Would you rather...

andrewr (user #3571) Silver MedalSuper Star

Andrewr has submitted to following questions to the site:

• This user hasn't submitted any questions.

Andrewr has posted the following comments:

• +29
  Our forefathers would be turning in their graves. They fought to provide maximum freedom for many generations to come, and the current administration is taking that away piece by piece. It's the same story every four years, and has been since the assassination of JFK. It doesn't matter which party wins because the ultimate outcome is predetermined. There's a bigger picture here, and the only person standing in the way of the status quo is Ron Paul, which scares the powers to be. This is why there is so much controversy already associated with missing ballots, fraud, and scandals. The head of the state GOP in Iowa, New York, and now Nevada all have resigned in the past two weeks. Coincidence? Probably not; to all of you Obama supporters on this page, if he gets elected bills similar to SOPA and PIPA will pass. He signed in NDAA on New Year’s Day, so enjoy what is left of your rights before big government, prolonged bankruptcy, and progressive social stratification ultimately result in a fascist America. For the uneducated or misinformed, NDAA does indeed allow the United States military to act as a sort of police force on American soil. Anyone suspected to have some sort of ties or associated with a terrorist group (what the Obama administration likes to refer to as “home-grown terrorists”), can be arrested without probable cause, has no rights, no lawyer, no phone call, and no day in court. They will be ‘whisked’ away to an undisclosed location and held their without due process of law for an indefinite amount of time. Obama has given rise to a new era in America, an era of tyrannical militarism, ensuring to end any form of anti-government resistance and silence the masses through brute force and fear; Machiavelli would be proud. I fear for the future of our country, with hopes that the land of the free will not give in to these criminals; Liberty or Death. Stand up to the government. Say no to Barrack Obama, say no to Mitt Romney, say no to the status quo.
• +39
  You liberals don’t understand that Obama, your glorified Marxist, or Romney, the GOP’s puppet of choice will push the same agenda regardless of who wins the election. If you would do some research and look through their voting records, you would find a striking similarity. Turn off CNN, wake up to what the federal government is really doing. I know that most of you enjoy having big brother take care of you all of the time. Liberals are so dependent on a broken system it’s really quite sad; do some INDEPENDENT research without utilizing the skewed mainstream media. It comes as no surprise to me that many European countries would vote Obama into office due to the vast amount of bankrupt socialist programs that so many unfortunate people are dependent on, run by a failing bankrupt government. Stuffing ballot boxes, habitually lying about fraud allegations, and blatantly skewing the results is something BOTH parties are guilty of. Just recently in Nevada, Ron Paul was cheated out of a state known to be largely libertarian. Newsmax published an article 3 days before the caucus even took place displaying statistically accurate results of the Nevada caucus. The status quo has already won because their puppet, Mitt Romney/Barrack Obama, is the front runner and everything is going according to plan (yes, I might as well refer to them as a singular individual. The outcome of the next 4 years would be that similar if EITHER gets into office). Please explain how an article about the results, with statistical accuracy, came out several days before the Nevada caucus even took place? It is astonishing to see how so many educated people constantly believe the bullsh*t that is fed to them. Yes, I understand that liberals are weary of a GOP candidate being elected into office, but please understand one thing; the current president is trampling all over the constitution, destroying the monetary value at unprecedented rates, and disgracing America internationally.
• +10
  Self-reliance and independence can seem overwhelming and frightening at first, but it's okay, just like the colonial tories you'll learn to appreciate that when true liberty is restored. Seriously though, you just now lost faith in everything. The Illinois economy is absolute sh*t. It mainly stems from the absurd legislation being approved in Cook County. I lost hope in sheep like you years ago.
• +6
  hmm....let's see. Evolution has been proven. The hybridization that occurred between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis has too been proven. Did you know that 3-5% of non-African descendants genome is derived from Neanderthals(due to early Homo sapiens leaving the Sub-Saharan area and coming into contact with Neanderthals ) This led to a founders effect and many bottle necks. The big bang, yep, recreated. I'm not going to get too much into this, but religion was created as a mechanism to control the masses, becoming very prevalent around the time of the first pristine civilizations such as Mesopotamia. Anyway, some 6,000 plus odd religions are known and have a record. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying there isn't a higher power, I'm just saying.
• +3
  wasn't aware that this poll was a tally on, "Did your Christian God create the world or did the big bang?" I was under the impression that it was about a higher power. Furthermore, using the Bible as evidence(and actually taking it literally for that matter) is nonsensical. There is a fossil record tracing our mammalian ancestors to the Paleocene Epoch 65.5 million years ago. We can trace the emergence of our bipedal ancestors back 6-7million years with the appearance of pre-Australopiths, such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis. We diverged from our closest living relatives in the genus Pan, chimpanzees. This was the path that made us uniquely human. I'm not going any further into it other than to say, as I said on the other 'young earth proponent' thread, that we (non-African descendants, because they did not contact them there) share 3-5% of our genome with Homo neanderthalensis (proving hypridization). Anyway, if you can use the Bible I suppose this legitimizes the use of Egyptian Hieroglyphs or Mesopotamian cuneiform against science to prove Creationism. One last thing, you all put gas in your car every day (FOSSIL fuel), if you honestly believe that the earth is only 6 or 7 thousand years old, explain the FOSSIL FUEL in your car. Did God create fossil fuel too, just for convenience sake? I may be biased since I study Paleoanthropology, but if you ask me, you are all just as bad as the ignorant people who killed Galileo for proving the earth was round, not flat. You all will come around. Have Faith :)
• I pointed out that I was talking about New Earth Christians at the beginning of the page, scroll down the page and see their comments. You're right, I should have been more specific as the majority of branches of christianity believe in evolution and the big bang. However, the majority of people who are posting to this site do not seem to. They referred to the Bible as a "history book". Literal interpretation of the books of the Bible was not intended.
• +2
  Thank you for proving my point, random. Due to increasing population densities in urban areas and social stratification, the first organized religions appeared. The elites(kings, royalty, priests, shaman, etc.) used religion as leverage against the population. The Aztecs killed for religions sake, wore the skin of the person they slayed at alter for days often times. The wars over religions started, because each pristine civilization was creating their own religion. The world was much more isolated then, and when a smaller territory was taken over by a larger empire, they either joined without resistance or were often forced into/killed for it. This created empires, which forced there religions upon so many people. They insisted to new generations the virtues of their particular religion, and justified illogical or irrational behavior with religion. Look at what the Crusades did to Muslims.
• +1
  The Bible provides metaphorical stories and should by no means be taken literally. They have underlying messages 'read between the lines'. You talk about God giving you free will, do you think he did that so you could be ignorant and dictated by a book written by men over hundreds of years from 2K years ago? Why don't you use that 1350cc brain and be more open to reality
• +1
  Hate to get 'all' grammatically correct, but it looks like you're a gullible idiot.
• +1
  You're an IDIOT. the catholic church openly embraces the big bang and evolution. Obviously you're a pretty ignorant one, if you don't even know what has happened since Vatican II. Catholics know not to literally interpret the bible. Figure sh*t out about your own religion, please.
• +1
  Typing Dialogue from when you answered a question in class? No wonder you're a creationist. Clearly logic, comprehension and application of are not you're strongest areas. I recommend actually attempting to understand evolution and reality before just saying, "screw it, I guess I'll be a creationist I'm not learning about the building blocks of life." Ignorance really isn't bliss.
• +1
  a pro-creation scientist? sounds like an oxymoron to me.
• +1
  Tell me about it. I am appalled that the majority of Americans actually are this ignorant.
• Why does it not surprise me that a creationist from Texas is creaming his pants about this thread. The absurdity of the protests against evolution being taught in public schools in the state of Texas is outrageous. I thought by the 21st century we would be rational enough to not teach creationism in any public schools. Separation of church and state; religious beliefs are best left at home. Taking away the chance to embrace science and rationality from the children will come back to bite your state in the ass. The anti-evolution movement in Texas makes me sick.
• That is where you are wrong random. I have read many portions of the Bible, I was forced to go to catholic school for much of my life. I know a lot more about Christianity than you assume. I know enough about Christianity and other religions to know to stay away from an organized cult. Wars are fought based on slight differences between religions, which otherwise share a very similar structure. All of the major religions of the world send the same message to their followers; yet wars are waged on them (primarily monotheistic religions). Why don't you stop being 'that guy' and think of your own comeback at the end of your irrational rants? Stop taking the last phrase from my prior post and restating it. You sound like an idiot.
• ^A product of No Child Left Behind; Literacy is overrated
• +1
  oh wow. The dollars worth is going to sh*t. Our monetary value is a joke. Half the reason the US dollar is still so prevalent is because barrels of oil are priced out internationally in US dollars. Just wait for the next dollar bubble to pop. As Louis CK put it "It would be like having 1,000,000 Prussian Franks."
• Instant gratification? or little to no knowledge on the current economic situation. It seems to me anyone who has seen that we are 17 trillion in debt and continue to print money like it's actually worth something would realize how useless the US dollar will soon be.
• +2
  To Start: NDAA, indefinite detention of american citizens, no search warrant, mass gun control, shrinking the middle class, empowering the 1%, attempting to pass bills such as PIPA and SOPA, shredding our constitution, enabling the military to act as a police force on american soil (Militarism), stripping away personal rights, condemning those who speak out against his unconstitutional policies and labeling them as 'home-grown terrorists', serial hypocrisy, spending more in his first term than any other president on his failure of a stimulus package, destroying our healthcare system, printing money so quickly people will be using 100's as toilet paper in the next decade. Sounds like we already have a dictator, how much worse could it get.
• +1
  faith is ignoring reality and concrete facts? Interesting. Sounds a lot like ignorance to me. Faith is not having your core beliefs changed, but accepting factual information throughout your life and making sense of all of it. Not blindly ignoring something as large as Human Origins.
• In a seminar recently one of the graduate students was discussing time he had recently spent in Texas. This was a modern human origins seminar, and we discussed the events taking place in Texas for quite a while. He went much more into detail, however. From what I understand and have read is that there is a large group there against evolution being taught in schools.
• +3
  No, it is not. There is a fossil record which illustrates hominin evolution over millions of years. We can trace our roots further back than that, many millions of years. After our divergence from the genus Pan some seven million years ago, if you only traced bipedal hominin evolution to theorize that creationism did occur, you would have to propose that 1 million years of hominin evolution=1,000 years. Essentially stating that people from 1,000 years ago would be representative of late Homo erectus and perhaps early Homo heidelbergensis (depending on your stance on cladistics; personally I don't agree with nearly as many speciation events but would classify slight craniofacial alterations as a separation of sub-species at most). Hope that answers your question, and now I would like for you to explain to me how that would all be possible under your set of beliefs.
• #directionalselection
• hence the phrase "slight craniofacial alterations" indicating that they more than somehow resemble us. Chimpanzees share 98.6% of the human genome, our closest living relatives, a species of the genus Pan. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) shared 99.9% of the human genome, only going extinct 40k-50k years ago. Due to hybridization between archaic humans and late Homo neanderthalensis, 3-5% of the nuclear DNA is present in non-African lineages. If you have ever taken a chemistry course and accept that paternity tests legitimately provide definitive evidence to determine who the biological father is then you should not discredit current methodologies used to prove that we are direct descendants to these ancestral 'ancient creatures that somehow resemble us, like monkeys'
• First of all I'm not an atheist. I am agnostic. I believe in the notion of a higher power, but do not agree with any sort of organized religion. I was raised to be Catholic and went to Catholic school through high school. Don't conclude that proponents of evolution are all atheists and are narrow-minded about spirituality.