The secondary agnostic definition is colloquial. In that that is the intended meaning by people who don't know what they are talking about. Atheism is simply 'a-' (without) 'theism' (belief in God). It doesn't require an active disbelief, although if somebody disbelieves in God they by default lack a belief in God as well. Not believing in God is the only thing required to be an atheist.
Dictionaries simply give the senses that words are used in, not the proper sense. If a word is misused enough it gets added as that meaning, simply because somebody might wonder what a person means with that word and look it up. If you want to see this in action look up the word 'irregardless' sometime. It's not in the dictionary because it's right, it's in the dictionary because it's common. Atheism doesn't include any beliefs, just a lack of belief in any type of god or gods. However, enough people use it to mean a denial or disbelief in God (a position which does require that a person be an atheist but doesn't include most or all atheists) enough that that usage was added. Huxley coined the word 'agnostic' to mean one who doesn't know or doesn't think knowledge is possible. Agnosticism has nothing to do with belief, it's a knowledge claim. However, it has since been often improperly used as a synonym for weak atheism (lack of belief, without active disbelief concerning gods). And if a word is used improperly, and often enough it gets added. You can even check words like 'nuclear' and find, lo and behold, that annoying mispronunciation is sitting right there as proper (rhymes with spectacular). Yes, language reference are handy, but they only reference how language is used, not if it is used properly.
And yet you only blank out 8 bits of the IP address? And even then the number number of possibilities is well below a 256 if you knock out the restricted ones that are highly doubtful. You just made it remotely inconvenient. You have no fear (of anybody who wants to do 2 minutes of work to find you).
Wimax becomes huge. OpenOffice.org media campaign speeds adoption, achives 30% penetration. Britney Spears remarries. AJAX becomes even more popular making the internet kinda suck. UPnP applications become almost universal. Firefox penetration hits 25% before IE7 comes out and knocks it down to 15%, even though IE7 sucks. Pope Benedict XVI dies. Democrats take the house, gain in Senate. US troops remain in Iraq throughout the year. Bush's approval rating reaches 30%. 2006 Hurricane Season exausts name list again. Somebody creates an effective non-website based bittorrent network. Pi proven to be normal. 3 new higher prime numbers found. Bird Flu kills about a dozen people and is stopped completely. "The third man of the fire will empower the forces of the blue prince." - Deemed to be quite vague but fits several situations that occur. South fails to rise again. Majority of scientists backslide on existence of dark matter halos. RIAA/MPAA go even more apesh!t.
Yeah, honestly a quick look at their budget will tell you that Microsoft isn't really a software company at all, they are a marketing company. They spend only a fraction on software. Whereas they spend huge amounts on marketing.
Exactly, an Intergalactic war that involves the aliens continuing to come here and get shot down by a pea shooter. They'd have to be greys(withoutmatter).
"The inclusion of this vacuum energy term can greatly effect cosmological theories."
You grammar people are always doing such things. Sure 'affect' makes sense in this sentence. But, he meant to use 'effect'. The inclusion of the term is going to greatly cause cosmological theories to come into being. What's wrong with that?
I hope this post effects thoughts in your head.
Heh. I tend to dislike the further/farther mess up a lot, because quite often with the metaphor of progress to distance a relative constant there's no gramamr policing going on.
Yeah, they should have chips in cars to check speed, and not only ticket every speeder but ticket them correctly. If you want, you can speed, but you'll get a speeder tax like (mph over limit)*(time in minutes)*($.10). So you could drive 160 but it would cost ten dollars a minute.
It is pretty stupid to force everybody to speed so they don't go so crazy slow as to impede traffic. At least it's not 55 everywhere still.
Just wait til they track the individual cell phones, and use the calculations to catch speeders. Location and speed they travel. Then just get a bunch and find out who the cellphones belong to and ticket them.
Yeah, honestly it is rather annoying to have to learn so many languages. I wrote an AJAX Chat program the other day, I needed HTML, javascript, PHP, mySQL and really should toss in some CSS. It took half the day to get it working in a very basic sense. I honestly didn't think about it once as a web development problem.
Perhaps he is HIV positive, and has an HIV negative identical twin. Go into a place, get tested several times, have brother go in to be tested several more times. OH, MY GOD HE WAS CURED! Cue, book deal and poppycock elixers!
The Asteroid belt is bound to have some easy to move, rather large, non-spinning, solid clumps of rock. That's trival compared to a rather large dustball of death spinning every five minutes. You can't land on it. You can't push it. But, push something else to hit it or gravitationally nudge it should be doable. And you're not forced to push around 20 tons of mass all the time, just find twenty tons and do that. Most of the journey would be pretty easy.
Or find a way to find space trash floating around in Earth's orbit (there's a lot of it). Grab it and use it as mass. Or I suppose you could with decades of notice push another rock near where the one rock was going to go at some point in the future and just tweak it to that way. Deflect it with gravity and all, but only use the ship as a thruster to toss a rock that you're sure won't break up into it's path.
>>Barring unforseen vectors, radioactive carbon simply does not add itself to the system. Certainly not in ways that cannot be checked for in contamination tests.
This actually happens in coal. Why we bothered to try to carbon date it escapes me. But there are a number of nuclear elements mixed in with coal that tweak the results upward for Carbon-14. So coal carbon dates much more recient than it should in some tests. The only reason I know this is because some Creationists claimed it was proof of creation, and I bothered to look up while laying the smack down. See, so in some ways creationists increase education.
They wouldn't know a sweet spot if they drove through Hershey Pa.
Really I would say for your money the best card for the frugal consumer that want's all the power needed for aps today, but money in their wallet. The 6800 standard is best. GS, GT, be damned. Runs like $160, marginally slower than the 6800GT. Also, it's about the best you can get if you have an AGP 8X.
>>Build a replica of a human being with a CPU for a brain, and we'll see if you can come up with a better design. Come up with an android that differs from a human only in terms of its hip, but retaining all of its other physiological functionality and then show that it's better, and you'll show the hip design is sub-optimal. Until then, it's just hubris disguised as legitimate science.
Or we could actively replace people's hips with ones that don't break down so often. Gee, look at that.
>>No, you diverged from the claim I gave and changed to specific, named "building blocks". The claim I gave said nothing about ATCG. It talked about building blocks.
You specificly said DNA building blocks.
>>That can mean anything down to and including quarks.
Not when you said DNA building blocks. Just trying to be vague doesn't make it non-falifiable. The claim that all organism on Earth are carbon-based and pass genetic information via DNA is quite falifiable, non-trivial, and non-falified.
>>You cannot non-arbitrarily draw the line and say "If all species are similar in this respect, obviously they came from a common ancestor."
Actually you can draw any such line. The existence of a face is proof of a common ancestor. Very few animals after the first development of the face have any alterations to the general design, two eyes and a mouth as such. So, any thing with a face has early sea-dwelling animals in their ancestors. You don't see any trees with faces, or molds, or bacteria. Birds have feathers, from the late dinosaurs that first developed feathers to the birds, everything with feathers falls into the bird family. Everything with hair falls into the mammal family (Mammalia is really a class, but you should know what I mean). The point is, if you ever see a tree with feathers or a bird with leaves common descent is wrong. Even if it's one of those web-feet like mutations. Every once in a while humans are born with tails (non-pseudo-tails but actual extra bones off the coccyx, just as from time to time whales are born with feet. But, if you ever find a shark or any other type of fish with feet, you win and common descent is wrong.
>>>>Firstly, it's not possible A T would be unable to create a number of proteins needed to live, >>Okay, so it's possible, great.
How did you get "it's possible" from my statement. Such a creature would need a different method of generating proteins and would disprove common descent.
>>>>Actually I was pretty much quoting Dawkins. The self-sacrifice for another species is not a claim of evolution. >>Just a prominent proponent of evolution (Douglas Futuyma).
I don't see how that addresses the actual claim.
>>Environmentalism is rare?
Environmentalism is not a counterevolutionary behavior. It's complex and the effect of a large brain, but preserving a habitat we need is in our best interest.
>>Suicide is rare?
Humans and lemmings. Although greedy gene behavior has shown that a number of organism die for propagation. Salmon still swim upstream just to mate and die. Black Widow males still mate even though they die afterwards. But, again, it's still an effect of a large brain. Large brains in humans can produce a number of things evolution shouldn't, but it's not part of evolution it's part of our evolved ability to override evolution.
>>Birth control is rare?
Amongst non-humans it's unheard of.
>>Homosexuality is rare?
2-3% of humans, some number of penguins, and a few other species. Bonobos for example are all bisexual, and have no problem reproducing.
>>Charity is rare?
Charity and altruism for our own species, more so for those who have are more likely to die without help is perfectly evolutionary. If the behavior of helping people who need help is popular, you're more likely to be helped when you need help.
>>>>No. The idea that one species producing something to be consumed by other species is an example of coevolution.... >>So I was right, any part "for" another species you can write off as coevolution.
Not any claim, it's coevolution because the relationship is mutualism. If the production of honeydew in aphids didn't help the aphids (via the ants protection and feeding) then it's not coevolution.
>>I'm trying to help you all see how so-called "predictions" of evolution are either trivial, non-fal
>>False and false. A designer would also make species hungry.
Simply because a designer would do it doesn't mean it's trivial.
>>Further, a scientist will always say that an animal eating "must be hungry"... how would you prove otherwise?
Check the hormones and neurotransmitters that account for the hunger response.
>>Okay, but that's not what the claim I gave said. It referred to the "basic building blocks" which could mean anything - including the carbon atom.
Actually your original claim was exactly that "'All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks' is non-falsifiable." The DNA building blocks are all A, T, G, C. Find an RNA-based animal and common descent is falsified (RNA stopped being used long before animals developed). You aren't arguing that the scientific idea of having very similar genetic systems is falsifiable, you seem to be arguing that your statements are too vague to be pinned down. But, the claim of DNA building blocks is quite prudent. As you did say DNA initially, and carbon isn't a part of any of the basic blocks of DNA (mostly N, and H), the answer is obviously no, you couldn't just say that. But, if you found non-carbon based lifeforms (in the physical base sense) this would again disprove common descent. As far as genetic basics, yes it is falsifiable. As far as elemental base is concerned, yes it is falsifiable.
>>I can 100% guarantee you if a species were found with just A and T, scientists would just cite the A and T as evidence that we all have the "same basic DNA building blocks"... ergo, non-falsfiable.
Firstly, it's not possible A T would be unable to create a number of proteins needed to live, unless some radically different protein fabrication was used, which would again disprove common descent. If it has the same fabrication system then it can use C and G, and just happens to not. RNA is a simpler precursor to DNA so if it used C and G and DNA didn't, it would again disprove common descent.
>>Now you're reverting to Darwin's claim, not the claim I started out with, which said that no member of any species will perform an act of self-sacrifice for another species. That is falsified.
Actually I was pretty much quoting Dawkins. The self-sacrifice for another species is not a claim of evolution. It doesn't seem as though it would be evolutionarily helpful, but it's not something that would be impossible to fathom. But, it should be quite rare. In humans and your example, it's simply a result of a large brain, that can override natural drives.
>>Let's say we found some gland on some animal A that, when coaxed, produced something that could ONLY be consumed by another species B, and was poison to all other species. Surely this is a counterexample to Darwin!
No. The idea that one species producing something to be consumed by other species is an example of coevolution. Take the example of the ants and aphids, aphids are a nonrelated species to ants and yet ants have been shown to feed and protect aphids because aphids produce honeydew. They have a special gland that produces the substance for the ants. Producing something that is to be consumed by other species is common throughout biology, from flowers (pollination) to helpful bacteria (they live and perform services for lots of different species). It gives them a niche to live in.
>>Any part "for" the sole benefit of another species B necessarily helps A. So you cannot falsify.
You were saying that this could be falsified (and moreover was). You slipped off topic. Although, the initial claim isn't even a claim of evolution. You were saying that one species harming itself without any gain is counterevolutionary. Which is remotely true, but evolution can still produce such things (although they should be, and are, quite rare). Human appendices can burst from time to time, which doesn't help humans much. Without surgery we die and appendices don't help humans as they don't do anyth
Hunger itself is quite non-trivial. Eating while hungry is also non-trivial.
>>What does it mean to have the same "basic" building blocks?
In regard to DNA? It means A, C, G, T.
>>And if the bases were all different for every species, you'd be saying "well, they all have carbon".
If the bases were different for every species there might actually be some truth behind intelligent design. If each species had a different type of genetic code it would completely strike down common descent. Thus, falsifing it. Your comment wasn't a general building blocks comment, it was a DNA building blocks. DNA is a huge amount of evidence for common descent, and has proved itself to be a much better indicator of descent than dentition and other things we use.
>>I was referring to the befit[sic] of another species, as everyone but you understood it to mean.
Ah, sorry I assumed you had said something much less retarded. The VHEM is unique to humans, and a byproduct of large brains. Large brains are a huge evolutionary leap forward but do produce some counterevolutionary results. But the benifit of a large brain more than outweighs all the suicide and people not wanting to have children. You don't find such results in species that can't overrule their own personal drives (non-humans). You could also argue that art and religion and such wastes time, better spent mating.
>>Except that this is not unique to evolutionary theory.
It falls squarely in evolution's corner. Because some objects fit perfectly into the predictions of both Newton and Einstein does not mean that the evidence is does not support that theory, it supports both and all theories that properly predicted such a thing. Where the theories predict different things is what weeds out other theories. Although, what other theory predicted such a thing?
>>You can totally dispute how species formed according ot it, yet still agree that antibiotics will spare all who were resistant to it.
Bacteria are a hard group to toss into species groups. You could argue that each bacteria is a different species. But, the bacteria sparing resistant bacteria is pretty easy to picture, but it doesn't mean it's not evolution by natural selection. Bacterial lines without resistence die off, more bacteria from the resistent lines show up, some become even more resistant and the cycle starts all over. Some lines are completely immune to some antibiotics.
>>Another example of a triviality.
Have you honestly disregarded the huge mountains of evidence best explained through Evolution through Natural Selection as trivial?
>>"Animals will eat when they're hungry and when there's food around" is trivial.
Eating only when hungry is not trivial in the least. It takes a good amount of work to develop the mechanisms to decide not to eat when food is available.
>>"All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is non-falsifiable.
Actually, that is quite falsifiable. All it takes is an organism that doesn't have the same DNA building blocks. The fact that we haven't found anything to disprove such an idea (RNA retroviri aside) lends a lot of evidence to common descent.
>>"No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by
Also, many animals act for the benefit of their families when it's not in their own best interest to do so. It's the basis of "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. Basicly there are huge numbers of species that show an ability for self-sacrifice. Members of the family usually have the same gene themselves, so by saving the family by sacrificing a single individual the total number of instances of the gene remains higher than if it did only what was best for the individual.
So, I would say you are easily wrong on all three. The first two directly wrong, and the final wasn't even a prediction of evolution and your example sucked. That's not really a genetic link anyhow, that's just big brain doing odd things. Humans also commit suicide too.
As for a prediction of evolution, I'll go with the creation of more and more superbugs, antibiotic resistent bacteria. When antibiotics came out there wasn't anything they couldn't kill, now there are a number of suckers that are harder and harder to defeat.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, if it were simple we would all be out of jobs.
BTW, anybody have a job?
http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheism/p/atheism .htm/ dict_standard.htm/ dict_online.htm
http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a
http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a
The secondary agnostic definition is colloquial. In that that is the intended meaning by people who don't know what they are talking about. Atheism is simply 'a-' (without) 'theism' (belief in God). It doesn't require an active disbelief, although if somebody disbelieves in God they by default lack a belief in God as well. Not believing in God is the only thing required to be an atheist.
Dictionaries simply give the senses that words are used in, not the proper sense. If a word is misused enough it gets added as that meaning, simply because somebody might wonder what a person means with that word and look it up. If you want to see this in action look up the word 'irregardless' sometime. It's not in the dictionary because it's right, it's in the dictionary because it's common. Atheism doesn't include any beliefs, just a lack of belief in any type of god or gods. However, enough people use it to mean a denial or disbelief in God (a position which does require that a person be an atheist but doesn't include most or all atheists) enough that that usage was added. Huxley coined the word 'agnostic' to mean one who doesn't know or doesn't think knowledge is possible. Agnosticism has nothing to do with belief, it's a knowledge claim. However, it has since been often improperly used as a synonym for weak atheism (lack of belief, without active disbelief concerning gods). And if a word is used improperly, and often enough it gets added. You can even check words like 'nuclear' and find, lo and behold, that annoying mispronunciation is sitting right there as proper (rhymes with spectacular). Yes, language reference are handy, but they only reference how language is used, not if it is used properly.
Yeah! That wouldn't be confusing in the least.
And yet you only blank out 8 bits of the IP address? And even then the number number of possibilities is well below a 256 if you knock out the restricted ones that are highly doubtful. You just made it remotely inconvenient. You have no fear (of anybody who wants to do 2 minutes of work to find you).
Wimax becomes huge.
OpenOffice.org media campaign speeds adoption, achives 30% penetration.
Britney Spears remarries.
AJAX becomes even more popular making the internet kinda suck.
UPnP applications become almost universal.
Firefox penetration hits 25% before IE7 comes out and knocks it down to 15%, even though IE7 sucks.
Pope Benedict XVI dies.
Democrats take the house, gain in Senate.
US troops remain in Iraq throughout the year.
Bush's approval rating reaches 30%.
2006 Hurricane Season exausts name list again.
Somebody creates an effective non-website based bittorrent network.
Pi proven to be normal.
3 new higher prime numbers found.
Bird Flu kills about a dozen people and is stopped completely.
"The third man of the fire will empower the forces of the blue prince." - Deemed to be quite vague but fits several situations that occur.
South fails to rise again.
Majority of scientists backslide on existence of dark matter halos.
RIAA/MPAA go even more apesh!t.
Which raises an odd problem... can mammoths eat lawyers? If not, why bother?
Google is doing the smart thing here. They can just outsource the evil and keep their hands clean.
Yeah, honestly a quick look at their budget will tell you that Microsoft isn't really a software company at all, they are a marketing company. They spend only a fraction on software. Whereas they spend huge amounts on marketing.
Exactly, an Intergalactic war that involves the aliens continuing to come here and get shot down by a pea shooter. They'd have to be greys(withoutmatter).
"The inclusion of this vacuum energy term can greatly effect cosmological theories."
You grammar people are always doing such things. Sure 'affect' makes sense in this sentence. But, he meant to use 'effect'. The inclusion of the term is going to greatly cause cosmological theories to come into being. What's wrong with that?
I hope this post effects thoughts in your head.
Heh. I tend to dislike the further/farther mess up a lot, because quite often with the metaphor of progress to distance a relative constant there's no gramamr policing going on.
Yeah, they should have chips in cars to check speed, and not only ticket every speeder but ticket them correctly. If you want, you can speed, but you'll get a speeder tax like (mph over limit)*(time in minutes)*($.10). So you could drive 160 but it would cost ten dollars a minute.
It is pretty stupid to force everybody to speed so they don't go so crazy slow as to impede traffic. At least it's not 55 everywhere still.
Just wait til they track the individual cell phones, and use the calculations to catch speeders. Location and speed they travel. Then just get a bunch and find out who the cellphones belong to and ticket them.
No I needed those. This guy had a gun to my head and demanded I use PHP on the server side to interact with the mySQL.
Yeah, honestly it is rather annoying to have to learn so many languages. I wrote an AJAX Chat program the other day, I needed HTML, javascript, PHP, mySQL and really should toss in some CSS. It took half the day to get it working in a very basic sense. I honestly didn't think about it once as a web development problem.
Perhaps he is HIV positive, and has an HIV negative identical twin. Go into a place, get tested several times, have brother go in to be tested several more times. OH, MY GOD HE WAS CURED! Cue, book deal and poppycock elixers!
The Asteroid belt is bound to have some easy to move, rather large, non-spinning, solid clumps of rock. That's trival compared to a rather large dustball of death spinning every five minutes. You can't land on it. You can't push it. But, push something else to hit it or gravitationally nudge it should be doable. And you're not forced to push around 20 tons of mass all the time, just find twenty tons and do that. Most of the journey would be pretty easy.
Or find a way to find space trash floating around in Earth's orbit (there's a lot of it). Grab it and use it as mass. Or I suppose you could with decades of notice push another rock near where the one rock was going to go at some point in the future and just tweak it to that way. Deflect it with gravity and all, but only use the ship as a thruster to toss a rock that you're sure won't break up into it's path.
>>Barring unforseen vectors, radioactive carbon simply does not add itself to the system. Certainly not in ways that cannot be checked for in contamination tests.
This actually happens in coal. Why we bothered to try to carbon date it escapes me. But there are a number of nuclear elements mixed in with coal that tweak the results upward for Carbon-14. So coal carbon dates much more recient than it should in some tests. The only reason I know this is because some Creationists claimed it was proof of creation, and I bothered to look up while laying the smack down. See, so in some ways creationists increase education.
They wouldn't know a sweet spot if they drove through Hershey Pa.
Really I would say for your money the best card for the frugal consumer that want's all the power needed for aps today, but money in their wallet. The 6800 standard is best. GS, GT, be damned. Runs like $160, marginally slower than the 6800GT. Also, it's about the best you can get if you have an AGP 8X.
I think Google started it. Didn't Google replace Yahoo's HQ with an empty lot? Or was that Microsoft.
>>Build a replica of a human being with a CPU for a brain, and we'll see if you can come up with a better design. Come up with an android that differs from a human only in terms of its hip, but retaining all of its other physiological functionality and then show that it's better, and you'll show the hip design is sub-optimal. Until then, it's just hubris disguised as legitimate science.
Or we could actively replace people's hips with ones that don't break down so often. Gee, look at that.
>>No, you diverged from the claim I gave and changed to specific, named "building blocks". The claim I gave said nothing about ATCG. It talked about building blocks.
...
You specificly said DNA building blocks.
>>That can mean anything down to and including quarks.
Not when you said DNA building blocks. Just trying to be vague doesn't make it non-falifiable. The claim that all organism on Earth are carbon-based and pass genetic information via DNA is quite falifiable, non-trivial, and non-falified.
>>You cannot non-arbitrarily draw the line and say "If all species are similar in this respect, obviously they came from a common ancestor."
Actually you can draw any such line. The existence of a face is proof of a common ancestor. Very few animals after the first development of the face have any alterations to the general design, two eyes and a mouth as such. So, any thing with a face has early sea-dwelling animals in their ancestors. You don't see any trees with faces, or molds, or bacteria. Birds have feathers, from the late dinosaurs that first developed feathers to the birds, everything with feathers falls into the bird family. Everything with hair falls into the mammal family (Mammalia is really a class, but you should know what I mean). The point is, if you ever see a tree with feathers or a bird with leaves common descent is wrong. Even if it's one of those web-feet like mutations. Every once in a while humans are born with tails (non-pseudo-tails but actual extra bones off the coccyx, just as from time to time whales are born with feet. But, if you ever find a shark or any other type of fish with feet, you win and common descent is wrong.
>>>>Firstly, it's not possible A T would be unable to create a number of proteins needed to live,
>>Okay, so it's possible, great.
How did you get "it's possible" from my statement. Such a creature would need a different method of generating proteins and would disprove common descent.
>>>>Actually I was pretty much quoting Dawkins. The self-sacrifice for another species is not a claim of evolution.
>>Just a prominent proponent of evolution (Douglas Futuyma).
I don't see how that addresses the actual claim.
>>Environmentalism is rare?
Environmentalism is not a counterevolutionary behavior. It's complex and the effect of a large brain, but preserving a habitat we need is in our best interest.
>>Suicide is rare?
Humans and lemmings. Although greedy gene behavior has shown that a number of organism die for propagation. Salmon still swim upstream just to mate and die. Black Widow males still mate even though they die afterwards. But, again, it's still an effect of a large brain. Large brains in humans can produce a number of things evolution shouldn't, but it's not part of evolution it's part of our evolved ability to override evolution.
>>Birth control is rare?
Amongst non-humans it's unheard of.
>>Homosexuality is rare?
2-3% of humans, some number of penguins, and a few other species. Bonobos for example are all bisexual, and have no problem reproducing.
>>Charity is rare?
Charity and altruism for our own species, more so for those who have are more likely to die without help is perfectly evolutionary. If the behavior of helping people who need help is popular, you're more likely to be helped when you need help.
>>>>No. The idea that one species producing something to be consumed by other species is an example of coevolution.
>>So I was right, any part "for" another species you can write off as coevolution.
Not any claim, it's coevolution because the relationship is mutualism. If the production of honeydew in aphids didn't help the aphids (via the ants protection and feeding) then it's not coevolution.
>>I'm trying to help you all see how so-called "predictions" of evolution are either trivial, non-fal
>>False and false. A designer would also make species hungry.
... how would you prove otherwise?
Simply because a designer would do it doesn't mean it's trivial.
>>Further, a scientist will always say that an animal eating "must be hungry"
Check the hormones and neurotransmitters that account for the hunger response.
>>Okay, but that's not what the claim I gave said. It referred to the "basic building blocks" which could mean anything - including the carbon atom.
Actually your original claim was exactly that "'All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks' is non-falsifiable." The DNA building blocks are all A, T, G, C. Find an RNA-based animal and common descent is falsified (RNA stopped being used long before animals developed). You aren't arguing that the scientific idea of having very similar genetic systems is falsifiable, you seem to be arguing that your statements are too vague to be pinned down. But, the claim of DNA building blocks is quite prudent. As you did say DNA initially, and carbon isn't a part of any of the basic blocks of DNA (mostly N, and H), the answer is obviously no, you couldn't just say that. But, if you found non-carbon based lifeforms (in the physical base sense) this would again disprove common descent. As far as genetic basics, yes it is falsifiable. As far as elemental base is concerned, yes it is falsifiable.
>>I can 100% guarantee you if a species were found with just A and T, scientists would just cite the A and T as evidence that we all have the "same basic DNA building blocks"... ergo, non-falsfiable.
Firstly, it's not possible A T would be unable to create a number of proteins needed to live, unless some radically different protein fabrication was used, which would again disprove common descent. If it has the same fabrication system then it can use C and G, and just happens to not. RNA is a simpler precursor to DNA so if it used C and G and DNA didn't, it would again disprove common descent.
>>Now you're reverting to Darwin's claim, not the claim I started out with, which said that no member of any species will perform an act of self-sacrifice for another species. That is falsified.
Actually I was pretty much quoting Dawkins. The self-sacrifice for another species is not a claim of evolution. It doesn't seem as though it would be evolutionarily helpful, but it's not something that would be impossible to fathom. But, it should be quite rare. In humans and your example, it's simply a result of a large brain, that can override natural drives.
>>Let's say we found some gland on some animal A that, when coaxed, produced something that could ONLY be consumed by another species B, and was poison to all other species. Surely this is a counterexample to Darwin!
No. The idea that one species producing something to be consumed by other species is an example of coevolution. Take the example of the ants and aphids, aphids are a nonrelated species to ants and yet ants have been shown to feed and protect aphids because aphids produce honeydew. They have a special gland that produces the substance for the ants. Producing something that is to be consumed by other species is common throughout biology, from flowers (pollination) to helpful bacteria (they live and perform services for lots of different species). It gives them a niche to live in.
>>Any part "for" the sole benefit of another species B necessarily helps A. So you cannot falsify.
You were saying that this could be falsified (and moreover was). You slipped off topic. Although, the initial claim isn't even a claim of evolution. You were saying that one species harming itself without any gain is counterevolutionary. Which is remotely true, but evolution can still produce such things (although they should be, and are, quite rare). Human appendices can burst from time to time, which doesn't help humans much. Without surgery we die and appendices don't help humans as they don't do anyth
>>Try to respond to what I actually posted.
Hunger itself is quite non-trivial. Eating while hungry is also non-trivial.
>>What does it mean to have the same "basic" building blocks?
In regard to DNA? It means A, C, G, T.
>>And if the bases were all different for every species, you'd be saying "well, they all have carbon".
If the bases were different for every species there might actually be some truth behind intelligent design. If each species had a different type of genetic code it would completely strike down common descent. Thus, falsifing it. Your comment wasn't a general building blocks comment, it was a DNA building blocks. DNA is a huge amount of evidence for common descent, and has proved itself to be a much better indicator of descent than dentition and other things we use.
>>I was referring to the befit[sic] of another species, as everyone but you understood it to mean.
Ah, sorry I assumed you had said something much less retarded. The VHEM is unique to humans, and a byproduct of large brains. Large brains are a huge evolutionary leap forward but do produce some counterevolutionary results. But the benifit of a large brain more than outweighs all the suicide and people not wanting to have children. You don't find such results in species that can't overrule their own personal drives (non-humans). You could also argue that art and religion and such wastes time, better spent mating.
>>Except that this is not unique to evolutionary theory.
It falls squarely in evolution's corner. Because some objects fit perfectly into the predictions of both Newton and Einstein does not mean that the evidence is does not support that theory, it supports both and all theories that properly predicted such a thing. Where the theories predict different things is what weeds out other theories. Although, what other theory predicted such a thing?
>>You can totally dispute how species formed according ot it, yet still agree that antibiotics will spare all who were resistant to it.
Bacteria are a hard group to toss into species groups. You could argue that each bacteria is a different species. But, the bacteria sparing resistant bacteria is pretty easy to picture, but it doesn't mean it's not evolution by natural selection. Bacterial lines without resistence die off, more bacteria from the resistent lines show up, some become even more resistant and the cycle starts all over. Some lines are completely immune to some antibiotics.
>>Another example of a triviality.
Have you honestly disregarded the huge mountains of evidence best explained through Evolution through Natural Selection as trivial?
>>"Animals will eat when they're hungry and when there's food around" is trivial.
Eating only when hungry is not trivial in the least. It takes a good amount of work to develop the mechanisms to decide not to eat when food is available.
>>"All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is non-falsifiable.
Actually, that is quite falsifiable. All it takes is an organism that doesn't have the same DNA building blocks. The fact that we haven't found anything to disprove such an idea (RNA retroviri aside) lends a lot of evidence to common descent.
>>"No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by
Also, many animals act for the benefit of their families when it's not in their own best interest to do so. It's the basis of "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. Basicly there are huge numbers of species that show an ability for self-sacrifice. Members of the family usually have the same gene themselves, so by saving the family by sacrificing a single individual the total number of instances of the gene remains higher than if it did only what was best for the individual.
So, I would say you are easily wrong on all three. The first two directly wrong, and the final wasn't even a prediction of evolution and your example sucked. That's not really a genetic link anyhow, that's just big brain doing odd things. Humans also commit suicide too.
As for a prediction of evolution, I'll go with the creation of more and more superbugs, antibiotic resistent bacteria. When antibiotics came out there wasn't anything they couldn't kill, now there are a number of suckers that are harder and harder to defeat.