Even if you take a game with a respectable story (Morrowind, for instance) the way it's broken down into tasks would mean that a film of it would play like a road movie rather than an action-adventure.
Secondly it isn't just about stats at something like the world cup where there are very few second chances and It is a game where you can completely dominate the opposition and still lose to a single error or bad ref decision.
How does that differ from what the quants usually deal with?
Better still, print it on the form. That way patients' lives won't be endangered by the human error of forgetting to stamp it. It's always better to design the possibility of risky human error out of the system.
...that they keep insisting that hundreds of millions of years was not enough time for the species we see today to evolve, but that the small number of animals in Noah's ark was able to evolve into a much larger number of species over the course of the last 4,000 years. They never seem to pick up on the incongruity of those two sets of ideas.
I'm not aware of any who do argue that all the species we have now evolved from those in the Ark -- certainly those who don't believe that new species can emerge through evolution. Young-earth creationist explanations of species diversity following the deluge range from a second divine act of creation to arguments that the flood was only local to the relatively small region populated by humans before the Tower of Babel incident, so species living outside that region were unaffected.
My underlying point is that many seem to hold to two opposing ideas, IMO...
1. There is no God, and evolution is how everything got here.
2. It's wrong to destroy species, etc. There's some moral/ethical/inherently-bad thing about it.
To me, there's a disconnect. #1 has some amount of backing (evolutionary theory). #2, combined with #1, seems to me to have no backing.
The collapse in belief in God in Western society happened at about the same time as a collapse in the belief that humans were something special, set apart from the rest of creation (no coincidence, that). Once you take away that dividing line, it's no longer clear why we might have moral obligations to all of our species and not to other species, leading to the concept of "speciesism" as a parallel to "racism" and "sexism". That leads to a spread of moral opinion (just as there is on racism and sexism). How you argue it and which side you take depends on how you work out your ethics. It's not a disconnect, but it's not an easy connection, either. If you are a hard-line social Darwinist you probably don't think there's such a thing as ethics/morality anyway. If you're a virtue ethicist you might well conclude that the elimination of species is not the action of a virtuous person. If you're a Kantian then it depends on who and what you count as within the scope of your ethics. If you are a utilitarian it depends who and what you count within your definition of "harm", and so on.
And as a criterion it works just fine for ring species; if the populations at the ends of the ring can't interbreed, they aren't the same species. The fuzzy relationships with neighboring populations is only a problem if you assume species relationships are commutative. But biological compatibility is not by nature commutative, so neither should you expect species relationships to be.
Maybe not, but if the species relationship is not transitive (I assume that's what you meant) how do you count them?
Yeah, the "can they produce fertile offspring" test is really only a way that lets you say that two populations [...] are definitely different species. The definition of "species" is way too fuzzy to easily say that things which can breed are the same species.
Nope, there are lots of definitions of species, not just that one (which fails on ring species).
OP is right, in that there are lots of different definitions of "species" and none of them is unambiguous. "Can mate" doesn't seem to be used much amongst taxonomists, not just because of bacteria but also because of things like ring species.
And this work is being used in public discussion and debate, so it's forensic! As is everything discussed in any public place, so I wonder whether Merriam-Webster's definition might be a little too broad.
I don't know -- ask them! Are any of those hybrids actually distinct species, in the sense of being fertile with each other and not with either parent species, for instance?
Good for you for standing up to the crowd, but I think you do yourself a disservice describing your position as "irrational". Irrational means contrary to reason, and (despite the modern secular mythology about religion) religion has usually had a very high regard for reason and has been anxious to ensure that it is a reasonable position. The disputes with materialism are generally over the premises of their arguments, not with the application of reason to those premises (although you will find plenty of duff arguments on both sides, both sides are usually willing to admit that those arguments are duff and to move on). I think you mean that religion contains a non-rational element, which indeed it does, just like every other worldview. It's to religion's credit that it's generally willing to admit that non-rational element whereas adherents of some other worldviews are less so.
No it doesn't -- that's a common blunder and one reason that the ID proponents get away with it. It doesn't contradict any existing evidence, and I confidently predict that it won't contradict any future evidence. That's because it doesn't make any predictions and so cannot contradict any evidence.
That's not actually a hole in the use of ID. It's a reason why most Christians -- even many fundamentalist Christians -- don't need ID. But there are some Christian fundamentalists whose reading of Genesis leads them to conclude that God created all the species as they are now on whichever of the seen days it was. They believe in development within a species, so they accept that horse breeding programs can lead to faster horses, for example, but not that new species can emerge. For those fundamentalists the idea that the creator used evolution is acceptable for development within a species but not for the emergence of new species because (they believe) that doesn't happen.
Which is the context Queensland History Teachers' Association head said it was in. I think it's also valid in the context of history (although that's more precisely evolution v. creationism, not it's more recent ID formulation -- and if 19th century controversies are ancient history then I'm feeling really old).
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By and large, games don't have plots, they just have stories. They're not the same thing.
Even if you take a game with a respectable story (Morrowind, for instance) the way it's broken down into tasks would mean that a film of it would play like a road movie rather than an action-adventure.
Secondly it isn't just about stats at something like the world cup where there are very few second chances and It is a game where you can completely dominate the opposition and still lose to a single error or bad ref decision.
How does that differ from what the quants usually deal with?
Catch 22. Need the porn to get the hard-on, need the hard-on to get the porn...
So bye bye the medical research and treatments which would be possible by creating hybrids
Only in Ohio. The rest of the world can still have them.
Then have a "priority" tick box, rather than expecting the doctor (under huge pressure) to remember to use a magic incantation.
That bit is credible. There's a culture of bullying in the NHS, and doctors are not above it.
Better still, print it on the form. That way patients' lives won't be endangered by the human error of forgetting to stamp it. It's always better to design the possibility of risky human error out of the system.
...that they keep insisting that hundreds of millions of years was not enough time for the species we see today to evolve, but that the small number of animals in Noah's ark was able to evolve into a much larger number of species over the course of the last 4,000 years. They never seem to pick up on the incongruity of those two sets of ideas.
I'm not aware of any who do argue that all the species we have now evolved from those in the Ark -- certainly those who don't believe that new species can emerge through evolution. Young-earth creationist explanations of species diversity following the deluge range from a second divine act of creation to arguments that the flood was only local to the relatively small region populated by humans before the Tower of Babel incident, so species living outside that region were unaffected.
My underlying point is that many seem to hold to two opposing ideas, IMO...
1. There is no God, and evolution is how everything got here.
2. It's wrong to destroy species, etc. There's some moral/ethical/inherently-bad thing about it.
To me, there's a disconnect. #1 has some amount of backing (evolutionary theory). #2, combined with #1, seems to me to have no backing.
The collapse in belief in God in Western society happened at about the same time as a collapse in the belief that humans were something special, set apart from the rest of creation (no coincidence, that). Once you take away that dividing line, it's no longer clear why we might have moral obligations to all of our species and not to other species, leading to the concept of "speciesism" as a parallel to "racism" and "sexism". That leads to a spread of moral opinion (just as there is on racism and sexism). How you argue it and which side you take depends on how you work out your ethics. It's not a disconnect, but it's not an easy connection, either. If you are a hard-line social Darwinist you probably don't think there's such a thing as ethics/morality anyway. If you're a virtue ethicist you might well conclude that the elimination of species is not the action of a virtuous person. If you're a Kantian then it depends on who and what you count as within the scope of your ethics. If you are a utilitarian it depends who and what you count within your definition of "harm", and so on.
And as a criterion it works just fine for ring species; if the populations at the ends of the ring can't interbreed, they aren't the same species. The fuzzy relationships with neighboring populations is only a problem if you assume species relationships are commutative. But biological compatibility is not by nature commutative, so neither should you expect species relationships to be.
Maybe not, but if the species relationship is not transitive (I assume that's what you meant) how do you count them?
Yeah, the "can they produce fertile offspring" test is really only a way that lets you say that two populations [...] are definitely different species. The definition of "species" is way too fuzzy to easily say that things which can breed are the same species.
Nope, there are lots of definitions of species, not just that one (which fails on ring species).
OP is right, in that there are lots of different definitions of "species" and none of them is unambiguous. "Can mate" doesn't seem to be used much amongst taxonomists, not just because of bacteria but also because of things like ring species.
What the hell is wrong with regular wine, that they have to turn it into brandy?
Nothing wrong with distilling something to see if it makes a nice drink.
And this work is being used in public discussion and debate, so it's forensic! As is everything discussed in any public place, so I wonder whether Merriam-Webster's definition might be a little too broad.
Actually, mick232 is right: it's pronounced "adle-wise". It shouldn't be, but when mick232 is around it is.
I don't know -- ask them! Are any of those hybrids actually distinct species, in the sense of being fertile with each other and not with either parent species, for instance?
It means that it is likely possible to create life. It doesn't mean that life on earth was created that way.
That was my point, and I think that it was nobodylocalhost's point (but that those with mod points missed his joke).
What she actually said (as reported) was " Classroom debate about issues encouraged critical thinking – an important tool".
Good for you for standing up to the crowd, but I think you do yourself a disservice describing your position as "irrational". Irrational means contrary to reason, and (despite the modern secular mythology about religion) religion has usually had a very high regard for reason and has been anxious to ensure that it is a reasonable position. The disputes with materialism are generally over the premises of their arguments, not with the application of reason to those premises (although you will find plenty of duff arguments on both sides, both sides are usually willing to admit that those arguments are duff and to move on). I think you mean that religion contains a non-rational element, which indeed it does, just like every other worldview. It's to religion's credit that it's generally willing to admit that non-rational element whereas adherents of some other worldviews are less so.
No it doesn't -- that's a common blunder and one reason that the ID proponents get away with it. It doesn't contradict any existing evidence, and I confidently predict that it won't contradict any future evidence. That's because it doesn't make any predictions and so cannot contradict any evidence.
Society as a whole would suffer from a massive influx of brain-washed idiots.
Yeah, at least you don't get any of them out of the state system!
I.D. is a valid scientific theory. Case and point: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958
That makes it a historical fact, not a scientific theory. It's important not to confuse the two.
That's not actually a hole in the use of ID. It's a reason why most Christians -- even many fundamentalist Christians -- don't need ID. But there are some Christian fundamentalists whose reading of Genesis leads them to conclude that God created all the species as they are now on whichever of the seen days it was. They believe in development within a species, so they accept that horse breeding programs can lead to faster horses, for example, but not that new species can emerge. For those fundamentalists the idea that the creator used evolution is acceptable for development within a species but not for the emergence of new species because (they believe) that doesn't happen.
Which is the context Queensland History Teachers' Association head said it was in. I think it's also valid in the context of history (although that's more precisely evolution v. creationism, not it's more recent ID formulation -- and if 19th century controversies are ancient history then I'm feeling really old).