Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 5:52 pm
Referring strictly to posts up until I made the above comment.Jeff250 wrote:Do you think that the debate we had here was unfairly demeaning to Christians or that they were unfairly attacked?
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Referring strictly to posts up until I made the above comment.Jeff250 wrote:Do you think that the debate we had here was unfairly demeaning to Christians or that they were unfairly attacked?
Yes I mean people in general.Jeff250 wrote:Will, who is "us"? Do you think that the debate we had here was unfairly demeaning to Christians or that they were unfairly attacked? I don't. I think you mean people in general?
You seem to agree that the tension between science and religion is old but assert that the demeaning nature in which some people talk about them is new. For instance, you say that we got over the Butler Act without anyone belittling Christians. But, in fact, during the Scopes Trial, we saw the exact opposite, with one side colorfully calling the other immoral, and the other colorfully calling the one ignorant--nothing new under the sun....
No. Read the article on the Scopes Trial. They have an entire section devoted to this.Will wrote:Butler Act, Scopes Trial, same thing...all of it a minor blip that popped up on the radar screen in a small town in Tennessee and whatever insults were hurled at the trial never made into the national character of the country.
Of course it isn't altruism.Will wrote:I find it very hard to believe it is altruism that has the villagers coming out with the torches and pitchforks trying to save us from the Jesus monster.
I did and there is nothing to indicate anything on the scale we have now. In that tiny event for it's limited duration, among it's participants and observers sure but then after that people over all never adopted that practice as a meme. It didn't become standard operating procedure in political debate to try and pin the crazy tail on the Christian! The way Dubya won pretty much unhinged the lefties!Jeff250 wrote:No. Read the article on the Scopes Trial. They have an entire section devoted to this.Will wrote:Butler Act, Scopes Trial, same thing...all of it a minor blip that popped up on the radar screen in a small town in Tennessee and whatever insults were hurled at the trial never made into the national character of the country.
I think that may not be true since we also have seen the birth of political correctness so it could be a wash. But considering the difference in the way the talking heads, left wingers and most celebrities seem to only speak poorly of Christians and rabidly defend Muslims I think you must be wrong. If their was an even application of disparagement at play then certainly the religion that has killed more people in just one of their many attacks than all the Christians bombing abortion clinics times 25 the phenomenon I'm describing can't be explained away as just the general attitude of society has become more abrasive....Jeff250 wrote:... If Christians are demeaned more now, I think it's because everyone is demeaning everyone more now.
I mentioned that because you sited your concern for peoples ability to be productive as reason to take up the fight. I think you are not representative of the majority, not even close.Jeff250 wrote:Of course it isn't altruism.Will wrote:I find it very hard to believe it is altruism that has the villagers coming out with the torches and pitchforks trying to save us from the Jesus monster.
I feel pretty threatened myself when those people get themselves elected to public office and vote on policies relating to science and technology. If someone wants to play the head-in-the-sand game on their own time, that's fine by me, but they cross the line when they bring that ignorance into the public policy sphere.Spidey wrote:Funny thing…I don’t feel the least bit threatened by young earth creationists (regardless how many museums, they have)…but the people screwing around in gene research scare the living bageebees out of me.
Not at all. The process of natural selection, which is the mechanism which drives evolution, depends on certain selection pressures provided by a species' environment. There's a classic example of the peppered moth, whose dark-colored variants became much more plentiful during the Industrial Revolution due to the soot-stained trees that provided better camouflage. In this case, the conditions that impacted earlier hominids to evolve into Homo sapiens were local in nature; obviously, the environment in northern Africa is far different than that in northern Siberia. In addition, those hominid species that were our ancestors only lived in that general area of the world; it was only much more recently that our own species ranged out of Africa into Asia and Europe.flip wrote:I would think for evolution to be true, we would see an evolution all over and not from just 2 separate individuals that then spread into what we see today.
You could be right--maybe the people publicly mocking fundamentalist Christians in 1925 stopped in 1926 after the article ends, but I think that the same people who were publicly saying these things in 1925 were still privately thinking them in 1926, and in 1924 too.Will wrote:I did and there is nothing to indicate anything on the scale we have now.
Again, I don't want to talk about liberals or conservatives, but I also see 20% of the population who thinks that Obama is a Muslim and who don't mean that as a compliment. I can't understand the thinking (or lack thereof) of either the group you mentioned or this one, but at least there seems to be a symmetry.Will wrote:But considering the difference in the way the talking heads, left wingers and most celebrities seem to only speak poorly of Christians and rabidly defend Muslims I think you must be wrong.
No--my point was the opposite--I can't care *too* much about young-earth creationists because their ideas will eventually lose because they can understand less and do less than people with better conceptions of reality.Will wrote:I mentioned that because you sited your concern for peoples ability to be productive as reason to take up the fight. I think you are not representative of the majority, not even close.
Um...have you seen the quotes out there by some of our illustrious Congressmen? Have you read some of Palin's sound-bytes? There are already plenty of very uninformed people in Congress right now, and not just in the realm of biology; bills like this are nothing short of pathetic. (I'm really surprised there hasn't been a thread on that here yet.) I feel like a basic grasp of science and technology should be an essential prerequisite to holding public office...that's how I exercise my vote, anyway.Spidey wrote:I’m finding it very difficult to imagine a scenario where Young Earth Christians could get elected to enough seats in Congress, to have any kind of affect on my life.
Yea, but they still make for great fear-mongering.Jeff250 wrote:No--my point was the opposite--I can't care *too* much about young-earth creationists because their ideas will eventually lose because they can understand less and do less than people with better conceptions of reality.
LOL. I love how you try to try and even the playing field while spitting out a barely legible post.Heretic wrote:Hahahahaha your a not funny any way Ferno. You can get any dumber any way. You act as though those are my thoughts when it's the scientist them selves who destroy own science with their own words.
Now you have the entire paragraph to mull over.Most important, it should be made clear in the classroom that science, including evolution, has not disproved God's existence because it cannot be allowed to consider it (presumably). Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. Of course the scientist, as an individual, is free to embrace a reality that transcends naturalism.
Mutating is NOT evolving. Hmm seems the peppered moth is STILL the peppered moth.Top Gun wrote: The process of natural selection, which is the mechanism which drives evolution, depends on certain selection pressures provided by a species' environment. There's a classic example of the peppered moth, whose dark-colored variants became much more plentiful during the Industrial Revolution due to the soot-stained trees that provided better camouflage.
Satan?Ferno wrote:...
I want to see these young-earth creationists explain the fact that bacteria have now developed a resistance to antibiotics over the years.
Will Robinson wrote:Satan?Ferno wrote:...
I want to see these young-earth creationists explain the fact that bacteria have now developed a resistance to antibiotics over the years.
sorry couldn't resist
Sir.AlphaDoG wrote:Mutating is NOT evolving. Hmm seems the peppered moth is STILL the peppered moth.Top Gun wrote: The process of natural selection, which is the mechanism which drives evolution, depends on certain selection pressures provided by a species' environment. There's a classic example of the peppered moth, whose dark-colored variants became much more plentiful during the Industrial Revolution due to the soot-stained trees that provided better camouflage.
edit: Oh, and, BTW, adapting to your environment is also NOT evolving.
I don't understand your argument. Why we should think that one population of organisms can't accrue enough of these mutations over time such that they are no longer genetically compatible with another population of organisms?AlphaDoG wrote:Mutating is NOT evolving. Hmm seems the peppered moth is STILL the peppered moth.
So you think that we would be better off with fur? I don't. (It seems like I could ask you a symmetric question--if you think that having fur is so useful, then why did God create us without it? Is he just a big jerk?) One of the lesser reasons why we lost our fur is because we didn't need it anymore. We became bipedal and that changed how we raised our children. If you use your arms to crawl around, your kids need to grab onto you. If you are bipedal, then you can carry your children. (Becoming bipedal also had other interesting side effects, like the way it bent our vocal tract, making language possible.) I think though that there is also a much more common sense explanation to your question--if you live in Africa, why would you want a fur coat that you can't take off?flip wrote:otherwise I can't figure out why these hominids lost fur to become dependent on clothes or why of all the different hominids
I don't understand why you find this puzzling. Species go extinct all the time. When you have finite resources, only the better adapted species survive. If you can out-hunt your competitors, then they go hungry. That alone is sufficient to explain why species like the Neanderthals went extinct. I've also heard the theory that we also directly killed Neanderthals. It's not unthinkable, considering we will kill our own kind over competition for resources.flip wrote:all the different hominids that supposedly existed now are nowhere to be seen and just our particular branch survived to become homo sapiens
I don't think so. In fact, it doesn't seem like you've really put any thought into this issue at all.flip wrote:To each his own. I can come up with enough questions to cast serious doubt on both sides of this coin,
Considering the arguments, speculation and conjecture, it's not unthinkable to believe in creation either.I've also heard the theory that we also directly killed Neanderthals. It's not unthinkable, considering we will kill our own kind over competition for resources.
I doubt that. Let's put some perspective on this. There are still cultures today who don't regularly wear clothes, typically in warmer climates. Clothing was probably initially more of an "it's cold here" thing than an "I'm naked" thing. (People don't feel naked in societies where people don't wear clothes.)flip wrote:No but to come from furry four legged creatures to what we are today means their had to be a moment of awareness of nakedness. That's not something that happens over a period of time but in an instant.
Don't misquote me. Read what came immediately before:flip wrote:Considering the arguments, speculation and conjecture, it's not unthinkable to believe in creation either.
One question, why instead of donning clothing did not the "fur" just come back once "man" started living in colder climes? Your "it's cold here" argument doesn't hold water IMO.Jeff250 wrote:
I doubt that. Let's put some perspective on this. There are still cultures today who don't regularly wear clothes, typically in warmer climates. Clothing was probably initially more of an "it's cold here" thing than an "I'm naked" thing. (People don't feel naked in societies where people don't wear clothes.)
At least Darwin himself, the man of original thought, questioned his own surmises and whether it stood the test of common sense or at least some form of evidence by saying \"If my theory be true\". I give him credit for at least thinking for himself and not scoring a perfect score on the required curriculum.Charles Darwin wrote, \"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?\" (Origin of Species, 1859). Since Darwin put forth his theory, scientists have sought fossil evidence indicating past organic transitions. Nearly 150 years later, there has been no evidence of transition found thus far in the fossil record.
One view of my back will prove that.Spidey wrote:Being naked has nothing to do with having fur or not.
LOL nice.Will Robinson wrote:Satan?Ferno wrote:...
I want to see these young-earth creationists explain the fact that bacteria have now developed a resistance to antibiotics over the years.
sorry couldn't resist
Aren't some ethnicities--say Europeans--"hairier" than others? In any case, I'd still prefer the flexibility of clothing over fur, even if the fur were seasonal, just because weather is never predictable. And, of course, if you're already wearing clothing, then how warm you can keep without wearing any isn't going to be as strong a selection pressure. It's the same reason why we wouldn't expect humans with indoor heating to evolve fur.AlphaDoG wrote:One question, why instead of donning clothing did not the "fur" just come back once "man" started living in colder climes? Your "it's cold here" argument doesn't hold water IMO.
Care to rethink that:flip wrote:The only problem with that bit of crap Ferno, is that so far there is NO beneficial mutation ever been documented. All known mutations so far have been destructive. Anyways my fun is over.
Really Mitochondrial Eve lived about (according to science) 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens evolved (according to science) 200,000 years ago.Ferno wrote:...because thousands of years ago, humanity experienced a massive die-off that seriously depleted the genepool?
It is true that the majority of mutations fall into the categories of either nearly neutral or harmful. Silent (neutral) mutations alter the DNA sequence but do not alter the amino acids encoded by the DNA sequence. This is due to built-in redundancy in the code (also referred to as degeneracy). For example, CCC, CCT, CCA, and CCG in the DNA all code for the amino acid glycine. In a hypothetical DNA sequence that has the sequence CCC if the last base is changed to any of the remaining DNA bases (T, A, or G), it will still code for the amino acid glycine. (However, there is some evidence that indicates that even these changes may not be completely neutral and may alter the stability of the mRNA, which serves as the intermediate between DNA and proteins).
My graduate work focused on studying mice that were missing three bases in their DNA and, thus, one amino acid from one protein. The mice were blind (no eyes), deaf, albino, had deficient immune systems, suffered osteopetrosis, had no teeth, and died upon weaning without supplemental nutrition. Talk about a harmful mutation! Even a small change in the DNA can cause large detrimental effects to the overall development and health of an organism.
But are there such things as beneficial mutations? In short, no, but let me explain. While I have yet to see evidence of a truly beneficial mutation, I have seen evidence of mutations with beneficial outcomes in restricted environments. Mutations are context dependent, meaning their environment determines whether the outcome of the mutation is beneficial. One well-known example is antibiotic resistance in bacteria. In an environment where antibiotics are present, mutations in the bacterial DNA that alter the target of the antibiotic allow the bacteria to survive (the bacteria are faced with a “live or die” situation). However, these same mutations come at the cost of altering a protein or system that is important for the normal functioning of the bacteria (such as nutrient acquisition). If the antibiotics are removed, typically the antibiotic resistant bacteria do not fare as well as the normal (or wild-type) bacteria whose proteins and systems are not affected by mutations