"It has been proved, and is logically obvious based upon the facts of evolutionary biology, that everyone prefers others of their same race."
It has not been proven in the scientific sense, and is not logically obvious based on the rules of evolutionary biology, which, like other branches of biology, does not regard regional variations in size, colouring, or minor physiognomy within a species as having any significance beyond small notes such as "members of the species that live in extremely hot, sunny regions have darker pigmentation, a slightly lower body-to-limb ratio, and a moderately higher sweat gland density per square millimetre of skin area".
"They are not programed to think they are superior, they are programed to protect the distinctness of their race, to prevent its extinction."
There is no such programming in the scientific sense, hence the fact that every group has been enthusiastically mixing its genes with members of every other group it's encountered since our species emerged.
"An organism, say the White race"
The white race is not a distinct organism from any other group within the species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, as is proven by the fact that (a) whites _can_ interbreed with all other human groups, and (b) large numbers of whites _do_ interbreed with other groups. All "races" of dog are similarly classified as part of the Canis Familiaris species for precisely the same reason, just as all the different "races" of horse belong to the Equus Caballius species.
"A race that evolved the tendency to preserve itself will be more preserved on average than races that do not have that tendency."
This will only be the case if that tendency increases the survival probability of the group and the individuals within it. If on the other hand evolution favours those who prefer genetic diversity over group isolation, then the group with the "race preservation instinct" will be steadily displaced by those without it until it completely disappears.
"I could argue that we are devolving in many ways"
It's impossible for an organism to devolve.
"not the least of which are in resistance to diseases and the kinds of foods we can eat"
These are cultural problems that only manifest themselves in wealthy (primarily Western) nations where people aren't exposed from birth to the wide array of pathogenic organisms that our immune systems evolved to deal with. The vast majority of humanity doesn't live in nearly sterile environments, doesn't eat sterilised foods or drink sterilised water, and does not therefore suffer from epidemics of allergic reactions to completely innocuous substances.
It's only memory if it's directly happened to you or somebody you know. A superstition arises when people begin to believe that "rustling grass is unlucky because everyone says so", i.e. the phenomenon itself becomes the thing to fear without the fearers having any idea of why they should fear it.
"There are also some coping mechanisms - people don't like to think of death as non-existence so the afterlife is invented."
I think that it's more a case of being unable to imagine non-existence that leads to ideas of life after death, because quite a lot of the myths surrounding it are notably unpleasant, whereas coping mechanisms tend to be based around comforting images, not horrible ones.
1. "Let there be light" identified the start of this reality."
etc.
You're forgetting that there's another creation story in Genesis 2:4b to 2:25, which has the following sequence of events:
1. The Earth already exists in the form of a misty, rainless desert. 2. God makes a man out of dust, and constructs a garden to put him in. 3. Animals are created in an attempt to provide a helper fit for his new man. 4. The animals prove to be unsatisfactory (i.e. God was in error!), so He makes a woman out of the man's rib.
Which of the two is the true account, because they can't both be true unless God created everything including the Earth and everything on it, then wiped the slate clean only on Earth leaving a misty desert, after which he created exactly the same things (including the two people with the same names) that had displeased him previously, but in a different order.
"There are plenty of examples of flawed superstitious beliefs leading to an equally large disadvantage or equally great damage. For examples see what happens to people who join cults."
There are also plenty of examples of other things that have helped us survive and prosper as a species that are lethal when used in certain ways, e.g. fire, tools and weapons, wheeled vehicles, dwellings that collapse on people, etc., etc., etc.
"and look for a persuasive argument why Nancy and Ronald Reagan consulting fortune tellers and horoscopes might not be a good thing when Ron's got his finger on the nuclear button."
There are also equally persuasive arguments for people with their fingers on nuclear buttons not listening to a wide variety of other sources who are demonstrably wrong most of the time, e.g. the CIA.
"Wiping out most species on the planet has to qualify as an evolutionary step backwards."
1) There's no such thing as "an evolutionary step backwards".
2) Man doesn't have the capability to unleash the sorts of destruction that would be necessary to wipe out most species on the planet. We could perhaps wipe out all land animals bigger than a rat, and probably the air-breathing aquatic animals and many fish that live in shallow waters, but they're only a tiny fraction of the species that inhabit this planet, all of which would continue to evolve just as they have been for at least 3.5 (American) billion years.
" From their point of view they have 'evidence' of their beliefs (mostly based on feelings or circular/incomplete reasoning) and can make up even more stuff to discount the rest."
This is a pretty good description of people in general, not just the religious ones.
Your obvious inability to answer my points with anything except a childish "my dad's better than your dad" pissing contest disgraces the many, many intelligent Christians who do not hide from debates by squawking bits of memorised doctrine like demented parrot.
" 'God within our time-space-matter-energy universe' is known as pantheism and the clause 'or as a part of it' covers panentheism (which seems to fit your description of Hinduism)."
It does indeed fit Hinduism. Their "Great One" is a being of unlimited power that exists outside time and space, but has an extremely wide variety of different manifestation that, with the notable exception of Brahma, are only present within a universe, and therefore cease to exist when it's destroyed. This isn't entirely dissimilar to the Kabbalistic Schemhamphorasch, where God has 72 names, each of which represents a specific aspect of the universe and an associated group of angelic beings that look different from the ones connected with other names, and have dominion over whatever the name itself represents.
"A problem with both of your posts is that you fail to consider that all of the major religions are well represented in both camps (and Hinduism particularly has a somewhat strong pantheist aspect to it as well)."
Where did I fail to consider this?
"I do not see how the GP can claim that Christianity does not have room for God within the universe as [at the very least] Jesus came in the flesh"
The many Old Testament accounts of God both speaking to people and directly causing a wide variety of physical phenomena indicates that the god of the Hebrews must have at least had what the Hindus would describe as "avatars" within the universe long before the events described in the New Testament. Multiple avatars would also provide a neat explanation for some of the terms in the old testament that point to the Hebrews originally having a polytheistic religion e.g. the "Beni Elohim" (Sons of the Gods) who mated with human women to produce the giant Nephalim.
We don't actually know that there was a whole lot of time. Stromatolites for example go back at least 3.5 (American) billion years, and we only know about the organisms that made them because they laid down rocky deposits (similar organisms exist today). The vast majority of micro-organisms (and indeed the vast majority of organisms of all sizes) have left us with no permanent record of their existence, so all we can say is that life goes back _at least_ 3.5 billion years, not that it didn't exist for a considerable period beforehand.
"I fail to see how anyone can, with a straight face (not to mention a clear conscience), claim to *know* what happened 300 million years ago and then try and account for some hole in the theory."
The Great Oxidation happened 2.4 (American) billion years ago, not 300 million. Evidence for it exists in "banded iron" deposits, which are various iron oxides that aren't found prior to that period (you need oxygen to oxidise iron), and more recently, the results of high-resolution chemostratigraphy also confirm that it occurred.
It's also not murder to kill people God has told you to kill, e.g. the entire population of Jericho. This means that anyone who reckons God has told him or her to kill any number of others for any reason in any way is covered, which I'm sure is a source of great comfort to those in organisations such as Al Quaeda.
"much religious belief is based on the idea that science can't explain and do everything."
Whereas the entirety of science is based on the idea that science can't explain and do everything because there's far too much of everything for us to ever be able to know about all of, let alone explain it or do it.
"Also, what they created does not meet the scientific criteria for life."
The same can be said for all the steps postulated by abiogenesis theorists which preceded the eventual emergence of organisms that do fit the scientific criteria for life.
" Why are chicken eggs so tasty? Animals have been stealing eggs from birds for millions of years, shouldn't they have evolved some non-tasty additives by now?"
Egg-laying animals may well have done so many times in the past, but the lack of any objective measure of tastiness that is common to all species (or for that matter, all members of the same species -- consider for example the wide variety of human foods that are considered to be delicacies in one culture, and repulsive in another) is always producing a situation where those who didn't find the "new variant" egg intolerable ended up displacing the ones who were incapable of utilising these valuable sources of nutrients.
"Iron is an essential part of metabolism. Brains and nervous systems are basically electrical systems. Some animals even have a compass. So why do no animals have radios? Not even primitive ones."
There are some animals that have what amount to radio receivers, e.g. sharks, who can detect the small electrical impulses in their prey's neuro-muscular systems from a considerable distance. if predators already have receivers, you definitely don't want to be the animal who is broadcasting high-powered electromagnetic signals all over the place, because everything with sharp teeth and any amount of sensitivity to electrical impulses will be coming your way to see what's producing this interesting new tingle in their sensor circuits. This is an excellent explanation for the fact that the animals we know about which have harnessed electricity for uncommon applications use it to give those curious toothy things with receivers (and indeed ones that use other senses to find prey) a massive tingling in the sensors that they won't forget in a hurry.
"Impressive results have been seen in modeling evolution - for example, genetic algorithms - but all of these systems plateau after a certain amount of runtime. This is the so called "local maxima" problem. Yet biologists claim with a straight face that Darwinian evolution is open ended."
Anybody who has to deal with local maxima (and indeed local minima) problems in models knows that these are artefacts of the models themselves, not reflections of any limitations in the thing that is being modelled.
"Horizontal gene transfer has been observed in the lab between multi-cellular organisms.. doesn't this just completely blow away the traditionalist "tree of life" assumption?"
No, because biologists don't pretend that such trees are anything other than convenient human abstractions of a continuum, just as metres, Kelvin, grammes, seconds etc. are convenient human abstractions of continua (or more correctly, things that might as well be continua at those scales).
"ALL other religions and world views always place their version of God within our time-space-matter-energy universe, or as as part of it."
Balderdash. Hinduism for example says that this universe is one of many that have existed, and others will exist after it (their total number is supposedly greater than the drops of water in the Ganges). Each of them is created by Brahma The Creator, maintained by Vishnu the Preserver, and will eventually be destroyed by Shiva the Destroyer, who are mere avatars of The Great One, a being so complex that humans can only perceive minute and sometimes apparently self-contradictory aspects of it. The story says that one day to Brahma is greater than four thousand million human years, and when he sleeps at night, the Earth is destroyed, and will be recreated when he awakes. After Brahma has lived a number of these days equal to the days in a human life, Shiva will destroy this universe (an act that also destroys Shiva and Vishnu), leaving Brahma to create a new universe and new avatars of Vishnu and Shiva.
"ONLY in the Bible does the real, eternal self-existent God reveal Himself as One outside of and entirely independent of the Universe and its content."
Nobody who isn't living in complete ignorance of the writings of the many other religions that have existed during our history would make such a preposterous claim, because the African Kabuka and Mandinga religions have single gods who create the entirety of the universe, as does the original Korean religion (which calls the creator JuMulJu), the ancient Egyptian cosmogony of Ptah, and many, many other religions both ancient and modern.
"Since the incubation period in humans can be 50 years with an average 30 years (according to June 21, 2001 Wisconsin State Journal and some other sources I looked at)"
These figures are all based on observations of kuru, which is a similar disease, _but not the same disease_. Furthermore, the studies they're derived from have been criticised by other scientists because they assume that funerary cannibalism ceased entirely in Papua when it was banned in the 1950s, whereas work by anthropologists suggests that the practice continued on a wide scale until the early 1990s, and may still be quite prevalent today.
NB: groups of scientists have been issuing warnings about vCJD epidemics that would begin to manifest themselves after a period which gets longer whenever the prior "danger line" is crossed without the much-ballyhooed epidemic appearing.
"we likely have yet to see the extent of how many people were affected by the outbreak in the 80s."
The incidence of new cases is declining every year in the UK, which is by far the best source of information due to (a) having been subject to a massively bigger outbreak of both BSE and vCJD than anyone else, and (2) their mandatory reporting system for any symptoms remotely suggestive of the disease that significantly reduces the chances of it being misdiagnosed (patients who are reported as potential victims must be autopsied on death and tested foe vCJD prions even if they've subsequently been diagnosed as suffering from something else).
"It's also easy to misdiagnose without proper testing- I imagine many doctors writing certain cases off as encephalitis or meningitis or a rapid onset of Alzheimer's (remember it sets in later in life due to the long incubation period)"
This isn't the case in the UK due to their extremely stringent reporting requirements, and the majority of cases (both suspected and confirmed) have occurred there, so their doctors are also the most likely to be aware of the disease.
"Yes, there are diseases you can get from vegetables, like salmonella, but unlike prion diseases you can destroy salmonella simply by cooking it."
You can destroy it by sustained temperatures of 100C or greater, so some cooking methods such as stir frying aren't adequate -- you'll basically be reduced to eating heavily boiled stuff. Note that oven cooking techniques require temperatures of at least 160C for several hours to destroy bacteria because hot air is notably ineffective at that particular task.
"Prions aren't inactivated even by BOILING them."
Autoclaves use steam at 134C to sterilise instruments because there are a large number of pathogens (bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and viruses) that can survive lesser temperatures (and indeed much higher ones for sevral hours in environments other than steam). Prions are also deactivated at 134C, although they require "cooking" for about 20 minutes rather than the 3 minutes that most autoclave cycles use to kill living organisms and their spores (stove top autoclaves use lower temperatures and longer times, so they don't destroy prions).
"And though you can get Hepatitis A from consuming foods many of us have been vaccinated against it- not to mention the vast majority will fully recover from it in as little as 2 weeks with no permanent damage to the liver"
It still kills about 100 people each year in the US, so it's a much greater danger than vCJD, which at its peak was claiming 10 people a year in the "prion hotspot" UK, and has now dropped to less than 5 new cases a year. Scaled up by a factor of 5 to account for population differences, this would mean that the US would have experienced 50 cases a year at the peak times if there'd been massive exposure to infected meat products like that in the UK, and about 22 annual cases nowadays, so you'd be five times more likely to die of hep. A than vCJD.
"Prion diseases on the other hand have no vaccine"
There isn't one yet, but German scientists have managed to treat mice in a way that makes them generate
The point I'm trying to make here is that the claim about placazoans (which only have one member species) being descendants of the first multi-celled animals isn't based on any supporting evidence at all, except in the sense that all multi-celled animals, including placazoans, evolved from a common ancestor. Soft-bodies creatures rarely leave any fossil evidence, so there aren't any known placazoan fossils, and although this doesn't mean that they weren't among the earliest multi-celled creatures (absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence), there's no current proof that they existed at that time.
"Pray tell, in what way have I misinterpreted the premise of your argument, you know, the definition of "strawman".
That is not _the_ definition of a straw man, as you well know. I'm sure you also know that this deliberate attempt to (a) pretend it has a single definition, and (b) put forward a subtly incorrect one is in itself a straw man.
Here are your straw men:
1) Claiming that a sentence contained overt biases against capitalism (which it didn't) instead of answering the point.
2) Taking an answer directed at one of your points, and responding with a different one.
"You obviously don't understand the culture at Nike and I do."
Claiming to understand something isn't the same as actually understanding it.
"Not only did I work there"
For a while in college (your words). You obviously believe that this qualifies you as an expert on a three billion dollar a year multination corporation, but believing something doesn't mean it's true.
"I also fit within the demographic"
Congratulations.
"You obviously don't, didn't, and don't. "
The utter inaccuracy of every other observation you've made about the way I live serve as ample indication of how worthless your estimates about the demographics groups that I do or do not belong in are.
"In other news, there are legitimate ways to deconstruct the actions of Nike over the years, but coming on a nerd site and complaining about "image" carries no credibility whatsoever."
I know your mind has difficulty in dealing with definitions, so I will clarify this one for your edification: saying that Nike are selling image is an assertion, not a complaint.
"In what sense is some little grub that is alive today my ancestor?"
And why is it assumed to be an ancestor just because it has less genes than any other animal that they've sequenced? Coral polyps have more genes than humans, and we also share large numbers of the same ones, but this doesn't mean corals evolved from humans.
Slashdot Mirror
"It has been proved, and is logically obvious based upon the facts of evolutionary biology, that everyone prefers others of their same race."
It has not been proven in the scientific sense, and is not logically obvious based on the rules of evolutionary biology, which, like other branches of biology, does not regard regional variations in size, colouring, or minor physiognomy within a species as having any significance beyond small notes such as "members of the species that live in extremely hot, sunny regions have darker pigmentation, a slightly lower body-to-limb ratio, and a moderately higher sweat gland density per square millimetre of skin area".
"They are not programed to think they are superior, they are programed to protect the distinctness of their race, to prevent its extinction."
There is no such programming in the scientific sense, hence the fact that every group has been enthusiastically mixing its genes with members of every other group it's encountered since our species emerged.
"An organism, say the White race"
The white race is not a distinct organism from any other group within the species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, as is proven by the fact that (a) whites _can_ interbreed with all other human groups, and (b) large numbers of whites _do_ interbreed with other groups. All "races" of dog are similarly classified as part of the Canis Familiaris species for precisely the same reason, just as all the different "races" of horse belong to the Equus Caballius species.
"A race that evolved the tendency to preserve itself will be more preserved on average than races that do not have that tendency."
This will only be the case if that tendency increases the survival probability of the group and the individuals within it. If on the other hand evolution favours those who prefer genetic diversity over group isolation, then the group with the "race preservation instinct" will be steadily displaced by those without it until it completely disappears.
"I could argue that we are devolving in many ways"
It's impossible for an organism to devolve.
"not the least of which are in resistance to diseases and the kinds of foods we can eat"
These are cultural problems that only manifest themselves in wealthy (primarily Western) nations where people aren't exposed from birth to the wide array of pathogenic organisms that our immune systems evolved to deal with. The vast majority of humanity doesn't live in nearly sterile environments, doesn't eat sterilised foods or drink sterilised water, and does not therefore suffer from epidemics of allergic reactions to completely innocuous substances.
"this is because of memory"
It's only memory if it's directly happened to you or somebody you know. A superstition arises when people begin to believe that "rustling grass is unlucky because everyone says so", i.e. the phenomenon itself becomes the thing to fear without the fearers having any idea of why they should fear it.
"There are also some coping mechanisms - people don't like to think of death as non-existence so the afterlife is invented."
I think that it's more a case of being unable to imagine non-existence that leads to ideas of life after death, because quite a lot of the myths surrounding it are notably unpleasant, whereas coping mechanisms tend to be based around comforting images, not horrible ones.
"Our rapid success as a species is turning this asset into a liability."
Assets becoming liabilities when conditions change is one of the major reasons why previously successful organisms become extinct.
"So the real question is: can it *devolve* quickly enough before it ends up destroying us?"
Empirical observation indicates that the opposite is occurring, i.e. we're becoming steadily more superstitious as a species rather than less so.
"Equally disturbing:
1. "Let there be light" identified the start of this reality."
etc.
You're forgetting that there's another creation story in Genesis 2:4b to 2:25, which has the following sequence of events:
1. The Earth already exists in the form of a misty, rainless desert.
2. God makes a man out of dust, and constructs a garden to put him in.
3. Animals are created in an attempt to provide a helper fit for his new man.
4. The animals prove to be unsatisfactory (i.e. God was in error!), so He makes a woman out of the man's rib.
Which of the two is the true account, because they can't both be true unless God created everything including the Earth and everything on it, then wiped the slate clean only on Earth leaving a misty desert, after which he created exactly the same things (including the two people with the same names) that had displeased him previously, but in a different order.
"There are plenty of examples of flawed superstitious beliefs leading to an equally large disadvantage or equally great damage. For examples see what happens to people who join cults."
There are also plenty of examples of other things that have helped us survive and prosper as a species that are lethal when used in certain ways, e.g. fire, tools and weapons, wheeled vehicles, dwellings that collapse on people, etc., etc., etc.
"and look for a persuasive argument why Nancy and Ronald Reagan consulting fortune tellers and horoscopes might not be a good thing when Ron's got his finger on the nuclear button."
There are also equally persuasive arguments for people with their fingers on nuclear buttons not listening to a wide variety of other sources who are demonstrably wrong most of the time, e.g. the CIA.
"Wiping out most species on the planet has to qualify as an evolutionary step backwards."
1) There's no such thing as "an evolutionary step backwards".
2) Man doesn't have the capability to unleash the sorts of destruction that would be necessary to wipe out most species on the planet. We could perhaps wipe out all land animals bigger than a rat, and probably the air-breathing aquatic animals and many fish that live in shallow waters, but they're only a tiny fraction of the species that inhabit this planet, all of which would continue to evolve just as they have been for at least 3.5 (American) billion years.
" From their point of view they have 'evidence' of their beliefs (mostly based on feelings or circular/incomplete reasoning) and can make up even more stuff to discount the rest."
This is a pretty good description of people in general, not just the religious ones.
Your obvious inability to answer my points with anything except a childish "my dad's better than your dad" pissing contest disgraces the many, many intelligent Christians who do not hide from debates by squawking bits of memorised doctrine like demented parrot.
" 'God within our time-space-matter-energy universe' is known as pantheism and the clause 'or as a part of it' covers panentheism (which seems to fit your description of Hinduism)."
It does indeed fit Hinduism. Their "Great One" is a being of unlimited power that exists outside time and space, but has an extremely wide variety of different manifestation that, with the notable exception of Brahma, are only present within a universe, and therefore cease to exist when it's destroyed. This isn't entirely dissimilar to the Kabbalistic Schemhamphorasch, where God has 72 names, each of which represents a specific aspect of the universe and an associated group of angelic beings that look different from the ones connected with other names, and have dominion over whatever the name itself represents.
"A problem with both of your posts is that you fail to consider that all of the major religions are well represented in both camps (and Hinduism particularly has a somewhat strong pantheist aspect to it as well)."
Where did I fail to consider this?
"I do not see how the GP can claim that Christianity does not have room for God within the universe as [at the very least] Jesus came in the flesh"
The many Old Testament accounts of God both speaking to people and directly causing a wide variety of physical phenomena indicates that the god of the Hebrews must have at least had what the Hindus would describe as "avatars" within the universe long before the events described in the New Testament. Multiple avatars would also provide a neat explanation for some of the terms in the old testament that point to the Hebrews originally having a polytheistic religion e.g. the "Beni Elohim" (Sons of the Gods) who mated with human women to produce the giant Nephalim.
"there was a whole lot of time before life arose"
We don't actually know that there was a whole lot of time. Stromatolites for example go back at least 3.5 (American) billion years, and we only know about the organisms that made them because they laid down rocky deposits (similar organisms exist today). The vast majority of micro-organisms (and indeed the vast majority of organisms of all sizes) have left us with no permanent record of their existence, so all we can say is that life goes back _at least_ 3.5 billion years, not that it didn't exist for a considerable period beforehand.
"I fail to see how anyone can, with a straight face (not to mention a clear conscience), claim to *know* what happened 300 million years ago and then try and account for some hole in the theory."
The Great Oxidation happened 2.4 (American) billion years ago, not 300 million. Evidence for it exists in "banded iron" deposits, which are various iron oxides that aren't found prior to that period (you need oxygen to oxidise iron), and more recently, the results of high-resolution chemostratigraphy also confirm that it occurred.
It's also not murder to kill people God has told you to kill, e.g. the entire population of Jericho. This means that anyone who reckons God has told him or her to kill any number of others for any reason in any way is covered, which I'm sure is a source of great comfort to those in organisations such as Al Quaeda.
"much religious belief is based on the idea that science can't explain and do everything."
Whereas the entirety of science is based on the idea that science can't explain and do everything because there's far too much of everything for us to ever be able to know about all of, let alone explain it or do it.
"Also, what they created does not meet the scientific criteria for life."
The same can be said for all the steps postulated by abiogenesis theorists which preceded the eventual emergence of organisms that do fit the scientific criteria for life.
" Why are chicken eggs so tasty? Animals have been stealing eggs from birds for millions of years, shouldn't they have evolved some non-tasty additives by now?"
Egg-laying animals may well have done so many times in the past, but the lack of any objective measure of tastiness that is common to all species (or for that matter, all members of the same species -- consider for example the wide variety of human foods that are considered to be delicacies in one culture, and repulsive in another) is always producing a situation where those who didn't find the "new variant" egg intolerable ended up displacing the ones who were incapable of utilising these valuable sources of nutrients.
"Iron is an essential part of metabolism. Brains and nervous systems are basically electrical systems. Some animals even have a compass. So why do no animals have radios? Not even primitive ones."
There are some animals that have what amount to radio receivers, e.g. sharks, who can detect the small electrical impulses in their prey's neuro-muscular systems from a considerable distance. if predators already have receivers, you definitely don't want to be the animal who is broadcasting high-powered electromagnetic signals all over the place, because everything with sharp teeth and any amount of sensitivity to electrical impulses will be coming your way to see what's producing this interesting new tingle in their sensor circuits. This is an excellent explanation for the fact that the animals we know about which have harnessed electricity for uncommon applications use it to give those curious toothy things with receivers (and indeed ones that use other senses to find prey) a massive tingling in the sensors that they won't forget in a hurry.
"Impressive results have been seen in modeling evolution - for example, genetic algorithms - but all of these systems plateau after a certain amount of runtime. This is the so called "local maxima" problem. Yet biologists claim with a straight face that Darwinian evolution is open ended."
Anybody who has to deal with local maxima (and indeed local minima) problems in models knows that these are artefacts of the models themselves, not reflections of any limitations in the thing that is being modelled.
"Horizontal gene transfer has been observed in the lab between multi-cellular organisms.. doesn't this just completely blow away the traditionalist "tree of life" assumption?"
No, because biologists don't pretend that such trees are anything other than convenient human abstractions of a continuum, just as metres, Kelvin, grammes, seconds etc. are convenient human abstractions of continua (or more correctly, things that might as well be continua at those scales).
"ALL other religions and world views always place their version of God within our time-space-matter-energy universe, or as as part of it."
Balderdash. Hinduism for example says that this universe is one of many that have existed, and others will exist after it (their total number is supposedly greater than the drops of water in the Ganges). Each of them is created by Brahma The Creator, maintained by Vishnu the Preserver, and will eventually be destroyed by Shiva the Destroyer, who are mere avatars of The Great One, a being so complex that humans can only perceive minute and sometimes apparently self-contradictory aspects of it. The story says that one day to Brahma is greater than four thousand million human years, and when he sleeps at night, the Earth is destroyed, and will be recreated when he awakes. After Brahma has lived a number of these days equal to the days in a human life, Shiva will destroy this universe (an act that also destroys Shiva and Vishnu), leaving Brahma to create a new universe and new avatars of Vishnu and Shiva.
"ONLY in the Bible does the real, eternal self-existent God reveal Himself as One outside of and entirely independent of the Universe and its content."
Nobody who isn't living in complete ignorance of the writings of the many other religions that have existed during our history would make such a preposterous claim, because the African Kabuka and Mandinga religions have single gods who create the entirety of the universe, as does the original Korean religion (which calls the creator JuMulJu), the ancient Egyptian cosmogony of Ptah, and many, many other religions both ancient and modern.
Player pianos (and roll-controlled organs and calliopes) weren't digital because they used variable slot lengths to control each note's duration.
Or had someone else by them...
I agree wholeheartedly with everything in your post.
"Since the incubation period in humans can be 50 years with an average 30 years (according to June 21, 2001 Wisconsin State Journal and some other sources I looked at)"
These figures are all based on observations of kuru, which is a similar disease, _but not the same disease_. Furthermore, the studies they're derived from have been criticised by other scientists because they assume that funerary cannibalism ceased entirely in Papua when it was banned in the 1950s, whereas work by anthropologists suggests that the practice continued on a wide scale until the early 1990s, and may still be quite prevalent today.
NB: groups of scientists have been issuing warnings about vCJD epidemics that would begin to manifest themselves after a period which gets longer whenever the prior "danger line" is crossed without the much-ballyhooed epidemic appearing.
"we likely have yet to see the extent of how many people were affected by the outbreak in the 80s."
The incidence of new cases is declining every year in the UK, which is by far the best source of information due to (a) having been subject to a massively bigger outbreak of both BSE and vCJD than anyone else, and (2) their mandatory reporting system for any symptoms remotely suggestive of the disease that significantly reduces the chances of it being misdiagnosed (patients who are reported as potential victims must be autopsied on death and tested foe vCJD prions even if they've subsequently been diagnosed as suffering from something else).
"It's also easy to misdiagnose without proper testing- I imagine many doctors writing certain cases off as encephalitis or meningitis or a rapid onset of Alzheimer's (remember it sets in later in life due to the long incubation period)"
This isn't the case in the UK due to their extremely stringent reporting requirements, and the majority of cases (both suspected and confirmed) have occurred there, so their doctors are also the most likely to be aware of the disease.
"Yes, there are diseases you can get from vegetables, like salmonella, but unlike prion diseases you can destroy salmonella simply by cooking it."
You can destroy it by sustained temperatures of 100C or greater, so some cooking methods such as stir frying aren't adequate -- you'll basically be reduced to eating heavily boiled stuff. Note that oven cooking techniques require temperatures of at least 160C for several hours to destroy bacteria because hot air is notably ineffective at that particular task.
"Prions aren't inactivated even by BOILING them."
Autoclaves use steam at 134C to sterilise instruments because there are a large number of pathogens (bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and viruses) that can survive lesser temperatures (and indeed much higher ones for sevral hours in environments other than steam). Prions are also deactivated at 134C, although they require "cooking" for about 20 minutes rather than the 3 minutes that most autoclave cycles use to kill living organisms and their spores (stove top autoclaves use lower temperatures and longer times, so they don't destroy prions).
"And though you can get Hepatitis A from consuming foods many of us have been vaccinated against it- not to mention the vast majority will fully recover from it in as little as 2 weeks with no permanent damage to the liver"
It still kills about 100 people each year in the US, so it's a much greater danger than vCJD, which at its peak was claiming 10 people a year in the "prion hotspot" UK, and has now dropped to less than 5 new cases a year. Scaled up by a factor of 5 to account for population differences, this would mean that the US would have experienced 50 cases a year at the peak times if there'd been massive exposure to infected meat products like that in the UK, and about 22 annual cases nowadays, so you'd be five times more likely to die of hep. A than vCJD.
"Prion diseases on the other hand have no vaccine"
There isn't one yet, but German scientists have managed to treat mice in a way that makes them generate
The point I'm trying to make here is that the claim about placazoans (which only have one member species) being descendants of the first multi-celled animals isn't based on any supporting evidence at all, except in the sense that all multi-celled animals, including placazoans, evolved from a common ancestor. Soft-bodies creatures rarely leave any fossil evidence, so there aren't any known placazoan fossils, and although this doesn't mean that they weren't among the earliest multi-celled creatures (absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence), there's no current proof that they existed at that time.
"Pray tell, in what way have I misinterpreted the premise of your argument, you know, the definition of "strawman".
That is not _the_ definition of a straw man, as you well know. I'm sure you also know that this deliberate attempt to (a) pretend it has a single definition, and (b) put forward a subtly incorrect one is in itself a straw man.
Here are your straw men:
1) Claiming that a sentence contained overt biases against capitalism (which it didn't) instead of answering the point.
2) Taking an answer directed at one of your points, and responding with a different one.
"You obviously don't understand the culture at Nike and I do."
Claiming to understand something isn't the same as actually understanding it.
"Not only did I work there"
For a while in college (your words). You obviously believe that this qualifies you as an expert on a three billion dollar a year multination corporation, but believing something doesn't mean it's true.
"I also fit within the demographic"
Congratulations.
"You obviously don't, didn't, and don't. "
The utter inaccuracy of every other observation you've made about the way I live serve as ample indication of how worthless your estimates about the demographics groups that I do or do not belong in are.
"In other news, there are legitimate ways to deconstruct the actions of Nike over the years, but coming on a nerd site and complaining about "image" carries no credibility whatsoever."
I know your mind has difficulty in dealing with definitions, so I will clarify this one for your edification: saying that Nike are selling image is an assertion, not a complaint.
"In what sense is some little grub that is alive today my ancestor?"
And why is it assumed to be an ancestor just because it has less genes than any other animal that they've sequenced? Coral polyps have more genes than humans, and we also share large numbers of the same ones, but this doesn't mean corals evolved from humans.