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Putting Anti-Evolution Candidates On the Spot
hmccabe writes "YouTube is currently taking submissions for their next debate, in which the Republican candidates will answer questions. This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution. But since I am not an expert in the subject, I would be interested in how you all feel the question should be presented. For my own part, I think it is important to present the overwhelming body of evidence on the subject as incontrovertible fact, much the same way DNA evidence is presented during a criminal trial, and ask why the candidate feels they can pick and choose what facts they believe in. Moreover, I am wary of coming across like Christopher Hitchins, so vitriolic the candidate will defend themselves rather than answer the question. Perhaps the most important aspect of posing the question is to inform the viewers who watch the debate that this is really not a matter of opinion, but of science. So my question is: 'Hey geneticists, have you considered addressing evolution in the YouTube debates? Can you do it in 30 seconds?'"
No food for the troll, but a candle against the darkness:
Ecclesiastes 3
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
The problem is when the anti-religious judge the religious based out of their own misconstrued biased opinion of what they feel religious people are all about. You can't comprehend it fine. you feel the need to judge any religious believer as a nutcase fine. Just so we're clear on who's got the prejudice around here. You obviously have no leg to stand on so you jump to vitriolic insults to cover up your lack of insight or anything useful to say. I'd be appalled if anyone let you speak on anything that had any importance.
How?
I guess I classify myself as one of those libertarians (although I think the accepted system of classification leaves much to be desired).
When I argue with my left-leaning friends (of which I have many), we rarely get much past the point of my asking where they differ from what has come to be called socialism, and in what way we should do things differently from other socialist systems that have failed generally (while they might have succeeded in one area or another).
On those few occasions when I can get past the school-yard taunts regarding the current President or the previous one, we always come to this one point of agreement: I have no problem with government doing something, if it can be made to do it well, and cost-effectively.
I've had long talks with a former DOL administrator who doesn't mind being called a socialist, he even quotes from Marx. He agrees government needs to work better. But when I suggest that we need a system whereby dead-wood government workers can be more easily fired, he launches into stories of how he (as a Democrat) thwarted the wishes of Republican appointees. He can't see a conflict between government working better and a career made of political backstabbing. He admitted to having many employees over the years who were not politically connected but who sat around doing nothing most of the time. I asked him had he ever been able to fire one. No, he said, but he was pretty good at getting them transfered to other departments.
I worked in government too, as a consultant, on and off for 15 years. During that time it was rare for me to see government people actually doing anything (I'm talking civilian, not military here). It was contractors like myself that did most of the work. We *reported* to government people at various levels, but for the most part they didn't have a clue what we were doing at any level of detail. Existing systems have no specifications (although they might have had a document or two that they *claimed* were the specifications). Our government "supervisors" would typically have inherited a "system" that they knew little about and would charge us with "Make it keep working as it always has." They were particularly unhelpful when it came to something that was demonstrably working wrong, or poorly. Nothing is so true in this environment than the phrase "good enough for government work".
I often hear government workers complain about how they are underpaid by comparison with the private sector, but most of them that I talked to had never worked in the private sector, and were petrified of the possibility of such a thing ever occurring. They would show up at work at 8 or after, claim they got in at 7, totally disappear at 10AM and not be seen again until 2PM in time to pack up and leave at 3 (or sooner if they could get away with it). They'll all retire sooner than most of the contractors who's salaries they claim are higher, they will have better health care, if they are military, lifetime PX benefits, and so on.
The left's argument seems to be that if we could grow the government significantly more, to 100% of the economy instead of just 40% we could *all* live this good life.
My only question remains, who is actually going to do the work?
I think its funny how anti-evolutionists create their own vocabulary. Like how the term microevolution and macroevolution, are only ones I hear in the context or a anti-evolutionist. So anyways "cross-species", "cross-kingdom", terms you made up I think. :) I assume you mean evolution that crosses a threshold of species or kingdom, not some sort of kinky inter-species mating thing. (actually I just googled "cross-kingdom", and it is used in reference to more of the latter.)
First off species, kingdom, phylum are terms nomenclaturists made up. There was never really a point where a non-chicken had a chicken egg, since species aren't so neatly defined. A lot of proto-chickens having not-so-proto chicken eggs.
Your average chicken does have a dinosaur as a ancestor. The fact that dinosaurs eventually grew wings and feathers is now well documented. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuvuuia_deserti or just the scaly reptilian feet that birds have. So thats some cross-class evolution.
But the best evidence that evolution can allow develop a wide array of species and even a few kingdoms is of course the biological diversity we see every day.
As far as God using old materials, of course you can be given any sort of scientific problem and respond "God did it." Why is there thunder? God did it. Why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? God did it. Or maybe the sun god, if your so inclined. It really gets us nowhere. Trying to understand, say, how our biology works by trying to fathom how you think God would create us is an exercise in futility. Evolution has been driving biological and medical research that last 150 years because it works. Many Creationists are hypocrites, they take advantage of the life-saving technology that the Theory of Evolution has provided them while trying to teach bogus ID theories in our schools, theories that not only are dead wrong, they also have no practical use.
Seriously... how is this even remotely considered a story worth my time when I go to slashdot?
Polling continually shows that a very high percentage (70-95%) of the entire world believes in some higher power.
Is it a coincidence that according to standardized tests I am also smarter than 99.99% of the world's population?
Here is a vid the "majority" might enjoy.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Explain, using only the bible:
1) The geologic record
2) The human appendix. No known use. Dangerous when infected.
3) Male nipples. I mean if Eve came after Adam, why would Adam have nipples? They would serve no purpose. It makes no sense.
4) Wisdom teeth. Painful and when infected they can be life threatening. No known use.
5) Junk DNA. It is not intelligent to put in useless ifnormation but random mutations can explain it easily.
6) Vestigial nictating membrane in the human eye. Like a cat's but non-functional. Again, useless.
There are probably lots more, folks with better knowledge of anatomy and biology than me could probably list some. But they all argue against intelligent design and a creator and for evolutionary processes.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+