Coulter fan flaunts foolishness

All documented cases that I am privvy[sic] to

ah, therein lies the rub.

this is what happens when AIG becomes the source of the "documented cases" such morons are privy to.

It's like someone who has never left a dark room, trying to tell everyone how wrong they are about sunsets.

It is obvious that he does not understand the definition of what a species is.

This is a little off topic but... I can't help myself. Best. Headline. Ever!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/12/27/clashing.clergy.ap/index.html

LOL, sounds like the main event for a sunday monster truck rally!

This fan of evil Coulter very stupid sounding and also very ignorant, Noh?

Inspite of all the documented changes, every one of them is still a bird.

Me not biologist but me lover of tropical fish.
Me interested in Genetic Maps.
Me thinks studies of African Chiclids good example of scientific proof of TOE. Granted they not really finches...

http://hcgs.unh.edu/cichlid/

In the creationist's world, the evidence for Intelligent Design is just now beginning to be examined by serious scientists, the cracks in evolution are beginning to force it apart, and honest men everywhere are starting to find themselves unable to reconcile any world view that doesn't account for a supernatural creator. Things are poised at that perfect moment right before an enormous and irrevocable paradigm shift. The fact that none of these things ever come to pass doesn't keep the Creationist from considering all of them perpetually about to.

It's like the movie Groundhog Day. Scientists spend the whole day explaining to the creationist why the theory of evolution is firmly evidenced, and yet they wake up the next day back on the same beginning square they started on. Sonny and Cher blare from the radio as the creationist begins yammering about why evolution is a theory in crisis. It's as if they're chronic amnesiacs. Every day they wake up knowing today is the day evolution is going to fall, and every day they're wrong. Yet they never learn why.

Thanks a bunch, Humbert. Now I've got that damned song trapped in my head.

"Bird" is a broad category, covering everything from hummingbirds to ostriches. This creationist wants to arbitrarily exclude all changes within the class Aves from consideration? Why? Again, because he can't rebut the evidence?

That's because creationists fundamentally misunderstand common descent. Humans and dolphins are both mammals, therefore by creationist logic, we are the same species.

Humans and dolphins are both mammals, therefore by creationist logic, we are the same species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraminology

most creobots aren't even aware their insano brand of "logic" has been "formalized".

HH: these are mostly the same people who expect the world to end Real Soon Now despite a couple of millennia of wrong predictions based on the same sources -- anyone who prefers logic to wishful thinking has already self-selected out of that group.

Jeopardy:

Contestant: "I'll take "how stupid can you get,' for $500, Alex."

Alex: "And the answer is, Finches are Still Birds."

Contestant: "What is 'An Anne Coulter Reader?'"

Alex: "Yes! And now it's on to Double Jeopardy."

I was just reading scienceblogger Orac's recent post on "Skepticism and the scientific consensus" and this just blends right in. People who do not understand a highly technical field somehow think that "studying both sides" and "thinking for themselves" gives them the expertise and understanding to go against the overwhelming scientific consensus -- a consensus which was hard won over time through a rigorous and competitive process of demonstration.

No, they read a book, so they're perfectly capable of sorting out the truth on their own. With creationists, there seems to be a weird blend of meekness and arrogance. On the one hand, they see themselves as the obedient children following God's authority, unafraid of bowing their heads and surrendering their will. And yet, on the other hand, they're renegade cowboys, takin' no one else's word fer it, but doing the hard, callus-makin' work all by themselves an' makin' up their own minds -- the true freethinker.

I'm reminded of Christoper Hitchins statement to the effect that religion manages to combine the maximum cringing humility with the maximum self-centered arrogance.

most creobots aren't even aware their insano brand of "logic" has been "formalized".

Or that it requires (at least in the young-earth variant) a much faster rates of what actual scientists call speciation than evolution.

Craig said, #7:
"Humans and dolphins are both mammals, therefore by creationist logic, we are the same species."
I agree. I think that that is the crux of their misunderstanding. they interpret "species" to mean the biblical word "kinds". I.E., they feel that all birds are the same "kind" and that therefore there has been no evolution. Maybe a little, simple, explanation of the definition of "species" would help.
Probably not, but maybe.

I've been reading up, lately, on the evolution of the immune system. It's fascinating stuff: clonal selection of B-cell lineages is almost like a little evolutionary process of its own, non-random survival of randomly varied replicators thrown into competition in an environment of their own making. When I look at the sheer quantity of technical detail that has been uncovered in answering questions like how the adaptive immune system in vertebrates evolved from the older innate immune system — or any one of umpteen other deep topics — and I compare that level of detail to the paltry smattering of trivialities offered by creationist Coulter fans, I just want to hang my head and sigh.

Yeah, the evo-creo wars are boring. After you've whacked these guys down a few dozen times ...

But, I do admire your tenacity. And I'm glad someone's doing it.

I agree. I think that that is the crux of their misunderstanding. they interpret "species" to mean the biblical word "kinds". I.E., they feel that all birds are the same "kind" and that therefore there has been no evolution.

damn, it's like I didn't even post.

see #8

the term was formalized by another complete idiot in the late 80's/early 90's:

Baraminology

If the very few intelligent intelligent design buffs out there were earnest, they'd be just as quick to heckle these morons as any evolutionist. Instead though, Dembski and crew dab vaseline on their supporters' cuts, and send them back for a fresh pummeling.

It is obvious that he does not understand the definition of what a species is.

Unless you've read something I haven't of late, neither do we.

What a tiresome task you take on PZ. Addressing these claims of ignorance may be important, but I marvel at your fortitude.

This commenter would be well served by taking a few college-level biology classes at a nearby university. There is a social importance to getting a well rounded education so that the truly evil people of the world (read Ann Coulter and the like) cannot take such easy advantage of their ignorance.

*sigh*

There is probably no point in *trying* to educate the stupid but, it's amaizing to what extent they are willing to take the same comments from creationists at face value.

For all we can tell (though I doubt it[*]) this guy could be "averagely intelligent" (as I am), but lacking in facts and knowledge (as I am), and thus taking the following statements as facts (as I *DON"T*) and finding his babble a reasonable conclussion (as I theoretically might if I were to somehow take the following statements as facts which I *really* do not ever want to believe myself capible of doing...)

*Science can not demonstrate species change.
*The "finches" are not of considerably different enough species as to demonstrate "species change"
*Much of evolution has been demonstrated to be false. (I'll be generous and assume he meant "false" rather than "fraudelent")
*All observed mutations have been shown to be weaknesses.

I have been led to believe (but as I freely admit that I am *not* knowledgeable, I will freely admit I can not claim with certainty) that each and every single one of these statements is patently false.

My question: Why does it seem so friggin' easy for the creationist kooks to float these comments as a "meme" so that people accept these at face value as true yet the, I assume, actual true facts of:

*species change has been observed and demonstrated.
*fossil record demonstrates "common descent" which verifies "large" species change (between say a cat and a dog or a turtle and a human or a flat worm and a redwood tree)
*positive mutations have been observed many times
*evolution, as are all sciences, is being modified and advanced as data and hypothesis are presented. Many predictions of evolution have been later verified by data.

seem to be so difficult to "infect" people with? Why can't we just make our set of "facts" and get them to stick? Why is it people are so ready to accept things that are outright lies, or wrong but not things that are every bit as simple but actually true?

[*] "averagely intelligent" = as smart as your typical intelligent person. I'm a typically intelligent person. I'm not particularly brilliant and don't really know anything but I can follow an argument and argue my way out of a paper bag.
I, however, doubt this guy is actually "averagely intelligent" because an averagely intelligent person ought to know enough not to cite "facts" he neither understands nor knows how to verify, nor should he accept anything purely on face value.

I claim quote mining:
Admittedly, some of it is not....but one can hardly adopt evolution as fact on evidence that is merely suggestive.

I wonder what Myers is hiding in that elipsis.

It's like someone who has never left a dark room, trying to tell everyone how wrong they are about sunsets.

--Ichthyic

Exactly! And if points 1 through 4 (speciation never observed, most evolution shown to be false, all known mutations harmful, etc) were true, then, yes, evolutions indeed would be in trouble. But every single one of those points is false.

What I don't get is why given a dark room and a shiny box saying "rooms on demand" and a room with lots of light with a bunch of blueprints of the room scattered across the hallway and inspectors inspecting and reinspecting and approving it, why do so many people chose the dark room.

It is obvious that he does not understand the definition of what a species is.

And how could anyone expect him to understand it? Species as a definition is not as fixed and discrete as even I would like. There was great resistance to the Linneaus classification system because naturalists thought it bent too easily towards convenience and away from accuracy.

I mean, at what point does one create a distinction between ring species examples such as green warblers? Geographic isolation makes the definition of species rather hard to pin down. This person didn't make the "I accept micro-evolution like the adaption of novel traits, but I just can't accept macro-evolution" claim. Perhaps even that would be a bit too nuanced for this cretin. While PZ can deconstruct these comments without any heavy lifting, it would have been more fun to see him engage someone who does try to make that compromise between evidence and religion.

We have observed distributions of subspecies that are best explained by a macroevolutionary transition, such as for the Kaibab and Albert squirrels.

PZ, I'm betting that second one is a slight typo that you meant to be "Abert's squirrel".

"Bird" is a broad category, covering everything from hummingbirds to ostriches. This creationist wants to arbitrarily exclude all changes within the class Aves from consideration? Why? Again, because he can't rebut the evidence?

Because he couldn't care less what the differences are among birds, and thus assumes there are no such differences.

I tend to think creationism is rooted less in religious faith -- which is merely the proximate cause -- than in blinding apathy toward the natural world, and, in fact, most other things.

Prof. Myers asks for a single paragraph to vet, naively unaware that Godless is, like much of Ms. Coulter's ouevre, a highly sophisticated acrostic.

Rather than a simple formula such as stringing together the first letters of each word, the depths of Coulter's revelations can only be understood by techniques derived from superstring theory and the Bible Code, analyzed by Tibetan Qabala transforms.

Take it easy, Prof. Myers. Dr. Dembski will reveal the irrefutable (even unfalsifiable!) truth soon after a supercomputer capable of his advanced Coulter Calculus (tm) has been created.

So I am at a loss as to how we have so many different species.

I think it has something to do with Phylogeny.

"The notion that all of life is genetically connected via a vast phylogenetic tree is one of the most romantic notions to come out of science. How wonderful to think of the common ancestor of humans and beetles. This organism most likely was some kind of a worm. At some point this ancestral worm species divided into two separate worm species, which then divided again and again, each division (or speciation) resulting in new, independently evolving lineages. Little did these worms know, those hundreds of million years ago, that some of their number would end up evolving into beetles, while their brothers and sisters would end up as humans or giraffes."

http://www.tolweb.org/tree/learn/concepts/whatisphylogeny.html

"Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the splitting and subsequent divergence of lineages has produced the Tree of Life, which has as its leaves the many species of organisms we see around us today."

http://www.tolweb.org/tree/learn/concepts/geneticconnections.html

I truly thank the cdesign proponentsists' Imaginary Friend for encouraging them to be such (as H.Humbert so politely stated) "chronic amnesiacs". If it wasn't for them, scientists would be off doing science ALL the time instead of MOST of the time, where SOME time is now spent creating glorious blogs and websites such as Pharyngula, Talk Origins, Panda's Thumb, RD's website, UC Berkeley's Evolution site, NCSE's site, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention the glorious comments and links posted by science folks on the blogs!

However, too much of a "good" thing can be bad. Take chocolate or red wine for example. A little bit is good for you and a lot makes you fat and sick. Expanding the analogy, a few cdesign proponentsists are great because they annoy the scientists enough to share the science in cool ways. Too many and the society collapses into ignorance,stupidity and a situation where the scientists all probably go work elsewhere rather than deal with the IDiots.

I'm asking MY imaginary friend, the FSM, for a showdown: Ann Coulter vs ERV Abbie. Not that PZ hasn't done a most excellent job in this post. It's a personal wish...being female, I'd just love to see Abbie wipe the smirk off Coulter's face.

C.C. It's worse than apathy, it's antipathy. rb

kwandongbrian:

Those ellipses were part of the original comment, not a "quote mine" by PZ.

Seriously, it takes like ten seconds to check that sort of thing out.

In one of his books Dawkins talks about the "discontinuous mind" -- the tendency to see things as either one thing OR another, but no gradients between. Daniel Dennett uses the example of the "First Mammal" fallacy:

1.) Every mammal has a mother.

2.) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals.

3.) But if there has been even one mammal, then by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals, which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals. It's a contradiction in terms.

Again, a pseudo-problem, because nature doesn't have sharp boundaries.

I think people have a tendency to approach hard or important subjects by drawing lines, and thinking in terms of "essences." The idea of gradual transitions and intermediaries is hard to grasp -- sometimes. We don't seem to have that problem figuring out how babies become teenagers. But religion seems to kick in the essentialist part of the brain, the Discontinuous Mind -- which divides and classifies, and then appeals to "common sense."

I think part of the problem with understanding species is that, in ID, there seems to be this idea of "kinds" in relation to Noah's Ark. It'd be cute if it weren't so annoying.

Oh YEAH?!
If we have Ann Coulter, how come we still have monkeys you evolutionist wiseasses!!?!?!?!

...{/lurk}

In response to Sastra, OM comment #11 and PZ's post in general:

One of the techs where I work recently displayed exactly this sort of dichotomous thought. He makes no attempt to hide the fact that he's a YEC and takes "Religious Studies" courses online. At our holiday party he was the one that said the obligatory opening prayer. In a recent conversation he revealed that he used to practice the occult (he wasn't too clear about what he meant by that) and that he was "one of the most skeptical people in the world."

After I recovered from my fit of laughter and put out the smoldering flames of my irony meter, I decided to break my rule about not discussing religion in the work place and attempted to have a rational conversation. It was a complete waste of effort.

It seems that, as far as he was concerned, being a skeptic meant questioning all temporal authority and blindly accepting every conspiracy story that came along. Religious leaders were also not to be questioned. When pressed, he retreated into the "Micro not Macro" stance on evolution and some sort of Argument from First Cause as justification for his beliefs. Every objection he raised to modern science and free inquiry seemed to come straight from AIG, completely unfiltered.

I wanted to steer him towards the TalkOrigins archive but he wouldn't have bothered reading it. After all, he took high school biology and anything else might threaten his immortal soul.

The real kicker here is that this guy is a laboratory technician in a Microbiology research lab.

{lurk}

H. Humbert:

Scientists spend the whole day explaining to the creationist why the theory of evolution is firmly evidenced, and yet they wake up the next day back on the same beginning square they started on.

Olbermann delivered a wonderful quote that was actually about Bill O'Reilly, but easily generalizes to describe these nitwits:

"...comedy, farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation...forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake..."

"All documented cases that I am privvy [sic]
to..."

You must be referring to the secret evidence kept in a top secret church location that only you and a few select creationists can access. Of course, you want to keep this evidence "privy" so that scientists will forever believe in evolution.

Shhh... It's a secret

don't antibiotic immune bacteria pretty much prove evolution?

All documented cases that I am privvy to fail to even demonstrate how an observed change in a species appearance was an improvement on its previous form. Based on that, I feel that mutations are freak events that always produce an inferior model.

But enough about himself, his family, and his church group...

why do so many people chose the dark room.

it's simpler?

they're afraid of a world that in reality is actually quite complicated?

black and white are simpler to parse than rainbows.

they just want a world where they can substitute simplistic fantasy for reality, and then feel justified in doing so. Nobody likes being singled out, whether we are talking about being smart, or stupid. if you surround yourself with peers of like mind, you don't feel singled out. BTW, this is why the fundies are such an excellent voting block to manipulate - they congregate in like minded groups that are extremely easy to manipulate with just the slightest poke. It's also why Mike Judge did the film "Idiocracy"; to point out what the logical end result of letting those who prefer dark rooms get what they want.

It's like a schizophrenic that, rather than accept the fact that his world is one of delusion and seek redress, prefers instead to seek out the company of those that share similar delusions in order to reinforce his own.

In my mind, that's always been the function of churches: a place to reinforce shared delusions to make one feel good about choosing fantasy over reality.

harsh?

maybe.

wrong?

I don't think so.

thadd writes:
don't antibiotic immune bacteria pretty much prove evolution?

Only if you're not a complete idiot.

I refuse to believ that Ann Coulter wevolved out of a perfectly good monkey. That is an insult to monkeys everywhere.

If the very few intelligent intelligent design buffs out there were earnest, they'd be just as quick to heckle these morons as any evolutionist. Instead though, Dembski and crew dab vaseline on their supporters' cuts, and send them back for a fresh pummeling.

IOW, they have unceasingly loyal, if moronic, troops.

"Onward Xian soldiers... marching as to war."

I'm sure they think they are like glaciers, slowly wearing down the mountain of materialism.

except they refuse to realize that the mountain itself is still growing far faster than they are wearing it down.

woozy wrote: "I, however, doubt this guy is actually "averagely intelligent" because an averagely intelligent person ought to know enough not to cite "facts" he neither understands nor knows how to verify, nor should he accept anything purely on face value."

Very true; I never even make it to the evolution arguments of commenters such as this one, because he's demonstrated enough absence of rational thought that one can pretty much discount anything he says beyond it as a fallacy. PZ hit a few gems, though one can look at a whole list:

"Please dont mention finches either." Why should we discount what we consider good evidence?

"So I am at a loss as to how we have so many different species." Not just an argument from ignorance, but an argument from personal ignorance.

"All documented cases that I am privvy to fail to even demonstrate how an observed change in a species appearance was an improvement on its previous form. Based on that, I feel that mutations are freak events that always produce an inferior model." To paraphrase: I have limited understanding and information about a phenomena. Based on that, I draw an unjustified conclusion.

"I am not ready to embrace evolution as science. If you do accept it as fact, then you do so on faith." So if our commenter doesn't consider it science, it must be faith. He is apparently the ultimate arbiter of scientific merit. That's a pretty big ego, isn't it?

Arby beat me to the point, but still:

Chris Clarke:

I tend to think creationism is rooted less in religious faith -- which is merely the proximate cause -- than in blinding apathy toward the natural world, and, in fact, most other things.

Not so much apathy as antipathy towards people perceived as being members of the so-called intellectual elite, I think. There's always been a strain of anti-intellectualism in the US, a kind of egalitarianism-gone-wrong, epitomized by the notion that one's opinion holds sway over all things. You get to pick out your own socks; why not your own "theory" of creation?

Once you attain that level of hubris, you can easily dismiss the work of generations of scientists, because you know your opinion is just as valid as theirs. Given most people's lack of understanding of the scientific method, they see no reason to believe some geek when he/she tells them that what their favorite holy man has been spouting is flat wrong.

The alternative--the acknowledgment that the universe is the way it is, and cares not at all what anybody wants--terrifies them. As Ichthyic says, they cluster together in churches, listening only to each other, imagining that if they just howl their hymns loudly enough, the universe will wrench itself into alignment with their fantasies.

It's like someone who has never left a dark room, trying to tell everyone how wrong they are about sunsets.

I love this!

"I'm sure they think they are like glaciers, slowly wearing down the mountain of materialism."

Glaciers? That's ridiculous. God filed down the mountains of materialism six thousand years ago.

filed them into nasty, sharp teeth...

sorry, i watch too much Python.

"I'm sure they think they are like glaciers..."

"I'm sure they think... like glaciers."

Evolution is not a faith or religion. There is no dogma, no church, no ritual, no belief in things unseen. We accept the theory only on the strength of the evidence.

Makes me wanna rock out with my Glock out!

kwandongbrian:

Those ellipses were part of the original comment, not a "quote mine" by PZ.

Seriously, it takes like ten seconds to check that sort of thing out.

Seriously, it takes like an IQ of 10 to figure out that was a joke.

All documented cases that I am privvy [sic]
to..."

You must be referring to the secret evidence kept in a top secret church location that only you and a few select creationists can access.

The location of the church privy is a secret?! No wonder creationists are so full of shit!

The location of the church privy is a secret?! No wonder creationists are so full of shit!

ROFLMAO!

winner!

It's so very simple though.

Read The Ancestor's Tale. :)

Truth Machine (#50)- Thanks.

James (#30) - It was a joke, but perhaps not that good a one.

Information that he's "privvy" (sic) to...
Is this an admission that creationism is a pile of crap?
Or that he's feeling flushed?

Were it ethical to perform it, I admit I'd like to see a little psychological experiment where people like AC, Bill Oh'Really!, Dumbski and others of their ilk were strapped into a chair and forced to read their works out loud. Each time they uttered something that was false they would receive an electrical shock. Each time they uttered something where it can be proven that they knew it was false when they wrote it they get two shocks or a higher voltage.

Yes, I think it is a character flaw of mine, but I'm quite biased against liars and panderers. I would say I'm biased against religious zealots, but then I'd be redundant.

I wish science could prove evolution or explain the inception of the universe to me. Believing in God and trying to be a good christian is hard work.

I barely have enough faith to support my belief in God yet here you are walking around like evolution and the big bang are facts. I have to give you guys credit though, your faith in science is exceptional.

I wish science could prove evolution or explain the inception of the universe to me.

Get an education.

Believing in God and trying to be a good christian is hard work.

Believing in fairies and gremlins is hard work too ... why bother?

I barely have enough faith to support my belief in God yet here you are walking around like evolution and the big bang are facts. I have to give you guys credit though, your faith in science is exceptional.

It's not faith, it's knowledge. Just because you lack it doesn't mean everyone else does.

Epikt (44),
Right on; it seems to be a "cluster fork" of imitativeness and submission whilst proclaiming cowboy independence and daring stature. "My opinion is jest as good as yers" is a signature of an abused mind striving for dominance. Sorry, mate, the monkey games don't work in the here and now. Some of us have declared independence from traditional mind-abuse systems just from licking the drops of the Enlightenment. That doesn't require submission at all. We're all journeymen in a universe not delimited by a Book contrived by our ancestors. Unquestioning Belief is the fatal sin. Skepticism is salvation.

What the fuck is the "inception of the universe"?

**** note: Spinoza means it is absurd to assume that there is an inception that requires explanation a priori, not that he doesn't know what the word "inception" means.

What the fuck is the "inception of the universe"?

The meaning of the phrase seems quite clear to me.

"inception: an act, process, or instance of beginning"

What the fuck is the "inception of the universe"?

An event that occurred on December 8, 1961.

Spinoza means it is absurd to assume that there is an inception that requires explanation a priori, not that he doesn't know what the word "inception" means.

I don't see where Douge made that assumption. And in any case, I don't see why such an assumption is absurd -- if there was an inception, it "requires" an explanation as a matter of intellectual inquiry. And it takes rather sophisticated physics to conceive of a universe that both has a Big Bang and doesn't have a beginning.

Douge: this subject is right up my alley, so here you are:
Outr universe, which is only one of an infinite number of universes in the multiverse, arose from quantum fluctuations in Wheeler foam (the good ol' "subspace" from Star Trek). This is because, as Victor Stenger pointed out, asymmetry is more likely than perfect equilibrium in any closed system. Consequently, the Big Bang was not only likely, but inevitable given the inherent instability found at the quantum level. And before you ask, there was no "before" the Big Bang; time started at the BB, as time is the recognition of entropy, which does nto exist in a singularity.
I hope thta makes things clear for you, but I fear that it will not. At least there's evidence to support my preceding paragraphs, whereas there is none for Thor, Zeus, Baal, Allah, or whichever sky fairy you follow.

If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?

yet here you are walking around like evolution and the big bang are facts.

I hear ya. Until last year, I always thought the Big Bang sounded kinda silly. How could they possibly know what they claim to know? How could something that bizarre be scientific consensus?

Then I read a few popsci books on the big bang, relativity, etc, and hey guess what, the scientists are right. The big bang still sounds crazy to me, but it's supported by facts. Actual predictions, actual measurements. Cosmic background radiation, red shift, etc. There's areas to quibble about, but the scientists are not playing a hoax on us.

And really, I haven't done that much reading. I'm not an expert. But the facts are there, at your local library. I recommend a book titled The Big Bang.

Evolution I never had an issue with... it seems too obvious.

And before you ask, there was no "before" the Big Bang; time started at the BB, as time is the recognition of entropy, which does nto exist in a singularity.

And yet you say the universe "arose". There's a lot that's highly speculative and controversial in what you wrote.

*fossil record demonstrates "common descent" which verifies "large" species change (between say a cat and a dog or a turtle and a human or a flat worm and a redwood tree)

Um, there's no "species change" between any of these pairs. Of course they each have a common ancestor, but then so does every pair of organisms.

Wheeler foam (the good ol' "subspace" from Star Trek)

Um, Star Trek subspace has nothing to do with Wheeler's quantum foam.

RE#6 by H. Humbert/Dec27,07@8:33PM:

Your post was one of the funniest things I've read about this topic in a long time. This is really a good illustration of the neurosis of creationists.

I can't wait to share this with my rational friends.

Good job!

Um, there's no "species change" between any of these pairs. Of course they each have a common ancestor, but then so does every pair of organisms.

Um, did you miss the part where I said I don't really know anything?

Likewise neither does the original guy... But he seems to believe they don't have common ancestors, and nothing in the universe ever demonstrates that the could.

Um, did you miss the part where I said I don't really know anything?

Um, so that precludes anyone pointing out errors in the "actual true facts" that you listed?

And do you really not know that redwood trees didn't evolve from flatworms?

There have been several recent letters to the editor concerning the teaching of evolution and creationism in the public school curriculum. Proponents of evolution say it is based upon scientific evidence and creationism is not, therefore, creationism should not be taught. I would ask those who favor only evolution to consider the following questions derived from the Discovery Institute in Seattle concerning recognized icons of evolution.

Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth, when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

Why don't textbooks discuss the Cambrian explosion, in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor, thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry, even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and that the drawings are faked?

Why do textbooks portray the archaeopteryx as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection, when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and that all the pictures have been staged?

Why do the textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection, even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended and no net evolution occurred?

Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence the DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to justify claims that we are just animals --when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

Perhaps the most important question to be asked is why are students told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact, even though many of its claims are based upon misrepresentations of the facts?

I have always been under the impression that Darwin's theory of evolution is just that -- a theory. Darwin himself, in his work, Origin of Species, said, "For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in the volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived."

Reflecting on his work near the end of his life, Darwin stated, "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them." I find it interesting that Darwin compares his work as a religion to those who reveled his work. Based upon what he said, if other concepts such as creationism should not be allowed in the public schools, neither should the theory of evolution.

Is Darwin's theory of evolution worthy of discussion and investigation? Of course. Should it be given scientific law status? More conclusive evidence needs to come forth before that can ever happen, which appears unlikely, since some of the critical "evidence" for evolution has had to be altered. For more indepth information, get a copy of "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?," authored by Jonathan Wells.

Since education is to be a quest for learning, it is proper to investigate any queries to creation. Our Forefathers would approve, why can't we?

I would ask those who favor only evolution to consider the following questions derived from the Discovery Institute in Seattle concerning recognized icons of evolution.

Ignorant arrogant troll. We know all about this dishonest garbage.

Yet you haven't answered any of them.

I wonder if perhaps creationists would better listen to evolutionists who also believe in god. As you know there are scientists who believe in both. I think if you really want to resolve this argument bringing these folks into the dialogue is crucial. Granted, we would still be left with the god question, but at least we wouldn't have creationism being argued as scientific theory, or the theory of the evolution of species being discussed as faith. Come to think of it, isn't the Catholic Pope on record as supporting species evolution?

The catholic church is quite strange sometimes.

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/icon.cfm

Some reading for ya, anon...

Lets take Dog Variability. When bred for certain traits, dogs become different and distinctive. This is a common example of microevolution�changes in size, shape, and color�or minor genetic alterations. It is not macroevolution: an upward, beneficial increase in complexity, as evolutionists claim happened millions of times between bacteria and man. Macroevolution has never been observed in any breeding experiment.

Before considering how life began, we must first understand the term �organic evolution.� Organic evolution, as theorized, is a naturally occurring, beneficial change that produces increasing and inheritable complexity. Increased complexity would be shown if the offspring of one form of life had a different and improved set of vital organs. This is sometimes called the molecules-to-man theory�or macroevolution

Microevolution, on the other hand, does not involve increasing complexity. It involves changes only in size, shape, color, or minor genetic alterations caused by a few mutations. Macroevolution requires thousands of �just right� mutations. Microevolution can be thought of as �horizontal (or even downward)� change, whereas macroevolution, if it were ever observed, would involve an �upward,� beneficial change in complexity. Notice that microevolution plus time will not produce macroevolution. [micro + time ≠ macro]

Creationists and evolutionists agree that microevolution occurs. Minor change has been observed since history began. But notice how often evolutionists give evidence for microevolution to support macroevolution. It is macroevolution�which requires new abilities, increasing complexity, that results from new genetic information�that is at the center of the creation-evolution controversy.

Because science should always base conclusions on what is seen and reproducible, what is observed? We see variations in lizards, four of which are shown at the bottom. We also see birds, represented at the top. In-between forms (or intermediates), which should be vast in number if macroevolution occurred, are never seen as fossils or living species. A careful observer can usually see unbelievable discontinuities in these claimed upward changes.

Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have made excuses for why the world and our fossil museums are not overflowing with hundreds of thousands of intermediates! None are found!

Organic Evolution Has Never Been Observed.

The Law of Biogenesis

Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this scientific law when claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes.a

Evolutionary scientists reluctantly accept the law of biogenesis.b However, some say that future studies may show how life could come from lifeless matter, despite the virtually impossible odds. Others say that their theory of evolution doesn�t begin until the first life somehow arose. Still others say the first life was created, then evolution occurred. All evolutionists recognize that, based on scientific observations, life only comes from life.

Mendel�s laws of genetics and their modern-day refinements explain almost all physical variations observed in living things. Mendel discovered that genes (units of heredity) are merely reshuffled from one generation to another. Different combinations are formed, not different genes. The different combinations produce many variations within each kind of life, as in the dog family. A logical consequence of Mendel�s laws is that there are LIMITS to such variation. Breeding experimentsb and common observationsc also confirm these boundaries.

Natural Selection

An offspring of a plant or animal has characteristics that vary, often in subtle ways, from its �parents.� Because of the environment, genetics, and chance circumstances, some of these offspring will reproduce more than others. So a species with certain characteristics will tend, on average, to have more �children.� In this sense, nature �selects� genetic characteristics suited to an environment�and, more importantly, eliminates unsuitable genetic variations. Therefore, an organism�s gene pool is constantly decreasing. This is called natural selection.

Notice, natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting characteristics. As the word �selection� implies, variations are reduced, not increased.

The variations Darwin observed among finches on different Galapagos islands is another example of natural selection producing micro- (not macro-) evolution. While natural selection sometimes explains the survival of the fittest, it does not explain the origin of the fittest. Today, some people think that because natural selection occurs, evolution must be correct. THIS IS THE HOAX! Actually, natural selection PREVENTS major evolutionary changes!

Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes available for evolution. Rarely, if ever, is a mutation beneficial to an organism in its natural environment. Almost ALL observable mutations are harmful; some are meaningless; many are lethal! No known mutation has ever produced a form of life having greater complexity and viability than its ancestors!!!

There is no direct evidence that any major group of animals or plants arose from any other major group.a Species are observed only going out of existence (extinctions), never coming into existence.

Codes, Programs, and Information

In our experience, codes are produced only by intelligence, not by natural processes or chance. A code is a set of rules for converting information from one useful form to another. Examples include Morse code and braille. Code makers must simultaneously understand at least two ways of representing information and then establish the rules for converting from one to the other and back again.

The genetic material that controls the physical processes of life is coded information. Also coded are complex and completely different functions: the transmission, translation, correction, and duplication systems, without which the genetic material would be useless, and life would cease.a It seems most reasonable that the genetic code, the accompanying transmission, translation, correction, and duplication systems were produced simultaneously in each living organism by an extremely high intelligence.

Likewise, no natural process has ever been observed to produce a program. A program is a planned sequence of steps to accomplish some goal. Computer programs are common examples. Because programs require foresight, they are not produced by chance or natural processes. The information stored in the genetic material of all life is a complex program. Therefore, it appears that an unfathomable intelligence created these genetic programs.

Life contains matter, energy, and informationd. All isolated systems, including living organisms, have specific, but perishable, amounts of information. No isolated system has ever been shown to increase its information content significantly.e Nor do natural processes increase information; they destroy it. Only outside intelligence can significantly increase the information content of an otherwise isolated system. All scientific observations are consistent with this generalization, which has three corollaries:

* Macroevolution cannot occur.
* Outside intelligence was involved in the creation of the universe and all forms of life.
* Life could not result from a �big bang.�

Yet you haven't answered any of them.

They've been answered many many times, moron.

* Macroevolution cannot occur.

You're wasting your time typing this stuff out. We've seen it and idiots like you over and over.

Ich [#40] and Epikt {#45]--

This all sounds true but a little unfair. The only ID-believer I've ever known personally is a guy who spent his entire 12 years of education in a Xtian school. Guess where he sends his kids to be "educated." [Which I suppose is making them the 3rd generation of imbeciles but fails to suggest a practical antidote.]

Sometimes I wonder if it's going to be impossible to keep ID out of the schools until we figure out some way to eradicate the brainwashing that's already been done. And I'm afraid we may be lurching toward a tipping point where it's no longer possible to reverse the trend.

Why doesn't somebody study people who came to their senses after a religious upbriging? Surely some good scientific research could turn up a common denominator and figure out how to reproduce it?

Maybe too many smart scientists are interested in marine life and neglecting their own species? OTOH, it probably makes life a lot less depressing for them and more entertaining for the rest of us to read about.

Ha! I'm the moron! You want arguments against evolution, yet when you have them you simply dismiss them with a "you're a moron." Give me a break. Your deceitful tactics are disgusting. This isn't science, it's a sham! You should be ashamed. Give me some legitimate arguments. Your name-calling is puerile.

Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth, when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

Have you read a biology textbook, you lying, dishonest, piece of shit?

That the Miller-Urey experiments do not represent initial conditions on earth are discussed nearly anywhere the initial experiments are. The experiments demonstrate that complex organic compounds can be formed from inorganic ones. They are not currently discussed as representing the actual conditions thought to have existed on earth.

Either you already know this and are lying to support your otherwise untenable position, or you are an ignorant fool who'd best shut the fuck up about things you haven't a fucking clue about.

Shithead. Go fuck yourself, you liar.

"Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence the DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?"

Because they are an example of a building block and not a finished article? What about building blocks vs finished buildings do you not understand?

I did my PhD on a mouse mutant with a novel leg muscle, it was the result of a change in a single gene. We know this because we also had the line of mice it mutated from. The background line has normal muscles, the mutant one this extra one. The problem is it also lacks a major limb nerve so other muscles have no nerve and it is club footed. The point is that it is still a potential building block. If there is another mutation in the population that when present with the first one causes the nerve to be present, but allows the novel muscle then those two building blocks together make a viable mouse with a novel muscle. It takes more than one block to make a house.

I'm so incensed over the lying coward Anon's comments that I screwed up the blockquotes.

Oh, the douchebaggery.

You want arguments against evolution, yet when you have them you simply dismiss them with a "you're a moron."

That's because you are a moron, anon. And you didn't provide arguments against evolution, you provided a laundry list of stupidity cribbed directly from Answers in Genesis or some other place. Every damn one of those has been answered a thousand times, and yet you in your infinite amnesiatic arrogance arrive in a huff to demand that we answer them again.

To reiterate: you're a moron.

Nor do natural processes increase information; they destroy it.

This is simple to test in the lab. You contrive a deleterious, but non-lethal, point mutation in some bacteria or yeast and you see how long it takes for information-restoring back-mutations to occur. IDiots would assume that some etheric force would stifle such mutations.

Why doesn't the DI take on such simple studies? Probably because even they know that the outcome is a tedious, done deal.

Ha! I'm the moron! You want arguments against evolution, yet when you have them you simply dismiss them with a "you're a moron." Give me a break. Your deceitful tactics are disgusting. This isn't science, it's a sham! You should be ashamed. Give me some legitimate arguments. Your name-calling is puerile.

Try following the links that have been posted to the articles other people have wrote refuting these exact same claims in response to previous instances of a sniveling little weasel like yourself copying-and-pasting them out of Disco Institute propoganda and brandishing them at us as if they were new, evidentially supported, internally consistent, or even interesting from a fantasy fiction perspective.

Even better would be to do your own damn research rather than expecting people with other demands on their time to spoonfeed you what relatively simple searches would discover. In fact, simply exploring Talk Origins would provide, for each of your questions, either an answer or a demonstration of why the question itself is wrong (generally when such questions are wrong they are wrong in the way that the classic "have you stopped beating your wife?" is wrong). If you had any actual honest interest in this subject, you would go educate yourself. However, as your ilk seems wont to do, you will no doubt linger and continue to troll. Let me preemptively remind you that public masturbation is illegal.

Ah, the old cut-n-paste Gish Gallop. Always good for making one seem like one knows what one's talking about without having to actually know.

The rules, which you'd know if you'd read anything here, was to cite ONE paragraph from Godless and we'd answer it. It's not a fair debate when you can toss out as much BS as you can copy from whatever Christian apologist web site and we have to spend thousands of words truthfully answering every detail while you just go ignore us and copy more.

Why are you afraid of evolution?

anon when dealing with a subjective reality one can't win an arguement simply by attempting to redefine the terms to suit your position. It just makes you look ignorant.

Two points that I you brought up I want to comment on specifcally.

1: Evolution does not require increased complexity. It doesn't disallow it but it doesn't require it. The continued existence of unicellular lifeforms (which have been observed to evolve things like antibiotic resistance) proves that.

2: The big bang has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. While evolution is used in the cosmology it's always preceded by a modifier to make it clear what is being spoken of. When speaking of evolution without any modifier one is invariably speaking of the theory of biology describing how different species arise from a common ancestor.
Conflating the two not only makes you look really, really ignorant, it also makes you look like an ass.

You have all missed (I think) the all-time classic example of graduated speciation, in process, and observable, right now.

That of the palearctic gulls.
In England ( & the coasts of W. Europe generally ) we have two entirely separate gull species (among others).
The two I'm thinking of are the Lesser Black-back gull, and the Herring Gull. They can't breed with each other.
BUT
If you go Eastabout, the Lesser b-b shades into another species (which it can interbreed with), then another species, and so on, until you get to the American Herring gull, which occasionally crosses the Atlantic, and can interbreed with the Herring gull that we started with.

How's that for an example?

anon:

We see variations in lizards, four of which are shown at the bottom. We also see birds, represented at the top.

You wouldn't be cutting-and-pasting from somebody else's text now, would you?

Lets take Dog Variability. When bred for certain traits, dogs become different and distinctive. This is a common example of microevolution�changes in size, shape, and color�or minor genetic alterations. It is not macroevolution: an upward, beneficial increase in complexity, as evolutionists claim happened millions of times between bacteria and man. Macroevolution has never been observed in any breeding experiment.

This is an argument I see trotted out ever so often, but I'm wondering: how can you tell that the differences between, say, a chow-chow and an Irish wolfhound indeed are trivial? As far as I know nobody has actually done DNA sequencing of every dog breed and worked out the differences betwen each pair. For all you know, the blue tongue of the chow-chow could be irreducibly complex and where does that leave you?

Stupid evilutionists! Of course I'm not a moron to be of the opinion that God created all species separately and then decided to drive extinct the millions of them that we only know from fossils. Of course I'm not a moron to assert that between 5 and 8 million species of currently existing beetle were all created by God (and perhaps taken onboard Noah's ark as well).

Tell me, what's moronic about believing that the scientific community (which is somehow trustworthy enough when it comes to designing aeroplanes, computers, medicine, etc.) has been deluding itself for over a century? This is truly moronic? Well, evilutionists, I guess you must be right. Heh! I am a moron (notice the sarcasm!) to dismiss the consensus of numerous mutually agreeing scientific disciplines, on the basis of a few unsupported hunches about how life and the universe must have arisen.

Evolution is just a theory. Hitler and Stalin were atheists.

Kimpatsu, I also usually find it's helpful (and entertaining to watch the reaction of someone) when you mention that the universe has no energy. A big wad of 0 energy, courtesy wonderful things like gravity.

Heisenberg really makes the world go round, eh?

And yeah, we all know the 1953 experiments are not perfectly demonstrative of our atmosphere. We do know it was fairly reducing, though. And most people don't know the number of largish, organic molecules we can find in asteroids and such (which I think is even more convincing, actually).

What people forget about the Miller-Urey experiments is that at the time, it wasn't clear to everyone that the basics of life COULD arise from inorganic processes at all.

This, they showed quite, quite well.

That it's how it actually happened? They don't show that nearly as well (if at all) ...

... but they don't need to. How it actually happened is going to be very hard to work out. We're lacking a lot of crucial information, and feasible experiments require quite stringent limitations on timescales - and given that the origin of life on Earth took at best millions of years, well...

... but again, we don't need to. The real issue is plausibility - is it PLAUSIBLE that life arose from inorganic stuff? Yes. Based on what we know (including the Miller-Urey experiments), it is very plausible. It might be that the basics of life arose somewhere else and were brought here by comets. It might be they arose here. But from the perspective of evolution it doesn't matter - what matters is that naturalistic processes CAN explain the origin of life. (defined here as "stuff that evolves")

Ha! I'm the moron!

Yes, you certainly are.

You want arguments against evolution

You're too fucking stupid to understand what the challenge is.

I wonder: if you put one of these Gumbys, or AIG regurgitating anons into a scanner and had them think about their infuriating finches, Miller-Urey, Haekel's embryos, Genesis, mined quotes, whether anything new or different in their brains would light up. Different mental processes occur when recalling and lying: they must know, deep down that cdesign proponentism is bullshit, but it is a supporting cornerstone of their bullshitty worldview which is why they fight so hard to defend it.

They must be wired different. We need to know.

Truth Machine: There was an episode of Voyager in which B'lanna Torres said that subspace and Wheeler foam were one and the same. Even if not, given that it's only SciFi, no big deal, right?
That quantum fluctuations resulted in the BB are, however, pretty much widely accepted now. No matter what you want to call Wheeler Foam.
I wonder whether creationist minds are erally all just lost in hyperspace...?

Anon got his first screed from here: http://www.ourmidland.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16735297&BRD=2289&PAG=46…

His second screed came from the bottom of this page: http://zelaron.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39786

Good job copying and pasting, Anon! And, yes, all these silly objections have been answer by people who are knowledgeable and much more charitable than you deserve: http://www.talkorigins.org/

You will ignore that site compeltely, of course, but its all there. Honest (as you are not)!

If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?

What? Have you never met a lawyer?

The genetic material that controls the physical processes of life is coded information.

If ANYONE had the capability to quantify the "information content" in a snippet of DNA, that would be an amazing achievement. Assuming that the most information-loaded strings of DNA are those that code for functional proteins, you'd just tell your computer to generate the most information-loaded strings of DNA possible, and voila, you'd have enzymes with novel functions.

Such a scenario is ridiculous.

The sad part is most creationists aren't stupid.

Anon said - "Why don't text books discuss the Cambrian explosion?"

I'm sure I first learned about that at school, and it wasn't in a secret learning basement where unsanctioned knowledge must be passed on by an underground network of hooded mentors. It was in biology.

Also, we had a library. There were books in it which we were allowed to read. Try it.

#101,

A case of regression. The attorney being a degenerate shark having lost the ability to hunt and relying on parasitism for its sustenance.

re Wheeler Foam

Has it ever occurred to anybody that our universe is a sign that Wheeler Foam is going flat?

Watching creos like anon is like talking to two-year olds.
"Why is grass green?"
"Because that's what color it is."
"But why?"
"Because it's full of little green things."
"But why is it green?"
"Because the primary photosynthetic pigment used to collect light to make food, chlorophyll, is green, and therefore the grass looks green."
"But you haven't answered my question, why is it green?"
"Green captures a lot of wavelengths, and there are secondary pigments to capture the rest, but green is still pretty efficient, and there are a couple of different greens, actually, not that we can see the difference easily."
"But why is it green?"
"Because all land plants inherited the use of chlorophyll as primary, so even if it weren't the most efficient pigment to use, there are some phylogenetic historical constraints that could keep them all using green in chlorophyll."
"But why is it green?"
"Sigh. Because God did it."
"Oh, ok."

woozy wrote:

Why can't we just make our set of "facts" and get them to stick?

Excellent question, and the subject of some good discussion over at Orac's blog as well.

I think it's because Coulter et al. come to scientific questions from a background in politics and rhetoric, where you select the set of facts that supports your point of view to win political battles. E.g., those opposing the Iraq war point to a set of facts and characterizations in support, those supporting the war point to a different set of facts and characterizations.

The emphasis about "gaps" in evolution, the continued use of "facts" that have been demonstrated to be inaccurate - these are perfectly familiar tactics from political battles. What these folks don't seem to realize is that science isn't a contest to win hearts and minds. The object is to explain *all* the facts, not martial some subset in support of your cherished belief system.

One can martial all sorts of facts in support of Newtonian physics, but then there is the inconvenient fact that clocks in orbit "lose" time in comparison to clocks on Earth. This flies in the face of common sense, so if we were having a political discussion, the majority would probably stick with Newton. But we're doing science, so we can't ignore this fact, though it conflicts with traditional beliefs about the way the universe works. If relativity, however counterintuitive, explains all the facts better than Newtonian mechanics, then that's the explanation that must prevail - at least it is if we're doing science rather than politics.

To all of you "brights" dissing Anon for her DI questions. The questions are familiar and the answers are too. Surely some on this blog know where to find them. Why not just politely post a link. Do you really think shouting "moron" is more persuasive? Do you think you evidence your own intelligence by shouting "stupid"? You do, but probably not the way you intend.

Allow me to deal with one question:

. . . Why don't textbooks discuss the Cambrian explosion, in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor, thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

Of course books do discuss the Cambrian explosion, but it's hardly true that all major animal groups appear together fully formed at that point. There were no birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, or jawed fishes in the Cambrian.

Fossil evidence depends on luck and traces that can survive 500 million plus years, but most primitive animals lacked such. The molecular evidence clearly shows that existing animal species diverged separately at distinct points in the history of life. It strongly suggests that some of these divergences took place twice as long ago as the Cambrian.

It's an intricate and somewhat complex tale, but it's beautifully told in Richard Dawkin's book The Ancestors Tale. That book has answers to many of your other questions as well.

I nominate Carlie, post #106, as front-runner for the next OM. Nice post.

G. Tingey (comment #93):
The Larus argentatus (Herring gull) complex has shown to be not a ring species. The real story seems to be far more complicated. See what Darren Naish wrote about this on his old blog:
http://darrennaish.blogspot.com/2006/02/no-no-no-no-no-herring-gull-is-…
To the creationists: this does NOT mean that evolution has been debunked or something, just that the evolution in this case went differently than previously thought.

Sorry if this has been asked but..

Anon, WHICH textbooks. Please provide links to the ones you are talking about and give us the page numbers as well for the list you've given us above.

Until then this is all just the same spewing that we've heard and refuted 1000's of times before.

At the risk of being "slammed" yet again, I'd like to address the creationists' claims. I still don't understand why it's so hard for some christians to disavow evolution. Evolution is a mechanism for change, nothing more. It neither proves nor disproves the existance of god or gods. The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that it must be an act of will to discount it, not an act of ignorance. If, as you believe, a god created the universe, then that god could have used evolution as a tool, as all the laws of nature are tools. (eg, rotation of the earth - surely you don't believe that a god actually moves the planet with his noodly appendage, do you?)

And as for the literacy of the bible, just remember that every religion believes it's holy book to be inerrant and the word of god. Either you're ALL right or your ALL wrong - which is it?

#108 In addition, the Cambrian Explosion lasted 80 million years - not an instant, as "explosion" might suggest.

SG

She only got to 13 on buffalobeast.com 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007. I'd have bet on her getting a little closer to the top ten.

"13. Anne Coulter

Charges: A skeletal freak who hates the world and lives to anger people into buying her books. Says Jews need to be "perfected," as if Christians are in better shape. Is against her own right to vote. Called John Edwards a faggot, when really he's just a little swishy. Is about as sexy as a preying mantis. If Coulter were a man, she'd never be allowed on TV.

Exhibit A: "Faggot isn't offensive to gays; it's got nothing to do with gays."

Sentence: Forced marriage to Osama bin Laden."

http://www.buffalobeast.com/122/50mostloathsome2007.html

Ha! I'm the moron! You want arguments against evolution, yet when you have them you simply dismiss them with a "you're a moron." Give me a break. Your deceitful tactics are disgusting. This isn't science, it's a sham! You should be ashamed. Give me some legitimate arguments. Your name-calling is puerile.

Yes, the name-calling is puerile, but given your tendentious recapitulation of a laundry list of specious, even fraudulent arguments, only a saint would refrain from calling you what you are. And I think we can all agree that Pharyngulans aren't saints.

However, they gave you a perfectly good reference that answers many of the questions you peddled. I shall do you the favour of posting it again:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/icon.cfm

For the record, YOUR tactics are disgusting. You clearly haven't any clue about the issues and I doubt your sincerity in 'debating' this. You simply copied and pasted a bunch of talking points and tossed them like a grenade into the midst of this board. I believe you got the reaction you expected. Which is that a bunch of smart people, tired of the idiocy of others repeating itself for the thousandth time, got testy with you. And quite right too. Why should these folks tolerate trollish behaviour? Particularly when they do not believe you have come to discuss things in good faith?

Nor do natural processes increase information; they destroy it.

Here's my challenge, creationista. Give me a definition of information that is objective and quantifiable, then demonstrate that it actually applies to this subject.

Assuming that the most information-loaded strings of DNA are those that code for functional proteins

You can't measure information in that way, it's subjective. It's not "information", it's "meaning".

The very first thing you should do when faced with any creationista babbling about "information" is ask them what they are talking about. The only objective measure of information is Shannon, and the Shannon information in DNA *cannot* increase, but only because Shannon is a closed system (the issue is in the definitions used, not in the DNA). Life isn't a closed system, so Shannon Information Theory cannot be applied to that aspect of biology.

It's like defining a bird as "something that flies", and claiming that ostriches aren't birds because they don't fly. It doesn't make ostriches into "not birds", but it makes for some really annoying arguments.

If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?

Candygram!

Well, you could define a Shannon entropy for the probability distribution of nucleotide frequencies. If p_i is the probability that a nucleotide chosen at random will be of type i, then we can easily write

H = -Σ p_i log p_i,

right?

And, of course, if we had a gene pool with multiple alleles for each gene, we could write a Shannon information for the allele distribution and use it as a gene-centered diversity index.

"If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?"

"What? Have you never met a lawyer? "

He said _bigger_ brains, Fernando.

I see you have managed to prove the theory while I was sleeping.

So, if creationists fear evolution, how should we identify your inability to consider ID, or some other idea?

What is more moronic, an unbending faith in God or in a scientific theory? I think neither. I like science, I would embrace evolution if it were proven. In my mind, God will never be proven until its to late for us to know. Evolution will at some point sink or swim, prolly swim if we give it enough time. LOL

Even if evolution was a little more conclusive, a creationist would simply attribute it to design.

There are several of you who by making any kind of an insult immediately discredits anything you say and only proves to others that you are unreliable at best.

Is it more important to be good at name calling or would you prefer to have enough faith and knowledge in a subject that you can easily share your ideas with anyone, from a small child to a hardened dissident?

Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away.
Matthew 13:47-48

Which fish are you? Does it bother anyone that you may be wrong? You know based simply on the evidence in front of you that evolution isn't quite up to speed. Are you putting all of your eggs in that unfinished basket?

There are so many unanswered questions that I find it difficult to accept any information from scientists who tout evolution as fact. The only thing you truly know is that you don't know. Failing to admit as much is only cheating yourself.

At the risk of being painfully redundant, Douge:

Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution.

Evolution is a Fact and a Theory.

There's a lot more where that came from, both on Talk.Origins and off.

So, if creationists fear evolution, how should we identify your inability to consider ID, or some other idea?

ID has been considered and it has been found to be not only lacking but that it has exactly zero scientific worth. It has provided nothing more than the ability to say "God Did it".

Douge@119 said:

Is it more important to be good at name calling or would you prefer to have enough faith and knowledge in a subject that you can easily share your ideas with anyone, from a small child to a hardened dissident?

The name calling comes solely from being human and having limited patience with having the same questions asked over and over again with no evidence of any attempt at learning.

I have no need for faith, thanks just the same. I'll take knowledge based on evidence over faith any day. Especially of the kind you're offering

I think Douge is having the age old problem of not knowing the scientific definition of Theory.

Or more likely he is ignoring it for his own purposes.

Cuttlefish? Oh Cuttlefish, where are you? Am I gonna have to do this myself?

A creo arrived in a huff,
Pasting copies of AiG fluff
That he thought would inflame,
But in this kind of game
He'd do better with billy goats gruff.

what the hell are you talking about????

Questions? Try this...

What god?

Johnny Vector (#124):

Not bad! :-)

I don't have time to finish reading the comments, so I'm sure someone else has answered the points (for lack of a better term) that anon raised in comment #75.

I just wanted to know if there is an equivalent to Godwin's law for people that bring up Haeckel.

Anon: Only outside intelligence can significantly increase the information content of an otherwise isolated system.

Outside intelligence = all that great science information on the web or in textbooks or in the head of your friendly local science teacher

Otherwise isolated system = you

Wonderful information content = it's there for the taking if you want it!

Stop building barriers to learning inside your head and try to teach yourself something.

You might not realize it but it's very sad to watch you waste your efforts on this crap.

Flip the switch in your head that is more accepting of learning and stop yourself - you can do it right now! - from going further down the path that leads to lifelong ignorance. You don't want to waste your life doing that.

Seriously.

No struggle was ever won with an excellent defense. So long as scientists spend their time defending evolution against the faithful they will never do more than temporally beat them back. Instead, look at the huge variety of scientific evidence (geology, astronomy, biology, etc. )that the world is vastly older than is posited in Genesis. This leaves believers with only a few options:
1.) ALL of science is a flawed epistimology and no naturalistic explanations are any improvement upon "god wills it."

2.) God is intentionally lying to us. (oomphalism) He is TRYING to fool us into disbelief so that he can punish with eternal damnation for looking at His actions rather than his words.

3.) Through the millenia, people have erroniously attributed to the divine all kinds of writings, many of which were perfectly logical to iron age sheppards.

There are so many unanswered questions that I find it difficult to accept any information from scientists who tout evolution as fact. The only thing you truly know is that you don't know. Failing to admit as much is only cheating yourself.

I think I'm starting to make sense of this.
Scientists: The only thing you truly know is that you don't know. See? There are unanswered questions, lots of them, Thus you know nothing.
Douge: Uh...I dunno.
Summary: Douge does not know, therefore nobody knows nothin.
Glad to be of service.

Douge, we do not reject ID because we have failed to consider it, but because we have. Your questions about evolutionary theory do not stem from investigation into it, but from ignorance of it. The epistemological humility you request from others on matters of empiricism is belied by the hubris you demonstrate on metaphysical ones. You are one of those pitiful men who lack sufficient intelligence to know what you do not know.

I wouldn't really go around lecturing people if I were you.

#129

Allow me to add:

4) god is really a short orange person (oompaloompaism), and is just singing songs to gullible people.

Douge:

How ironic that I first read your quote from Matthew not in the way you intended, but as a metaphor for science. The fishermen are the scientific community and the fish are hypotheses that need to be sorted through. The good hypotheses are ones that accord with the evidence, are fruitful and lead to further discovery and understanding -- in short, the ones that are intellectually nourishing -- and the bad hypotheses conflict with the evidence, and/or fail to explain anything of themselves or to open the door to any further exploration or discovery. These have no nutritive value and rightly get tossed away.

Which kind of fish are you feeding your brain with?

#112:

And as for the literacy of the bible, just remember that every religion believes it's holy book to be inerrant and the word of god. Either you're ALL right or your ALL wrong - which is it?

While I wholeheartedly agree that all I've every heard of are wrong, be sure not to fall into the false dichotomy. FSMism may be the truth.

"Only outside intelligence can significantly increase the information content of an otherwise isolated system."

What is this "isolated system" to which Douge refers?

A body? No way. Exchanges matter and energy with the surroundings.

A cell? Exchanges matter and energy with the surroundings.

The earth? Exchanges matter and energy with the surroundings. Lots of energy, in fact.

The solar system? Now we might be getting closer, although it still exchanges matter and energy with the surroundings. Proportionately less, I would propose, however, because there isn't much for surroundings to exchange with. However, comets and meteors still wander through from outside the solar system.

The galaxy? Like the solar system, but moreso. Still able to exchange matter and energy with its surroundings. Unfortunately, it has already sucked up most of the matter from the surroundings.

To any level, the only system that can truly be considered isolated is the universe, and only then more or less by definition.

Then again, a good insulated thermos is pretty isolated.

a good insulated thermos is pretty isolated
Excellent for keeping one's Primordial Soup warm.

I know what I know and nothing more. I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes. I am not promoting God, only the idea that you are as close to being wrong as anyone else. You find comfort and meaning in knowledge in the same way that believers find it in scripture and their faith. Difference being that when it fails you, you are in the unique position to manipulate it until it gives you an answer you like better. Its human nature. You swallowed the red pill, I chose blue.

Someone here surely has the moral character to admit that you are preaching a false religion. While I think it is a good theory and certainly worthy of pursuit, it is still a theory and should be handled as such.

I find it so incredibly disengenous that we know its not proven, yet we are so willing to teach it as such essentially brainwashing society into acceptance. That is the epitomy of hypocrisy for the scientific community.

It would be nice to have some accountability from the intellectual community on this issue.

Douge, you know not of what you speak.

There is no "manipulation" in science, there is correction. Science is looking for explanations, and sometimes theories get reversed (wanna buy some phlogiston, cheap?).

As man has progressed, all the gods have had reduced roles. That is because man has found better answers than "goddidit". So the "its" that "goddid" are fewer and fewer.

Religion does not search for answers. Religions are pretty damned static and do not correct, but they DO manipulate.

Please, do yourself a favor, and get an education while you still can.

The sad part is most creationists aren't stupid.

Oh really? They certainly appear to be stupid.

Evolution is a fact.

Get over it.

Nor do natural processes increase information; they destroy it.

That is so stupid. Our brains our natural and thinking is a natural process. We collectively create information constantly. Also entertainment, sitcoms, and advertising which are anti-information but that is collateral damage.

Creationists try to destroy information. But they aren't very good at it. So far, with a lead weight trying to pull us back to the Dark Ages, humankind somehow manages to keep progressing.

Oh really? They certainly appear to be stupid.

I know what you mean, but I think many aren't stupid. I think there are the cynical Dumbskis, who are exploiting the controversy for monetary gain, and that there are the vast unwashed masses (you know, morons), who are ignorant. Among them, I believe there are many who are ignorant and stupid and there are those who are willfully ignorant - they don't know and don't want to know. Brainwashed? Closed minded? Both? Unfortunately, it seems that none who want to debate can even fathom learning from a non-biblical source.

I know what I know and nothing more. I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes.

You've been given answers to your questions as well as been provided links to get more information. However you would rather remain willfully ignorant about the facts and stay snug in your world where you can keep making the God excuse instead of actually educating yourself with what the best scientists in the world are doing on the subject.

You are no different than any other troll who wanders onto this blog.

Please go away, you offer nothing to this conversation other than self assured ignorance, smugness and obduracy.

(wanna buy some phlogiston, cheap?)

There go you Lavoisierists engaging in censorship again. Why are you afraid of teaching the controversy in chemistry classes?

Warning: digression ahead.

Watching creos like anon is like talking to two-year olds.

Or it's like talking to Cartesian philosophers:

"Why is grass green?"

[explanation]

"But why is it green?"
"Sigh. Because there are green qualia."
"Oh, ok."

"If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?"

I see we have an exceptionally stupid troll to bounce around for exercise and amusement.

One of the shark's distant cousins, in fact, has evolved to walk on land with big brains and has taken over the world. We call them humans. Sharks and humans are both vertebrates, closely related in the grand scheme of things. Go back far enough and they share a common ancestor.

There is far, far, far more accountibility in science than in religion. It's called peer review. Nothing like it exists in religion. Any Billy Bob with a pulpit can claim to know the will of God, make absurd claims and act on his untestable belief.

Also, if you knew anything about how science works, you would understand that it's not so much about "proving" things as it is about failing to disprove testable hypotheses. For the moment, evolution is a thoroughly tested theory, and so far, we haven't been able to disprove it. So, this is what we teach. No one is brainwashing anyone.

Hey, Douge (@ #137), that little blue pill you have to take every day--it's actually technically called a "pulvule." Your comments on this thread make it imperative that you not miss a dose!

Raven,

I think, and I could be wrong, that that comment was sarcasm.

I read the passage from Matthew as the fish the fishermen wanted were the ones that got killed and eaten. The others were thrown back in the water to continue living. So, which do you want to be--the ones that get eaten or the ones that get thrown back? (Visions of Cthuhlu are coming to mind there.)

"If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?"

umm... because they have stood the test of time and proved to be successful for a vastly longer time than we have? We have yet to prove that over the long term we will be as successful as they are. One could as easily ask why they haven't developed wings and talons. Or we haven't developed gills so that we could populate the majority of the planet that is covered by water.

Douge: Facts are facts. Theories are theories. Theories are never proven - they are DISproven. The ToE has not been DISproven and is (in fact) supported by more evidence than I could possibly list here.

Here's the basic concept:

Evolution occurs. That is a fact.

The Theory of Evolution proposes set of mechanisms which explain how and why evolution occurs.

The simple fact that the theory does not explain every single observation in perfect detail does NOT mean that the theory is incorrect or, as creobots are so fond of saying, that it is "full of holes." That is a creationist talking point, and (by defintion) means nothing. You're listening to the wrong people.

Someone here surely has the moral character to admit that you are preaching a false religion.

Oh, now it's a moral issue? LMAO. Ok, let me get this straight: If someone who actually KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT doesn't agree with your ill-informed and distorted version of reality, they're morally deficient? I suggest you go out and buy a mirror. Or better yet, a book on the subject you claim to know so much about. Christ on a go-kart! Get a grip!

You have "visited" evolution? Oh. Well, I have "visited" Pennsylvania, but I really don't know much about it, and surely know far, far less about Delaware than someone who has lived there (and studied the history and current conditions of the state) for one hundred and fifty years. (Ok, now play spot-the-analogy, and explain how and why it applies to the discussion at hand. Thank you.)

Answers that seem to satisfy you.

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

For my own amusement, I will guess. Not one.

Oops, now Delaware is Pennsylvania! (See how we evolutionists lie and twist the facts to fit our pet theories?)

H = -Σ p_i log p_i,

right?

Heh.

The thing is that Shannon IT has its uses, just not the way the creobots want it to be used.

I think the 'holes' that Douge mentions best illustrate his own failing and the failings of creationists as a whole in this subject. The holes are the gaps in their own knowledge about science in general, as in the Scientific Method, Genetics, Biology, Math, Heritability, et cetera.

I'm a layperson with a general knowledge of science and sometimes things go over my head, but I'm also smart enough to know that the understanding is'nt going to leap out of a web post and curl up in my lap. If it takes me the rest of my life to understand some of the concepts of this 'debate' that's fine, it'd be time well spent. The problem is that science is something that requires effort to understand, and religion is the opposite. Unquestioning belief is mastered as a child, and should also be abandoned around the same time when the individual begins to develop their own identity and learn for themself. How old does a kid have to be to start shouting 'No!' at their parents or questioning 'Why?' Scientific knowledge requires study and personal application; you wouldn't walk into an operating theater and expect to refute the surgeon on their procedure just because you read a book on it once.

Also--- did you just quote The Matrix? Seriously?

Ann Coulter basically works on the same principle as a 4-year old who says dirty words at the dinner table for shock value and should be taken about as seriously. People who support her are at least on step lower.

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

So basically Douge you've just admitted that no evidence would ever convince you.

So my statement above is spot on. Good job. Tell me what first hand knowledge you have that you can so easily dismiss what the very best educated and experienced in the field say is so and demonstrate is so in ways that the layman and the scientist should be able to understand?

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

Funniest thing you've written so far, Douge.

Where did you get your "first hand knowledge" showing creationism is absolutely correct? Or are you merely regurgitating things others have told you?*

*I already know the answer!

Hey Douge,

Reality isn't relative.
It changes, but not because of personal preference.

I know that's a concept that's foreign to every religionist who ever lived, but do try to keep up with the world you live in, kay?

I know what I know and nothing more.

It's very little.

I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes.

At best you've only "visited" evolution, you're too ignorant and stupid to say if it has any holes or not.

I am not promoting God, only the idea that you are as close to being wrong as anyone else.

Of course, purely negative and vile. You have nothing positive to present, just your hatred of intellection.

You find comfort and meaning in knowledge in the same way that believers find it in scripture and their faith.

How is that, retarded little boy? What's "comforting" about science, about evolution? Come on, you're making the charges, along with a whole lot of people who like to point out that evolution in fact grants no comfort or promise. But you have your litany of lies picked up from illiterates the equal of you, so you mindlessly chant your nonsense.

Evolution has one use, which is to understand the world. You, not understanding the world, fail to recognize how we value such understanding.

Difference being that when it fails you, you are in the unique position to manipulate it until it gives you an answer you like better.

Except that you're a dumbass liar. ID and cretinism constantly try to find flaws, based on the fact that evolution really has considerable constraints. Unfortunately for egregious liars like yourself, biology just happens to fit those constraints. Hence the blank and stupid unsupported charges from a droning moron like yourself.

Its human nature. You swallowed the red pill, I chose blue.

Actually, if you weren't a narrow-minded cretin, you'd note that we don't drug ourselves to avoid reality. That's all your doing, and you don't understand another way.

Someone here surely has the moral character to admit that you are preaching a false religion.

Based on what, your completely unevidenced claims, which happen to be the stock in trade of ignorant fools who don't understand science?

While I think it is a good theory and certainly worthy of pursuit, it is still a theory and should be handled as such.

It is, numbnuts, just like the theory of special relativity it. Crack open a book for once, you might like to be something other than a drooling moron.

I find it so incredibly disengenous that we know its not proven,

Were you not a useless drone, you'd know that science isn't about proof (and no, don't anybody bring up the fact that "proof" is sometimes written--it's just a shorthand expression).

yet we are so willing to teach it as such essentially brainwashing society into acceptance.

I'm sure brainwashing is all you know, since you speak the words of the brainwashed pseudoscientists.

That is the epitomy of hypocrisy for the scientific community.

That's why ID isn't allowed to be taught as science, because yes, your pseudoscience is the epitome of hypocrisy.

It would be nice to have some accountability from the intellectual community on this issue.

It would be nice to be dealing with someone intelligent and educated enough to understand the meaning of terms like "theory" in science. But you don't, you only have your idiot's guide to pseudoscience, which you presume is the truth.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

Either advertently or inadvertently, you are nothing but a troll. Therefore, I'm almost certainly done playing with you.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Great Sagan's Ghost!
Where to begin....

"Worldly" knowledge is the only kind of knowledge there is.
What the hell do you mean by this:
"I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory"

Do you have "first hand knowledge" of evidence to disprove the theory?
You are out of your league here buddy, unless you can come up with something more amusing than the long dead creationist/denialist canards that you keep regurgitating you should head over to AIG or UD and discuss how bad the theory is with like minded individuals.

"I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me."

You mean that's not what you've been doing since you got here?

"I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?"

Good Lord. The "Were you there?" challenge. Pathetic.

Have you ever been to Iwo Jima? Or Antarctica? How about the Tao-Rusyr Caldera? No? Well, how do you know they exist? I can only assume that you doubt the existence of these places. And yet you believe in the otherworld, and the afterlife - do you not?

You've admitted that you believe wordly knowledge is useless. You have thus forfeited your right to criticise those who may actually possess some.

Geez, you really had me fooled there for a few minutes. I thought you might actually be teachable.

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

It must feel satisfying getting your entry for dumbest quote of the year in at such a late hour in the competition.

Coming in right under the wire. Nice.

@Douge (#137),

You swallowed the red pill, I chose blue.

Swallow one of Pfizer's blue pills, and go and get laid, my intellectually challenged friend. It will drive away the demons that haunt you, I promise.

Douge #120 wrote:

There are so many unanswered questions that I find it difficult to accept any information from scientists who tout evolution as fact. The only thing you truly know is that you don't know. Failing to admit as much is only cheating yourself.

Isaac Asimov once wrote an essay called "The Relativity of Wrong." In it, he talked about how there are shades and degrees for being "wrong." They used to think the earth was flat: they were wrong. Then they thought the earth was round. That, too, turned out to be wrong -- it's actually slightly flattened at the poles. And Asimov wrote "But if you think that this means that the people who thought the earth was round were just as wrong as the people who thought the earth was flat -- then you are more wrong than either."

Evolution is a technical area. Scientists do not "believe" in evolution -- they use it, to make predictions and test other theories which also make predictions, which then test other theories and so on. It is not complete. Nothing ever is. But it's more complete than nothing. It's more right than wrong.

Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing. There are relativities to be being wrong. There are degrees of certainty. And experts in the field really do know more than you do.

Interesting how even evidentialist apologists like those who argue for Creationism often resort to the populist "everything is faith" mantra. It's the easiest way to level any playing field, and let the guy in the stands take a turn -- without having to train, follow rules, or put forth any real effort.

Is it just me, or have the creo legions been sending some of their dumber emissaries here as of late?

Douge the wacko troll:

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

For my own amusement, I will guess. Not one.

Got that wrong like everything else you said.
case 1
Cancer will kill 100 million of the 300 million people alive in the USA today. We can treat it with chemo, radiation, and biologicals. Quite often it disappears. But most of the time, for metastatic disease which is the main killer, it comes back. Sooner or later, the treatments stop working and the cancer is resistant to whatever was used. So we keep treating with other options until they have all stopped working. The patient dies.

This is evolution in action. Treatment resistant cancer cells have well characterized mutations that confer resistance to whatever they were treated with. Anyone who has seen metastatic cancer or treated cancer patients sees it in action. The numbers are huge here, 1/3 of the population will die of cancer.

case 2. Diseases evolve to fill new niches and resist antibiotics. We've seen this with HIV, SARS, and are presently watching bird flu influenza H5N1. Drug resistant TB and malaria are 2 of the other three top infectious single agent disease killers worldwide. These evolving diseases kill millions of people worldwide every year. Evolution is blind, it is on nobodies side.

case 3.The world's population is 6.7 billion. Modern agriculture which has benefited greatly from applied evolution manages to feed them. Without the green revolution and the ability to combat agricultural diseases and pests, these people wouldn't even be alive.

Douge, you are a pathetic disgraceful troll. If everyone had your attitude of voluntary ignorance, we would still be back in the stone age. Evolution is all around us. It only matters to people who want modern medicine and food.

Fortunately for the human race, you are just an outlier on the bottom of the sanity-intelligence curve. Baggage taking up space while contributing nothing to humankind.

Try http://notanncoulter.com/

It is amazing that Coulter deserves this but there seem to be people who take her seriously. After all she appears on MSM whenever she wants, MSNBC, etc.

Sastra, please tell me that you are saving copies of all the comments you've written, later to be edited into a book on the subject of belief and religion. You have a knack for putting things just right. Succinct, yet substantial. If you organized your thoughts into longer essays, and then turn those into chapters...well, I'd say you just might have a best seller on your hands. As Dawkins and the rest of the "new" atheists have shown, demand for an author who can see and discuss these issues clearly is in hight demand.

I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes.

Ah, here is the problem. Douge has confused "evolution" with "Royal Albert Hall."

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

If you are going to argue against one of the best supported and widely accepted theories in biology (worldly knowledge), then you simply have to have the worldly knowledge to do it. After all, if someone wanted to argue against the truth of Christianity, don't you think it would be a good idea for them to actually read and study the Bible, before they spout off on a Christian blog? Would an article on the Bible written in American Atheist magazine be an acceptable substitute for actually reading the Bible?

No. That is why you need to do more than read Icons of Evolution or whatever you've been reading. And you need to get over the idea that whatever it is you read puts you on common ground with evolutionary biologists, so you can fight it out with them.

If you really want to argue against one of the best supported and widely accepted theories in biology, what you really need to do is get a degree. Come up with testable hypotheses for an alternative explanation, publish them in peer review, and change the consensus from within.

But if all you want to do is just "not believe" in evolution, then go ahead -- but don't tell yourself you're interested in whether or not it's true, and understanding it. You're only interested in "not believing" in front of other people.

I know what I know and nothing more. I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes.

Such as? Specifics?

Sorry, in order to take you seriously we honestly need to see that the "holes" of which you speak, aren't simply rehashed claims made by AIG or the Discovery Institute. The fact that you refer to it as "just a theory," suggests that what we'll get will be yet another collection of claims that have been proven false dozens of times. Please, prove me wrong.

H. Humbert #171:
ah, thanks my sweet, but I feel like I mostly just rework or rephrase from better sources... and then try not to call anyone a dumbass numbnut fuckwad with shit for brains.

It's my best trick.

Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

Okay, I have to ask. What other kind of knowledge are you talking about? What sort of knowledge can NOT be defined as "worldly"?

Could you give an example?

And before you ask, there was no "before" the Big Bang; time started at the BB, as time is the recognition of entropy, which does nto exist in a singularity.

An awful lot of people have trouble understanding that "before the big bang" is a nonsense concept like "north of the north pole" or "colder than absolute zero". For religious folks maybe it would help to point out that asking what happened before the big bang is pretty much the same question as the old one about what God did before creation. The scientific answer is a secular, evidence-based version of St. Augustine's that time is a property of creation, "before" doesn't exist without time, so asking what was before the creation is a question without any real meaning.

Douge the parasitic troll:

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

Douge is really an example of evolution in action. He has already admitted that he is dumb, uneducated, and has no desire or ability to change either. OK, free country. But not exactly what a technological competitive society needs.

Evolutionary game theory predicts that complex systems will evolve parasitic "cheaters". These parasites benefit far more than then they contribute. Douge is just a parasite. There is a first hand example of evolution in real time, Douge the parasite, predicted by evo-game theory.

Sastra wrote: "I feel like I mostly just rework or rephrase from better sources."

So does every author, but that in itself is a skill. Anyway, even if you have no intention of authoring a larger work, why not start saving copies of your posts in a folder? You might be surprised at how quickly the content accumulates. And after all, everyone needs a hobby.

Douge avows:"I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes."

I have visited Idaho. It is still full of holes.

Completely off-topic, but I've just discovered that Talk Origins is blocked here at work, but Answers in Genesis is not. Nice. For the record, I work on a military base (gasp).

I found the Matrix movies to be too idiotic to pay much attention to them. Is Doug claiming to have taken the pill that released him from the matrix or the one that put him back to sleep?

Seems to me he's attempting to use an assumed air of 'higher', 'non-worldly' knowledge to hide from himself his own profound ignorance.

Graculus (#155):

The thing is that Shannon IT has its uses, just not the way the creobots want it to be used.

Definitely. One can make a quantitative statement that, for example, the genetic code for mapping nucleotide sequences into amino acids has certain information-theoretic properties. The last letter in a codon is less informative than the ones before; it's easy to imagine how this could be biologically significant, particularly if you ask how the genetic code evolved in the first place. Did life once have codons of two letters apiece, and then add a third nucleotide?

Active research is going on in this field. To pick a random article, see S. Itzkovitz and U. Alon, "The genetic code is nearly optimal for allowing additional information within protein-coding sequences", Genome Research 17:405-412, 2007.

Douge,
Scientists don't claim to have all the answers, we just state what we think it the best explanation with the current knowledge. As someone already said, that evolution is occuring is not in any doubt to anyone that has a little knowledge. The exact mechanisms are where the interesting questions still are. Changes in the theory aren't likely to disprove something that's as well supported as evolutionary theory, and it's certainly not going to be done by people who's attempt at explanation is essentially "God did it, it's impossible to know more so we should just give up now".

Up to your last post I was like kseniya and thought you were at least honest in seeking answers. After that I'm not sure if it's worth responding to, but I'll say a few things.

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

I don't care if you're not interested in learning about this stuff, I'm used to people's eyes glazing over when I start talking about my research. What will piss us scientists off is when you start criticizing the knowledge that those you are interested have gained while demonstrating you don't have any yourself.

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me.

We all have to rely on knowledge gained by those outside our specialties. The trick is to find the most credible sources to learn from, you seem to be relying on those with the least credibility.

I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

For my own amusement, I will guess. Not one.

Bad guess for this site. I'm probably one of the lesser qualified, but here's a few things.

I did my undergrad in the department with a professor researching a metabolic pathway that evolved within the last 75 years and another that won the Nobel prize for discover ribozymes, which lends support for the idea of the RNA world. This work was with another professor that I also taught my microbiology class who now works on describing relationships between organisms in different environment. This class taught me a lot of what I know about the molecular evidence for evolution. I also had friends that worked in a lab dealing with how salmonella deal with the immune response, though I suppose you'll say this is just microevolution.

Now my grad program has one two professors that both have interests in how enzymes can evolve new specificity, and both happened to assign papers on that subject for our literature review class.

As for my own work, I study the structural and biophysical changes in a protein due to a polymorphism that has evolved within the time that the different races of humans have seperated. Neither form exists outside of primates. I'd also like to start studying some of the proteins in the same family which almost all seem to have polymorphisms in a similar place, suggesting this is a postition that is sensitive for evolution.

As I said I'm more tangentially related evolutionary research, so there's probably other people around even closer to that kind of research. And biologists even as distant as myself don't take kindly to people who are ignorant of our field trying to argue that there's the basis of so much research is wrong.

I sure do love reading Sastra's stuff, too. Not that she's the only good writer 'round here, but her (style+substance)/wordcount score is tough to beat.

I have visited Idaho. It is still full of holes.

What? Do you think potatoes grow on trees?

Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

Surely this is pure rhetoric. You can't possibly be so naive. Even if your ridiculous notion of life after death were true, wouldn't you like your life before death to at least not be a painful ordeal? Well, for that you need worldly knowledge - the more the better.

Is Doug claiming to have taken the pill that released him from the matrix or the one that put him back to sleep?

Douge is, to his credit, admitting that he's taken the blue pill, the one that puts his body back to sleep and his mind back into the artificial, dream-world unreality of The Matrix. It's the red pill that triggers awareness of reality.

Morpheus: "Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more."

*sigh*

Is the truth really so frightening?

For some reason, a few commenters here have reminded me of this,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYFQZFL0yoo&NR=1

I only said I know what I know, I left it to you to make a judgement as to how much or little that would be. And how quickly you are to make such an impossible judgement with only a few sentences on an internet forum. One must always consider the source of the data to establish whether it is credible. Once again, simply blurting out that everyone is stupid does not make you smart. Nor credible which if you were a scientist would surely be very important to you would it not?

Trying to be objective outside of your self is so very difficult. I would be hard pressed to believe that scientist have any more success with it than the rest of us. I suppose if I told myself it must be true every day of my life I may well begin to believe as well.

I respect that the theory is good, it makes sense to me. In fact if I was stupid and didn't care, maybe I would have already agreed to accept it as fact. But I don't, nor is there unanimous agreement amongst yourselves as to the acceptance of the theory. Maybe your time would be better spent working on your colleagues than arguing the point to me. Which brings me back to a previous question. Why can you not explain it to me? If it is true I will be able to recognize it.

The problem is that you cannot adequately explain it and it is for your own self preservation that you must attack my ability to understand it in order to defend it for yourself. You will continue to lose this argument until your theory is no longer theory.

ah, thanks my sweet, but I feel like I mostly just rework or rephrase from better sources... and then try not to call anyone a dumbass numbnut fuckwad with shit for brains.

Phew. There's still a role for me here, then.

Sastra, you continue to amuse and elucidate us with your cogent and erudite comments, and leave the name-calling to me (it may not be my best trick, but it's somewhat cathartic when I'm otherwise at a loss for words.)

If you don't mind though, I'm going to borrow the phrase 'dumbass numbnut fuckwad with shit for brains' (properly acronymed to DNFwSfB for brevity, of course).

Douge, you are a DNFwSfB. And I have never visited your brain, but it is pretty clear from your writing that it is still full of holes.

I respect that the theory is good, it makes sense to me. In fact if I was stupid and didn't care, maybe I would have already agreed to accept it as fact.

Well, one out of two ain't bad.
Now if only you didn't "care" so much about defending indefensible positions...

Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?

I guess we've arrived at the crux of the matter. You're "only visiting this planet," aren't ya? This earthly vessel is but a brief burden on your soul until either you die and pass on to the true life for which your soul was born, or The Rapture, (be pure) comes along and takes you to the magisterial auditorium where you get front row seats to watch the heathens burn and die horrible deaths under the reign of the Anti-Christ, followed by the 1,000 year blissful enthronement of the True Christ, followed by the whole world going Ka-Blooey and flying guitar-shaped spaceships carrying domed cities head towards heaven with the faithful who spent their last few years in the Golden Streets of the New Jerusalem (either in Missouri or Israel.) Why worry your pretty little head with the details of nature when you have tickets to the Eternal Show?

Of course, you didn't need an education to learn about the end-game of Christianity, did you? You have ways of testing it and knowing it, and there can be no holes in it. I mean because it's not a theory it can't have holes, it's a verified law because it's in the Bible, it's in BOTH Matthew and the Revelations of St. John.

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

Right back at ya, dude.

You swallowed the red pill, I chose blue.

Forget silly generalizations and go learn something substantive about science and evolution.

Now!

And how quickly you are to make such an impossible judgement with only a few sentences on an internet forum.

Why, this is a fascinating remark coming from you who called into question the moral character of every single person who accepts the validity of the ToE on the strength of the evidence.

Why can you not explain it to me? If it is true I will be able to recognize it.

A) People have been trying.

B) I doubt it:

You will continue to lose this argument until your theory is no longer theory.

How does this claim fail to suggest that you've already made up your mind? Every word you've posted thus far suggests it. Your intransigent refusal to actively seek knowledge on the subject suggests it. Yet you blame everyone else for this failing. Since when is your education anyone's responsibility but your own?

I suggest you rethink your position.

Can't resist this bit of stupidity:

Sastra, you continue to amuse and elucidate us with your cogent and erudite comments, and leave the name-calling to me (it may not be my best trick, but it's somewhat cathartic when I'm otherwise at a loss for words.

There's actually something to be said for honesty, as well.

But I suppose one can treat dumbfucks like Douche as if they were reasonable intelligent beings, rather than the shrill ad hominem--using ignorant a-holes that they are. Good cop, bad cop is something that works no matter that everyone knows about it.

Frankly, though, I don't find the good cop role to be interesting, nor what the Douches of this world actually deserve.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Which brings me back to a previous question. Why can you not explain it to me? If it is true I will be able to recognize it.

The problem is that you cannot adequately explain it and it is for your own self preservation that you must attack my ability to understand it in order to defend it for yourself. You will continue to lose this argument until your theory is no longer theory.

We have tried to explain Modern Evolutionary Theory to you, but, the only thing that has prevented you from recognizing it is the fact that you continue to purposely deny the fact that Modern Evolutionary Theory makes sense.

You, yourself, have disparaged evolutionary biology as being "worldly knowledge," thus denying the cornucopia of benefits that the application of evolutionary biology has provided, including medicine, improved agriculture, and an understanding of how the living world lives.

And you have the gall to paint yourself as a persecuted martyr... Uh, really, that a person, such as yourself, has deliberately mentally crippled themselves for religious reasons is a sad spectacle worthy of only pity and contempt.

"I have visited Idaho. It is still full of holes."

Did you go to Craters of the Moon?

Can't resist this bit of stupidity:

Oops, that was not in the least meant for the quote that appears. Sorry about that, I had actually thought of responding to a bit of the stupidity that Douche churned out, then thought better of it, and forgot to take off that heading.

That was not meant for you or anything you wrote, Brownian.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

McMillan, thank you for shedding some light on your experiences. I am not interested in converting anyone, I am not trying to say you are all wrong, on the contrary I believe most of what is being done in terms of research but I am simply not convinced of the end result. I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp and that a chimp came from something else and back and back to the primordial soup theory. If that is what you are still hanging your hat on these days.

I think what is being uncovered on a molecular level and human genetics is fascinating. I know that you are discovering new things all the time, maybe some support evolution maybe not, but I look around and say, hey, Its been like eleventy billion years now, we should be tripping over the evidence everyday. We should be able to see it. It should be a lot more plain to a layman based on the claims the scientific community has made over the years regarding the subject. So maybe you guys are doing some back peddaling while you shore up the theory. I don't have a problem with that.

My gripe, as I have mentioned before is that it is not factual on the level it is being presented to us. Please refrain from the religious practice of evolution and get back to the science of the matter. Is that asking to much?

Here's something like how it should have gone:

Can't resist agreeing with Brownian:

Sastra, you continue to amuse and elucidate us with your cogent and erudite comments, and leave the name-calling to me (it may not be my best trick, but it's somewhat cathartic when I'm otherwise at a loss for words.
There's actually something to be said for honesty, as well.

But I suppose one can treat dumbfucks like Douche as if they were reasonable intelligent beings, rather than the shrill ad hominem--using ignorant a-holes that they are. Good cop, bad cop is something that works no matter that everyone knows about it.

Frankly, though, I don't find the good cop role to be interesting, nor what the Douches of this world actually deserve.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

The problem is that you cannot adequately explain it and it is for your own self preservation that you must attack my ability to understand it in order to defend it for yourself. You will continue to lose this argument until your theory is no longer theory.

Is this a sociological experiment on your part? How did you come to choose this thread's commenters as your source for an explanation of evolution? How did you arrive at the notion that they are interested or obliged to provide such?

This is not a biology textbook, or any other manner of reference. It's a blog, with an open comment policy no less. Any information on evolution provided by commenters is entirely at their discrection, and its veracity depends on them actually knowing what they're talking about in the first place.

I submit that the effort it takes you to comment here is comparable to the effort it would take you to seek out sources of information that actually exist and intend to inform on the subject. The choice you've made makes me seriously doubt your claimed innocent pursuit of an explanation for evolution.

Sometimes I wonder if it's going to be impossible to keep ID out of the schools until we figure out some way to eradicate the brainwashing that's already been done.

that's exactly right. It is a form of brainwashing and cultism. If one feels uncomfortable viewing evangelical xianity in such a fashion, you can examine Scientology for parallels instead. Once the problem is approached from the viewpoint that it is indeed sociological/psychological in nature, I believe progress will finally be made (slowly but surely).

And I'm afraid we may be lurching toward a tipping point where it's no longer possible to reverse the trend.

Have you ever seen the movie "Idiocracy"? I recommend it for no other reason than watching the first 20 minutes where they set up the entire premise of the movie.

Why doesn't somebody study people who came to their senses after a religious upbriging? Surely some good scientific research could turn up a common denominator and figure out how to reproduce it?

there have actually been several such studies. There are some twin studies looking at heritability of predilections towards extreme religious behavior, as well as other studies like the fairly recent one in Science looking at sociological impacts on resistance to scientific theory:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/316/5827/996

if you want the links to the twin studies as well, just ask.

Maybe too many smart scientists are interested in marine life and neglecting their own species?

guilty as charged.

;)

OTOH, it probably makes life a lot less depressing for them and more entertaining for the rest of us to read about.

judging from the popularity of PZ's blog, I'm not sure I would agree.

"And how quickly you are to make such an impossible judgement with only a few sentences on an internet forum."

Douche, you used the word 'proof' and its derivatives incorrectly a number of times. If you were familiar with science, scientists, or the scientific method at all, you would not have made such a basic mistake.

To make an analogy: it is as if you walked into an airplane hanger and asked the nearest mechanic how an airplane can fly when all of its components are heavier than air. Would you blame the mechanic if he said you hadn't a clue what you were talking about?

Remember Douche, we see your kind on a near daily basis. Like most seasoned teachers, we can spot the fact that you're a plagiarist at 100 yards.

I see comments like those from Douge (a cross between Doug and douche?), and for some strange reason, a song from Harry Nilson keeps repeating itself in my head:

Everybody's talking at me

I don't hear a word they're saying

Only the echoes of my mind

Sigh. There's only so many times we can point to, y'know, actual resources, where Douge can go to, y'know, actually learn stuff, before something like this happens:

Worldly knowledge is really a drag;
It's all evil, and just makes me gag.
Take for instance this "Douge";
When I eat the pill rouge
I can see he's some kind of a bag.

It's Blake Stacey's fault for egging me on.

I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp and that a chimp came from something else and back and back to the primordial soup theory.

You've just demonstrated that you either have done No research on the ToE, that you have terrible reading comprehension skills or that you are just parroting something your were told by the ICR orDI or some other worthless creationist organization.

dogmeatib,

You aren't going to tell me that potatoes grow in holes, are you?

Rey Fox,
Actually I lived in Idaho for 12 years, about 25 miles north of Boise. And I did visit the Craters of the Moon.

I'm not picking on Idaho. I was just amused by the idea of visiting evolution. You really can't make this stuff up, you have to wait for creationists to make it up for you.

And Idaho rocks. But it is still full of holes.

but I look around and say, hey, Its been like eleventy billion years now, we should be tripping over the evidence everyday.

We are. The evidence is everywhere. It's flu season. This year's flu has evolved, hence you need a new flu shot this year.

The Burgess shale (and its associated fossils) are a six-and-a-half hour drive from my house. I don't know of anyone who's visited who hasn't tripped over a fossil while hiking.

The oil sands are a three hour drive from where I live. The entire oil industry is based upon the mutual support the theory of evolution and the field of geology lend each other. If the ToE were not predictive and helpful in predicting oil deposits, there'd likely not be a car on the streets today.

I am the proud owner of a fat and happy lionhead goldfish named Fishyssoise. She is the result of generations of selective breeding. If I were to toss her in a pond with a variety of other fancy goldfish and leave her to do her thing, I'd have a pond full of carp-like comets (the basal form) within a few seasons.

Keep in mind, Douche, that we trip over the evidence of a heliocentric solar system every day, and yet there are still a few who deny that reality. See a personal resemblance there?

We should be able to see it.

We. Do.

You shut your eyes and then complain that you can't see.

That's just plain dumb.

AC: Let's review some of Douge's comments:

Someone here surely has the moral character to admit that you are preaching a false religion. While I think it is a good theory and certainly worthy of pursuit, it is still a theory and should be handled as such.

I find it so incredibly disengenous that we know its not proven, yet we are so willing to teach it as such essentially brainwashing society into acceptance. That is the epitomy of hypocrisy for the scientific community.

It would be nice to have some accountability from the intellectual community on this issue.

I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp and that a chimp came from something else and back and back to the primordial soup theory. If that is what you are still hanging your hat on these days.

These comments reek - REEK, I say - of the arrogance and ignorance of an ideologue who has already made up his mind, while pretending to be open-minded.

Douge, your "belief" has exactly NO bearing on the truth of the matter, but it just so happens, you are correct: Homo sapiens did not descend from the chimpanzee. As far as I know, it's been a long, long time since anyone seriously suggested that that might be the case. Are you really so poorly informed, yet bold enough to make pronouncements such as those I quoted above?

It should be a lot more plain to a layman based on the claims the scientific community has made over the years regarding the subject.

Why? Why "should" it be? Why should the accumulated knowledge of a billion man-hours of scientific research and analysis be "plain to a layman"? Why? On what do you base that assertion? Are you one of those who want to put it to a public vote? Theory of Evolution: Check One, True or False?

How many people really understand quantum mechanics or special relativity? Does the validity of these theories and disciplines really rest on how well they are understood by the layperson?

Again, I suggest you rethink your position.

My gripe, as I have mentioned before is that it is not factual on the level it is being presented to us. Please refrain from the religious practice of evolution and get back to the science of the matter. Is that asking to much?

Among other things, Douge, if you actually took the time to use, say, google or Wikipedia, you would realize that there are literal libraries worth of evidence for evolution.

What physical evidence is there for the Earth forming as literally described in the Book of Genesis six to ten thousand years ago?
Absolutely nothing.

What physical evidence is there for positive contributions made by Creationism or Intelligent Design?
Absolutely nothing.

Among other things, Douge, humans are not descended from chimpanzees, humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. It's in the same manner that you are not descended from your 2nd cousin twice removed, you and your 2nd cousin twice removed both share a common ancestor.

So, before you begin again with your moronic bellyaching that passes for sanctimonious whining, please overcome your inherent hate for "worldly knowledge" and learn something. It's as St Augustine said, in that, Christians who spout nonsense in front of learned pagans and other non-Christians do absolutely nothing but make blasphemous idiots of themselves, like what you are doing right now.

And Idaho rocks

I spent some time in the Sawtooth National Recreation area and had a great time. spent some time snorkelling in the streams looking at salmonids (OK, just trout), too.

some very beautiful areas around those parts. for those that have never visited, it's well worth the trip.

It should be a lot more plain to a layman based on the claims the scientific community has made over the years regarding the subject.

This is an absurd claim, considering the sorry state of science education in the U.S. and the significant credulity of the general populace (even before factoring in things like fundamentalist Christianity that actively oppose scientific findings).

I am a layman regarding evolutionary science. I follow scientific findings in general because I find science and the world it studies fascinating. I have no problem getting the gist of evolution. Then again, my well was never poisoned, and I went to the trouble of learning, on my own, more than my standard education provided on the subject.

Johnny Vector (#208):

I'd go with capsule rouge instead of pill rouge, but still, good job.

I also don't count on popular media to do anything other than its purpose: to entertain me. It doesn't even do that consistently, much less educate or inform.

Douche blathered,

I look around and say, hey, Its been like eleventy billion years now

More like 4.5.
It seems like what you 'know' also didn't include geology or radiometric dating.
But regardless, in how many of those years did we have scientific methodology?
In how many years did we even exist?

What is your reference for how fast knowledge should be accumulated?

we should be tripping over the evidence everyday.

We do.
Unlike you, though, we stop and try and figure out what happened.

We should be able to see it.

What is your definition of 'seeing', in this case?

It should be a lot more plain to a layman based on the claims the scientific community has made over the years regarding the subject.

Why?
Do you think that a plain description ("sun go up, sun go down") is a valid justification for a complex theory (the rotation of the earth).

Isn't that just saying that "common sense" should rule over every scientific inquiry?
Please tell me that's not how you think the world works.

So maybe you guys are doing some back peddaling while you shore up the theory.

In what way?
Where?
Who?

Or maybe, your super-enlightened being means that you don't have to explain anything.
I'm guessing that's the case.

But I don't, nor is there unanimous agreement amongst yourselves as to the acceptance of the theory.

actually, yes, there is. more than any other theory in biology, that's for sure (well over 99%), and more than just about any theory you can name in any field. tens of thousands of careers in biology are built upon successful experiments testing aspects and predictions of the theory in the field. if the theory was as weak as those lying to you have suggested, it would have been dumped over a hundred years ago.

It's obvious you have been listening to a lot of people that have been lying to you.

how's that make you feel?

do you enjoy being lied to?

hey, I'm just curious as to why you appear to prefer being lied to.

hey, I'm just curious as to why you appear to prefer being lied to.

He's already admitted to chosing the blue pill, to preferring dream over reality and illusion over truth. *shrug* It all fits.

but not WHY.

WHY does he prefer being lied to.

But I don't, nor is there unanimous agreement amongst yourselves as to the acceptance of the theory.

Wrong again. Acceptance of the fact of evolution in biology and related fields runs over 99% in the USA. It is higher in Europe.

You can find more biologists in mental hospitals and detox centers than biologists who don't accept evolution the fact and theory.

The few who don't freely admit they don't on cult religious grounds.

In the general population, the evolution deniers are virtually all from cult versions of Xianity or Islam. Who again let their cult viewpoints dictate their views.

Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor? Perfect, give me a link to that.

WHY? You mean the underlying Why? Yes, yes, that is a good question.

These comments reek - REEK, I say - of the arrogance and ignorance of an ideologue who has already made up his mind, while pretending to be open-minded.

Oh I agree, and I echo your admonition that he rethink his position - or think it in the first place, since reason appears to have nothing to do with it.

For example:

I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp and that a chimp came from something else and back and back to the primordial soup theory. If that is what you are still hanging your hat on these days.

I won't say "Good, neither do we." I won't even explain why this is a gross (but common) misunderstanding/mischaracterization of evolution. I will simply ask: Apart from a religious belief that contradicts it, what reason would he have to reject the basic idea of humans evolving from non-human organisms?

Ignorance of the specifics of evolution can only explain so much. After all, Douge's concept of science education is also severely flawed, but he doesn't seem to reject education itself.

Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor? Perfect, give me a link to that.

Sure! Hey, how about a cool quarter-million links?

Ha! I'm the moron! You want arguments against evolution, yet when you have them you simply dismiss them with a "you're a moron." Give me a break. Your deceitful tactics are disgusting. This isn't science, it's a sham! You should be ashamed. Give me some legitimate arguments. Your name-calling is puerile.

Posted by: anon | December 28, 2007 3:14 AM

I'm a bit late to the fight, but those questions have been specifically answered multiple times. Also, next time you cut-and-paste creationist tracts, do a better job with the hard-returns, they made little squares in the middle of your "questions" and completely gave you away, probably even to those who've never seen those questions before.

@ Carlie #106, Thank you! Lovely post. "Why?" is an emotional question. All the "How" answers, don't address this. What is being asked with "Why?" rather than "How is the grass green?" is "What meaning or significance does the color green hold? Thus the only answer that calms the emotions and stops the questions is "God did it." --God being a metaphor for love or ancestral nurturing or continuity. God is also a story that is already familiar so the scaffolding builds on previous knowledge. Teaching through narrative is very powerful. "Once upon a time there was a tiny creature living in the sea that had the ability to be green, but had never heard of green, never thought about being green..." If we personalize it to something that can be related to through direct experience the story becomes even more powerful. Humans seek meaning not just mechanics. To understand doctrines that go beyond meaning one has to sit on a meditation cushion a long time. Or be a very good scientist. Objectivity is a path to enlightenment, but it requires being objective to one's own mind as well.

BTW, a nice book for children is Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story by Lisa Westberg Peters. Great illustrations. May not work for adults. ; )

"Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor? Perfect, give me a link to that."

Google Nakalipithecus nakayamai.

Douge,

You came in here very arrogant and took a beating. Many of these people are professionals in the field, biologists, ya know. I'm not sure if you're just a troll or if you really are not sure. You don't seem interested enough to do some reading, but that is exactly what you should do. Hit the library after work or on a Saturday. Some of the comments here have pointed you to excellent sources, including web sites. You would be doing yourself a favor.

Science delivers.

Now, why did Kseniya and I go out of our way to type a few words into Google when Douche won't even bother to do it himself?

The only reasonable explanation must be simple Christian Charity, eh?

Douge,

Evolution isn't generally visible to the naked eye because
1. Fundamentally it's a population-based phenomenon, not visible even as 'hopeful monsters'.
2. It's mostly paced in deep time, which requires a geological perspective alien to intuition.

It's possible nonetheless to see selection at work in
* Selective breeding - here the populations are carefully tabulated for economic reasons, and guess what - breeding works along evolutionary expectations.
* 'ring species', natural examples in which populations vary over space as well as time, so that all stages of the evolutionary change are presently viewable. As noted earlier in this thread, herring-gull data once thought to be a ring species have turned out to be more complex than originally thought. But the wikipedia also mentions Wake's salamander study and Irwin's greenish warblers are canonical, and Irwin's site has a .pdf of his 2001 Genetica article discussing the micro/macroevolution issues explicitly from this perspective.

Speaking of personal experiences in evolution, I've studied speciation in ground squirrels, throughout California, Oregon and Alaska. The only coherent interpretations for these data are evolutionary. Biblical interpretations don't add anything. Even though a great flood was central to the biotic division of California's Central Valley ca. 750kya, that isn't the one discussed Biblically (even in the Book of Mormon) and had nothing to do with human depravity. Or ground squirrels'.

Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor? Perfect, give me a link to that.

since links to the relevant places to find such information were already given to you, instead I will point you to one of the individual bits of hard evidence from modern chimps and humans that is used in support, in addition to fossil evidence:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#molecular_vestiges

note that the key here is not necessarily that we both share broken pseudogenes regulating the production of vitamin C, but that they are both broken in exactly the same way. there simply is no other hypothesis other than common descent that sufficiently explains this.

and as to how science actually works:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/unfair.cfm

but of course, with ease I can predict you not only will refuse to read these, but will likely instead look for what AIG has to say about it instead.

like I asked you earlier:

why do you prefer to be lied to?

It's a Christmas Miracle, Brownian. :-)

Which one do you want? How far back should we go?

You need to be more specific Douge.

Douge re #202,

Evolution isn't generally visible to the naked eye because
1. Fundamentally it's a population-based phenomenon, not visible even as 'hopeful monsters'.
2. It's mostly paced in deep time, which requires a geological perspective alien to intuition. (There are wikipedia articles for each term I italicize here.)

It's possible nonetheless to see selection at work in
* Selective breeding - here the populations are carefully tabulated for economic reasons, and guess what - breeding works along evolutionary expectations.
* 'ring species', natural examples in which populations vary over space as well as time, so that all stages of the evolutionary change are presently viewable. As noted earlier in this thread, herring-gull data once thought to be a ring species have turned out to be more complex than originally thought. But the wikipedia also mentions Wake's salamander study and Irwin's greenish warblers are canonical, and Irwin's site has a .pdf of his 2001 Genetica article discussing the micro/macroevolution issues explicitly from this perspective.

Speaking of personal experiences in evolution, I've studied speciation in ground squirrels, throughout California, Oregon and Alaska. The only coherent interpretations for these data are evolutionary. Biblical interpretations don't add anything. Even though a great flood was central to the biotic division of California's Central Valley ca. 750kya, that isn't the one discussed Biblically (even in the Book of Mormon) and it had nothing to do with human depravity. Or ground squirrels'.

Humans seek meaning not just mechanics.

i see yet another person who doesn't understand that evolution theory indeed actually attempts to answer the WHY question as well as the how.

mechanisms like natural selection are used to explain the "how" of it, but evolution itself is an attempt is in the form of an ultimate explanation.

example:

WHY do deer have antlers that drop off every year?

answer:

evolution

HOW did they get that way?

answer:

selection (natural and sexual).

so, those who feel that evolution displaces deism wrt to the specific question: why are organic beings the way that they are? are actually correct.

it does.

the point being that perhaps those that attempt to utilize their religious beliefs to answer such questions are asking their religion to answer the wrong questions to begin with.

Steve, that block is potentially worrisome. I wonder how specifically it has been blocked off. Talk.origins is hosted at 209.200.243.184 - how about trying the host itself (lunarpages) by just throwing that address in the address bar? How about try something in the same block, like 209.200.243.189?

Just one I.T. person with a maladaptive bent can make something into apparent 'policy' that is in fact merely applying their own prejudices. Sometimes, they are just mindlessly enacting the policies of someone one rung up the chain.

It could even be an honest mistake from a too-broad block, say if the entire 209.200 address area was blocked.

Let us know how specifically it has been blocked, for we can turn that into juicy gossip if it turns out to be a targeted block :)

OK, Douge and friends, let's try this another way.

If you really want to understand evolution and want to be able to recognise its effects - all around you every day - then why not go back to the beginning. Sit down quietly somewhere and read Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Remember, as you read, that this was not written for people with two and three PhDs - the profession of scientist did not then exist. It was written for people of average intelligence who were lucky enough to have a slightly better than average education. In theory, therefore, a US high school graduate should be able to understand it, no?

While you're about it, find out something of the history of the book - that it is based on more than two decades of detailed observation and profound thought, that Darwin was a real and humane person who was doubtful about publishing because he knew that his findings contradicted what many whom he respected had been taught, that not every idea in it was brand new in 1859 and that Darwin was aware of the work of fellow enquirers going back at least to Robert Hooke.

And who, you ask, was Robert Hooke? A fascinating person with the luck to have an excellent biography by Lisa Jardine available from Amazon for less than ten dollars.

Reading Darwin will not turn you into a twenty-first century scientist. It will not put you into a position to refute the work of PZ or of the other scientists who post here. It might, though, put you into a position to ask intelligent questions of today's scientists on matters like what has been amplified, redefined, explained differently since it was written - as Darwin himself fully expected it to be. He, remember, always saw the book as a first attempt at a synthesis of the knowledge then available to him. He would be very surprised indeed if he popped back today and discovered that no holes had been picked in what he wrote. But the holes do not destroy the concept! They are handholds to a better understanding.

I am not a scientist. I do not always understand what PZ writes but I do know that I would only be able to prove him wrong if I were to learn as much as he knows in his own field and then some - at least ten years' hard and concentrated work, I imagine!

I hate the way you dismiss worldly knowledge as if it were somehow tainted. If you are going to keep this up I need you to prove to me that you make no use of and gain no benefit from knowledge which has been deliberately sought. Until then, shut up about it.

Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor? Perfect, give me a link to that.

How about comparing the human and chimp genomes like they did here

You have a better explanation of how things like broken genes that are broken in the same ways or evidence of viral infections that got integrated in the same place in chimps and humans. While the evidence of common ancestry is pretty strong based on functional genes, creationists still fall back to say the similarities are needed for it to function. I haven't seen anyone give a good explanation for why the nonfunctional things should show the same patterns of similarities.

I know that you are discovering new things all the time, maybe some support evolution maybe not, but I look around and say, hey, Its been like eleventy billion years now, we should be tripping over the evidence everyday.

Not some supports evolution and some not, pretty much all of it supports evolution. As people already said, we are pretty much tripping over evidence everyday. The reason evolution is taken for granted by almost all knowledgeble people is not because of dogma. It's because there's so much evidence, that to deny it would mean huge amounts of cognitive dissonance

Ichthyic asked:

WHY does he prefer being lied to.

Well, since we're talking about The Matrix anyway, perhaps the character Cypher can shed some light on this:

Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
[Takes a bite of steak]
Cypher: Ignorance is bliss.

Blue pill indeed.

The problem is that you cannot adequately explain it and it is for your own self preservation that you must attack my ability to understand it in order to defend it for yourself. You will continue to lose this argument until your theory is no longer theory.

Posted by: Douge | December 28, 2007 3:03 PM

Douge, I hate to break it to you but the "Theory of Evolution" goes back to the 6th Century BC:

Evolutionary thought, the idea that species develop over time, has its roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Muslims. However, until the 18th century, Western biological thinking was dominated by essentialism, the idea that living forms are unchanging. During the Enlightenment, evolutionary cosmology and the mechanical philosophy spread from the physical sciences to natural history. Naturalists such as Maupertuis and Buffon began to focus on the variability of species, and Erasmus Darwin included even more explicit evolutionary speculations in his writings. The emergence of paleontology and with it the notion of extinction, combined with the dramatic expansion of known species undermined the static essentialist view of nature. The first fully developed theory of evolution was proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early 19th century; Lamarck's theory of transmutation held that species had an innate drive pushing them up the great chain of being, and that the mechanism of inheritance of acquired characteristics helped them adapt to local conditions.

The evolutionary theory often referred to as Darwinism was first publicly put forward by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and discussed in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Unlike Lamarck's theory, Darwinism proposed common descent and a branching tree of life. It was based on the idea of natural selection, and it synthesized evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology. The debate over Origin raised serious questions about the place of humanity in nature, and was a key step in the process of methodological naturalism replacing natural theology in the sciences.

So, whine all you want sugar butt, evolution isn't going away. It isn't EVER going to go away. The only thing that will change is how we, as a Civilization, pick ourselves up from ignorance and be bothered to understand the complexities of evolution.

You demonstrate, clearly, that you'd rather hold onto ignorance. And I can see why, fully looking at the world will force you explore, and conclude, that your bronze-age religion is a lie and just about everyone in your life is an ignorant poser who's keeping up the architecture of a lie because the lie has a life of it's own.

Frack. I hate this blog's software.

"I'm not picking on Idaho."

I know. But Craters of the Moon is where most of the holes I know of are. Although I guess there are a lot of holes around Silver City as well, of the man-made variety.

Rey Fox,

There are some really big holes (caves) in Hell's Canyon, too.

You keep your eyes open and your head down. It's full of strange folks with zero sense of humor.

PZ -

Have you considered building a little creationist widget? You know, something that would simply copy-paste one of the standard dumb arguments as a comment, and give them the chance to sign it as if it were their own work.

The benefit for you is that it would save database space, and then refutations could be automated, too. Sure, it saves them some time, but it saves you some time, and I value yours more, so my inner economist thinks it a net gain.

Plus, the buttons would give the opportunity for a bit of graphic design fun...

Moses #242 wrote:

So, whine all you want sugar butt, evolution isn't going away.

I think PZ should consider this as a motto.

1.) Every mammal has a mother.

2.) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals.

3.) But if there has been even one mammal, then by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals, which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals. It's a contradiction in terms.

Again, a pseudo-problem, because nature doesn't have sharp boundaries.

Not even! The conclusion doesn't even follow from the premises -- a third, unmentioned, premise is required: every mammal's mother is a mammal. And this premise is wrong.

I wish science could prove

Stop right here, and learn what science is.

As long as you can answer the question "if I were wrong, how would I know?", you are doing science. As soon as you can't, you aren't.

Proponents of evolution say it is based upon scientific evidence and creationism is not, therefore, creationism should not be taught.

No. Proponents of evolution say that the theory of evolution is science, while the non-theory of creationism is not science. (And they are right. It's easy to find out why they are right.)

concerning recognized icons of evolution.

Here we go, pretending that Wells the Moonie's book has never been discussed before... <yawn>

Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth

As mentioned above, they haven't done that for decades. Today, these experiments (plural) are merely a proof-of-concept: amino acids etc. etc. can form from simple molecules.

Why don't textbooks discuss the Cambrian explosion

Fifty years ago they didn't, because the Cambrian "explosion" hadn't been discovered yet. Next question.

in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed

Maybe for some values of "major" and "fully formed"...

instead of branching from a common ancestor

I don't see how 520-million-year-old fossils automatically disprove the existence of a 600-million-year-old ancestor...

Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry

Some use photos.

even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages

They are most similar in the pharyngula stage, when, roughly speaking, the body-plan genes are expressed. They are often wildly different before that, but this is because of the different amounts of yolk in the eggs.

and that the drawings are faked?

Haeckel had, shall we say, "filled in" a few that he hadn't seen in the required stages. Don't act as if Haeckel was the only embryologist ever.

Why do textbooks portray the archaeopteryx as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds even though modern birds are probably not descended from it

If I have you, your uncle, your granduncle, and your great-granduncle, it is fairly easy to reconstruct what your grandfather looks like. Old Archie would be the granduncle here.

and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

This is a misunderstanding that dates from the time when we knew the great-granduncle's grandchildren but not the great-granduncle's sister. We've found her. We've found Jurassic dromaeosaurids and troodontids in the last few years.

Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection, when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and that all the pictures have been staged?

Because they rest on the underside of twigs with lichens (when there's no pollution -- peppered) or without lichens (when there's pollution -- uniformly dark). Research did not stop 100 years ago.

Why do the textbooks claim that beak changes in Gal[á]pagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection, even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended and no net evolution occurred?

Imagine an ice age, complete with lower precipitation over most of the world. In other words, imagine "a severe drought" that lasts a few tens of millennia.

It is important to remember that the reversal wasn't due to some kind of magic elasticity in the DNA. It was due to natural selection: in wet years, there are enough small seeds for everyone, so those who bother growing and supporting a huge beak are at a disadvantage.

Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence the DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

Explained above.

Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to justify claims that we are just animals

Doubly wrong. Firstly, no drawings are used to justify the idea that we are animals. Secondly, why "just animals"? Is it bad to be an animal? Would you prefer being a choanoflagellate?

when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

This is blown way, way out of proportion. The disagreements concern details that you wouldn't even see because you don't know where to look for them.

Perhaps the most important question to be asked is why are students told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact, even though many of its claims are based upon misrepresentations of the facts?

This is a claim based on ignorance.

I have always been under the impression that Darwin's theory of evolution is just that -- a theory.

You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.

Darwin himself, in his work, Origin of Species, said, "For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in the volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived."

Quote-mining! Hooray! Give me the rest of the page or shut up.

Reflecting on his work near the end of his life, Darwin stated, "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them."

Quote-mining again.

Based upon what he said, if other concepts such as creationism should not be allowed in the public schools, neither should the theory of evolution.

Even if this were true, it wouldn't matter. We're in science here. Science is not a personality cult. Darwin was a genius, sure, but neither was he infallible, nor did he know what we know today. Science didn't stop with his death, in other words.

Since education is to be a quest for learning, it is proper to investigate any queries to creation. Our Forefathers would approve, why can't we?

You are the one who believes he knows everything about evolution and has stopped learning.

It is not macroevolution: an upward, beneficial increase in complexity, as evolutionists claim happened millions of times between bacteria and man.

I call strawman. There is no "upward". There is no increase in complexity -- there is an increase in diversity, but none in complexity, as far as complexity can be measured in the first place. Using your ignorance to define your own technical terms, attributing the use of those terms to us, and then complaining about us is... well... stupid. Read S. J. Gould's book Full House.

Before considering how life began, we must first understand the term �organic evolution.�

How true.

* Life could not result from a �big bang.�

Guess what: the universe resulted from the big bang, not life. (Not directly anyway.)

We see variations in lizards, four of which are shown at the bottom. We also see birds, represented at the top.

Stupid, anon. Stupid. You can't copy images into a blog post; you have to use an elaborate HTML trick. I bet you didn't even try. In any case, you forgot to give us the source of your strawman factory... if you had done that, you wouldn't have needed to copy and paste in the first place...

And yeah, we all know the 1953 experiments are not perfectly demonstrative of our atmosphere. We do know it was fairly reducing, though.

An atmosphere with lots of carbon dioxide is actually weakly oxidizing, though of course still not too oxidizing to prevent uranium dioxide or pyrite from occurring in river gravel or iron-II from occurring in seawater.

And most people don't know the number of largish, organic molecules we can find in asteroids and such (which I think is even more convincing, actually).

Bingo.

I nominate Carlie, post #106, as front-runner for the next OM. Nice post.

Seconded and thirded.

Even if evolution was a little more conclusive, a creationist would simply attribute it to design.

Two words: Stupid Design. All those stupidities like the fact that the paths of air and food cross in limbed vertebrates (but not, say, insects), that DNA is used (DNA falls apart when stored in water -- we use lots of energy to constantly repair it), that vertebrate eyes are built the wrong way around (while cephalopod eyes aren't), and so on. Intelligent design would be something else.

I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

I, for one, have seen several specimens of Sinornithosaurus, one of Sinosauropteryx, at least one of Caudipteryx, and lots of birds from the same age in museums in China (Beijing, Beipiao, Sihetun). The real fossils, with these mine own eyes.

"I know what I know and nothing more. I have visited evolution."

Kinda like saying you went to foreign country for a vacation and now know it better than the people who live there even though you can't even speak the native language. You are a quite the idiot, aren't you Douge?

To contribute to the discussion of the problem (religious teaching) rather than the unfortunates who suffer from it (like Douge and Anom), Huston Smith in The World's Religions, lists six functions of a religion, in no particular order, as: 1) To provide explanations concerning the world, 2) to provide ritual, 3) to provide security, 4) act as a source of authority, 5) provide a code for moral behavior, 6) and be a repository for wisdom traditions.

Science usurps #1, re-defines #s 3, 4 and 6, shows the meaninglessness of #2 and encroaches on #6- which is a property of a society and not religion.

So, of course, all they can do is rave- their world has been squashed flatter than a presidents' EEG. How to get past the rave? Dunno.

In one of his books Dawkins talks about the "discontinuous mind" -- the tendency to see things as either one thing OR another, but no gradients between

The Ancestor's Tale. Just read that section on the flight back to Boston today (and it's good to be home)

WB Jeff :-)

I believe most of what is being done in terms of research but I am simply not convinced of the end result

I can see the jigsaw pieces strewn out before me, but c'mon, there's no way they all interlock and form a rectangle.

Douge wrote:

"I barely have enough faith to support my belief in God yet here you are walking around like evolution and the big bang are facts. I have to give you guys credit though, your faith in science is exceptional."

Faith is science is much like faith in gravity. If you drop a ball, you expect it to fall. It fell last time you dropped it. It fell every time you dropped it. If someone else drops it the same way you did, it falls the same way. You can take measurements of how it fell, and use them to predict how it will fall the next time you drop it. You can use those measurements and other knowledge derived from observation of the way things work in the universe to predict how it will fall if you drop it from a higher point, or a lower point, or in water, or onto a steel plate, or another ball sitting on a steel plate. To the scientist, the universe appears to behave according to consistent laws, some of which they know and even have nifty equations to describe, some of which they only have descriptions of in non-mathematical language, and some which have yet to be understood or even discovered. The big bang and evolution are somewhat less immediately obvious as gravity, but belief in them comes from a similar source: observation of reality.

If, however, you believe in a god that performed miracles of creation, your belief is consistent with a gravity that is merely a whim of god. You drop the ball, and god could decide to suspend gravity and let it float, or turn it into a goat, or anything. If god performs miracles that defy the laws of nature, then there are no consistent laws of nature, merely whatever laws god chooses at the moment. Have you observed god in as definite a way as a physicist has observed gravity when he drops a ball? Have you measured god? I think not. You were told to believe in god, and you did. You may believe in a god which you have never definitively observed in a way that can lead you to doubt the gravity that you experience all of the time. And somehow, you think that this makes your way of looking at the universe better than that of a scientific mind.

Another way of looking at it: religious people believe in god, while scientists believe in the universe. Religious scientists manage to believe in both. There might be a god, but there definitely is a universe.

WB Jeff :-)

dank u wel.

It's good to be home (and I have a very happy kitty)

One must always consider the source of the data to establish whether it is credible.

No. Data are data. What one must always consider is the question of whether the conclusions really follow from the data, and whether the data contain measurement errors or the like. Neither the person who did the measurements nor the person who drew the conclusions are of any interest to science itself.

Trying to be objective outside of your self is so very difficult.

No, it's merely hard work.

Can you replicate your results? Can someone else replicate the results? Is it possible to replicate your results with different methods? And so on.

I suppose if I told myself it must be true every day of my life I may well begin to believe as well.

I call projection.

Which brings me back to a previous question. Why can you not explain it to me? If it is true I will be able to recognize it.

Explain what? The theory of evolution? -- If it is the best explanation for the data*, you will only be able to recognize that if you know the data -- which you don't, as you have demonstrated.

* I didn't say "true". Truth is for philosophers, proof is for logicians and mathematicians. Science is about reality.

I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp

Of course we didn't. Instead, we have a common ancestor with the chimps. Genome-wise, the chimps are more different from this ancestor than we are: they have had more evolution than we.

but I look around and say, hey, Its been like eleventy billion years now, we should be tripping over the evidence everyday. We should be able to see it.

Indeed. We are tripping over the evidence every day, and I, for one, can see it.

It should be a lot more plain to a layman

What is not plain about stupid design? What is not plain about Ichthyostega, Acanthostega, Tiktaalik and the other eleventy fossils -- the fact that you haven't looked them up yet?

However, keep in mind that "plain" doesn't equal "short". I highly recommend the following book, which is a great explanation for laypeople and yet has 419 pages.

Judy Scotchmoor & Dale A. Springer (editors): Evolution: Investigating the Evidence, The Paleontological Society Special Publication 11 (August 2002)

My gripe, as I have mentioned before is that it is not factual on the level it is being presented to us.

That's what you believe. You are wrong.

Craig Pennington wrote:
Or that it requires (at least in the young-earth variant) a much faster rates of what actual scientists call speciation than evolution.

Super-Evolution! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mPPnN1c0jk

Truth Machine: There was an episode of Voyager in which B'lanna Torres said that subspace and Wheeler foam were one and the same.

Uh, so you're using fictional characters as authorities backing up your assertion? Wheeler foam and Star Trek subspace don't have the same properties.

To all of you "brights" dissing Anon for her DI questions. The questions are familiar and the answers are too. Surely some on this blog know where to find them. Why not just politely post a link.

Such a link was posted, but nothing comes of it -- people like anon don't read the links, or read it just as fodder for more trolling.

Do you really think shouting "moron" is more persuasive?

Nothing is persuasive. Sometimes the most appropriate response is contempt.

Yes, the name-calling is puerile, but given your tendentious recapitulation of a laundry list of specious, even fraudulent arguments, only a saint would refrain from calling you what you are. And I think we can all agree that Pharyngulans aren't saints.

So not being a saint is the same as being childish? anon's cut-and-paste and "Ha! I'm the moron!" are puerile; my expressions of contempt are quite mature, thank you.

"You keep your eyes open and your head down. It's full of strange folks with zero sense of humor."

I know, I got my hair cut with one of them recently. He legally changed his name to "Pro-Life" and ran for governor in 2006.

about "information" is ask them what they are talking about. The only objective measure of information is Shannon, and the Shannon information in DNA *cannot* increase, but only because Shannon is a closed system (the issue is in the definitions used, not in the DNA). Life isn't a closed system, so Shannon Information Theory cannot be applied to that aspect of biology.

This isn't at all true. An increase in fitness can be viewed as a decrease in uncertainty about the environment, which means an increase in Shannon information.

So, if creationists fear evolution, how should we identify your inability to consider ID, or some other idea?

What is more moronic, an unbending faith in God or in a scientific theory?

What's moronic are your ridiculous claims that we are unable to consider ID and that we have an unbending faith in a scientific theory.

There are several of you who by making any kind of an insult immediately discredits anything you say and only proves to others that you are unreliable at best.

That's a fallacy. Odd that you have such high standards for science to prove anything to you but depend on the flimsiest of evidence for proof in this case.

I have to interject that I am always amazed at the fortitude shown by the commenters here. When I see creationists proudly spouting off the same "arguments" over and over, I'm usually reduced to a quivering indignant pile of jello randomly spouting "Bah! Talkorigins! Gaaa!!!" Kudos to all of you.

I know what I know and nothing more. I have visited evolution. It is still full of holes.

It's your knowledge that is full of holes, oh arrogant one.

anon wrote

Macroevolution requires thousands of �just right� mutations ...macroevolution, if it were ever observed, would involve an �upward,� beneficial change in complexity. ... All observations have shown that life comes only from life. ...A logical consequence of Mendel�s laws is that there are LIMITS to such variation.

1) "Macroevolution" to achieve some general goal might require some "just right" mutations, and a highly specific goal might even require thousands of "just right" mutations, but the only goal in evolution is to survive long enough to ensure that one's inheritable characteristics are passed on to another generation. If you die, you lose. If you fail to find a mate, you lose. If you mate unsuccessfully, you lose. If, however, you help a sibling or other near relative to successfully reproduce, you get partial credit. Artificial selection (breeding) often has goals, and breeders are often able to develop the traits they are looking for with no control whatsoever on the mutations of their breeding stock. If random mutation works for breeders (and it obviously does), how can it possibly fail to work for nature, which has an enormously larger breeding population to work with, and far more time as well.
2) Increase in complexity is not automatically beneficial. When simplification leads toward survival, species either simplify or become extinct. If you know where to look or who to ask, and are inclined to, you might drown in examples of this occuring, but I'm not holding my breath on it. Creationists seem to think of evolution as a system for designing life-forms. It isn't. It is merely a cycle wherein organisms grow to maturity (or not) and reproduce (imperfectly) (or not). Evolution does not design, nor does it plan, but it does exist.
3) All observations have also shown that life is best described as complex chemistry of organic, inorganic and organometallic compounds in a water base. No non-chemical component (spark) of life has ever been discovered. Given how easily simple molecules can recombine into many of the amino acids, sugars, lipids and other building blocks of life, up to and including RNA, is it so hard to imagine that over the first few hundred million years that somewhere on earth's approximately 510,000,000,000,000 square meters, some sets of the building blocks of life came together in a way that produced a simple form of life that could reproduce and therefore evolve? Knowing the odds in this game is not enough, you'd also have to know how often the game was played. (and anyone who quotes the odds against abiogenesis is flat out lying--there are far too many unknowns remaining) Sure, the odds for any one square meter in any given year are poor, but nature rolled the dice in more ways than you can calculate.
4) Mendel's laws are incomplete. There is a lot more to genetics than Mendel lived to discover. Mendel was lucky he didn't pick maize (or corn, as it is called in North America), he would have probably never figured anything out. Given the mechanisms in cells that can delete genes, duplicate genes, activate dormant genes, deactivate genes to a dormant state, move a gene or part of a gene from one place to another, embed genes from a virus into a chromosome, turn one chromosome into two or two into one, your understanding of the Limits of genetic variation is suspect. Consider two populations of organisms of a single species, separated by some barrier in a way that neither of the two populations can contribute any genetic material to the other. Evolutionary theory predicts that eventually the two populations will diverge to the point where they cannot interbreed even if the barrier is removed. If ever a creationist finally describes a mechanism that could prevent this from happening in sufficient detail that biologists could look for the mechanism and determine whether or not it exists, what he'd have is a theory. Until then, statements insisting that this (unknown) mechanism exists are unwelcome hot air (like farts in an elevator).

"If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?"

I see we have an exceptionally stupid troll to bounce around for exercise and amusement.

Raven, raven, raven.

"If evolution was true, how come sharks haven't evolved to walk on land and have bigger brains to take over the world?"

umm... because they have stood the test of time and proved to be successful for a vastly longer time than we have?

Anyone who didn't get that the shark comment was a joke, please get yourself tested for Asperger's and autism.

Then again, I didn't pay attention to the poster's id ... someone who thinks Ann Coulter is a goddess could actually mean that as a valid argument.

The serious answer is that evolution doesn't have aims, least of all the aim of giving sharks big brains to take over the world, so there's no reason to expect that.

Why do you insist I get an education?

Because you said you "wish science could prove evolution or explain the inception of the universe to me". Perhaps you were lying, but if not ... getting an education is how you become familiar with the science that supports evolution. Is this difficult to understand?

I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me. I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

Do you have first hand knowledge the George W. Bush lives in the White House? Your insistence on first hand knowledge is deeply intellectually dishonest. And your understanding of knowledge is feeble ... we don't just regurgitate, we understand the relationships among observations and the inferences that can be made from them.

For my own amusement, I will guess. Not one.

Um, do you have any idea where you are posting?

An awful lot of people have trouble understanding that "before the big bang" is a nonsense concept like "north of the north pole" or "colder than absolute zero".

There are many possible cosmological models in which "before the big bang" is not a nonsense concept.

I have been reading. Interesting stuff. Not answering my questions yet.

I will be wrong when you can zap a puddle of goo and make a man walk out of it. LOL

I like the one about the Whale that used to walk. Do you have a fossil record of the walking unit and then something in between? How do you know the vestiges weren't always there?

I'm getting the feeling that Douge is accumulating MAJOR Loki points here...

Why can you not explain it to me?

We can, but it could take years.

If it is true I will be able to recognize it.

I don't recognize that as a truth. Can you prove it?

Douge #274 wrote:

I will be wrong when you can zap a puddle of goo and make a man walk out of it. LOL

This is so far off I'm seriously starting to wonder if Douge has been putting us on all this time. It almost sounds like that satirical shark remark.

He laughs. Does he laugh because he's yanking our chain now -- or because he thinks that's what evolution says and it's funny that we're never going to be able to do that?

Curiouser and curiouser...

I only said I know what I know, I left it to you to make a judgement as to how much or little that would be. And how quickly you are to make such an impossible judgement with only a few sentences on an internet forum.

No, you didn't only say that, and we make reasonable inferences from the totality of what you have said.

Once again, simply blurting out that everyone is stupid does not make you smart.

That's a strawman, one of the many things you say that tells us something about you.

Nor credible which if you were a scientist would surely be very important to you would it not?

How does calling you stupid make anyone not credible? And why do you think such credibility is particularly important to a scientist?
Do you have any idea of how science works?

Trying to be objective outside of your self is so very difficult. I would be hard pressed to believe that scientist have any more success with it than the rest of us.

But your beliefs are a function of your ignorance. Science is a community endeavor in which scientists submit their claims to harsh scrutiny and criticism, and testing and retesting against the world. Human beings are prone to confirmation bias; the methodology of science recognizes this and actively undercuts it.

I respect that the theory is good, it makes sense to me. In fact if I was stupid and didn't care, maybe I would have already agreed to accept it as fact.

Theories aren't facts. You're ignorant, and too arrogant to recognize the importance of that.

But I don't, nor is there unanimous agreement amongst yourselves as to the acceptance of the theory. Maybe your time would be better spent working on your colleagues than arguing the point to me.

You have no idea what we agree to, what we accept, or how we spend our time. And you're complaining that we aren't presenting the argument to you -- which you say you would recognize if it were true. The fact is that you're an arrogant ignorant ass -- common in your kind -- and indeed time spent on trolls like you is waste of time.

PZ Myers wrote:

Matings between very different animal species are not a significant mechanism of evolution,

I recently read an article about interbreeding between two butterfly species that resulted in a new species. Cross-species mating may not be an important mechanism of animal evolution, but the mechanism does exist.

Fernando Magyar wrote "Me not biologist but me lover of tropical fish," and that still sounds more intelligent than the writings of some creotrolls.

H. Humbert wrote "...the creationist begins yammering about why evolution is a theory in crisis...." Sort of like the NewAgers a few years ago who were yammering about the "Grand Alignment of the Planets" and how it was going to cause world-wide disasters and make California fall into the sea. Some astronomers and physicists did a few calculations, found out how small the effect was in comparison to the lunar tide, and then went back to work. The alignment came and went with no noticeable effect, and after a while, even the NewAgers forgot it. The creationists' equivalent of "Grand Alignment," however, never seems to go away.

thadd wrote "don't antibiotic immune bacteria pretty much prove evolution?"
Yes, but not nearly as well as the bacteria that have evolved to feed on unnatural chemicals like nylon or synthetic jet fuel, but the creotroll will whine, "but they're still bacteria!" or "that is microevolution, not macroevolution." Regarding which, I recently read an article about a subspecies of C. elegans that ate a species of bacteria that fatally infect ordinary C. elegans. The bacteria munching C. elegans, however, do poorly in the ordinary environment that is hospitable to the main strain. Their ability to thrive in an otherwise fatal environment is coupled with reduced mobility. There's a nematode well on its way to being a separate species.

My gripe, as I have mentioned before is that it is not factual on the level it is being presented to us. Please refrain from the religious practice of evolution and get back to the science of the matter. Is that asking to much?

Just because you are too stupid to understand how the evidence supports evolution doesn't mean that evolution is religion -- that's an extremely arrogant position. As you say, you're a layman -- therefore you're not in any position to make such a consequential judgment.

I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp

We don't believe that man evolved from a chimp either.

and that a chimp came from something else

So where do you think chimps came from? The Ark? Do you have any clue about the fossil, morphological, and molecular evidence? Which is more likely, evolution or Noah's Ark? This is all science says -- what is most likely. Science does not purport to offer proof. That you talk about such things shows how very little knowledge you have.

Its been like eleventy billion years now, we should be tripping over the evidence everyday.

What sort of evidence do you think we should be seeing that we aren't? You make all these stupid statements and insist that, because of them we're touting religion and should stop, but you provide no support for them. The fact is that you're an arrogant dishonest idiot.

Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor? Perfect, give me a link to that.

Why, because you're too stupid to look it up yourself? Oh, that's right, you're not interested in "wordly (sic) knowledge". So by a "link" you can't mean web links. And you want first hand knowledge -- so even the fossil record isn't enough, you want to be there. Sorry, but we can't satisfy your request. But it's your problem that you insist on being an ignorant git, not ours.

truth machine:

Uh, so you're using fictional characters as authorities backing up your assertion? Wheeler foam and Star Trek subspace don't have the same properties.

Dude, Star Trek subspace is also fictional, so it seem reasonable to take fictional characters as authorities on it.

Google Nakalipithecus nakayamai.

That won't help. It's just a jawbone and teeth; it doesn't prove anything.

The problem is that these gits reject inference, even though they personally employ it themselves every day, and greatly benefit from the totality of inference represented in human technology.

every mammal's mother is a mammal. And this premise is wrong.

No, actually, it's not -- there was never, in all of history, a case of a mammal borne of a non-mammal. This is a Sorites Paradox. It can only be resolved by recognizing that "mammal" is not a perfectly defined category -- which is Dennett's point about nature not having sharp boundaries.

The theory of common descent essentially demands that every living organism originated from a single living organism.

What was it? How did it come into existence?

Regarding the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. Why have they not evolved into a species able to more efficiently control its host to sustain its own species or spawn a newer more evolved species? Why has it only evolved under the microscope of science?

By now these guys should be the dominant species should they not?

I will be wrong when you can zap a puddle of goo and make a man walk out of it.

You're wrong NOW, moron. And if you could zap a puddle of goo and make a man walk out of it, that would be a refutation of the ToE, you stupid fucking moron.

Regarding the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. Why have they not evolved into a species able to more efficiently control its host to sustain its own species

Uh, what part of surviving the host's attempts to kill them off isn't sustaining the species?

Why has it only evolved under the microscope of science?

Uh, because they're microscopic? The question displays a degree of stupidity that I can't quite fathom. Are you saying that, if scientists weren't looking at them, antibiotic resistant bacteria wouldn't have evolved? Are you denying that there are antibiotic resistant bacteria? If you believe there are, where do you think they came from?

By now these guys should be the dominant species should they not?

Bacteria are the dominant species. If the question is why antibiotic resistant bacteria don't dominate non-antibiotic resistant bacteria -- "by now" makes unwarranted assumptions about the size of populations and the relative fitness of the various strains; antibiotic resistance isn't necessarily free.

Dude, Star Trek subspace is also fictional, so it seem reasonable to take fictional characters as authorities on it.

Since, as I noted, Wheeler foam and Star Trek subspace have different properties, the fictional characters are wrong, dipshit.

By now these guys should be the dominant species should they not?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance, "Half of all S[taphylococcus] aureus infections in the US are resistant to penicillin, methicillin, tetracycline and erythromycin".

Since, as I noted, Wheeler foam and Star Trek subspace have different properties, the fictional characters are wrong, dipshit.

Presumably in the Star Trek universe Wheeler foam and subspace are the same thing. It's fiction, and science fiction at that. Honestly, this kind of discussion should only go on late at night at the dorkiest of cons.

Presumably in the Star Trek universe Wheeler foam and subspace are the same thing.

No, moron, the properties of Star Trek subspace are part of the Star Trek canon and are spelled out in the link I gave, and they are different from the properties of Wheeler foam, which are well known and are given by the link I gave. The properties of Wheeler foam certainly are not defined by what some Star Trek characters said, because Wheeler foam was introduced by Kimpatsu, who was clearly referring to the Wheeler foam of our universe.

However, I know from my last discussion with you that reasoning is lost on you, so I won't bother further with your tiresome self.

Presumably in the Star Trek universe Wheeler foam and subspace are the same thing. It's fiction, and science fiction at that. Honestly, this kind of discussion should only go on late at night at the dorkiest of cons.

I actually find myself pleased I haven't the slightest clue wtf this particular "debate" is all about.

I must be doomed.

The theory of common descent essentially demands that every living organism originated from a single living organism.
What was it? How did it come into existence?

sweet plastic jesus on my dashboard, this boy knows how to move goalposts.

so, cut and paste from AIG?

check

run away when presented with obvious counters to such dreck?

check

ignoring obvious evidence presented multiple times?

check

finally, moving goalposts further and further as each successive moronic point is shot down?

check.

congrats, you're skills as a creobot are complete.

put on your tinfoil hat and report for your plastic lightsaber.

Not answering my questions yet.

denial and projection, projection and denial.

another data point for my collection.

thanks douge.

douge:

I'll simply refer you back to #234, and repeat:

but of course, with ease I can predict you not only will refuse to read these, but will likely instead look for what AIG has to say about it instead.

like I asked you earlier:

why do you prefer to be lied to?

so, douge, why do you prefer being lied to?

at this point in time, it is the only thing you can answer that might be of interest to anyone here.

Regarding the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. Why have they not evolved into a species able to more efficiently control its host to sustain its own species

because selection doesn't work at the level of "species", it works at the level of the individual, for one.

and, just to repeat what TM said, what makes you think that individual bacterium didn't mutate and become more efficient at maintaining themselves within particular hosts? (assuming you meant that as opposed to "control")

frankly that statement is puzzling given that even AIG admits that microorganisms can evolve. If you meant why don't the organisms become efficient enough to "kill" the host... think about it for a second - is that REALLY efficient from the perspective of the parasite? aside from that, have you ever heard of the Red Queen hypothesis?

basically, you need to remember (learn?) that host immune systems evolve, too.

probably too advanced for you at the moment, but I doubt you would read a simpler version anyway:

http://www.indiana.edu/~curtweb/Research/Red_Queen%20hyp.html

if you actually DID mean control, there are actually some really fun examples of parasites literally controlling their hosts.

would you like some examples (he asked, knowing the answer would be no)?

you're so close to figuring out what is really going on.

too bad you're so determined not to get there in your mad rush to feel justified in being ignorant.

It really is like watching someone trying to hold on to the notion that the world is flat, when we keep showing them photographs of the earth from space.

so, uh, why do you prefer being lied to again?

basically, you need to remember (learn?) that host immune systems evolve, too.

From the POV of bacteria, our immune systems have evolved to produce antibiotics.

I doubt you would read a simpler version anyway:

Douge doesn't believe in "wordly (sic) knowledge".

if you actually DID mean control, there are actually some really fun examples of parasites literally controlling their hosts.

would you like some examples (he asked, knowing the answer would be no)?

In any case, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicrocoelium_dendriticum

D. dendriticum spends its adult life inside the liver of its host. After mating, the eggs are excreted in the feces. The first intermediate host, the terrestrial snail (Cionella lubrica in the United States), eats the feces, and becomes infected by the larval parasites. The larvae (or cercariae) drill through the wall of the gut and settle in its digestive tract, where they develop into a juvenile stage. The snail tries to defend itself by walling the parasites off in cysts, which it then excretes and leaves behind in the grass. The second intermediate host, an ant (Formica fusca in the United States), uses the trail of slime as a source of moisture. The ant then swallows a cyst loaded with hundreds of juvenile lancet flukes. The parasites enter the gut and then drift through its body. Most of the cercariae encyst in the haemocoel of the ant and mature into metacercariae, but one moves to the sub-esophageal ganglion (a cluster of nerve cells underneath the esophagus). There, the fluke takes control of the ant's actions by manipulating these nerves. As evening approaches and the air cools, the infested ant is drawn away from other members of the colony and upward to the top of a blade of grass. Once there, it clamps its mandibles onto the top of the blade and stays there until dawn. Afterward, it goes back to its normal activity at the ant colony. If the host ant were to be subjected to the heat of the direct sun, it would die along with the parasite. Night after night, the ant goes back to the top of a blade of grass until a grazing animal comes along and eats the blade, upon which the lancet flukes will be back inside their host. They live out their adult lives inside the animal, reproduce, and the cycle continues.

Now that obviously could not be a result of evolution. It must be an example of God amusing himself.

did you catch the "zombie cockroaches" that came out in science or Nature a while back?

about a year ago, IIRC.

that one was really fun.

wasps essentially turning cockroaches into zombie slaves with a bit of brain surgery, and riding them like cattle back to their burrows.

I'm sure I could dig up the reference.

ah, no it was in a different journal, actually:

Arch Insect Biochem Physiol. 2005 Dec;60(4):198-208

they talked about it on PT last year:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/02/the-wisdom-of-p.html

my favorite parasite story of the last 5 years.

Yeah, a toxic cocktail that changes the cockroach's metabolism in such specific ways is pretty nifty.

Scientists haven't figured that one out, but there's a great case of scientists harnessing a behavior-changing parasite -- the rabies virus. A group of neuroscientists wanted to identify every neuron with a synaptic connection to a specific neuron. Normally the rabies virus travels along the axons, crosses the synapse, and attacks neighboring neurons. They modified it so it wouldn't travel without a trigger in the cell, introduced the virus, and turned on the trigger in the target neuron. Oh, and they added a gene for green phosphoresence to the virus. Result: the target neuron and all its neighbors, and no other neurons, lit up.

Douge,

You're wrong that all living organisms must have come from a single organism. You're going to need to do some research on how genetic algorithms actually work. The Cliff Notes version is that evolution works on populations, not individuals. So what you are going to find is that at some point way back a few billion years, there were a bunch of single celled DNA based organisms, that were freely exchanging genetic material through viruses etc. For more detail try wikipedia for LUA.

As for the antibiotic resistant bacteria, why do you feel that they need to evolve to better control their host? By all evidence they're already more than capable of reproducing, so there will be very little evolutionary pressure to do better. That said, some bacteria effectively have found ways of better controlling their hosts. Look up Wolbachia for some interesting reading of a bacteria capable of changing the equlibrium between the sexes of its hosts, as the bacteria prefers females. In some insects it even turns males into females...

I like the one about the Whale that used to walk. Do you have a fossil record of the walking unit and then something in between? How do you know the vestiges weren't always there?

Yes, there is a nice fossil record of the "walking unit" and "something in between". Try here and here, with updates on the main page, which I won't link directly to so as not to be caught in the filter for too many links, and the update just came out last week so it should be easy to find anywhere.

Those are nice summaries of what's known about whale evolution, and they're written for 9th graders so it ought not to be out of your reading comprehension level. And if that's still too much, try watching the PBS evolution special. It's got pretty pictures! And video! Trying to knock on whale evolution as an idea without evidence is the height of ignorance.

And as for if "the vestiges weren't always there", what do you mean? Are you saying that God made lots of transitional whale forms just to trick us? He made lots of whales with useless little pelvises and stumpy legs just for fun? Is that something a "perfect designer" would do?

And as for if "the vestiges weren't always there", what do you mean? Are you saying that God made lots of transitional whale forms just to trick us? He made lots of whales with useless little pelvises and stumpy legs just for fun? Is that something a "perfect designer" would do?

He means how do you know? How can you prove that God didn't do just that? if you can't prove it, then it's religion and propaganda.

Teh stupid runs deeper than you could imagine.

Douge said: "Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?"

What good is that? WTF??? Worldly knowledge is good because you LIVE in the world, duh.
I've only read up to post# 164 so far but couldn't stop myself from making that little observation about reality right away.

Cheers,
Ray

I blame evolution for developing people stupid enough to not believe in it.

Douge said: "Why do you insist I get an education? Surely if I invested my life in the pursuit of knowledge, wordly knowledge at least, I will become a man of wordly knowledge. What good is that?"

What good is that? WTF??? Worldly knowledge is good because you LIVE in the world, duh.

He said "wordly", not "worldly" -- twice. And he followed that with "I would only be regurgitating things that others had told me", so I think it was intentional.

"It's very similar to what Coulter accomplished in her book, so it's not surprising that her followers would be no better.

Like this sentence isn't dripping with sarcasm! But it's true, of course.

Re: #233

Evolution for those without deep time perspective:

1) Single cell splits into two (etc.).
2) Fishies swim.
3) Monkeys swing from trees.
4) Humans.

How about evolution writ in 9 months?

1) Single cell (egg) is fertilized and splits into two (etc.).
2) Fetus develops gills (just like fishies!).
3) Fetus develops vestigial tail (just like monkeys!).
4) Human is born.

I had an interesting thought about a hundred comments back (yeah, I read them all. My head kind of hurts now) re: Icthycic's question - why Douge likes being lied to. I'm surprised I remembered my thought, actually, through the all encompassing weariness with yet another ID proponent.

Anyway, my thought. It seems to me that creationism is all an hysterical response to the idea that humans are not at the Apex of Everything. Douge's rebuttal regarding bacterial evolution and "controlling their hosts" is a perfect example. The assumption here is that the form of Human as a bipedal, walking, talking, McDonald's eating, reality TV watching organism is the end result, the "aim" of evolution. (Good lord, I hope not. If the sum total of human existence is to be a fan of American Idol, I should like to emigrate from the species now, thank you very much.) The creationists are working from the premise that Humanity = Perfection, and the purpose of any species existence is to "evolve" to a human form.

As long as creationists are unable and unwilling to understand that 1) evolution has no "goal", 2) an individual member of a species has no "goal" other than survival, and 3) that Humanity does not necessarily equal Perfection, then the discussion will remain at a standstill.

survival, and 3) that Humanity does not necessarily equal Perfection, then the discussion will remain at a standstill. Yes

1) Single cell splits into two (etc.).
2) Fishies swim.
3) Monkeys swing from trees.
4) Humans.

not really.

more like:

1
1 2
1 2 3
1 2 3 4

it's not a ladder.

it's a tree. (it looked better with ascii formatting, but I can't get it to translate correctly).

Anyway, my thought. It seems to me that creationism is all an hysterical response to the idea that humans are not at the Apex of Everything.

kind of a form of "manifest destiny"?

actually, my own opinion is that creationists ignore reality in order to fit into a group that makes them comfortable with what their parents or peers taught them to be "true".

it's like a bunch of enablers that assist each other in maintaining their delusions. any lie that works in their minds to defend the "clique" is automatically worthwhile and accepted at face value, then rationalized when anybody dares to call it a lie.

like a bunch of college football fans of a perpetually losing team.

Anyone who claims with pride that he took the blue pill has GOT to be a troll.

Either that, or his familiarity with The Matrix is even weaker than his understanding of evolutionary biology.

Birds of a feather flock together and I don't mean Aves, if you catch my drift.

Ichthyic,

Well, yeah. But the beauty of the example is the convergence of 5 billion years of evolution contained in a 9-month gestation. Creating it as a tree would ruined the lovely symmetry. (And really, it being nearly New Years, and humans being addicted to lists, it just seemed nice.) But go ahead, be more right. We're on the same side.

Well yes, there is a certain allure to the notion. And the notion has a name: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, as I trust you know. And a history, much of which is unhappy.

One could hardly be more right than to reject the notion as Icthyic did, but it's unfortunate that this appealing notion is so wrong. There really is need of intuitive ways to present evolution. Non-fictional ways, ideally - but even in fiction there's a paucity of books such as Darnton's THE DARWIN CONSPIRACY (in which the logic of natural selection is revealed to Chuck indirectly by a South American tribe which has always understood it as simple common sense) or Baxter's grand novel EVOLUTION. I admire Antonia Byatt's manifesto for literary authors to adopt evolutionary perspectives (per her ON HISTORIES AND STORIES) ... but it's hard. The untutored mind stumbles over evolution even more than over formal logic or statistical reasoning.

I maintain pz meyers is promoting Christianity. For instance, reading that comment I immediately prayed "Jesus, make it stop!"

Still, he did shut you evolatheists down, did he not?

Creating it as a tree would ruined the lovely symmetry.

well, in addition to it being more accurate, I had originally formatted it to look like an xmas tree, but the formatting didn't come through.

still, the point being that at no time should you confuse people, even unintentionally, into thinking that evolution is a ladder.

otherwise, you get the inevitable response:

"well how come there are still PYGMIES AND DWARVES!"

:p

I maintain pz meyers is promoting Christianity

maybe it's just late, but I maintain you made no sense whatsoever in your last post.

thwaite,

Thanks for the lesson, I was NOT aware of that, alas. I shall refrain from further ignorant rambling. Even the best intentions...yadda yadda yadda.

Your last comment brings to mind, oddly, something my very-religious mother-in-law asked me once: "If evolution is fact and man evolved from gorillas, why are there still gorillas?" After visibly grimacing at the question, I basically launched into an explanation that, in fact, bore a slight resemblance to Ichthyic 's Christmas tree. (See, you were more right!)

There really is need of intuitive ways to present evolution.

Agreed. I believe the biggest problem we face in this regard is the tendency for people to conceptualize evolution as a process that somehow acts on a specific individual organism (in the form of modifications passed on to its direct descendents) AND globally to all members of the species of which that organism is a representative. Hence the excruciatingly wrong questions about the continuing existence of monkeys and the dearth of cat-bearing dogs.

Unfortunately, this general misconception is fed in part by commonly-used (and not necessarily incorrect) conventions, such as the classic image of the progression from stooped-ape to upright-man, and ubiquitous claims that Species X "descended from" Species Y. Both imply that the more recent forms descend directly from, and therefore replace, all instances of the earlier forms. More to the point, neither suggests the branching-bush-of-life, which is much closer to the truth.

It seems to me that an important step in changing the way evolution is perceived by the layperson is to stress the idea that evolution is something that occurs in, and to, populations rather than to an entire species or to select individual members of the species.

An easily understood example might be a creature that is familiar to everyone: the cat. It's not hard to imagine (or to explain) how, as the proto-cat spread across the globe, isolated populations of proto-cats slowly changed - by way of the accumulation of random, heritable variations filtered by natural selection - to become populations of Siberian tigers, Bengal tigers, ocelots, lynxes, lions, panthers, and so forth.

Analogies to this process can be found in human populations. Isolated populations evolve their own lanuages, cultures, and physical characteristics. Perhaps an understanding of these processes can help foster an intuitive understanding of evolutionary process.

Unfortunately, these examples don't illustrate so-called "macro" evolution very well, but IMO it's not so difficult to imagine (or explain) how an isolated population of, say, jaguars could, over several million years, perhaps evolve into something quite unlike jaguars, and morphologically more similar to creatures like foxes, or wolverines, or even lemurs or otters or seals, depending on the variations that appeared in the population and on the nature of the selective pressures that were being exerted on the population at the time.

I also realize the a good number of people are highly resistent to these concepts, and insist on misunderstanding them because they conflict with deeply-held beliefs. Still, I believe there are a great deal of people who are on the fence, even if they don't realize it, who are teachable but tend to grab for the easiest available and intuitively-comfortable explanation, even if it's little more than an uniformed denial along the lines of "Naw... whales couldn't have evolved from land mammals. Just look at them!"

(StdDisclaimer: I am a layperson, and am quite sure that others have thought about this topic far longer and in far greater depth than I have.)

I agree with CapitalistImperialistPig completely. I do add the caveat that the main benefit of his approach is for the lurkers. Think of that as our version of "for the kids."

Nice use of the Comic Sans font.

#101,

A case of regression. The attorney being a degenerate shark having lost the ability to hunt and relying on parasitism for its sustenance.

re Wheeler Foam

Has it ever occurred to anybody that our universe is a sign that Wheeler Foam is going flat?

Oops, now Delaware is Pennsylvania! (See how we evolutionists lie and twist the facts to fit our pet theories?)

1.) Every mammal has a mother.

2.) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals.

3.) But if there has been even one mammal, then by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals, which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals. It's a contradiction in terms.

Again, a pseudo-problem, because nature doesn't have sharp boundaries.

Not even! The conclusion doesn't even follow from the premises -- a third, unmentioned, premise is required: every mammal's mother is a mammal. And this premise is wrong.

I wish science could prove

Stop right here, and learn what science is.

As long as you can answer the question "if I were wrong, how would I know?", you are doing science. As soon as you can't, you aren't.

Proponents of evolution say it is based upon scientific evidence and creationism is not, therefore, creationism should not be taught.

No. Proponents of evolution say that the theory of evolution is science, while the non-theory of creationism is not science. (And they are right. It's easy to find out why they are right.)

concerning recognized icons of evolution.

Here we go, pretending that Wells the Moonie's book has never been discussed before... <yawn>

Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth

As mentioned above, they haven't done that for decades. Today, these experiments (plural) are merely a proof-of-concept: amino acids etc. etc. can form from simple molecules.

Why don't textbooks discuss the Cambrian explosion

Fifty years ago they didn't, because the Cambrian "explosion" hadn't been discovered yet. Next question.

in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed

Maybe for some values of "major" and "fully formed"...

instead of branching from a common ancestor

I don't see how 520-million-year-old fossils automatically disprove the existence of a 600-million-year-old ancestor...

Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry

Some use photos.

even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages

They are most similar in the pharyngula stage, when, roughly speaking, the body-plan genes are expressed. They are often wildly different before that, but this is because of the different amounts of yolk in the eggs.

and that the drawings are faked?

Haeckel had, shall we say, "filled in" a few that he hadn't seen in the required stages. Don't act as if Haeckel was the only embryologist ever.

Why do textbooks portray the archaeopteryx as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds even though modern birds are probably not descended from it

If I have you, your uncle, your granduncle, and your great-granduncle, it is fairly easy to reconstruct what your grandfather looks like. Old Archie would be the granduncle here.

and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

This is a misunderstanding that dates from the time when we knew the great-granduncle's grandchildren but not the great-granduncle's sister. We've found her. We've found Jurassic dromaeosaurids and troodontids in the last few years.

Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection, when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and that all the pictures have been staged?

Because they rest on the underside of twigs with lichens (when there's no pollution -- peppered) or without lichens (when there's pollution -- uniformly dark). Research did not stop 100 years ago.

Why do the textbooks claim that beak changes in Gal[á]pagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection, even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended and no net evolution occurred?

Imagine an ice age, complete with lower precipitation over most of the world. In other words, imagine "a severe drought" that lasts a few tens of millennia.

It is important to remember that the reversal wasn't due to some kind of magic elasticity in the DNA. It was due to natural selection: in wet years, there are enough small seeds for everyone, so those who bother growing and supporting a huge beak are at a disadvantage.

Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence the DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

Explained above.

Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to justify claims that we are just animals

Doubly wrong. Firstly, no drawings are used to justify the idea that we are animals. Secondly, why "just animals"? Is it bad to be an animal? Would you prefer being a choanoflagellate?

when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

This is blown way, way out of proportion. The disagreements concern details that you wouldn't even see because you don't know where to look for them.

Perhaps the most important question to be asked is why are students told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact, even though many of its claims are based upon misrepresentations of the facts?

This is a claim based on ignorance.

I have always been under the impression that Darwin's theory of evolution is just that -- a theory.

You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.

Darwin himself, in his work, Origin of Species, said, "For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in the volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived."

Quote-mining! Hooray! Give me the rest of the page or shut up.

Reflecting on his work near the end of his life, Darwin stated, "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them."

Quote-mining again.

Based upon what he said, if other concepts such as creationism should not be allowed in the public schools, neither should the theory of evolution.

Even if this were true, it wouldn't matter. We're in science here. Science is not a personality cult. Darwin was a genius, sure, but neither was he infallible, nor did he know what we know today. Science didn't stop with his death, in other words.

Since education is to be a quest for learning, it is proper to investigate any queries to creation. Our Forefathers would approve, why can't we?

You are the one who believes he knows everything about evolution and has stopped learning.

It is not macroevolution: an upward, beneficial increase in complexity, as evolutionists claim happened millions of times between bacteria and man.

I call strawman. There is no "upward". There is no increase in complexity -- there is an increase in diversity, but none in complexity, as far as complexity can be measured in the first place. Using your ignorance to define your own technical terms, attributing the use of those terms to us, and then complaining about us is... well... stupid. Read S. J. Gould's book Full House.

Before considering how life began, we must first understand the term �organic evolution.�

How true.

* Life could not result from a �big bang.�

Guess what: the universe resulted from the big bang, not life. (Not directly anyway.)

We see variations in lizards, four of which are shown at the bottom. We also see birds, represented at the top.

Stupid, anon. Stupid. You can't copy images into a blog post; you have to use an elaborate HTML trick. I bet you didn't even try. In any case, you forgot to give us the source of your strawman factory... if you had done that, you wouldn't have needed to copy and paste in the first place...

And yeah, we all know the 1953 experiments are not perfectly demonstrative of our atmosphere. We do know it was fairly reducing, though.

An atmosphere with lots of carbon dioxide is actually weakly oxidizing, though of course still not too oxidizing to prevent uranium dioxide or pyrite from occurring in river gravel or iron-II from occurring in seawater.

And most people don't know the number of largish, organic molecules we can find in asteroids and such (which I think is even more convincing, actually).

Bingo.

I nominate Carlie, post #106, as front-runner for the next OM. Nice post.

Seconded and thirded.

Even if evolution was a little more conclusive, a creationist would simply attribute it to design.

Two words: Stupid Design. All those stupidities like the fact that the paths of air and food cross in limbed vertebrates (but not, say, insects), that DNA is used (DNA falls apart when stored in water -- we use lots of energy to constantly repair it), that vertebrate eyes are built the wrong way around (while cephalopod eyes aren't), and so on. Intelligent design would be something else.

I wonder which of you has first hand knowledge of any of the evidence that is used to substantiate the theory?

I, for one, have seen several specimens of Sinornithosaurus, one of Sinosauropteryx, at least one of Caudipteryx, and lots of birds from the same age in museums in China (Beijing, Beipiao, Sihetun). The real fossils, with these mine own eyes.

One must always consider the source of the data to establish whether it is credible.

No. Data are data. What one must always consider is the question of whether the conclusions really follow from the data, and whether the data contain measurement errors or the like. Neither the person who did the measurements nor the person who drew the conclusions are of any interest to science itself.

Trying to be objective outside of your self is so very difficult.

No, it's merely hard work.

Can you replicate your results? Can someone else replicate the results? Is it possible to replicate your results with different methods? And so on.

I suppose if I told myself it must be true every day of my life I may well begin to believe as well.

I call projection.

Which brings me back to a previous question. Why can you not explain it to me? If it is true I will be able to recognize it.

Explain what? The theory of evolution? -- If it is the best explanation for the data*, you will only be able to recognize that if you know the data -- which you don't, as you have demonstrated.

* I didn't say "true". Truth is for philosophers, proof is for logicians and mathematicians. Science is about reality.

I do not believe a man evolved from a chimp

Of course we didn't. Instead, we have a common ancestor with the chimps. Genome-wise, the chimps are more different from this ancestor than we are: they have had more evolution than we.

but I look around and say, hey, Its been like eleventy billion years now, we should be tripping over the evidence everyday. We should be able to see it.

Indeed. We are tripping over the evidence every day, and I, for one, can see it.

It should be a lot more plain to a layman

What is not plain about stupid design? What is not plain about Ichthyostega, Acanthostega, Tiktaalik and the other eleventy fossils -- the fact that you haven't looked them up yet?

However, keep in mind that "plain" doesn't equal "short". I highly recommend the following book, which is a great explanation for laypeople and yet has 419 pages.

Judy Scotchmoor & Dale A. Springer (editors): Evolution: Investigating the Evidence, The Paleontological Society Special Publication 11 (August 2002)

My gripe, as I have mentioned before is that it is not factual on the level it is being presented to us.

That's what you believe. You are wrong.

survival, and 3) that Humanity does not necessarily equal Perfection, then the discussion will remain at a standstill. Yes