All? No. The organizing principle of ID is to not argue with fellow ID'rs about such matters. Heck microevolution? ID'rs include people that believe the earth is 6000 years old: it's just that people agree not to bring it up until evolution is destroyed.
And those that do claim to accept microevolution often define it VERY differently from scientists, for instance, claiming that it does not and cannot "create new information." Which is, frankly, nonsense.
"But in terms of DNA changes are really very minor, only selecting a different combination of attributes from an existing set."
Which random mutation is constantly increasing, as well as adding greater capacity to...
Do you know what tetrachromatism is? It's four-sample color vision, allowing those that have it to make out much finer shades of color as well as see into part of the UV spectrum. It has arisen recently, and currently only in women. How about ultra-dense, apparently unbreakable bones right out of a Bruce Willis movie? A family in Connecticut. Or immunity to LDH cholesterol? A mutation traced back to a guy in the 1700s.
My point is that even in just very recent just human history, there are countless examples of quite radical new traits, not to mention tons of small drifts in one direction or another. And great apes are among the very _slowest_ in evolutionary change.
"In defence of evolution, this kind of example is the only kind that is ever offered."
This is often because it's the simplest to explain. We, for instance, know exactly how the speciation of abalones works, down to the gene by gene changes. But it would take me a long long time to explain, even assuming that you already have a background in genetics. And that's just one tiny example among countless, and that's one THE simplest speciations to explain. AND that's just the start of discussing the issue!
"I haven't heard about Behe, I'll have to read up on how he refutes the fossil evidence."
He doesn't really, because he by and large accepts macroevolution.
"Like I said to the last guy it can't be gradual because of the Cambrian Explosion, which turns the Darwin's tree of life upside-down."
No, it doesn't. Two things are significant about the Cambrian Explosion: lots of diversity emerged faster than it normally does, and hard parts, which fossilize better, emerged en masse for the first time. But nothing about it suggests that none of these forms had precursors.
"So if you use microevolution and fossil records you don't get macroevolution. It just doesn't add up. With the current data micro and macro evolution don't link together."
You objectively don't know what you are talking about. One species "morphing" into another has not only been observed in real time, as well as shown to have happened in the past, but we understand in great detail the genetic mechanisms that make it happen. The Cambrian explosion doesn't in any way negate this, and if you think it does, you've been misled. Once upon a time, ID theorists proposed that we'd never find the precusors to the Cambrian chordates: that they just appeared out of nowhere. Oops, it wasn't much more than a year after that we turned up pre-cambrian chordates.
If you think that macroevolution suggests that one modern animal turns into another, then you have no idea what you are talking about about. What common descent actually proposes is quite conservative: in fact, so conservative that life almost never leaves the taxonomic groups of its ancestors. Human beings are STILL apes, still primates, still eutherians, still tetrapods, still limbed verterbates, still chordates, still eukaryotes.
Likewise, whatever species descend from frogs will all still be rightly grouped as "frogs," just as all frogs are still rightly grouped as amphibians, tetrapods, limbed vertebrates, chordates, etc.
If that seems strange to you... then you don't know what you are talking about.
"As you don't think there's much difference, and as you consider selecting your favourite bits is not absurd, can I conclude that you believe making up your own religion is not absurd?"
Claiming that people are picking their favorite bits isn't what these people feel they are doing. They feel they are trying to work out insight based on something imperfect.
"If you think I compared anybody to Hitler, then you need to take some reading comprehension lessons. Honestly. The extent to which they were "compared" was that they are both considered to be human beings capable of conviction."
Right, and you seem to judge harmless convictions about morality and such just as "nutty" as genocidal ones: that granny is just as much a nut as Hitler because they both held convictions that they couldn't prove to you. But that's just dumb.
"It's more preferable to me to live in a world where "moderate" religious people side with fundamentalists against me than to lie to the "moderate" religious people in order to get them to side with me against the fundamentalists. It's nothing to do with ego or misanthropy, and everything to do with being a decent person."
Where did you get "lie" to anyone from? I didn't say lie to them: I said don't pontlessly be a dick to them because you sell them short. I'm not going to insult and attack theists for believing things I don't believe out of some sort of arrogant idea that I know what beliefs are stupid and what aren't. All I know is what beliefs I don't find justification for, and what I don't. People believe all sorts of things that they cannot prove to me, but that I don't have any quarrel with as long as they don't expect me to believe them and they don't harm anybody. There's a big difference between being unable to objectively prove something and just having a personal belief.
"Contrary to your assertion that there are all sorts of new powers being invented or used, what you see is the use of wartime powers by the executive branch against an enemy which is outside the law."
We have a "war" declared not on a nation or even an organization, but an amorphous, rootless concept. "Al Qaeda" is a term we apply to all sorts of different groups, loosely affiliated. Of course, by your definition of war, we've been at war the vast majority of our nation's history. Shouldn't we drop the "special powers during wartime" nonsense if our President is basically always going to have these powers all the time in perpetuity? Doesn't that demand some sort of serious discussion in our society as to what our standards are really going to be if we are going to function in perpetual war from now on? I'm not saying they shouldn't be broad or as powerful as they need to be. But they shouldn't be rushed into being out of the public eye without any serious discussion about where we are going as a nation. That's a TERRIBLE precedent.
What we have is clearly already stretching things out of their normal, designed function for wars with foriegn nations. How can you possibly assert that the current administration hasn't made things up? It took a look at a law and said "too much effort, doesn't matter, we can do what we want if we say it's important." It's "oversight" wasn't allowed to do or say anything against it. It refers to acts of Congress restraining it as "advice that we are happy to listen to." It's made up new policies about prisoner treatment and detainment out of whole cloth, changed standards and values we were supposed to have without asking. It's off any existing rulebook. Now, that's not its fault. It didn't create all these unforseen situations. But the precedent that, if there are no existing rules, it should just make them up even when they go way outside previous standards in other cases is just the wrong way to work things.
"It is entirely possible that we would be acting consistently with international law to execute them all as spies, but we aren't doing that."
Spies? People taken from their home country, by force, with no serious standards of proof or evidence that they even bore arms against anyone? Don't you see how none of this actually responds to my point? If there is no due process at all, then there is no due process for anyone anywhere.
"In violation of every precept of civilization they recognize no innocents in combat, but make war on the young, the old, the sick and infirm, ordinary people going about their business, just as if they were soldiers."
I wonder where they got that idea? Oh yeah: Hiroshima, which was exactly the same, tactically. In fact, that was their exact reasoning: when at war, do the things that you think will knock out the enemy's will to fight. What is our response to that sort of logic? "It was necessary to save more lives of our people and theirs" Oops, that's perfectly applicable to their strategy too. See the mess we get into when we start validating the tactics and reasoning of the enemy out of mere convienience without asking anybody or thinking of the consequences?
"As to the question of secrecy, that is the nature of this war. Secrecy protects the way we get information, and denies information to the enemy, such as who we have captured, how we found them, what they are telling us, how we are using it, what we are going to do next. Sometimes the very knowledge of the existence of a method tells the enemy all that they need to know to avoid our using it. "
Maybe, but that's why we have normal channels of checks and balances that can still keep things secret. This administration has bypassed those countless times, seemingly not out of need, but out of not wanting the checkers and balancers to know what was done. And sometimes, tactics like stress positions and water boarding, or defacing the Koran, challenge norms that the government just does not have the right to undertake on its o
"You didn't answer my question. What's the difference between selecting bits of a religion that you happen to agree with while ignoring the bits you don't agree with, and making your own religion up?"
Not much. But then, what's your deal with either? Why does it stick in your craw so much that other people believe things YOU don't think are justified? Instead of just a nanny-state, we really need you nannying around people's personal convictions?
"Just because they believe it sincerely, it doesn't mean it's any more justifiable. Hitler sincerely believed that he was doing the world a favour by getting rid of all the Jews. Obviously the sincerity of a belief isn't the important factor you make it out to be, or everybody would be excusing genocide with "but at least he really believed in what he was doing".
No, and that you compare some granny with conviction that God is a loving spirit who gives her strength with Hitler says far more about you than anyone else. It people do bad things, we can call them on it. If people push bad policies on others, we can call them on it. I just don't see the purpose in policing or getting all worked about the perfectly sociable beliefs of the majority. Especially when they are based on some personal experiece I have no access to and cannot really comment on.
"That sounds suspiciously like "humour these nuts because they're on our side". Sorry, but I won't do that."
More, I suspect, out of your own ego and misanthropy than any actual concern for the good of the world. These "nuts" are the people all around you, who aren't hurting anyone with their beliefs, and who find them comforting. I'm not going to begrudge them that if they are otherwise good people. It's not really my business, and if I went around screaming about the flaws or idiosyncrancies of everyone I met, I'd be a jerk, not some sort of self-styled prophet of truth.
Not irrelevant at all. That's the point. God doesn't direct the world to be the way it is. But when beings of sufficient spiritual understanding seek a connection with something more, God responds. Which can include all manner of miracles and Jesus and what have you. Your mileage may vary, and of course you're going to lose the atheists on those. But as far as physics, biology and so on... no problem.
My point was not that he wasn't a smart guy, but he was a bright but not exceptional guy who did the hard hard work of just sitting down with tons and tons of data and coming up with an idea no one had ever had before: an idea that is really pretty simple. You can read Darwin's journals and how he develops these ideas: it's fascinating. It's not Hawking: it's like you or me teasing through an idea and hitting on something phenomenal.
When I say genius, it's not to denigrate the man, but instead to credit someone of good but not exceptional intelligence for accomplishing something amazing through hard hard work. He wasn't someone born with genius. He wasn't a Mozart. He wasn't an Einstein. He was someone who had this feeling that there was something there he couldn't quite put his finger on... and he stuck with all the evidence he could find until he woked out what it was.
Two people in the same period of history came up with this same idea at roughly the same time. That suggests that the environment and the emerging evidence had a lot to do with it. Darwin was just one of the only people who were really paying attention.
The problem is, because these people are not a nation, but an amorphous group of people to whom anyone can belong, and because this is not a war in any normal sense of the world, (it can never have a clear end) and these new powers can effectively be exercised on anyone at any time, forever.
"In WWII, there were some soldiers who could have been held up to 6 years. In Viet Nam, there were airmen held for at least 8 years."
Except these people were protected under a system that the world had worked out so that certain standards as to their treatment and their status applied. Instead of working any of these very new powers out, we've made them up. In secret. With only a few people in the entire world even knowing what they are.
"If they start holding ordinary criminals, even murderers and rapists, as if they were terrorists, there will be a wide outcry."
It's clear that we already HAVE held completely innocent people as if they were terrorists for years, and then kicked them to the street. Some we apparently kidnapped in allied countries without consulting the nation, spent months allegedly beating and abusing them, and then kicked them out on the street after we realized that they just had the same name as someone we were looking for.
If we can do, any nation is justified in doing it. That's not what we want.
"If you have a way to see through the lies and deception of Al Qaeda members,"
Right now it's quite apparent that our own government will lie about what its doing, to its own people (to whom it is supposed to be a servant of), to the world. Even on matters that are irrelevant to national security that seem to have more to do with covering ass. I believe very strongly that Al Qaeda is a threat and will lie. But I also have no faith that this government will act in a way I can countenance. That's why I want clear standards made out in the open, not in secret.
"to separate the involved from the uninvolved, the innocent from the guilty, without requiring evidence and legwork, I'm sure that the US military would gratefully receive it. By the way, the consequences if you are wrong isn't a stolen car, but people dying."
Same with killers. Same, apparently, even with domestic terrorists (like McVeigh, who killed more Americans in one attack than all but the 9/11 attacks). Certainly we need to set the limits to the situation. But just because the consequences are high doesn't mean there get to be NO limits, or that our leaders get to make up their own limits and standards of conduct in secret without the people knowing what is being done in our name "for our own good." That exceeds their legitimate power.
Or to work out some belief and conviction that one has that they cannot shake. I can't begrudge someone's sincere belief. Sorry, I just think you are selling people short. Worse, you're selling short exactly the sort of people who make up the MAJORITY of those people who would otherwise be our allies against fundamentalists.
OEC is generally not the term for what you are talking about: theistic evolutionists. OECs generally include people that believe that the earth is old, but that God specially created all the different species, or some other belief that basically evolution doesn't really happen and that humans, for instance, are not related to apes.
"Darwin's studies dealt more with the evolution of a species like what is observed from a selective-breeding or "natural selection" standpoint, for which there is (now) fossil record, rather than the evolution of one species into an entirely different species, for which there is no fossil record."
I don't know what you mean by "entirely different" species. The whole problem with species is that there is no good dividing line: they blend too easily into one another. That's why there are such things as hybrids (of all sorts of different levels from perfectly viable and capable of reproducing to completely viable but sterile to only partially viable, and so on) and ring species, and the like.
There's more than enough of a fossil record to substantiate all the claims about repeated speciation over time: that men came from the same ancestor as apes, that tetrapods are descendents of ancient lobed fish, and so on. Common descent is commonly known as "the fact" of evolution, with various mechanisms, like natural selection, explaining that fact.
Again, I ain't saying that I believe it or that there is any compelling reason to believe ex nillo. But it's certainly a path towards a theist reconcilling their beliefs (which they already hold) with all of science.
And this is still chilling: "Although there have been genuine innocents who were held and released, as they would have been anyway"
Held for years, disappeared from their families and loved ones without notice, and entirely without any recourse whatsoever? That's not something I want my country to be doing to anyone, just as I don't want any country to do it to my citizens.
The problem with saying that any class of people is outside of the need for due process is that this means that ANYONE can be put outside of due process at any time. Once you've taken a random person, if they have no due process, they cannot even contest the matter of whether they really fall into this special class or not.
Heck, you should see the sorts of insights you get when #2234 posts! 1-2233 don't post anymore because when they do, readers minds litterally get slashdotted, sometimes leading to hemorrage and irreperable server crash.
I hate to have to correct people on this, but "macroevolution" IS a meaningful term in biology. It certainly isn't what creationists think it means (i.e. a boundary between observable evolution and not, or between complex changes and simple trait selection), but it does refer to useful concepts about how large scale patterns of speciation work over time. For instance, extinction events that kill thousands of species at once are considered macroevolutionary. So are long term patterns of genetic drift. So is the question of whether evolutionary change is steady or punctuated (to be fair, many think that this was a bit of a straw man debate, with Gould attacking a position almost no one actually held). So is the discussion over whether complexity is a trend or not.
Here's talk origins: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.htm l You're right that the basic underlying churning of processes isn't any different. But don't get goaded into thinking that there is no useful distinction. Genetic change within a breeding population tends to combine, mix, and spread, while once speciation has occured, there is no longer any necessary mechanism for convergence.
"Exactly how have they "taken over the discussion" in America? Certainly not at the point of a gun, as did the actual Taliban."
Well, in our country, you can dominate the public discussion by spending a lot of time trying to get in the news. The result is that the worst, most fanatical of people get tapped as the spokespeople for the religious point of view, while the disinterested majority just doesn't spend that time and effort. They aren't as angry or as motivated or as desperate for publicity.
The same effect happens with regular politics. But I have to say that I'm a little more upset that "religion" get represented by the shrill and nutty than that Democrats or Republicans do. Religion is more important to good folks than party.
Well, and moderates tend, by their very nature, not to SEEK press! The thing is, to actually want press, you have to be pretty angry and dedicated to getting it,and often you have to spend a lot of money on PR to keep its attention on you. (Heck, I work in politics, and you can believe me when I say that you have to pay lots and lots of good money to get press and create stories and so forth). Most normal Christians have better things to do, and better things to spend their money on (like charity, for one).
I still hold out hope that there will be backlash of thoughtful moderates before things have to get too bad to have to inspire it.
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All? No. The organizing principle of ID is to not argue with fellow ID'rs about such matters. Heck microevolution? ID'rs include people that believe the earth is 6000 years old: it's just that people agree not to bring it up until evolution is destroyed.
And those that do claim to accept microevolution often define it VERY differently from scientists, for instance, claiming that it does not and cannot "create new information." Which is, frankly, nonsense.
"But in terms of DNA changes are really very minor, only selecting a different combination of attributes from an existing set."
Which random mutation is constantly increasing, as well as adding greater capacity to...
Do you know what tetrachromatism is? It's four-sample color vision, allowing those that have it to make out much finer shades of color as well as see into part of the UV spectrum. It has arisen recently, and currently only in women. How about ultra-dense, apparently unbreakable bones right out of a Bruce Willis movie? A family in Connecticut. Or immunity to LDH cholesterol? A mutation traced back to a guy in the 1700s.
My point is that even in just very recent just human history, there are countless examples of quite radical new traits, not to mention tons of small drifts in one direction or another. And great apes are among the very _slowest_ in evolutionary change.
"In defence of evolution, this kind of example is the only kind that is ever offered."
This is often because it's the simplest to explain. We, for instance, know exactly how the speciation of abalones works, down to the gene by gene changes. But it would take me a long long time to explain, even assuming that you already have a background in genetics. And that's just one tiny example among countless, and that's one THE simplest speciations to explain. AND that's just the start of discussing the issue!
If you'd like, though, this is always a great place to start: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
What sort of evidence would YOU like to hear about?
"I haven't heard about Behe, I'll have to read up on how he refutes the fossil evidence."
He doesn't really, because he by and large accepts macroevolution.
"Like I said to the last guy it can't be gradual because of the Cambrian Explosion, which turns the Darwin's tree of life upside-down."
No, it doesn't. Two things are significant about the Cambrian Explosion: lots of diversity emerged faster than it normally does, and hard parts, which fossilize better, emerged en masse for the first time. But nothing about it suggests that none of these forms had precursors.
"So if you use microevolution and fossil records you don't get macroevolution. It just doesn't add up. With the current data micro and macro evolution don't link together."
Read this:
http://home.comcast.net/~aronra/Taxonomy.html
You're not even close to correct on this one. The controversy about Gould and punc Eek has been GROSSLY mispresented.
You objectively don't know what you are talking about. One species "morphing" into another has not only been observed in real time, as well as shown to have happened in the past, but we understand in great detail the genetic mechanisms that make it happen. The Cambrian explosion doesn't in any way negate this, and if you think it does, you've been misled. Once upon a time, ID theorists proposed that we'd never find the precusors to the Cambrian chordates: that they just appeared out of nowhere. Oops, it wasn't much more than a year after that we turned up pre-cambrian chordates.
If you think that macroevolution suggests that one modern animal turns into another, then you have no idea what you are talking about about. What common descent actually proposes is quite conservative: in fact, so conservative that life almost never leaves the taxonomic groups of its ancestors. Human beings are STILL apes, still primates, still eutherians, still tetrapods, still limbed verterbates, still chordates, still eukaryotes.
Likewise, whatever species descend from frogs will all still be rightly grouped as "frogs," just as all frogs are still rightly grouped as amphibians, tetrapods, limbed vertebrates, chordates, etc.
If that seems strange to you... then you don't know what you are talking about.
"As you don't think there's much difference, and as you consider selecting your favourite bits is not absurd, can I conclude that you believe making up your own religion is not absurd?"
Claiming that people are picking their favorite bits isn't what these people feel they are doing. They feel they are trying to work out insight based on something imperfect.
"If you think I compared anybody to Hitler, then you need to take some reading comprehension lessons. Honestly. The extent to which they were "compared" was that they are both considered to be human beings capable of conviction."
Right, and you seem to judge harmless convictions about morality and such just as "nutty" as genocidal ones: that granny is just as much a nut as Hitler because they both held convictions that they couldn't prove to you. But that's just dumb.
"It's more preferable to me to live in a world where "moderate" religious people side with fundamentalists against me than to lie to the "moderate" religious people in order to get them to side with me against the fundamentalists. It's nothing to do with ego or misanthropy, and everything to do with being a decent person."
Where did you get "lie" to anyone from? I didn't say lie to them: I said don't pontlessly be a dick to them because you sell them short. I'm not going to insult and attack theists for believing things I don't believe out of some sort of arrogant idea that I know what beliefs are stupid and what aren't. All I know is what beliefs I don't find justification for, and what I don't. People believe all sorts of things that they cannot prove to me, but that I don't have any quarrel with as long as they don't expect me to believe them and they don't harm anybody. There's a big difference between being unable to objectively prove something and just having a personal belief.
"Contrary to your assertion that there are all sorts of new powers being invented or used, what you see is the use of wartime powers by the executive branch against an enemy which is outside the law."
We have a "war" declared not on a nation or even an organization, but an amorphous, rootless concept. "Al Qaeda" is a term we apply to all sorts of different groups, loosely affiliated. Of course, by your definition of war, we've been at war the vast majority of our nation's history. Shouldn't we drop the "special powers during wartime" nonsense if our President is basically always going to have these powers all the time in perpetuity? Doesn't that demand some sort of serious discussion in our society as to what our standards are really going to be if we are going to function in perpetual war from now on? I'm not saying they shouldn't be broad or as powerful as they need to be. But they shouldn't be rushed into being out of the public eye without any serious discussion about where we are going as a nation. That's a TERRIBLE precedent.
What we have is clearly already stretching things out of their normal, designed function for wars with foriegn nations. How can you possibly assert that the current administration hasn't made things up? It took a look at a law and said "too much effort, doesn't matter, we can do what we want if we say it's important." It's "oversight" wasn't allowed to do or say anything against it. It refers to acts of Congress restraining it as "advice that we are happy to listen to." It's made up new policies about prisoner treatment and detainment out of whole cloth, changed standards and values we were supposed to have without asking. It's off any existing rulebook. Now, that's not its fault. It didn't create all these unforseen situations. But the precedent that, if there are no existing rules, it should just make them up even when they go way outside previous standards in other cases is just the wrong way to work things.
"It is entirely possible that we would be acting consistently with international law to execute them all as spies, but we aren't doing that."
Spies? People taken from their home country, by force, with no serious standards of proof or evidence that they even bore arms against anyone? Don't you see how none of this actually responds to my point? If there is no due process at all, then there is no due process for anyone anywhere.
"In violation of every precept of civilization they recognize no innocents in combat, but make war on the young, the old, the sick and infirm, ordinary people going about their business, just as if they were soldiers."
I wonder where they got that idea? Oh yeah: Hiroshima, which was exactly the same, tactically. In fact, that was their exact reasoning: when at war, do the things that you think will knock out the enemy's will to fight. What is our response to that sort of logic? "It was necessary to save more lives of our people and theirs" Oops, that's perfectly applicable to their strategy too. See the mess we get into when we start validating the tactics and reasoning of the enemy out of mere convienience without asking anybody or thinking of the consequences?
"As to the question of secrecy, that is the nature of this war. Secrecy protects the way we get information, and denies information to the enemy, such as who we have captured, how we found them, what they are telling us, how we are using it, what we are going to do next. Sometimes the very knowledge of the existence of a method tells the enemy all that they need to know to avoid our using it. "
Maybe, but that's why we have normal channels of checks and balances that can still keep things secret. This administration has bypassed those countless times, seemingly not out of need, but out of not wanting the checkers and balancers to know what was done. And sometimes, tactics like stress positions and water boarding, or defacing the Koran, challenge norms that the government just does not have the right to undertake on its o
"You didn't answer my question. What's the difference between selecting bits of a religion that you happen to agree with while ignoring the bits you don't agree with, and making your own religion up?"
Not much. But then, what's your deal with either? Why does it stick in your craw so much that other people believe things YOU don't think are justified? Instead of just a nanny-state, we really need you nannying around people's personal convictions?
"Just because they believe it sincerely, it doesn't mean it's any more justifiable. Hitler sincerely believed that he was doing the world a favour by getting rid of all the Jews. Obviously the sincerity of a belief isn't the important factor you make it out to be, or everybody would be excusing genocide with "but at least he really believed in what he was doing".
No, and that you compare some granny with conviction that God is a loving spirit who gives her strength with Hitler says far more about you than anyone else. It people do bad things, we can call them on it. If people push bad policies on others, we can call them on it. I just don't see the purpose in policing or getting all worked about the perfectly sociable beliefs of the majority. Especially when they are based on some personal experiece I have no access to and cannot really comment on.
"That sounds suspiciously like "humour these nuts because they're on our side". Sorry, but I won't do that."
More, I suspect, out of your own ego and misanthropy than any actual concern for the good of the world. These "nuts" are the people all around you, who aren't hurting anyone with their beliefs, and who find them comforting. I'm not going to begrudge them that if they are otherwise good people. It's not really my business, and if I went around screaming about the flaws or idiosyncrancies of everyone I met, I'd be a jerk, not some sort of self-styled prophet of truth.
Not irrelevant at all. That's the point. God doesn't direct the world to be the way it is. But when beings of sufficient spiritual understanding seek a connection with something more, God responds. Which can include all manner of miracles and Jesus and what have you. Your mileage may vary, and of course you're going to lose the atheists on those. But as far as physics, biology and so on... no problem.
My point was not that he wasn't a smart guy, but he was a bright but not exceptional guy who did the hard hard work of just sitting down with tons and tons of data and coming up with an idea no one had ever had before: an idea that is really pretty simple. You can read Darwin's journals and how he develops these ideas: it's fascinating. It's not Hawking: it's like you or me teasing through an idea and hitting on something phenomenal.
When I say genius, it's not to denigrate the man, but instead to credit someone of good but not exceptional intelligence for accomplishing something amazing through hard hard work. He wasn't someone born with genius. He wasn't a Mozart. He wasn't an Einstein. He was someone who had this feeling that there was something there he couldn't quite put his finger on... and he stuck with all the evidence he could find until he woked out what it was.
Two people in the same period of history came up with this same idea at roughly the same time. That suggests that the environment and the emerging evidence had a lot to do with it. Darwin was just one of the only people who were really paying attention.
As I noted in the other response that caught this error, I should have written "Libertarian" theology. Duh on me.
Sorry, that should be Libertarian, not liberation.
that last time should be "atheist", obviously.
Well, yes. How does everyone keep missing that point? It's advice for theists. If you're a theist, it doesn't apply to you.
The problem is, because these people are not a nation, but an amorphous group of people to whom anyone can belong, and because this is not a war in any normal sense of the world, (it can never have a clear end) and these new powers can effectively be exercised on anyone at any time, forever.
"In WWII, there were some soldiers who could have been held up to 6 years. In Viet Nam, there were airmen held for at least 8 years."
Except these people were protected under a system that the world had worked out so that certain standards as to their treatment and their status applied. Instead of working any of these very new powers out, we've made them up. In secret. With only a few people in the entire world even knowing what they are.
"If they start holding ordinary criminals, even murderers and rapists, as if they were terrorists, there will be a wide outcry."
It's clear that we already HAVE held completely innocent people as if they were terrorists for years, and then kicked them to the street. Some we apparently kidnapped in allied countries without consulting the nation, spent months allegedly beating and abusing them, and then kicked them out on the street after we realized that they just had the same name as someone we were looking for.
If we can do, any nation is justified in doing it. That's not what we want.
"If you have a way to see through the lies and deception of Al Qaeda members,"
Right now it's quite apparent that our own government will lie about what its doing, to its own people (to whom it is supposed to be a servant of), to the world. Even on matters that are irrelevant to national security that seem to have more to do with covering ass. I believe very strongly that Al Qaeda is a threat and will lie. But I also have no faith that this government will act in a way I can countenance. That's why I want clear standards made out in the open, not in secret.
"to separate the involved from the uninvolved, the innocent from the guilty, without requiring evidence and legwork, I'm sure that the US military would gratefully receive it. By the way, the consequences if you are wrong isn't a stolen car, but people dying."
Same with killers. Same, apparently, even with domestic terrorists (like McVeigh, who killed more Americans in one attack than all but the 9/11 attacks). Certainly we need to set the limits to the situation. But just because the consequences are high doesn't mean there get to be NO limits, or that our leaders get to make up their own limits and standards of conduct in secret without the people knowing what is being done in our name "for our own good." That exceeds their legitimate power.
Or to work out some belief and conviction that one has that they cannot shake. I can't begrudge someone's sincere belief. Sorry, I just think you are selling people short. Worse, you're selling short exactly the sort of people who make up the MAJORITY of those people who would otherwise be our allies against fundamentalists.
OEC is generally not the term for what you are talking about: theistic evolutionists. OECs generally include people that believe that the earth is old, but that God specially created all the different species, or some other belief that basically evolution doesn't really happen and that humans, for instance, are not related to apes.
Uh, no. I chimed in on Dvorkin's usage.
"Darwin's studies dealt more with the evolution of a species like what is observed from a selective-breeding or "natural selection" standpoint, for which there is (now) fossil record, rather than the evolution of one species into an entirely different species, for which there is no fossil record."
I don't know what you mean by "entirely different" species. The whole problem with species is that there is no good dividing line: they blend too easily into one another. That's why there are such things as hybrids (of all sorts of different levels from perfectly viable and capable of reproducing to completely viable but sterile to only partially viable, and so on) and ring species, and the like.
There's more than enough of a fossil record to substantiate all the claims about repeated speciation over time: that men came from the same ancestor as apes, that tetrapods are descendents of ancient lobed fish, and so on. Common descent is commonly known as "the fact" of evolution, with various mechanisms, like natural selection, explaining that fact.
Again, I ain't saying that I believe it or that there is any compelling reason to believe ex nillo. But it's certainly a path towards a theist reconcilling their beliefs (which they already hold) with all of science.
The real question is: who is God hustling?
And what if there are some of both?
And this is still chilling:
"Although there have been genuine innocents who were held and released, as they would have been anyway"
Held for years, disappeared from their families and loved ones without notice, and entirely without any recourse whatsoever? That's not something I want my country to be doing to anyone, just as I don't want any country to do it to my citizens.
The problem with saying that any class of people is outside of the need for due process is that this means that ANYONE can be put outside of due process at any time. Once you've taken a random person, if they have no due process, they cannot even contest the matter of whether they really fall into this special class or not.
Heck, you should see the sorts of insights you get when #2234 posts! 1-2233 don't post anymore because when they do, readers minds litterally get slashdotted, sometimes leading to hemorrage and irreperable server crash.
I hate to have to correct people on this, but "macroevolution" IS a meaningful term in biology. It certainly isn't what creationists think it means (i.e. a boundary between observable evolution and not, or between complex changes and simple trait selection), but it does refer to useful concepts about how large scale patterns of speciation work over time. For instance, extinction events that kill thousands of species at once are considered macroevolutionary. So are long term patterns of genetic drift. So is the question of whether evolutionary change is steady or punctuated (to be fair, many think that this was a bit of a straw man debate, with Gould attacking a position almost no one actually held). So is the discussion over whether complexity is a trend or not.
m l
Here's talk origins:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.ht
You're right that the basic underlying churning of processes isn't any different. But don't get goaded into thinking that there is no useful distinction. Genetic change within a breeding population tends to combine, mix, and spread, while once speciation has occured, there is no longer any necessary mechanism for convergence.
"Exactly how have they "taken over the discussion" in America? Certainly not at the point of a gun, as did the actual Taliban."
Well, in our country, you can dominate the public discussion by spending a lot of time trying to get in the news. The result is that the worst, most fanatical of people get tapped as the spokespeople for the religious point of view, while the disinterested majority just doesn't spend that time and effort. They aren't as angry or as motivated or as desperate for publicity.
The same effect happens with regular politics. But I have to say that I'm a little more upset that "religion" get represented by the shrill and nutty than that Democrats or Republicans do. Religion is more important to good folks than party.
Well, and moderates tend, by their very nature, not to SEEK press! The thing is, to actually want press, you have to be pretty angry and dedicated to getting it,and often you have to spend a lot of money on PR to keep its attention on you. (Heck, I work in politics, and you can believe me when I say that you have to pay lots and lots of good money to get press and create stories and so forth). Most normal Christians have better things to do, and better things to spend their money on (like charity, for one).
I still hold out hope that there will be backlash of thoughtful moderates before things have to get too bad to have to inspire it.