Way to exhort a population by referring to your audience as fools. I applaud your rhetorical skills. A couple of articles you may find enlightening yourself, assuming your mind hasn't already been made up to the point where you might be confused by the facts...
A couple of newsgrouparticles about him as well, the 2nd of which has a number of other links if you're still interested. You'll also notice that Dr. Spetner is comfortable in posting articles on that bastion of scientific credibility, trueorigin.org.
Kohan: Ahriman's Gift is the best for a number of reasons. The downside is that it's significantly harder than the first game, Immortal Sovereigns.
You get access to the new units. You get access to more campaign missions. If you play online (and that's where the longevity of these games lie), most people are using K:AG vs. K:IS these days. The campaign is a prequel in storyline vs. a sequel, so you're not really spoiling yourself (not that the stories GREAT or anything, but if it's a concern it shouldn't be..)
My recommendation would be to play a number of skirmish missions to get a feel for the game mechanics before playing the campaign. Some people prefer the skirmish mode to the exclusion of the campaign as they can fine-tune the difficulty by chosing various AI opponents, their race, the map, etc. Then play the campaign using the easiest AI setting. I believe you can get some strategy tips at www.kohan.net forums still.
Clark Howard tested this sign-up-for-a-prize phenomena at a mall once. He had a sign up for something like "Win a trip to Hawaii" but the forms he put on the stand gave him permission to withdraw $20 from the persons bank account. Got their name, phone number, address and signature authorizing the withdrawal. I think one person caught on. He confronted each and spoke with them about their carelessness and didn't use these, of course. He's a radio personality / manage-your-money type on AM radio. www.clarkhoward.com
I thought "conventional" wisdom held that electric sharpeners weren't that good. Does the Spyderco defy this general rule or is it "good enough" for someone without the time or skill to use water stones and steel hones?
I've nowhere near a perfect ear but I can certainly hear things like faint artifacts in mp3 files and I do have a taste for decent sound reproduction. I have a friend who has no ear at all for this sort of thing and his home setup is just awful. I've had to learn to hold my tongue when I'm over there. His subwoofer is turned up about three times as loud as it should be and the main driver so loose and low-quality it sounds like constant flatulence... *shudder* I'm glad not to be cursed with a "perfect" ear though, I don't have that much money for home audio equipment...:)
Well, like I said, I haven't heard them. But I do think the Klipsch line has fairly decent bass. I've certainly not got an 'audiophile' ear but I am a bit of an enthusiast. The problem with the Klipsch (at least the ones I have) is a lack of midrange. Luckily my soundcard has a hardware-level 10 band equalizer on it that more or less takes care of that. The monsoons are supposedly very accurate in the high-end and while they might not be as loud as the Klipsch on the low-end they're supposed to be a bit tighter.
Good luck finding a demo setup though. Only one's I've seen around here demoed are the Klipsch, the Logitech (Z560's aren't that bad) and the Altec-Lansing. It's hard to judge sound quality in Best Buy on the speaker aisle anyway. I bought these Klipsch simply on the basis of their reputation and wound up having to shell out an extra $50 for a new preamp box to get rid of all that static in the volume knob. Ah well, I only paid $120 for 'em and they're perfectly good for games & mp3's. Live and learn.
Now that I think of it and upon rereading your message, a computer show probably isn't a good place to judge a subwoofer. Assuming it's like the shows around here in a big ol' arena-type environment it'd take a hell of a sub to really sound full in that large of a room. You might want to see if you can get a set from a place that accepts returns and listen to them in your computer room...
The Monsoon MH-505's are supposed to be pretty good speakers. I believe you can find them for under $150 if you look real hard. They combine those flat-panel speakers for high-range clarity with some conventional mids to compensate for the flat-panels lack of midrange. Combined with a fairly decent sub. At least that's what I've read when I was doing research on them (after I bought a pair of Klipsch v2.400's, the initial model, had a lot of problems with it's preamp rheostat getting all staticy). I haven't seen a set setup anywhere to give them a test-listen.
You should be able to find them under $150 if you keep an eye on ebay and the various websites that carry them.
That would be interesting to find out what the breakdown is for browser identifier codes attaching to slashdot. I suppose opera would throw it off by a bit but what are most linux people using these days, opera or mozilla?
Give me an example situation where competition for food, environment and predation are all absent.
Not necessarily absent, but not significant. My apologies for misstating the case. In the case of sharks that haven't changed very much for hundreds of millions of years, they've evolved to be so good at what they do that there's not a lot of room for incremental improvement. Their environment is relatively constant, they produce more than enough young to counter predation and the food supply is abundant enough to support a large population.
The examples you gave are different - the ways to test it are very unclear, and the ways to disprove it had to be listed, they weren't immediately known.
So science is supposed to only deal with things a simpleton can understand? Maybe the ways to disprove it weren't immediately known to you but you seem bright enough, I'm sure you could have come up with a few if you'd thought about it for a few minutes first.
In fact, the famous trilobite has been found alive in parts of the world - although if this is a very elaborate hoax I would be happy for someone to point it out.
I'd be happy for any proof of it. I'm not finding any on the newsgroups or the web and you'd think there'd be a bit of buzz about it if it were true.
As for vestigial structures, there used to be a list of over 100 in the human body. That list has been almost eliminated as the function of these previosuly "useless" structures became known.
Yay for science! Really though, this does not at all extrapolate to mean we'll find a use for all of them.
And again on the topic of strata - around the world different ages are shown to be in the wrong order. Older ages sitting on top of younger ages when it should be the other way around.
You do jump around, don't you? I'm afraid that geologists have been well able to explain any of these that I've ever heard of through the nifty theory of plate tectonics and erosion.
Excuses like shifting ground are insufficient since the surface area is sometimes quite large, making shifts almost impossible, and shows no evidence of shifts.
Do you have evidence that this is the case or is this just an argument from incredulity?
As for dating methods, there are some which support us, some which contradict. They are a lot based on assumptions that are not always fair. The dating methods that support millions of years have been shown to be especially flawed over and over.
By whom and where? What are your objections to the data collected here? You really need to start providing evidence or cites and not just make these assertions.
This is absurd, there is always room for improvement, be it physical or mental.
Unfortunately for you, you're attacking a strawman. Nowhere does evolutionary theory say that populations will or must improve. In a large population, it doesn't matter that much if it's you or your brother that reproduces. Without pressure in the form of competition for food, environment or predation you wouldn't expect a species to evolve any faster than what drift would take them (a very slow process).
I gave an example of Australian Aboriginees supposedly living in isolation for 40,000 years. That has to be enough time to see some beginnings of speciation.
No, it doesn't. And man is the worst example of species that you might see this in because of our intellect. This wonderful brain of ours has made it possible to obviate many natural selective pressures that other species face. (Starvation countered by cultivation/group hunting, Environment countered by fabricated shelter, Predation countered by weapons, etc.) 40,000 years is long enough that there may be a speciation event but it certainly isn't long enough that there must be.
I also know that in the Answers In Genesis magazine they advertise their technical journal, with the caption "Don't get caught using outdated arguments!", so it seems to me that it is a priority of theirs to reject whatever is shown false.
Hey! And it only took 10+ years of people constantly correcting them about these particular arguments that got them to finally recant!
Hmm, I wonder about your true knowledge of the integrity of ICR members. You say ICR founder is Duane Gish. According to the ICR, their founder is Henry M. Morris
My humble apologies. Duane Gish was, however, one of the founding members and is currently vice president of the institute. Did you actually read the link I provided that describes some of Gish's problems with honesty? I'm not claiming first hand knowledge but do you believe Joyce Arthur is just making this stuff up? If you are truly one who wants to understand and know the truth, then read and try to understand the depth of what evolutionary theory is, not just what you think it is.
The fact that living "fossils" have pretty much no change says something important.
It does indeed. It shows that a species may be able to fill it's ecological niche so well as to prevent competition significant enough to make it change. Evolutionary theory doesn't state that species will change at some rate over time but that they change in response to selective pressure. There are other examples of "living fossils" amongst certain species of sharks. The explanation is that they haven't had to change in order to survive so they haven't. At least beyond the standard genetic drift. There are small differences. The presumed extinction was ~70 million years ago, btw. We are the same the whole world over. Where is the evolution in progress?
We lack the isolation we once did in order to speciate and our brains have allowed us to relieve ourselves of many if not most of the selective pressures faced by our ancient ancestors. Now let there be a world war that sends us back to the stone age and have 9/10'ths of the world's population die and you might see some movement. But maybe not even then. It could be the mere existence of our higher reasoning allows us to alleviate the majority of the selective pressures on our species. I predict we'll be evolving ourselves with genetic engineering long before we significantly change due to 'mere' genetic drift.
How is that possible if recessive traits don't express themselves until the point when a host of harmful mutations have the chance to express themselves?
I'm not sure I understand your question. Why does the expression of a recessive have to wait for a mutation? If the recessive exists in population it just has to wait for two organisms with the same recessive to breed.
I'm sorry, have you looked at all the date samples done by creation scientists (sent off to official, well respected laboratories for testing) and the samples show wildly innacurate dates? I have read many examples of this.
Care to share a few? Something other than this one?
As for using outdated arguments, from what I can see creationists have rejected the idea of the speed of light slowing.
Those were just a few of many and not all creationists have given up the changing speed of light argument. Many Young-Earth Creationists still cling to it in some form or fashion.
I don't know what the moon dust argument is, could you please tell me? I think I can guess.
That the cosmic dust accumulation on the moon should have built up into a layer 20 feet deep (or whatever) if the moon were really 5 billion years old. Long and short, the calculation was based on erroneous suppositions.
Creationists are nowhere near as bad as evolutionary textbooks publishing information long ago demonstrated to be false or a hoax. The peppermoths is a great example.
I beg to differ. Creationists are called to the carpet on a daily basis for some of the things they try to get away with. Peppermoths should have only ever been used as an example of natural selection. If there ever was a textbook that said it was proof of macroevolution, it was wrong. All 3 textbooks I've seen and all I've ever heard of use it as an example of natural selection. Unless you can come up with scores more examples, you don't have a leg to stand on by saying creationists are nowhere near as bad.
If you'd like some reading material, check some of these out. A couple of visits to the ICR museum and some of the inaccuracies and falsehoods contained therein. Take a look at the Creation Research Society's creed that members must adhere to. A list of "distortions" of truth by ICR founder Duane Gish.
I am going along, aren't I?:) Btw, Kent Hovind still sports the light speed decay theory. You might want to check out Answers in Genesis and TrueOrigins and see if you can spot more errors on your own... I'd help but it's really getting late and it's not as fun as it was when I started...:)
"The major tenets of the evolutionary synthesis, then, were that populations contain genetic variation that arises by random (ie. not adaptively directed) mutation and recombination; that populations evolve by changes in gene frequency brought about by random genetic drift, gene flow, and especially natural selection; that most adaptive genetic variants have individually slight phenotypic effects so that phenotypic changes are gradual (although some alleles with discrete effects may be advantageous, as in certain color polymorphisms); that diversification comes about by speciation, which normally entails the gradual evolution of reproductive isolation among populations; and that these processes, continued for sufficiently long, give rise to changes of such great magnitude as to warrant the designation of higher taxonomic levels (genera, families, and so forth)." - Futuyma, D.J. in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates, 1986; p.12
As to falsifiablity, I'm cribbing from the Talk.origins website here as they are a wonderful resource and I am a layman myself when it comes to these matters, an interested layman, but a layman nonetheless.
Evolution and common descent are certainly falsifiable. One way to disprove them would be to show that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Not surprisingly, many creationists are trying to do just that. One could also falsify evolution by showing that the various forms of life have not changed significantly over time. Finding strong evidence that humans coexisted with dinosaurs or trilobites, organisms that are currently known to have gone extinct millions of years ago, would be one way to do this.
In addition to being falsifiable, evolution makes a large number of verifiable predictions. It predicts that closely related organisms will share a large amount of the same genetic material. It predicts an ordering of the fossil record, in which animals like mammals never appear before the first reptiles. It predicts that isolated regions of the planet will be populated by living organisms that are unique throughout the world. It predicts anatomical similarities between genetically similar organisms. It predicts the existence of atavisms and vestigial structures that were useful to ancestral forms but are much less useful to present forms. And so on.
While it is true that these types of predictions are based on prior observations of the evidence, so are the predictions of any scientific theory. In the scientific endeavor, observations are collected, a theory is built to explain them, and the theory is tested by comparing its predictions with further observations.
Well, I was asking for a scientific theory of Creation and what you've given is simply assertion. But as to the main thrust of your argument, I agree. God doesn't preclude science, science doesn't preclude god.
because the Universe, the Earth, and each one of us exists as part of God.
Good Ol' Pantheistic Solipsism, a philosophy I try to believe in at least 3 days out of every week....:)
Also, I have taken the time to understand evolution.
Do you really understand it if you didn't even know that beneficial mutations had been observed?
I have also read up on creation theory, and have come to understand it. If you (or the guys at talk.origins) can't put in the effort to do the same for creation theory, why should I have to type it up for you? The information is out there, go find it.
Believe me, I and hundreds of other have scoured creationist websites for this elusive theory. It has not materialized. To date, noone has cared to explicate a scientific Theory of Creation (fyi you need a falsifiable hypothesis if you want to take a crack at coming up with one).
Regarding millions of years, there are creatures and plants which are being found often that have been presumed extinct for millions of years.
And how exactly does that help or hinder evolutionary theory in the slightest?
Creationists teach that the adaptation is done by already present genetic information.
That's certainly one way that natural selection works. However, as pointed out by others, you are wrong in your assumption that all mutations are harmful. Mutations are roughly 90% neutral. In a population, harmful mutations (those that negatively impact a creature's ability to reproduce) are weeded out fairly efficiently. A beneficial mutation will permeate a population fairly rapidly. If I remember correctly, a mutation that confers a 1% survival advantage will spread throughout the population in 100 generations or so.
Given the above facts, evolution has to explain how recessive genes were created.
Again explained by another poster. Negative traits are weeded out via natural selection.
Creationists also have problems with dating methods that show the earth to be millions of years old.
These contentions have all been debunked to my knowledge unless something new has come to light in the last six months. Here is a good starting point. There is also no good evidence of a global flood or even a reasonable mechanism by which such a flood could happen.
two people who possess the same beneficial recessive gene will also posess in common a much greater number of recessive harmful genes which will have opportunity to express themselves.
I think you're assuming that all or most new beneficial genes come from recessives and not new dominant mutations.
Deleterious mutants are selected against but remain at low frequency
in the gene pool. In diploids, a deleterious recessive mutant may increase in frequency due to drift. Selection cannot see it when it is masked by a dominant allele. Many disease causing alleles remain at low frequency for this reason. People who are carriers do not suffer the negative effect of the allele. Unless they mate with another carrier, the allele may simply continue to be passed on. Deleterious alleles also remain in populations at a low frequency due to a balance between recurrent mutation and selection. This is called the mutation load. If beneficial mutants arise infrequently, the only fitness differences in a population will be due to new deleterious mutants and the deleterious recessives. Selection will simply be weeding out unfit variants. Only occasionally will a beneficial allele be sweeping through a population. The general lack of large fitness differences segregating in natural populations argues that beneficial mutants do indeed arise infrequently. However, the impact of a beneficial mutant on the level of variation at a locus can be large and lasting. It takes many generations for a locus to regain appreciable levels of heterozygosity following a selective sweep.
- from AN INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY by Chris Colby
One thing I have tried to explain before is that both evolution and creation theory are not science. They are philosophy.
Evolutionary theory is based on science. Creation theory doesn't exist as a theory. It has never been explicated by anyone. All the creationist-types ever do is try to punch holes in evolutionary theory and never quite succeed. Science actually has a self-correcting mechanism of peer-reviewed journals to prevent erroneous memes from spreading. Believe me when I say that the ICR-type organizations have no such mechanism. They've been spreading some of their lies for years after it's been clearly pointed out to them they are wrong (moon dust, speed of light slowing down, sun shrinking, earth rotation slowing and more).
A message to all who might read this, not to the author I reply to
So should I not respond since this wasn't for me in particular?:) I'm hardly an atheist but an argument from popularity is no argument at all. I understand the need for hope but I believe that faith should be reserved for when we need it, not as a default mode for our existence. If God/Aum/Ra/Shiva didn't want us to understand the Universe, why would it have endowed us with an intellect? As to your prophecy points I'd have to read up on your particular flavor if you want to provide some links. My impression of the prophecies I've seen so far is that they're not nearly as specific as their proponents make them out to be.
I am one who likes to understand and know the truth.
A noble desire.
What is a fiction is the macro-evolution of one species changing enough to become a new one, and through this progression all variety of plants and animals today have come to be. I have presented arguments before that no-one has been able to answer.
Speciation has been observed, maybe not to your specification, but it's convinced the taxonomists anyway. We've observed it in the last 100 years, it's hard to imagine how much things might change in a length of time 30 million times longer than this. As to your unanswerable arguments, I'd love to hear them.
I tell you, I don't believe the PC Division is interested in the home market very much anymore. Home users cost a mint to support compared to business customers.
But I don't foresee IBM getting out of the PC business until the PC dies. Reason being that they're a single point of purchase when companies need to roll out a big server (or 20) and a few hundred (or thousand) clients. It's these sales with support contracts that make the money, not the $600 box sold to grandma whose razor-thin profit margin is blown the first time she calls the helpdesk asking how to setup AOL.
Slashdot Mirror
Way to exhort a population by referring to your audience as fools. I applaud your rhetorical skills. A couple of articles you may find enlightening yourself, assuming your mind hasn't already been made up to the point where you might be confused by the facts ...
An email correspondance between Dr. Edward Max and Dr. Lee Spetner.
A couple of newsgroup articles about him as well, the 2nd of which has a number of other links if you're still interested. You'll also notice that Dr. Spetner is comfortable in posting articles on that bastion of scientific credibility, trueorigin.org.
Kohan: Ahriman's Gift is the best for a number of reasons. The downside is that it's significantly harder than the first game, Immortal Sovereigns.
..)
You get access to the new units. You get access to more campaign missions. If you play online (and that's where the longevity of these games lie), most people are using K:AG vs. K:IS these days. The campaign is a prequel in storyline vs. a sequel, so you're not really spoiling yourself (not that the stories GREAT or anything, but if it's a concern it shouldn't be
My recommendation would be to play a number of skirmish missions to get a feel for the game mechanics before playing the campaign. Some people prefer the skirmish mode to the exclusion of the campaign as they can fine-tune the difficulty by chosing various AI opponents, their race, the map, etc. Then play the campaign using the easiest AI setting. I believe you can get some strategy tips at www.kohan.net forums still.
Clark Howard tested this sign-up-for-a-prize phenomena at a mall once. He had a sign up for something like "Win a trip to Hawaii" but the forms he put on the stand gave him permission to withdraw $20 from the persons bank account. Got their name, phone number, address and signature authorizing the withdrawal. I think one person caught on. He confronted each and spoke with them about their carelessness and didn't use these, of course. He's a radio personality / manage-your-money type on AM radio. www.clarkhoward.com
...
Pretty funny though
REread , HAHAHAHA, that's rich ... :)
ahhh , I got ya. Thanks for the tip, it looked electric on the website I saw it on so I assumed. See what ya get for assuming? :)
I thought "conventional" wisdom held that electric sharpeners weren't that good. Does the Spyderco defy this general rule or is it "good enough" for someone without the time or skill to use water stones and steel hones?
You're so right!! Before AC the southeastern U.S. was completely unpopulated by humans! AC made it possible!1!!
I've nowhere near a perfect ear but I can certainly hear things like faint artifacts in mp3 files and I do have a taste for decent sound reproduction. I have a friend who has no ear at all for this sort of thing and his home setup is just awful. I've had to learn to hold my tongue when I'm over there. His subwoofer is turned up about three times as loud as it should be and the main driver so loose and low-quality it sounds like constant flatulence... *shudder* I'm glad not to be cursed with a "perfect" ear though, I don't have that much money for home audio equipment ... :)
Well, like I said, I haven't heard them. But I do think the Klipsch line has fairly decent bass. I've certainly not got an 'audiophile' ear but I am a bit of an enthusiast. The problem with the Klipsch (at least the ones I have) is a lack of midrange. Luckily my soundcard has a hardware-level 10 band equalizer on it that more or less takes care of that. The monsoons are supposedly very accurate in the high-end and while they might not be as loud as the Klipsch on the low-end they're supposed to be a bit tighter.
Good luck finding a demo setup though. Only one's I've seen around here demoed are the Klipsch, the Logitech (Z560's aren't that bad) and the Altec-Lansing. It's hard to judge sound quality in Best Buy on the speaker aisle anyway. I bought these Klipsch simply on the basis of their reputation and wound up having to shell out an extra $50 for a new preamp box to get rid of all that static in the volume knob. Ah well, I only paid $120 for 'em and they're perfectly good for games & mp3's. Live and learn.
Now that I think of it and upon rereading your message, a computer show probably isn't a good place to judge a subwoofer. Assuming it's like the shows around here in a big ol' arena-type environment it'd take a hell of a sub to really sound full in that large of a room. You might want to see if you can get a set from a place that accepts returns and listen to them in your computer room...
The Monsoon MH-505's are supposed to be pretty good speakers. I believe you can find them for under $150 if you look real hard. They combine those flat-panel speakers for high-range clarity with some conventional mids to compensate for the flat-panels lack of midrange. Combined with a fairly decent sub. At least that's what I've read when I was doing research on them (after I bought a pair of Klipsch v2.400's, the initial model, had a lot of problems with it's preamp rheostat getting all staticy). I haven't seen a set setup anywhere to give them a test-listen.
You should be able to find them under $150 if you keep an eye on ebay and the various websites that carry them.
Counterproductive to whom? People who sell jade or those who like to own jade pieces? It's not like making money is some holy grail or something ...
That would be interesting to find out what the breakdown is for browser identifier codes attaching to slashdot. I suppose opera would throw it off by a bit but what are most linux people using these days, opera or mozilla?
And where do they get this digital data from exactly? The analog noises around it? Don't they do that with A to D convertors?
You forgot the 'i'. I'll take 480p over 1080i any day.
Is there a reason for that? The only comparison I could find in short order was here, and they seemed to think 1080i was better than 480p.
Give me an example situation where competition for food, environment and predation are all absent.
Not necessarily absent, but not significant. My apologies for misstating the case. In the case of sharks that haven't changed very much for hundreds of millions of years, they've evolved to be so good at what they do that there's not a lot of room for incremental improvement. Their environment is relatively constant, they produce more than enough young to counter predation and the food supply is abundant enough to support a large population.
The examples you gave are different - the ways to test it are very unclear, and the ways to disprove it had to be listed, they weren't immediately known.
So science is supposed to only deal with things a simpleton can understand? Maybe the ways to disprove it weren't immediately known to you but you seem bright enough, I'm sure you could have come up with a few if you'd thought about it for a few minutes first.
In fact, the famous trilobite has been found alive in parts of the world - although if this is a very elaborate hoax I would be happy for someone to point it out.
I'd be happy for any proof of it. I'm not finding any on the newsgroups or the web and you'd think there'd be a bit of buzz about it if it were true.
As for vestigial structures, there used to be a list of over 100 in the human body. That list has been almost eliminated as the function of these previosuly "useless" structures became known.
Yay for science! Really though, this does not at all extrapolate to mean we'll find a use for all of them.
And again on the topic of strata - around the world different ages are shown to be in the wrong order. Older ages sitting on top of younger ages when it should be the other way around.
You do jump around, don't you? I'm afraid that geologists have been well able to explain any of these that I've ever heard of through the nifty theory of plate tectonics and erosion.
Excuses like shifting ground are insufficient since the surface area is sometimes quite large, making shifts almost impossible, and shows no evidence of shifts.
Do you have evidence that this is the case or is this just an argument from incredulity?
As for dating methods, there are some which support us, some which contradict. They are a lot based on assumptions that are not always fair. The dating methods that support millions of years have been shown to be especially flawed over and over.
By whom and where? What are your objections to the data collected here? You really need to start providing evidence or cites and not just make these assertions.
This is absurd, there is always room for improvement, be it physical or mental.
Unfortunately for you, you're attacking a strawman. Nowhere does evolutionary theory say that populations will or must improve. In a large population, it doesn't matter that much if it's you or your brother that reproduces. Without pressure in the form of competition for food, environment or predation you wouldn't expect a species to evolve any faster than what drift would take them (a very slow process).
I gave an example of Australian Aboriginees supposedly living in isolation for 40,000 years. That has to be enough time to see some beginnings of speciation.
No, it doesn't. And man is the worst example of species that you might see this in because of our intellect. This wonderful brain of ours has made it possible to obviate many natural selective pressures that other species face. (Starvation countered by cultivation/group hunting, Environment countered by fabricated shelter, Predation countered by weapons, etc.) 40,000 years is long enough that there may be a speciation event but it certainly isn't long enough that there must be.
I also know that in the Answers In Genesis magazine they advertise their technical journal, with the caption "Don't get caught using outdated arguments!", so it seems to me that it is a priority of theirs to reject whatever is shown false.
Hey! And it only took 10+ years of people constantly correcting them about these particular arguments that got them to finally recant!
Hmm, I wonder about your true knowledge of the integrity of ICR members. You say ICR founder is Duane Gish. According to the ICR, their founder is Henry M. Morris
My humble apologies. Duane Gish was, however, one of the founding members and is currently vice president of the institute. Did you actually read the link I provided that describes some of Gish's problems with honesty? I'm not claiming first hand knowledge but do you believe Joyce Arthur is just making this stuff up?
If you are truly one who wants to understand and know the truth, then read and try to understand the depth of what evolutionary theory is, not just what you think it is.
The fact that living "fossils" have pretty much no change says something important.
:) ... I'd help but it's really getting late and it's not as fun as it was when I started ... :)
It does indeed. It shows that a species may be able to fill it's ecological niche so well as to prevent competition significant enough to make it change. Evolutionary theory doesn't state that species will change at some rate over time but that they change in response to selective pressure. There are other examples of "living fossils" amongst certain species of sharks. The explanation is that they haven't had to change in order to survive so they haven't. At least beyond the standard genetic drift. There are small differences. The presumed extinction was ~70 million years ago, btw.
We are the same the whole world over. Where is the evolution in progress?
We lack the isolation we once did in order to speciate and our brains have allowed us to relieve ourselves of many if not most of the selective pressures faced by our ancient ancestors. Now let there be a world war that sends us back to the stone age and have 9/10'ths of the world's population die and you might see some movement. But maybe not even then. It could be the mere existence of our higher reasoning allows us to alleviate the majority of the selective pressures on our species. I predict we'll be evolving ourselves with genetic engineering long before we significantly change due to 'mere' genetic drift.
How is that possible if recessive traits don't express themselves until the point when a host of harmful mutations have the chance to express themselves?
I'm not sure I understand your question. Why does the expression of a recessive have to wait for a mutation? If the recessive exists in population it just has to wait for two organisms with the same recessive to breed.
I'm sorry, have you looked at all the date samples done by creation scientists (sent off to official, well respected laboratories for testing) and the samples show wildly innacurate dates? I have read many examples of this.
Care to share a few? Something other than this one?
As for using outdated arguments, from what I can see creationists have rejected the idea of the speed of light slowing.
Those were just a few of many and not all creationists have given up the changing speed of light argument. Many Young-Earth Creationists still cling to it in some form or fashion.
I don't know what the moon dust argument is, could you please tell me? I think I can guess.
That the cosmic dust accumulation on the moon should have built up into a layer 20 feet deep (or whatever) if the moon were really 5 billion years old. Long and short, the calculation was based on erroneous suppositions.
Creationists are nowhere near as bad as evolutionary textbooks publishing information long ago demonstrated to be false or a hoax. The peppermoths is a great example.
I beg to differ. Creationists are called to the carpet on a daily basis for some of the things they try to get away with. Peppermoths should have only ever been used as an example of natural selection. If there ever was a textbook that said it was proof of macroevolution, it was wrong. All 3 textbooks I've seen and all I've ever heard of use it as an example of natural selection. Unless you can come up with scores more examples, you don't have a leg to stand on by saying creationists are nowhere near as bad.
If you'd like some reading material, check some of these out. A couple of visits to the ICR museum and some of the inaccuracies and falsehoods contained therein. Take a look at the Creation Research Society's creed that members must adhere to. A list of "distortions" of truth by ICR founder Duane Gish.
I am going along, aren't I?
Btw, Kent Hovind still sports the light speed decay theory. You might want to check out Answers in Genesis and TrueOrigins and see if you can spot more errors on your own
"The major tenets of the evolutionary synthesis, then, were that populations contain genetic variation that arises by random (ie. not adaptively directed) mutation and recombination; that populations evolve by changes in gene frequency brought about by random genetic drift, gene flow, and especially natural selection; that most adaptive genetic variants have individually slight phenotypic effects so that phenotypic changes are gradual (although some alleles with discrete effects may be advantageous, as in certain color polymorphisms); that diversification comes about by speciation, which normally entails the gradual evolution of reproductive isolation among populations; and that these processes, continued for sufficiently long, give rise to changes of such great magnitude as to warrant the designation of higher taxonomic levels (genera, families, and so forth)."
- Futuyma, D.J. in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates, 1986; p.12
As to falsifiablity, I'm cribbing from the Talk.origins website here as they are a wonderful resource and I am a layman myself when it comes to these matters, an interested layman, but a layman nonetheless.
Well, I was asking for a scientific theory of Creation and what you've given is simply assertion. But as to the main thrust of your argument, I agree. God doesn't preclude science, science doesn't preclude god.
:)
because the Universe, the Earth, and each one of us exists as part of God.
Good Ol' Pantheistic Solipsism, a philosophy I try to believe in at least 3 days out of every week....
Also, I have taken the time to understand evolution.
Do you really understand it if you didn't even know that beneficial mutations had been observed?
I have also read up on creation theory, and have come to understand it. If you (or the guys at talk.origins) can't put in the effort to do the same for creation theory, why should I have to type it up for you? The information is out there, go find it.
Believe me, I and hundreds of other have scoured creationist websites for this elusive theory. It has not materialized. To date, noone has cared to explicate a scientific Theory of Creation (fyi you need a falsifiable hypothesis if you want to take a crack at coming up with one).
And how exactly does that help or hinder evolutionary theory in the slightest?
Creationists teach that the adaptation is done by already present genetic information.
That's certainly one way that natural selection works. However, as pointed out by others, you are wrong in your assumption that all mutations are harmful. Mutations are roughly 90% neutral. In a population, harmful mutations (those that negatively impact a creature's ability to reproduce) are weeded out fairly efficiently. A beneficial mutation will permeate a population fairly rapidly. If I remember correctly, a mutation that confers a 1% survival advantage will spread throughout the population in 100 generations or so.
Given the above facts, evolution has to explain how recessive genes were created.
Again explained by another poster. Negative traits are weeded out via natural selection.
Creationists also have problems with dating methods that show the earth to be millions of years old.
These contentions have all been debunked to my knowledge unless something new has come to light in the last six months. Here is a good starting point. There is also no good evidence of a global flood or even a reasonable mechanism by which such a flood could happen.
two people who possess the same beneficial recessive gene will also posess in common a much greater number of recessive harmful genes which will have opportunity to express themselves.
I think you're assuming that all or most new beneficial genes come from recessives and not new dominant mutations.
- from AN INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY by Chris Colby
One thing I have tried to explain before is that both evolution and creation theory are not science. They are philosophy.
Evolutionary theory is based on science. Creation theory doesn't exist as a theory. It has never been explicated by anyone. All the creationist-types ever do is try to punch holes in evolutionary theory and never quite succeed. Science actually has a self-correcting mechanism of peer-reviewed journals to prevent erroneous memes from spreading. Believe me when I say that the ICR-type organizations have no such mechanism. They've been spreading some of their lies for years after it's been clearly pointed out to them they are wrong (moon dust, speed of light slowing down, sun shrinking, earth rotation slowing and more).
A message to all who might read this, not to the author I reply to
So should I not respond since this wasn't for me in particular?
I am one who likes to understand and know the truth.
A noble desire.
What is a fiction is the macro-evolution of one species changing enough to become a new one, and through this progression all variety of plants and animals today have come to be. I have presented arguments before that no-one has been able to answer.
Speciation has been observed, maybe not to your specification, but it's convinced the taxonomists anyway. We've observed it in the last 100 years, it's hard to imagine how much things might change in a length of time 30 million times longer than this.
As to your unanswerable arguments, I'd love to hear them.
Ya know, IBM still sells PC's ... :)
IBM PCD
I tell you, I don't believe the PC Division is interested in the home market very much anymore. Home users cost a mint to support compared to business customers.
But I don't foresee IBM getting out of the PC business until the PC dies. Reason being that they're a single point of purchase when companies need to roll out a big server (or 20) and a few hundred (or thousand) clients. It's these sales with support contracts that make the money, not the $600 box sold to grandma whose razor-thin profit margin is blown the first time she calls the helpdesk asking how to setup AOL.