No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

[genedigger]

the amount of pride seen in the world today was prophecied about in that fairy tale book the bible.men would be lovers of themselves,boastful,and puffed up with pride in the last days.'the love of the greater many'has definetly'cooled off'.

 

[igrowone]

I do agree it is a luxurious lifestyle we live here in the US and the rest of the developed world, but it's not the only way. ...

i agree with this notion, perhaps the most important question to humanity?
the overwhelming majority of our evolution/history is about making choices that were hard to make any other way
agriculture? if you want to live in a settled lifestyle, and many wanted for this, then you better figure out how to get more food out of your territory year after year
it's led us to the 'endless growth' economies, they only work if they grow
but growing forever isn't going to work

 

[RetroGrow]

theres a lot more than a few christians stopping stem cell research,there is some countries in europe and even isreal that are making major breakthroughs in that field

As usual, that sentence doesn't even make sense.
Creationist Christians in the U.S. are trying to stop stem cell research. Scientists in Europe, the U.S., and Israel are working on stem cell research, to advance it, not to stifle it. Only creationist morons are trying to stifle it, and that makes them murderers. Same as it's always been.

 

[RetroGrow]

As far as human evolution, We are evolving at a faster rate.

well, some of us at least.


http://www.wired.com/2012/11/recent-human-evolution-2

Human Evolution Enters an Exciting New Phase
Click to Open Overlay GalleryImage: Kevin Dooley/Flickr

If you could escape the human time scale for a moment, and regard evolution from the perspective of deep time, in which the last 10,000 years are a short chapter in a long saga, you’d say: Things are pretty wild right now.

In the most massive study of genetic variation yet, researchers estimated the age of more than one million variants, or changes to our DNA code, found across human populations. The vast majority proved to be quite young. The chronologies tell a story of evolutionary dynamics in recent human history, a period characterized by both narrow reproductive bottlenecks and sudden, enormous population growth.

The evolutionary dynamics of these features resulted in a flood of new genetic variation, accumulating so fast that natural selection hasn’t caught up yet. As a species, we are freshly bursting with the raw material of evolution.

“Most of the mutations that we found arose in the last 200 generations or so. There hasn’t been much time for random change or deterministic change through natural selection,” said geneticist Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, co-author of the Nov. 28 Nature study. “We have a repository of all this new variation for humanity to use as a substrate. In a way, we’re more evolvable now than at any time in our history.”

Akey specializes in what’s known as rare variation, or changes in DNA that are found in perhaps one in 100 people, or even fewer. For practical reasons, rare variants have only been studied in earnest for the last several years. Before then, it was simply too expensive. Genomics focused mostly on what are known as common variants.

However, as dramatically illustrated by a landmark series of papers to appear this year — by Alon Keinan and Andrew Clark, by Matt Nelson and John Novembre, and another by Akey’s group, all appearing in Science, along with new results from the humanity-spanning 1,000 Genomes Project — common variants are just a small part of the big picture. They’re vastly outnumbered by rare variants, and tend to have weaker effects.

The medical implications of this realization are profound. The previously unappreciated significance of rare variation could explain much of why scientists have struggled to identify more than a small fraction of the genetic components of common, complex disease, limiting the predictive value of genomics.
'The genetic potential of our population is vastly different than what it was 10,000 years ago.'
But these findings can also been seen from another angle. They teach us about human evolution, in particular the course it’s taken since modern Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, learned to farm, and became the planet’s dominant life form.

“We’ve gone from several hundred million people to seven billion in a blink of evolutionary time,” said Akey. “That’s had a profound effect on structuring the variation present in our species.”

Akey isn’t the first scientist to use modern genetic data as a window into recent and ongoing human evolution, nor the first to root rare variation in humanity’s post-Ice Age population boom. The new study’s insights reside in its depth and detail.

The researchers sequenced in exhaustive detail protein-coding genes from 6,515 people, compiling a list of every DNA variation they found — 1,146,401 in all, of which 73 percent were rare. To these they applied a type of statistical analysis, customized for human populations but better known from studies of animal evolution, that infers ancestral relationships from existing genetic patterns.

“There were other hints of what’s going on, but nobody has studied such a massive number of coding regions from such a high number of individuals,” said geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania.

Akey’s group found that rare variations tended to be relatively new, with some 73 percent of all genetic variation arising in just the last 5,000 years. Of variations that seem likely to cause harm, a full 91 percent emerged in this time.

Why is this? Much of it is a function of population growth. Part of it is straightforward population growth. Just 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, there were roughly 5 million humans on Earth. Now there are 7 billion. With each instance of reproduction, a few random variations emerge; multiply that across humanity’s expanding numbers, and enormous amounts of variation are generated.

Also playing a role are the dynamics of bottlenecks, or periods when populations are reduced to a small number. The out-of-Africa migration represents one such bottleneck, and others have occurred during times of geographic and cultural isolation. Scientists have shown that when populations are small, natural selection actually becomes weaker, and the effects of randomness grow more powerful.

Put these dynamics together, and the Homo sapiens narrative that emerges is one in which, for non-African populations, the out-of-Africa bottleneck created a period in which natural selection’s effects diminished, followed by a global population boom and its attendant wave of new variation.

The result, calculated Akey, is that people of European descent have five times as many gene variants as they would if population growth had been slow and steady. People of African descent, whose ancestors didn’t go through that original bottleneck, have somewhat less new variation, but it’s still a large amount: three times more variation than would have accumulated under slow-growth conditions.

Natural selection never stopped acting, of course. New mutations with especially beneficial effects, such as lactose tolerance, still spread rapidly, while those with immediately harmful consequences likely vanished within a few generations of appearing. But most variation has small, subtle effects.
Click to Open Overlay GalleryVisualization of the distribution of potentially harmful genetic variation across protein-coding portions of the human genome. The top section represents variation that predates the human population explosion 10,000 years ago. The bottom represents variation that arose since then. Image: Fu et al./Nature

It’s this type of variation that’s proliferated so wildly. “Population growth is happening so fast that selection is having a hard time keeping up with the new, deleterious alleles,” said Akey.

One consequence of this is the accumulation in humanity of gene variants with potentially harmful effects. Akey’s group found that a full 86 percent of variants that look as though they might be deleterious are less than 10,000 years old, and many have only existed for the last millennium.

“Humans today carry a much larger load of deleterious variants than our species carried just prior to its massive expansion just a couple hundred generations ago,” said population geneticist Alon Keinan of Cornell University, whose own work helped link rare variation patterns to the population boom.

The inverse is also true. Present-day humanity also carries a much larger load of potentially positive variation, not to mention variation with no appreciable consequences at all. These variations, known to scientists as “cryptic,” that might actually be evolution’s hidden fuel: mutations that on their own have no significance can combine to produce unexpected, powerful effects.

Indeed, the genetic seeds of exceptional traits, such as endurance or strength or innate intelligence, may now be circulating in humanity. “The genetic potential of our population is vastly different than what it was 10,000 years ago,” Akey said.

How will humanity evolve in the next few thousand years? It’s impossible to predict but fun to speculate, said Akey. A potentially interesting wrinkle to the human story is that, while bottlenecks reduce selection pressure, evolutionary models show that large populations actually increase selection’s effects.

Given the incredible speed and scope of human population growth, this increased pressure hasn’t yet caught up to the burst of new variation, but eventually it might. It could even be anticipated, at least from theoretical models, that natural selection on humans will actually become stronger than it’s ever been.

“The size of a population determines how much selection is going to be acting moving forward,” said anthropologist Mark Shriver of Penn State University. “You have an increase in natural selection now.”

An inevitably complicating factor is that natural selection isn’t as natural as it used to be. Theoretical models don’t account for culture and technology, two forces with profound influences. Widespread use of reproductive technologies like fetal genome sequencing might ease selection pressures, or even make them more intense.

As for future studies in genetic anthropology, Akey said scientists are approaching the limits of what can be known from genes alone. “We need to take advantage of what people have learned in anthropology and ecology and linguistics, and synthesize all this into a coherent narrative of human evolution,” he said.

Geneticist Robert Moyzis of the University of California, Irvine, co-author of a 2007 study on accelerating human evolution, noted that the new study only looked at protein-coding genes, which account for only a small portion of the entire human genome. Much of humanity’s rare variation remains to be analyzed.

Moyzis’ co-authors on that study, geneticist Henry Harpending of the University of Utah and anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, also warned against jumping to early conclusions based on the new study’s dating. Some of what appears to be new variation might actually be old, said Hawks.

Even with these caveats, however, the study’s essential message is unchanged. “Sometimes people ask the question, ‘Is human evolution still occurring?'” said Tishkoff. “Yes, human evolution can still occur, and it is.”

Citations: “Analysis of 6,515 exomes reveals the recent origin of most human protein-coding variants.” By Wenqing Fu, Timothy D. O’Connor, Goo Jun, Hyun Min Kang, Goncalo Abecasis, Suzanne M. Leal, Stacey Gabriel, David Altshuler, Jay Shendure, Deborah A. Nickerson, Michael J. Bamshad, NHLBI Exome Sequencing Project & Joshua M. Akey. Vol. 491, No. 7426, Nov. 29, 2012

If we left it to natural selection, half the third world would have perished. We rescued them, to our own detriment. Now they threaten to over run us.
Natural selection is nature's way. Only the strong survive, creating stronger progeny. We have altered that. I think mother nature knows best.

 

[Weird]

If we left it to natural selection, half the third world would have perished. We rescued them, to our own detriment. Now they threaten to over run us.
Natural selection is nature's way. Only the strong survive, creating stronger progeny. We have altered that. I think mother nature knows best.

we are a cognitive extension of nature

survival of the fittest aka eugenics is what the nazi practiced, interesting you embrace that mantra and claim to be humanistic.

Why not link a lennon song that extols those virtues to illustrate the type of person you just might be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/; from Greek εὐγενής eugenes "well-born" from εὖ eu, "good, well" and γένος genos, "race, stock, kin")[2][3] is the belief and practice which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population.[4][5] It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics).[6]


While eugenic principles have been practiced as far back in world history as Ancient Greece, the modern history of eugenics began in the early 20th century when a popular eugenics movement emerged in Britain[7] and spread to many countries, including the US and most European countries. In this period eugenic ideas were espoused across the political spectrum. Consequently, many countries adopted eugenic policies meant to improve the genetic stock of their countries. Such programs often included both "positive" measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and "negative" measures such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. People deemed unfit to reproduce often included people with mental or physical disabilities, people who scored in the low ranges of different IQ tests, criminals and deviants, and members of disfavored minority groups. The eugenics movement reached a climax in Nazi Germany where a state policy of racial hygiene based on eugenic principles led to the Holocaust and the murder by the German state of at least 10 million people. In the decades following World War II, with the institution of human rights, many countries gradually abandoned eugenics policies, although some Western countries, among them Sweden and the US, continued to carry out forced sterilizations for several decades. Today eugenics as a state policy is practiced in China, where it is also criticized by international organizations. Without being part of systematic eugenics policies, elements of eugenic practice exist in many societies ranging from state policies encouraging safe sex or offering rewards for procreation or offering fetal genetic screenings, counseling or abortions, to private companies or individuals offering rewards for sterilization or abortion for members of certain groups.


The main critique towards eugenics policies is that regardless of whether "negative" or "positive" policies are used, they are vulnerable to political abuse because the criteria of selection are determined by whichever group is in power. Furthermore, negative eugenics in particular is considered by many to be a violation of basic human rights, which include the right to reproduction.

 

[Wö£fëñxXx]

As usual, that sentence doesn't even make sense.
Creationist Christians in the U.S. are trying to stop stem cell research. Scientists in Europe, the U.S., and Israel are working on stem cell research, to advance it, not to stifle it. Only creationist morons are trying to stifle it, and that makes them murderers. Same as it's always been.

You'll argue simply for arguments sake, eh?
I'm quiet sure I am not the only one here that concludes you are a dogmatic, belligerent tool.

Did you pray for a pony as a child and were declined?

You rant about evolution then go on and on about stem cell research?
Apparently you can't tell the oxyMORON between the two, and then have the gall to call others childish names. Shame on you.

To quote myself here.

One plus one equals two whether you are a theist or a humanist. But when you start accumulating data and sifting it through YOUR worldview, it affects what you do with the answer. In other words, your worldview determines how you use the information you have collected.
If you believe that mankind is the product of evolution, that will affect the value you put on human life, the way you think about the world, and your ethics. Instead of honoring mankind as a little lower than the angels, you will denigrate him as a little higher than the apes.

But if you believe that God is the Creator, that means you embrace the concept of another Authority that supersedes human authority. Therefore you will not believe that man’s authority is the measure of all things, and you will be governed by a standard of truth that is above and outside of man-made authority.

The issue of creation isn’t just a matter of how we came to exist. It is a worldview issue, a matter of who reign in ultimate authority on this earth, man or God. Your decision on this question will impact every part of your life. How you view this matter will even determine how you value life – how you value yourself and others. This is a critical piece of truth that when absent from the education of a culture will lead to increased crime and violence.

Mans authority is not the measure of all things. we all will embrace death/separation from the physical and return to the un-dilluted spiritual, because we are spiritual, we have a soul and we live in a body, an earth suit.

evolve
verb \i-ˈvälv, -ˈvȯlv, ē- also -ˈväv or -ˈvȯv\

: to change or develop slowly often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state : to develop by a process of evolution

Nothing evolves what we actually have is entropy, that is why you are going on about stem cell research.

en·tro·py
ˈentrəpē/
noun
noun: entropy; plural noun: entropies; symbol: S

2.
lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
"a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme"
synonyms: deterioration, degeneration, crumbling, decline, degradation, decomposition, breaking down, collapse;

Entropy was introduced by sin, a gradual decline, that's why God said not to eat of that one tree or you will die, then He said to Himself in Genesis after Adam ate of that fruit "Lets get them out of the garden least he eat of the tree of life and live forever". Can you imagine living forever with the sin of cancer for instance and not be able to die? ouch. I'd call that mercy.

creationism
noun cre·a·tion·ism \-shə-ˌni-zəm\

: the belief that God created all things out of nothing as described in the Bible and that therefore the theory of evolution is incorrect

Creation all the way, we have to much evidence of it including an undeniable written account along with a visual if one will simply take an unbiased look around.

Darwin on his deathbed said his theory was incorrect.

Love you Retro

 

[trichrider]

i agree with this notion, perhaps the most important question to humanity?
the overwhelming majority of our evolution/history is about making choices that were hard to make any other way
agriculture? if you want to live in a settled lifestyle, and many wanted for this, then you better figure out how to get more food out of your territory year after year
it's led us to the 'endless growth' economies, they only work if they grow
but growing forever isn't going to work

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150326152238.htm

Public Release: 27-Mar-2015
Do biofuel policies seek to cut emissions by cutting food?

Princeton University
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A study published today in the journal Science found that government biofuel policies rely on reductions in food consumption to generate greenhouse gas savings.
Shrinking the amount of food that people and livestock eat decreases the amount of carbon dioxide that they breathe out or excrete as waste. The reduction in food available for consumption, rather than any inherent fuel efficiency, drives the decline in carbon dioxide emissions in government models, the researchers found.

"Without reduced food consumption, each of the models would estimate that biofuels generate more emissions than gasoline," said Timothy Searchinger, first author on the paper and a research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy.

Searchinger's co-authors were Robert Edwards and Declan Mulligan of the Joint Research Center at the European Commission; Ralph Heimlich of the consulting practice Agricultural Conservation Economics; and Richard Plevin of the University of California-Davis.
The study looked at three models used by U.S. and European agencies, and found that all three estimate that some of the crops diverted from food to biofuels are not replaced by planting crops elsewhere. About 20 percent to 50 percent of the net calories diverted to make ethanol are not replaced through the planting of additional crops, the study found.

The result is that less food is available, and, according to the study, these missing calories are not simply extras enjoyed in resource-rich countries. Instead, when less food is available, prices go up. "The impacts on food consumption result not from a tailored tax on excess consumption but from broad global price increases that will disproportionately affect some of the world's poor," Searchinger said.
The emissions reductions from switching from gasoline to ethanol have been debated for several years. Automobiles that run on ethanol emit less carbon dioxide, but this is offset by the fact that making ethanol from corn or wheat requires energy that is usually derived from traditional greenhouse gas-emitting sources, such as natural gas.

Both the models used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board indicate that ethanol made from corn and wheat generates modestly fewer emissions than gasoline. The fact that these lowered emissions come from reductions in food production is buried in the methodology and not explicitly stated, the study found.
The European Commission's model found an even greater reduction in emissions. It includes reductions in both quantity and overall food quality due to the replacement of oils and vegetables by corn and wheat, which are of lesser nutritional value. "Without these reductions in food quantity and quality, the [European] model would estimate that wheat ethanol generates 46% higher emissions than gasoline and corn ethanol 68% higher emissions," Searching said.

The paper recommends that modelers try to show their results more transparently so that policymakers can decide if they wish to seek greenhouse gas reductions from food reductions. "The key lesson is the trade-offs implicit in the models," Searchinger said.

###​

 

[trichrider]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88GTUXvp-50

[YOUTUBEIF]88GTUXvp-50[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[D. B. Doober]

Quote:
Originally Posted by RetroGrow View Post
If we left it to natural selection, half the third world would have perished. We rescued them, to our own detriment. Now they threaten to over run us.
Natural selection is nature's way. Only the strong survive, creating stronger progeny. We have altered that. I think mother nature knows best.

They don't threaten to overrun us. Millions of people around the world would agree with your statement. The other side would call you a Nazi. The people calling people Nazis are usually not bright. With the exception of Weird et al

 

[D. B. Doober]

It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics).[6]

While eugenic principles have been practiced as far back in world history as Ancient Greece, the modern history of eugenics began in the early 20th century when a popular eugenics movement emerged in Britain[7] and spread to many countries, including the US and most European countries.
---------------------

I see nothing wrong or unnatural with recessive traits becoming unwanted and disappearing. Its natural selection. Fuck with natural selection and you get people going gooblegabblegoop because they are so recessive they hide behind a religion from across the planet, spreading their hate and recessive genes via surrogates; poor health - obesity, poor vision, migraines, cancer, mental illness, etc. Sadly, money can dilute the gene pool. Remember that next time you see someone with poor genes...ask yourself if the father or mother was/is wealthy. Without that money, they're tree is done with and the gene pool is normal/secure. Look what money does! Just do a Google search. I'm going to try "rich ugly" and see if I can laugh.
I'm a classically trained anthropologist and I hate Hitler.

 

[armedoldhippy]

I see LOTS of shit wrong with letting recessive genes disappear. humanity is the sum of all of our parts, and removing curly hair, red hair, etc is only ruining the gene pool.

 

[mr.brunch]

Yeah, an undeniable written account- written by mad old men.

 

[Weird]

I see LOTS of shit wrong with letting recessive genes disappear. humanity is the sum of all of our parts, and removing curly hair, red hair, etc is only ruining the gene pool.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=55297&pictureid=1290546View Image

Id like to leave a pool of genes all over her

 

[mr.brunch]

As we seem to be hovering around the subject of creation stories, it only seems fair to include a few more....

CREATION STORIES


In the beginning

All human societies, including our own, tell stories of how the world began. Such stories are almost infinitely varied in detail, but they tend to include some basic themes.

Many accounts begin with earth, or with earth retrieved from water. In some of them gods and people and animals emerge from the earth (just as plants still do). In others the process begins when a creature, such as a crab or tortoise, dives into a primeval ocean and brings up a small piece of earth from which the universe is created. Myths of these kinds are common among American Indians and aboriginal Australians (who place before the moment of creation a period called 'the time of dreaming').

Eggs and emptiness

Several mythologies, including one developed in China, begin with the splitting in two of a cosmic egg. In the Chinese version this is followed by the growth of a giant whose limbs eventually form the observable world. A dismembered giant features also in the Germanic (or Norse) account of creation.

The Germanic version begins with a magic emptiness, one of the most characteristic features of creation stories. The Hebrews imagine a first moment when all is void, with darkness on the face of the deep. In Greece the story begins with Chaos, meaning a gaping emptiness. In Egypt and Mesopotamia a boundless ocean sets the primal scene.

Divine disorder

In societies where many tribal groups have coalesced into a single civilization, each bringing their own gods, there tends to be a dramatic series of encounters between the contending deities - sometimes sexual, but more often murderous and even cannibalistic - before humans appear in the story. This is true of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and above all Greece. The mythology of Japan also provides a complex account of the early affairs of the gods, while hardly noticing the arrival of mankind. In the multi-faceted mind of India, several creation stories are able to co-exist.

An entirely different theme emerges with the ancient Hebrews. They declare, briefly and to the point, that God did it.

Egypt

There are several creation stories in Egypt, attached to rival gods. The most common one begins with Nun, the primeval ocean, from which Amen rises in splendour. He takes the name Re, thus in effect merging two rival deities. By an act of masturbation (described as such in the temple texts) he produces a divine son and daughter. These two breed a race of gods, while the tears of Amen-Re become mankind - appropriately enough, for man's behaviour soon persuades the creator to withdraw from earthly affairs. He retires to the heavens, where he reigns as the sun.

As creation stories go, this is a simple one. But, from this beginning, Egyptian mythology evolves into great complexity.

Mesopotamia

The Mesopotamian creation story survives on clay tablets found in Ashurbanipal's library, in the saga known as Enuma elish (named from its first two words, meaning 'When on high'). The tablets are written in the 7th century BC, but the origin of the text is believed to go back to at least 1500 BC - a period when Babylon was the dominant city of the region.

The story begins with two watery tumultuous beings, one male and one female, Apsu (sweet water) and Tiamat (salt water). From their union there come forth a variety of sea monsters and gods. In the ensuing chaos Tiamat, the female creator, tries to take control. Her descendants unite against her, choosing one of their number - Marduk, the god of Babylon - to lead them.
Armed with a hurricane and riding a tempest drawn by four fiery steeds, Marduk meets Tiamat and her evil accomplice Kingu in battle. He kills them both.

He splits the monstrous corpse of Tiamat into two parts. From half of her he creates the heaven, from the other half the earth. In heaven he constructs a dwelling place for his colleagues, the gods. Realizing that they will need a race of servants, he uses the blood of Kingu to create the first man. This is followed by other necessary tasks, such as the creation of rivers, plants and animals.

India

The creation myths of India, in keeping with the complexities of Hinduism, range from familiar themes such as dismembered giants and magical eggs to the most delicately expressed doubts as to the possibility of knowledge on such a matter.

In an early story Purusha is a primal man sacrificed by the gods as the act of creation. The sky comes from his head, the earth from his feet, the sun from his eye and the moon from his mind. The four castes of Hindu society also derive from his body - see the Caste system). The birds and animals come from the fat which drips from him during the sacrifice.
A much later Indian story involves the god Brahma. Beginning from nothing, he goes through a lengthy process. First he creates, by thought alone, the waters. In them he deposits his seed, which grows into a golden egg. He himself is born in the egg. After a year, again by thought alone, he splits the egg in two. The halves become, in the usual way, heaven and earth.

But Indian philosophy also produces a less literal response to these eternal mysteries. One of the hymns in the Rigveda speculates on various cosmic forces which might have fashioned the universe. It concludes with a passage of most Sophisticated scepticism, beginning: 'But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened.'

The Bible story

In strong contrast with all other creation myths, the Hebrew version has a simplicity and confidence deriving from a rugged monotheism. The Old Testament opens with a magnificently confident statement: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'

This first chapter of Genesis, in which the creation is described, is believed to be the work of priests in the 5th century BC. They give the impression of looking around them - to see what God needed to create - and then devising his programme. Since the sabbath is probably already sanctified as a day of rest, they need to fit the task into a working week of six days.
The resulting programme is eminently practical, from the first moment when everything is void and dark yet also somehow awash with water. Day 1, separate light from darkness, day from night. Day 2, make space among the encircling waters by pushing up the vault of the sky. Day 3, divide the material beneath this vault into earth and sea; and on the earth let there be vegetation. Day 4, attention returns to the vault of heaven; create sun and moon and stars. Day 5, it is time for creatures in water and air; create fishes and birds. Day 6, earth too must be populated; create land animals of all kinds, and man in God's image to supervise the creatures.

The task is done. God rests on the seventh day, and sanctifies it.
In this account there is only one flaw. God's world sounds perfect, and surely must be so. But we know it is not. There are such things as disease, guilt, violence, sexual shame, even death. How can this be?

The Hebrew story provides an immediate answer in the second chapter of Genesis. Everything is indeed perfect in the Garden of Eden, and would have remained so if Eve had not tempted Adam into eating the fruit of a tree which God had forbidden them to touch. Its fruit brings an awareness of good and evil, which leads to sexual shame. After this act of disobedience Adam and Eve are in the real world. What happens there is their fault, not God's.

China

Of various creation stories which evolve in China, the most striking is that of P'an Ku. He is hatched from a cosmic egg. Half the shell is above him as the sky, the other half below him as the earth. He grows taller each day for 18,000 years, gradually pushing them apart until they reach their appointed places.

After all this effort P'an Ku falls to pieces. His limbs become the mountains, his blood the rivers, his breath the wind and his voice the thunder. His two eyes are the sun and the moon. The parasites on his body are mankind.

Greece

The Greeks acquire a vague attachment to a great many different gods during their gradual movement, as a group of Indo-European tribes, into the region of modern Greece. The result is an extremely complex account of how everything began, with deities jostling for a role. Zeus, ruler of the sky, eventually emerges as the chieftain of the gods. It is likely that he is the original god whom the Greeks brought with them. But in the first Greek account of the beginning of the universe, written down by Hesiod in about 800 BC, Zeus arrives late on the scene.

The story begins, like so many others, with a gaping emptiness, Chaos. Within this there emerges Gaea, the earth.
Gaea gives birth to a son, Uranus, who is the sky. The world now exists, earth and heaven, and together Gaea and Uranus provide it with a population, their children. First Gaea produces the Titans, heroic figures of both sexes, but her next offspring are less satisfactory; the Cyclops, with only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, are followed by unmistakable monsters with a profusion of heads and arms. Uranus, appalled by his offspring, shuts them all up in the depths of the earth.

Gaea's maternal instincts are offended. She persuades the youngest Titan, Cronus, to attack his father. He surprises him in his sleep and with a sharp sickle cuts off his genitals, which he throws into the sea.
Cronus frees his brothers and sisters from their dungeon, and together they continue to populate the world. But an inability to get on with their offspring characterizes the males of this clan. Cronus, who has six children with his sister Rhea, eats each of them as soon as it is born.

Once again maternal instincts intervene. To save her youngest child, Rhea wraps a stone in swaddling clothes. Cronus swallows the bundle and Rhea sends the baby to foster parents. He is Zeus. As an adult he overwhelms his father, defeats all the other Titans in a great war, and then settles upon Mount Olympus to preside over a world which has at last achieved a certain calm.
During this, imperceptibly, mankind has arrived on earth - it is not clear how. But men are certainly there, because a free-thinking Titan, Prometheus, smuggles them the valuable gift of fire. These first men are not considered direct ancestors by most Greeks, and there are several versions of how the present race of humans originated.

One is that Zeus, exasperated by Prometheus, sends a flood to drown mankind. Two humans escape in an ark. When the flood has subsided, the oracle at Delphi tells these two to cast behind them the bones of their first ancestor. That ancestor, they reason, is Gaea, the earth. They throw stones over their shoulders, and from each stone a human being is created.

Japan

The Japanese story of creation leads not so much to the first man as to the first emperor - not surprisingly, since the legends are collected and written down early in the 8th century AD by command of the imperial family, eager to establish a direct link back to the gods. It transpires that the gods have a lengthy and complex existence before we reach the emperor.

The story begins with a floating amorphous mass, similar to the slithery substance of an egg but moving more like a jelly-fish. From this there emerges a reed-like object, which produces eight generations of brother-and-sister gods.
The eighth pair of gods are Izanagi (The Male Who Invites) and Izanami (The Female Who Invites). Standing on the Floating Bridge of Heaven, they lean down to stir the brine of the sea with a lance. The liquid begins to curdle and forms an island. The two gods come down on to it, and build a Central Pillar. Behind this they come together, in a delightful passage of Divine innocence, to try and create more islands and gods.

Their first products are flawed (a child which cannot stand at the age of three, an island composed of foam). This turns out to be because the woman spoke first in their sexual encounter. With due formality established, they create many gods - including those of the eight islands of Japan.
The gods proliferate (soon there are 8 million) and they have many dramatic adventures, establishing such basic patterns of life as day and night, summer and winter. Eventually the Sun goddess sends her grandson, Ninigi, to rule the Central Land of Reed Plains. This is Japan.

Ninigi is granted three treasures as symbols of his rule - a jewelled necklace (symbolizing benevolence), a mirror (purity) and a sword (courage). His great-grandson Jimmu-Tenno is listed in Japanese legend as the first emperor. A necklace, mirror and sword are still the Japanese imperial symbols, kept in an inner sanctuary of Shinto shrines.

Norse legends

The main northern story of creation is probably shared by all the people forming one distinct part of the Indo-European family - the German tribes, who gradually move south through Europe from the shores of the Baltic. But it is in Scandinavia that the Germanic legends are eventually recorded and preserved, in the stories of the Norse gods.

In the beginning there is nothingness. Gradually this space fills with water, which freezes and then partially melts. From the drops of melting water a giant in human form emerges. This is Ymir. From his armpit a man and a woman appear - giants like himself, but capable of producing others by more conventional means.
Meanwhile a cow has licked the melting ice and has revealed another giant, from whom the god Odin (or Wotan) descends. Odin and his brothers kill the aged Ymir. Of his flesh they make the earth, of his skull the heavens, of his blood the sea, of his bones the mountains and of his hair the trees.

Odin builds a place for himself and the other gods to dwell in, linked to earth by the bridge of the rainbow, and he arranges for the maggots in Ymir's corpse - who have taken stunted human shape as dwarfs - to remain in what is now his body, beneath the surface of the earth. On earth itself Odin and his colleagues breathe life into two tree trunks, turning them into Ask and Embla, the first man and woman.

 

[waveguide]

mesopotamia... well if their ears weren't so tame, they wouldn't need messing up.

heck i know a gal calls her music "tigress and you fraidees"

 

[Weird]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world...o-make-contact-with-PARALLEL-UNIVERSE-in-days

SCIENTISTS conducting a mindbending experiment at the Large Hadron Collider next week hope to connect with a PARALLEL UNIVERSE outside of our own.

 

[mr.brunch]

Ha. Daily express.
Surprised they don't think immigrants will pour in through those black holes.... That's their usual line.

Am I wrong in thinking that it would be impossible to create a black hole on earth as there isn't enough matter to compress? And as for sucking in the universe.. Again impossible. Even if the sun suddenly compressed into a lil black hole, it wouldn't suck us in as its gravity would still be the same as it is now- so our orbit would remain the same.
We'd still be fucked tho.

 

[RetroGrow]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world...o-make-contact-with-PARALLEL-UNIVERSE-in-days

SCIENTISTS conducting a mindbending experiment at the Large Hadron Collider next week hope to connect with a PARALLEL UNIVERSE outside of our own.

I don't think the creationists are going to like that.
I do, though.
They can just pretend it's not real, like dinosaurs.

 

[RetroGrow]

Quote:
Originally Posted by RetroGrow View Post
If we left it to natural selection, half the third world would have perished. We rescued them, to our own detriment. Now they threaten to over run us.
Natural selection is nature's way. Only the strong survive, creating stronger progeny. We have altered that. I think mother nature knows best.

They don't threaten to overrun us. Millions of people around the world would agree with your statement. The other side would call you a Nazi. The people calling people Nazis are usually not bright. With the exception of Weird et al

The people shouting "Nazi" are full of shit, just like the like the phony reverend con men who have worn out the race card. Nature has it's way of weeding out the weak, and it has nothing to do with Nazism. Hitler was a psychopath, mother nature is not. Nature is what it is. Survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. Weak species become extinct, and are replaced by stronger species. Has nothing to do with Hitler. Those who say it does are speaking from weakness. That's their only retort, so they use it. Logic goes out the window.

 

[RetroGrow]

You'll argue simply for arguments sake, eh?

Said the creationist moron, regurgitating biblical crapola drilled into your head from birth by other morons. Meaningless, baseless, drivel. Superstitions of the ancients, preserved by the thoughtless.
Time to evolve, but evolution is "dangerous" to people who can't think outside their tiny biblical box. So sad.