"The parent poster cannot proclaim the virtues of modern knowledge, lump all people of faith into one statement, then chastise them. THAT, my friend, is intellectually lazy."
Agreed. But then, most people use the term "creationist" to refer to YECs or other denialists. There are many theistic evolutionists who could be called creationists too, but whom have no conflict with mainstream science. But I'm not sure even they would identify with a criticism aimed at creationists.
What you claim about people trolling is true, but trivial. Sure, for ANY point of view you can point to a couple of knuckleheads. But that's a pretty weak way to attack science in general, and claim that evolution is a "faith" that people are mad about anyone criticizing. Of course, if you can show me a criticism that's actually accurate and informed, I'll be very surprised. There are a number of very real hotly debated controversies within mainstream biology. But I've never, not once, seen any creationist mention them.
I can't find any reference to this fact about the "reappearing Sabertooth" anywhere. Nor does it really make much sense that we could declare something extinct if there is fossil evidence that it existed after that period. Nor am I aware of any genes in domestic felines that can simply be turned on to produce a Sabertoth. So..... Cite?
I'd say that by and large, this isn't true. The vast majority of scientists have no interest in, and pay no attention to, these sorts of political debates. They certainly aren't doing research with an eye towards ID: they've been persuing the same subjects as careers, not as activism.
I'd say that what has started to change is the way the few politically and publical involved scientists have tried to convey information to the general public. They realize that the ID and creationist folks have been using PR tactics to try and sell their views without offerring anything substantive. So the science fans are fighting back.
It's worth noting that demanding full explanations for how everything evolved is particular premature in that we don't yet know how a lot of these work in the first place. It's pretty hard to reproduce and think about and test simpler or ancient versions of something when you barely understand hwo it does what it does in the here and now. We're learning, but it's no coincidence that people like Behe have picked for their examples things which lie very very very far back in time and are still largely unstudied.
It's also worth nothing that the IC camp has made arguments about plausibility and incredulity (there's no way this could have evolved!). Scientists have already countered with descriptions of possibility: many different ways this or that could have evolved (we just can't be sure which one was THE one)! The IC then retreated to demanding your "step-by-step" explanation of how it DID in fact evolve. But this is a very different question: it goes from pointing out a potential dispositive flaw in evolution to merely bickering about the incomplete present state of our knowledge: which isn't a very strong criticism of evolution at all. So I'd say that while they wouldn't admit it, they HAVE cowered in defeat, or at least retreated to a fairly unimportant position.
Leaving aside the rather silly speculative example, natural selection acting on a population IS evolution. It's leading to a population more suited to a particular lifestyle and overall collective behavior, which itself a new trait.
Mutations certainly creates the options available, but natural selection is the only measure of what "better" actually means.
I'd say that the problem is that the evidence for evolution requires a lot of prior knowledge. You have to be reasonably well informed about: chemistry, genetics, bio-chem, statistics, geology, and the basic scientific method to put it all together. Most laypeople simply have neither the time nor the interest to devote to learning those things, much less looking at how all the evidence for evolution fits together.
I'm not sure what the solution is, other than more education. Sadly, in the US at least, despite creationism being banned, basic biology is barely taught in many places, and evolution is often quietly skipped entirely.
I wonder if the people who answered yes to this really believe that:
a) the dinosaurs never existed b) if they did, that it had no real effect on the ecology: things were still pretty much like they are now, just with dinos running around.
I mean, the era of the dinos are by the far most well-known geologic period other than our own. And you need only to have seen a few imaginative pics of this time to know that they lived in a radically different ecology: all different plants, all different creatures, very different climate, etc.
But maybe people manage to think of this as this as not much different from "in its present form"? I dunno. It's pretty hard to wrap ones mind around it.
"Another is to point out evolution's flaws (something evolutionists get very testy about, btw. They don't like their faith questioned anymore than religious people do)"
It's easy to make this accusation, but intellectually lazy.
I'd say that scientists spend more time picking apart each others flaws and mistakes than in almost any other realm of life. What they get testy about is people who haven't bothered to actually study the debates, who know next to nothing about the subjects they are talking about, spreading falsehoods or gross misrepresentations of science. Worse, even when these ideas are debunked or even admitted as wrong by the people making them, they then still get brought up over and over again to new audiences. How many times have you heard the "evolution can't add new information" or "if we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes" nonsense? If people seemed determined to spread lies and falsehoods about me personally, I'd certainly get "testy." But not because anyone was questioning my "faith."
Yep. It's important to note that the functional abilities of proteins are often determined by just a few key sites (certain amnio acid sequences) which make the protein fold in a certain way. The rest of the protein is free to vary somewhat without making much of a difference. And sometimes, these sections can, through mutation, add a new function to the protein without taking away the old function: the new folding may not interfere with important part of the old shape.
Of course, this "retain the old, try the new" can happen in a lot of other ways in a genome as well: like if the code specifying a protein is duplicated, creating two identical copies... and then one can mutate and acquire a new function while the old one keeps doing the old function. This mechanism is what seems to have been the sort active with the evolution of blood clotting.
Indeed. Most scientists roll their eyes at the use of "missing link" because it obviously misleads far more than it informs. The basic idea is that we have a family tree of life. There are millions upon millions of branches (species), and billions upon billions of twigs (individual creatures) alive over time, but only a very very tiny proportion are still alive today. That means that there is a far far vaster space of animals that died that are NOT the ancestors of any living creature than there are.
Hence, since fossilization is basically a rare and random crapshoot, the chances of finding THE common ancestor are always unlikely, and we can't even reliably tell if we had. But, fortunately, it's also irrelevant. That's because we can learn more than enough simply by finding a fossil that's past a particular branching point about the creatures that led to those we see today. We are trying to learn the general, overall shape of the tree, and since features all tend to be unique to any given lineage, we can still always tell everything we need about the prior branchings from the random sampling of fossils we have.
Currently we have so many that all the basic connections are pretty clear. And when you add in genetic studies that confirm these relations, the conclusion becomes about as rock solid as can possibly be. Creationists often try to confuse the debate over how particular twigs branch with a debate over whether there even is a tree of life pattern and branching at all.
In the interests of good discussion, I'd like to answer any questions that those questioning or unfamiliar with evolution have about the basic idea. We always seem to get a lot of sniping and pile-ons, and cross debate on this subject, so I thought I'd at least offer a place to express doubts or ask somewhat more general theory questions. Most of what I'm best experienced with as regards to evolution is common descent, but I've been studying the subject for quite some time now both as an amatuer and as an aspiring grad student, so I feel pretty comfortable with the broad scope of evidence and debate as long as it isn't too overly technical, even if it's outside my general focus of zoology.
It's worth noting that most mathematicians already think ideas like Irreducible Complexity and Complex Specified Information are a load of hooey, despite the appeals people like Dembski and Behe make to having made innovative breakthroughs in these areas:
One good blog on this subject I've found is Good Math, Bad Math, and some posts relevant to this topic are:
-CSI is basically incoherent: if you translate the definition of CSI into non-obscure words, it essentially boils down to either "something that contains a lot of information, but doesn't contain a lot of information" or a definition for which EVERY piece of information is specified: http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/04/one-last-stab -at-dembski-vacuousness.html
-IC, when translated into math, makes no sense. We can actually PROVE in math that there is no general proof that some system is the simplest possible (which IC requires), much like we can prove that we can never solve the halting problem. http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/problem-with- irreducible-complexity.html
Not at all. I'm an atheist, but I welcome imaginative, honest theist thinkers like biologist Kenneth Miller who feel that, if anything, evolution BETTER fits this theology than the reverse. A universe in which God allows to develop on its own, and then reaches out PERSONALLY to sentient creatures (and even performs miracles as part of this reaching out) is far more "free" than one in which God is constantly micro-managing.
Now, I don't believe in God, but I bear no grudges against those who do, and as long as a belief doesn't involve scientific claims or attacking good science with falsehoods, but I applaud those who are taking their beliefs forward and refining them to make them more honest rather than simply defending dogma. If there were a God, the only kind I can possibly imagine would reward the former, not the latter.
Right. Just like their "Angels: How Many Came on Earth This Week to Find Lost Cats?" Time runs these sorts of glurge stories constantly (and they all boil down to: some people say its real, others say it not, who knows: did we beat National Enquirer in circulation?). This isn't the first time they've had a cover on the shroud either... and yet, they had just as little of interest to report then as well.
This thread is falling off the bottom of my comments page, but I'll try to keep up.
""Christianity" no more purports to be an ideology than a brick purports to be a suitable material for building."
You're just dancing around the basic issue here: Christianity at least IS some collection of views on the world, convictions, whatever. That means that those views are open for criticism, and not all criticism is automatically illegitimate.
"After all, there's no reason for any atheist to give a fig that someone believes in one God, versus believing in one million deities, or none at all; and, even if there was such a reason, there's no atheistic directive to "preach the gospel", try to "convert" others, etc."
This account of things is narrating a boxing match by only describing the punches being thrown by one guy. We live in a culture that is constantly denying that atheists can be good, worthwhile people and citiznes. Athiests are denying parental rights because of their lack of beliefs. They are the most hated miniority in the U.S. Why _wouldn't_ atheists have a chip on their shoulder? Not long ago going to a public school meant mandatory secretarian prayer, even if you were Jewish, and there are many people that still think it should be there, teacher led.
Your mileage may vary, but by and large, I don't find that there are many atheists at all advocating for the same thing in return: mandated atheism.
I'm pretty darn respectful of religion and religious people. I agree there are some atheists that aren't, and I find myself correcting them from time to time. But really, assholes are found in every group, so I don't see the point of trying to blame a particular group for assholes.
"Does that not mean those atheists are basically acting as if they are a religion? "
I dunno: are Democrats that spend their time attacking Republicans engaing in religion? Are all people that disagree with something automatically religious? What's the point of demanding that they be called religious anyway? So you can go "ha ha, you're just like me?!" What does that add to anything. So what?
"But the utter lack of response by atheists to their "own kind" speaking improperly on their behalf, and with disrespect, to and about others, suggests that this subculture is, in practice if not precisely, representative of atheists in general"
Again, you're working off the logic that atheists are a "kind." But atheists have nothing in common other than they DON'T have theism in common. Your insistence atheists are responsible for each other's behavior is no different than me insisting that Christians answer for Hitler, or that all non-football fans answer for what basketball fans do. You are focusing so hard on theism that you forget that people who are not theists are not all the same.
"If they are, then you define religion purely as a matter of what a belief system affirms (in that it promotes the idea that a deity exists), in which case it is quite clear, by that definition, that Christianity does not affirm the appropriateness of killing others (and the Bible in fact commands, allegedly in God's own words, "Thou shalt not murder")."
But since many sorts of killings are not defined by God as murder (if, for instance, committing genocide, bashing kids out of their mother's wombs, and sparing all the virgins for the use of God's people is not understood as "murder," then murder is a pretty vauge concept to begin with). But I'm not blaming you for that view, because there is no one "true" vision of Christianity. I'm just pointing out that it's very slippery to deny that all Christianity is free from criticism, and that whenever someone does something bad in its name, you can simply write them off as getting it wrong. Well, according to YOU, maybe.
"If they are not, then how can you believe atheism's denials are not essentially religious in nature?"
Because that makes no sense. I was born an atheist. I never had god beliefs to begin with, at
What would you consider to be a legimate criticism from the ID camp, as opposed merely to a misinformed or misleading one?
The fact is, most of ID is composed of arguments about the supposed weaknesses of evolution that turn out to be either bogus or based on a misunderstanding of how science works.
That's not to mention that ID grew directly out of the legal defeats of Scientific Creationism, and it's founding documents explicitly say that the goal is to be coy about stating anything outright, instead trying to convince the public that evolution is evil materialism, etc.
Um, in case you were of the notion that the Shroud was ever taken so seriously that it would have headlines if disproven, or that tons of scientists spend lots of time working on it just waiting for a breakthrough, you're wrong. Outside of a bunch of Shroud-nuts, not many people, not even the Catholic Church, care all that much about it or think that it's truth is so proven that disproving it would be news.
The burden of proof is on you to justify the claim that it is an almost 2000 year old relic that was THE specific Shroud used for one particular individual (Jesus) whose image was burned into it by magic.
Actually, you're a bit in the wrong on your own joke. IQ is defined as the normed MEDIAN value, meaning half below, half above, always. Average values, however, can be unbalanced: a small number of large values can skew the average. With averages, there is no guarantee of half on one side, half on the other.:)
Dawkins acn't be blamed for not covering every concievable single subject in one book, especially one written for laypeople. Discussing bio-chemistry is pretty hard when you can't guarantee that your audience knows much about chemistry, cell cycles, genetics, etc.
However, I must say that I find the incredulity a bit weird. It would be strange if light sensitivity _wasn't_ part of the nervous system. After all, lots of organic chemicals are sensitive to, and react differently to light. Those reactions would be a quite and predictable natural trait to select for.
"Also, Dawkins never really gets around to addressing the issue of how complicated protein molecules like hemoglobin could have come into being through only random mutations and non-random natural selection, an question which, as Dawkins himself mentions, a number of people have some problems with."
Again, you expect him to explain every single issue you can think of in a popular book, without using chemistry? The evolution of hemoglobin has been discussed extensively, but since it's a chemically complex protein, understanding it takes a heck of a lot prior knowledge of things like protein folding and interactive bio-chem.
I'm not sure what mean about "complete" species in the world today vs. in the past. Transitional species are just as "complete" as any other. Indeed, they only are transitional relative to hindsight: nothing is special about them in the here and now.
New species are splitting off as we speak. Speciation has not stopped in the modern world. No species has been "left behind": everything has just developed in different directions. Evolution is branching, not linear.
I think you have a lot of misconceptions about evolution.
I very much doubt you've ever read any actual papers, because that's simply not how they are "all" like. Perhaps you are thinking of summary articles, lit reviews, or prelim articles (and if you aren't familiar with what those are, then you REALLY don't know what you are talking about), which are written already assuming the readers have a fair bit of knowledge already, and yet which most laypeople end up reading instead of the technical or debate papers.
"Reading this actual news report, you see the same thing when it talks about the gills disappearing...no explanation for how an alternative method of air developed as one waned... No explanation of how oxygen is pulled through a non-existent trachea, etc."
That's because those are subjects already dealt with at great great length elsewhere. You're expecting a single introductory paper to discuss every single issue relating to an evolutionary sequence? It's not even really the right journal for that!
I think your misconception is based on the idea that every sceintific paper is like a polemic trying to re-prove evolution. But they're not: the article is trying to present the key general morphological elements and some speculation to inform other scientists and get them started. That's its primary interest and objective. The introduction of this fossil is the very start of a process of productive work being done on it. It's not going to restate the findings or evidence of every other paper right there at the beginning.
"That was my point on bio-chemistry...when you get down into the actual details of biology where it blends with chemistry, very few people are talking about. Evolution opponents have capitalized on this notion, even publishing a book called "Darwin's black box" that addresses just this problem...hand waving."
This is what Behe claims, but he was wrong when he wrote, and he's even more wrong now: there's plenty of research into and discussion about evolutionary biochemistry. Of course, most of his claims were goofy in the first place. Sure, we don't have a full idea of how flagella evolved: this happened far before any fossil record or genetic study could "see" backwards. More importantly, we STILL don't know entirely how flagella even work: it's a bit premature to worry about how they evolved if we don't even yet know that.
Uh, no, we don't realize that because you are wrong. You are confusing a debate over the pace of evolution with its "tiny steps at a time" nature. Punk Eek was only ever about whether change was constant and steady (it's not), not over whether evolution works by and large via small gradual changes (it does).
YOU clearly don't know what Darwin said either. Darwin stated several times in origin that he didn't expect transitions to be steady, but to change and then remain in balance for long periods of time unchanged. Punk Eek was arguging against a view known as phyletic gradualism: which many have suggested was a bit of a straw man anyway.
Presenting yourself as an expert correcting the rest of us when you are clearly misinformed is, to put it mildly, ironic.
Slashdot Mirror
"The parent poster cannot proclaim the virtues of modern knowledge, lump all people of faith into one statement, then chastise them. THAT, my friend, is intellectually lazy."
Agreed. But then, most people use the term "creationist" to refer to YECs or other denialists. There are many theistic evolutionists who could be called creationists too, but whom have no conflict with mainstream science. But I'm not sure even they would identify with a criticism aimed at creationists.
What you claim about people trolling is true, but trivial. Sure, for ANY point of view you can point to a couple of knuckleheads. But that's a pretty weak way to attack science in general, and claim that evolution is a "faith" that people are mad about anyone criticizing. Of course, if you can show me a criticism that's actually accurate and informed, I'll be very surprised. There are a number of very real hotly debated controversies within mainstream biology. But I've never, not once, seen any creationist mention them.
I can't find any reference to this fact about the "reappearing Sabertooth" anywhere. Nor does it really make much sense that we could declare something extinct if there is fossil evidence that it existed after that period. Nor am I aware of any genes in domestic felines that can simply be turned on to produce a Sabertoth. So..... Cite?
I'd say that by and large, this isn't true. The vast majority of scientists have no interest in, and pay no attention to, these sorts of political debates. They certainly aren't doing research with an eye towards ID: they've been persuing the same subjects as careers, not as activism.
I'd say that what has started to change is the way the few politically and publical involved scientists have tried to convey information to the general public. They realize that the ID and creationist folks have been using PR tactics to try and sell their views without offerring anything substantive. So the science fans are fighting back.
It's worth noting that demanding full explanations for how everything evolved is particular premature in that we don't yet know how a lot of these work in the first place. It's pretty hard to reproduce and think about and test simpler or ancient versions of something when you barely understand hwo it does what it does in the here and now. We're learning, but it's no coincidence that people like Behe have picked for their examples things which lie very very very far back in time and are still largely unstudied.
It's also worth nothing that the IC camp has made arguments about plausibility and incredulity (there's no way this could have evolved!). Scientists have already countered with descriptions of possibility: many different ways this or that could have evolved (we just can't be sure which one was THE one)! The IC then retreated to demanding your "step-by-step" explanation of how it DID in fact evolve. But this is a very different question: it goes from pointing out a potential dispositive flaw in evolution to merely bickering about the incomplete present state of our knowledge: which isn't a very strong criticism of evolution at all. So I'd say that while they wouldn't admit it, they HAVE cowered in defeat, or at least retreated to a fairly unimportant position.
Leaving aside the rather silly speculative example, natural selection acting on a population IS evolution. It's leading to a population more suited to a particular lifestyle and overall collective behavior, which itself a new trait.
Mutations certainly creates the options available, but natural selection is the only measure of what "better" actually means.
I'd say that the problem is that the evidence for evolution requires a lot of prior knowledge. You have to be reasonably well informed about: chemistry, genetics, bio-chem, statistics, geology, and the basic scientific method to put it all together. Most laypeople simply have neither the time nor the interest to devote to learning those things, much less looking at how all the evidence for evolution fits together.
I'm not sure what the solution is, other than more education. Sadly, in the US at least, despite creationism being banned, basic biology is barely taught in many places, and evolution is often quietly skipped entirely.
I wonder if the people who answered yes to this really believe that:
a) the dinosaurs never existed
b) if they did, that it had no real effect on the ecology: things were still pretty much like they are now, just with dinos running around.
I mean, the era of the dinos are by the far most well-known geologic period other than our own. And you need only to have seen a few imaginative pics of this time to know that they lived in a radically different ecology: all different plants, all different creatures, very different climate, etc.
But maybe people manage to think of this as this as not much different from "in its present form"? I dunno. It's pretty hard to wrap ones mind around it.
That was actually the subject of this great, award winning blog post on Pharyngula:
o per_reverence_due_those.php
"The proper reverence due those who have gone before"
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/the_pr
"Another is to point out evolution's flaws (something evolutionists get very testy about, btw. They don't like their faith questioned anymore than religious people do)"
It's easy to make this accusation, but intellectually lazy.
I'd say that scientists spend more time picking apart each others flaws and mistakes than in almost any other realm of life. What they get testy about is people who haven't bothered to actually study the debates, who know next to nothing about the subjects they are talking about, spreading falsehoods or gross misrepresentations of science. Worse, even when these ideas are debunked or even admitted as wrong by the people making them, they then still get brought up over and over again to new audiences. How many times have you heard the "evolution can't add new information" or "if we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes" nonsense? If people seemed determined to spread lies and falsehoods about me personally, I'd certainly get "testy." But not because anyone was questioning my "faith."
So I think your accusation is in very poor form.
Yep. It's important to note that the functional abilities of proteins are often determined by just a few key sites (certain amnio acid sequences) which make the protein fold in a certain way. The rest of the protein is free to vary somewhat without making much of a difference. And sometimes, these sections can, through mutation, add a new function to the protein without taking away the old function: the new folding may not interfere with important part of the old shape.
Of course, this "retain the old, try the new" can happen in a lot of other ways in a genome as well: like if the code specifying a protein is duplicated, creating two identical copies... and then one can mutate and acquire a new function while the old one keeps doing the old function. This mechanism is what seems to have been the sort active with the evolution of blood clotting.
Indeed. Most scientists roll their eyes at the use of "missing link" because it obviously misleads far more than it informs. The basic idea is that we have a family tree of life. There are millions upon millions of branches (species), and billions upon billions of twigs (individual creatures) alive over time, but only a very very tiny proportion are still alive today. That means that there is a far far vaster space of animals that died that are NOT the ancestors of any living creature than there are.
Hence, since fossilization is basically a rare and random crapshoot, the chances of finding THE common ancestor are always unlikely, and we can't even reliably tell if we had. But, fortunately, it's also irrelevant. That's because we can learn more than enough simply by finding a fossil that's past a particular branching point about the creatures that led to those we see today. We are trying to learn the general, overall shape of the tree, and since features all tend to be unique to any given lineage, we can still always tell everything we need about the prior branchings from the random sampling of fossils we have.
Currently we have so many that all the basic connections are pretty clear. And when you add in genetic studies that confirm these relations, the conclusion becomes about as rock solid as can possibly be. Creationists often try to confuse the debate over how particular twigs branch with a debate over whether there even is a tree of life pattern and branching at all.
In the interests of good discussion, I'd like to answer any questions that those questioning or unfamiliar with evolution have about the basic idea. We always seem to get a lot of sniping and pile-ons, and cross debate on this subject, so I thought I'd at least offer a place to express doubts or ask somewhat more general theory questions. Most of what I'm best experienced with as regards to evolution is common descent, but I've been studying the subject for quite some time now both as an amatuer and as an aspiring grad student, so I feel pretty comfortable with the broad scope of evidence and debate as long as it isn't too overly technical, even if it's outside my general focus of zoology.
It's worth noting that most mathematicians already think ideas like Irreducible Complexity and Complex Specified Information are a load of hooey, despite the appeals people like Dembski and Behe make to having made innovative breakthroughs in these areas:
b -at-dembski-vacuousness.html
- irreducible-complexity.html
w een-ic-and-it-arguments.html
One good blog on this subject I've found is Good Math, Bad Math, and some posts relevant to this topic are:
-CSI is basically incoherent: if you translate the definition of CSI into non-obscure words, it essentially boils down to either "something that contains a lot of information, but doesn't contain a lot of information" or a definition for which EVERY piece of information is specified:
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/04/one-last-sta
-IC, when translated into math, makes no sense. We can actually PROVE in math that there is no general proof that some system is the simplest possible (which IC requires), much like we can prove that we can never solve the halting problem.
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/problem-with
-Even if they did make sense, CSI and IC basically conflict with each other, arguing contradictory things:
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/conflict-bet
Not at all. I'm an atheist, but I welcome imaginative, honest theist thinkers like biologist Kenneth Miller who feel that, if anything, evolution BETTER fits this theology than the reverse. A universe in which God allows to develop on its own, and then reaches out PERSONALLY to sentient creatures (and even performs miracles as part of this reaching out) is far more "free" than one in which God is constantly micro-managing.
Now, I don't believe in God, but I bear no grudges against those who do, and as long as a belief doesn't involve scientific claims or attacking good science with falsehoods, but I applaud those who are taking their beliefs forward and refining them to make them more honest rather than simply defending dogma. If there were a God, the only kind I can possibly imagine would reward the former, not the latter.
Right. Just like their "Angels: How Many Came on Earth This Week to Find Lost Cats?" Time runs these sorts of glurge stories constantly (and they all boil down to: some people say its real, others say it not, who knows: did we beat National Enquirer in circulation?). This isn't the first time they've had a cover on the shroud either... and yet, they had just as little of interest to report then as well.
This thread is falling off the bottom of my comments page, but I'll try to keep up.
""Christianity" no more purports to be an ideology than a brick purports to be a suitable material for building."
You're just dancing around the basic issue here: Christianity at least IS some collection of views on the world, convictions, whatever. That means that those views are open for criticism, and not all criticism is automatically illegitimate.
"After all, there's no reason for any atheist to give a fig that someone believes in one God, versus believing in one million deities, or none at all; and, even if there was such a reason, there's no atheistic directive to "preach the gospel", try to "convert" others, etc."
This account of things is narrating a boxing match by only describing the punches being thrown by one guy. We live in a culture that is constantly denying that atheists can be good, worthwhile people and citiznes. Athiests are denying parental rights because of their lack of beliefs. They are the most hated miniority in the U.S. Why _wouldn't_ atheists have a chip on their shoulder? Not long ago going to a public school meant mandatory secretarian prayer, even if you were Jewish, and there are many people that still think it should be there, teacher led.
Your mileage may vary, but by and large, I don't find that there are many atheists at all advocating for the same thing in return: mandated atheism.
I'm pretty darn respectful of religion and religious people. I agree there are some atheists that aren't, and I find myself correcting them from time to time. But really, assholes are found in every group, so I don't see the point of trying to blame a particular group for assholes.
"Does that not mean those atheists are basically acting as if they are a religion? "
I dunno: are Democrats that spend their time attacking Republicans engaing in religion? Are all people that disagree with something automatically religious? What's the point of demanding that they be called religious anyway? So you can go "ha ha, you're just like me?!" What does that add to anything. So what?
"But the utter lack of response by atheists to their "own kind" speaking improperly on their behalf, and with disrespect, to and about others, suggests that this subculture is, in practice if not precisely, representative of atheists in general"
Again, you're working off the logic that atheists are a "kind." But atheists have nothing in common other than they DON'T have theism in common. Your insistence atheists are responsible for each other's behavior is no different than me insisting that Christians answer for Hitler, or that all non-football fans answer for what basketball fans do. You are focusing so hard on theism that you forget that people who are not theists are not all the same.
"If they are, then you define religion purely as a matter of what a belief system affirms (in that it promotes the idea that a deity exists), in which case it is quite clear, by that definition, that Christianity does not affirm the appropriateness of killing others (and the Bible in fact commands, allegedly in God's own words, "Thou shalt not murder")."
But since many sorts of killings are not defined by God as murder (if, for instance, committing genocide, bashing kids out of their mother's wombs, and sparing all the virgins for the use of God's people is not understood as "murder," then murder is a pretty vauge concept to begin with). But I'm not blaming you for that view, because there is no one "true" vision of Christianity. I'm just pointing out that it's very slippery to deny that all Christianity is free from criticism, and that whenever someone does something bad in its name, you can simply write them off as getting it wrong. Well, according to YOU, maybe.
"If they are not, then how can you believe atheism's denials are not essentially religious in nature?"
Because that makes no sense. I was born an atheist. I never had god beliefs to begin with, at
What would you consider to be a legimate criticism from the ID camp, as opposed merely to a misinformed or misleading one?
The fact is, most of ID is composed of arguments about the supposed weaknesses of evolution that turn out to be either bogus or based on a misunderstanding of how science works.
That's not to mention that ID grew directly out of the legal defeats of Scientific Creationism, and it's founding documents explicitly say that the goal is to be coy about stating anything outright, instead trying to convince the public that evolution is evil materialism, etc.
Um, in case you were of the notion that the Shroud was ever taken so seriously that it would have headlines if disproven, or that tons of scientists spend lots of time working on it just waiting for a breakthrough, you're wrong. Outside of a bunch of Shroud-nuts, not many people, not even the Catholic Church, care all that much about it or think that it's truth is so proven that disproving it would be news.
The burden of proof is on you to justify the claim that it is an almost 2000 year old relic that was THE specific Shroud used for one particular individual (Jesus) whose image was burned into it by magic.
Actually, you're a bit in the wrong on your own joke. IQ is defined as the normed MEDIAN value, meaning half below, half above, always. Average values, however, can be unbalanced: a small number of large values can skew the average. With averages, there is no guarantee of half on one side, half on the other. :)
Platypi are multiple, er, platypus...es.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus
Dawkins acn't be blamed for not covering every concievable single subject in one book, especially one written for laypeople. Discussing bio-chemistry is pretty hard when you can't guarantee that your audience knows much about chemistry, cell cycles, genetics, etc.
However, I must say that I find the incredulity a bit weird. It would be strange if light sensitivity _wasn't_ part of the nervous system. After all, lots of organic chemicals are sensitive to, and react differently to light. Those reactions would be a quite and predictable natural trait to select for.
"Also, Dawkins never really gets around to addressing the issue of how complicated protein molecules like hemoglobin could have come into being through only random mutations and non-random natural selection, an question which, as Dawkins himself mentions, a number of people have some problems with."
Again, you expect him to explain every single issue you can think of in a popular book, without using chemistry? The evolution of hemoglobin has been discussed extensively, but since it's a chemically complex protein, understanding it takes a heck of a lot prior knowledge of things like protein folding and interactive bio-chem.
I'm not sure what mean about "complete" species in the world today vs. in the past. Transitional species are just as "complete" as any other. Indeed, they only are transitional relative to hindsight: nothing is special about them in the here and now.
New species are splitting off as we speak. Speciation has not stopped in the modern world. No species has been "left behind": everything has just developed in different directions. Evolution is branching, not linear.
I think you have a lot of misconceptions about evolution.
I very much doubt you've ever read any actual papers, because that's simply not how they are "all" like. Perhaps you are thinking of summary articles, lit reviews, or prelim articles (and if you aren't familiar with what those are, then you REALLY don't know what you are talking about), which are written already assuming the readers have a fair bit of knowledge already, and yet which most laypeople end up reading instead of the technical or debate papers.
"Reading this actual news report, you see the same thing when it talks about the gills disappearing...no explanation for how an alternative method of air developed as one waned... No explanation of how oxygen is pulled through a non-existent trachea, etc."
That's because those are subjects already dealt with at great great length elsewhere. You're expecting a single introductory paper to discuss every single issue relating to an evolutionary sequence? It's not even really the right journal for that!
I think your misconception is based on the idea that every sceintific paper is like a polemic trying to re-prove evolution. But they're not: the article is trying to present the key general morphological elements and some speculation to inform other scientists and get them started. That's its primary interest and objective. The introduction of this fossil is the very start of a process of productive work being done on it. It's not going to restate the findings or evidence of every other paper right there at the beginning.
"That was my point on bio-chemistry...when you get down into the actual details of biology where it blends with chemistry, very few people are talking about. Evolution opponents have capitalized on this notion, even publishing a book called "Darwin's black box" that addresses just this problem...hand waving."
This is what Behe claims, but he was wrong when he wrote, and he's even more wrong now: there's plenty of research into and discussion about evolutionary biochemistry. Of course, most of his claims were goofy in the first place. Sure, we don't have a full idea of how flagella evolved: this happened far before any fossil record or genetic study could "see" backwards. More importantly, we STILL don't know entirely how flagella even work: it's a bit premature to worry about how they evolved if we don't even yet know that.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/04/ embrace_your_inner_fish.jpg
Awwwwww.....
Uh, no, we don't realize that because you are wrong. You are confusing a debate over the pace of evolution with its "tiny steps at a time" nature. Punk Eek was only ever about whether change was constant and steady (it's not), not over whether evolution works by and large via small gradual changes (it does).
YOU clearly don't know what Darwin said either. Darwin stated several times in origin that he didn't expect transitions to be steady, but to change and then remain in balance for long periods of time unchanged. Punk Eek was arguging against a view known as phyletic gradualism: which many have suggested was a bit of a straw man anyway.
Presenting yourself as an expert correcting the rest of us when you are clearly misinformed is, to put it mildly, ironic.