>88% of Democratic economists think Obama would be best, while 80% of Republican economists pick McCain
And, since there were more than 3x as many Democrats in the pool as Republicans, I would assume that many of the "Independents" were also left-leaning.
Huh? That was an odd chain of logic. You quote statistics that 12% of Democrats are persuaded by the evidence to give a non-biased opinion against their own Democratic candidate on the economy, and that 20% of Republicans are persuaded by the evidence to give a non-biased opinion against their own Republican candidate on the economy. You then accuse independents of secret left bias.
I could understand quoting the part about independents lean toward Obama by 46% compared to 39% for McCain and deciding to dismiss that as bias, but how do you possibly make a chain of logic that partisan economists jumping ship against their own candidates is bias??? There's no better indication of honest non-bias than someone admitting he thinks his own side is wrong about something.
I believe academia itself is conducive to liberalism. The "real world" tends to drive people back towards conservatism
Education tends to lead people to liberalism, especially at colleges comprised of a more diverse student body beyond the local community or beyond state lines.
This is why there is a corrosive undercurrent of anti-educationism occasionally cropping up in conservative dialog. It is pretty much a cliche, the small town teenager goes off to college somewhere and the parents are horrified to see him come home with more liberal attitudes. People in the community see the neighbor's kid come back from college with more liberal attitudes. Conservative parents in the community start developing an attitude against sending their kids college, or at least to keep them in the local community college.
If you look at liberalism vs conservatism, there is exactly one overriding determining factor. The population of urban and suburban areas are liberal even in the Reddest of states, and in rural areas people are conservative even in the Bluest of states. Urban and suburban areas in Red of states vote Democrat, rural areas in Blue states vote Republican.
The cause is interaction and familiarity with people from different backgrounds and with diverse ideas. It leads to liberal social tolerance and acceptance of diversity. Experience that people of other races and religions and national origins and sexual orientations are not scary, Learning that the best way for everyone to get along is that you let them live how they wish to live and they let you live how you wish to live. A socially liberal live-and-let-live attitude. If two people want an interracial marriage, I'll let them live how they want and they'll let me live how I want. If two people want a gay marriage, I'll let them live how they want and they'll let me live how I want.
A larger college is like a mini-city bringing together diverse people from a wider area.
Those university-employed economists don't depend on the market for their living;
According to the CNN article: economists in the academic world were largely on the same page as the nonacademic types in predicting which candidate would be best for the long term.
It would be interesting to see which particular items (if any) where they didn't line up, but on the overall issue academia was a non-factor.
that decay rate study being an example which I mentioned now twice but which you seem to be ignoring for some reason
That study is much like the cold fusion. It is a very interesting result, it is worthy of further testing, but the overwhelming likelihood is that it will not hold up.
Preliminary scientific results are nowhere near as reliable as well reviewed repeatedly tested science. Preliminary results can go astray for a number of reasons. Media attention tends to focus on "hot new results" that defy scientific expectations. Media attention all too often focuses on exactly the reports that are most likely to be wrong.
I will fully admit I have a bias on interpreting scientiffic information. My bias is in favor of science that has been subjected to expert peer review where no substantive errors were identified. My bias is to be cautious or skeptical of results that have not been peer reviewed. My bias is to place a reasonable measure of trust in scientists that have a track record of doing solid scientific work respected by the scientific community. My bias is to be cautious about results from people with no scientific history and reputation, and to be actively skeptical of those with a history of identifiably-flawed work. My bias is to trust results that have been independently impartially replicated. My bias is to to be cautious about results that have not been replicated. My bias is that results are extremely dubious when there are repeated attempted replications refuting the result. My bias is that results are likely right when they fit in cleanly with all of known science. My bias is that results conflicting with established science are unlikely to be right, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Note that "unlikely" results are in many cases exactly the ones most worthy of further investigation. Most such results almost always end up being refuted by further investigation, but they are the ones that most advance science if they are confirmed.
Let me reiterate, "unlikely" results are in many cases exactly the ones most worthy of further investigation. By saying certain things are "unlikely" does not mean I am taking them off some list of things that are acceptable to study. To the contrary I am elevating their studyworthyness.
People attached to any area of pseudo-science are all too ready to dismiss solid established science, and all too eager to latch on to every preliminary anomalous result that might vaguely be interpreted to support their pet subject. Bias to dismiss any conflicting information and bias to accept what they want to hear. Creationists often take this to the most insane degree possible.
It still sounds to me as though you are waiting for somebody else to tell you what to think on this subject
I've looked to different degrees into a astrology and a number of comparable areas. Everything that I have seen is that astrology and the like have no rational basis for working, and have no credible evidence of success.
It's possible for something to work with no known rational explanation, but if something has absolutely ZERO rational basis then it dang-well better have some solid results.
As for listening to other people, the "mainstream scientific community" has earned a high level of respect and trust from me. I am a major science geek and I have a significant understanding of many fields and why they are right. The "mainstream scientific community" has earned a significant level of my trust and respect extending to areas I haven't specifically studied or for which the science goes over my head in some field.
Based on my science "biases" I listed earlier, everything indicates that astrology has been tested and refuted beyond all reason. But more importantly, astrology is such a socially prominent thing, it is impossible that it could be so big and gone on so long without producing a torrent of solid positive research if there was any validity to it. There are just way too many people interested and
"I'm presenting this report because I know you're cleared, and I believe you have the need to know. It's TOP SECRET, Compartmentalized, Code Fushia". Sex-ay!
Ok... calling Code Fushia sexy has got to be on the top-ten list of Clues You Might Be Gay.
You say "predictions" quite a lot, but don't forget that it's all been done *after the facts* no matter how you look at it.
No. Anything "after the fact" is not a prediction. Evolution has made countless thousands of predictions, and every time tested, evolution passes with flying colors.
Evolution predicted the nature and geological layers of bird-dinosaur links before they were found, and it predicts the nature and geological layers of future finds. Evolution predicts that for each "gap" in the fossil record, there are intermediate forms at intermediate times. Each time a fossil is found in a "gap", now there are two "gaps", one above it and one below it. And now evolution makes two new predictions, intermediate forms at intermediate times in the upper gap and intermediate forms at intermediate times in the lower gap. We are constantly finding new fossils filling in the "gaps". Each such find is a test of the prediction of evolution, each such find offers two new predictions of evolution, and with each such find the "gaps" get smaller and smaller. And in some cases, like Foraminifera, the gap size is zero.
The largest body of predictions would be pretty much ALL DNA analysis ever done. There are thousands of labs across the globe doing thousands of genetic analyses for the last two or three decades. Evolution predicts an extremely strict set of relationships between the DNA of different species. Evolution predicted a strict tree of common descent long before scientists ever knew what DNA was. DNA analysis establishes evolution's tree of common descent with the same absolute certainty that DNA establishes human family trees of descent in a courtroom.
Let me explain one small sliver of the genetic evidence. There is something called endogenous retroviruses. When you are infected by a virus, on rare occasion a chunk of virus DNA accidentally gets inserted at some random point in the DNA of one of your cells. A new chunk of "junk" DNA. On even more rare occasion this happens in a sperm or egg cell, in which case the child will carry this random insertion in all of the DNA in their entire body, and they pass it down to their descendants. Humans have thousands of such chunks in our DNA, as do other species.
It turns out that different species share some of these chunks. The same chunk of virus DNA at the same exact 1-in-4,000,000,000 location. Evolution says that each shared chunk is inherited from a unique insertion event in a common ancestor, and evolution says that by testing different species you can trace back in the family tree to locate that common ancestor. According to evolution each insertion happened at a specific point on evolution's tree of life, species below that point will carry it and no other species can carry it. So if you pick some particular chunk and test a couple of species you can use that to pin down the insertion point on evolution's tree, and you can then predict which other untested species will or will not carry it.
For example humans and chimps carry almost the exact same collection of endogenous retroviruses. There are chunks found in humans and in no other species. That insertion happened after the human-chimp split. There are chunks found in humans and in chimps and in no other species. That insertion happened shortly before the human-chimp split. There are chunks found in humans and chimps and a few other primates - the ones that evolution says happen to be more closely related to us. That insertion happened earlier in the primate tree. There are chunks found in all primates and in no other species. That insertion happened in the very earliest primates. There are insertions found in all primates and in certain other species evolution happens to say are closely related to primates. There are insertions found in humans and dogs and whales and all mammals. There are insertions found in all mammals and some reptiles - the reptiles evolution happens to say are more closely related to mammals.
How having a semi-hollow/fragile limb that neither gives any real advantage for flying, yet gives major disadvantage for anything that requires strength.
You accidentally reversed the order. Proto-birds were flying with heavy bones first. Later they evolved air pockets inside their bones, evolutionary pressure for weight savings to improved flight.
Feathers for warmth are different from feathers for flight. Unless perfectly shaped in the minutest detail, (and that's changes along the wing) they will give no advantage.
The feathers on the just-before-flight dinosaurs are nearly identical to modern feathers. And yes, small fast running dinosaur want a nice aerodynamic flow across it's entire body, and yes, pumping undersized proto-wings for more running speed gives you exactly the pressure to adapt into exactly the wings you need to flight. Exactly the evolutionary pressure to continuously evolution to exactly the advantage you cite.
Chances of all those consecutive changes happening and surviving without giving any benefit defy math.
Right - *if* they didn't give a benefit along the way. All of the changed I cited are advantageous all along the way. Fast running with pumping arms flows directly and beneficially into flight. Later bones became hollow and the hands are lost from the wings and the shoulder joint rotated outwards and the breast keel bone and other changes were all evolved to improve flight.
How does the existence feathered dinosaurs in itself prove evolution anymore than a Jackalope would?
Evolution predicted exactly that sort of evidence of birds evolving directly out of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs with feathers are an intermediate form directly supporting evolution. Anti-evolutionists keep trying to claim there are no transitional forms and that there are no links.
Dinosaurs evolved into birds, and the first step was the appearance of feathers. The next step was running feathered dinosaurs with "wings" too small for actual flight. The next step is a dinosaur with functional wings. I don't recall the exact sequence, but he have step by step a sequential appearance of the "bird toe" feet, the loss of hands from the arms, the appearance of the keel bone on the breast, the disappearance of the abdominal ribs, the appearance of hollow bones, several changes to the spine, the loss of jaw and teeth and the appearance of the beak. There are dozens of such features that biologically distinguish modern birds from dinosaurs.
It is a clear sequence of changing traits over time. For the fossil steps we have, one or a small number of those traits changes from dinosaur to bird traits. And evolution predicts that new fossil fines will fit in between them. If there is some step in that sequence where two traits change, evolution predicts there was an form with one of them changed. And evolution's predictions are right. New finds always fit properly on that evolutionary sequence.
Predictions are the test of science. Evolution has made millions of predictions, and evolution has been endlessly confirmed as those predictions are tested by now fossil finds or tested by DNA analysis and as tested in countless other ways.
First of all, you spend a lot of time saying it's "fully dinosaur" rather than "fully bird", which really doesn't move the argument much at all
I call it "fully dinosaur" making a mockery of the anti-evolution attempt to dismiss Archaeopteryx as "not an intermediate form" because it is "fully bird". Archaeopteryx is one of the most blatant intermediate forms one can imagine, and trying to dismiss it as "full bird" shows how far they distort reality trying to dismiss inconvenient facts. It is willful blindness.
If, prior to the find of Archaeopteryx, one asked a creationist what sort of evidence they would demand to prove evolution, they'd say a half-dinosaur-half-bird. They would say a dinosaur with feathers and wings. And then we found the feathered dinosaurs, and then we found th
A scientist / clergyman argues that creation should be discussed in science class and 'scientists' want him fired or this?
What ever happened to letting the facts prove themselves?
No. You obviously didn't read the fine article.
According to the article a scientist / clergyman is trying to teach science in science class and he's having trouble because a few of the students come in badly misinformed by the anti-evolution PR campaign. This scientist / clergyman wants "to let[] the facts prove themselves", but he says he's having trouble teaching them the facts. He is trying to adjust his teaching of the facts... his teaching of evolution... he's trying to adjust his teaching in a way to help dogmatic resistant creationist students learn the science and learn the facts.
What ever happened to the notion that your scientific theories are better because they match the available evidence more closely than anything else available?
Right. All of the available evidence confirms evolution. The problem he is having is that some students are coming in and refusing to pay any attention to the lessons and the evidence.
Now we have scientists trying to silence a dissenting opinion?
There is political controversy over evolution and there is social controversy over evolution, however there is no actual scientific controversy over evolution.
Of professional earth and life scientists, rounded to the nearest full percent, 100% of them agree evolution is the one and only scientific theory supported by the evidence. If you want to look to the tenth of a percent, 99.9% are on the evolution side. And those 99.9% consider the 0.1% to be crackpots pushing idiological bogoscience. Out of about 480,000 earth and life scientists only about 700 give any credence at all to Creation Science.
And as for high school science classes, you must teach an accurate overview of the field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. To the nearest full percent, 100% of professionals biologists consider evolution to be the one and only understanding and practice of modern biology.
There is one and only one accurate presentation of the professional field of biology. 100% of biologists practice biology on the basis of evolution, there is no dispute over that fact, there is no dissent from that fact.
This attitude makes me more weary of Evolution than of any other scientific theory. no matter how may ways people try to argue ague against gravity or electricity, they are simply confronted with the evidence or simply ignored.
If only that would work with evolution. But people dogmatically dedicated against evolution simply ignore the evidence, and we can't simply ignore them because they keep lobbying politicians and running public relations misinformation campaigns and they keep trying to seize control of public school science classes to kick actual science out and substitute anti-evolution pseudoscience.
Only Biologists try to get heretics fired or simply silenced in defense of the sacred Evolution dogma.
If a high school science teacher is teaching that the sun is powered by electricity or anything else misrepresenting science, then yes, that teacher damn well should be fired. Or at minimum transfered to be a gym teacher or something and get some proper science teachers to ACCURATELY present the various fields of science as understood and practiced by professionals in those fields.
The notion that there is any dispute over the science is pure PR fiction. The number of anti-evolutionists is roughly comparable to the number of scientists that claim the sun is powered by electricity. Out of about 480,000 earth and life scientists about 479,300 are on the evolution side.
Chuckle... I just saw this third post. Oh well, a third reply. I didn't plan it this way. hehe.
plenty of credible scientists who think it happened that way
No there aren't.
Out of about 480,000 earth and life scientists there are only about 700 who give Creation Science any credibility at all. Link.
That is less that zero point one five of a percent. Rounded to the nearest full percent, 100% of earth and life scientists consider the who Creation science thing non-credible. And the common term for a scientist considered non-credible by 100% of the scientific community is "crackpot". If you want to look to the tenth of a percent, 99.9% of earth and life scientists consider 0.1% to be non-credible crackpots.
The only reasonable thing to do, then, is to present both of these theories, give them equal time
If I dig up 0.1% of astronomers who are into the Electric Universe stuff, do we spend 50% of a science lesson teaching that the sun is powered by nuclear fusion and 50% of the time teaching that the sun is powered by electricity? Present both theories? Give them equal time?
Maybe they will find the missing links in the fossil record
There is a substantial chunk of the fossil record spanning thousands of diverse species with NO missing links. Copy/pasting from an old post of mine:
There are tiny animals in the ocean called Foraminifera. They are generally a tiny fraction of an inch in size, they grow intricate mineral skeletons called 'tests', and they literally number in the trillions. Vast numbers of them die every day and their tests settle to the sea floor in a continuous rain. A vast continuous rain of perfectly layered tiny fossils in the sediment that slowly builds up on the sea floor. In the 1970's deep see oil exploration lead to advanced deep see drilling technology, and that exploration drilling started bringing up sediment drill cores to be analyzed. Cores to be analyzed for oil purposes, but incidentally loaded with an effectively limitless supply of tiny Foraminifera fossils. A perfect continuous record tracing the branching tree of diversification and speciation over many tends of millions of years. Not merely a continuous sequence of transitional species, but a hyper detailed record of entire populations along each speciation split. Scientists are studying exactly how long each speciation split took, and examining in detail how populations behave and change during speciation events, and studying how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events. A perfect record tracing diverse currently existing species back to their common ancestor.
I'm perfectly fine with "teaching both sides"... however that lessen proceeds as follows.... the anti-evolution side says there are no transitional fossils at all, they don't exist. Then you present the evolution side, and you show the students the absolutely continuous foraminifera record showing ALL transitional forms. That's how it all goes... the anti-evolution sides says X, and then the evolution side presents the facts proving the anti-evolution-X is total fiction. It's like presenting both sides of flatearthism. The science side wins on the facts and the anti-science side completely falls apart under any informed critical scrutiny.
I posted to you a few minutes ago about genetic algorithms, but I just saw this post with the creationscience.com. It is easy to show that that site is one big pile of misinformation.
For example they do the usual Young Grand Canyon thing. The simply refutation is that a torrent of fast water will forcefully carve its way in straight lines. A cursory review of the Grand Canyon immediately shows not mearly a meandering path, but multitudes of tight U-turns. Places where fast water would immediately wash straight over and cut away the middle of the U-turn. It's obvious once you notice the issue. You can't quickly carve U-turns with a blasting torrent of water.
The whole notion of a young earth is refuted by evidence from across the entire planet. If you dig in the arctic or ant arctic ice pack you can clearly see and count visible yearly snow layers. During the summer 6 months of dust and pollen settle down from the atmosphere, and the surface bakes under the summer sun for 6 months altering the coloration and texture. If you dig and count down 1929 layers you can find traces of ash from the famous 79 A.D. Mt Vesuvius eruption that destroyed Pompeii. If you dig and count down the layers you can find traces of volcanic ash from every major volcanic eruption in recorded history. If you dig down about 5300 layers you find faint traces of lead contamination first appearing in the snow... because about 5300 layers down is about 3300 B.C. and that was the beginning of the bronze age when civilizations first started mining and smelting lead ore... releasing lead contaminated dust and lead contaminated smoke into the atmosphere.
The visible countable layers continue down well over 100,000 years worth. Beyond that the layers get squeezed to thin and blur together. The the deep blurred icepack goes down about 800,000 years. The 100,000+ visibly countable layers have the normal scattering of ash of 100,000+ years worth of volcanic eruptions. And the full 800,000 years worth of icepack too has about 800,000 years worth of scattered eruption ash layers. 1 layer = 1 year all the way back through all of recorded history, the layers continues smoothly and unaltered beyond that point, and the record of volcanic eruptions authenticates that timeline all the way down. You can't suddenly start putting down thousands of layers per year when it takes a year or two for each event of volcanic ash to settle out of the atmosphere. Any attempt at a "fast layering" excuse completely falls apart, each volcanic ash event would stretch across thousands of layers instead of one or two layers, and you would be completely missing the year worth of pollen and dust of each layer.
The earth is way over 100,000 years old. There was no Global Flood any time within the last 100,000+ years.
One side is the entire scientific community and an entire planet worth of evidence, and on the other side are people engaging is wishful thinking, and willful blindness of inconvenient facts, and twisting the evidence way beyond the breaking point to fit the picture they want to paint.
Based on handle and sig I take it you're a programmer. Me too.
Take a look into genetic algorithms. Not only are they fun to play around with, they are incredibly powerful for solving some classes of programming problems that are almost impossible to even attempt to code for by any usual algorithms. More than half of all Fortune 500 companies use Genetic Algorithms somewhere or other in their business.
The basic concepts are quite simple. You have a population of "individuals" and a string of digital DNA for each "individual". You interpret the DNA as some sort of rules or solution to the problem - there are a couple of ways to do that but exactly how doesn't matter too much. You then let each individual try the problem, maybe competitive with each other, and rank the better ones higher and you kill the worse ones. Then for the survivors you do sexual reproduction taking half the DNA from each parent to generate a child generation. Sprinkle in a *very* low rate of mutation - the real power is in the sexual recombination. Then you just loop generations.
It is amazing watching evolution in action. Starting from purely random DNA it generally starts improving rapidly. Depending on the problem it can often evolve better solutions than the best human experts have ever designed by any means.
Digitally implemented evolution is a commercially applied science. The process of evolution is an incredibly powerful information creation engine. As programmers we are uniquely positioned to see and deeply understand evolution as an information processing system. It really is an amazing experience witnessing it in action. It's fun, fascinating, and it adds a unique technique into your programmer's bag of tricks that potentially enables you to solve certain categories of problems that you couldn't even attempt to tackle before. Just search up any of the countless sources out there on "genetic algorithms".
Oh, and on sexual reproduction.... you're pretty much right that evolution can't really jump from asexual to complex male and female forms. The only problem there is in imagining there was such a jump. In biology there are many species with a variety of far more simple forms of sexual reproduction. Just to cite one such point, you overlooked hermaphrodism which is quite common in plants and worms and other species. No male and female forms, just one form, and that form is often capable of self-fertilization. There are even unicellular sexually reproducing species. No male or female or sexual organs...you just need two cells to swap half their DNA. In the most primitive sense you could just have two cells merge, let the chromosomes pair up, then undergo pretty much a normal cell division. Single cells varying between that sort of sexual shuffling and asexual divisions.
I know things are gradual, but how please tell me how something like a birds wing is supposed to evolve?
There are at least two ways. We're pretty sure bats too the "trees down" path, and that birds took the "ground up" path.
The "trees down" path is pretty obvious if you consider flying squirrels. They don't actually have full flight, they have advanced gliding abilities. The flying squirrel jumps or falls out of a tree, and the more and better "winglike" structure it has the more safely it can fall and "parachute" down, and then the further and better it can glide for distance or to other trees. From there it is clear and simple to develop efficient gliding into level gliding and then into upwards powered flight.
As for the ground-up path...
But wings are completely differently built to any other bone, (and pretty useless without feathers, feathers of course being pretty useless unless perfectly tuned as well.)
Nope, feathers are useful before flight. They are useful for keeping warm. Birds have a coat of feathers to keep warm just as mammals have a coat of fur to keep warm.
And guess what? There are dinosaurs with feathers. Just google it. That right there should be a giant flag waving in your face that evolution is true. Dinosaurs with feathers are transitional.
And back to "how wings evolved"... some of those feathered dinosaurs were fairly small really fast runners. They had feathered arms which were much too small to be wings. As fast runners, the wings had to be reasonably aerodynamic over the body. A small fast runner does not want crude clunky feathers sticking out with rotten air drag. Then note that when you run you pump your arms. If you look at chickens or any bird, they pump their wings to help them run faster. Flapping your wings can give you a significant boost to running speed, even if they are way too small and weak to actually take off into the air. It should be pretty easy to see how improving aerodynamics and improving the arm flapping will steadily and continuously improve running speed, eventually to the point of short hopping micro-flight a few feet at a time and eventually full flight. This path can also make use of the trees-down pattern mentioned above for bats. They could climb trees and evolve downward gliding and flapping for better distance from tree to tree.
That's the kind of transitional forms I'm talking about
Yes, we have quite a few transitional forms on the bird line. As I already mentioned there were feathered dinosaurs. I'll just address the famous Archaeopteryx. It is a perfect example of a transitional. Anti-evolutionists try to dismiss it as "fully bird", but that is so ridiculous that they would in fact be better off trying to dismiss Archaeopteryx as "fully dinosaur". Except for the wings, Archaeopteryx is in fact fully dinosaur and essentially zero percent bird in every respect. Archaeopteryx has a jaw and teeth, just like dinosaurs. There is no bird on earth with a jaw or teeth, they all have beaks. Archaeopteryx has a long bony tail, just like dinosaurs, not birds. Archaeopteryx has heavy solid bones, just like dinsaurs. All birds have very light hollow bones. Archaeopteryx has abdominal ribs, like dinosaurs. Birds don't. Archaeopteryx has an ordinary small flat breast bone just like dinosaurs, it is completely missing the big keel bone that all birds have to anchor their powerful flight muscles. Archaeopteryx's shoulder joints point downwards, just like dinosaurs have, pointed in the proper direction for walking and climbing. Birds have their shoulder joints facing outwards, properly oriented for flapping motion. There are about five or six technical characteristics of the spine (vertebra fusings and shapes and vertebra counts and their attachments and orientations) that exactly match dinosaurs but completely unlike any bird.
In every respect EXCEPT wings, Archaeopteryx is a dinosaur and lacks absolutely every defining characteristic of birds.
I'm kinda curious what this "evidence that contradicts evolution" is
The generally recognized "best" source for the anti-evolution side is collected at answersingenesis.org. Be warned, the bullshit runs about three miles deep over there. There is no "evidence that contradicts evolution" that has gone through the scientific peer review process without being torn to itty-bitty-shreds, often on the basis of gross math errors.
There's also discoveryinstitute.org, but they are not nearly as comprehensive as the answersingenesis.org site.
Note a significant difference between the pro-evolution side and the anti-evolution side: The pro-evolution side such as talkorigins.org and pandasthumb.org and most other sources and individuals are more than happy to point people to websites and sources for the anti-evolution side. However you oddly NEVER find anti-evolution websites offering any links for the evolution science side.
P.S. Here is an old post of mine that. Check it out, it won at least one skeptic completely over to the evolution science side.
I am just as disgusted by the militant atheist blathering on about Science proves there is no God
I call bullshit.
I participate in virtually every discussion on here even remotely connected to evolution, and in umpteen years I have seen someone make that argument exactly ONCE, and I personally called him on it. He immediately replied apologizing profusely for his careless comments, and that he he did not intend to make that claim.
Having conversations with invisible some sky wizard is silly, but science can no more disprove the existence of God that it can disprove the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorns.
I suspect that if somehow we could destroy one of these polar forces the other would follow and we would finally wind up with a balanced world wehre Science can do Science and Religion can do Religion and neither one will have penis envy over the other and we can all move on.
LoLz.
You could kill every atheist on earth and the radical fundies would be just as dedicated as ever to hijacking the force of government to push 6000 year ago 6-day wacky-literalist Creationism in public school science classes.
If we could somehow muzzle the anti-science cranks and just teach science in science class, you'd be hearing pretty well squat from atheists on this whole science thing.
However, evolution is usually taught as a secular religion
Huh?
As far as I am aware, Evolution is taught EXACTLY the same way Chemistry is taught. Or at least it shout be taught exactly the same way.
the people pushing for creationism to be taught alongside it want nothing more than parity for the two philosophical beliefs.
We are talking about SCIENCE CLASS. Not philosophy class.
In science class we teach an accurate overview of the particular field of science as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. In Chemistry class that means teaching Atom Theory. In Biology class that means teaching the Theory of Evolution.
Of course, the "open minded" evolutionists want the other side muzzled, marginalized, fired and otherwise silenced.
A teacher should not be teaching existentialist philosophy in Chemistry class.
Nor should a science teacher be presenting th Electric Universe theory of an electric powered sun. It would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to give students the slightest impression that professional astronomers or professional physicists consider the electric sun theory to have any scientific basis or any scientific credibility whatsoever. It would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to give students the slightest impression that professional biologists consider any of the anti-evolution stuff to have any scientific basis or any scientific credibility whatsoever.
People are perfectly free to talk about and teach Creationism in private school sand in the home and pretty much anywhere else. However it in no way represent biology as understood and practiced by professional biologists and has no place in a public school science class, except perhaps as part of a lesson on identifying non-science and fraudulent science.
Oh, and people are completely welcome to actually *DO* some science trying to disprove evolution / support creationism, or any other research they like. In fact Christian groups have TRIED to give these anti-evolution crackpots money.... "Here please take our money and go do some of this wonderful science you keep talking on and on about". And they they still didn't did any science. You can't PAY them to do science because there is no science to back up all of their bogus anti-evolution claims.
The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.
"They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said.
There is social controversy over evolution and political controversy over evolution, but no scientific controversy. These lying anti-evolution sacks of shit won't even do any actual science even if you shove bags full of money into their hands begging them to do some science. They have a public relations campaign against evolution, but they don't have jack-shit scientifically to back up their claims. They get millions of dollars per year in donations, and what do they spend that money on? Science? No. They spend that money on political influence and on public relations campaigns and on lawyers. They don't spend any of it on science because the science refutes all of their claims.
P.S. Sorry for the crude&flammish language. I'm in a bad mood, I am sick and tired of all the lies and misinformation, and I haven't gotten any sleep. Oh well. Fuck you to everyone that deserves it. I'll either get modded flamebait or +5... or probably both... and I'm to tired to give a shit either way.
UM, I think you neglected to mention that Evolution is also just a theory at this point.
Theory of Relativity. Atom Theory. Electromagnetic Theory. Theory of Gravity.
Yeah, let's remove all "just theories" from science class. You have a pop-quiz asking them how to spell 'science', and then you send them home with nothing else to teach. Brilliant!
Yeah, you might want to mention that part when you advocate suppressing alternative beliefs in the classroom...
Excuse me, but we don't teach Swedish in English class.
We teach English in English class, and we teach Science in Science class.
And in Science class teachers should not be teaching "beliefs". They should be teaching accurate overview of the various fields of science as understood and practiced by professionals in those fields. And the indisputable FACT is that Evolution is the one and only understanding and practice of the field of biology by 100%(*) of professional biologists. "Welcome kids, this is biology class. The one and only scientific understanding and practice of biology among professional biologists is evolution and some other things I'll get to later. Here is what evolution says and he's how it works and here let me show you this shitload of evidence that convinced all of those scientists that evolution was valid and accurate. You don't have to believe in evolution any more than you have to believe in atoms, but you do need to understand the material and you do need to pass the tests."
It wouldn't matter if Atom Theory were wrong and atoms don't exist. A Chemistry class must teach an accurate overview of Chemistry as understood and practiced by professional Chemists. Even if atom theory is wrong and atoms don't exist, it is impossible to understand the modern field of chemistry without knowing atom theory. Even if atom theory is wrong and atoms don't exist, it is impossible to enter and practice modern Chemistry unless one understands atom theory. Even if atom theory is wrong and atoms don't exist, it is impossible to do good science proving atom theory is wrong unless one first understands atom theory.
So even if you have the ignorant notion that evolution is wrong, it doesn't matter. The absolutely indisputable fact is that among 100%(*) of professional biologists evolution is the one and only modern scientific understanding and practice of biology.
(*)Footnote: Rounded to the nearest full percentage point 100% of biologists accept evolution, rounded to the nearest full percentage point 100% of chemists accept atoms, rounded to the nearest full percentage point 100% of astronomers accept the fusion-powered-sun. Just because one-in-a-couple-hundred people-witha-a-degree is a crackpot does not mean we teach the Electric Universe electric-powered-sun crapola in highschool science class.
If you want a manual, you can buy #1 and install #2.
When you first install it you should probably call their installation line. You know, just to say thanks but no thanks you won't be needing their activation services, and that they could save some money by skipping that unneeded service next time.
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>88% of Democratic economists think Obama would be best, while 80% of Republican economists pick McCain
And, since there were more than 3x as many Democrats in the pool as Republicans, I would assume that many of the "Independents" were also left-leaning.
Huh? That was an odd chain of logic. You quote statistics that 12% of Democrats are persuaded by the evidence to give a non-biased opinion against their own Democratic candidate on the economy, and that 20% of Republicans are persuaded by the evidence to give a non-biased opinion against their own Republican candidate on the economy. You then accuse independents of secret left bias.
I could understand quoting the part about independents lean toward Obama by 46% compared to 39% for McCain and deciding to dismiss that as bias, but how do you possibly make a chain of logic that partisan economists jumping ship against their own candidates is bias??? There's no better indication of honest non-bias than someone admitting he thinks his own side is wrong about something.
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I believe academia itself is conducive to liberalism. The "real world" tends to drive people back towards conservatism
Education tends to lead people to liberalism, especially at colleges comprised of a more diverse student body beyond the local community or beyond state lines.
This is why there is a corrosive undercurrent of anti-educationism occasionally cropping up in conservative dialog. It is pretty much a cliche, the small town teenager goes off to college somewhere and the parents are horrified to see him come home with more liberal attitudes. People in the community see the neighbor's kid come back from college with more liberal attitudes. Conservative parents in the community start developing an attitude against sending their kids college, or at least to keep them in the local community college.
If you look at liberalism vs conservatism, there is exactly one overriding determining factor. The population of urban and suburban areas are liberal even in the Reddest of states, and in rural areas people are conservative even in the Bluest of states. Urban and suburban areas in Red of states vote Democrat, rural areas in Blue states vote Republican.
The cause is interaction and familiarity with people from different backgrounds and with diverse ideas. It leads to liberal social tolerance and acceptance of diversity. Experience that people of other races and religions and national origins and sexual orientations are not scary, Learning that the best way for everyone to get along is that you let them live how they wish to live and they let you live how you wish to live. A socially liberal live-and-let-live attitude. If two people want an interracial marriage, I'll let them live how they want and they'll let me live how I want. If two people want a gay marriage, I'll let them live how they want and they'll let me live how I want.
A larger college is like a mini-city bringing together diverse people from a wider area.
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Those university-employed economists don't depend on the market for their living;
According to the CNN article:
economists in the academic world were largely on the same page as the nonacademic types in predicting which candidate would be best for the long term.
It would be interesting to see which particular items (if any) where they didn't line up, but on the overall issue academia was a non-factor.
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that decay rate study being an example which I mentioned now twice but which you seem to be ignoring for some reason
That study is much like the cold fusion. It is a very interesting result, it is worthy of further testing, but the overwhelming likelihood is that it will not hold up.
Preliminary scientific results are nowhere near as reliable as well reviewed repeatedly tested science. Preliminary results can go astray for a number of reasons. Media attention tends to focus on "hot new results" that defy scientific expectations. Media attention all too often focuses on exactly the reports that are most likely to be wrong.
I will fully admit I have a bias on interpreting scientiffic information. My bias is in favor of science that has been subjected to expert peer review where no substantive errors were identified. My bias is to be cautious or skeptical of results that have not been peer reviewed. My bias is to place a reasonable measure of trust in scientists that have a track record of doing solid scientific work respected by the scientific community. My bias is to be cautious about results from people with no scientific history and reputation, and to be actively skeptical of those with a history of identifiably-flawed work. My bias is to trust results that have been independently impartially replicated. My bias is to to be cautious about results that have not been replicated. My bias is that results are extremely dubious when there are repeated attempted replications refuting the result. My bias is that results are likely right when they fit in cleanly with all of known science. My bias is that results conflicting with established science are unlikely to be right, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Note that "unlikely" results are in many cases exactly the ones most worthy of further investigation. Most such results almost always end up being refuted by further investigation, but they are the ones that most advance science if they are confirmed.
Let me reiterate, "unlikely" results are in many cases exactly the ones most worthy of further investigation. By saying certain things are "unlikely" does not mean I am taking them off some list of things that are acceptable to study. To the contrary I am elevating their studyworthyness.
People attached to any area of pseudo-science are all too ready to dismiss solid established science, and all too eager to latch on to every preliminary anomalous result that might vaguely be interpreted to support their pet subject. Bias to dismiss any conflicting information and bias to accept what they want to hear. Creationists often take this to the most insane degree possible.
It still sounds to me as though you are waiting for somebody else to tell you what to think on this subject
I've looked to different degrees into a astrology and a number of comparable areas. Everything that I have seen is that astrology and the like have no rational basis for working, and have no credible evidence of success.
It's possible for something to work with no known rational explanation, but if something has absolutely ZERO rational basis then it dang-well better have some solid results.
As for listening to other people, the "mainstream scientific community" has earned a high level of respect and trust from me. I am a major science geek and I have a significant understanding of many fields and why they are right. The "mainstream scientific community" has earned a significant level of my trust and respect extending to areas I haven't specifically studied or for which the science goes over my head in some field.
Based on my science "biases" I listed earlier, everything indicates that astrology has been tested and refuted beyond all reason. But more importantly, astrology is such a socially prominent thing, it is impossible that it could be so big and gone on so long without producing a torrent of solid positive research if there was any validity to it. There are just way too many people interested and
If you're going to be a usage/spelling nazi, at least get it right.
He shouldn't have had a 'u' in "Intensive porpoises".
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"I'm presenting this report because I know you're cleared, and I believe you have the need to know. It's TOP SECRET, Compartmentalized, Code Fushia". Sex-ay!
Ok... calling Code Fushia sexy has got to be on the top-ten list of Clues You Might Be Gay.
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canada has some of the best covert ops and communications interceptions people in the world.
I've never trusted those goddamn Canadians.
Their in it with the gays - building landingstrips for the aliens.
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You say "predictions" quite a lot, but don't forget that it's all been done *after the facts* no matter how you look at it.
No.
Anything "after the fact" is not a prediction.
Evolution has made countless thousands of predictions, and every time tested, evolution passes with flying colors.
Evolution predicted the nature and geological layers of bird-dinosaur links before they were found, and it predicts the nature and geological layers of future finds. Evolution predicts that for each "gap" in the fossil record, there are intermediate forms at intermediate times. Each time a fossil is found in a "gap", now there are two "gaps", one above it and one below it. And now evolution makes two new predictions, intermediate forms at intermediate times in the upper gap and intermediate forms at intermediate times in the lower gap. We are constantly finding new fossils filling in the "gaps". Each such find is a test of the prediction of evolution, each such find offers two new predictions of evolution, and with each such find the "gaps" get smaller and smaller. And in some cases, like Foraminifera, the gap size is zero.
The largest body of predictions would be pretty much ALL DNA analysis ever done. There are thousands of labs across the globe doing thousands of genetic analyses for the last two or three decades. Evolution predicts an extremely strict set of relationships between the DNA of different species. Evolution predicted a strict tree of common descent long before scientists ever knew what DNA was. DNA analysis establishes evolution's tree of common descent with the same absolute certainty that DNA establishes human family trees of descent in a courtroom.
Let me explain one small sliver of the genetic evidence. There is something called endogenous retroviruses. When you are infected by a virus, on rare occasion a chunk of virus DNA accidentally gets inserted at some random point in the DNA of one of your cells. A new chunk of "junk" DNA. On even more rare occasion this happens in a sperm or egg cell, in which case the child will carry this random insertion in all of the DNA in their entire body, and they pass it down to their descendants. Humans have thousands of such chunks in our DNA, as do other species.
It turns out that different species share some of these chunks. The same chunk of virus DNA at the same exact 1-in-4,000,000,000 location. Evolution says that each shared chunk is inherited from a unique insertion event in a common ancestor, and evolution says that by testing different species you can trace back in the family tree to locate that common ancestor. According to evolution each insertion happened at a specific point on evolution's tree of life, species below that point will carry it and no other species can carry it. So if you pick some particular chunk and test a couple of species you can use that to pin down the insertion point on evolution's tree, and you can then predict which other untested species will or will not carry it.
For example humans and chimps carry almost the exact same collection of endogenous retroviruses. There are chunks found in humans and in no other species. That insertion happened after the human-chimp split. There are chunks found in humans and in chimps and in no other species. That insertion happened shortly before the human-chimp split. There are chunks found in humans and chimps and a few other primates - the ones that evolution says happen to be more closely related to us. That insertion happened earlier in the primate tree. There are chunks found in all primates and in no other species. That insertion happened in the very earliest primates. There are insertions found in all primates and in certain other species evolution happens to say are closely related to primates. There are insertions found in humans and dogs and whales and all mammals. There are insertions found in all mammals and some reptiles - the reptiles evolution happens to say are more closely related to mammals.
And of course the same relationsh
Well, someone has to be there to shut off the servers and sell them for scrap on eBay...
How about Sarah Palin?
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I'd say that's an agreeable point to let this wrap up. Tho it's tempting to argue invisible-pink :D
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How having a semi-hollow/fragile limb that neither gives any real advantage for flying, yet gives major disadvantage for anything that requires strength.
You accidentally reversed the order.
Proto-birds were flying with heavy bones first.
Later they evolved air pockets inside their bones, evolutionary pressure for weight savings to improved flight.
Feathers for warmth are different from feathers for flight. Unless perfectly shaped in the minutest detail, (and that's changes along the wing) they will give no advantage.
The feathers on the just-before-flight dinosaurs are nearly identical to modern feathers. And yes, small fast running dinosaur want a nice aerodynamic flow across it's entire body, and yes, pumping undersized proto-wings for more running speed gives you exactly the pressure to adapt into exactly the wings you need to flight. Exactly the evolutionary pressure to continuously evolution to exactly the advantage you cite.
Chances of all those consecutive changes happening and surviving without giving any benefit defy math.
Right - *if* they didn't give a benefit along the way.
All of the changed I cited are advantageous all along the way. Fast running with pumping arms flows directly and beneficially into flight. Later bones became hollow and the hands are lost from the wings and the shoulder joint rotated outwards and the breast keel bone and other changes were all evolved to improve flight.
How does the existence feathered dinosaurs in itself prove evolution anymore than a Jackalope would?
Evolution predicted exactly that sort of evidence of birds evolving directly out of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs with feathers are an intermediate form directly supporting evolution. Anti-evolutionists keep trying to claim there are no transitional forms and that there are no links.
Dinosaurs evolved into birds, and the first step was the appearance of feathers.
The next step was running feathered dinosaurs with "wings" too small for actual flight.
The next step is a dinosaur with functional wings.
I don't recall the exact sequence, but he have step by step a sequential appearance of the "bird toe" feet, the loss of hands from the arms, the appearance of the keel bone on the breast, the disappearance of the abdominal ribs, the appearance of hollow bones, several changes to the spine, the loss of jaw and teeth and the appearance of the beak. There are dozens of such features that biologically distinguish modern birds from dinosaurs.
It is a clear sequence of changing traits over time. For the fossil steps we have, one or a small number of those traits changes from dinosaur to bird traits. And evolution predicts that new fossil fines will fit in between them. If there is some step in that sequence where two traits change, evolution predicts there was an form with one of them changed. And evolution's predictions are right. New finds always fit properly on that evolutionary sequence.
Predictions are the test of science. Evolution has made millions of predictions, and evolution has been endlessly confirmed as those predictions are tested by now fossil finds or tested by DNA analysis and as tested in countless other ways.
First of all, you spend a lot of time saying it's "fully dinosaur" rather than "fully bird", which really doesn't move the argument much at all
I call it "fully dinosaur" making a mockery of the anti-evolution attempt to dismiss Archaeopteryx as "not an intermediate form" because it is "fully bird". Archaeopteryx is one of the most blatant intermediate forms one can imagine, and trying to dismiss it as "full bird" shows how far they distort reality trying to dismiss inconvenient facts. It is willful blindness.
If, prior to the find of Archaeopteryx, one asked a creationist what sort of evidence they would demand to prove evolution, they'd say a half-dinosaur-half-bird. They would say a dinosaur with feathers and wings. And then we found the feathered dinosaurs, and then we found th
A scientist / clergyman argues that creation should be discussed in science class and 'scientists' want him fired or this?
What ever happened to letting the facts prove themselves?
No. You obviously didn't read the fine article.
According to the article a scientist / clergyman is trying to teach science in science class and he's having trouble because a few of the students come in badly misinformed by the anti-evolution PR campaign. This scientist / clergyman wants "to let[] the facts prove themselves", but he says he's having trouble teaching them the facts. He is trying to adjust his teaching of the facts... his teaching of evolution... he's trying to adjust his teaching in a way to help dogmatic resistant creationist students learn the science and learn the facts.
What ever happened to the notion that your scientific theories are better because they match the available evidence more closely than anything else available?
Right. All of the available evidence confirms evolution. The problem he is having is that some students are coming in and refusing to pay any attention to the lessons and the evidence.
Now we have scientists trying to silence a dissenting opinion?
There is political controversy over evolution and there is social controversy over evolution, however there is no actual scientific controversy over evolution.
Of professional earth and life scientists, rounded to the nearest full percent, 100% of them agree evolution is the one and only scientific theory supported by the evidence. If you want to look to the tenth of a percent, 99.9% are on the evolution side. And those 99.9% consider the 0.1% to be crackpots pushing idiological bogoscience. Out of about 480,000 earth and life scientists only about 700 give any credence at all to Creation Science.
And as for high school science classes, you must teach an accurate overview of the field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. To the nearest full percent, 100% of professionals biologists consider evolution to be the one and only understanding and practice of modern biology.
There is one and only one accurate presentation of the professional field of biology. 100% of biologists practice biology on the basis of evolution, there is no dispute over that fact, there is no dissent from that fact.
This attitude makes me more weary of Evolution than of any other scientific theory. no matter how may ways people try to argue ague against gravity or electricity, they are simply confronted with the evidence or simply ignored.
If only that would work with evolution. But people dogmatically dedicated against evolution simply ignore the evidence, and we can't simply ignore them because they keep lobbying politicians and running public relations misinformation campaigns and they keep trying to seize control of public school science classes to kick actual science out and substitute anti-evolution pseudoscience.
Only Biologists try to get heretics fired or simply silenced in defense of the sacred Evolution dogma.
If a high school science teacher is teaching that the sun is powered by electricity or anything else misrepresenting science, then yes, that teacher damn well should be fired. Or at minimum transfered to be a gym teacher or something and get some proper science teachers to ACCURATELY present the various fields of science as understood and practiced by professionals in those fields.
The notion that there is any dispute over the science is pure PR fiction.
The number of anti-evolutionists is roughly comparable to the number of scientists that claim the sun is powered by electricity.
Out of about 480,000 earth and life scientists about 479,300 are on the evolution side.
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Chuckle... I just saw this third post. Oh well, a third reply. I didn't plan it this way. hehe.
plenty of credible scientists who think it happened that way
No there aren't.
Out of about 480,000 earth and life scientists there are only about 700 who give Creation Science any credibility at all. Link.
That is less that zero point one five of a percent. Rounded to the nearest full percent, 100% of earth and life scientists consider the who Creation science thing non-credible. And the common term for a scientist considered non-credible by 100% of the scientific community is "crackpot". If you want to look to the tenth of a percent, 99.9% of earth and life scientists consider 0.1% to be non-credible crackpots.
The only reasonable thing to do, then, is to present both of these theories, give them equal time
If I dig up 0.1% of astronomers who are into the Electric Universe stuff, do we spend 50% of a science lesson teaching that the sun is powered by nuclear fusion and 50% of the time teaching that the sun is powered by electricity? Present both theories? Give them equal time?
Maybe they will find the missing links in the fossil record
There is a substantial chunk of the fossil record spanning thousands of diverse species with NO missing links. Copy/pasting from an old post of mine:
There are tiny animals in the ocean called Foraminifera. They are generally a tiny fraction of an inch in size, they grow intricate mineral skeletons called 'tests', and they literally number in the trillions. Vast numbers of them die every day and their tests settle to the sea floor in a continuous rain. A vast continuous rain of perfectly layered tiny fossils in the sediment that slowly builds up on the sea floor. In the 1970's deep see oil exploration lead to advanced deep see drilling technology, and that exploration drilling started bringing up sediment drill cores to be analyzed. Cores to be analyzed for oil purposes, but incidentally loaded with an effectively limitless supply of tiny Foraminifera fossils. A perfect continuous record tracing the branching tree of diversification and speciation over many tends of millions of years. Not merely a continuous sequence of transitional species, but a hyper detailed record of entire populations along each speciation split. Scientists are studying exactly how long each speciation split took, and examining in detail how populations behave and change during speciation events, and studying how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events. A perfect record tracing diverse currently existing species back to their common ancestor.
I'm perfectly fine with "teaching both sides"... however that lessen proceeds as follows.... the anti-evolution side says there are no transitional fossils at all, they don't exist. Then you present the evolution side, and you show the students the absolutely continuous foraminifera record showing ALL transitional forms. That's how it all goes... the anti-evolution sides says X, and then the evolution side presents the facts proving the anti-evolution-X is total fiction. It's like presenting both sides of flatearthism. The science side wins on the facts and the anti-science side completely falls apart under any informed critical scrutiny.
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I posted to you a few minutes ago about genetic algorithms, but I just saw this post with the creationscience.com. It is easy to show that that site is one big pile of misinformation.
For example they do the usual Young Grand Canyon thing. The simply refutation is that a torrent of fast water will forcefully carve its way in straight lines. A cursory review of the Grand Canyon immediately shows not mearly a meandering path, but multitudes of tight U-turns. Places where fast water would immediately wash straight over and cut away the middle of the U-turn. It's obvious once you notice the issue. You can't quickly carve U-turns with a blasting torrent of water.
The whole notion of a young earth is refuted by evidence from across the entire planet. If you dig in the arctic or ant arctic ice pack you can clearly see and count visible yearly snow layers. During the summer 6 months of dust and pollen settle down from the atmosphere, and the surface bakes under the summer sun for 6 months altering the coloration and texture. If you dig and count down 1929 layers you can find traces of ash from the famous 79 A.D. Mt Vesuvius eruption that destroyed Pompeii. If you dig and count down the layers you can find traces of volcanic ash from every major volcanic eruption in recorded history. If you dig down about 5300 layers you find faint traces of lead contamination first appearing in the snow... because about 5300 layers down is about 3300 B.C. and that was the beginning of the bronze age when civilizations first started mining and smelting lead ore... releasing lead contaminated dust and lead contaminated smoke into the atmosphere.
The visible countable layers continue down well over 100,000 years worth. Beyond that the layers get squeezed to thin and blur together. The the deep blurred icepack goes down about 800,000 years. The 100,000+ visibly countable layers have the normal scattering of ash of 100,000+ years worth of volcanic eruptions. And the full 800,000 years worth of icepack too has about 800,000 years worth of scattered eruption ash layers. 1 layer = 1 year all the way back through all of recorded history, the layers continues smoothly and unaltered beyond that point, and the record of volcanic eruptions authenticates that timeline all the way down. You can't suddenly start putting down thousands of layers per year when it takes a year or two for each event of volcanic ash to settle out of the atmosphere. Any attempt at a "fast layering" excuse completely falls apart, each volcanic ash event would stretch across thousands of layers instead of one or two layers, and you would be completely missing the year worth of pollen and dust of each layer.
The earth is way over 100,000 years old. There was no Global Flood any time within the last 100,000+ years.
One side is the entire scientific community and an entire planet worth of evidence, and on the other side are people engaging is wishful thinking, and willful blindness of inconvenient facts, and twisting the evidence way beyond the breaking point to fit the picture they want to paint.
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Based on handle and sig I take it you're a programmer. Me too.
Take a look into genetic algorithms. Not only are they fun to play around with, they are incredibly powerful for solving some classes of programming problems that are almost impossible to even attempt to code for by any usual algorithms. More than half of all Fortune 500 companies use Genetic Algorithms somewhere or other in their business.
The basic concepts are quite simple. You have a population of "individuals" and a string of digital DNA for each "individual". You interpret the DNA as some sort of rules or solution to the problem - there are a couple of ways to do that but exactly how doesn't matter too much. You then let each individual try the problem, maybe competitive with each other, and rank the better ones higher and you kill the worse ones. Then for the survivors you do sexual reproduction taking half the DNA from each parent to generate a child generation. Sprinkle in a *very* low rate of mutation - the real power is in the sexual recombination. Then you just loop generations.
It is amazing watching evolution in action. Starting from purely random DNA it generally starts improving rapidly. Depending on the problem it can often evolve better solutions than the best human experts have ever designed by any means.
Digitally implemented evolution is a commercially applied science. The process of evolution is an incredibly powerful information creation engine. As programmers we are uniquely positioned to see and deeply understand evolution as an information processing system. It really is an amazing experience witnessing it in action. It's fun, fascinating, and it adds a unique technique into your programmer's bag of tricks that potentially enables you to solve certain categories of problems that you couldn't even attempt to tackle before. Just search up any of the countless sources out there on "genetic algorithms".
Oh, and on sexual reproduction.... you're pretty much right that evolution can't really jump from asexual to complex male and female forms. The only problem there is in imagining there was such a jump. In biology there are many species with a variety of far more simple forms of sexual reproduction. Just to cite one such point, you overlooked hermaphrodism which is quite common in plants and worms and other species. No male and female forms, just one form, and that form is often capable of self-fertilization. There are even unicellular sexually reproducing species. No male or female or sexual organs...you just need two cells to swap half their DNA. In the most primitive sense you could just have two cells merge, let the chromosomes pair up, then undergo pretty much a normal cell division. Single cells varying between that sort of sexual shuffling and asexual divisions.
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I know things are gradual, but how please tell me how something like a birds wing is supposed to evolve?
There are at least two ways. We're pretty sure bats too the "trees down" path, and that birds took the "ground up" path.
The "trees down" path is pretty obvious if you consider flying squirrels. They don't actually have full flight, they have advanced gliding abilities. The flying squirrel jumps or falls out of a tree, and the more and better "winglike" structure it has the more safely it can fall and "parachute" down, and then the further and better it can glide for distance or to other trees. From there it is clear and simple to develop efficient gliding into level gliding and then into upwards powered flight.
As for the ground-up path...
But wings are completely differently built to any other bone, (and pretty useless without feathers, feathers of course being pretty useless unless perfectly tuned as well.)
Nope, feathers are useful before flight. They are useful for keeping warm. Birds have a coat of feathers to keep warm just as mammals have a coat of fur to keep warm.
And guess what? There are dinosaurs with feathers. Just google it. That right there should be a giant flag waving in your face that evolution is true. Dinosaurs with feathers are transitional.
And back to "how wings evolved"... some of those feathered dinosaurs were fairly small really fast runners. They had feathered arms which were much too small to be wings. As fast runners, the wings had to be reasonably aerodynamic over the body. A small fast runner does not want crude clunky feathers sticking out with rotten air drag. Then note that when you run you pump your arms. If you look at chickens or any bird, they pump their wings to help them run faster. Flapping your wings can give you a significant boost to running speed, even if they are way too small and weak to actually take off into the air. It should be pretty easy to see how improving aerodynamics and improving the arm flapping will steadily and continuously improve running speed, eventually to the point of short hopping micro-flight a few feet at a time and eventually full flight. This path can also make use of the trees-down pattern mentioned above for bats. They could climb trees and evolve downward gliding and flapping for better distance from tree to tree.
That's the kind of transitional forms I'm talking about
Yes, we have quite a few transitional forms on the bird line. As I already mentioned there were feathered dinosaurs. I'll just address the famous Archaeopteryx. It is a perfect example of a transitional. Anti-evolutionists try to dismiss it as "fully bird", but that is so ridiculous that they would in fact be better off trying to dismiss Archaeopteryx as "fully dinosaur". Except for the wings, Archaeopteryx is in fact fully dinosaur and essentially zero percent bird in every respect. Archaeopteryx has a jaw and teeth, just like dinosaurs. There is no bird on earth with a jaw or teeth, they all have beaks. Archaeopteryx has a long bony tail, just like dinosaurs, not birds. Archaeopteryx has heavy solid bones, just like dinsaurs. All birds have very light hollow bones. Archaeopteryx has abdominal ribs, like dinosaurs. Birds don't. Archaeopteryx has an ordinary small flat breast bone just like dinosaurs, it is completely missing the big keel bone that all birds have to anchor their powerful flight muscles. Archaeopteryx's shoulder joints point downwards, just like dinosaurs have, pointed in the proper direction for walking and climbing. Birds have their shoulder joints facing outwards, properly oriented for flapping motion. There are about five or six technical characteristics of the spine (vertebra fusings and shapes and vertebra counts and their attachments and orientations) that exactly match dinosaurs but completely unlike any bird.
In every respect EXCEPT wings, Archaeopteryx is a dinosaur and lacks absolutely every defining characteristic of birds.
Oh, and I almost forgot... Archaeopte
I'm kinda curious what this "evidence that contradicts evolution" is
The generally recognized "best" source for the anti-evolution side is collected at answersingenesis.org. Be warned, the bullshit runs about three miles deep over there. There is no "evidence that contradicts evolution" that has gone through the scientific peer review process without being torn to itty-bitty-shreds, often on the basis of gross math errors.
There's also discoveryinstitute.org, but they are not nearly as comprehensive as the answersingenesis.org site.
Note a significant difference between the pro-evolution side and the anti-evolution side: The pro-evolution side such as talkorigins.org and pandasthumb.org and most other sources and individuals are more than happy to point people to websites and sources for the anti-evolution side. However you oddly NEVER find anti-evolution websites offering any links for the evolution science side.
P.S.
Here is an old post of mine that. Check it out, it won at least one skeptic completely over to the evolution science side.
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The thing that strikes me is that non-Christian accounts of creationism would be taken in also.
The force of government should only be imposed to indoctrinate people in the right religion!
Duhh!
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I am just as disgusted by the militant atheist blathering on about Science proves there is no God
I call bullshit.
I participate in virtually every discussion on here even remotely connected to evolution, and in umpteen years I have seen someone make that argument exactly ONCE, and I personally called him on it. He immediately replied apologizing profusely for his careless comments, and that he he did not intend to make that claim.
Having conversations with invisible some sky wizard is silly, but science can no more disprove the existence of God that it can disprove the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorns.
I suspect that if somehow we could destroy one of these polar forces the other would follow and we would finally wind up with a balanced world wehre Science can do Science and Religion can do Religion and neither one will have penis envy over the other and we can all move on.
LoLz.
You could kill every atheist on earth and the radical fundies would be just as dedicated as ever to hijacking the force of government to push 6000 year ago 6-day wacky-literalist Creationism in public school science classes.
If we could somehow muzzle the anti-science cranks and just teach science in science class, you'd be hearing pretty well squat from atheists on this whole science thing.
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However, evolution is usually taught as a secular religion
Huh?
As far as I am aware, Evolution is taught EXACTLY the same way Chemistry is taught. Or at least it shout be taught exactly the same way.
the people pushing for creationism to be taught alongside it want nothing more than parity for the two philosophical beliefs.
We are talking about SCIENCE CLASS. Not philosophy class.
In science class we teach an accurate overview of the particular field of science as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. In Chemistry class that means teaching Atom Theory. In Biology class that means teaching the Theory of Evolution.
Of course, the "open minded" evolutionists want the other side muzzled, marginalized, fired and otherwise silenced.
A teacher should not be teaching existentialist philosophy in Chemistry class.
Nor should a science teacher be presenting th Electric Universe theory of an electric powered sun. It would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to give students the slightest impression that professional astronomers or professional physicists consider the electric sun theory to have any scientific basis or any scientific credibility whatsoever. It would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to give students the slightest impression that professional biologists consider any of the anti-evolution stuff to have any scientific basis or any scientific credibility whatsoever.
People are perfectly free to talk about and teach Creationism in private school sand in the home and pretty much anywhere else. However it in no way represent biology as understood and practiced by professional biologists and has no place in a public school science class, except perhaps as part of a lesson on identifying non-science and fraudulent science.
Oh, and people are completely welcome to actually *DO* some science trying to disprove evolution / support creationism, or any other research they like. In fact Christian groups have TRIED to give these anti-evolution crackpots money.... "Here please take our money and go do some of this wonderful science you keep talking on and on about". And they they still didn't did any science. You can't PAY them to do science because there is no science to back up all of their bogus anti-evolution claims.
The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.
"They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said.
Full article.
There is social controversy over evolution and political controversy over evolution, but no scientific controversy. These lying anti-evolution sacks of shit won't even do any actual science even if you shove bags full of money into their hands begging them to do some science. They have a public relations campaign against evolution, but they don't have jack-shit scientifically to back up their claims. They get millions of dollars per year in donations, and what do they spend that money on? Science? No. They spend that money on political influence and on public relations campaigns and on lawyers. They don't spend any of it on science because the science refutes all of their claims.
P.S.
Sorry for the crude&flammish language. I'm in a bad mood, I am sick and tired of all the lies and misinformation, and I haven't gotten any sleep. Oh well. Fuck you to everyone that deserves it. I'll either get modded flamebait or +5... or probably both... and I'm to tired to give a shit either way.
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UM, I think you neglected to mention that Evolution is also just a theory at this point.
Theory of Relativity.
Atom Theory.
Electromagnetic Theory.
Theory of Gravity.
Yeah, let's remove all "just theories" from science class. You have a pop-quiz asking them how to spell 'science', and then you send them home with nothing else to teach. Brilliant!
Yeah, you might want to mention that part when you advocate suppressing alternative beliefs in the classroom...
Excuse me, but we don't teach Swedish in English class.
We teach English in English class, and we teach Science in Science class.
And in Science class teachers should not be teaching "beliefs". They should be teaching accurate overview of the various fields of science as understood and practiced by professionals in those fields. And the indisputable FACT is that Evolution is the one and only understanding and practice of the field of biology by 100%(*) of professional biologists. "Welcome kids, this is biology class. The one and only scientific understanding and practice of biology among professional biologists is evolution and some other things I'll get to later. Here is what evolution says and he's how it works and here let me show you this shitload of evidence that convinced all of those scientists that evolution was valid and accurate. You don't have to believe in evolution any more than you have to believe in atoms, but you do need to understand the material and you do need to pass the tests."
It wouldn't matter if Atom Theory were wrong and atoms don't exist. A Chemistry class must teach an accurate overview of Chemistry as understood and practiced by professional Chemists. Even if atom theory is wrong and atoms don't exist, it is impossible to understand the modern field of chemistry without knowing atom theory. Even if atom theory is wrong and atoms don't exist, it is impossible to enter and practice modern Chemistry unless one understands atom theory. Even if atom theory is wrong and atoms don't exist, it is impossible to do good science proving atom theory is wrong unless one first understands atom theory.
So even if you have the ignorant notion that evolution is wrong, it doesn't matter. The absolutely indisputable fact is that among 100%(*) of professional biologists evolution is the one and only modern scientific understanding and practice of biology.
(*)Footnote: Rounded to the nearest full percentage point 100% of biologists accept evolution, rounded to the nearest full percentage point 100% of chemists accept atoms, rounded to the nearest full percentage point 100% of astronomers accept the fusion-powered-sun. Just because one-in-a-couple-hundred people-witha-a-degree is a crackpot does not mean we teach the Electric Universe electric-powered-sun crapola in highschool science class.
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Waiter! There's SHIT in my soup!
I'm sorry sir. Let me fix that for you.
Here you go sir! All fixed.
What the FUCK! This is the same goddamn bowl of soup with the exact same fucking piece of shit in it!!
Yes sir, but now there is slightly less shit in your soup.
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If you want a manual, you can buy #1 and install #2.
When you first install it you should probably call their installation line. You know, just to say thanks but no thanks you won't be needing their activation services, and that they could save some money by skipping that unneeded service next time.
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The Electric Universe....
because Creationists need someone to mock on science.
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Totally Gnu/arly dude!
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