Can you explain how plankton evolved a higher conscious state, and thereby forced itself into a physical state of, say, seaweed?

They are not discredited because they are creationists, they are discredited either because the initial claims they have are proven to be incorrect, or because the explanations they provide aren't substantiated by any evidence. If they provided third-party reviewed and verifiable evidence of something specific, instead of, "it's NOT this, so it MUST be god," then they would not be discredited. But, alas, as most they can come up with it "It's NOT this..." and have their claim tested, and often dismissed.



I have, actually. The most it does it put some very minor (and not very well supported) doubt into the evolution theory, while not providing any evidence for any other theory. Falsifying evolution =/= automatically proving creationism.


Diinasaurs have evolved into birds. There are tons of fossils that show raptor-type dinos slowly evolving into flightless birds (more like gliding birds), and eventually into the birds we have now. Likewise there is tons of evidence and fossil records showing a small furry creature that could be classified as a large rodent (I think, don't remember exactly), which slowly migrated into the ocean, and became what we now know as whales. Whales still have legs in their bodies, but they are just bone structures under the skin that don't actually do anything.


Actually, there are probably about 40 species found in the fossil records that show a gradual transition from primitive apes, to more advanced apes, to our many ape-like ancestors, to finally what we are like now. So, yes, there is plenty that shows that.



Actually, it took millions of years. There are plenty of evidence of evolution right now, though you guys dismiss it as "micro-evolution," despite mechanisms for macro and micro being exactly the same. Micro is just faster thanks to much faster reproduction. But we have plenty of evidence in the speciation in the gallapagos islands, plenty of fossil records linking one species to the next, and every time we run into a question that relates to evolution, and make a hypothesis based on what we know (such as finding two related fossils and expecting a link between them), we find that link eventually, and confirm that theory.
Ironically, you are not willing to believe in evolution because no one was around for that, but are willing to believe in Jesus, despite no one being around for that, either. None of the bible was written by people with eyewitness accounts. And, are you basically claiming that the only thing you are willing to believe in is something that was written down by us humans???


Um, yes, we actually can. And we don't even really have to do much of anything. All we have to do is take some very basic single-cell plant-life, like algee, grow it near the boundary of where water hits land for a few million years until some of it adapts to growing on dry rocks instead of in the water, at which point it becomes moss. Then we have to grow that moss further inland, where it will start to compete for resources with other moss, and grow from the basic green flaky stuff you find on trees and rocks to the tall fuzzy stuff you find on the ground. Then you let it continue to fight and evolve until it becomes a flowering moss, where it reproduces better by growing long stalks of pollen, which can spread much further in the wind. Then that moss will evolve into taller grass-like moss, and eventually ferns. At the same time, you'll need to evolve some invertibrates into things like trylobites and crabs, and have those crawl out of the ocean and evolve into incects, since flowers are designed for polination by incects. Once you get those, those ferms will figure out how to attract incects all on their own, and become flowering bushes. And after a while of these bushes fighting to attract the best and fuzziest insects, you'll have a roze. Tada. That's actually how it all happened (and I took a summer vacation out in the forrest, looking for these various plant species and moss's, including complex fuzzy and flowering moss, when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, so I put all that progression together at a rather early age)


For a flower to just suddenly go *POOF* and appear, yes, you're right. For a flower to gradually evolve from algae from nothing? It's pretty much mathematically guaranteed.



The probability is, I'm guessing, 1 out of let's say 1,000,000,000,000,000, or 1/1,000,000,000,000,000. However, let's say there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 planets in our universe (again, just guessing, too lazy to look up actual estimates). So the final equation comes out to be 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 * 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 1/1. In other words, the probability of life just popping up randomly in the universe is about 1 to 1. Probably even higher than that, actually. What is the probability of someone finding a correct bitcoin hash in the next 10 minutes, when the chances of finding one are 1 in 2,000,000,000,000,000 or whatever? The answer is about 1 to 1, since there are that many dice being thrown out there every 10 minutes. It's the same concept, except instead of millions of ASIC chips hashing millions of tries a second, there are millions of planets trying to create life millions of times a second.


It's not a matter of the heart, it's a simpler matter of actual real evidence, and the theory that it fits into best. You cant really argue against that unless you bring conflicting evidence. Bringing questions into existing evidence only makes the theory a bit weaker. It doesn't automatically prove that a conflicting theory is better. As for not wanting to believe in god, it's also not a matter of want. Do you believe in Zeus? Or Santa Claus? Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? I would assume no, but is that because you simply don't want to believe in them? I don't think belief is ever a matter of "want."


I'm not saying your own encounter is not real. Just that it's not proof of anything to anyone else but you. Personal experiences are not proof of something, unless they can be duplicated, and the only explanation is the one you claim. Unfortunately, your experience can not be, and may have tons of explanations.

Is there such a thing as a thin client DNS server? I can't think of any way to store an entire database on IPs and domain names in a thin client...

One issue I could see with implementing NMC on top of BTC is future scalability. Specifically, when BTC blockchain gets huge, it would mean that the datacenters that store bitcoin blockchain information would have to also double as DNS providers. I think a NMC blockchain would be much much smaller in size compared to bitcoin, since transactions on namecoin are much less frequest, even if they may hold more data. So keeping the two separate would allow for many more smaller, independent DNS providers, instead of limiting it to just the few bitcoin providers we'll likely end up with in the future.

Noobody is arguing about that one particular gene that this site picks out. The genes in question make up a huge majority of your genetic structure, actually. So while these guys "win" on this one example, they still "lose" on the 20,000 others. And, again, it's not proof that "god did it," it's at most proof that "we don't know how it happened."




◾ Because earth used to be constantly bombarded with craters back when it was first coming together. Our solar system consisted of lots and lots of gas and rocks, and as rocks came together through gravitational pull, they became planets. There were still tons of rocks floating around in space, though, and they all kept slamming into earth and other planets and moons. Eventually, the number of leftover rocks decreased, and also earth got a gas atmosphere that burned up most rocks when they entered, and the number of new craters decreased. We still had some huge rocks flying around in space, though, and still do (one is scheduled to come really close in the next few years). Doesn't matter that craters have different dates. Only thing that matters is that one of them is as old as when dinasaurs became extinct.
◾ Because the thing that killed off dinasaurs wasn't a lack of light? It could have been a change in atmospheric composition, or, more likely, a change in global temperature. Cold-blooded dinasaurs died when it got too cold for them to survive, while mamals survived just fine.
◾ Why would an asteroid impact create acid rain? The cloud that gets tossed up is just dirt, not tons of burning carbon and sulfur. Besides, any amount of rain on earth is only a teeny tiny fraction of the amount of water in the oceans. It would be practically impossible for acid rain to polute oceans to the point where all fish die.



Dear god I hope you don't actually believe this. If this were true, you'd think we'd actually find some dragon bones, teeth, skins, scales, or anything else used by humans from that time period. Why do we have tons of antiques made from leather and bone from as far back as a couple thousand years ago, but yet not a single thing made from dragons? You'd think items like that would be extremely valuable, highly sought after, and very carefully preserved.



No amount of catastrophic conditions can fossilize something in just 4000 years, sorry. Takes WAY longer than that. It's not just flesh becoming hard and rigid, it's all biological matter becoming completely replaced with minerals (stone). And no amount of catastrophic conditions can make atoms split apart faster than they actually do, which is how we tell how old things are.



The difference is that science says, "Well, this is the best idea we got, based on this and this and this and this and this. And maybe it's wrong, but at least it's all based on this evidence." Religion says, "This is the idea we must have. Let's find evidence to support it, such as this and this, but not this." One starts with no answer, and tries to find it using whatever it can, the other starts with an answer (your so-called "truth"), and tries to find evidence to fit it.

Sorry, but, unlike what you and your group may believe, evolution is not actually a disputed theory. At all. Not any more than the heliocentric theory, or the theory that the earth is round. There is just way way way too much evidence for it, and every time we make a prediction based on this theory, it gets confirmed yet again. If you want to try to disprove that theory, at most you will make parts of it a bit more questionable. You won't automatically make your fantasy be correct, because the question isn't "Evolution vs Creationism," it's "Evolution vs Creationism vs Zeus vs Aliens vs Hologram vs Just a dream vs Martian migration vs... vs ... vs ... and so on and so forth." To get your creationism theory to even be considered, you'd have to actually find some evidence of something being intelligently designed (so far there's zero of that), or some evidence of a god leaving a message or something behind, one that could not have beeen created by humans, such as with a written book.

I'd prefer to believe that I am a pretty fairy princess, with pretty butterfly wings, and a whole stable of pretty pink and purple unicorns (not really), but, alas, reality doesn't give a shit about what I want to believe, and it's more productive to NOT live in a fantasy world.

If I was an inteligent designer, I would have attached all those things to the pelvis, as it makes a far stronger and better support for those muscles. And the claim that "there must have been a modification of the tailbone" is kinda false, as we simply had longer tails, with the same muscles atached to the base of it, and eventually the number of segments in the coccyx reduced from 10, or however many it was, to 3 or 5, leaving us with just the base of our tails.

Does your source say anything about the bible's claim of incorrect number of ribs in males, or of whales having vestigial legs inside their bodies from the time when they used to roam on land as much smaller animals?

All of that isn't evidence FOR young earth, it's evidence AGAINST old earth. It doesn't automatically prove that your theory is correct, as there could be any number of reasons for those things to happen, and your theory would actually need some positive evidence to support it. At this point, going by your list, a theory that "God did it like it describes in Genesis" is no better than "Aliens did it," or "Zeus did it" or  even "There was way more helium locked in earth's crust that we expected." Discounting one theory does not automatically prove your own personal one.

Is this what you mentioned while in Amsterdam, when you asked the OT developers to hold off on implementing Namecoin?

"Can you give me some observable evidence of evolution?"

Sure! Look at your butt. You have a tail. It's under your skin, and is called a coccyx. You have no reason to have that tail, and it is actually more of a hindrance at this point (it can break, it causes pain, it gets in the way), but it's there, only because our ancestors actually had a full tail.

Then sin must have entered the world hundreds of millions of years ago, at the same time as life did.

Why does God get blamed for it? Because either god is all powerful and created everything, or he is not.


False. I have felt that way about a lot of people in the past (bullies mostly). I overcame that hate not because of god, but because I simply decided they are not worth my time and energy.

How about agree not to torture for all eternity anyone who has either never heard of him, or doesn't think just stories without evidence is enough to believe in him?


That frankly sounds sick. Who in their right mind accepts human sacrifice of someone's son in exchange for the bad things they have done? I would rather people pay for their own sins personally. Also, not for all eternity {which is a really long time). And also not for random acts that someone just decides are sin. Not believing in something because there is no evidence for it is not evil, in my view.

BTW, I'm sure I've mentioned it, but if I haven't, I've read the bible all the way through, first when I was about 5, and then a few times again since then. I only really studied it, instead of reading it like a fairy tale, when I started to question it much later.

Not just mutations. Diseases, viruses, cancers, extreme inefficiencies in our biology, extreme fragility in our environment, tons of vestigial organs and completely useless body parts in many animals including us... If there was someone intelligent creating all life on earth, why was he so horribly bad at it?

That's not a logical fallacy, and is in fact exactly scientific. The fallacy you are thinking of is "It's true, because it has not yet been proven false," which is the exact opposite of what you have said. In science everything is considered false until proven true. In religion, everything is true until proven false (an impossibility, and thus a fallacy).

Hmm. This just reaffirms my belief that the Christian god is a vain and prideful asshole. Who the hell tortures people for eternity just because they don't give them attention or worship him?

Why do you believe that everything is too perfectly created? Are you not aware of the massive flukes and flaws that exist in biology and nature?

Atheists don't deny god. To deny god, one must first acknowledge him. Atheists don't even go that far. They just ignore him completely, as if he doesn't exist. And if they die and go to heaven, they'll be like, "Oh, hey, sup. Guess you're real after all. OK." And not, "Ahh! You're real! I deny you!"

The biggest cause of BFL delay was the ASIC chip manufacturing from China. The second biggest was assembly time required to put together boxes, circuit boards, fans, and power supplies. At this point, according to BFL sources (and the fact they were selling them directly), they can get all the ASIC chips they want, and have the production system running full speed. At the same time, putting those cards together just involves slapping a heatsink onto a circuit board. Way quicker and easier. So, maybe it won't be a problem or an issue anymore. Technically they aren't making a new product, just a new circuit board for something they already have (as opposed to when they started making FPGAs or ASICs from scratch).

Does that mean you have quit searching? Because that is the biggest problem with and the biggest evil about religion: people believe they have found the truth, are content in thinking they now know everything important they need to know, and never bother to continue to progress beyond where they are. Like during the Dark Ages, when God was all the truth anyone needed, and anyone continuing to search was obviously not content enough with god, and thus should be burned or killed for being a heathen.

Sorry, that's not how I look at it, and not how I believe the definition applies. It should be:

Agnosticism: "There might be a moose in these woods."
Theism: "There is a moose in these woods, but I have no evidence."
Atheism: "There is no evidence that there is a moose in the woods, or that there ever was a moose in the woods, and thus the idea of a moose in the woods is simply irrelevant and shouldn't even be taken into consideration."

Clearly the atheist position is the most logical one, as the agnostic one would have to take into consideration every single creature that may or may not exist, or every single god or deity that was ever invented, to stay agnostic. Do you consider that every good w ever thought of might exist? And how does that affect your life?