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  • ALTHOUGH I'M A CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN (Baptist), I no longer believe that the Bible teaches eternal torment or suffering. The Bible teaches eternal punishment, but it's not eternal torment. In my popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS, I explain how and why teaching of eternal torment entered early into Christianity and how Scriptures have been misinterpreted and taken out of context to support that teaching. ~Babu G. Ranganathan (B.A. theology/biology)

  • very interesting video thanks

  • I have two very close dear friends who are Jewish. One is a psychologist and one is a Rabbi at a Reform Synagogue. My friend, the Rabbi embraces Darwin's Theory of Evolution. He supports science education, and even he is against all attempts to insert Creationism into the school science curriculum. But then, Jews DO NOT go around trying to force Creationism into science textbooks. It's only Christian Fundamentalist who are doing that. Most Reform or Conservative Jews accept Evolution.

  • and at the start of this vid. explain your coccyx? so you dont crap yourself? its a major ligament attachment point!! you would not do so good without this and it is not proof of vestigial tail.

  • @farmski

    See "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry A. Coyne, pages 62-66, for photo evidence and discussion of human vestigial tails and atavisms.

  • @farmski

    "explain your coccyx? so you dont crap yourself?"

    And animals without a coccyx have no bowel control, then? What about the redundant genes we have for the creation of a tail?

    The reason she poses that question is because, from an evolutionary biologists viewpoint, there would be no reason for the existence of the coccyx other than as the vestigial remains of a tail. The minor use it has now could be more efficiently evolved in ways that didn't involve the creation of more bone.

  • why are there absolutely no observable macro-evolution examples? if it happens slowly then there should actually be many examples of every hominid from ape to man, but in-fact there is a massive gap, but if it happens almost overnight, boom! then we should be able to observe it? and why doesnt the fossil record appear consistently in all places? why does the fossil record not appear anywhere in a complete state from top too bottom anywhere on earth? why are out of place artifacts brushed over?

  • @farmski

    "if it happens slowly then there should actually be many examples of every hominid from ape to man"

    Not many dying creatures become fossilized, it is actually quite rare, requiring quite specific circumstances.

    "why doesnt the fossil record appear consistently in all places?"

    For this reason.

    "why are out of place artifacts brushed over?"

    Because until a pattern is discovered, they're near meaningless. A lot of experiments have the rare result which doesn't fit in.

  • Is Darwin the same guy who invented PRO evolution soccer ?

  • Is Darwin they always the same guy who invented PRO evolution soccer ?

  • The human transitional "fossil" record is a joke.

    A tooth becomes a village and a jawbone an entire skeleton.

    It is a myth that only the most gullible or ignorant can possibly believe.

    Then on top of that some monkeys want to say they are the most evolved monkeys. Superior monkies if you will. Get real

    Anyone who really believes that crap seriously needs to have their head examined.

  • @vbarnes156

    "A tooth becomes a village and a jawbone an entire skeleton."

    If you took the time to watch the lecture, you'd have a good idea as to the important of inference. But let me assure you, the human transitional fossil record is vast. More than just a few teeth and a few jawbones. Lots more.

    "the most evolved monkeys"

    Most evolved? A serious scientist wouldn't say that. All the primates have had the same amount of evolution, just down different paths.

  • @vbarnes156 Important = importance*

  • I'm amazed the professors at stanford worry so much about what christians think. Sad really, they should just do their work and not worry.

  • @rolin600 if Christians kept their creationist beliefs in the home and church instead of making repeated attempts to impose it on others in the classroom, they wouldn't have to "worry so much about what christians think". What's "sad" is that they are continually distracted from their work by having to defend science against religious dogma.

  • How clever (HomeleandSecurity), I think you are a good example for what´s going wrong with the american public education system.

    No arguments ?!

    (probably people like you are the people hittler would have liked to be his followers. Don´t ask, just believe and follow)

  • Darwin was just a fevered pedophile. Anyone who believes in his work supports the Nazis, Hitler and pedophilia.

  • Comment removed

  • Anyone else think the guy in the brown jacket

    and blue shit (not bald) reminds them of the

    guy in the Beavis and Butthead movie that

    gets hit with the door as it's kicked in by the

    FBI? He's playing coombaya or something :p

  • This woman rocks so hard!

  • If we don't have the neurones to understand something scientifically, how in hell would 'mystical experience' allow us to understand it? Isn't the assumption that a world other than us exists tested every time something unexpected happens to us - can't we infer that, alongside the consistency of natural laws, by how much more simply, like the lazy driver rather than the ufo, explain nature with consistent laws?

    Norse gods were no more omnipotent than UFOs - nor is YHWH "afraid of iron" Elohim

  • look up annunaki on how we were created

  • 4. In Bible, we find two (2) candidates to be called GOD, but atheists are arguing just

    with ONE,not with other pretendent.

    5. Mostly atheist, are against God's morality and justice

    but never refer the same to other candidate: satan.

    6. Bible maintans evolution after creation, earth have billions of years etc.

    Atheism is a dead concept.

  • @Acmd7

    Interested to see what 2 candidates you refer to - there seem to be more than 2 gods you can draw out of the bible. Athiests tend to promote the idea that a personal creator is almost certainly false, as its extremity complex and would have to *poof* into being fully formed, we have no evidence. Religious morality is more a reason to want to spread non-belief.

    Woo, a theist having trouble with large numbers what a surprise,

    There's more than ample evidence for old earth -none fr young

  • God exist! evidences:

    1. In Bible we find a lot of prophecies which happened and are happening.

    2. If anybody will follow what God asks (ex: praying), everybody will have whatever they (ask)

    want (somebody can call it miracles).

    3. Blasphemies: if anybody will do it, is puniched very soon and anybody is free to try it,

    even right now!

  • @Acmd7

    1)a) we find claimed prophecies in other religions - what reasons do you have for not accepting those religions on the basis of their prophecies, and why are the Bible's prophecies exempt from this?

    b) many books of the bible were written long after the prophecies in question; how can you be sure they are not self-fulfilling prophecies? Much of the evidence that some prophecies were successful comes from these latter books - would you accept prophecies in any analogous situation?

  • @Acmd7

    1)c) Some prophecies in scripture were shown in scripture not to come true; Joshuah 17:17-18 prophecies the cananites will be driven out, but Judges 1:27-29 shows they did not.

    d) more contradict known reality: Isa 17:1 holds Damascus will be utterly destroyed forever, Jos 8:28 held Ai will be destroyed, Isa 14:2 and Jer 51:36 claim the same of Babylon, Ge 15:18, 17:3,8, none of these came true, nor did Dt 1:7-8 which holds Abraham's descendants will conquer land they never have taken

  • @Acmd7

    1) D) Many claimed prophecies especially mesianic prophecies about Jesus were not prophecies at all - is this perhaps one of the reasons you reject other religions?

    E) Conformation bias and false prophecy are well documented in new religious movements - why are these, and other naturalistic means of apparently true prophecies, less probable explanation A Priori than the supernatural? If you are willing to accept natural over magical in other religions, why not your own?

  • @Acmd7

    Can you give me some examples of prophecies that you believe you have evidence have come true? Are these prophecies unambiguous? Are the number of true prophecies more than could be accounted for by chance alone? Have all simpler explanations been ruled out?

    This IS a means of empirically testing the bible though - it just fails the test, as it does with blasphemy, I can blaspheme without being punished though god delivers very temporal punishments in text - usually through followers.

  • @Acmd7

    Oh my Darwin :U I've just realized your probably an atheist trying to show religion is a failed testable hypothesis - if so I'm sorry I didn't see earlier :I

    If not and you are a christian, try the second and third ones and see if God exists.

  • (A) Information is: the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence.

    (B) Information exist independent of its medium.

    (the same information can be stored in one's mind, expressed verbally, written on paper, typed on a computer etc.)

    (C) Code = Language. Language originates in a MIND.

    There ore only two types of language known to man: (1) That of human mind origin (2) DNA code.

    Information is not matter or energy.

    Language is not matter or energy.

  • @Mr88playmaker

    In all the forms you list, information is stored in matter and energy - from the ink on paper tot he molecules in DNA.

    The language of DNA originates in a mind - yours. You interpret the molecules as such.

    How does god prevent evolution/ DNA is constantly changing by mutation, allele distributions are altering in response to drift an selection pressures fast enough for us to observe fixing; artificial selection shows where these slight changes can lead - why not extrapolate back

  • @unassumption (QUOTE): In all the forms you list, information is stored in matter and energy - from the ink on paper tot he molecules in DNA.: (END QUOTE)

    You're equating information with medium. If I call you on the phone to inform you that you've won the lottery, the information is not the telephone.

  • DNA code is empirical proof that biological life forms are a creative product of information and language. i.e.: Nous / Logos

  • @Mr88playmaker Prokaryotes have simpler DNA storage and replication mechanisms than Eukaryotes, and within the bacteria the genetic material is diversely handled. there are clear paths for the molecular replication system to have evolved. All other forms of supposed "irreducible" complexity have been explained from the immune system to the flagella and of course the eye. You do get that 'dna as a language' is a metaphor?

    Explain how DNA evidences let alone proves "creation"

  • First time i've ever watched university lectures out of my own free will. lol. mighty interesting.

  • sure are a lot of christfags here

  • The two main problems which the theory of evolution raises for Christianity are

    (1) Jesus had no knowledge of evolution and believed in the Genesis story of the Creation.

    He could not possibly have been the revelation of God to Man.

    (ii) Evolution overthrows the idea of human immortality, a Life After Death.

    We have evolved from lower forms of life.

    At which point did we acquire this gift of

    immortality?

    The Christian cannot answer this.

  • The Vatican's argument: At some point in our split from from what would become chimps and baboons, God implanted a soul, and gave us immortality.

    Whether or not you believe this, I don't, is up to you.

    Christ could have not told his followers of evolution, because he would also have had to explain DNA, chemistry, and other things, and him not speaking about it does not disprove his being the son of god any more than him not speaking about quantum physics does.

    FYI, I'm a non believer

  • Can Pope Benedict XVI in His Infinite wisdom explain why it took the Almighty several billion years to inject a "Soul" into one of the millions of species which have lived,evolved, become extinct on the earth.

    The Almighty certainly was in no great hurry to create a species with whom He could communicate!!

  • =The Almighty certainly was in no great hurry to create a species with whom He could communicate!!=

    There are plenty of other species that use communication. If god wants intelligent communication why does he select the ignorant to be his followers in heaven?

    I don't see why anyone would choose the dumb people to hang with.

  • Perhaps because he is a poet at heart, and wanted to see it all unfold in it's time? I don't believe it, but I also don't see an obvious argument against that. He wanted to make it all look like no god had a hand in it? It was part of a bet with Loki? (See Heinlein, "Job: A Comedy of Justice") Science doesn't essay an answer here, where evidence and even logic are malleable.

  • @puncheex

    Perhaps its not science thus defined, but whatever principle we're using to say the alien didn't paint the road with the cowpie, would work against a deity. If an lifeform from our galaxy obeying the same physical laws as we do is too unlikely, how much more improbable is a being not even from this universe, of whos composition and mechanisms of action we have only the vaguest information from the most dubious sources. How is the evidence more mailable here, than in the alien case?

  • @puncheex

    I contend ockham's razor is essential to inference, and must be incorporated into a definition of science, we can't presume all explanations are equaliprobable; from this fundamental assumption would come support for the external world and the consistency of natural laws. I'm sure a non-circular case based on prior probabilities or some such could be made for Ockham.

    In short the 'argument' against God making it look like he didn't exist - its just not likely and adds nothing.

  • @unassumption: I agree. My argument is that if you rule out atheism, then there is no logical conclusion; any number of theological excuses come into play logic no longer can choose. Science is the quest for natural explanations. It rules out theological causes a priori, because it seeks out natural ones. It has been successful, in that the natural processes it has uncovered has lead to successful utility and understanding.

  • Excellent point of view ...but, to begin with, there is no scientific evidence of the historical existence of Christ.

    Greetings, rationalistx.

  • @rationalistx lol Jesus didn't know about evolution, LOL you people are laughable.

    Macro evolution is impossible.

    Evolution cannot be observed & cannot be falsified, therefore it is CLEARLY NOT SCIENCE

  • @sgentlemanjack112

    "Evolution cannot be observed & cannot be falsified"

    It has been observed, and it can be falsified. I think you're confusing evolution with God.

    Common ancestry, to the degree science infers it, has not been observed. But speciation has. If animals speciate now, why would they not have always speciated? There is no reason to believe that speciation would have ever stopped.

    "Macro evolution is impossible."

    And there is no scientific basis for this assertion.

  • The Theist religions are the only ones where a single human sin forms the basis for the whole religion. If this is removed the religion fails. The first humans had to commit the sin!

    Deities cannot be scientifically tested but humans can. Humans are subject to natural laws. Adam and Eve are humans. The modern scientific theory of evolution proves that the biblical first humans do not exist. This is a big problem for the theists!

    No Prince of Denmark - No "Hamlet".

  • =Jesus saith unto him, =

    Have you proved Jesus yet?

    Have you proved God yet?

    Don't think scientific problems with evolution at Darwins time equate to proof of God/Jesus at any time.

    =ARE YOU SAVED?=

    ARE YOU SANE?

  • I'm watching these one-a-night and I'm hooked already! This is a great series of lectures and informed discussions*. Many thanks are deserving to Stanford for making these available.

    *Eugenie Scott's explanation and hand puppetry about the three domains: an exemplary example of what I mean.

  • Hooray, Eugenie Scott is one of my heros, always ready to fight the good fight against poisoning the minds of children.

  • Who said that we should "stop science" and "never grow outside of the box". It seems to me that you are making a straw man argument.

    If you make a testable claim science can look at it. But you can't just make shit up and claim you are doing science.

  • Maybe you should write evolution a letter and tell him to stop saying such stupid things. I don't want science to stop neither!

    You are making a lot of empty noise here. Can you substantiate what the "obvious flaws" are? It shouldn't be too hard since they are obvious.

  • OK what is just accepted on faith re evolution.

    We can and do breed animals galore showing evolution works, with a selection system.

    Natural selection is just a summation of all the selective forces in the environment.

    Where is it flawed?

    How does it not work?

    Present some argument or evidence to support your case.

  • Why don't you answer the question posed to you. Substantiate your claims that evolution is flawed. Unless you can do this you are engaging in "empty noise" as the other person commented. A distinction should be made between opinions that are the result of fatuous speculation and explanations supported by a range of evidence. Evolution now has over 150 years of accumulated evidence to substantiate its claims including the many scientific branches.

  • Very cool! ★★★★★

    Katalyzt

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