Hmmm. I considered a pun involving Hortas on match.com (alternative to dating Carbon), but dumped it as being to horrible for words.

Don't say I never did nothin' for y'all.

And it's much appreciated, Tongster, it really, really is. Really.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Well, I think the most compelling evidence of that is in that interview: If an evolutionist came across evidence that quantitatively proved that all animals were created by a supernatural entity, they'd be shaken to the core by it, but I think most would at least allow it to enter into their thought process. If the reverse happened, and a creationist was confronted with clear, inarguable evidence that there was no God behind the creation of life, they'd instantly claim that evidence was planted by Satan.

Well, I'm certain there would be exceptions to the rule on both sides, but on the whole I guess that's true.

*resists the urge to perform volcan mind-meld*

no kill i


er...

*walks away*

Yea, I'm sure some so-called scientists would ignore it anyway. I guess I'm talking about the Scientist and the Evangelical, not the scientist and the evangelical, if that makes my meaning clear.

Well, I take your meaning, but the capitalization is not what gets it through, in case you're wondering.

Just to keep the obvious position in the discussion: the issue of Science versus Faith isn't a cut-and-dried conflict between "godless evolution" and "six days of Creation, 6,000 year old Earth" etc

As Dweller suggested, Science surely could accept the existence of God: God would simply be incorporated into the known facts of the Universe.

That's why people who decry that Science must reject the "supernatural" are so off-base.

Science simply must recognize that the "supernatural" might only be unknown aspects of "Nature" that can be grasped eventually by the limits of Mankind's mind.

Electricity isn't the killing-jolt of demons or gods ... it's a force of Nature. Man came to understand that.

Man might also eventually come to understand that the origin of Life is in a Divine Life-force, that the motivating forces of "evolution" are due to a Divine Will towards self-awareness and sentience.

The Universe(s) originate from an Origin that Science can merely construct "what ifs" from.

A Divine Creator outside of Time/Space would have little concern whether Creation takes the entire "Time" of the Universe(s) existence .... or happened during some supposed "Six Days of Creation" (which is itself only vaguely described in Judeo-Christian Scripture).

The limitations of Man's imaginings (be they of "science" or "evangelism") are NOT the limitations of the Divine.

So ... evolution is merely a material record, footprints in the sands of existence.

Who's walking, where they came from and where they're going ... WHY the journey is undertaken ... Science has little to say about that.

Science tells us how the fossilized footprints (and the fossilized feet) change thru time.

Just to state the obvious.

The most atheist, most didactic scientists I know still accept that there is a supernatural, they just believe that it's just things that are currently beyond our ken. Which I'm willing to accept.

Indrid, if you get the chance, get to your local library and find if they have a copy of "Fossil Legends of the First Americans." I think you'd find it an excellent read.

Thanks, I'll try to find it.

Just getting a chance to read this and haven't got the time to read the thread yet, sheesh you get a job and where does the time go!

Matt thanks a bunch for explaining the 'soft parts' thing i think a lot of these articles never really emphasise that its the impressions/differentially fossilised indications of soft tissues. They seem quite happy to make it sound like you could crack it open and eat it.

mmm tasty rock! *breaks teeth trying to chew*

And i think it's great that they are finding this stuff!

quote:

muds or sand it has the potential to preserve the soft tissues too. I think I've read it has to do with the ability of water to move through the sediment it's buried in

Yup anoxic muds (that is mud that doesn't have oxygen and therefore can't support bacteria that normally breakdown tissue) are the most comman to preserve soft tissues. And the actual differential fossilisation, that results in the structure being reproduced by rock is likely caused by the actual spread of minerals and stuff during the fossilisation process. Which i must admit i don't know that much about, and i think not much is know in general as to why some structures remain and other times are distroyed.

Or why completely new structures are created in rock during morphogenisis of mudstone sandstone. Ok in laymans terms why you get big balls of harder rock or harder layers of rock formed out of the same material.

Oh and the Xianxiang and Burgess shale fauna's are great examples of soft parts being preserved! i wonder if anyone is trying to raise funds to CT scan any of them?

CSI did this thng where they pulled a conversation from a pot, by hitting it with a laser, flimsy wax recording analogy, blah blah. Major loss of credibility points.

So ok, God is possible, certainly. Somewhere, Bertrand Rusell says that the argument from design might be circumstantial evidence for an Architect, but not an omniscient Creator.

If we're talking about a finite being, subject to time, governed by natural laws, I'd say that might even be likely, somewhere in the universe.

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but seems an interesting thread and I thought it deserved a bump anyway..

Where does imagination come from? Is it affected by intelligence?

That's a tough one to answer because imagination is difficult to quantify, as is intelligence. If we work with the basic definition, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality," and intelligence as something similar to "the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria," then the answer becomes a bit clearer.

Until recently, imagination was regarded as a function of the right side, the creative or emotional side of the brain. Recent study has shown, however, that the left side of the brain is a vital part of our ability to construct clear images of things both seen and unseen, and so must play an integral role in imagination.

So, a someone that's well-developed in both hemispheres, one that is capable of taking thought and applying it to the world in a meaningful way (and hence intelligent) will tend to be imaginative, I would think.

imagination is something we also develope with time, that and being able to percieve that things aren't nessisarily real.

i don't know what age we start to develope imagination, but i think it's one of the later stages of brain developement....

also isn't there some research into children that are deprived of stimulation lacking imagination?

I think that our imagination is a way for us to be artistic. It allows us to create different worlds, different scena1.

1.ability to visualize: the ability to form images and ideas in the mind, especially of things never seen or never experienced directly
2. creative part of the mind: the part of the mind where ideas, thoughts, and images are formed
3. resourcefulness: the ability to think of ways of dealing with difficulties or problems
4. creative act: an act of creating a semblance of reality, especially in literature

Oooo. Imagination. Good topic.
I had a number of conversations with my old boss who was a Behavior Analyst about this.
Applied Behavior Analysis is the modern descendent of B.F. Skinner's psychological theories. There is no psychological area more obsessed with Science (with a capital 'S') then ABA.
ABA has a very difficult time accounting for imagination. Everything that the brain does in this model is supposed to be in response to some stimulus. So where do completely original, novel thoughts come from? Creativity is not something that Skinner was able to grasp.

My boss theorized that artists' creative process is a matter of responding to some external stimulus and then responding to that response etc etc until the art/imagination is coming entirely from the loop of responses to internal events and not directly connected to reality. (Which was also his explanation for schizophrenia).

I'm not an ABA, so there are things about it that I don't always agree with, but the ABAs certainly have the empirical Science on their side on most things.

quote:

Originally posted by ZoneSeek:
CSI did this thng where they pulled a conversation from a pot, by hitting it with a laser, flimsy wax recording analogy, blah blah. Major loss of credibility points.

Actually they only pulled two words "Angel" and "Robby"..and then filled in the blanks. What little they did use, I believe could actually be done..the wax-recording analogy is true...sound can cause a needle to vibrate - particularly if at close range and loud volumes...like the argument they were supposedly recording.

And if you'll recall the 'recording' they pulled was very *very* blurry.

Not saying it could be as easy as they made it appear , but it's not *completely* impossible that some kind of sound could be 'recorded' onto wet clay being worked by/decorated by a needle while on the wheel under those circumstances...

I don't know how to actually prove it of course . And I'm likely totally off base... Just that my dad's a musician, and he and all his friends know a tonne about music history/wax-records/cylinders/78s/old methods etc...so I do know that the theory they used to back it up is legit...

This seemed like the best thread to post these in. In my spare time ( ) I've been cleaning some trilobite fossils I found back in May. These guys are about 350 million years old. They're both Phacops Rana. One is flat and was likely covered up when an ocean storm buried it in sand quickly and it couldn't react. The other is a "roller" and curled up into a ball to protect itself. They remind me of potato bugs of the sea.

This is the flat one as I found him. You can only see his side ribs and a faint outline of one eye.


This is him pretty much cleaned up. I still have some work to do. I'm not sure what is near his tail. It might be coral.


This is the roller as I found him.


This is him cleaned up.

From a completely unexperienced eye, those look pretty frickin' cool!