I think a better question for debate would be: "Is NowASaint afraid of atheists?"
After all, you wouldn't expend this much time and effort trying to bring atheism down at every opportunity, if you were secure in your own beliefs. The fact you seem to hate atheism implies you're afraid they might influence you and change your mind.
Either way, you're obviously a "real" Christian whereas I never was, so this is clearly the way Christ would have acted.
"You're stupid, you're going to hell, now follow me!"
Oh wait...
It benefits the pre-modern society as its teachings encourage people to accept the status quo "because it's how God intended".
In a world with low life expectancy, it provides a comfort blanket for those who expect to die young.
However, it's not so beneficial when faced with the social and technological progress of the modern world, as it is often a conservative force that doesn't want to lose its power over people.
I mean, so does the constant pathological desire to spread one's views by creating a hundred new debates every day with the same topics and buzzwords, and not replying to opposing points. It doesn't mean it's a mental disorder.
Onto the actual topic, I did respond to you when you posted this in a debate earlier -- as I have done the last few times you've taken a debate argument into a new debate -- but like the other times, I'm still awaiting a reply.
There are three main "brands" of Islam: Sunni, Shia and Sufism. Sunni Islam has a small branch called Salafi, which is responsible for a disproportionate amount of radicalisation, and has also killed a lot of mainstream Sunnis.
Sufism is generally quite peaceful.
Shia is seen as being relatively peaceful and the literature contains a lot less violence and more guidance on how to resist oppression in an ethical way. This is because the Shia school faced less political oppression. Shia Muslims have also not given up itjihad (I assume you know what this means, since you know about Islam).
Sunni Islam is a larger group (and I will impress upon you that like all religious groups, it is composed of individuals who do not all think as a collective). However, it has been influenced more by Wahabism (I assume you also know what this means?) which has resulted in schisms, meaning radical groups like Salafi exist.
The problem is that the media and many politicians, who don't know any better, lump all types of Islam together, which is a bit like lumping Catholics and Protestants together and blaming all followers of Christianity for something like the Magdalene Laundries.
I'm not sure how humanity can justify making other living things suffer for the sake of its own vanity.
I can see why testing pharmaceuticals on animals may be justified as animals like mice are argued to have less of a capacity for suffering. But for the sake of beauty and skincare, we should either test on artificial skin grown in the lab, or get people to volunteer to test it.
I seem to recall seeing something from Fox News where the (male) newsreader descended into huge, globbing fake tears because of some news story where someone wasn't being a proper patriot, or something. "I'm sorry... I just LOVE THIS COUNTRY SO MUCH... HOW COULD PEOPLE DO THIS?"
Not only unprofessional, but incredibly manipulative.
After the Manchester attack I was curious to see how the American news might sensationalise it so I went on Fox News. I immediately became suspicious... all the "advisors" they had on the air were unusually attractive, immaculate-looking young women who looked like they were fresh out of college. These "advisors" weren't asked any questions; the male newsreader sat on the sofa between them and monopolised the discussion, while draping himself around them. There was another advisor, an older woman via video link, who was being pressed for a "woman's" view on the tragedy like she had some magical insight because of her chromosomes.
I would have laughed, had I not realised this was the sort of everyday viewing the right-wing consumed.
https://www.youtube.com/
The video link is an example of Fox News being a clown network.
I've never been so thankful for the BBC and Sky News. The level of professionalism on a lot of British TV news stations seems to be much higher.
If we were able to solve all real problems on Earth (though I would argue that money would still need to be spent in order to maintain the solutions to these problems), I'd say it'd be worth it to investigate aliens.
However, I think alien investigation would probably be more likely to yield results if we were to send out probes in our own Solar System to explore potential hotbeds for life, like the moon Ganymede which contains ice, or if we were to investigate comets like the Rosetta probe did.
If we are to discover alien life is possible, we are much more likely to be successful if we start small. If we discover bacteria on another moon or planet, that's the point where we've established life exists elsewhere, and we could go back to beaming radio messages.
No, I don't think you have to know or believe you're an oppressor to be one.
Obviously it's much clearer-cut if you know you're squashing certain people down, but you can be unaware of what you're doing and still be squashing those people down.
For example, you could be a man in the 19th century who genuinely believes women do not have the logical capabilities to make a sensible choice, and is worried that to allow them the vote would be to doom the country. This may be due to Victorian ideas or the kind of "science" that being peddled about by phrenologists etc. at that time.
You could have been taught in school that Jews are a threat to the Aryan race and if you don't have any reason to question it then you'll believe it just as surely as you would if you'd been taught the earth was flat.
I acknowledge it also paints the human race in a bad light to see everyone as either an oppressor or a victim. So while we may play the role of one or the other at times, our power shifts through our lives. So a child is "oppressed" in that they have less power than the adults in charge, but they can still take the role of a playground bully. A low-end office worker may have less power than his boss, but he can still go home and beat his wife. His wife may hold another sort of power (e.g. financial or social) over him, and so it goes on...
Oppression is not always "bad" (for example, letting pets or young children do whatever they like is probably not a good idea).
For the most part it's power dynamics and I also don't agree with the notion that all white people (or men, or straight people, or able-bodied people) are oppressors and all black people (or women, or gay / queer people, or disabled people) are victims. Some groups may or may not have certain advantages or generally hold more power in society, but it's too complex to try and draw generalisations.
I'll take this side to play devil's advocate.
"Being the oppressor" is subjective. You could argue that you are the oppressor if you are directly allowing oppression to take place. For example, a man in the late 19th century using physical force to keep his wife in the kitchen and out of the polling station, or a white person in 20th century America forcing a black person to the back of the bus.
There is also the argument that if you are complicit in oppression, or if you are allowing yourself to benefit from the oppression without doing anything to stop it, then you're part of the oppressing group.
Examples include:
The daughter of a slave owner who is in full knowledge of what her father is doing, but chooses to ignore it because she has a very comfortable and wealthy life. She uses dehumanising slurs to refer to the slaves and enjoys watching them get punished, though she doesn't oversee or punish them herself.
A youngster in 1930s Germany who believes the Jews to be evil. When he goes out with his parents, he sees their behaviour towards them and doesn't stop it or even consider that it is wrong. He and his school friends talk about what they want to do to Jews "to help save Germany" but never carry out their fantasies.
A young woman in modern day Russia has three older brothers whom she knows routinely beat up gay men coming out of underground haunts in central Moscow. She doesn't particularly agree with what they're doing, but she doesn't do anything to try and stop them.
We could expand that to say that two centuries ago, a specific class of people (white slave owners and their families in the Deep South) were the oppressors. So yes, classes of people can be oppressors.
However, expanding this to an entire skin colour, gender or sexual orientation is very dangerous as it implies that huge groups of diverse people who don't hold a central shared viewpoint all think exactly the same way.
I don't think they should be completely logical but logic is far more important to a debate than emotion.
When the debate is on a more objective topic (for example, arguing about whether something is real), logic is especially important because the side with the most logical reasoning is more likely to be the one that's correct.
When it's something more subjective, such as whether something is moral, emotional reasoning has more of a role to play but should not be used as a crutch.
Emotion tends to be what people resort to when they have no logic to back their arguments up. As someone who prefers to stay calm and logical, it irks me if someone's argument is nothing but emotion, as that's when the fallacies usually start.
This isn't an answer to the question.
The question focuses on a god's influence over human life. Not the universe.
Your answer could equally well be given by a deist, who does not believe in a god who intervenes in human affairs, but who believes a conscious entity of some description brought the universe into being.
It is also possible that something can be created from your "magic nothing": http://www.popsci.com/science/article/
https://phys.org/news/
I'm not particularly opinionated on this matter, but the No side needs some love.
SETI costs $2.5 million a year. In the grand scheme of things, and considering how much countries like the USA spend on other things, that really isn't very much.
Even if radio waves travel at the speed of light, our nearest star (excluding the Sun) is just over 4 light years away. For a contact to be successful, there are a lot of things that would need to happen:
1. The region of the universe where the radio waves are going must contain at least one star with a planetary system.
2. At least one planet in that star's planetary system must be capable of sustaining life.
3. The life-sustaining planet must have life on it.
4. That life must be reasonably evolved (not bacteria).
5. That life must be of human-level or above intelligence. For example, dinosaurs are complex life forms, and the likelihood of finding something else so complex close by is very low, but they would not be of sufficient intelligence to be able to respond.
6. That life must have the technology to detect the transmissions from Earth. Don't forget that before the 20th century, we would not have been able to detect the transmissions. So we are assuming the life is in the equivalent of our 20th century or later.
7. The transmissions must come through properly.
8. That life has to recognise the transmissions as being extra-terrestrial.
9. That life must have the technology and willingness to respond to us.
10. Back on Earth, assuming the SETI project has not been abandoned or humans have gone extinct, we have to still have the ability to respond to the signal.
11. Then what?
We would not be able to visit the aliens, learning things from them would be very difficult given the length of time transmissions take, and there is the chance the life would be hostile.
As can be seen the probability of getting a response in a nearby system is so absurdly low it begs the question of why we don't put the money to better use.
Spend it on better telescopes, better instruments, more scientists. Or stop looking out to the stars and focus on improving life for people on Earth -- the life that we know really exists.
Pal, you're an atheist.
You're an atheist for every single god that exists or has ever existed, with the exception of the Jewish one. You don't believe in Thor, Ra, Woden, Guanyin, Susanoo, Kukulcan or Vishnu. I just went one god further than you.
If you'd been raised in a different culture or at a different period of history you'd believe in a different god and think the Christians were the heretics.
If your only critique of agnosticism -- not being sure if God exists, or not being particularly fussed because it is not impacting your life -- is that it's "stupid" then I think you need to reexamine your own beliefs.
You're a parrot
Funny you call me a parrot when you have two identical responses you rattle off in every debate no matter the subject:
"God did this, atheists are fools for not seeing it!"
"Repent you sinner for you will be cast into the lake of fire and burn in hell for all eternity."
Dermot... he thinks I'm Irish because my profile says "United Kingdom"... he must not have done too well in his world history exam!
When my Irish friend was complaining about not having done as well in his Leaving Certificate exams as he'd wanted, I should have reassured him that they don't actually exist...
This is priceless.
Not really. The majority of environmentalists want to live a relatively nice lifestyle, but the thing that sets them apart is that they try and avoid waste and an excessive carbon footprint.
It would be hypocritical if you were taking a lot of unnecessary hot showers or driving places you could realistically walk.
But a lot of environmentalists are happy to simply try and reduce their harm to the environment (e.g. by making sure they recycle as much as possible, not leaving lights on in rooms that aren't being used, cycling instead of driving and so on).
You completely missed the fact the original post was mocking the ancients for believing gods came from water. The idea that humans were made out of earth is really not that different.
You are going to act that stupid and then expect me to read your twisted renderings of my statements and your stupid responses?
I don't know, but you seem to expect me to, so may as well extend the courtesy.
Atheism is soooo stupid.
I'm not an atheist but I still disagree. Disbelieving in a god isn't stupid.
You just can't face reality, can you?
Most atheists would argue that the reality we can see is the one that exists. As for not being able to face reality, atheists aren't the ones with the afterlife comfort blanket. When you're dead you're dead and that's it. It might be scary, but it's better than the idea that you can go to heaven as long as you do x, y and z.
You hope to be exonerated in death and exempt from Hell, don't you?
I don't want to go to any afterlife, thank you. Being forced to continue to exist after one's natural life has ended sounds like torture no matter how pleasant it is. And it's not about being "exonerated" because if I die and there's no afterlife, there's nobody to gloat to. I wouldn't even know I was "exonerated".
You think you are better, stronger, and smarter than God, don't you?
Atheists don't believe there is a God, so there's no competition.
If there actually was an all-powerful God then God would win.
God says you are a fool and I have to agree with God.
Only your version of God. The thousands of other gods which have existed across the millennia -- which, by the way, have no more or less evidence than the one that's currently in favour -- have had little to say on the topic.
They are if they are implemented unfairly.
For instance, dress codes at work for a woman might involve high heels and make-up. High heels are extremely uncomfortable and can lead to foot deformities (not to mention some women cannot physically wear them due to disabilities etc.). Make-up has been linked to skin cancer, women may not want to wear it and the only reason why you would wear it is to look pretty. It has no other function.
The dress code I mentioned would be sexist assuming the only requirement for men is a suit and some smart shoes.
My sixth form had a dress code but it was not rigorously followed. For example, we were told that our skin couldn't touch our seat when we were sitting down, or it meant our clothes were too short. Guys often broke this rule with their shorts, but it was the girls that were called out on it much more often (even if they were wearing shorts and not a skirt).
There was one girl, of about 17 years old, who was told her skirt was "distracting" an adult male teacher.
There was another girl who was told her tights were "giving the wrong impression" when she was sitting right next to another girl whose tights were of the same denier (thickness). The only difference was that one was a model student and the other girl was not.
Then again, the dress code was still fairly lenient in most situations. It was better than having to wear a uniform, especially considering we were in sixth form (ages 16-18 and an optional two years of study, for those who aren't familiar with the UK system).
Yes, we do need to eat meat, at least in nature. Meat contains the proteins we need to sustain our energy. Being exclusively vegetarian is a modern-day choice as we have much greater access to protein supplements, mycoproteins and beans and lentils that may not grow in our part of the world.
Humans are by nature omnivorous; they derive certain nutrients from plants, while things like proteins come from other animals.
Onto the question of is it ethical.
I don't think it's ethical to eat meat that's been reared in inhumane conditions, such as chickens that have been kept in cages, birds that have been force-fed (foie gras) or calves that have been locked away in sheds and deprived of maternal contact (veal).
Free range animals and wild animals that have been hunted are more ethical as they have had a better quality of life.
However, those of us who eat a lot of meat should also consider the destructive force that cattle rearing etc. has on the environment, e.g. deforestation to make way for poor quality pasture.
You've linked me to a Christian website.
[it is taken] from the belief, now abandoned, that organisms found in putrid organic matter arose spontaneously from it
Seriously? I'm not surprised the belief was abandoned. Organic matter comes from organisms, which are alive.
This just proves the point that science is able to grow and develop in the light of new evidence and ideas.
So here we are, face to face with the first contradiction of evolution
This is a false and deliberate misrepresentation of evolution. This is abiogenesis, not evolution.
Scientists themselves assure us that the structure of a single cell is unbelievably intricate.
Because cells can evolve too.
Everything should be in the process of changing into something else—with literally hundreds of millions of half-developed fish trying to become amphibious, and reptiles halfway transformed into birds, and mammals looking like half-apes or half-men.
Tiktaalik. Archaeopteryx. Australopithecus. I was able to come up with an example of each off the top of my head.
We haven't discovered all fossils yet, and individual organisms don't have a very good chance of becoming fossilised. If there weren't many in a species, none might be preserved, or we might simply not have found them. Remember there's an entire ocean that would be very difficult to search.
Not one single drifting, changing life form has been studied. Everything stays within the well-defined limits of its own basic kind and absolutely refuses to cooperate with the demands of modern evolutionists.
False (see above).
As all scientists agree, mutations are very rare. Huxley guesses that only about one in a hundred thousand is a mutant. Secondly, when they do occur, they are almost certain to be harmful or deadly to the organism.
Yet if a need arises, it's a case of adapt or die. Take the case of the peppered moth as an example of change we can observe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepperedmothevolution
Man and monkeys are supposed to stem from the same animal ancestry! Even chimpanzees and many monkey groups vary tremendously. Some are smart, others dumb. Some have short tails and some long. Some have no tails at all. Their teeth vary in number. A few have thumbs and others do not. Their genes are different. Their blood is different.
Tail length depends on habitat; if you spend a lot of time climbing then you need a longer tail for balance, or for swinging from branches.
Teeth variation depends on the food available in the climate and that individual species' diet.
Opposable thumbs depend on if the animal is evolving to be an efficient climber (no thumbs) or to use tools (thumbs).
Genes will change over millennia if the breeding pool is isolated. Humans still share 96% of their genetic material with a chimpanzee.
all the fossils were easily recognized and classified within their own families, just as God decreed
False. See my point above.
Even the most ancient fossil forms in the lowest fossil beds have stubbornly retained the same features of their modern counterparts, and it is amusing to listen to the exclamations of surprise by the evolutionists.
Seismic shift, such as subduction can cause changes in the fossil layer.
All the lower strata below the Cambrian have absolutely no fossil record of life other than some single-celled types such as bacteria and algae. Why not? The Cambrian layer is full of all the major kinds of animals found today except the vertebrates. In other words, there is nothing primitive about the structure of these most ancient fossils known to man. Essentially, they compare with the complexity of current living creatures. But the big question is: Where are their ancestors? Where are all the evolving creatures that should have led up to these highly developed fossils?
Much evolution took place during the "Cambrian Explosion".
Before the start of the Cambrian, their corpses and droppings were too small to fall quickly towards the seabed, since their drag was about the same as their weight. This meant they were destroyed by scavengers or by chemical processes before they reached the sea floor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrianexplosion#Increaseinsizeanddiversityofplanktonicanimals
Darwin admitted having no way to defend his theory, but he still would not adjust his theory to meet the unanswerable arguments against it.
This is a guy who was writing in the nineteenth century. A lot of theories weren't backed up very well. The luminiferous ether was believed right through the nineteenth century. Science can now do better.
The Bible explains very graphically about a Flood that ravaged the face of this earth, covering the highest mountains and completely destroying all plant and animal life outside the ark.
And then a gem like this gets dropped. A book is clearly worth more to these people than observable evidence.
No such process of fossilization is taking place today. No oil or coal is forming by present natural forces at work.
This is patently false. It takes millions of years for this sort of thing to form and it requires a lot of pressure, meaning it's not possible to observe it. Even if we could observe the process, it would be taking place so gradually it would be impossible to detect.
"And, let us remind you who find such odds ridiculous (even if you are reassured by Mr. Huxley), that this figure was calculated for the evolution of a horse! How many more volumes of zeros would be required by Mr. Huxley to produce a human being?
This is a misrepresentation. The chances of creating something that looks like a human being are slim. They are equal to the chance of creating a human that more closely resembles an ape, or the chance of creating a Neanderthal. We could have never evolved at all, but then we wouldn't be here to marvel at how unlikely it is!
There are billions of inhabitable planets in the Universe. It is likely that on at least one, life would arise. After this it's a series of small steps, each with a degree of probability.
To follow our ancestry back through the sons of Adam, "who was the son of God," is so much more satisfying than to search through dismal swamps for bleeping monad forebears.
In the writer's opinion. Most scientists would argue it's more satisfying to actually look at the world around them and think about how far life has come.
The true cause for evil and the true remedy for it are found only in the Word of God. Sin has defaced the image of God in man, and only a personal encounter with the perfect Saviour will bring a reversal of the problem of evil.
And here's the propaganda at the end.
It says God formed man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
So humans came from dirt according to the Bible. Thanks for proving my point.
To believe life came from non-life takes a lot more faith, baseless faith, than to believe the Living God created living things.
It doesn't. It's still better than the intellectual cowardice associated with the cop-out clause of "we don't know so it was God".
When there is new evidence as to where life came from, the theory may change.
Living things always come from living things, and the only logical originator of the first living thing would be the Living God who was always there and always will be there.
You've contradicted yourself in this statement. If living things ALWAYS come from living things, which living thing did God come from?
So your idea is similar to abiogenesis; it's possible for something to come from nothing.
You are building a hope for death, a false hope, a fools hope, hoping to be exonerated in death and free from judgement.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the science. Science does not exist to build hope.
Scoffers walk according to their lusts. They love their lusts more than life so they fly off, riding high like moths into the fire of Hell.
This has nothing to do with anything... are you capable of making a single argument without dragging Hell into it?
Literal interpretations of Genesis imply humanity came to life by earth.
There's a good possibility that abiogenesis could have taken place in the world's oceans when there were good conditions for life to form.
However, there are other theories that suggest bacteria might have been carried on comets or meteors. I do consider that a bit of a cop-out, as the life still needs to have been formed somehow.
Climate change is the long-term alteration in climate as a result of global warming. Actually, it can involve parts of the planet becoming colder. For example, if the sea temperature rises enough for warm currents like the North Atlantic Drift to be diverted, the temperature in Britain would become lower.
Global warming is the process of greenhouse gases filling the atmosphere and trapping heat (an extreme example of global warming is Venus).
Your assertion that it's "climate change" in winter and "global warming" in summer is inaccurate.
https://trends.google.com/trends/
Google Trends shows that people tended not to search much for either term in July last year. "Climate change" had a noticeable spike in Google searches at the end of May / beginning of June (around the time Trump announced he was pulling out of the Paris Agreement). "Global warming" did not.
There are no statistics available to decide what keywords are actually in the news at specific times of year, so there is no evidence to support a seasonal inclination towards one term over the other.
Funny you should say that. The East Coast of the United States is seeing an accelerated rate of rising sea level.
Source:
Other sources which back this up
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differences-east-coast-sea.html
Basically we are mammalian animals and in all other mammalian animals, the larger and stronger usually instinctively is the one who steps up when protecting family is an issue.
We no longer live in caves and most of us in the developed world don't live side-by-side, and having to contend, with wild animals. Unless you're in a very dangerous community, or a country like Nigeria or India where there is a real threat of rape, abduction or murder to your family, there is not enough physical threat in the modern world to justify needing to put the strongest member of your family in the role of "protector".
In other mammals, it is quite common for the mother to be the protector as the father often leaves after impregnating the female. An example of this is the stoat.
My sixth form had a school dress code which was followed subjectively, and it resulted in teachers picking on students they didn't like.
There was a rule where you couldn't dye your hair a bright colour. Two girls went into a lesson after the school holidays, one with bright green hair, the other with bright pink hair (let's call them Green and Pink). Green was complimented on her hair by the head of sixth form, who then told Pink in the same breath that she (Pink) had to cover it up with a hat if she didn't want to risk suspension.
The only difference? Pink wasn't well-liked by the teachers; Green was seen as something of a "special case" due to some mental health issues, and treated much more leniently in every situation.
There was also a rule where you couldn't wear short shorts unless you were wearing tights underneath. Two girls went to the head after having had an argument in which I had been involved. It was summer, so both were wearing short shorts with tights underneath. The tights were of a similar denier (thickness). One of the girls (we'll call her Sarah) was a very hard worker, a model student who ran a human rights club on Friday lunchtimes. The other girl (we'll call her Jane) was fairly average at everything.
The head of sixth form told Jane that her tights were too thin; when Jane pointed out that Sarah's tights were of the same thickness, she got the response, "It's Sarah so it's OK."
I'm sure there were unfair cases with the guys, but these were the ones that stood out in my memory.
In both cases the person discriminating was the female head of sixth form.
39% of young working millennials and 44% of older working millennials work more than one job (compared to just 29% in the general working population)
Just under half of 15-24 year olds in the USA are employed: https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-rate-by-age-group.htm
A study of 1,000 adults in the USA suggests that baby boomers may actually be more entitled than millennials: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/
Millennials are not actually that much more entitled than anyone else.
However, it is more difficult for millennials to find jobs than their parents did in their youth, a job is no longer guaranteed for life, and in a lot of countries, higher education is more expensive than it was.
You're the fool if you think insulting anyone gives you the moral high ground. Watching your furious rants is oddly entertaining, like watching a toddler having a tantrum because the grown-ups aren't giving him the attention he wants.
Just don't sulk like a little boy if your so-called "debates" go completely ignored.
And if the only people who do reply are on the extreme far right, you can carry on deluding yourself that everyone on this site, and indeed the world, agrees with you. Have fun in your deluded bubble.
I've had to explain macro vs micro evolution more times than I can count
I'm not going to claim credit for someone else's writing or try and paraphrase, but this sums up what I'm trying to say.
For biologists, there is no relevant difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Both happen in the same way and for the same reasons, so there is no real reason to differentiate them. When biologists do use different terms, it is simply for descriptive reasons.
When creationists use the terms, however, it is for ontological reasons —- this means that they are trying to describe two fundamentally different processes. The essence of what constitutes microevolution is, for creationists, different from the essence of what constitutes macroevolution. Creationists act as if there is some magic line between microevolution and macroevolution, but no such line exists as far as science is concerned. Macroevolution is merely the result of a lot of microevolution over a long period of time.
(https://www.thoughtco.com/g00/
Therefore the terms, "macro" and "micro" evolution are overwhelmingly used by creationists to refute one type of evolution or both.
My friend, you never replied to my argument on "Did Jesus Hide Dinosaur Bones in the Ground to Test Our Faith"?
For your reference, here it is:
Fossilization takes an improbable event that has less chance of happening than winning the lottery.
Yes, this is true. However it is only true for each individual organism. If you take into account the number of organisms that have died, you will end up with a lot of fossils. However, there is no guarantee you will be able to find a sample of everything.
This is why we haven't got a complete fossil record.
At least that was Richard Dawkins answer for why the fossil record lacks all of these intermediaries theists demand.
The fossil record that we do have is full of transitional fossils (I'm assuming this is what you meant by intermediaries?)
Here are a few examples. I'll link the article for you at the end.
-Most fossil giraffes have short necks and today's have long necks, but anatomist Nikos Solounias of the New York Institute of Technology's New York College of Osteopathic Medicine is preparing a description of a giraffe fossil, Bohlinia, with a neck that is intermediate in length.
-Tiktaalik, aka the fishibian or the fishapod, is a large scaled fish that shows a perfect transition between fins and feet, aquatic and land animals. It had fish-like scales, as well as fish-like fin rays and jaw and mouth elements, but it had a shortened skull roof and mobile neck to catch prey, an ear that could hear in both land and water, and a wrist joint that is like those seen in land animals.
-Scientists know that mastodons, mammoths and elephants all share a common ancestor, but it gets hard to tell apart some of the earliest members of this group, called proboscideans, going back to fossils from the Oligocene epoch (33.7 million years ago to 23.8 million years ago). The primitive members of this group can be traced back to what Prothero calls "the ultimate transitional fossil," Moeritherium, from the late Eocene of Egypt. It looked more like a small hippo than an elephant and probably lacked a long trunk, but it had short upper and lower tusks, the teeth of a primitive mastodon and ear features found only in other proboscideans.
https://www.livescience.com/
And then we magically see 10 intermediaries on a chart.
The intermediaries we cannot find can still be charted using educated guesswork. We have the start point and the end point, and we often have at least one transitional fossil. So, scientists can normally make a good guess, which may or may not be disproven when the rest of the fossils are unearthed.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has spiked since humans have been on this planet: https://climate.nasa.gov/system/contentpages/mainimages/203_co2-graph-021116.jpeg
Temperatures have warmed around 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) since 1880: https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/
Add to this the melting glaciers, the loss of Arctic sea ice and rising sea level (https://skepticalscience.com/
This is how we know global warming is happening.
only debate moderates
False. You've banned me and many other moderates.
You've basically banned everyone who disagrees with you or plays devil's advocate, presumably because if an idea isn't far-right conservative, you don't want to hear it. Are you really that insecure?
Coming from the guy who supports:
- Banning refugee children from the USA
- Defunding an organisation that helps prevent cancer in women
- Air strikes that kill civilians including children
- Reliance on dirty coal, which will make air dirtier and result in more cot deaths near power plants
- Leaving it to individual states to decide the legality of abortion
- Not giving fathers paid paternity leave
What makes you think you're so much better?
It's more likely that it'll come about as a result of energy deficiency.
We currently can't sustain the whole population on nuclear and renewables. So when it's no longer possible (or economical) to extract fossil fuels, the energy industry is going to take a massive hit.
Rising energy costs will mean the poorest in society will no longer have electricity in their homes. This will lead to huge inequality, which culminates in resentment and riots.
The US and the rest of the developed world is likely to see prolonged power outages. The West's reliance on electricity means it'll be impossible to access money, use shops and access food.
The financially privileged in the developed world will suffer most; the majority of poor people in places like sub-Saharan Africa are likely to be able to continue their lives as normal.
Technically speaking, a phone is a computer.
Phones are ideal for making calls, which is important to have in emergencies. They can also do most things that a laptop or desktop can and are quicker to power up.
However, if you want to do in-depth research or write anything up in digital format, they're really not that great. I often start doing things on my phone, but start up my laptop when it becomes clear they'll take me a while otherwise. And even though I can speed-text, my 90WPM typing speed is still much faster and results in fewer mistakes.
Give me a real book any day.
For starters, eBooks need to be read on a screen. Reading them on your phone or computer is bad for your eyes as the screens aren't optimised for that kind of thing. So if you want to enjoy an eBook, you have to buy a Kindle.
What do you do if you can't afford a Kindle, if you lose it or if it gets stolen? What if you want to encourage a young child to read but don't trust them with a Kindle?
If you're reading with a young child, it's much harder to be interactive with an eBook (e.g. getting them to point at pictures or following the text with your finger).
Books have character, e.g. the way they smell, the way they feel, the little tears and imperfections that show it's been well-read, the chance to find a bookmark or pencilled note in a second-hand book...
When researching, it's much easier to flick through a book to find a certain chapter, page number or the index.
What happens if we have some crisis in which we lose electricity for days, weeks or even forever? We would then lose all our written knowledge and culture, as the Internet would be down too.
When the child is going off and doing things on their own, that's the time to get them a phone. A basic flip phone, on Pay As You Go, is probably best. The child is responsible for buying their own top-ups so they have to pay for their own calls and texts.
When they decide they want a smartphone, they can save up for one.
