Re:Good to see misinformation is alive and well.
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
They most certainly don't hate us for the CIA's 1953 takedown of democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran and the subsequent installment of a repressing and torturing Shah.
Anything that happened between 1943 and 1989 is a result of the Cold War and blame can be placed on any number of countries/leaders. There is no excuse for killing of any kind in my book (except maybe capital punishment). None of these things were necessarily 'right' or 'good', but they may have been the best thing at the time to do. Besides, countries make mistakes just like you and me. Throwing up a list of the brightest and most horrible as an attack is childish and naive.
It's not that we're hated because we still, to this day, Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon.
Tell that to the jews in America that have tremendous political clout. The US is a republic that more often than not listens to it's constituents and that is why Israel gets the guns and planes. Add to that the need for an American interest in the region and you have a strong impetus for the US to stay involved in Israel.
As a 17 year old, I get enough of this "They hate us because we have all this good shit" on the news and at school.
Maybe you should spend some time in a foreign school where they feed you the "We hate Americans because they starve our children" line every day when in fact the dictator has 58% of the countries wealth, food, electricity and clean water in his 100 palaces. Then you can begin to be justified in claiming to want to know "the real matters at hand."
You cannot do everything on a PC that you can do on a Mac
I disagree. I have burned several DVDs, both home movies and legal copies of movies. As for Win/Linux, I use both and have had success with both. Granted that I work in the entertainment industry and have access to drivers/support/help that most don't. I have a dual P3-ghz machine with a gig of RAM that I built myself. It has RH 7.2 and Win2k. I also have a kick ass video card and that probably helps. I guess what I mean to say is that a Mac is great for people who want a no brain solution to digvid, "Everything else I've discovered that I love (iTunes, iPod, iPhoto) is just gravy." Exactly.
After finally getting firewire to work I found that there were too many incompatible file formats. Maybe you can get it to work but I'm tired of tinkering every night.
I never had a problem, but maybe my firewire board is made differently. All I know is that I have no incentive to look at a Mac when I can do all I need with a PC. Not to mention that I can upgrade without breaking the bank.
1) Because I can do everything on a PC that I could do on a MAC.
2) Because I don't need flashy/trendy/cool cases to do my job.
3) Because I don't want to pay for an OS when I can get one for free.
4) Linus is much 'cooler' than Steve.
5) I don't need to make Toy Story 3 on my computer, just recompile a kernel and play Civ3.
6) I don't want that damn iMac making faces at me.
Slashdot has got to be the best place to find all the April fools jokes on the net. I don't even have to browse through story after story looking for a lame one to question as real or fake. They are all presented for me here to oggle and laugh at with millions of other/.ers. And I thought onion was America's finest news source.
but there are are increasingly few serious climatologists, meteorologists and geologists who don't believe that human activities are having a sigificant effect on the Earth's climate.
As a former meteorology major at the U of Arizona, I still have contacts with many meteorologists both in and out of government service. I currently work at a TV station and am friends with the stations staff meteorologists. From what I have determined from this very loose knit network of scientific professionals, most agree that man has an impact on the environment, but that the degree of impact has yet to be decided.
Fact is there is too much evidence for *both* arguments to say that one or the other is right. Since it is mainstream right now to be aligned with pro-global warming camps, more data will surface to support that argument. Personally, I think that while global temps may be increasing, Human involvement is entirely overrated.
Sorry, due to the potential seriousness of the threat, the burden of proof is on you.
On the contrary, due to the enormous economical and social impact of the changes proposed by the "Environmentalists" to fix the "problem", the burden of proof is on you. Furthermore, there is a greater threat from NEOs smashing into earth than from a global rise in temps of 2 degrees Celsius over the next fifty years.
Correct me if I am wrong (it's been a while since orbital physics) but since the payloads are being placed into Geosynchronous orbits, angular momentum is conserved. Since the two objects are still in the same system together, they keep the same relative energies (greater angular speed for the payload at a greater distance equals same energy). If they leave orbit, then I believe you may see a loss of momentum.
Have we really? Last time I checked neither bin Laden nor Mohommad Omar had been captured, nor seen, and few if any high-ranking officials in Al-Qaeda had been captured.
Your quote of the article was accurate. We *have* undermined the network and overturned the government of Afghanistan. Are we done? You said it yourself, "it's not even close to resolved." So what's your point? Katz didn't say "we're done". But we are making and have made progress towards our stated goals. Futhermore, we have been told from the beginning that it would be a long hard war. Too bad we don't know who we are really fighting and it seems that the battleground is more on US soil digitally than anywhere else. I think that is what he was trying to say.
I don't really want to get intoa big debate, but...
Neither do I, but... the infamous 9.11.01 event shows that you don't have to have access to guns to kill, or even kill en masse. As for the loose screws in the USA, even without access to 'legal' guns, they would find them anyway. Where there is a will there is a way. Ask McVeigh, oh wait I guess you can't.
Come on... chimps and humans are genetically very similar, but hopefully it's not just the keen mined researchers that can tell the difference between the two.
Precicely my point. In the article, the organisms used were only identifiable via genetic tests. Obviously humans and chimps are different beings, these organisms were not.
I won't even begin to counter you point for point but I will reply because I cannot look at your obvious hypocrisy without doing so. Yeah, some "whackjobs" claiming to be Christian killed some docs in the name of religion. Killing is inherantly against Christianity and therefore, these people are by definition not Christians, regardless of what they profess. And some of them want to change what is being taught in schools. Is that in and of itself wrong?!? Certainly not under the US Constitution. What if some day evolution is proven to be wrong? Will it be OK by you to change school curriculum? What about adding abortion understanding to the health classes? The point is that no matter what change you try to make, someone is not going to like it. That does not mean it is wrong and you spouting obscenities off at "religious freaks" makes you just as much of a freak.
I hate bigots just as much as the next man, but I hate hypocrits even more.
In fact, the first schisms were already happening in the church not long after jesus died.
Actually, the first schisms happened before he died. See Judas Iscariot, John the Baptist, etc. Catholics claim a lineage of authority from Christ himself. Factually speaking, none of the Apostles lived long enough after Christ's death to bestow such authority. Protestants recognized this and tried to 'reform' the church from without with varying degrees of success. Mormons claim an apostasy and restoration and that they are the ones with the only true Christian religion. Other religions that believe in Christ are a variation on this theme.
Why does one have to draw a line between micro and macro?
Good question. I don't if we *have* to, but it seems convenient to a lot scientists to categorize things. For me, it is simply this: to say that one organism changes into another is quite different from saying that it simply changes. Genetically speaking, the organisms are different that is true, but some of the differences are so miniscule that it is only noticeable to the very keen minded researcher.
Let's see the independantly-verified study on Mt. St. Helens lava.
I will be the first to admit that I don't know where to find it. However, why would you ask me this when you go on to say in this thread, "The studies in question were performed to confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the scientific community that this particular type of rock (and, by extension, most rock of seabed origin) is unsuitable for radiometric dating."
So it sounds like bait to me and I won't waste time replying, which young-earth was kind enough to do.
Anything a fellow creationist comes up with, that fits what you want to believe, is accepted as fact without question.
What a load of crap. Of course you say yourself that qualifications aren't everything and can even prejudice a person. I don't claim to have all the definitive proof for Creation. But I do claim to believe in a God who has children that look just like Him and do so for a very good reason. I also claim that the earth was made (by divinity or not) by materials that themselves are very old. I also believe that those materials did not exist in an elemental state as those who hold to the stellar disk model would have you believe.
But if you and your fellow creationists wish to be taken seriously, present proof based on facts.
That's the problem. I don't seek to change your mind. I seek to gain understanding. I don't want to convince you that you are wrong or to necessarily be taken seriously by you. I have come to believe in God from a very personal set of experiences and I don't expect you or anyone else to do so because of anything I say. As for fact, that is a very elusive and subjective thing in my opinion. Else why would science continue to change over the years if it was based on fact from the beginning?
The premise that all truth comes from God, is - as you observe - part of your religion. This presents several (well, at least two) problems: it assumes the truth of your religion at the start - rendering it impossible you to acknowledge the truth of anything contrary to your religion; and it implies that true things are 'given' to man by your God alone - wouldn't this imply that those affliated with other belief structures would not be capable of finding true things?
Problem 1 as you state it, is that if I assume all truth comes from God (specifically the God I worship) then truth cannot come from other sources (other religons). I definately hold to my statement that truth can only come from God. However, let me clarify myself. Truth originates from God but can be manifested in many ways. The industrial revolution was categorized by many inventions that changed the way humans communicated, sheltered themselves, travelled and did business. Certainly the science behind these inventions can be considered truth. However, a precious few of these came about as a result of members of my religion. Therefore, just because a man or woman recieved a flash of inspiration to create invention X or cure for disease Y, does not mean the truth came from something other than God. In fact I would submit to you that indeed that is exactly where that inspiration/revelation/insight came from. I believe that we are all literal children of God and that He has a vested interest in us. That means that He wants us to learn and grow (just like we do for our own children). The point is, that we learn from Him directly and indirectly but it all comes from God.
However, wouldn't this humility require that you admit to uncertainty about the assumptions your religion is based upon?
Good question! I try to never assume anything. However, the basic tenents of any beleif in a Supreme Being tend to revolve around faith. This can be a tricky subject to understand, at least it was for me at first. To believe in something requires faith. I have faith that Russia exists though I have never seen it directly. I have seen pictures and even spoken to people from there. But in the end, I have to make a decision as to whether I believe in such a place. The same is true for believing God. I have never seen Him and don't remember being in heaven where He lives. But I have heard of people seeing Him (Moses/Mohammed/Peter) and so I have to make a choice. If you are really trying to have faith, then you need a desire to have it. This desire can then find a place to grow into faith. After a time the faith becomes knowledge. My religion makes very few assumptions and is pretty much founded on very basic principles. So I don't need to make any allowances for it. By definition, if I believe in a religion then there is no doubt. There was at one time, but I have had them satisfied enough for me.
hope the points were clear enough without offending.
It takes a lot to offend me so don't worry about it.
Not a problem. I tend to not point out things like that unless it becomes a big issue. You caught it so it's no big deal. I totally dislike the way we are abusing the earth and make large efforts to be less wasteful with my resources. I just don't like it when people try to hype up a percieved problem into a looming catastrophy to further their own agendas.
The strongest case is the first, where two Drosophila paulistorum strains developed hybrid infertility in the lab. Hybrid infertility is the basic 'litmus test' for speciation. If the flies in group A can't successfully mate with the flies in group B, they are probably different species.
I will look them up. However, from the description, it seems that they are more closely related to 'micro' than 'macro' evolution. One has to decide where to draw the line and science makes it convenient with standard definitions. I don't see how interbreeding (or lack thereof) in and of itself makes it an evolutionary change.
Are the professors you ask actually evolutionary biologists, or are they molecular/cellular folks? Asking the molecular people about specific speciation events is like asking evolutionary biologists about specific enzymatic mechanisms - it's biology, but not the kind they know the guts of.
One evolutionary biologist and two paleontologists. I am focusing my efforts now on the human evolution side because this seems much more pertinent to my beliefs. There happens to be a great deal of information on human evolution studies so it is taking me quite some time to go through it. So far, nothing that satisfies the scientific community's own standards for fact has been found by me.
I'm sorry - but by making it clear that your religion is at stake, and is in serious danger should 'macro' (your term) evolution be real, you have made your argument very weak.
On the contrary, part of my religion is that all truth comes from God. Just because I don't understand it or know about it does not make it any less than true. Despite my scepticism, I am not without humility in accepting truth when I know it to be so. So far, I have not found anything to contradict my beliefs.
Speciation events (that is the creation of new species) have been observed directly.
Really?!? I would love a link or reference on this one! Seeing as how my wife is a biologist and I frequently speak with University professors on this topic and have *never* heard of this, it would be quite a surprise. I anxiously await your reply.
However, the term creationist, is more commonly used to describe those who disbelieve the theory of evolution, and it is these people, who my comment was aimed at.
Evolution is fine for people who do not believe in a God. However, to those who do, it simply does not hold water. At least to me. There are major problems with evolution despite your original post's claim that it didn't need any help.
* The fossil record is not complete, indeed it is far from complete. * Radiometric dating is inaccurate. Hardened lava from Mt. St. Helens that is known to be 8 years old tested, using the same equipment as archeologists to be 350,000 to 3,500,000 years old. It's theory relies on the even distribution of isotopes within the tested material. Since this simply is not the case, all radiometric dating is suspect.
So as a scientist I find big problems with evolution (these are just a couple). As a person who believes in a God, I cannot subscribe to the understanding of man as a trump the supremecy of God.
There are many Christians who believe in a old earth, with God using evolution as a tool to create life's diversity who would call themselves creationists.
I believe that the materials the earth is made of is old but not the earth itself (relatively speaking). While micro evolution may take place, Man did not evolve from anything and will not evolve to anything. This simply goes against the basic teachings of Christianity. At least the Christianity I believe in.
Also, would slowing erosion in some areas be a bad thing? My girlfriend is studying geology...
My wife teaches biology and when you decrease erosion, you decrease sediment production. This can have a major impact on local marine life (plankton, sand sharks, sea weed, etc.) Any impact on the food chain carries up to the top. Studies around large harbor areas (where shoreline is cemented in) shows this very thing happening. So yes it would be great for homeowners (assuming the erosion is actually slowed) but not so great for local marine life.
Measurement from groundstations date back over a century, allowing us to make some slightly more useful observations about the past 10 years.
Okay, but there are some caveats with using only ground based reporting stations. First, 100 years ago there were only a handful of reliable measurement stations. So that data cannot be used for any kind of global assessment. Second, there is a rising doubt over how much of the data prior to about thirty years ago that is accurate enough to use in making anything under half a degree change mean anything. Last, new evidence suggests that urban areas are heat sinks and therefore may skew readings for those stations affected by their local climate change. Urban weather stations (including airports) account for almost 70% of installed stations worldwide.
What you are saying is, using 23 years of measurements, we were not able to say that the last 20 years showed significant increases in global temperatures. Don't you think that is a little disingenuous?
What I'm saying is that we place too much emphasis on ground based measurements especially in light of more recent sattelite data. Despite it's relativy short history of data collection, it does shed some light on the picture as a whole. It would be foolish to say that over twenty years the earth's temperature increased when two different measuring methods during that same time frame displays a discrepancy.
what about all those diagrams and handwritten notes.
When I worked for Intel Software Testing (hence the nick) we used Visual Source Safe. It allowed us to store any kind of document in it (source, jpg, vsd, mpp, etc). With the check-in/check-out feature and version history it allowed us great flexibility and reduced wasted time figuring out who changed what.
I know it's a M$ product, but it did the job for us.
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They most certainly don't hate us for the CIA's 1953 takedown of democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran and the subsequent installment of a repressing and torturing Shah.
Anything that happened between 1943 and 1989 is a result of the Cold War and blame can be placed on any number of countries/leaders. There is no excuse for killing of any kind in my book (except maybe capital punishment). None of these things were necessarily 'right' or 'good', but they may have been the best thing at the time to do. Besides, countries make mistakes just like you and me. Throwing up a list of the brightest and most horrible as an attack is childish and naive.
It's not that we're hated because we still, to this day, Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon.
Tell that to the jews in America that have tremendous political clout. The US is a republic that more often than not listens to it's constituents and that is why Israel gets the guns and planes. Add to that the need for an American interest in the region and you have a strong impetus for the US to stay involved in Israel.
As a 17 year old, I get enough of this "They hate us because we have all this good shit" on the news and at school.
Maybe you should spend some time in a foreign school where they feed you the "We hate Americans because they starve our children" line every day when in fact the dictator has 58% of the countries wealth, food, electricity and clean water in his 100 palaces. Then you can begin to be justified in claiming to want to know "the real matters at hand."
You cannot do everything on a PC that you can do on a Mac
I disagree. I have burned several DVDs, both home movies and legal copies of movies. As for Win/Linux, I use both and have had success with both. Granted that I work in the entertainment industry and have access to drivers/support/help that most don't. I have a dual P3-ghz machine with a gig of RAM that I built myself. It has RH 7.2 and Win2k. I also have a kick ass video card and that probably helps. I guess what I mean to say is that a Mac is great for people who want a no brain solution to digvid, "Everything else I've discovered that I love (iTunes, iPod, iPhoto) is just gravy." Exactly.
After finally getting firewire to work I found that there were too many incompatible file formats. Maybe you can get it to work but I'm tired of tinkering every night.
I never had a problem, but maybe my firewire board is made differently. All I know is that I have no incentive to look at a Mac when I can do all I need with a PC. Not to mention that I can upgrade without breaking the bank.
1) Because I can do everything on a PC that I could do on a MAC.
2) Because I don't need flashy/trendy/cool cases to do my job.
3) Because I don't want to pay for an OS when I can get one for free.
4) Linus is much 'cooler' than Steve.
5) I don't need to make Toy Story 3 on my computer, just recompile a kernel and play Civ3.
6) I don't want that damn iMac making faces at me.
Slashdot has got to be the best place to find all the April fools jokes on the net. I don't even have to browse through story after story looking for a lame one to question as real or fake. They are all presented for me here to oggle and laugh at with millions of other /.ers. And I thought onion was America's finest news source.
It's not just this story...
but there are are increasingly few serious climatologists, meteorologists and geologists who don't believe that human activities are having a sigificant effect on the Earth's climate.
As a former meteorology major at the U of Arizona, I still have contacts with many meteorologists both in and out of government service. I currently work at a TV station and am friends with the stations staff meteorologists. From what I have determined from this very loose knit network of scientific professionals, most agree that man has an impact on the environment, but that the degree of impact has yet to be decided.
Fact is there is too much evidence for *both* arguments to say that one or the other is right. Since it is mainstream right now to be aligned with pro-global warming camps, more data will surface to support that argument. Personally, I think that while global temps may be increasing, Human involvement is entirely overrated.
Sorry, due to the potential seriousness of the threat, the burden of proof is on you.
On the contrary, due to the enormous economical and social impact of the changes proposed by the "Environmentalists" to fix the "problem", the burden of proof is on you. Furthermore, there is a greater threat from NEOs smashing into earth than from a global rise in temps of 2 degrees Celsius over the next fifty years.
Correct me if I am wrong (it's been a while since orbital physics) but since the payloads are being placed into Geosynchronous orbits, angular momentum is conserved. Since the two objects are still in the same system together, they keep the same relative energies (greater angular speed for the payload at a greater distance equals same energy). If they leave orbit, then I believe you may see a loss of momentum.
Have we really? Last time I checked neither bin Laden nor Mohommad Omar had been captured, nor seen, and few if any high-ranking officials in Al-Qaeda had been captured.
Your quote of the article was accurate. We *have* undermined the network and overturned the government of Afghanistan. Are we done? You said it yourself, "it's not even close to resolved." So what's your point? Katz didn't say "we're done". But we are making and have made progress towards our stated goals. Futhermore, we have been told from the beginning that it would be a long hard war. Too bad we don't know who we are really fighting and it seems that the battleground is more on US soil digitally than anywhere else. I think that is what he was trying to say.
So their selection/identification has some basis on actual use.
Got the letter Saturday and one of my sites is on the list, but not active.
I was with Register.com but just switched to Go Daddy (9$ vs. $30 is a no brainer). It will be a cold day in hell when Veri$ign gets my cash.
I don't really want to get intoa big debate, but...
Neither do I, but... the infamous 9.11.01 event shows that you don't have to have access to guns to kill, or even kill en masse. As for the loose screws in the USA, even without access to 'legal' guns, they would find them anyway. Where there is a will there is a way. Ask McVeigh, oh wait I guess you can't.
Come on... chimps and humans are genetically very similar, but hopefully it's not just the keen mined researchers that can tell the difference between the two. Precicely my point. In the article, the organisms used were only identifiable via genetic tests. Obviously humans and chimps are different beings, these organisms were not.
Holy flamefest!
I won't even begin to counter you point for point but I will reply because I cannot look at your obvious hypocrisy without doing so. Yeah, some "whackjobs" claiming to be Christian killed some docs in the name of religion. Killing is inherantly against Christianity and therefore, these people are by definition not Christians, regardless of what they profess. And some of them want to change what is being taught in schools. Is that in and of itself wrong?!? Certainly not under the US Constitution. What if some day evolution is proven to be wrong? Will it be OK by you to change school curriculum? What about adding abortion understanding to the health classes? The point is that no matter what change you try to make, someone is not going to like it. That does not mean it is wrong and you spouting obscenities off at "religious freaks" makes you just as much of a freak.
I hate bigots just as much as the next man, but I hate hypocrits even more.
In fact, the first schisms were already happening in the church not long after jesus died.
Actually, the first schisms happened before he died. See Judas Iscariot, John the Baptist, etc. Catholics claim a lineage of authority from Christ himself. Factually speaking, none of the Apostles lived long enough after Christ's death to bestow such authority. Protestants recognized this and tried to 'reform' the church from without with varying degrees of success. Mormons claim an apostasy and restoration and that they are the ones with the only true Christian religion. Other religions that believe in Christ are a variation on this theme.
Why does one have to draw a line between micro and macro?
Good question. I don't if we *have* to, but it seems convenient to a lot scientists to categorize things. For me, it is simply this: to say that one organism changes into another is quite different from saying that it simply changes. Genetically speaking, the organisms are different that is true, but some of the differences are so miniscule that it is only noticeable to the very keen minded researcher.
Let's see the independantly-verified study on Mt. St. Helens lava.
I will be the first to admit that I don't know where to find it. However, why would you ask me this when you go on to say in this thread, "The studies in question were performed to confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the scientific community that this particular type of rock (and, by extension, most rock of seabed origin) is unsuitable for radiometric dating."
So it sounds like bait to me and I won't waste time replying, which young-earth was kind enough to do.
Anything a fellow creationist comes up with, that fits what you want to believe, is accepted as fact without question.
What a load of crap. Of course you say yourself that qualifications aren't everything and can even prejudice a person. I don't claim to have all the definitive proof for Creation. But I do claim to believe in a God who has children that look just like Him and do so for a very good reason. I also claim that the earth was made (by divinity or not) by materials that themselves are very old. I also believe that those materials did not exist in an elemental state as those who hold to the stellar disk model would have you believe.
But if you and your fellow creationists wish to be taken seriously, present proof based on facts.
That's the problem. I don't seek to change your mind. I seek to gain understanding. I don't want to convince you that you are wrong or to necessarily be taken seriously by you. I have come to believe in God from a very personal set of experiences and I don't expect you or anyone else to do so because of anything I say. As for fact, that is a very elusive and subjective thing in my opinion. Else why would science continue to change over the years if it was based on fact from the beginning?
The premise that all truth comes from God, is - as you observe - part of your religion. This presents several (well, at least two) problems: it assumes the truth of your religion at the start - rendering it impossible you to acknowledge the truth of anything contrary to your religion; and it implies that true things are 'given' to man by your God alone - wouldn't this imply that those affliated with other belief structures would not be capable of finding true things?
Problem 1 as you state it, is that if I assume all truth comes from God (specifically the God I worship) then truth cannot come from other sources (other religons). I definately hold to my statement that truth can only come from God. However, let me clarify myself. Truth originates from God but can be manifested in many ways. The industrial revolution was categorized by many inventions that changed the way humans communicated, sheltered themselves, travelled and did business. Certainly the science behind these inventions can be considered truth. However, a precious few of these came about as a result of members of my religion. Therefore, just because a man or woman recieved a flash of inspiration to create invention X or cure for disease Y, does not mean the truth came from something other than God. In fact I would submit to you that indeed that is exactly where that inspiration/revelation/insight came from. I believe that we are all literal children of God and that He has a vested interest in us. That means that He wants us to learn and grow (just like we do for our own children). The point is, that we learn from Him directly and indirectly but it all comes from God.
However, wouldn't this humility require that you admit to uncertainty about the assumptions your religion is based upon?
Good question! I try to never assume anything. However, the basic tenents of any beleif in a Supreme Being tend to revolve around faith. This can be a tricky subject to understand, at least it was for me at first. To believe in something requires faith. I have faith that Russia exists though I have never seen it directly. I have seen pictures and even spoken to people from there. But in the end, I have to make a decision as to whether I believe in such a place. The same is true for believing God. I have never seen Him and don't remember being in heaven where He lives. But I have heard of people seeing Him (Moses/Mohammed/Peter) and so I have to make a choice. If you are really trying to have faith, then you need a desire to have it. This desire can then find a place to grow into faith. After a time the faith becomes knowledge. My religion makes very few assumptions and is pretty much founded on very basic principles. So I don't need to make any allowances for it. By definition, if I believe in a religion then there is no doubt. There was at one time, but I have had them satisfied enough for me.
hope the points were clear enough without offending.
It takes a lot to offend me so don't worry about it.
Actually I owe you an apology...
Not a problem. I tend to not point out things like that unless it becomes a big issue. You caught it so it's no big deal. I totally dislike the way we are abusing the earth and make large efforts to be less wasteful with my resources. I just don't like it when people try to hype up a percieved problem into a looming catastrophy to further their own agendas.
The strongest case is the first, where two Drosophila paulistorum strains developed hybrid infertility in the lab. Hybrid infertility is the basic 'litmus test' for speciation. If the flies in group A can't successfully mate with the flies in group B, they are probably different species.
I will look them up. However, from the description, it seems that they are more closely related to 'micro' than 'macro' evolution. One has to decide where to draw the line and science makes it convenient with standard definitions. I don't see how interbreeding (or lack thereof) in and of itself makes it an evolutionary change.
Are the professors you ask actually evolutionary biologists, or are they molecular/cellular folks? Asking the molecular people about specific speciation events is like asking evolutionary biologists about specific enzymatic mechanisms - it's biology, but not the kind they know the guts of.
One evolutionary biologist and two paleontologists. I am focusing my efforts now on the human evolution side because this seems much more pertinent to my beliefs. There happens to be a great deal of information on human evolution studies so it is taking me quite some time to go through it. So far, nothing that satisfies the scientific community's own standards for fact has been found by me.
I'm sorry - but by making it clear that your religion is at stake, and is in serious danger should 'macro' (your term) evolution be real, you have made your argument very weak.
On the contrary, part of my religion is that all truth comes from God. Just because I don't understand it or know about it does not make it any less than true. Despite my scepticism, I am not without humility in accepting truth when I know it to be so. So far, I have not found anything to contradict my beliefs.
Speciation events (that is the creation of new species) have been observed directly.
Really?!? I would love a link or reference on this one! Seeing as how my wife is a biologist and I frequently speak with University professors on this topic and have *never* heard of this, it would be quite a surprise. I anxiously await your reply.
However, the term creationist, is more commonly used to describe those who disbelieve the theory of evolution, and it is these people, who my comment was aimed at.
Evolution is fine for people who do not believe in a God. However, to those who do, it simply does not hold water. At least to me. There are major problems with evolution despite your original post's claim that it didn't need any help.
* The fossil record is not complete, indeed it is far from complete.
* Radiometric dating is inaccurate. Hardened lava from Mt. St. Helens that is known to be 8 years old tested, using the same equipment as archeologists to be 350,000 to 3,500,000 years old. It's theory relies on the even distribution of isotopes within the tested material. Since this simply is not the case, all radiometric dating is suspect.
So as a scientist I find big problems with evolution (these are just a couple). As a person who believes in a God, I cannot subscribe to the understanding of man as a trump the supremecy of God.
There are many Christians who believe in a old earth, with God using evolution as a tool to create life's diversity who would call themselves creationists.
I believe that the materials the earth is made of is old but not the earth itself (relatively speaking). While micro evolution may take place, Man did not evolve from anything and will not evolve to anything. This simply goes against the basic teachings of Christianity. At least the Christianity I believe in.
Also, would slowing erosion in some areas be a bad thing? My girlfriend is studying geology...
My wife teaches biology and when you decrease erosion, you decrease sediment production. This can have a major impact on local marine life (plankton, sand sharks, sea weed, etc.) Any impact on the food chain carries up to the top. Studies around large harbor areas (where shoreline is cemented in) shows this very thing happening. So yes it would be great for homeowners (assuming the erosion is actually slowed) but not so great for local marine life.
Measurement from groundstations date back over a century, allowing us to make some slightly more useful observations about the past 10 years.
Okay, but there are some caveats with using only ground based reporting stations. First, 100 years ago there were only a handful of reliable measurement stations. So that data cannot be used for any kind of global assessment. Second, there is a rising doubt over how much of the data prior to about thirty years ago that is accurate enough to use in making anything under half a degree change mean anything. Last, new evidence suggests that urban areas are heat sinks and therefore may skew readings for those stations affected by their local climate change. Urban weather stations (including airports) account for almost 70% of installed stations worldwide.
What you are saying is, using 23 years of measurements, we were not able to say that the last 20 years showed significant increases in global temperatures. Don't you think that is a little disingenuous?
What I'm saying is that we place too much emphasis on ground based measurements especially in light of more recent sattelite data. Despite it's relativy short history of data collection, it does shed some light on the picture as a whole. It would be foolish to say that over twenty years the earth's temperature increased when two different measuring methods during that same time frame displays a discrepancy.
what about all those diagrams and handwritten notes.
When I worked for Intel Software Testing (hence the nick) we used Visual Source Safe. It allowed us to store any kind of document in it (source, jpg, vsd, mpp, etc). With the check-in/check-out feature and version history it allowed us great flexibility and reduced wasted time figuring out who changed what.
I know it's a M$ product, but it did the job for us.
Try these URLs:
t xt16.htm
http://www.stark.kent.edu/writing/review 1998/wise.htm
http://www.unesco.org/courier/1998_08/uk/dossier/
While these don't go into specific implementations, they are a good starting point for more information on the merging of the technologies.