A message from Lab Rat

[Dinsdale]

This thread is one of the most glorious train wrecks I've ever seen.

I won't say who the fatality was here, but you can probably figure it out by applying a little science.

[R-Jack]

Humans sat around doing ... NOTHING ... for a REAL long time. lol

I was going to mention something about evolution, but I have a feeling 'tart will look at that word and have the same look on his face as the first caveman that saw fire.*




















*5999 years ago in Tart years.

[PSUFAN]

Too bad Mike the Lab Rat doesn't post here any more.

We're not pretentious enough.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

Too bad Mike the Lab Rat doesn't post here any more.

The Deciders are working a deal to pick up the poor man's version, Ike the Floor Mat. He doesn't engage with pretense, but you can wipe your feet on him when you're done.

[mvscal]

Too bad Mike the Lab Rat doesn't post here any more.

The Deciders are working a deal to pick up the poor man's version, Ike the Floor Mat. He doesn't engage with pretense, but you can wipe your feet on him when you're done.

Wags already posts here.

[poptart]

There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that shows that our universe began with a big bang about 14 billion years ago. Science tells us that we indeed are tiny. The biggest object in our entire solar system is our sun, yet it is just an average star in a in our galaxy, which has at least 200 billion other stars in it. Our entire galaxy is merely one of billions of galaxies in the universe.

There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that shows that life on this planet began billions of years ago, with the forces of evolution and natural selection continuing on to this day.

Do you simply not believe science? Or do you compartmentalize it somehow? Also, if you did believe the science, would that prevent you from having your faith?

As I've said, I think it's possible that the earth is VERY old.

I don't believe macroevolution happens, and if you want to think science has "proven" it, you're free to think that.
Count me out.
It's a fun theory, but it's a very sad laugh, imo.

My faith is not dependent on "scientific findings" about the age of the earth or life.

As I've said, I don't KNOW the ages of things and the message of the Bible isn't centered in any way on those things.


I didn't start the thread this direction.
I replied to a question and then faithfully continued to answer questions as they've been put to me.
Expected ridicule has followed.

Now I've asked one question.

Do you want to give your take or are you taking a pass on it?

[Tom In VA]

poptart - I was being facetious about Mike the Lab Rat being the only voice of merit on these matters. I've come to learn that considering all the voices sounding off on God - even those who do not believe (especially those who do not believe) had strengthened my faith and experience with God in my life. Each time I read these threads, I experience a growth in effectiveness and understanding, not unlike my muscles experience growth after resistance training. Your input provides the form, thank you.


Mgo - I laughed out loud. Ike the Floor Mat. Good One.



To my atheist friends - Warmest regards and Nothing Bless You.
To my agnostic friends - I don't know either, something is going on though - ain't it cool ?.
To my faithful friends - thank you for your service, God Bless.

v/r
Tom in VA

[PSUFAN]

Ike the Floor Mat

That'll _pretense!

[Van]

pop, to answer your question...you answered your own question, with the mention of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that point in history*, man primarily lived a slow, simple, quiet, rural life.

Think...Kansas City. Meatgrinder. Canaduh.

Then the IR blowed the fuck up and...BAM! Everything started accelerating and stuff!

Suddenly the population shifted to where, for the first time in man's history, the majority of mankind now lives in urban environs. Moroever, following the IR came the most important invention of Don King's "ALL TIMES!", 'lectricity. Once that shit happened, all bets were off. Now it's at that point were the entire breadth of human knowledge is being doubled every...what...four minutes?

In about the time it takes Terry to take out the garbage, drain the gutters, watch some Tyler Perry on the UPN and fire off another e-mail to his congressman to complain some more about George W and the mean ol' Big 10, our entire date base of knowledge tripled.

All that has been going on in a wild orgy over the past fifty years or so; accompanying that massive clusterfucking of technology has been a boom in population growth, which has been helped along by the un-mud hutting improvements in the standard of living for so many people around the world.

These days, in the time it takes for Darrius Heywood-Bey to drop a pass, eight more Tongans were born, who actually survived the birthing process.

Back when "the Christ" was around, weren't none of this shit going on. The lives of people then weren't much different than the lives of people from a thousand years earlier, or a thousand years hence.

Check back with mankind a thousand years from now. Assuming there still is a mankind, it probably won't even be recognizable to us.

You can thank - or blame - science for all this.





~nods sagely at Dins~

[Dinsdale]

invention... 'lectricity.

ELIMINATED.

Back when "the Christ" was around, weren't none of this shit going on. The lives of people then weren't much different than the lives of people from a thousand years earlier, or a thousand years hence.

DOUBLE ELIMINATED.

But, adressing the point of this statement... it simply screams "Crack a book sometime."

Yeah, that whole centralized water supplies, large projectiles, gunpowder... none of that stuff changed peoples' lives.

[Van]

Compared to the way lives were so suddenly and drastically changed following the application of electricity? No, they weren't. Not even close. Compared to the life you live today, the lifestyle of someone living in Christ's time would seem far more familiar to most people living in 1787. Mankind's harnassing of electricity is what allowed for the sudden technological explosion that saw the 20th century create more change than all other centuries combined. The only century that even comes close is the 21st century, and for precisely the same reason.

[Van]

Oh, and Dins...

You may as well get off your highhorse about different from/different than. While it used to be considered 'correct' to use 'from' exclusively - except in certain, very specific situations where 'than' or 'to' must be used - that hasn't been the case for at least fifty years. It's really more of a 19th-century construct. In modern times, especially in British English, 'than' and 'from' are considered interchangeable for this application.

While no one will ever say you're wrong for insisting on using 'from' in all but the most specific circumstances, it is now equally true that the vast majority of grammarians consider it to be a very open subject for debate, especially considering the widely accepted usage of 'than' on both sides of the pond.

So go ahead and keep using 'different from' if you wish, as you're fine in choosing to do so, but your insistence on stamping your feet and shouting "Eliminated!" every time you see 'different than' isn't going to matter. Hate it all you want, but every day it gains further acceptance, and it's likely here to stay.

[Screw_Michigan]

You're both wrong.

[Dinsdale]

We've been down this road before -- just because cretins have used shitty grammar for X years, it still doesn't make it correct.


Sorry, bud -- you were differentiating two nouns/things/concepts/whatever, which makes "different from" the ONLY acceptable use.

"Than" is a word of comparison.

Believe it or not, simple fucking grammar dictates as much -- "similar TO, different FROM." See how opposites use opposites? Ain't fucking rocket surgery.

Is something "separate than" a similar grouping? Of course it isn't.

Period. EOS... no matter how many times you make that blunder, it doesn't change the usage.


And Screwy -- you ain't exactly a quick learner, eh? Either in school or on these boards. I seem to remember your "literary skeelz" laying quite an asswhooping on yourself, quite recently in fact.

[PSUFAN]

DOUBLE ELIMINATED.

But, adressing the point of this statement

[Van]

Dins, you're not incorrect in any of your arguments there. The point is that it still doesn't matter. In recent times 'than' has gained widespread acceptance, even among grammarians. It's quaint and charmingly Old School to rail against the cretinous destruction of Our Sacred Language in modern times - god knows I'm also guilty of "Get off my lawn, ya punks!" thoughts, and not only regarding language - yet such a stance ignores the fact that language is fluid. Fifty years from now, there will be many more differences. We'll surely hate 'em; regardless, they'll flourish.

[PSUFAN]

Mankind's harnassing

HarnASSING?

[Van]

Hey, PSUFAN...



Knock it off!

(But seriously...THREE different tries to find the right pic? I'm honored!)

(Edit-Make that FOUR! Four different :facepalm: pics! Yeah!)

(Edit-Five! Dude is UNSTOPPABLE!)

(Edit-Okay, with the Conan facepalm, I give up. )

[Dinsdale]

We'll surely hate 'em; regardless

Didn't you mean "irregardless"?


Yeah PSU... you know the rule... if you're running some spelling/grammarsmack...

proofread, proofread, and proofread again, since you'll invariably fuck something up. And if your name is Screwy, you'll even try to defend it.

[PSUFAN]

Van, no edits here...it's a script:
http://www.facepalm.org/img.php - gives you a different random image every time your browser hits it, from http://www.facepalm.org

Wacky, wacky InterHorn.

[Van]

We'll surely hate 'em; regardless

Didn't you mean "irregardless"?

That's quite possibly my biggest "pet peeve" word, since it's invariably only used by saltlicks who are trying to sound smart.

I hate 'nucular' too. I'm loving this final season of 24, yet I'm about ready to run a tire iron down Keifer Sutherland's maw. Jesus fucking Suck, it's one thing for our former president to be unable to pronounce the damn word, but it's entirely wrong for Jack freaking Bauer to butcher it five times per night.



Dave, you're way too techno-savvy for me. Your interwebs prowess is nearly frightening, and I bow before your Geekdom.

[Dinsdale]

We'll surely hate 'em; regardless

Didn't you mean "irregardless"?

That's quite possibly my biggest "pet peeve" word, since it's invariably only used by saltlicks who are trying to sound smart.

But wait -- I thought that if poor grammar was used extensively enough, it became "acceptable"?



Matter of fact, I'm humbly requesting that PSU/admins edit the word filter here to change "regardless" to "irregardless" -- you know, to get Van's grammatical "rules of acceptance" ball rolling.

[PSUFAN]

language is fluid

Holy grammarsmack buzzkill, BatVan. Nice to see that argument advanced after your grammatical dignity takes a swan dive into the ELIMINATION trench.

[Van]

Didn't you mean "irregardless"?

That's quite possibly my biggest "pet peeve" word, since it's invariably only used by saltlicks who are trying to sound smart.

But wait -- I thought that if poor grammar was used extensively enough, it became "acceptable"?

If it's used extensively enough in the proper circles, to the point that grammarians and professional editors concede its validity, then yes, it begins to become acceptable.

When it's merely bandied about by dumbshit rappers and hausfraus who wouldn't know their own split from an infinitive? Not so much.

Matter of fact, I'm humbly requesting that PSU/admins edit the word filter here to change "regardless" to "irregardless" -- you know, to get Van's grammatical "rules of acceptance" ball rolling.

I call bullshit. You've never "humbly" done anything in your life.

[mvscal]

But what I'd ask you to step out of your box and think about is this --

The neolithic revolution (first agricultural revolution) took place about 10,000 yrs ago, we are told.
And the industrial revolution took place beginning in the 1800's.
Man (homo sapien) is said to be around 200,000 yrs old.

So man sat around with his thumb up his @ss, slopping around in the mud and living in a cave for ------> 190,000 years before he began to start agriculture?

Really now?

Really.

Step out of your indocrination and give that some thought.

You think he did jack squat for 190,000 years?

Who says they weren't doing anything? They were hunting and gathering. In their downtime, they would be making and repairing tools, following the herds they hunted and looking for decent shelter.

Man, if anything, is ambitious, curious, exploratory, creative, and one to CONQUER and ADVANCE, by nature.

And they did all these things in that timeframe. They spread out across the entire globe.

[Dinsdale]

Yeah, and nevermind the near extinctions caused by hellfire and brimstone large meteors, massive volcanic eruptions, and the resulting climate changes...

they were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

[Dinsdale]

I hear the jury's still out on "science."


Sin,
Poptart

[Dinsdale]

Step out of your indocrination and give that some thought.

You think he did jack squat for 190,000 years?

.

Well, they did kind of evolve into 5 distinct subspecies of Homo sapiens...

which modern DNA research can clearly trace to Eastern Africa, and even come up with a reasonable timeline of how it went down.

But the Garden of Eden was in Iraq, right?


Argon/carbon dating is pretty freaking accurate. DNA evidence is not just permissable in a court of law, it's preferred.


But not in the court of Popbeenduped.

People who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible are as funny as they are sad and dangerous.

Question for you, Pop -- when you moved to Korea, weren't you worried about falling off the edge of the flat Earth (your book DOES say that, you know)?

[poptart]

This thread is a nice smorgasboard -- even got Van and Dins poised to argue punctuation and grammar for 3 or 4 pages.


What Scripture are you talking about, Dins?


Van, mvscal, thanks for your answers.
Not sure you really answered anything, though.

Who says they weren't doing anything? They were hunting and gathering. In their downtime, they would be making and repairing tools, following the herds they hunted and looking for decent shelter.

And you think man did this for ... 190,000 years.

That's a LONG time.
A REAL long time.

Interesting concept.

Man (we're talking about REAL man, and not some half-ape creatuer) was a complete feeb and he only suddenly became competent in the last few thousand years.
And he became REALLY competent in the last two hundred years.
And he became REALLY REALLY competent in the last 50 years.

lol

The progress of man in the last few thousand years has been staggering.
And if we take just three thousand years, for a point of discussion, that is just 1.5% of man's supposed time on the planet.

You are asking us to believe that the HUGELY OVERWHELMING bulk of man's progress has taken place in just a minute fraction of his overall time.

It's goofy, sorry.

I could see man diddling around for a few hundred years, or a few thousand years ... but 190,000 years of nothing??

Doesn't pass the common sense test.

So again, what do you do with all of this science? How do your faith and science co-exist (if they do)?

Man-made global warming is a fact, right?

I mean, it's a proven fact and the scientific community overwhelmingly recognizes it, yes?

What I do with science is listen to it.

Then I digest it and use my brain to make my own judgements.

I don't know how many more times I need to say that I don't KNOW the ages of things.

I believe the Bible.
Whether a believer in Christ wants to take the creation days as literal is up to him.
I take it as a literal six days, because it reads that way to me.
I could be wrong about it.
It doesn't matter.
The Bible doesn't make it an issue in any way.
One can believe in Jesus Christ and believe a LOT of other things.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

I believe the Bible.

Which version?

Does this include text inserted in the early centuries by scribes?

[mvscal]

And you think man did this for ... 190,000 years.

That's a LONG time.
A REAL long time.

Sure is. What's your point?

Man (we're talking about REAL man, and not some half-ape creatuer) was a complete feeb and he only suddenly became competent in the last few thousand years.

Who says he was a complete feeb? I'd like to see how you would manage to survive in his world. You wouldn't last a week.

Feeb? You're a fucking idiot. This "feeb" expanded into every available climatic and environmental niche on the planet. This "feeb" was the most dangerous and efficient hunter on the planet. This "feeb" was larger and healthier than all but the wealthiest of present day humans.

The progress of man in the last few thousand years has been staggering.

Progress requires specialists which were made possible only by agriculture fairly recently in relative terms.

You are asking us to believe that the HUGELY OVERWHELMING bulk of man's progress has taken place in just a minute fraction of his overall time.

It isn't a "belief," you pathetically ignorant tard. It is an established fact.

[poptart]

I prefer the King James Bible, Marty.

Progress requires specialists which were made possible only by agriculture fairly recently in relative terms.

Why did it take him ... 190,000 years ... to begin agriculture - I mean, this great GREAT "real" man of yours?

If it makes sense to you, fine.
Dig it.
I find it to be a very big laff.

It is an established fact

Excuse me.


bwaaaaa ...

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

I find it to be a very big laff.

Oh...trust me...

There's plenty of "very big laffs" in this thread already.

[Tom In VA]

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Were your boys doing security detail on this glorious day, Tom?

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

WAIT. ARE THOSE CANADIAN FLAGS I SEE IN THE BACKGROUND???!!!?

SWEET MOTHER OF FUCK!!?!@!?

[Tom In VA]

Relax Marty, those are all very educated men - scientists - from Canada.


They probably don't believe a Supreme Being exists anymore. That requirement is only for newcomers I guess.

[Van]

Doesn't pass the common sense test.

Yet talking serpents, the Earth being stopped on its axis, 900-year-old men, breeding pairs of penguins walking from Antarctica to Syria and a single human being somehow managing to create not only a woman but an entire planet full of different races of people from a single McRibb does pass your common sense test.

pop, do you have even the slightest notion as to how bat shit insane you sound?

[mvscal]

Doesn't pass the common sense test.

Yet talking serpents, the Earth being stopped on its axis, 900-year-old men, breeding pairs of penguins walking from Antarctica to Syria and a single human being somehow managing to create not only a woman but an entire planet full of different races of people from a single McRibb does pass your common sense test.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

They probably don't believe a Supreme Being exists anymore.

I though that Shriners worshipped demons and practiced witchcraft while having ritual gay sex and drinking the blood of babies...