Bay 12 Games Forum

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To be fair, Colonel McBadass seemed to actually be more about vengeance for all the people, including probably friends, he'd seen killed on Pandora. He didn't seem to care about the economics at all, really. He was angry and the Na'vi were not only convenient targets, but partially responsible for what he viewed as a grave injustice (while the Na'vi view the human intrusion and lack of concern for their culture as the grave injustice). It's clear that he's sufficiently prideful that he doesn't even consider the possibility that his side is wrong, but his motivation is mostly (what he views as righteous) vengeance. Or at least, that's what I got out of it.

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Ok, well, as for empirical evidence, I made a post elsewhere on this forum discussing that...

Here's the quote with some basic evidence laid out near the bottom, although I admit the tone is rather insulting as a response to the poster I was quoting. I may have misconstrued what you posted about evolution, though, so I apologize for that. If you're not being willfully ignorant, then I'll try to be civil in the future. Here's the quote, though, for reference

Your quite frankly outrageous statement that there has been no documented evidence of evolution is staggering, but has been far more effectively countered than I could possibly arrange to have done, but let me add that numerous aspects of existing life make no goddamn sense if you don't look at them with evolution in mind. Your ear, for instance, has two cranial nerves innervating it, despite its small size and the great distance between the nerves. This makes sense, because the bones (and attached muscle) that currently make up the ear USED to be jaw bones that were separated by a fair bit, and it was sensible for them to have separate nerves. Or look at the tongue; it has 5(!) different cranial nerves that lead to it, and the only way this makes sense is if God was preposterously high while He was Creating (although that would explain a hell of a lot), or if the tongue was cobbled together from 5 disparate muscle sets (which it was). There is INCREDIBLY well documented transition from fin bone structure in lobe-finned fishes to tetrapod, and the ancestral arrangement of humerus, radius + ulna, carpals, metacarpals, phalanges, remains in essentially every living vertebrate known. This doesn't make much particular sense, unless God was unimaginative in addition to being stoned out of his gourd, since there innumerably more sensible ways of accomplishing the same task. I could go on, if you'd like.

At any rate, I agree that bringing this debate up in the first place was really a poor choice on Jude's part. It's wholly tangential, really, and the only reason I'm participating in it is that it's a pet peeve of mine when people dismiss the whole thing as "a theory" or "in violation of physical laws" or other reasons that either miss the point entirely or fail to actually be accurate. My best excuse is that telling me evolution doesn't make sense is like telling a mathematician that addition doesn't make sense. Anyway, that said, if you'd like I can probably fetch you references for those particular facts I mentioned in the wall o' text quote up there, it'll just take me a bit since they're from memory.