Quote from: Ahoyhoy on August 07, 2012, 12:36 pmI do love that Noah story. Great how they managed to fit 2 of each of the 6 MILLION species on earth onto their boat. Big boat then.With all the oceans merged into one all encompassing sea, I wonder how they saved the freshwater fish?If they are the type of Christian to worry about such things, then they explain it by saying 'microevolution' occurs, but not 'macroevolution'.Such an explanation is not a logic failure, quite contrary to what most atheists think, but a (diabolical) failure of the imagination instead. Darwin said as much when he was talking about the chalk hills of England being originally composed of living animals (he was an amateur geologist too), it takes a certain frame of mind to appreciate the vast scope and implications of such a slow and powerful process. That is partly why some scientists deliberately use psychedelics or amphetamines to further their inspiration. But for Thomas Malthus's Essay on Population Growth and Charles Lyell's (I think) book on geology, "Principles of Geology" (he discovered the earth was billions of years old vs tens of thousands as commonly thought by even many scientists of the day), we would have never had the formation of the Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection that was Darwin's contribution to Science. At least not from Charles Darwin anyway. I would say biology only became a science from this point onwards, similar to how Adam Smith's discovery of the Division of Labor turned economics into a science. The modern world owes an exceptionally disproportionate debt to the Scottish race, which is why I'm a big fan of them and their nuttiness :-)Organized religion is today after all, a form of learned imagination, it does all the work for you. Once upon a time the Church (both groups) was the main supporter of Natural Philosophy as it was called then, and many Christians were fantastic scientists or natural philosophers, believing it was very spiritual to investigate the natural world.Unfortunately, this is now the position of a tiny majority of Christians in today's world. I can respect any truthseeker, any thinking person, whether Christian or Atheist who believes in an objective truth and strives after the shape of it, even if it is hard to understand. But deliberately cultivated ignorance and unquestioning respect to authority I cannot stand. This is why I hate any groupthink, irrespective of what ideology it is coming from.In my view, you could have a high I.Q, and yet be a mental midget if you aren't an independent thinker. Richard Feynman was a genius, but wasn't as quick as his peers (remember the average I.Q of almost any physicist is extremely high vs the average, I think 150+). Yet he was extremely effective and productive in his field, he dominated it. Actually if you read about Feynman, you quickly find that his character is exceptionally familiar, he was very much the classic /b/tard, like one of the smarter anons. Lulz is a concept Feynman would have had no trouble with. This is also why I favor 4chan users over facebook users, they might be composed of spectra from banal to genius, but at least they form their own thoughts. You could trawl Facebook for years worth of communications without crossing a stray original thought.