Why do we only find fossils?

Why as an artist do I not just try to do the exact same painting over and over again?Why do they all seem "related?"Use your brain and think about it.

Yes, but as an artist the consequences of my actions do not cause pain and discomfort for billions of beings. Why on earth have a world where something as awfull as desiese could survive?How about parasites, why on earth create the worms that cause elephantiasis? Or malaria?If I paint a picture, I don't consign any sentient, feeling, creatures to a horrible fate. So, you suggest the designer is board so he makes variety? How could a creature that is all knowing ever be anything but eternaly board?When I make a new piece of art it's exciting and pleasurable to me because I am creating something 'new', something I haven't seen before. It is also a test of my skills meaning the result isn't certain. When it comes out right I am elated!An omniscient, all powerfull designer is likely incapable of deriving pleasure from an artistic process. Further, his creations seem malicious.

Why is a theological question, one I am capable of answering, but nothing really to do with the factual issues raised here.You choose to disbelieve in God because you cannot imagine why God would have created things the way they are. Your disbelief is not rooted in facts, logic or any such thing, but in your own incredulity.Let me ask you something. Why do you ascribe pleasure as good and pain as bad? You already accept an arbitrary faith judgment, and then use that judgement to deny God exists. You merely assert your faith here without any factual or historical basis whatsoever.As far as this world's suffering, if you want to learn the Christian perspective on why a good God, full of Love, would allow suffering, we can do that, and it's not hard to explain it, at least the words, but it's probably a different thread.The fact you choose to disbelieve in the existence of God based on your faith and consider that a scientific perspective is telling.This message has been edited by randman, 11-13-2005 11:37 PM

I agree that this current tack could be leading toward a theological debate which would be OT. My interest was more in discussing the "poofer". The ID that supposedly exists in this world.If I was to discern this creatures nature by examining the world around me, I would determin that this being is , at best, indiferent to our condition, at worst takes pleasure in it.What would you infer randman, from examining a creature like the parasites that cause malaria or elephantiasis?

I think the problem with "poofing" is different.
From direct observation, we know that genetic information, and hence the traits we inherit are passed from parent to offspring. Even in asexual species, there is a direct line of descent from parent to offspring. This is true whether the genetic material is RNA or DNA. The only exception is horizontal transfer. Even epigenetics requires inheritance and thus, you are related to your parents, grandparents, to humans who are lost in time, and have a common , if distant, ancestry with species that are observed now only as fossils. Randman and other creo/IDists would have you believe that at times suitable to their preferred mythology, the principles of genetics were halted and things just magically poofed into existence. Given that all life known shows the same type of transmission of traits between individuals and populations, what compelling reason is there to accept that this did not hold true in the past i.e. what observed mechanism of heredity today suggests that whimsical special creation occurred in the past? One could reverse the question to, why don't creationists argue that genetics is a sham? Why not be consistent and state that nobody is related to their parents and that we are just poofed magically into being by a creator/designer? It is also a unsupportable and contradicts the evidence....but at least it would be a more consistent anti-fact belief system.

Excelent Point!Creos. should be totaly abandoning genetics!PTOM for you.

Yaro, it's off-topic. I have no issue at all reconciling reality with the God of the Bible, but it's still off-topic.

I didn't mention the god of the bible. I mentioned the ID.I think its perfectly within topic to explore this proposition further.You have proposed an ID which "poofs" creatures into existance. If this is true, certain observations should follow from this premiss.What would you expect to see in nature if an ID is real?

I have mentioned that what we observe as maintaining and bringing particles and thus all physical things into existence looks very much like the "poofing" concept you choose to disbelieve. Maybe making a comparison can help you, and then you can take some time to learn about the science of physical reality. Take a projection of some sort, such as TV or whatever. In reality, the projection even if appearing to be still is not still. There are frames being projected, and there are waves of light showing the projection. The information itself exists somewhere and is being projected out in waves as a physical form.That is crude but not an altogether wrong depiction of what occurs with physical things; they are a projection pattern of an information set. What we think of as physical is not still or stationary. It is the produce of the information set that exists somewhere outside of our normal concepts of space and time, which is why things like entanglement can be occur, which creates such a connection that immediate action at a distance occurs observably between entangled particles, which appears thus superluminally to us and suggests there exists profound connections in a deeper structure of the universe beyong the speed of light.It's still off-topic though, and personally I don't want to be goaded into getting banned.This message has been edited by randman, 11-14-2005 11:37 AM

Dunno about 'poofs', but I have experienced reverse-poofs. Every time I check my wallet for the twenty I`m sure I had------

He again avoids that fact that he and the rest of the anti-science creo's and IDists should be mounting a campaign that challenges the huge gaps in Mendelian genetics and the conspiracy of science to suppress the inconsitent data that would lead good Xians to believe they are genetically related to their parents.Let's look at the gaps in Mendelian genetics,
Horizontal transmission of genetic information from non-related individualsRetrotransposition of several different types of pol and non pol containing genetic elementsmaternally inherited genomes i.e. mitochondriaepigenetic modification via methlyation of CpG's etc.siRNA, and other non-coding functional RNA'sMaternal RNA'sIn fact, given that most traits are quantitative in nature, patterns which Mendel observed are actually rare, i.e. single gene determining single traitsThis is suppressed by the scientific establishment and used to guide Xians away from the truth that nobody has parents, that DNA based forensics is a sham, and that Lysenko was closer to the truth. You are created ex-nihilo. Poofed banged into existence via QM..ahem, God... Genetics is a liberal conspiracy to make conservatives pay child support to fund secular liberal programs like Medicaid. Mendel recanted on his deathbed saying "I just wanted some peas with my steak".Anti-Mendel (Hereditary Poofism) would be the only honest position that creos/IDists can take if one has to posit ID or special creation to explain ancestry. It ignores about the same amount of empirical evidence as anything else from the anti-evolution crowd but at least it would be consistent with the objections to evolution.

That is hillarious!!!I would PTOM you again, but that would be unfair

The cosmology forum would be the right place to discuss the possibility of "poofing" on a macro scale.You might not have noticed, but Modulous did open up the thread he said he would: Side Issue: Whale Fossils and Tar Preservation--Percy

Percy, can you let yaro know that?

I don't intend to follow that line of argument further. It's absurdity alone renders it self refuting. I will restate the origional intent of this thread in the hopes others, beyond randman, will contribute.