as Christian apologist, Collins also makes the repellent claim that “the traditional lore about Galileo’s persecutions by the Church is overblown.” Lest we forget: Galileo, the greatest scientist of his time, was forced to his knees under threat of torture and death, obliged to recant his understanding of the Earth’s motion, and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life by steely-eyed religious maniacs. He worked at a time when every European intellectual lived in the grip of a Church that thought nothing of burning scholars alive for merely speculating about the nature of the stars. As Collins notes, this is the same Church that did not absolve Galileo of heresy for 350 years (in 1992). When it did, it ascribed his genius to God, “who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions.” Collins clearly approves of this sordid appropriation, and goes on to say that all the fuss about Galileo was, in the end, unnecessary, because “the claims that heliocentricity contradicted the Bible are now seen to have been overstated….” (And what if they weren’t overstated? What then?) It is simply astonishing that a scientist has produced such a pious glossing of the centuries of religious barbarism that were visited upon generations of other scientists.

If one wonders how beguiled, self-deceived and carefree in the service of fallacy a scientist can be in the United States in the 21st century, “The Language of God” provides the answer. The only thing that mitigates the harm this book will do to the stature of science in the United States is that it will be mostly read by people for whom science has little stature already. Viewed from abroad, “The Language of God” will be seen as another reason to wonder about the fate of American society. Indeed, it is rare that one sees the thumbprint of historical contingency so visible on the lens of intellectual discourse. This is an American book, attesting to American ignorance, written for Americans who believe that ignorance is stronger than death. Reading it should provoke feelings of collective guilt in any sensitive secularist. We should be ashamed that this book was written in our own time.



Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation. He is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and has studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions, along with a variety of contemplative disciplines, for twenty years. Mr. Harris is now completing a doctorate in neuroscience. His work has been discussed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, The Economist, The Guardian, The Independent, The Globe and Mail, New Scientist, SEED Magazine, and many other journals. Mr. Harris makes regular appearances on television and radio to discuss the danger that religion now poses to modern societies. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. Several foreign editions are in press. Mr. Harris lives in New York City.

pilgrim.1:
You know, huxley2, reports like this are sure to catch your fancy - as much as it arrests the interests of many others, both religious and non-religious. However, it's also interesting that such occurences are not unique to religious institutions. On the same subject of evolution, it's not secret that two evolutionists were in very bitter feud up until the demise of one of them. Their names? Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen J. Gould - their quarrel was quite serious, both were atheists and both did not agree with each other on the intricacies of their cherished beliefs.

People interpret issues differently because they see them differently - and that is not only among and between religious people, but also among atheists. Who 'emerges' the 'winner' is also only a matter of how the public interprets the outcome.

Hello Pilgrim.

Are you serious about Dawkins and Gould disagreeing over evolution? Really? What was the bone of contention?

m_nwankwo:
I am not making a contribution to the biblical passage that the poster cited in framing his questions. Rather I am only concerned with what science has to say about blood. David is correct on the role of blood and his scientific descriptions are accurate in my view. The human body as it is cannot survive without the blood. One can say that without the blood, the human body dies. It is so self evident that I wonder why it is being contested. In future, I do not think that is feasible to generate artificial blood from precursors that have no direct bearing with the natural blood. Thus in future, it may be possible to program stem cells to mature into blood cells and plasma but such a product is not artificial, rather it is a reproduction of the natural process of blood production. I would have made a contribution on blood transformation but since the poster seems to be concerned about what the bible says about it, I have nothing to say.

I do not think that the role of the blood in higher animals is in dispute at all here.  None of my post not those of my colleagues dispute that point.  On the other hand, we all acknowledge that the blood is the tissue that pervades the entire blood, performing a VITAL role.

The theological point was whether LIFE was in BLOOD, which is what David and his ilk are evading although he clearly referred to Lev 17 which makes this point.   If LIFE is in blood, in what way is it contained within the blood?

On the issue of artificial blood, am afraid to say that because blood precursor might be used to seed any form of artificial blood makes such blood unartificial.  I disagree.  On that basis, notthings whatsoever could ever be consider artificial because whatever one does would entail the use of already existing material.

davidylan:
I think that is totally wrong. Take away the bone marrow, how do you generate the WBCs in the blood?
How would antibodies circulate in the blood?
How would your artificial blood know when to release clotting factors?

this is basic science dude.

just say you dont understand both passages. its ok.

I never thought any of these where considered regulatory, but like I said I could be wrong.

The bone marrow is what makes the cells, but it is not blood.  It secrete cells into the liquid medium just like other endocrine organs secrete their hormones into the blood.  But these organs, not their secretions is blood.

Clotting factors are release as a result of the detection of some chemical signals.  It is not beyond to wit of man to mimic this process exactly, is it.  After all, this is what happens in many of the chemical plants all over the world.   Or do you think there is some little fairies that do it?

davidylan:
Your question again is meaningless . . . while you can always obtain a long term artificial heart, you cant obtain long term artificial blood.

Go back and read again . . . there is nothing like "artificial blood". That is a misnomer . . . you have volume expanders or oxygen therapeutics. The reason why is because they only fulfill a very short term need in case of acute blood loss. blood does a lot more than carry oxygen, it regulates electrolytes important for maintaining heart function, WBCs are important for mounting an immunological response, hormones from endocrine glands are transported in blood, blood removes waste from organs of the body, platelets are critical for clotting, antibodies are secreted into blood . . . all these things that artificial blood cannot do.

So to claim that we can one day substitute blood is nothing but a joke. There is a reason the body was designed to replenish blood frequently but not other tissues. Other tissues can survive damage, losing the capacity to generate blood is fatal unless you do a bone marrow transplant.

I agree it is a MIGHTY challenge to artificially replace what the blood of the body does naturally. But remember, blood is only a transport medium, albeit a VERY important one.  I do not think is performs any regulatory functions ( I stand corrected).  Other organs secrete substances into the blood which then carries them to their site of activity.  Its function is simply mechanical, so in principle there is no reason why it could not be artificial created.  The challenges fo achieving this are technological.   Remember, the same sort of argument used to be said of the heart, but today heart replacements are possible in many different forms.

davidylan:
The same paul said here - Col 2:16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

You dont seem to have the capacity to understand the bible.

This only makes it worse.  It shows what a crazy bundle of contradiction and confusion the bible is.  It says one thing on one page and several pages later says the direct opposite.   Which of these two passages takes precedence and why?  That is what I would like to know.

davidylan:
I have never denigrated science . . . on the contrary.

I have rather made sure that charlatans like yourself dont get away with using science as a cloak for your unbelief.

OK, let us examine that, David.  

1)  What does science say about the age of LIFE on earth?

2)  Why is there no scientific evidence that proves that mammals life in the pre-cambrian?


Let us see how a scientist-in-entertaining  would answer these questions


Can't wait to see his answers and I am already preparing my belly for a good laugh.  

David,

What about artificial blood, which seems to be doing almost as good a job as real blood?  Unlike other tissue in the body, blood is a tissue that needs constant replenishing.  It it were possible to get the our bodies completely bathed in artificial blood all the time and fine a way of replenishing and refreshing the supply, then I think it would be possibel to sustain life with only artificial blood.  But said technology is centuries in the future,  just like medieval man would have been aghast at pacemakers, dialysis 500 years ago.


On a different not, in the NT, this is what Paul said;

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, [size=16pt]from the meat of strangled animals and from blood[/size]. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” (Acts 15: 19-21)


What ddid he mean here?  That Christians should avoid eating blood?    Is it really possible to truly avoid eating blood if you are not vegan/vegetarian?   Do you know how much blood is contained within a joint of steak?

davidylan:
The bible defines man as a Spirit, soul and a body . . . obviously it didnt mean that blood is that spirit because it is simply a part of the body.

When Lev 17 talked about blood being the "life" of the body, it simply meant that blood is an absolute requirement for you to continue existing in your mortal bodies.

I'm about tired of these pinging back and forth from intransigent illiterates.

is

Now, you just made that up, didn't you?  The text is there, plain and simple for everyone to read, and it says nor implies nothing of the sort.

davidylan:
I have no idea why this is still a problem. Blood is the life of the body in one sense - if there were no blood in you there'd be no life in you . . . i.e. you'd be dead in less than 2 mins. It doesnt mean that the essence of your nature is in the blood. It simply means that you ABSOLUTELY require blood to continue surviving in your mortal body.
Do you need to lose blood to understand this?

The heart serves one important purpose - to pump blood through the body. You can replace a heart with a pump, you can live with a defective heart using a pacemaker but you cant replace your blood and live another 2 yrs. you cant live with leukamia and survive another 5 yrs. your heart is important but you can do without it . . . you cant do without blood.

Do i have to bring out an elementary book to point this out to you?

Well, you are running away from the comment which is at the root of the debate;  and it is Lev 17:

davidylan:
I'm sorry, its a new day but permit me to call this the daftest post i ever read in a long time.

How can blood carry donor "character traits" and "nature"? Did Lev 17 really say that? Here is what it said - Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

Now that is not the same as the character traits being in the blood. It simply agrees with the clearly medical FACT that blood is the life of the body. If you were to lose a mere 20% of your blood volume you WILL go into hypovolemic shock and die.

Is the life of the flesh is in the blood: ?  Is this statement true?  Whereabout in the blood tissue is the LIFE?  That is what we want answers to,  Davidylan.

davidylan:
Is that the topic of the thread? When you block heads hit a dead-end you start grasping at straws.

But that is your own opinion. you dont know what was of utmost priority in the mind of the bible writers. If they had to write down EVERYTHING you expect to find in the bible we'd probably need a truck to carry it to church on sunday.

We do NOT like it when people spread falsehood as gratuitously as you do. On the one hand you try to pass off yourself as a [pseudo]-scientist and on the other you do your utmost of impede, malign and denigrate science enterprise. What a shame and sham.

davidylan:
I repeat .  . Lev 17 wasnt talking about those lifeforms, it was specific about animals with blood that the Jews would kill for food. For them, blood is the life of the body.

you're off the rails with your rant.

Granted, but let us see what you said earlier;

davidylan:
I'm sorry, its a new day but permit me to call this the daftest post i ever read in a long time.

How can blood carry donor "character traits" and "nature"? Did Lev 17 really say that? Here is what it said - Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

Now that is not the same as the character traits being in the blood. It simply agrees with the clearly medical FACT that blood is the life of the body. If you were to lose a mere 20% of your blood volume you WILL go into hypovolemic shock and die.

You appear to disgree that "blood carries the donor character traits and nature", but you agree that life is in the blood, by quoting Lev 17.  Is this really true?

If the donor's character traits and nature are NOT in his blood,  is his life in his blood?   Which component of his blood carried his life?  The white cell, red cells, plasma, etc, etc?  How much of it is necessary to "carry his life".

In a blood transfusion center, is every container of blood a sample of someone's life, or a proportion of someone's life in the container?   What if blood of the same type are mixed together, do you get a multi-personality blood?

davidylan:
What a serious shame.

It is true that blood is just one of the organs in the body . . . but it IS THE MOST IMPORTANT. without blood your other organs are as good as useless.

1. When blood clots in any artery of the heart, the muscles supplied by that particular artery die almost immediately and is what you know as a heart attack (myocardial infarction). Depending on the severity of the muscles involved, you could die.

2. A brain aneurysm (blood loss from a burst artery in the brain) is one of the fastest and silent killers known.

3. Without blood, your brain can only survive no more than 4 minutes as it requires oxygen to survive. Once you're brain dead you're as good as gone.

4. Try cutting your wrist and draining only 10-15% of your blood . . . if you survive without medical attention then come back here to tell us that blood is not the life of the body.

I NEVER denied any of the above.  Yes, blood is one of the organs (or tissues) that allows LIFE,  but it is NOT LIFE  for life exists in many forms without blood.   For "higher" lifeforms blood is absolutely vital,  but for other forms of life it is not and they have managed to survived for billions of years without it.

davidylan:
I'm sorry, its a new day but permit me to call this the daftest post i ever read in a long time.

How can blood carry donor "character traits" and "nature"? Did Lev 17 really say that? Here is what it said - Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

Now that is not the same as the character traits being in the blood. It simply agrees with the clearly medical FACT that blood is the life of the body. If you were to lose a mere 20% of your blood volume you WILL go into hypovolemic shock and die.

Utter rubbish.  The blood like many of our other organs (heart, liver, kidney, brain, lungs, etc, etc) is a vital organ for "higher" animals.  But does it mean that it carries the LIFE of the organism?  How about organism that life but do not have blood?  Where do they get their LIFE from?

davidylan:
All this can be summed up in a single sentence - you simply do not understand my side of the story but are simply writing out of a pre-concieved anti-me bias based on earlier interaction on previous posts.

I said this on another post and will repeat it here - rather than science being an indictment against the bible, it has actually turned out to be an important tool in understanding how amazing God really is. Is the bible a science textbook? No. and i have never intimated so.
Is science bad? No! If not i wouldnt be a scientist myself.

The bible actively promoted learning, one of the early disciples (Luke) was a greek doctor, obviously he wasnt practicing his trade by reading the teachings of Christ alone! Simon was a fisherman, a trade that required at least a rudimentary knowledge of oceanography . . . did that stop him from being one of the leaders of the early church? No.

So the problem here is NOT science . . . you seem to have the idea that i'm saying science is bad and we shld simply hug the bible . . . that is far far from the truth. [/b]The bible was not written by a bunch of learned scientists so obviously there was a lot they didnt know about the world around us, no one expects to go read the bible to understand the principles of physics . . . infact Genesis simply says "let there be light" . . . we are not told the speed of that light, anything about how it is reflected, nothing on its physical properties . . . we simply know that "and there was light".

Another point in your diatribe that caught my attention was this - [b]You don't have to disprove science and the tremendous knowledge of the world it has helped us acquired because you want to prove the biblical assertions that we all believe through faith.

where in any of my earlier posts was i trying to "disprove science"?   [size=18pt]I am a scientist-in-training, why would i want to disprove my own profession[/size]? Does that make a shred of sense?

My point was simple - science has taught us a ton . . . but is it the answer to the most critical questions about how the earth appeared, why we could not have simply appeared by chance or "evolved" from simple organisms? Apparently NO!
Science has its limits . . . it is just sad that many who dont even understand the basic principles of science try to use it as a cloak to justify their unbelief.

It is one-thing to doubt the bible, i have no problems with that . . . but to use UNVERIFIED, UNSUBSTANTIATED scientific theories to debunk the theory of creation is pretty absurd.

It would be a cold day in hell the moment many of you start commenting on topics free of bias and without coming here with a chip on your shoulders.

You cannot be serious!!!!  Are your for real - A scientist in training?   Have you imbibed the principles and philosophy of the scientific method?   It does not look like you have.