Narb

A major portion of the resurrection narrative people that tend to forget is the mass invasion of zombies after Jesus' return, don't believe me? Read your bible.

"The graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many." - Matthew 27:52-53

So how are you celebrating the Zombie Uprising of 33 AD?

"The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, against the ruling Qing Dynasty. About 20 million people died, mainly civilians, in one of the deadliest military conflicts in history."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

"After Hong failed on multiple occasions to pass the imperial examinations (about 5 percent of those who attempted the examinations passed them), which would have allowed access to the ranks of the ruling scholarly elite, he experienced a lengthy illness. After spending many days in bed, he recovered with a changed personality. He had received a pamphlet from a Protestant Christian missionary in 1836 after his last failed attempt at the imperial examinations, and his cousin Li Ching-Fang noticed the pamphlet on a bookshelf inside Hong's house. After reading it Li suggested that Hong should read the material. After studying the material, Hong Xiuquan claimed that the illness he had following his imperial examinations was in fact a vision to the effect that he was the younger brother of Jesus, who was sent to rid China of the corrupt Manchu Qing Dynasty rulers. After this alleged vision, he felt it was his duty to spread Christianity (in the form that he developed) and overthrow the foreign rule of the Qing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan

What's your opinion?

Many Theists like to claim evolution is impossible since the chances of it occurring are 10^3000 (1 followed by 3 thousand 0's).

However, this is simply not true for 2 reasons.

1) Evolution is not based on chance, but natural processes. For instance, a snow flake forming by chance is 10^2500, an absurd impossibility. However, we see snowflakes falling each winter (well, not here in Australia), it is due to crystallisation. Evolution is based on natural processes, mutation and natural selection, like crystallisation, this is not based on chance.

2) The number given always does not include the criteria used to produce the number, it is a false criteria fallacy.

However, recently a Theist posed to me a rewording (like the Kalam Cosmological Argument, it is the same argument, just reworded). They posed to me, the number of mutations required to produce a horse is 10^3000. Not only is this obviously a rewording of the previous argument (based on the fact it's the exact same value, and that in 90% of statistical cases, this number is given) it also does not give the criteria used to come up with the value.

But let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that this was a valid number. That it would take 10^3000 mutations to create a horse. That's a pretty high number, so how can we resolve this? By calculating the amount of mutations in lifes history!

Bacteria replicate at a rate of 10^-8 (or once ever 0.00000008 generations) and at a rate of approximately 15-20 minutes (lets assume a conservative 20 minutes). So what now?

Since bacteria reproduce exponentially (2 bacteria produce 4, 4 produce 8, etc, they do not produce linearly, 1 makes 2, 2 makes 3, etc) we can calculate this with the equation 2^x where x is the number of generations. But how many generations have they been reproducing for? According to Wikipedia, "The oldest ancient fossil microbe-like objects are dated to be 3.5 Ga (billion years old)". But how many generations are in 3.5 billion years? That's a very long time. First we have to work in minutes. There are 1.84 x 10^15 minutes in 3.5 billion years, or 184 followed by twelve 0's, we know bacteria reproduce every 20 minutes, so 1.84 x 10^15 divided by 20 equals 9(.198) x 10^13 (or 90 trillion).

From this we can conclude that bacteria replicate 90 trillion times in the duration of lifes existance. But this doesn't seem bigger than 10^3000 does it? It's only approximately 10^14. That's because it is 90 trillion 20 minute intervals. To calculate how many bacteria there will be we need to make this the exponent, which we can conclude will be 2^90 trillion.

But what about the low mutation rate (in this example it is low, our genes mutate hundreds of times each human generation). We simply multiply it by 2^90 trillion. So the final equation is 10^-8(2^90 trillion) or 2^90 trillion divided by 10^8. Simplified this is equal to 10^10^13 or 10^10000000000000.

This calculation demonstrates that the total number of mutations by ONE colony over the duration of lifes existence would amount to 10^10000000000000, much, much greater than 10^3000. This argument is therefore refuted.

I admit that some of the numbers are unrealistic and simplified (there are far too many variables to take into account, mass extinctions, variable mutation rate, etc) however, the number given by Theists are also guilty of this. So I would assume some allowance of simplification is given.

So Y!A answers, what are your thoughts on this? It took me a while to write this, so please, share your comments, or any objections to this. Thanks.

Psalm 137:9 (NAS)

"How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock."

Christianity, a religion of peace.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%...

What are you apologising for?

So there's this really nice girl here on R&S, but i'm too shy to ask her out. I'm not sure what to do, how do I know she likes me? She smiles at me during class a lot. Does that me she likes me?

Well then what do you make of this?

http://www.permaculture.org.au/images/Average_Glob...