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Where does everyone stand in regards to...

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  • #761
Everyone's religion is right? That's awfully liberal of you.
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  • #762
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!! LOL!!! HA HA HA HA!!!
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*breathe Luis, breathe* LOL!!!!
 
  • #763
I never claimed to be a conservative!
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I was given that label by others here.

Scot
 
  • #764
Rubra:
Also, sometimes a trait may not be so critical to a specie's survival, therefore not hindering it or benefiting it by having the trait. A vestigial sort of trait may be a phenotype from past generations, among other explanations.

Do you know which one (fanged or not fanged) dominates the percentage of the whole population?
 
  • #765
[b said:
Quote[/b] (scottychaos @ Jan. 12 2005,10:07)]Here is my theory about all the different world religions..they are ALL right!
The old devout Christian grandmother who dies..she REALLY DOES go to heaven to spend eternity with Jesus!
The Hindu who lives a good life, He really is reincarnated and comes back one step higher..
the Bhuddist really does reach nirvana.
The Viking warriors really are whooping up in Valhalla..
the American Indians are with their Great Spirit..

I think all religions are just different ways of intrepretating God..
God is too big for one religion..
He can make them ALL correct if he wants to..

I actually had this conversation in college..really scared me, turned me off on Christianity for a long time..
between me and "Born Again friend" lets call her "BAF".

Baf - only those who are saved will go to heaven, all other will go to Hell.
Me - So Ghandi is in hell?
Baf - well...yes, I would have to say so.
Me - A newborn baby born in the wilds of deepest africa, born to non-christian parents, and dies at one day old..that baby goes to hell?
Baf - yes.

AHHHHHHH!!!!
How can people think that?
I know that God is not sending babies to hell!!
and..there have been millions of good, decent, god-loving people in the past, and God has not punished them all because they didnt accept the "correct" religion!
no way..My God would never do that.
So I think as long as you are truely a good person, you end up right with God..and if you really believe, deep in your spirit, that when you die you will have some specific experience, the God is capable of giving you that..whatever it is they want..

How can any Human say they know what God wants or thinks?
its impossible..(and terribly arrogant!)
I think ALL religions can be valid..

Scot
Scot, what you wrote directly contradicts the Bible. Jesus, himself, says (and I am not particularly skilled in quoting, but more effective in conveying the concepts) that HE is the resurrection and the Life. No person comes to the Father except through the son. Broad is the gate to destruction and narrow is the path for salvation. There is is none righteous, no not one. All have come short of the glory of God. All, like sheep have gone astray. All our works are like filthy rags. The wages of sin is death. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whomever puts his faith in him will not face eternal death, but will cross over to eternal life. It is by faith you are save, and not of your own, so that no person can boast. Faith without works is dead. (Those two go togethere as a complete unit, not a contradiction) If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.


Though the Bible does not come right out and say anything about the fate of babies, it DOES, as our 13 year old forum member brought out, say that we have a sin nature. For those people who never heard or read the Bible message, that is addressed in the first chapter of Romans. God is taking responsiblity for dealing with them.

To the atheist participants: It is easy to play "devil's advocate" and take pot shots at the Christians participating. It is easy to find individual pieces of Scripture to find apparent contradictions. however, at least one of you has outright said that he hasn't read the Bible. It is totally inappropriate to make fun of what you haven't read.

While Christians, who have read and prayed may come up with varying interpretations and applications to minor things, like manifestational gifts of the Spirit or going to the movies, alcoholic beverages, how old the earth is, etc... , there is no disagreement on god being the creator of this earth and its inhabitants. There is NO disagreement about what God said about sin, faith, and salvation.


God's message, has been clear and consistent throughout the Old & new Testament: God created. We are ALL sinful. We ALL deserve eternal death. God gives us ALL the opportunity to choose eternal life. We can't save ourselves. God, through His Son accomplished this for us. A choice of faith and living it is ALL that is required. Read the Bible and find out if what I wrote is true or not.
 
  • #766
Jim:
Ever heard of Mary Magdalene? What do you think?
 
  • #767
Jim,
yes, I know of that particular quote from Jesus,
and I understand what it means..
but..
millions of people have died without ever having been aware of Jesus or Christianity..through no fault of their own.
I just cant believe that they would be punished because they were born 5,000 years before the birth of Christ,
or because they died before they ever even heard about the Bible or Jesus..
I just cant believe God would work that way..
He would have to be far more fair than that.

If you happen to be born into a Christian family, and you know "the rules"..and then later in life you choose to reject Jesus..then fine, maybe then you had the opportunity for salvation and turned it down..
but kids born into Muslim families in the middle east cant very well say "hey Mom and dad, and suicide-bomber brother, I heard about this Jesus guy, I think christianity is the better way to go than Islam, im going to become a Christian"..
they cant DO that!
any more than you could convert to Islam.
its not in their culture, its not in their upbringing..
sure, some do maybe, I know many people born into other religions DO convert to Christianity..
but many people born into Christian homes also convert to Islam, or bhuddism, or Wicca, or whatever..
I just cant believe that GOD believes there is only one true religion!
He has to be far more understanding than that..

and! here is a cool theological question for you (or anyone)..
(this only from a Christian point of view)
why is it absolutely necessary to accept Jesus in THIS short lifetime?
Say someone is 15 years old, they have just joined a chuch, and are just beginning to learn "the word"..but they have not fully understood or accepted everything yet..(and lest face it, there is a lot to absorb! you cant just say "I accept Jesus" without a good deal of education first!)
so this kid has just started on his christian path..
the day after attending his first church service he dies in a car accident!
He wasnt "born again"..He hadnt yet got to the point of accepting Christianity or Jesus..
is God going to say "oh, so sorry! you had the chance! you didnt accept my Son! sorry, its off to hell for you"
NO! of course He would never do that!
So..if one believe that, then it must be possible to accept Jesus as your savior AFTER you die!
why couldnt that 15 year old kid continue his spiritual developement AFTER death?
I see no reason why not..
yet many christians say "nope..gotta accept it all fully BEFORE you die, thats the only way"..
it CANT be the only way..

So, maybe all these people that are of the "wrong" religion in life have the chance to repent after death!

Scot
 
  • #768
Scotty! I am suprised at you. Even in the Word of God, the answer is there. He is not wasting these lives who did not know Him. If you had the time to study the scriptures, there is indeed a provision for those who do not know Him. So no, God is not roasting babies over an open Fire, or anyone else who hears the message. Now, since this is an evolution thread, can we get back to that? This thread keeps getting off track because everyone wants to argue God vs. Evolution. Personally, I don't care about the issue, but try to stay on track to prevent locking of the topic. And no, I am still not convinced that evolution is a fact. Just because AE and Alpha are easily swayed by science, because it sounds good, some of us are more stubborn, and require much more than words. There are too many gaps to fill yet, and until the gaps are filled---well. I still think those who spout the Evolution Theory, and those who spout the Intelligent Design Theory, need to see where both Theories are good, and combine the knowlegde of the two. One sidedness, as I see in this thread, is counter productive, whether you are quoting the Bible, or some study. the Bible was written by man, and so were your evolution papers. Therefore, if the Bible is not infallible because it was written by man, then the Evolution Theory has the same credibility problems, as it was also written by man. Combine the theories, boys. And cull out the things that compliment the other, and open your minds for crying out loud, and quote your own discoveries, instead of someone else's.
 
  • #769
Amen, brother.  Study both, learn more and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
 
  • #770
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]OK. Try to get this straight, i don't know whats not being clear to you.

I am not talking about competition between species, i'm talking about one species developing within itself.

Do you mean a subspecies or cultivar or something? If you expect all of them to die out in one shot you are wrong. Evolution doesn't function that way.

I mean the genus nepenthes. Why have all the more "primitive" forms been dying out? I don't think there's a lack of space, or a lack of bugs. If there were, only n. hamata, which can keep more insects in the pitcher because of the fangs, and is therefore farther along in evolution, would survive. And n. glabrata would die out. Since hamata and glabrata coexist with plenty of room and food to spare, why aren't we seeing primitive nepenthes as well?

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I just cant believe that GOD believes there is only one true religion!
He has to be far more understanding than that..

I beleive we have already discussed a perfect god. A perfect god does not just try to be nice to everybody. Rightiousness goes hand in hand with justice. Any court that frees the guilty without restitution is not perfect. It's corrupt!


Peter
 
  • #771
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Rubra @ Jan. 13 2005,4:46)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I just cant believe that GOD believes there is only one true religion!
He has to be far more understanding than that..

I beleive we have already discussed a perfect god.  A perfect god does not just try to be nice to everybody.  Rightiousness goes hand in hand with justice.  Any court that frees the guilty without restitution is not perfect.  It's corrupt!


Peter
I dont mean God should be nice to those who do not deserve it..
im not talking about "the guilty"..
im talking about very good people who happen to not be Christian..

Scot
 
  • #772
And this is all assuming 'good' and 'evil' even exist in the cosmic arena.
 
  • #773
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Rubra @ Jan. 13 2005,10:46)]I mean the genus nepenthes. Why have all the more "primitive" forms been dying out? I don't think there's a lack of space, or a lack of bugs. If there were, only n. hamata, which can keep more insects in the pitcher because of the fangs, and is therefore farther along in evolution, would survive. And n. glabrata would die out. Since hamata and glabrata coexist with plenty of room and food to spare, why aren't we seeing primitive nepenthes as well?
There are some things you need to understand. First off animals/plants grouped into a genus are very closely related and ALL share something that makes them to be grouped in that genus. Even if the "primitive" (as you say) nepenthes is still around, it wouldn't be grouped into the genus nepenthes since it isn't a nepenthes!
This comes back to a very popular question: "What came first? The chicken or the egg?"
A chicken was laid by a chicken like ancestor and the offspring became the chicken.
Nepenthes' origins aren't from other Nepenthes. The genus nepenthes branched off from another organism.

Now.

The fact that there are no primitave nepenthes around means that the nepenthes that are populating the earth now prooved better suited to surviving.
For example:
Let's go back into a time when (hypothetically) both "primitive" nepenthes and our "modern day" nepenthes coexisted. There are many things that can test if a specie is suitable for survival.
Natural disasters, disease, and competition being some of them. Modern day nepenthes where probably better at what they do (which is feeding off of insects and attracting them). Primitive nepenthes where probably just too "new" evolutionary wise to fit that niche, and when the new nepenthes came along, it dominated.

Like the plant version of neanderthals vs. cro-magnons.

Also, just because now there are plenty of insects around doesn't mean that primitive nepenthes shoudl still be here. It might have been much different back then.
You should google the history of the location of those nepenthes to check if what you are saying is actually true for back then when primitive nepenthes where around.
 
  • #774
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Rubra @ Jan. 13 2005,10:46)]I mean the genus nepenthes.  Why have all the more "primitive" forms been dying out?  I don't think there's a lack of space, or a lack of bugs.  If there were, only n. hamata, which can keep more insects in the pitcher because of the fangs, and is therefore farther along in evolution, would survive.  And n. glabrata would die out.  Since hamata and glabrata coexist with plenty of room and food to spare, why aren't we seeing primitive nepenthes as well?
Species extinction isn't at all uncommon. It's thought that 99.9% of all the species that ever lived are extinct (no, they didn't all live at the same time), and there may be as many as 100 million species alive right now.

I can't speak to the history of Nepenthes (I'd like to know more about it's earlier forms, actually), but I think it's reasonable to deduce that less than 1% of all the Nepenthes/pre-Nepenthes species that ever lived are still alive (I guess the pre-Nepenthes would be 0% at this point unless anybody knows of some). And these extinctions include a massive number of highly successful species I'm sure. History is full of climate shifts, disasters, you name it... nature is harsh. You know how delicate some of these plants are.

It would be a mistake to focus on just this one plant in this argument. You don't even have to leave the realm of CP's to find species where older forms are still entirely successful. I don't know the exact lineage (I think there's a thread on it somewhere)... this is very rough and simplistic... but helis may have resulted from pings... sarrs from helis... darlingtonia from sarrs... that sort of thing. Yet all of those plants are still around and doing ok (at least before we showed up). I'm sure I'm going to be corrected repeatedly on the real progressions.

And outside of the CP realm... this is a very small list (we know of over 500) of some of the species out there that have remained mostly unchanged for the past 50-500 million years: coelacanth fish, neopilina mollusks, tuataras, ginkgo trees, alligators, lice, cicadas, nautiluses, horseshoe crabs, army ants, green sturgeons, wollemi pines, cockroaches, velvet worms, cycads, triops, emperor dragonflies, lungfish ... and of course there are all those microscopic lifeforms like bacteria that are still around. Do any of these species have evolutionary branches coming off of them? I don't have time to research all of them right now, but I'm willing to bet I'd find some (someone else want to lift the burden off me a bit here?). Oddly these old species are brought up by creationists a lot as if they prove a point somehow... and you're asking about them as evolutionary evidence.

Anyway... I'm running out of rambling time here. I'd still like to hear what creationists have to say about the extinction point I brought up a couple pages ago. I don't think I'm going to get a response (like most of the serious questions I've brought up in the past).
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  • #775
Anyone notice the recent news story from Atlanta? A federal judge just made the public school system remove stickers from the bio text books that said evolution is a theory, not a fact.

Nice.

Incidently, gravity is a theory, not a fact, too.
 
  • #776
Thats interesting. Well at least we are making progress (Well the scientists side). My dream job would be to work on evolutionary theory. Refining it and connecting different families, genus's and groups of living organisms
 
  • #777
My dream job is xenobiology but the field doesn't exist yet.
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  • #778
EP, I assume you are talking about:
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Glabrata is succeeding so every nepenthes species that ever existed in history should have succeeded? Does extinction not exist in the creationist reality?

I'm not saying things don't go extinct. Everybody know they do. My point is, if everything but the most advanced form dies off, then glabrata should be around when we've got hamata. If things don't just die off like that, then we should have primitive nepenthes, meaning plants with only semi-carnivorous pitchers. These could be slightly hardier, even if they can't catch eat insects quite as easily.



[b said:
Quote[/b] ]You should google the history of the location of those nepenthes to check if what you are saying is actually true for back then when primitive nepenthes where around.

Dude, I am not of the opinion that there ever were ancestors of the genus.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]im talking about very good people who happen to not be Christian..

Why should God accept them, or any of us at all? He is God. He created us. We sinned against him, we were not worthy of him anymore. He has every right to destroy us. The very fact that he is willing to forgive us at all is amazing.

It's like if you were to make a lego world. You make the lego people so that they chose to do whatever they want, but you tell them your rules. They promtly break all the rules, and act as if you never existed. Even if they follow their own rules to the best of their ability, they still aren't doing what's right (which you defined). That would be a reason to scrap that batch and start anew, right? Now if you are perfectly just, you are going to scrap them unless they pay you back for what they did. Since you are gracious, you offer to cancel their payment, and pay it for them. The only condition is that they repent, start following your rules, and get to know you.

That is basically what its like from God's point of view. If we reject him, it doesn't matter how "good" we are, we're still gonna burn.

Peter
 
  • #779
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Rubra @ Jan. 13 2005,4:17)]I'm not saying things don't go extinct. Everybody know they do. My point is, if everything but the most advanced form dies off, then glabrata should be around when we've got hamata. If things don't just die off like that, then we should have primitive nepenthes, meaning plants with only semi-carnivorous pitchers. These could be slightly hardier, even if they can't catch eat insects quite as easily.
I think you are getting too specific with this whole thing. When i say something dies off i mean it over a long period of time and because of big changes. The entire genus Nepenthes and the plants that are in it are all still here because they are extremely similar to each other.

In the museum we recently had to read a publication on DNA barcoding and their experiment on birds. They found that the difference between birds of the same genus was less than 4%.
I'm not saying that within that a 4% difference isn't alot (only 2% separates us from apes) But there isn't alot of variation that can occur within a genus since they are classified BECAUSE they are similar.

My point?

There isn't something drastically different between nepenthes of in same genus so that only one dominates and the other don't. Thats why they are in the same genus. Because of their similarities. Primitive nepenthes are dead since they are VERY different from modern day nepenthes.
 
  • #780
If I made the lego world I would let the lego people run amuck as long as they did not try to kill me
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As for the Atlanta Text books. Thats interesting the issue with creationism, abortion, and gay-marrage are really all the same. How much power does religion (mainly Christian) have over goverment and how much power does goverment have over religion. The goverment is held by the constitution to not interfer in relgion, but what is holding religion back besides the goverment saying "seperation of Church and State"? Its my opinion that religion is trying to promote a theocracy and therefore has introduced and forced things like the Atlanta text books. I challange anyone to prove to me that either evolution cannot have happened or a god created everything. I do not belive that a god created everything. True we do not know yet how life came about on earth but we can prove evolution. Who's to say that Aliens did not land species from their planet on earth? Thats an argument that relgion and science cannot disprove. Religion would have to prove with out a doubt that a god does exist for me to belive that the god created all the different species.
 
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