It was a geologist Sir Charles Lyell that described the geoplogic column. Darwing had his book and was influenced by it in the writing of his book. Yet it is a fact that no one knows a single place in the world where the column perfectly exists. Charles never identified the place where his charts were provable. Nor has any geologist since him.

Punctuated ebrilibrium is a recent attempt to explain the fact that there are no intermediate lifeforms in the fossil record. Your timeframe is very great for the punctuation.  Describe to me how punctuated equilibrium explains the findings of the scientist who discusses which came first the chicken or the egg?

http://truthiswhatmatters.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rethinking-evolution-chicken-or-the-egg.pdf

The main complaint is that the chart showing changes of ape to man still persists in text book. Invariably the feet are flat and the intermediate forms are upright even though no such intermediary forms exist now that the three were proven falicious, Piltdown, Nebrasca, Neandrythal

I am not currently up on this topic. But I understnad that if you use the same method of dating on "Terrible lizards" the meaning of DINASAUR in latin as is used to date things that have occured in the past millenium  (First terrble one was the one called IGUANADON because it is identical to todays IGUANA only much bigger) you will find that they date about 5000 years old. This might explain why they have found DNA in the bones of unfossilized Dinasaur bones from the Arctic in recent years.

See if you can spot the pattern.

Allah says "Come let us reason together" but he knows he will win the argument.

Yahweh says "Come let us reason together" but he knows he will win the argument.

Ganish says "Come let us reason together" but he knows he will win the argument.

Apollo says, "Come let us reason together" but he knows he will win the argument.

If someone used your same argument to argue for another god claim you would not buy it, so do not expect us to buy the same self serving circular reasoning you reject from others but hypocritically are using yourself and are too blind to fucking see it.

"My god says" is what everyone says to make the argument for their god claim. It is about as impressive to us as taking a shit.

Before you get to word one of your convoluted ancient comic book or what your fictional super hero "says' you start off with the naked assertion that a magical non material super brain with no cerebellum or neurons and no location, exists.

An invisible friend claim by ANY NAME is bullshit, yours and every one claimed in human history. Humans make up gods, gods are not real. Not yours, not any prior polytheist gods, and not any of the monotheist ones claimed today.

I can quote Star Wars but that doesn't make "The Force" or "Obe Wan" real.

Yea plastic is the result oil products. What the fuck does that have to do with any god existing? Plastics as an invention prove that humans in the end DO NOT depend on the fictional gods they claim to make new things, otherwise they could have merely prayed for God to hand plastic to them directly.

I find it funny that you claim a caring god exists, but for 99.99999999999999% of the last half million years of human evolution, your deadbeat invisible friend waited most of that time to even say shit to us as humans, but when he did, instead of writing the book himself, took fallible humans and over 1,000 years, and 40 books, with books left out, only to have us fight over those books, allow spinoffs that the big three fight over and for what? So he can watch his toys stab each other so he can say "Last one standing gets to hang out with me".

No, the reason we have plastics isn't because of a fictional friend in the sky. The reason we have any modern invention is because HUMANS dared to question and dared to think and test. And even though plastics have a downside as far as pollution, they also make up the medical technology such as IV bags, heart implants, lung tubes, that save lives.

And the computer you are reading this on is also a result of plastics and was not the result of Allah or Vishnu or Jesus. Humans are the reason you don't have to hunt your food, why you can see a doctor when you get sick, and why you have cell phones and air travel and how we put humans on the moon. All your comic book provides is a social club, no more useful than a Star Wars fan club.

God/s will not save humanity, only the human ability to face reality and find common solutions to the human condition of reality. Evolution was never dependent on being a Christian or Jew or Hindu or Buddhist.

I am glad I don't have to hunt my food. I am glad I don't have to use a horse or walk for transportation. I am glad I can connect globally on the internet. If a god existed he is a fucking asshole for holding out on us. But since the reality is that humans have always made up gods, then our species ignorance that we have only in the past century, have slowly overcome, makes sense. But it is fucking absurd to postulate an asshole who waits and watches and does nothing.

HUMANS made the progress and only humans can save each other. There is no Allah or Jesus or Yahweh or Thor doing a damned thing to help or harm us, there are only humans who have always had the capability of helping or harming each other.

No prophecy has ever been worth paying attention to. They are always so generalised and vague that they could refer to practically anything. If that's all it takes for someone to believe in a religion, no wonder there are so many cults throughout history and today. I can easily make prophecies that are guaranteed to come true, and I can't directly see the future, to my knowledge.

You haven't spent enough time on this subject. The most significant reason to argue against the death penalty has nothing to do with any religion.

The biggest reason has to do with the fact that approximately 1/3 of all capitol punishments dealt out were to people innocent of the crime.

The next biggest reason is that capitol..

My point - you didn't read anything, you didn't even look at the pretty pictures on the Smithsonian web site.  You can't spell DINOSAUR.  Blah.

I love it how these theists toss about terms like secular humanists, like it applies to anyone that doesn't fall in line with their blind dogmas. 

Got news for you Whitefox : 

You can be an Atheist and a Republican. You can be an Atheist and a Democrat. You can be an Atheist and a Libertarian. You can be an Atheist and a Nazi. You can be an Atheist and a Communist. You can be an Atheist and a Fascist. 

You can be an Atheist and be pro/anti abortion, pro/anti death penalty, pro/anti gun control or any other issue. 

Atheist : lack of belief in god. That is all that means. That's it. 

Stop throwing around the words like "secular humanists" and thinking that applies to everyone that does not believe in god. 

"Secular humanists" seems to be a popular term among theists, as a derogatory reference to atheists. 

Can you give me the definition of secular ? The definition of Humanist ? The definition of Atheist ? And can you demonstrate how all three mean three different things ? 

Like when you treat an entire complex economy as if it were simplistic as Cinderella ending up in a palace because she scrubbed floors? OUCH! 

Look, to be fair, we all have our predilections and that is why although I give you so much shit, I know I have them too.

If our species were as simple formula as far as all of us always getting what we want, utopias would exist, but the reality is that they never will.

We both know that evolution has occurred regardless of religious labels. What makes you think that if you or I win either way on economic issues, that our species will die out? If anything kills us by our own hand, it will be because of our focus on labels in far as politics and religion and economics, when we should be focused on common condition.

You really need to keep up with the progress of science - Lyell died over 100 years ago; things have moved on since then.

The 'Geological Column' is an idealised description of what we should see in a situation where rock layers were deposited in an unbroken sequence at some location which was virtually undisturbed over almost the entire history of the Earth.

Since it is extremely unlikely that there is such a site in reality, we only find incomplete versions of it. In any case, it is very naive to use the word 'perfect' when referring to something one expects to actually observe.

'Punctuated Equilibrium' had NOTHING to do with 'explaining' any 'gaps' in the fossil record - just the observation that the  evidence seemed to show that evolution proceeds at very different rates at different times and places, for different species. 

Neanderthals are well established 'cousins' of homo sapiens, it even seems that there was some inter-breeding, and we may share a few percent of our genes with them.

Radiometric dating requires careful and precise techniques, so it is easy to get it wrong if not enough care is taken, or if the materials have been contaminated, but there have been many, many cross-checkswith alternative dating techniques, so the suggestion that it is 'riddled with errors' is very ignorant of the real situation.

In this real and inevitably imperfect world it is unlikely that we could come to know any non-trivial fact about Reality, apart from basic logic and math, and 'cogito ergo sum', with anything like Absolute Certainty. Real world knowledge can only be held with some finite degree of confidence. You make a false dichotomy between absolute certainty and relativism. Lack of absolute certainty does not imply relativism, just that the best we can aim for is what seems the best fit to reality, what seems to work best.

There is no logical necessity that a creator being must be the standard of what is good or moral, unless you subscribe to 'might makes right', the morals of a dictator. Even if we could demonstrate that a Creator being actually existed, we have no way to establish with any certainty what its attributes or motives must be.

I found very many links to dinosaur DNA. This is one example.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/scientists-recover-t-rex-soft-tissue/

I found very many links to dinosaur DNA. This is one example.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/scientists-recover-t-rex-soft-tissue/

Yet again, you do what all creationist and theists do, change the topic when someone points out your lies, I am talking specifically about the claims on your website and the claim that you made about it be found in the froze north, as such the article you just point out is talking about a 70 million year old t-rex not a 5000 year old unfossilized dinosaur bone that you have made  claim of. Truth is not found by dodging topics. No offense whitefox, actually I take that back, your a liar, a straight out liar. I have point out the problem for your so called 5000 year old dinosaur you have not even bothered with it. Whatever it's nothing new and I should expect as much for someone using not truth, but their view of the truth. Not someone that uses evidence but lies, misinformation and ignorance.

That mentions DNA:

So it does not say they found it.  Not a good link to 'Dinosaur DNA'.

Here is a much better link:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070412-dino-tissues.html is a link to actual isolation and  sequencing of ancient DNA. Note, it had already been established that it the fossil was 68-million years old.  It came up in my first search.

Radio-carbon dating is usable for dating things up to about 50000 years, so different methods would be needed for dating dinosaur fossils. It would rapidly become apparent that there was a problem if they tried to use it on much more ancient remains.

You base your position on the fairy-tales/myths of the Bible. 

 Ray, I've just looked at your "three reasons to reject evolution". The quote you have at the end, 

"Evolution is not accepted by all scientists and much less by all scholars; it is admittedly an unproven theory; it is by its own principles unscientific, unphilosophical..." etc

Was taken from a book published in 1917! Is this really the best you can do? That's weak man, very weak. and as others have stated, this is willful propaganda deliberately espousing old and obsolete information whilst knowingly ignoring a wealth of other information. If you are prepared to stoop to this level, very few people here will have any respect for you.

If you truly consider evolution a myth, but also believe that truth is what matters, you need to take this outdated misinformation down from your site and at the very least put up something contemporary, although I should warn you now that every attempt to do this by creationist scientists has failed.. eg The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy.

Edit: also just read your link: http://truthiswhatmatters.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/gracetoyou-faithandsciencefalselysocalled.pdf - which is laughable garbage written by someone without the intellect to even understand the basic tenants of biology, geology, physics or astronomy yet is disparaging about them all. Perhaps we should move discussion on this to a separate thread where the points in this paper can be discussed in detail to avoid hijacking this thread? Happy to if you want.

 ... Have you run away Ray?

Still very interested in your responses to the recent posts on this thread...

...probably

  When carefully read, you'll find this within the comments of five different people a call to work on becoming current. You dont want to stay in the camp where they are basing this all on Creationist's arguments from decades back, now do you ? when all along they are no where near current .

  However the reception it should serve to indicate, you'll have to at least make it worth people's while.

  It reminds me of something recent, where exact replicas of earliest dinosaurs representations are found on the road side.  A reference to the British Museum of Natural History's exhibit, from a particularly famous example.  Of a pair of models, of a early bad  Dimetrodon sail-back, based on an exhibition of dinosaur skeletons of the time, standing along side what was a bit of a monstrosity; I forget the name, looking like a over-sized Iguana. With one-third of the front-end from one Dinosaur species and a quarter of the back end from a third species.

Too bad, for all that at least he was quite polite.