Biblical challenge

I didn't feel the need to attempt to rip your belief spectrum to shreds, nor did I brand you a member of a cult, nor did I make stereotypical presumptions about your parents, nor did I label you brainwashed... in fact I haven't once criticized your beliefs - I've merely tried to explain my own.

See many people would see your above statement as deluded, to think that the catholic church is responsible for the "over population" of the earth - is quite a stretch of the imagination... I find it interesting that andy believes in little green men on Mars and you believe that the world is over populated with catholics... Yet I'm the nut?

Reality is Forks, we all have our own beliefs - just try not to be so intolerant of those unfamiliar to you.

For someone so in touch with their metaphysical dimention, you don't half bang on about materialism.

I'm afraid that noone here is going to respect you for being able to twist the bible to loosely fit contemporary understanding that has instead come from the hard work and persistance of generations of scientists.

If you want respect for this, then quite frankly the only place you are likely to find it is from other religious jews, because people of every other religion and no religion will think you are wasting your time.

You said that almost like you actually knew the first thing about the mindset of "every other religion"... theres a whole world outside of nucastle.co.uk and jesmond andy... try experiencing it speaking for it.

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joe's threads always make a good read.

Me too

meee three!

I haven't got a belief spectrum. I only accept that things seem a certain way to me. If someone offers me a better explanation I'll go with that. I don't have to believe in the latest scientific theory or the old book theory. I'm a free man. You seem to be tied up in knots with it all. Try to get out more.
Lets see, you called me a failed artist, an arrogant, bigoted, under-achieving small town, ignorant, semi-educated, unmarried, poverty stricken raver.
In the words of the great sage himself ' try not to be so intolerant of those unfamiliar to you'
:worship:

Being a "Nu-Jew"(tm) cant be that brilliant; your man Joe is obviously so troubled by his former existence as a scabby little raver that he feels the need to come back to his old stomping ground and bleat on about how wonderful his new found life is?

Sounds like its Forks 1 - Joe 0 to me

There is nothing wrong with religion, people may need a spiritual side. Its when religion gets organised and people (particularly governments/authority) start to put to their own spin on it, for their own gain, is when you should start to worry. And every religion is guilty of this. The biggest example with Christians is the old, "Hmmm, I need to build a nice new big church, but I need some cash for this, lets see. Ahh yes lets instigate the idea of heaven and hell into this niffty little book. Then I can go around and put the fear of god and your immortal soul on the line. But of course if you slip me a few quid or maybe that nice little sea side block of land you have, your immortal soul will end up in heaven."

The Koran actually says that you shall treat woman like the farmer treats the dirt beneath his feet. Most farmers would tell you the soil is very important to their livelihood and treat it like gold. But as soon as some woman hating prick got hold of this and put their own spin on it... well you know the rest.

Anyway the point of this is that religion is not to blame for the ills done in their various names. Its people you should be blaming, and people who go round saying things like "Jews run the media" (which I hear all the time), "Muslims believe this", "Christians believe so and so", are more to blame than most.

yeh. sumfink like that.

As much as I thought that was a ridiculous post, this was an interesting question I hadn't heard of it before, so I thought I'd better look into it. The short answer to your question is no. The long answer is below.

Clearly if the lioness was getting fertilised, giving half her genes to her offspring, then spending a lot of energy on being pregnant and rearing her young before killing them then this would be difficult to explain. This isn't what happens though.

Lions have the interesting behaviour of living in prides. Within a pride, there will tend to be a number of females, a much smaller number of males and cubs.

Selfish gene theory (which, remember, is the theory that the gene, as opposed to the individual or group, is the fundamental unit of natural selection, it's nothing to do with anything nasty like atheism) predicts that genes which increase the likelihood of propogating themselves for minimal energy expenditure will tend to increase in number in the gene pool. Genes that tend to cause their lions to perform activites that reduce their likelihood of passing on their genes, or that increase their energy expenditure, will be less competetive and decrease in the gene pool. This much is common sense.

A male lion has a very small energy expenditure in fertilising lionesses and contributing half of his genes to the offspring. On the other hand, the lioness has a very large expenditure - the egg takes more to produce, she has to eat more when pregnant, it's risky etc.

Male lions often hunt for food when in prides. However, they have no particular way of knowing which lion cubs contain their selfish genes if they arrive in a new pride. The worst case scenario from the point of view of the male lion's genes would be for him to spend years collecting food for and protecting cubs which contained none of his genes. On the other hand, if he kills (or better still, eats) all the cubs when he gets to a new pride, then he can fertilise the lionesses at very little expense to himself, before his genes reap the reward of being propogated through offspring. Lionesses benefit (albeit less so) from having a male that (after he has invested some effort in early nurture) then has a vested interest in then seeing his cubs through to reproduction. When mathematical evolutionists turned their hands to this problem, it turns out that this theory works.

I hadn't actually bothered to read The Selfish Gene before, but when I was looking into your question, it turned out that Darwin and Dawkins had anticipated it long before whichever creationsist you read it from. Is it possible that they had read it in The Selfish Gene, ignored the explanation, and passed it onto gullible people who they knew wouldn't question it? You can find a far more comprehensive and well written explanation in any edition of that book, which, incidentally, is every bit as fascinating as I'd hoped.