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| View Poll Results: do u belive in evolution | |||
| yes but up to a certain extent |
   
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33 | 32.67% |
| yes , fully agree |
  
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47 | 46.53% |
| absolutely against |
  
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17 | 16.83% |
| undecided yet |
  
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4 | 3.96% |
| Voters: 101. You may not vote on this poll | |||
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03-31-2006, 07:24 AM
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Is it? Fundamentalists would have us believe it. But the Bible is unclear. In Exodus, chapter 20, we read the Ten Commandments, and are told that we should not commit adultery. Adultery however is not defined as simply having sex outside of marriage. It's defined as having sex with a married person. Nothing is said to prohibit sexual relations between two unmarried people. In fact, if we look in the book of Leviticus, we are given a list of every situation in which we should not have sex. We're not to have sex with married people, or with family members, or with animals. We are not, however, prohibited from having sex with an unmarried person who is not in our family. A few people have interpreted Deuteronomy 22:13-21 to be against pre-marital sex, but when we actually read what's there we see it's about lying and bringing disgrace to one's father, not about sex. In these verses a man is given a bride by another man, and then goes to court to claim the woman was not a virgin. The verses then say that the bride's father must prove she was a virgin. If he can prove it, the new husband is fined for bringing shame upon the bride's family by claiming he was given a faulty bride. If she cannot prove she's a virgin, then she is put to death for being a harlot while still in her father's house. Notice that there is nothing said about the man not being a virgin, and there are no equal punishments brought against men. Why? Because this is not about having sex. It's about a woman who is still considered property, meaning she lives in her father's house and is being given to another man (in exchange for money), taking it upon herself to sleep around and thus destroying her value as a bride worth selling. In this case, the woman having sex brings shame to her family by making the father out to be a liar when he accepts money from a man who wants to bed down with a virgin. In short, while having sex outside of marriage is not forbidden by the Bible, the women not being honest about it brought dishonor to her father, which is a sin according to the Ten Commandments. Another verse, often quoted by itself to condemn sex outside of marriage, is Exodus 22:16, where we read "If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall give the marriage present for her, and make her his wife." But when we look at the verse immediately following, we get a whole different picture. In verse 17 we read, "If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equivalent to the marriage present for virgins." Just like the Deuteronomy reference we can clearly see this is not about sex, but rather is about destroying a commodity - a virgin daughter who can be sold for a price. In these Exodus verses it's spelled out even more clearly. There is no mention of immorality, nor is the man who seduces the woman penalized for having sex before marriage - only for having sex with a virgin, and even then his only penalty is to pay the father what the woman would have cost as a virgin. Some places in the bible, such as Mark 7:21, state that "fornication" is a sin. Fundamentalists like to interpret that as meaning "sex outside of marriage." It's not true. The Greek translation identifies "fornication" as being any "illicit (illegal) sexual activity." However, as we saw above, God did not mention sex between two unmarried people as being illicit. Interesting. And, in fact, we read in 2 Samuel chapter 5 where some of God's greatest leaders, such as King David (whom God called a man "after his own heart"), had hundreds of wives and hundreds of unmarried concubines (women kept in the house for the purpose of having sex). None of these were considered sins. It is only when David had sex with another man's wife (2 Samuel 11:1-5) that he committed the sin of adultery. 
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03-31-2006, 07:44 AM
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03-31-2006, 09:18 AM
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say what you wanna say, this makes it pretty clear in my book, it seperates "fornification" and "adultry"..... 1 Corinthians 6 (kjv) 9.Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10.Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
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save a doughnut, kill a C*P CHECK OUT ALL MY FUNNY PICS @ HTTP://DANNYMACK81.MULTIPLY.COM
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03-31-2006, 02:02 PM
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The Bible as a whole speaks to the subject. It speaks of whoremongers. Now if it’s just sex between consenting unmarried people why would it be wrong? There are also passages like: Quote:
I don’t believe your argument stands up when considering the overall teachings of the Bible. .
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03-31-2006, 02:53 PM
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Among the early Jews, from various causes, the difference between a wife and a concubine was less marked than it would be amongst us. The concubine was a wife of secondary rank. There are various laws recorded providing for their protection (Exo 21:7; Deu 21:10), and setting limits to the relation they sustained to the household to which they belonged (Gen 21:14; Gen 25:6). They had no authority in the family, nor could they share in the household government. The immediate cause of concubinage might be gathered from the conjugal histories of Abraham and Jacob (Gen. 16; 30). But in process of time the custom of concubinage degenerated, and laws were made to restrain and regulate it (Exo 21:7). Christianity has restored the sacred institution of marriage to its original character, and concubinage is ranked with the sins of fornication and adultery (Mat 19:5; Co1 7:2) .
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03-31-2006, 06:04 PM
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Nothing is absolute.
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03-31-2006, 06:15 PM
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Now, you could make the argument that fornication being a 'sin' is a CHRISTIAN thing - we know that Christian doctrine often clashes with Hebrew doctrine. But that's only one side of the argument. What I'm really looking for, is how sex before marriage is immoral . . . and nobody has been able to tell me how it is. Nobody ever will. As well, what constitutes 'marriage'? Like all things, 'marriage' is a fluctuating term. Its definition changes. Like I said, everything is relative. Marriage means different things to different people. There is no absolute standard for what marriage is.
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03-31-2006, 06:25 PM
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The Bible as a whole speaks to the subject. It speaks of whoremongers. Now if it’s just sex between consenting unmarried people why would it be wrong?[/quote] Because whores have sex for money. Remember that passage that was talking about the father who sold a 'virgin' daughter when she wasn't REALLY a virgin? Do you think there's no such thing as a whore who LIES about what she is? Or a man that LIES about who he is, or what he is, or where he's from when purchasing services from a whore? Hebrew law is very specific about fair trade. Lying has no part in fair trade. There are also passages like: If you can’t control yourself – get married. Not, have sex like bunnies until you decide to get married. Again, that's NT. Show me that it's the proper translation. I don’t believe your argument stands up when considering the overall teachings of the Bible. .[/quote] Considering the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, it does.
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03-31-2006, 09:14 PM
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Jesus (the fulfillment of the law) says that fornications (legal, voluntary sexual intercourse between persons not married to each other) defiles the man. In context of the culture to which Jesus was speaking, and in context of the teachings of the entire scripture (Old and New Testament) we can conclude that fornication is not acceptable. .
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04-01-2006, 05:52 AM
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04-01-2006, 07:07 AM
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Pwnage
Hello, everyone. My name is Chris.
“Hi, Chris! And welcome!” Thank you. I had a revelation recently. Had I been on the road to Damascus, I would have fallen off of my horse. *laughter* Yes . . . *clears throat* Anyway, my revelation concerns a game I have been playing. “What game is that?” A game called Information. Information is a game played using only words. The object of the game is too confirm or deny a certain piece of information. It is played between two people. A Presenter and Responder. The Presenter presents the information, along with a claim concerning that information. The Responder then either confirms the information, thus admitting defeat, or denies the claim concerning the information. There are two ways for the Responder to do this. Firstly, the Responder can go into detail about why the claim is wrong. Or they can simply SAY the claim is wrong, without providing any reason as to why. In that case, it is up to the Responder to illustrate why the claim is right a second time and await a response. If the Responder cannot illustrate why the claim is wrong, such as by only SAYING it is wrong, the Responder loses. It is a case of silence is compliance. I have been playing this game, acting as a Presenter, for a while now. A lot of Information has been presented, and things have become bogged down. In order to clarify the standing score, I feel it is important that we go over the Information presented, the claims made about it, and the denials made by the Responder. Our particular game of Information concerns increases of genetic information in organisms. As Presenter, it is my task to present increases in the genetic information of organisms. Plain and simple. Well . . . maybe not THAT simple. This game of Information is played using Key Words. These Key Words are: increase, loss, and new. There ARE variations of the terms. It is important to understand which variations are real, and which variations have no relation to the terms at all. For example, increase does not necessarily mean a new increase. Imagine a box. The box represents an organism. Inside the box is a piece of paper, representing a piece of genetic information. There are two ways to increase the information in this box. Firstly, imagine that, along with the piece of paper, we add a rubber band. The rubber band is a NEW piece of information; it was not there before. Now, imagine the box and the solitary piece of paper again. This time, the piece of paper is copied, and the two pieces placed inside the box. This represents an increase in information. No new info is added, but no info is lost, either. It may be the same information, but that information has DOUBLED in size, adding MORE of the same. If you gain weight from eating the same food every day, you still GAIN weight. Like an MP3. MP3s are files within a computer, storing information. When you copy an MP3, and place the copy elsewhere within the computer, the information contained in the computer has increased. This is why the memory space inside the computer gets lower, even when the information is just a copy. There is a third option: imagine again that the piece of paper is copied, the pieces placed inside the box. Only this time, the second piece of paper is cut in half before it is placed in the box. This represents an alteration. The information increases, but the new information is different because it has been altered. And that is an example of how information increases in an organism. Any questions? “No.” Then let’s move on, and take a look at the very first example of an increase in genetic information I provided: “Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) plasma levels have been consistently related to a polymorphism (4G/5G) of the PAI-1 gene. The renin-angiotensin pathway plays a role in the regulation of PAI-1 plasma levels. An insertion (I)/deletion (D) polymorphism of the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene has been related to plasma and cellular ACE levels. In 1032 employees (446 men and 586 women; 22 to 66 years old) of a hospital in southern Italy, we investigated the association between PAI-1 4G/5G and the ACE I/D gene variants and plasma PAI-1 antigen levels. None of the individuals enrolled had clinical evidence of atherosclerosis. In univariate analysis, PAI-1 levels were significantly higher in men (P<.001), alcohol drinkers (P<.001), smokers (P=.009), and homozygotes for the PAI-1 gene deletion allele(4G/4G) (P=.012). Multivariate analysis documented the independent effect on PAI-1 plasma levels of body mass index (P<.001), triglycerides (P<.001), sex (P<.001), PAI-1 4G/5G polymorphism (P=.019), smoking habit (P=.041), and ACE I/D genotype (P=.042). Thus, in addition to the markers of insulin resistance and smoking habit, gene variants of PAI-1 and ACE account for a significant portion of the between-individual variability of circulating PAI-1 antigen concentrations in a general population without clinical evidence of atherosclerosis.” It seems daunting, but actually read it. The unhealthy individuals in the study have a higher concentration of Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 than the healthier individuals. The mutation occurred in order to combat the effects of activities such as smoking and drinking. Unfortunately, my Responder never made a denial of the fact that there is an increase in information in humans due to beneficial mutations. I provided five other examples of these increases, and my responder has not made a denial concerning those, either. He has, however, said that he does not deny beneficial mutations; only increases in information. Here is a quote from my Responder in post #162: Quote:
But I never made the claim that beneficial mutations lead to one species evolving into another, now, did I? In Information, as in debates, one can construct Straw Men in an effort to draw the game away from its original intent, in this case, the original intent being to show that there increases in genetic information. The game was never to show that beneficial mutations lead to one species evolving into another. For shmicheal, as far as this game goes, we will call this Straw Man 1. The challenge to show that an increase in the genetic information of these humans did not occur still stands. In my next example of increases in genetic information, I made the assumption that my Responder understood how to use web searches. I was wrong: increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991) increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003) novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996) novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995) My Responder has yet to provide a response on how there were no increases in genetic information in these examples. Next, I provided the example of a Japanese bacterium that suffered a frame shift mutation that just happened to allow it to metabolize nylon waste. The new enzymes are very inefficient (having only 2% of the efficiency of the regular enzymes), but do afford the bacteria a whole new ecological niche. They don't work at all on the bacterium's original food - carbohydrates. And this type of mutation has even happened more than once! My Responder’s response was: Quote:
Just two more Straw Men. Shortly thereafter, I provided the example of ray-finned fishes that have extra Hox clusters. “There is a single Hoxa2 gene in most vertebrates, whereas fugu (Takifugu rubripes) and medaka (Oryzias latipes) have two coparalogous genes [Hoxa2(a) and Hoxa2(b)]. In the hindbrain, both genes are expressed in rhombomere (r) 2, but only Hoxa2(b) is expressed in r3, r4, and r5. Multiple regulatory modules directing segmental expression of chicken and mouse Hoxa2 genes have been identified, and each module is composed of a series of discrete elements. We used these modules to investigate the basis of differential expression of duplicated Hoxa2 genes, as a model for understanding the divergence of cis-regulatory elements. Therefore, we cloned putative regulatory regions of the fugu and medaka Hoxa2(a) and -(b) genes and assayed their activity. We found that these modules direct reporter expression in a chicken assay, in a manner corresponding to their endogenous expression pattern in fugu. Although sequence comparisons reveal many differences between the two coparalogous genes, specific subtle changes in seven cis elements of the Hoxa2(a) gene restore segmental regulatory activity. Therefore, drift in subsets of the elements in the regulatory modules is responsible for the differential expression of the two coparalogous genes, thus providing insight into the evolution of cis elements.” Then, baleen whales. “Amplification of the DQB exon 2 provided sequences showing high within-species and between-species nucleotide diversity and uninterrupted reading frames consistent with functional class II loci found in related mammals (e.g., ruminants). Cloning of amplified products indicated gene duplication in the humpback whale and triplication in the southern right whale, with average nucleotide diversity of 5.9 and 6.3%, respectively, for alleles of each species.” Then, the molecular evolution of the major outer-membrane protein gene (oprF) of Pseudomonas. “Since OprF is known as a pleiotropic protein, modifications in evolutionary constraints could have resulted from variations in cryptic functions, correlated with the ecological fingerprint. Finally, relaxed constraints and/or episodic positive evolution, especially for some P. fluorescens strains, could have led to a phylogeny reconstruction artifact.” “Positional cloning identified loss of the newly described, rat-specific Fcgr3 paralogue, Fcgr3-related sequence (Fcgr3-rs), as a determinant of macrophage overactivity and glomerulonephritis in Wistar Kyoto rats. In humans, low copy number of FCGR3B, an orthologue of rat Fcgr3, was associated with glomerulonephritis in the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus. The finding that gene copy number polymorphism predisposes to immunologically mediated renal disease in two mammalian species provides direct evidence for the importance of genome plasticity in the evolution of genetically complex phenotypes, including susceptibility to common human disease.” The one I just mentioned is VERY interesting, considering that the INCREASE in macrophage over activity was activated by a LOSS of genetic information. My Responder goes even further in creating Straw Men, when he quotes me as saying: Quote:
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His response did, however, prompt my analogy of The Box. So I give him credit for digging his own grave by giving an analogy he did not fully understand. He also offers a response to: Quote:
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Guess what? It comes from a mutation. And guess what else? That mutation contains information that was not there before. Otherwise, the original bacteria would be able to do what the mutated bacteria does. Here’s what my Responder either failed to read, understand, or quote from me: “Here's an example. Take a nice fresh culture dish, and place a single bacteria on it. A colony will grow. This is "before". Take one bacteria from "before", and start a new culture with it. After the culture is well-started, add some antibiotic. Somewhere in the culture, there may be a mutant who is resistant to the antibiotic. If there isn't such a mutant, they all die. In that case, start over. If necessary, you can encourage mutation, maybe with some radioactivity. Eventually, you will find such a mutant. You will know it's there because it reproduces, and your culture dish will contain a living colony instead of a dead one. This is "after". Now get the DNA sequences of "before" and "after". Several researchers have done just this, and the DNA sequences have been published. It is definitely the case that "after" can have new genetic information, which is not present in "before". In the above example, a beneficial mutation allowed the bacteria to survive a negative thing. It is equally easy to get a mutation that allows a positive thing. For example, give your colony a huge supply of some food which they cannot eat. Eventually some mutant will be able to eat the food, and will have a great many descendants. Then wipe out the normals (by withdrawing the normal food) and you have an "after" colony. As one researcher said: Here's a tested recipe for isolating successful mutations... Grow a batch culture of Salmonella typhimurium strain SK2979 at 37 deg. C on Neidhardt's MOPS-based minimal medium with 0.4% glycerol as the carbon source and 10 mM L-aspartate as the nitrogen source. Dilute and subculture for several days. L-aspartate fast growing mutants will take over the culture in something under 3 days. These typically have a doubling time of 60 minutes on asparate, compared to about 120 minutes for the parental, wild-type strain. Even better, starting with the fast-growing strain, one can easily isolate secondary mutation(s) which permit growth on aspartate as the sole carbon and nitrogen source -- which the parental strain simply cannot do. This demonstrates how cumulative mutations can arise. Basically, techniques involving the natural occurrence of spontaneous, beneficial mutations are commonly used by bacterial geneticists.” If my Responder is still interesting in showing me exactly how and where this copied information comes from the original bacteria, I will be waiting. Quote:
Why, then, are the mutants not present in every bacteria used in the experiment? Why, then, are methods of creating mutation suggested? He goes even further in discrediting himself: firstly, he suggests: Quote:
Apes and humans are primates. There is no evidence to suggest that whales evolved from horses. If my Responder wishes to provide such evidence, I will be waiting. Where he got this information from, I do not know. Quote:
So . . . To tally up the game, I have given at least sixteen examples of increases in genetic information to which my Responder has not indicated a single reason why there were no increases in genetic information. At least sixteen challenges still stand unanswered. shmicheal has sixteen opportunities to prove me wrong. He has done so zero times. I’m not yet ready to declare myself a winner in the game, as I am allowing the challenges to remain. shmicheal, I am issuing you a formal challenge here and now: of these sixteen examples, show me exactly how, from the text of the examples I provided, there are no increases in information.
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04-01-2006, 07:38 AM
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Secondly, you have to establish which definition of fornication he was using. Quote:
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So what’s the deal? Do you believe that Christianity still has value despite its age? If so, why are you applying the MODERN definition of fornication? Quote:
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