Baylor University and Evolution

Baylor University in Waco, Texas is the largest Baptist University in the world, and has a pretty good science department.  I always thought the Baptists were creationists/fundamentalists…

From the Biology Department at Baylor University:

Statement on Evolution
“Evolution, a foundational principle of modern biology, is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence and is accepted by the vast majority of scientists. Because it is fundamental to the understanding of modern biology, the faculty in the Biology Department at Baylor University, Waco, TX, teaches evolution throughout the biology curriculum. We are in accordance with the American Association for Advancement of Science’s statement on evolution. We are a science department, so we do not teach alternative hypotheses or philosophically deduced theories that cannot be tested rigorously.”  http://www.baylor.edu/biology/index.php…

From the Baylor University Geology Department:

“Whether biological evolution occurs has NOT been a matter of scientific debate for more than a century. It is considered a PROVEN fact. The specific mechanisms of biological change over time continue to be a topic of active research, and include mechanisms proposed by Charles Darwin as well as more recently developed ideas based on our growing knowledge of genetics and molecular biology. Using the methods of modern science, our knowledge of the fundamental mechanisms of life has grown enormously since the initial characterization of the role of DNA in reproduction, inheritance and evolution in the mid-1950s.”   My emphasis http://www.baylor.edu/geology/index.php…

DOWNLOAD the 1 MB PDF file Evolution and the Fossil Record by Pojeta and Springer.
http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution.pdf

Ice Core Says No Noah’s Flood

“Recently an ice core nearly two miles long has been extracted from the Greenland ice sheet. The first 110,000 annual layers of snow in that ice core (GISP2) have been visually counted and corroborated by two to three different and independent methods as well as by correlation with volcanic eruptions and other datable events. Since the ice sheet would have floated away in the event of a global flood, the ice core is strong evidence that there was no global flood any time in the last 110,000 years.” Paul H. Seely

Paper can be found at:  http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Seely.pdf

The above link is to a Christian site for God believing scientists.  

Just one more hole in the Christian Bibles myths.

“Geology, paleontology, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, population genetics, biogeography, embryology, and others–all independently converge to the same conclusion: evolution happened.” –Michael Shermer–Skeptic Magazine

Man Made Genetics

We’re getting closer and closer folks.

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.
The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA.
The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.  Full story at BBC

P.Z. Myers over at Pharyngula has the scientific explanation of whats going on.

Real Truths About Religion and God

People have responded to many of my posts about religion by asking me where my proofs come from. I suspect these people are just religious believers who want to convert me, and others, who write about non-belief.

There is information on any subject you can imagine on the Internet (as I’m sure you all know), including original research papers on subjects relating to Biblical truth. The popular science-type magazines all have a web presence. And contrary to some Christians beliefs, they are not part of an evil cabal out to satanize all who view them.

I have a blogroll type list of websites I use to gather information from, on the right side of my site…if you’re reading this…you will see it as you scroll down. These are legit sites and they have reliable, mainstream, real world information. If Christians were to ever actually seriously research their Biblical beliefs they would soon see how much they have been misinformed, and how wrong the Bible is.

I am a realist however, and I just put the stuff out there with the hope that it will strike a chord with someone who is searching for the truth, and maybe cause them to go to real world proofs, instead of Hebrew myths, that are a waste of precious time and energy.

The famous site listed below has all the answers to flood myth lined up and they are checkable. Other parts of the site have some of the best general information about scientific origins of the earth, universe, humans, etc. They have been around since the early nineties. If you take time to explore it thoroughly you will find links to original research and real world explanations of our earth, and all who live on, and in it. The people who write there are experts-who happen to not have a Doctorate of Divinity.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

If the Noachian Flood can be disproven (and it has been), then other parts of the Bible are also suspect of being wrong. And there are many other disproven Biblical assertions. Many Christians just don’t accept the truth. They cling very hard to a 2800 year old Hebrew myth, a view of a childish God, that people of the time didn’t have enough knowledge, or intellectual sense of the world, to question.

That the Christian faith has survived this long is not an indicator of its being true. To the contrary, it is an indicator of how easily the church adjusts its theology to conform as much as possible to currant social conventions (think slavery, polygamy, prostitution, kings killing on a whim, etc.). The church is known to burn papers (and people) that disagree with currant theological thought.

Think about the currant ‘state of the religion.’ Now, about 2008 years since the birth of Jesus (?) Roughly 1700 years since Christianity got the official ‘okey-dokey’ from secular rulers, and its still in a state of disrepair. There are maybe thousands of sects and they all differ. Muslims believe in the same God…so they say, and they are out to kill us…for heresy. Catholics believe Protestants practice heresy, and vice-versa. Mormons…who knows what they believe. There is either one that is right…or none is right. There is not two of them who are right…or three, or four…

Through manipulation of human thought and incorrect reasoning, physical threats, actual physical harm, and burning at the stake, or as little as social/societal ostracism, Christians have spread their evil plot to take over the world and control humans…every actions and thought…for more than two thousand years. Think about it for a while; think about the whole long history of Jews and Christians and what they have always wanted from us.

What has been, and is, their ultimate goal? It’s to take over control of all humanity and tell us how to think and act…they actually have that kind of control of a significant portion of the US population…think Bible belt and the Deep South. Churches are the social center and source of information, on how to conform…of many hundreds of thousands or millions of Evangelical Fundamentalist type people. I think those people are afraid that if they don’t belong to a church, they’ll automatically go out and start sinning in the worst possible way.

There is some evolving news about change in the Catholic position on humanity. They are actually starting to accept that humans have a looong history. Go to the site below and check it out. Notice in the upper right hand corner where the paper comes from. That old fossil…the Catholic Church…might have some life and intellect left after all. http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/zim/zim_251adamandeve.html

Below is a quote from the article mentioned above.

“The Catholic position on this is clear. St. Thomas says that “one should not try to defend the Christian faith with arguments that are so patently opposed to reason that the faith is made to look ridiculous.” It is simply nonsense to say that the world is only 6,000 years old (Catechesis, Creation and Evolution, Zenit News, Dec. 19, 2005).” My emphasis.

The Catholics are leading the pack in the changing of theological thought to match what is known to be true nowadays, although their present thought is a little dopey. I look forward to following this change. I also look forward to how the Evangelical Fundamentalists will continue to deny In-Your-Face truth.

Some suggested Google search terms that I have followed: Religion, God, Jesus, El, Elohim, Yahweh, Jehovah, biblical tribes, Scripture, Noah’s flood, Ur of the Chaldeans, city of Dan, city of Laish, sea people, Babylon, age of earth, Hebrews, Christian myth, Sumerians, Akkadians, Mesopotamia, Jericho, Chaldea or Chaldeans, Assyria, Indus valley civilization, ancient Egypt, Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, flood stories, flood myths, Myths, ancient native Americans, Solutrian, Clovis points, cave paintings, Adam and Eve, African civilization(s), Bronze age, iron age, ancient Briton, ancient Europe, Neanderthal, Hebron, Abraham, Lot, biology, Midrash, Torah, Jewish myths, ancient languages, archaeological dating, carbon dating, dating methods, Dendrocronology, stratigraphy, oil geology, Permian, Paleontology, DNA, rNA, genetics, human history, human pre-history, ancient India, ancient Iran, Stonehenge, henges, pyramids, stelas, Rosetta stone, cuneiform writing, hieroglyphs, Euphrates river, Tigris river, Geology, life sciences, and on and on….

The above terms represent maybe one twentieth of the search terms (sorry they aren’t alphabetized) I have used in following the paths of Christian religion. I have been doing this for about two years now, in my spare time. If the site is religious sect sponsored, they will often try to deny real world science by any means they can, including, but not limited to, lying and misdirection. There are a few exceptions that are starting to tackle the problem head on though, and the Catholic Church, as mentioned above, is one of them.

There is not one or two sites that can disprove all things religious untrue, though talkorigins.com comes close. I find you have to visit and really absorb many, many different viewpoints and disciplines and slowly let them simmer in your head. Good hunting.

For latest post go: Here

Is God Even Real?

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything … just give him time to rationalize it. — Robert A Heinlein

Does your religion adapt to new discovery or does it deny the existence of new facts? There are a few that adapt, and although I kinda think this is good, it still bothers me in many ways. I mean, to me religion, because God supposedly creates it, or us, or whatever, should have everything right from the beginning. There should be no questions, or even a perceived need to question anything, because everything meshes perfectly and makes sense from the beginning and explains all, from the start of time, to a thousand years or ten thousand or a billion years into the future.

If a true God created this universe, this galaxy, solar system, Earth, and man/woman, animals, etc., there should be no questions about it at all. Inquiring minds (no sly comments please;) that many people have, should immediately see the answers. There should not be scientists, or just plain folks who have an inquiring intelligence seeing inconsistencies in our existence. There should be no need for the constant bickering and back at you thing that has been going on for the last three or four hundred years now.

Our physical, universe, and such are more and more found to be describable in a testable physical manner. The science doesn’t go away–because it works–and explains in a manner that cannot be denied by reasoning, functioning, intellect. Religion cannot be explained adequately without magic. A phenomenon that has yet to be observed.

People who claim to be scientists and believe in a spirit that lives in the sky, who goes around creating matter and forming stuff, and wanting people to forever fall to their knees to worship her/him and follow this code of conduct that very few, if any people could, with any success, well I think there is something going on that may be a genetic thing. There is something in their DNA or brain connections that predisposes them to think that way. Look at the evidence they bring forth. How long does it take to disprove it by provable fact? If a God did this the truth would be staring you in the face. But it’s not, and never has been, and the assumptions of facts in the Bible are not valid anymore. But, then of course they never were.

The evidence keeps building up, and some otherwise intelligent people keep denying its truth. The real truth should be so in your face that its undeniable….by anyone.

A real, loving God, would not subject untold billions of people to the misery that this world has dished out before modern times…and still does to third world countries. There is no apologetics in existence that can make this right-No God works this way; unless he is a Dark God.

Can you imagine yourself being born into Darfur, or any of a dozen or more countries in Africa, and sitting in the desert as a child, starving to death? Now imagine tens of thousands or millions of your brother and sisters starving right along with you. A God, who sits back, sees this and does nothing, is not a competent God.

Does any of the melodrama that Christian religion attempts to impose on the whole world make logical sense?