Alas, fanatics are not. I have yet to meet a fanatic 'evolutionist' yet religious fanatics are a-dime-a-dozen - whether they be so-called Christian, Muslim, Hindu.
I think you'll find that the Hindus aren't that nutty about evolution - In fact, I think that Hinduism is the only major religion that accepts change.

I am quite prepared to live-and-let-live; you have your belief, I have mine. Yet why are fanatics, such as yourself, unable to reciprocate? You and your ilk have always tried to force your views upon those who disagree with you - throughout history, often at the point of sword or the flame of torch.
Worse yet, why is it that Christians tend to take sword to their own more than any other? I've spent the weekend reflecting on this and came to this, perhaps equivocal, view: The Christians couldn't start off on the right foot in unison from the second that Jesus ascended, and because of their massive disagreements, they had to kill each other off. How is it possible to expect a religion to live in harmony when you have Egypt, Rome, and Constantinople giving each other the finger within 300 years? Sample questions: Was Mary divine? Was Jesus mortal-made-divine or divine? Did Jesus have one nature, two natures, or Buddha nature? While I don't see how this can tear coreligionists apart to the point of butchery, the facts remain that even well after Westphalia, Christian smote Christian in the name of the Lord.

This is senseless. Especially when you're supposed to love your neighbour ("You can tolerate him if you try" - Tom Lehrer)

Their intolerance towards any who differ from the so-called Christians is truly frightening to behold as they quote their scriptures and behave the opposite of what they screech.
It's almost always out of context or based on clearly slanted translations.

In regards to yourself and your little group; do any of you actually have an original thought?
Here's one I came up with during my pondering. As I pointed out earlier (somewhere... where's a search engine when you need one? Oh, well...) science can be wrong - In fact, there must be errors in order for science to exist. Take gravity as an example.

Science assumed for many milennia that heavier objects fall faster than light objects. Along comes Galileo. "If I have a ten-pound rock and tether a one-pound rock to it," he ponders, "will the one-pound rock cause the ten-pound rock to fall faster because it's a total of eleven pounds, or will the one-pound rock retard the fall of the ten-pound rock?" With this kind of logic he pokes a hole in the scientific status quo. Later on, in rather ingenious experiments, he shows that all objects fall with the same acceleration regardless of mass. It's the results are irrefuteable, and thus the old hypothesis that weight dictates acceleration is rejected in whole.

Science must accept it because it satisfied scientific rigor: The experiment could be repeated ad infinitum and one will draw the same conclusion. Indeed, when Armstrong dropped a hammer and a feather on the moon, they both hit the ground simultaneously. Galileo's conclusion is shown to be correct both on Earth and on Luna, and there is no further doubt about it: This is universal law. It is true after its discovery, and it was true before its discovery.

(I won't bring up the Church's reaction, but I'll point out that it was equal and opposite.)

Note that I said "must accept" and "rejected in whole", because the same does not apply to religion - There the laws are selective at best. Take for instance this passage (You may need to change your encoding to UTF - Sorry Richard! If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll replace it with a link)

שמות כ
ד לא–תעשה לך פסל וכל–תמונה אשר בשמטם ממעל ואשר בארץ מתחת ואשר במים מתחת לארץ:
ה לא–תשתחוה להם ולא תעבדם כי אנכי יהוה אלהיך אל קנא פקד עון אבת על–בנים על–שלשים ועל–רבעים לשנאי:
ו לעשה חסד לאלפים לאהבי ולשמרי מצותי:
Exodus 20
4 You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth.
5 You shall not bown down to serve them. For I the Lord your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me,
6 but showing kindness to the thousanth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

If we take this as literally, then a good portion of Christians have to be put to death. How many Churches are there where there's a picture of Christ? Isn't there always an image of Jesus on the cross facing the congregation in the pews? Isn't that a likeness of God "who art in Heaven"? And what about "Passion of the Christ"? Do we kill off Gibson for filming Caviezel who assumes the role of God (or at least the son of God)?

I'm not going to bother with the remaining bulk of this particular commandment because I think I've made my point. Scriptures are selectively accepted, where as science must be embraced unconditionally - not on blind faith, but on the grounds of proof by scientific rigor. This is where one flash-point lies, and why I, for one, have a very hard time swallowing religion with the kind of blind faith exhibited here (That's not an insult). I can't deny gravity, but I get to choose about the word of God?

Just to keep you up to date, one of our long-time Christian friends from South Korea just joined our team today, so we now have four members in all including myself. I honestly don't anticipate ever having a very large team, but that's okay. Better quality than quantity.
Those without sin cast the first sarcasm?

The excercise that's going on with this board is a standard technique that's used universally not only by this little band but by evangelicals of every stripe. The 'holy trinity' led by the prime instigator are simply raking these boards to see if maybe they can recruit some new blood.
They have their favorites and if you take a few minutes to check out the patterns it's pretty evident who they consider potentcial sheep milling around in the goatherd of the SETI boards.
Dont think for a minute these clowns have come here to in the interest of maybe contributing something to this project or that they might have even the slightest interest in what's going on in any field of human endeavor at all. A typical foray into SETI territory is based on a single subject. A clipboard full of scriptural references is prepared in advance with twenty or so 'proofs'. The ringleader comes out first with a couple of assinine statements in reference to his selected 'witness topic'. This will be something really stupid thats calculated to get a rapid and irate response- Like he'll come out gushing some peace on earth crap and then:
"Yes, we have plans to take over the entire world...but that won't completely happen until Armageddon when Jesus Christ will subdue all of His Father's enemies once and for all."
I dont know about you guys but I want to slap him when I hear that and he damn well knows it. Once he's engaged, as we've all seen over and over again he just completely ignores anything at all that anyone posts because it's then time for his rapid-fire paste up job of those long strings of bullshit bible verses. This is his 'witnessing'. He could give a shit less about what's going on here. His 'job' is to slather these boards with shit. Mission accomplished, he's planted all his seeds. Then one of the lackeys comes in and gives it a try. His lackeys are weak and sometimes they try to sound intelligent. This is a big no no. The mission here is not to teach, but simply to troll- to see if he can suck just one or two in. He about sprang a hemmoroid licking at Rachel but she was too spry for him and he had to quit her- go girl!
I've got to laugh at some of this it's so pathetic. I had poor Simeon eating my bullshit there until he caught me laying it on too thick and I bet Woo Woo man gave him the WHOA FO' about that. They dont want a debate here. They dont want a fresh thought to cross their mind. I feel bad that they've surrendered their imagination and are funneling all that concentrated energy into such a worthless obsession.
And I'm not talking about religion cause religion is not a bad thing at all. I think we all know that there is much more to a person than the sum of his parts- there exists a human spirit that's manifested in the great accomplishments of our race. We are capable of spiritual perception in ways we are not yet even aware of. Our spieces is evolving and our creative potencial is increasing. I'm not a god person but I know the spirit within man can be very strong and worthy of cultivation.
These guys dont realize the awful harm they're doing to Christianity- Poor Jesus- these idiots are undermining his support base...cc

@ Carl Cuseo

Carl you forgot to mention that they don't have a sense of humor either.

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> Interesting indeed! You can't prove that evolution really occurred on Earth,
> so using a little Photoshop magic, you decided to invent your own proof of
> evolution on Mars, eh?
>
> Naughty, naughty, naughty! You shouldn't tell lies like that! Hold out your
> hand. Whack!!!
>
> Here is the original photo taken straight from the APOD web site,
> without the addition of my (WordWeaver's) skull:
DUH! What's interesting is that you think *I* created that picture and that anybody would believe it. Look up 159.148.95.19 and tell me where that goes. San Diego, CA? HA! Amsterdam, Netherlands. Nor do I have Photoshop or know how to use it. So I invented proof? More like I was making a joke. Maybe if you werent so bereft of humor you'd be able to enjoy life a little more and not be so sensitive. I could tell you what I was in fact searching for when I stumbled across this picture but all you have to do is look to the left of this post and discover that for yourself.

I think we were the ones who were blessed with humour and misery. :-P Oy!

> Carl you forgot to mention that they don't have a sense of humor either.
:P phftftftftft *I* do to!

> I think we were the ones who were blessed with humour and misery. :-P Oy!
>
Oy, gevalt! Wordweaver, hoow mamash hatee haat HARA!

@ H. Richard Utzig
You forgot to mention the blue eyes, that would make Jesus an Aryan. Jesus of Norway, or perhaps Nederland.

P.S. The devil made me say that!



And for Christ's sake don't forget the black lamb.

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> > ...Amsterdam, Netherlands.
>
> Actually, I think it is Riga, Latvia.
>
Sounds good to me, but the lamb is definitely Jewish (Fallasha).

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Someone must have Circumcised it.

Edit: Spelling correction made to appease the alphabet gods.

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If he knew how to don't you think he'd have done an nslookup י.ה.ו.ה? (Escape sequence intended)

:>0

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