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Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

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Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
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The Origin of Life/Evolution?

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  • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

    Originally posted by BearBugs View Post
    And in response to those whom say that the bible "can not be the word of God" or is "heresy" I say to you, all of scientology has no proof. While the Bible has much proof. How about the prophecies written hundreds to thousands of years before the events happened? How about the proof that Jesus Christ did indeed live? How about the Ark of the Covenant that is hidden somewhere in the middle east? There is so much proof that the bible was indeed written with the inspiration of the most high God and it's sad that so many people search for the truth when God is standing right beside you calling your name.
    You are taking their bait. Evolution proponents really can't defend Evolution, so they attack the Bible, thus they don't have to defend Evolution. Lets make them stay or subject and ignore their attacks on the Bible. If they want to make the Bible's authenticity the subject of debate they should start a thread about it.

    I think the Mods would permit it in as much as people aren't calling each other names in this thread, and the Bible's authenticity would be a somewhat similar thread.
    Last edited by Will Galen; 05-09-2013, 06:33 AM.

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    • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

      Originally posted by Will Galen View Post

      The thread is about Evolution and the origin of life. It stands to reason that the Bibles creation account would come into the conversation, but you guys are just making random attacks on the Bible.
      ....which is like me saying it stands to reason that Spider-man would come into a conversation about radiation and its effects on the human body....

      An argument on intelligent design is fine. I don't agree with it necessarily, but fine. The bible? No, I don't think it stands to reason the accounts written in Genesis would come up in any serious conversation about the beginning of life on earth. Fairy tales aren't supposed to be taken seriously.

      And by the way, evolution itself has been defended pretty successfully in this thread....
      Last edited by Kstat; 05-09-2013, 06:35 AM.

      It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

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      • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

        Originally posted by BearBugs View Post
        And in response to those whom say that the bible "can not be the word of God" or is "heresy" I say to you, all of scientology has no proof.
        Are you sure?

        "I had to take her down like Chris Brown."

        -Lance Stephenson

        Comment


        • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

          Will,

          By acccident you had a Darwinian moment and hit on the basis for all of evolution earlier in this thread. Hear me out, please. I gave the example of the yellow butterflies who find themselves in a sooty environment due to a polluting factory being built, so their bright yellow color makes them stick out like a sore thumb vs. the blackened trees. Thus their predators gobble them up at an unprecedented rate. Well, every now and then these yellow butterflies have a brown offspring, by chance of a random genetic mutation. In this altered environment, say those brown offspring have 100-fold better chance of surviving and passing on their brown-winged butterfly morphology to their offspring. It is only common sense that in just a few generations that colony of yellow-winged butterflies EVOLVES into a colony of brown-winged butterflies.

          I call it an example of evolution in action, which is 100% correct. You say "hey wait, that's just something that happens naturally", which is also 100% correct. Evolution happens naturally. Its basis is common sense. It's not some fancy world view, or a nefarious attempt to deny God, or whatever.

          Substitute the example of the arrival of a soot-producing factory with the emergence of an active volcano, arrival of an ice age, the beginning of a period of global heating, whatever environment pressure you want to choose. Existing life will adapt to that pressure in order to best survive, since its genetic machinery makes such adaptation possible. Over hundreds of millions of years the tiny yellow-to-brown wing color changes are reflected in huge species-altering changes.

          Sure the process may be unsettlingly random in that those seemingly doomed yellow butterflies probably also have a few offspring that are orange, grey, white, or green and those don't fare any better than the yellow ones did in the soot-only the brown ones hit the jackpot. But maybe in another niche the pressure is volcanic ash and the grey ones preferentially survive! That versatility to mutate to make a variety of colors serves them well. Call that versatility of the genetic machinery the wisdom of a creator who created the natural process of evolution when the Earth was formed, if you will! That step seems completely unnecessary, but it at least retains the common sense portion of the story- we see evolution in action and it just makes sense!

          I don't deny that story of creation is a wonderful one to those that believe it. I just find all of the myriad stories of life overcoming great upheaval to evolve to what we see today to also be wonderful. I can't look at a whale, learn that it is every bit the mammal that we are, and marvel as to how it came to be, a creature so very much more like us than it is like any fish of the sea. The clear fossil record, the DNA evidence, and 50 million years of time show us that some population of an early mammal diverged and led to whales, to land mammals we have today, and maybe even to us. How is that not amazing? Is it an abomination just because some ministers tell you not to listen to ideas that really boil down to common sense in action?
          Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013, 08:50 AM.
          The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

          Comment


          • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

            Originally posted by Will Galen View Post
            What do we have in this thread?

            Since86 saying to Slick Pickham,



            Then Graphic-er replying to Since86, saying,



            Then Graphic-er asking in the very next post.



            What does your question have to do with the Origin of life and Evolution? Since86 is right! You guys are just generically bringing up questions that have nothing to do with the thread.

            The thread is about Evolution and the origin of life. It stands to reason that the Bibles creation account would come into the conversation, but you guys are just making random attacks on the Bible.

            The Noachian Flood, and who chose the books of the Bible have nothing to do with the origin of life.

            And the bottom line will always be that disproving the Bible doesn't prove Evolution.

            If you don't believe the Bible, that's fine, but again that's not what this thread is about. How about sticking to the subject and defending Evolution and answering how a bunch of amino acids can come spontaneously to life, when real science says life only comes from prior life?
            Like I said earlier, how do we know the Amino Acids did not interact with something that came from space? How do we know that it wasn't some microbe buried in a meteorite. I find that idea way more plausible than some creator going ZAP! life! Things from space impact the Earth all the time. No body could answer my postulation, with anything other than "not likely", even though we are talking about billions of years of time for this interaction to occur. Then folks start talking about Floods, and biblical proof of the floods.
            You can't get champagne from a garden hose.

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            • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

              Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
              Will,

              By acccident you had a Darwinian moment and hit on the basis for all of evolution earlier in this thread. Hear me out, please. I gave the example of the yellow butterflies who find themselves in a sooty environment due to a polluting factory being built, so their bright yellow color makes them stick out like a sore thumb vs. the blackened trees. Thus their predators gobble them up at an unprecedented rate. Well, every now and then these yellow butterflies have a brown offspring, by chance of a random genetic mutation. In this altered environment, say those brown offspring have 100-fold better chance of surviving and passing on their brown-winged butterfly morphology to their offspring. It is only common sense that in just a few generations that colony of yellow-winged butterflies EVOLVES into a colony of brown-winged butterflies.

              I call it an example of evolution in action, which is 100% correct. You say "hey wait, that's just something that happens naturally", which is also 100% correct. Evolution happens naturally. Its basis is common sense. It's not some fancy world view, or a nefarious attempt to deny God, or whatever.

              Substitute the example of the arrival of a soot-producing factory with the emergence of an active volcano, arrival of an ice age, the beginning of a period of global heating, whatever environment pressure you want to choose. Existing life will adapt to that pressure in order to best survive, since its genetic machinery makes such adaptation possible. Over hundreds of millions of years the tiny yellow-to-brown wing color changes are reflected in huge species-altering changes.

              Sure the process may be unsettlingly random in that those seemingly doomed yellow butterflies probably also have a few offspring that are orange, grey, white, or green and those don't fare any better than the yellow ones did in the soot-only the brown ones hit the jackpot. But maybe in another niche the pressure is volcanic ash and the grey ones preferentially survive! That versatility to mutate to make a variety of colors serves them well. Call that versatility of the genetic machinery the wisdom of a creator who created the natural process of evolution when the Earth was formed, if you will! That step seems unnecessary, but it at least retains the common sense portion of the story- we see evolution in action and it just makes sense!

              I don't deny that story of creation is a wonderful one to those that believe it. I just find all of the myriad stories of life overcoming great upheaval to evolve to what we see today to also be wonderful. I can't look at a whale, learn that it is every bit the mammal that we are, and marvel as to how it came to be, a creature so very much more like us than it is like any fish of the sea. The clear fossil record, the DNA evidence, and 50 million years of time show us that some population of an early mammal diverged and led to whales, to land mammals we have today, and maybe even to us. How is that not amazing? Is it an abomination just because some ministers tell you not to listen to ideas that really boil down to common sense in action?
              It IS amazing, as a theory, unfortunately that theory is offered as a fact and used to discredit what others choose to believe. Personally, I'm fine believing that God created all things and that SOME evolutionary trends may occur but the sum total of the mutations required to create man in his current form is just too overwhelming to be coincidental, especially on a global population level.
              Ever notice how friendly folks are at a shootin' range??.

              Comment


              • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                There seems to be a growing body of evidence that much, or perhaps even all, of the water on a planet such as ours can arrive via comets. Thus the thought that other essential requirements for life could have also arrived by similar processes is not a crazy notion. At this point I don't think there is much data either way, but it seems a decent educated guess. In the vastness of the universe isn't it kind of egotistical to think that life got a foothold here first, or only got a foothold here? If it began somewhere in our galactic neighborhood first then we could well have been seeded for life by cosmic bombardment.
                Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013, 09:14 AM.
                The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                Comment


                • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                  Originally posted by indygeezer View Post
                  unfortunately that theory is offered as a fact and used to discredit what others choose to believe.
                  That's an interesting point of view.

                  I would instead say that an entrenched belief system is accepted by a great many people as facts that cannot be refuted no matter what, with the threat of eternal damnation to those who dare to use their brain. I don't see a justification for such dogmatic close-mindedness. I find it appalling to see such dogmatic close-mindedness spoon-fed to our children. If you want to home-school your kids and teach them about fairies, dragons, and pixie dust being real, then go right ahead. I will feel sorry for those kids, but in the end maybe they will be able to think for themselves.

                  Evolution stands only on evidence, not opinion. It will be a great shame to let those who want to cover up that evidence get their way.
                  Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013, 09:22 AM.
                  The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                  Comment


                  • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                    Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
                    The point was that flood stories were re-told for centuries, long before the Bible was written, by cultures that did not believe in God. Then later, essentially the same story was re-packaged with a religious spin put on it front and center.

                    If the theory of sudden burst of the glacier melt-swelled Mediterranean into the Black Sea were true,

                    and if I had survived somehow in a mountain or something while essentially the entire area of the Earth that I know about or that I had ever seen was inundated by 50 feet of water, I would (wrongly) have recorded it as a global flood too. Later re-tellers would further embellish it and spin it to their own purposes. What gets really odd that one of those later re-tellers would have his version of my story decreed to be the word of God!
                    There’s problems with your assertion there were flood stories told centuries before the bible was written. Take the Epic of Gilgamesh, a flood story you mentioned that is supposingly the oldest of the flood Myths. It was originally written on 12 clay tablets. Although the tablets were said to have been fired in 1150 BC, the origin of the story was dated to 2,500 to 2,750 BC. Which conveniently happens to put it a few centuries before Bible chronology says the Noachian flood occurred. (2370 BC)

                    There are other experts that date the Gilgamesh Epic between the 21st and 18th centuries BC. To be fair their dates conveniently put the Epic several hundred years after the flood. Lostpedia dates it to the 8th century BC. How they came up with that date is rather curious in as much as the tablets were said to be fired in 1150. Then there’s the “Institute for Creature Research,” which says, “The actual tablets date back to around 650 B.C. and are obviously not originals since fragments of the flood story have been found on tablets dated around 2,000 B.C.”

                    Obviously if the experts can’t agree on the dates of the Gilgamesh Epic, or the age of the tablets, your assertion that flood stories were re-told for centuries, long before the Bible was written, is in question.

                    As for the glacier melt theory, I’ve read similar accounts. The accounts were about walls of water 2,000 feet high traveling from 45 to 65 mph. The hypothesis as I understand it is a glacier starts melting and the water is held back until a part of the glacier gives way producing a huge wave that leaves a scar on the land. That makes sense to me, and I buy it happening, but I also buy the Noachian flood happening and that of course would produce the same scaring.

                    The thing is, people who don’t believe the Bible account will attribute it to glacier melt as a way of discrediting the Bible. However, glacier melt doesn’t account for the fossil record.

                    Evidence that a flood of immense proportions occurred is in the great number of fossil dumps. The Saturday Evening Post noted: “Many of these animals were perfectly fresh, whole and undamaged, and still either standing or at least kneeling upright. ... Here is a really shocking—to our previous way of thinking. Vast herds of enormous, well-fed beasts not specifically designed for extreme cold, placidly feeding in sunny pastures ... Suddenly they were all killed without any visible sign of violence and before they could so much as swallow a last mouthful of food, and then were quick-frozen so rapidly that every cell of their bodies is perfectly preserved.”

                    This fits in with what happened in the Noachian flood. The Bible describes it in these words: “All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.”

                    The rushing water would no doubt be accompanied by wind, by freezing winds in the polar regions. There, the temperature change would be the most rapid and drastic. This may have been what happened to the mammoth that was uncovered by excavators in Siberia. Vegetation was still in its mouth and stomach, and its flesh was even edible when thawed out.

                    IN 1932 a road-construction crew was digging near the Colosseum in Rome when one of the men struck a hard object. It turned out to be the tusk and cranium of an elephant. This discovery is not an isolated case. Over the years, about 140 fossilized remains of elephants have been found in and around Rome, the first confirmed case being in the 17th century.

                    People thought that the bones belonged either to elephants imported into ancient Rome or to the ones that Carthaginian General Hannibal brought into Italy. G.B. Pianciani, a 19th-century priest and professor of Natural Sciences in Viterbo, challenged those assumptions. Because the bones were mostly found in alluvial deposits, he concluded that they belonged to animals that had died elsewhere and were carried to their new location by floodwaters. (For those who don't know an alluvial deposit is material deposited by water, be it rivers or floods. It consists of silt, sand, clay, and gravel, as well as much organic matter.)

                    A cave near Palermo, Sicily, was filled with many tons of remains, including the fossilized bones of deer, oxen, elephants, and hippopotamuses of various ages— even a fetus. In fact, 20 tons of fossils found their way onto the market in the first six months after the site was discovered!

                    In Southern England, paleontologist J. Manson Valentine discovered fossil beds containing massive deposits of splintered bones of many of the same animals as well as of hyenas and polar bears. What is the reason for these large beds of diverse animal fossils in such diverse places?

                    A global flood would explain it. My opinion is there is too much diverse evidence of a global flood to say it never happened. Such evidence is also why some scientists say a huge meteor must have hit the earth in the past. Admitting to a global flood would give credence to the Bible, and that they don’t want to do.

                    What’s true is everything in the Bible is disputed. Often without reason. One man said Noah’s ark was a myth because it was to big to be carried. He had read where the Levites were carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and assumed it was the same as Noah’s ark.

                    I’m not going to reply to anymore attacks on the Bible in a thread about Evolution.

                    Comment


                    • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                      Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
                      There seems to be a growing body of evidence that much, or perhaps even all, of the water on a planet such as ours can arrive via comets. Thus the thought that other essential requirements for life could have also arrived by similar processes is not a crazy notion. At this point I don't think there is much data either way, but it seems a decent educated guess. In the vastness of the universe isn't it kind of egotistical to think that life got a foothold here first, or only got a foothold here? If it began somewhere in our galactic neighborhood first then we could well have been seeded for life by cosmic bombardment.
                      It could be, but even if it's true that's just kicking the can down the road and passing the buck. It doesn't explain the origins of life other than how they arrived here, versus how they arrived in the physical universe.

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                      • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                        Originally posted by Will Galen View Post

                        The thing is, people who don’t believe the Bible account will attribute it to glacier melt as a way of discrediting the Bible.
                        Or people will review new evidence as to whether it supports or does not support a specific hypothesis, completely divorced from any sinister motivation to discredit anything.

                        If I uncovered irrefutable scientific evidence in clear support of a biblical creation in seven days and a Noahian flood, I would publish it in the journal Science (or maybe Nature) and most likely win a Nobel prize one day. It would be a remarkable, transformative scientific achievement.

                        Data stands on data's own legs. That's how science works.

                        That's not to say a rogue so-called scientist hasn't now and then will made up data to fit a world view (Andrew Wakefield's fabricated data linking vaccines to autism, as an example). Such rogues are identified, discredited by the scientific community, and the findings 100% retracted.
                        Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013, 11:21 AM.
                        The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

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                        • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                          Originally posted by Hicks View Post
                          It could be, but even if it's true that's just kicking the can down the road and passing the buck. It doesn't explain the origins of life other than how they arrived here, versus how they arrived in the physical universe.
                          That's certainly true. It could explain all of life on Earth, when paired with an abundance of time and evolution, but it does just shift the question of origin to another setting.
                          The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

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                          • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                            What you guys are actually saying now actually implies life didn't originate on earth. You're come a long ways since Darwin. But you still don't have any proof, you are still dealing with a hypothesis.

                            Going there probably ends the discussion for me. I can scoff, but both sides know there's no scientific proof of that, so what good would it do to keep telling you that? None.
                            Last edited by Will Galen; 05-09-2013, 11:52 AM.

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                            • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                              Darwin to my knowledge never wrote a word about the origin of the first life forms on Earth or abiogenesis.

                              He first outlined examples of the common sense notion of life adapting from other pre-existing life, with abundant examples like my butterfly one (the most famous being the many species of finches in different habitats, with bodies and beaks tailored for exploiting locally abundant diets).

                              It sounds like to some extent you and geezer are... Darwinists!
                              Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013, 12:44 PM.
                              The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

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                              • Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                                Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
                                Darwin to my knowledge never wrote a word about the origin of the first life forms on Earth or abiogenesis.
                                My point in saying you've come a long way since Darwin was that the Evolutionary theory has changed a lot since his day.

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