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Definition of "design"?

sfs

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They can beg to differ all they want.

Martyrs do not kill themselves.
That is certainly not true in many non-Christian cultures, and it was not true in Christianity until roughly the time of Augustine. Eusebius, for example, includes among his lists of martyrs pious women who committed suicide to avoid rape.
 
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AV1611VET

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MoonLancer

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DrkSdBls

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I'm confused as to how the semantical debate on the definition of a martyr ties into the overall discussion of Evolutionary Theory.

It doesn't. Then again, none of this for the last 17 pages do. It's just something to talk about by a bunch of people bored of the same conversions everyday.
 
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Thistlethorn

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A martyr is someone who chooses to die rather than to deny their faith.
Murdering lots of people isn't martyrdom, I wish people would stop this slanderous comparison.

It's not slanderous. A lot of people disagree with your definition of "martyr", that's all I'm saying.
 
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laconicstudent

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A martyr is someone who chooses to die rather than to deny their faith.
Murdering lots of people isn't martyrdom, I wish people would stop this slanderous comparison.


How is it slanderous when multiple religious authorities, mainly conservative Muslim Imams, disagree with your interpretation?
 
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Jazmyn

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Traditionally, in Christianity, a martyr is someone who will die rather than deny the Lord. In Christianity, someone who kills many in an act of violence by committing suicide, is not considered a martyr. Suicide bombing is illegal, it causes grief for the many families whose loved ones were murdered, the victims did not consent. Comparing it to people who rather non-violently died for their faith is sort of equating them to something evil, thus I consider it slanderous.
 
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nvxplorer

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To all. If God did not play a part in natural processes, just keep going back and back - how do you explain how it happened? Bearing in mind this is just your "explanation".
Maybe it was God's powerful neighbor?

That we don't know the answer illustrates that by inserting the word "God," we are using this word as a metaphor for "that which we do not know."
 
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laconicstudent

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I know. The point is there are other religions in this world that disagree. I'm hardly slandering anyone when I point out that Muslim Imams consider suicide bombers, and guerrilla fighters to be martyrs. That is a factual statement.

And if martyrdom is invalidated on the basis of legality, as you assert in your post, that means that all the early Christians weren't martyrs. After all, they broke the law by refusing to worship the deified Caesar. Therefore, they were criminals, not martyrs.
 
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Mike Elphick

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After 170 odd posts, have we decided upon a defintion of 'design' yet?

I thought Alunyel was on the right lines:-

Seconded by Thistlethorn:-
That would be my definition as well.

And hinted at by catzrfluffy:-

I agree, all man-made objects have a function, even if this is to amuse or decorate (arts and crafts) or change man's mental state (painting, music, drugs). A can-opener, for example, satisfies this criteria and we all know what its function is, but what is the 'function' of a rabbit, say? What is the 'purpose' of the universe? What 'function' does the Earth serve in the universe?

Paley's watch (ht*p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy) is a favourite example of the 'design implies a designer' argument used by creationists. But there's a number of very good arguments against this analogy:-

A characteristic of something designed by people is that it performs a function that doesn't help the object itself. The watch is not bothered what time it is, nor whether it is wound up or not, but these are important issues for the designer and the user of the watch. Darwin, I believe, stated that evolution couldn't produce a characteristic in one species that was beneficial only to another species.

In my opinion, evolution is a design process in its own right, but, compared with human 'intelligent' designs, it generates designs without foresight, intention or specific function.

Of course, internally, watches and bacteria both contain sub-units for which there's clearly a function (e.g. spring and flagellum), but it's the function of the complete object that distinguishes organisms generated by biological evolution and objects designed by humans.
 
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Mike Elphick

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The citation for the original article is:

Salisbury, Frank B, Natural Selection and the Complexity of the Gene, Nature 224, 342-343 (25 October 1969)

Thanks. I couldn't access the paper itself, but got some insight into what it's intention was:-



So, it seems the 10^415 is for a single, specific DNA molecule that can self-replicate.

One of the great things about challenging creationists (who quote popular anti-evolution material that seems to self-replicate itself amongst the creationist community), lies on looking at the bad science behind it all and learning something.

Thanks to the internet, the reference Sophophile provided led me to a number of interesting papers. This one "How much of protein sequence space has been explored by life on Earth?" is quite relevant:-


In the paper we read:-


If you guys are going to keep moving the goalposts from the original link I posted, until evolution becomes a "must", then I'm out of this conversation.

Sorry, AV, but reducing the number of amino acids to half a dozen would indeed seem to change the gaol-posts! As I said, proteins don't necessarily need a specific sequence of amino acids.
 
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catzrfluffy

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A characteristic of something designed by people is that it performs a function that doesn't help the object itself. The watch is not bothered what time it is, nor whether it is wound up or not
That's because it's not alive.
but these are important issues for the designer and the user of the watch. Darwin, I believe, stated that evolution couldn't produce a characteristic in one species that was beneficial only to another species.
Humans can be do things beneficial only to other animals.
 
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gaara4158

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That's because it's not alive.Humans can be do things beneficial only to other animals.

Yes, but our ability to do such things comes from our intelligence, motor skills, social skills, etc. all of which are beneficial to us.
 
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