So, you don't think we should teach kids about gravity? You don't think we should explain that scientific theories are not guesses? You don't think we should tell them the truth about their parents archaic belief systems?
So, what, do you suggest, would a science class look like? Bible readings? Group prayer meets?
"Please Lord, I wish I knew why the Sun was yellow, please grant me that information in a dream"
Right, now that I've logged in...
Both machines were running Vista Professional, the laptop was billed as "Vista Premium Ready". Both machines were installed by me, and were very clean. I normally don't even install the apps that come on the driver CD.
Sorry, I must have missed the general unhappiness with CFC's that was overridden by scientists. Perhaps you can point me to some 1970s documentation where scientific studies were done showing the long term benefits of CFC's to reassure a unconvinced public? I think if you look really hard, the people telling you to rush into new things are companies, to be specific marketers and advertisers. Dunno about you, but as far as I know those aren't scientific fields.
Once again you attack scientists for stuff that non-scientists do. I hate to break it to you, but eveything that happens is not in fact controlled by the World Conspiracy of Scientists (TM).
As for the hospitals advertising, well again, it's advertising yeah? Not scientists. You know that when they dress actors up in lab coats and have them say all the cool things about a new face cream that it's not actually scientists yeah? Anyway I live in South Africa and AFAIK doctors and lawyers are not allowed to advertise. I've never heard a radio ad like you describe.
As for the peanuts, I really did not know that, but in any case keep in mind that they're not banning peanuts outright, just in an enclosed space. Secondly keep in mind that again, it's not scientists doing this, but the airlines. Science supplys the data about how many people are deathly allergic to peanuts, and the airlines ban peanuts because they see it as too risky.
I guess another option would be to inform you that there's a 1 in a million chance you might kill someone if you eat peanuts, serve them and charge you with culpable homicide if someone does die. Would you prefer that? I can tell you the airlines wouldn't because they'd get a huge public relations fiasco if something like that happenned. I guess we could just ban people with peanut allergies from flying, but I think that in the US they might be able to sue for violation of their civil liberties. Tell you what, why don't you come up with a solution which has a minimum impact on everyone, and does not result in death or the revocation of the US Constitution.
As for Vioxx bein yanked, again that's a political/marketing decision. Science showed that the drug could be dangerous, the manufacturer pulled it, and if they hadn't, the FDA would have. Instead of whinging about science, instead lobby your congressman for laxer aftermarket controls on drugs. Politics, not science.
As for my bridge out analogy, I really think you're stretching it pretty far, but the basic reason we use science is because it works. From the Dark Ages to today, life expectancy has improved dramatically, dunno the exact figures but it's at least doubled. So, if you lived without science you'd be twice as likely to be dead already. If you were a child your prospects would be grinding physical labor for your entire life. You would be illiterate, the furthest you'd ever travel would be to the neighbouring town. Communication with extended family far away would quite simply be beyond your means.
Science changed all that. It led to inventions which vastly increased the wealth of the world, cured diseases, provided new means of transportation, communication and play. Now, you're unhappy that new inventions are often a two-edged sword. This is true, any power comes with a cost. We could, when a new technology is discovered, study it backwards and forwards for decades before releasing it, to ensure we've got all the kinks worked out. However, it would mean that today we'd probably still be using slide rules and cars would still be in the Model T era, admittedly with catalytic converters and great fuel efficiency.
We choose as a society not to wait that time, we choose to accept that there may be future problems. We do this because we're not a species of frightened ninnies. We decide to deal with those problems as and when they arise, and on the whole very few problems do arise as a percentage of discoveries, so we're ahead of the game. We also realise that tommorrows discoveries often solve today
Such a single identity that there were hundreds of wars, some of them HUGE such as the Thirty Years War. Religion also caused massive schisms such as the Reformation. The "single cultural identity" you mention had MUCH more to do with the Roman heritage than Christianity, which to a very large extent just usurped that to it's own advantage.
The Dark Ages were an era of night, ignorance and superstition where the Church did everything it could to suppress new knowledge, to the extent of burning dissenters. It was only with the loss of power of the Church that the Enlightenment could begin. It says something that some of the earliest Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza and Voltaire fled to the relatively secular Netherlands to escape persecution.
Europe had been ravaged by religious wars; when peace in the political situation had been restored, after the Peace of Westphalia and the English Civil War, an intellectual upheaval overturned the accepted belief that mysticism and revelation are the primary sources of knowledge and wisdom--which was blamed for fomenting political instability
As the churches influence waned, scientific progress increased. The Reformation, and the rise of nationalism are what kicked off the Enlightenment.
I find it amusing that you attribute to the Church what it did the most to destroy.
Sorry about the formatting, been a while since I last posted on Slashdot. Ironic to be railing against an incompetant buffoon and at the same time forget to check my post. Doh!
It's actually amazing how wrong you are on so many levels. The whole point of science is in fact to sift through the millions of ideas and focus on the correct ones, so without science you'd be deluged with even more crap, and more importantly, you'd have no mechanism to determine which ideas were valid and which ones were wrong.
You're quite right that science has a lot of bad news for us, but perhaps that's because there IS actually some bad news? Let's imagine that you're driving on a road, it's dark, night-time, raining, and someone has kindly put up a sign that says "Bridge Out". Would you prefer the sign not to be there? I mean I'm sure that it'd bum you out that you have to turn around and go the long way around. I'm sure that would "suck". Anyway, it has good news for us, and it also tells us how to fix the problems. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? It's going away now because we banned CFC's. Didn't read any advice about that in the Bible BTW.
I know of no science that says you have to share with the third world, I thought that was Christian charity actually. Oh right, no such thing. I also am not aware of any science that says you can't give dangerous drugs to your grandmother, or eat peanuts on the plane. I think what you're referring to there is politics. Helps by the way, if you have the slightest fucking clue about what you're criticizing.
There is no cure for cancer either, but given the ill-informed drek that has characterised your post so far, I'm not surprised you've screwed the pooch on that one either. Just going to skip past some of your diatribes at politicians and teachers, and dive straight into your complete and vacuous misunderstanding of history. Hate to break it to you dumbass, but the reason Europe became successful has little or nothing to do with the church (which had been dominant in Europe for 1100 hundred years before Europe boomed), and almost EVERYTHING to do with the scientific method.
What science actually gives you is information about how the Universe works. You can ignore that if you want, but since we live in the universe that's probably not such a good idea.
Oh, and dipswitch:
Y o u d o n e e d t o u n d e r s t a n d e v o l u t i o n t o
c r e a t e n e w m e d i c i n e s
Science offers reality, sucks to you if you find that shitty, but I actually would rather be more unhappy and know the truth than be blissfully unaware of what's actually going on. Oh, and you know what? I'm actually very happy anyway, so I win all round, and you're just another ignoramus in a world full of ignoramuses.
Sorry, their evidence is based on an interpretation of their evidence? Like my car is based on an interpretation of my car, right? Evolutionary theory is one of the best supported by evidence that we have. There's literally mountains of evidence supporting evolution, and nothing, not one, piece of evidence disputing it.
Agreed, evolutionary theory is, in effect, an interpretation of the evidence. Since it appears to interpret it so well it's accepted as a theory not a hypothesis. There's two ways of supplanting a theory. One is to find evidence contradicting the theory, this approach has been unsuccessfully tried for almost 150 years. The second is to come up with a theory that explains the facts better. And no, saying "nyah, nyah, I don't care about the evidence it just doesn't work like that!" is not a better theory.
It's Darwin's theory, not hypothesis. Dembski and Behe's argumentum ad ignorantiam is a hypothesis. However it is nice to see an IDist who actually understands that calling it a hypothesis is more snide than calling it a theory.
Even if this did break Darwin's theory, I'm afraid to tell you that you're gunning at the wrong target. Pure Darwinian evolution was superceded some time ago by the Modern Synthesis. If you want to attack evolution, it's probably better to attack current theory rather than Victorian Age thinking, wouldn't you say?
BTW, the pharynx I mentioned in an earlier post is in fact the join point between the mammallian airway and gullet.
So, let's get this straight. You think that an "incomplete system" would be one where there's limited usefulness, but with potential for usefulness in future. In fact such a system would be contrary to evolution, since there is no plan of what may or may not be useful. So, let's just look at limited usefulness. How about the male nipple then?
As for the ocellus, you're completely missing the point. Whether there are other mechanisms to detect predators/prey is besides the point. The ocellus provides an additional, albeit limited assistence to that task. At the same time, it is exactly the kind of limited eye that creationists claim does not exist. It is, at most, 10% of an eye. Yet it provides an evolutionary advantage. So, the evolution argument that there would be numerous "transitional" features is met, and the creationist argument that there would not be is debunked. You don't get much simpler than that.
As for the flagellum, let's just get one thing straight: evolutionary theory is not your fake strawman of evolution. It does not have any problems with "neutral" mutations. I know this is a difficult concept to grasp, but when evolution talks about selection, "neutral" mutations are not selected against because, um, they're neutral.
Costs of mutation are cheap. Costs of expression of those mutations might be very expensive. Since a huge amount of the DNA sequence is indels, either the Creator was a blithering idiot, or there's something else going on.
Your viewpoint appears to promote that life has arrived at this point due to sheer chance and beneficial mutations. I do not share this viewpoint.
And this is why you don't get evolution. Where have I said that sheer chance is the cause of life as we know it? Anyone who says something like that betrays a complete lack of the slightest understanding of evolution. Chance does have a role to play, but it is not the overriding role. The overriding role is natural selection, which is most certainly not random.
Oh, and BTW, it's not a viewpoint. It's a fact. We've seen the evidence in the fossil record, we've seen the occurance in the laboratory, we've seen it in the wild. We have the mechanisms, we have the details. We know how the "modification" in "descent with modification" occurs. We've run simulations. We've checked the results against all the other sciences. They're all in agreement. There's no disputing it. You might as well say that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
I feel a certain sympathy for the Creationist position, perhaps why I've bothered this long. You see, you're stuck in a bind. Either the Bible is fallible or the world is a lie. Since God created the world, and inspired the Bible, you're faced with a dichotomy. The Bible is very clear that God created the world, and not so clear on His direct authorship of the Bible. Technically, if the world and the Bible are in contradiction, then the world should take precedence, being a direct creation and all.
Instead, you've decided that the work of men (perhaps inspired by God, but men nonetheless) takes higher priority than His work as revealed in His creation. As such, you're idolators, putting a book above God. The only way you can reconcile that is to claim that the book and the world are not in conflict, no matter what evidence shows you to be wrong. As such, you're not just idolators, but dishonest idolaters. If not dishonest to others, then at the very least to yourselves.
Okay, let's dial back the crap-o-meter here. I was not talking about insect larvae at all. I mentioned the ocellus in adult insects, I discussed the flagellum, I discussed your complete refusal to define an "incomplete system". I also pointed out the non-useful trait of having an airway that crosses the eating tube (found in you, not larvae), which BTW means that you can choke while eating, which is just stupid design.
A neutral mutation, by the way, can be one where the mutation does not express. A simple example is in indels. As such it has no biological cost, and as such cannot be selected for or against, at least immediately. Alternatively, it can be a slightly different way of doing the same thing. Where's the "cost" to the organism?
Male nipples: a trait arising from the use of "common code" for both male and female
*blinks in disbelief*
And that's an example of efficiency? In one breath you're raving about how every mutation must provide benefit. In another you're telling me that a structure on the male body, which offers no direct benefit whatsoever to the organism, or it's offspring, is an example of design efficiency? Those nipples cost resources to make, and maintain (not many, admittedly). They're not an example of design efficiency at all. A much better design would be to place the "genetic template" for nipples on the X-chromosome, and to place an instruction on the Y not to have them express at all.
In fact male nipples would be my idea of a typical "neutral" mutation.
Oh dear. I am certainly, most definately, not implying that such complex systems arise from a single beneficial mutation. Nonetheless I stand by my statement that there are no "incomplete systems". Every successful mutation cannot harm the organism, and as such must be beneficial, or at worst, neutral. Thus each such mutation results in a complete system, in that the system works. If it didn't it would be selected against, and the mutation would not long survive.
So, at no stage would one expect to find an organism with an "incomplete system", however one would expect to find many organisms with, as you put it "developing systems". You see, the question I have to ask, is what the hell is an "incomplete system"? If the stemma and ocellus don't qualify, what would? Oh, and BTW, the ocellus is found on adult insects. As for the article on the evolution of the flagellum, I'm not qualified enough to dissect its claims to a huge detail, but I certainly found the line of thought plausible at least. Your complaints about it seem to be based on a rather limited understanding of evolution, so if you don't mind, I think I'll stick with the authors expertise.
This is a complete mischaracterisation. Natural selection implies nothing of the sort. Useful traits survive better than their lack, sure. But neutral traits can survive, and many non-useful traits do too. Just have a look at the sheer idiocy of the pharynx as an example. However, at each step, each mutation was either beneficial or neutral. That does not mean that the overall design is good, but that's what we'd expect, because there was no design, merely a succession of small steps.
Still waiting to find out about the design efficiency of male nipples BTW.
you try to classify "the eye" as an identical system that all forms of life are working to perfect
Sorry if that is the impression I did give. I did deliberately put "half an eye" in quotes to try and point out that it isn't my concept I was attacking but rather a simplistic creationist strawman. Obviously I wasn't clear enough;-D
Only one major shift of function occurred at the system level, the transition from a pilus to a protoflagellum. All of the other changes in system function can be seen as minor modifications of a basic function; if these are enumerated (export --> secretion --> adhesion --> pilus, and dispersal --> taxis), then four minor shifts of function occurred. In all cases a "shift" in function is actually more accurately described as an addition of function at the system level, as previous functions are maintained.
BTW, really interested here, how exactly do male nipples show design efficiency? I always thought they were bloody superfluous;-D
If you're looking for "incomplete systems", have a look at Ocelli, Stemmata. Of course, the standard response to things like this is that they are not incomplete since they do fine for the animals concerned. This in fact is disingenuous at best, since the question was to show "incomplete systems" in existance now. Excluding by definition all organisms in existance now would make giving you examples impossible. However, personally, I don't believe that there are or ever were any incomplete systems. Then again I wasn't the one asking the question, was I?
If we were to have a time-machine, and were able to travel back to any time in the evolution of earth, we would likely never find an "incomplete system", certainly not one that survived. We would instead find many very complete systems, some of which gradually became coopted into different functions whilst still being "complete" in the sense that they made perfect sense for the organism involved at the time.
Well, a pet peeve of mine is people mischaracterising evolution;-D Evolution does not at all, implicitly or explicitly say anything about the origin of life. In fact it explicitly limits itself to replicating organisms. Anything before that is explicitly beyond it's purview. Now, many abiogenesis researchers are coming up with ways in which very simple pre-cell based replicators may have come into play. If these replicators fit the requirements for evolution, then in those circumstances, yes evolution would have something useful to say, and yes we would then be able to push the "starting point" of evolution back a bit. But I can't see that happenning any time soon.
Yes, yes, and yes. Getting back to the point, I did "look in the places that believers say the evidence is found", and the fact of the matter is the evidence for creationism isn't found there. All that you will find there is evidence that most of the people involved have not the slightest clue what they're talking about when they discuss science.
It's actually funny, because creationism to some degree kicked off my questioning. You see, I'd been brought up in RC, which has no real problems with evolution or science. It was only after I got involved with a bunch of reborns that I got exposed to creationism. It didn't sit well with me, so I started looking into it further and discovered that they were peddling worn-out, discredited old lies.
Not to say that something as simple as that was the cause of my rejecting religion, but it was one of the catalysts. I think your post exemplifies another catalyst pretty well too.
Any trait that was burdensome on the bearer of that trait and offered no advantage to offset that burden would indeed be heavily selected against. Which is indeed why we don't find such traits in the wild or in fossil record. Evolution predicts that any mutation must be beneficial for it to be selected for.
You see the problem for creationists is that "half an eye" does provide an advantage, at least more of one than having no eye. As an example, consider an animal that has some light-sensing patches, but cannot "see". Thos light-sensing patches provide an advantage. They can help the animal navigate, and if it suddenly goes dark, they can scurry around trying to hide, assuming that the shadow could have been caused by some predator.
There have been in fact simulations of the evolution of any eye from a patch of light-sensing skin. These simulations have shown very clear possibilities for the evolution of an eye where every step was more advantageous than the one before. Now, we don't know what steps were actually taken, since the eye is soft and squishy and doesn't fossilize well, but we have several pathways. Even more importantly, there are many, many animals who would have, compared to us, "half an eye", and they do fine. Compare our eye with the simplicity of the nautiloids, or the distance vision of an eagle, and it quickly becomes aparrent that we too do not have 100% of an eye.
The bacterial flagellum, and the blood clotting cascade have also been shown to have clear evolutionary pathways where each additional step was advantageous. Interestingly, the bacterial flagellum started off life not as a means of propulsion, but a means of attack, and was co-opted to movement.
can see no sense in arbitrarily starting the evolutionary clock after life has already been formed
Since evolution deals only with replicating life, and nothing else, how exactly do you expect to set the clock any earlier? It is a limitation of the theory. What it describes was not in existance before life began, therefore the theory has no applicability. Hardly arbitrary. The theory of plate tectonics doesn't apply to the Moon which doesn't have them, nor does it apply to the Earth just as it was forming. This is not a weakness of the theory, merely that it doesn't apply in those circumstances. Similarly, gravity doesn't explain nuclear fission, but that doesn't make gravity or atomic bombs any less real.
Hmm, dunno, I'm an athiest. I was brought up in a religious background, went to Church regularly, read the Bible several times over, and got Reborn. The ridicule from "buddies" I had to face came from Christians, and yes many of them were intellectuals.
Actually, not really. It's the naturalistic precursor. It's entirely possible that the first bit of matter to be endowed with the ability to replicate had life breathed into it by the Creator, or whoever. Evolution takes no position on the origin of life at all. Even if you could prove that the origin of life was by God, evolution would still apply, since it took effect from the moment a self-replicating, mutating organism came into existance.
Arguing against abiogenesis does nothing to harm evolutionary theory.
If you have a problem with it, no-one is insisting you believe it. You're welcome to your personal beliefs. However, you are (and have in your previous posts) disputing science based on those beliefs. No matter what evidence is put before you showing evolution to be correct, you would twist it or deny it because your faith does not allow for it. At least, unlike many Creationists, you seem to be willing to admit this. However, like many other Creationists you seem to feel that science must conform to your personal beliefs.
Keep in mind that if you're a biblical literalist, it is not just evolution you must deny, but also physics, astronomy, geology, archeology, and many others. They all point to an old Earth and contradict a literal reading of Genesis.
As I said before, you're welcome to your personal beliefs, but evangelising bad science based on those beliefs is not welcome.
I think you'll find that evolution is a lot more gradual than you give it credit for. The main reason that we expect to find "jumps" in the fossil record is precisely because it is gradual. To simplify, speciation is theorised to be "faster" for isolated species, since their smaller population allows for swifter distribution of advantageous genes. Once they expand beyond their range, if they have evolved enough advantages, they very quickly expand even further.
So, if we look everywhere on earth, except for at that original range, we will find a "sudden" appearance of that species. Even if speciation was not "swifter" in isolated populations, we would expect to find this. However, if we did ever find the original range (a VERY unlikely proposition), we would find the gradual fossil record for that species.
Perhaps because it's smack bang in a time period where our ancestor species came out of the water onto land, and happens to be coming our of water onto land?
Nebraska Man, afraid you're mistaken. Especially about the "people went looking for" part. It was a chance discovery
As for your 3 camps, I'm firmly in 3, I don't believe in God myself, but I don't care whether you do. However, I do care when people egregiously misrepresent science.
how an you prove this animal just didn't go extinct and wasn't transitional to anything at all.
Truthfully, we can't. First off there's no proof of anything in science. Secondly, we may indeed be descended from a different tetrapod species that made the leap from sea to land. However, we can trace our lineage to this time period, and this fossil shares many characteristics with our more fully land-based ancestors. As such it is a possible ancestor. Importantly, it's the first such one so clearly making the move from sea to land.
what advantage would an aqua based ear structure provide on land?
It would certainly offer more advantage than no ear whatsoever.
no hybrid ears have ever been observed in the fossil record, so far as i have been able to tell.
And I'd be fairly surprised if we did find any such fossils. Firstly, it begs the question of what a "hybrid" ear actually is. Secondly, the ear is comprised of very small bones, the kind that do not last, since they easily get wiped out by the fossilization process.
1. There is a lot more about this just that it's "an animal that we haven't seen before". It's a tetrapod like we are. We've found aquatic tetrapod fossils, we've found land-based tetradpod fossils. This one is between the two. It has land-based features (i.e. lungs and strong limbs), and fish-based features (i.e. fins and scales). As such it falls between the two "groups" of tetrapods.
2. They didn't "assume" the time period. They looked in riverine rocks which are dated to having been deposited between 417 mil and 354 mil years ago to find the animal. They knew the time period it should come from (from the dates of aquatic and land tetrapods fossils), and they knew the type of environment it would be found in (riverine). So, they went to an area dated to that time period, that was riverine in those days, and found the fossil.
3. (Since you conflated two points in no 2), the point is that it doesn't resemble "some other animal", it resembles two other animals, a marine tetrapod and a land tetrapod. Ergo, transitional fossil.
The major presupposition is that the genetic code that allows for breathing on land is implicit in genetic change. The group of possible genetic alterations included at least one genetic sequence which would result in land breathing capabilities.
Umm, the genetic code before the fish started evolving lungs would likely have had nothing explicit or implicit about breathing on land. The genetic code after the evolution of lungs would have had quite a lot about it, very explicitly.
Keep in mind that possible genetic sequences are not "baked-in" prior to the event, but are generated as a result of evolutionary pressures and mutations.
Actually, I think you'll find that there is no controversy between creation and intelligent design. For example Abrahimic Creation asserts that a supernatural entity known as Jehovah created everything, Intelligent Design asserts that an unknown supernatural entity created everything.
Since Intelligent Design makes no theological claims, it is bad theology, and since both Creation and Intelligent Design are contradicted by the facts, they both make bad science.
I think you'll find that most scientists don't think they know it all. There wouldn't be much point in doing research if you did know everything would there? Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're the one with the doctorate in let's say some form of Christian theology. Now, let us further assume that some physicist, who has only read the Epistles comes along and starts preaching about the Word to your flock.
He completely gets it wrong, since he is ignorant of such important points as the Sermon on the Mount, the Resurrection (at least the details thereof), and so forth. I'm assuming that you, as our hypothetical Doctor of Divinity, would be horrified, and would attempt to correct him. In this situation, you're not saying that he might not have anything useful to add, nor are you saying that you know everything about the Word of God, you're merely saying that he isn't in possession of the complete facts.
The important point here is that you're better qualified at this than he is, and thus you're in a position to address his errors. When a preacher makes scientific claims, the roles are reversed.
Fair enough. I haven't delved into kernel architecture for some time. Whilst I was aware that NT had many microkernel-like features, and that OS X had many monolithic kernel-like features, I was not aware that this tradeoff had a name. To me Hybrid kernel just seems like a grey area between monolithic and microkernel. Sort of a bag where you shove anything that doesn't fully support one side or the other.
As a grey area, I wonder how grey the various kernels are in fact? I mean is OS X more "whiteish" than NT or vice versa?
Oh and BTW if you're going to make comments like "as much as Windows blows", you're hardly the one to be accusing anyone of disseminating FUD.
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So, you don't think we should teach kids about gravity?
You don't think we should explain that scientific theories are not guesses?
You don't think we should tell them the truth about their parents archaic belief systems?
So, what, do you suggest, would a science class look like? Bible readings? Group prayer meets?
"Please Lord, I wish I knew why the Sun was yellow, please grant me that information in a dream"
Right, now that I've logged in...
Both machines were running Vista Professional, the laptop was billed as "Vista Premium Ready". Both machines were installed by me, and were very clean. I normally don't even install the apps that come on the driver CD.
Sorry, I must have missed the general unhappiness with CFC's that was overridden by scientists. Perhaps you can point me to some 1970s documentation where scientific studies were done showing the long term benefits of CFC's to reassure a unconvinced public? I think if you look really hard, the people telling you to rush into new things are companies, to be specific marketers and advertisers. Dunno about you, but as far as I know those aren't scientific fields.
Once again you attack scientists for stuff that non-scientists do. I hate to break it to you, but eveything that happens is not in fact controlled by the World Conspiracy of Scientists (TM).
As for the hospitals advertising, well again, it's advertising yeah? Not scientists. You know that when they dress actors up in lab coats and have them say all the cool things about a new face cream that it's not actually scientists yeah? Anyway I live in South Africa and AFAIK doctors and lawyers are not allowed to advertise. I've never heard a radio ad like you describe.
As for the peanuts, I really did not know that, but in any case keep in mind that they're not banning peanuts outright, just in an enclosed space. Secondly keep in mind that again, it's not scientists doing this, but the airlines. Science supplys the data about how many people are deathly allergic to peanuts, and the airlines ban peanuts because they see it as too risky.
I guess another option would be to inform you that there's a 1 in a million chance you might kill someone if you eat peanuts, serve them and charge you with culpable homicide if someone does die. Would you prefer that? I can tell you the airlines wouldn't because they'd get a huge public relations fiasco if something like that happenned. I guess we could just ban people with peanut allergies from flying, but I think that in the US they might be able to sue for violation of their civil liberties. Tell you what, why don't you come up with a solution which has a minimum impact on everyone, and does not result in death or the revocation of the US Constitution.
As for Vioxx bein yanked, again that's a political/marketing decision. Science showed that the drug could be dangerous, the manufacturer pulled it, and if they hadn't, the FDA would have. Instead of whinging about science, instead lobby your congressman for laxer aftermarket controls on drugs. Politics, not science.
As for my bridge out analogy, I really think you're stretching it pretty far, but the basic reason we use science is because it works. From the Dark Ages to today, life expectancy has improved dramatically, dunno the exact figures but it's at least doubled. So, if you lived without science you'd be twice as likely to be dead already. If you were a child your prospects would be grinding physical labor for your entire life. You would be illiterate, the furthest you'd ever travel would be to the neighbouring town. Communication with extended family far away would quite simply be beyond your means.
Science changed all that. It led to inventions which vastly increased the wealth of the world, cured diseases, provided new means of transportation, communication and play. Now, you're unhappy that new inventions are often a two-edged sword. This is true, any power comes with a cost. We could, when a new technology is discovered, study it backwards and forwards for decades before releasing it, to ensure we've got all the kinks worked out. However, it would mean that today we'd probably still be using slide rules and cars would still be in the Model T era, admittedly with catalytic converters and great fuel efficiency.
We choose as a society not to wait that time, we choose to accept that there may be future problems. We do this because we're not a species of frightened ninnies. We decide to deal with those problems as and when they arise, and on the whole very few problems do arise as a percentage of discoveries, so we're ahead of the game. We also realise that tommorrows discoveries often solve today
Such a single identity that there were hundreds of wars, some of them HUGE such as the Thirty Years War. Religion also caused massive schisms such as the Reformation. The "single cultural identity" you mention had MUCH more to do with the Roman heritage than Christianity, which to a very large extent just usurped that to it's own advantage.
The Dark Ages were an era of night, ignorance and superstition where the Church did everything it could to suppress new knowledge, to the extent of burning dissenters. It was only with the loss of power of the Church that the Enlightenment could begin. It says something that some of the earliest Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza and Voltaire fled to the relatively secular Netherlands to escape persecution.
From Wikipedia's entry on the Age of Enlightenment:
As the churches influence waned, scientific progress increased. The Reformation, and the rise of nationalism are what kicked off the Enlightenment.
I find it amusing that you attribute to the Church what it did the most to destroy.
Sorry about the formatting, been a while since I last posted on Slashdot. Ironic to be railing against an incompetant buffoon and at the same time forget to check my post. Doh!
It's actually amazing how wrong you are on so many levels. The whole point of science is in fact to sift through the millions of ideas and focus on the correct ones, so without science you'd be deluged with even more crap, and more importantly, you'd have no mechanism to determine which ideas were valid and which ones were wrong. You're quite right that science has a lot of bad news for us, but perhaps that's because there IS actually some bad news? Let's imagine that you're driving on a road, it's dark, night-time, raining, and someone has kindly put up a sign that says "Bridge Out". Would you prefer the sign not to be there? I mean I'm sure that it'd bum you out that you have to turn around and go the long way around. I'm sure that would "suck". Anyway, it has good news for us, and it also tells us how to fix the problems. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? It's going away now because we banned CFC's. Didn't read any advice about that in the Bible BTW. I know of no science that says you have to share with the third world, I thought that was Christian charity actually. Oh right, no such thing. I also am not aware of any science that says you can't give dangerous drugs to your grandmother, or eat peanuts on the plane. I think what you're referring to there is politics. Helps by the way, if you have the slightest fucking clue about what you're criticizing. There is no cure for cancer either, but given the ill-informed drek that has characterised your post so far, I'm not surprised you've screwed the pooch on that one either. Just going to skip past some of your diatribes at politicians and teachers, and dive straight into your complete and vacuous misunderstanding of history. Hate to break it to you dumbass, but the reason Europe became successful has little or nothing to do with the church (which had been dominant in Europe for 1100 hundred years before Europe boomed), and almost EVERYTHING to do with the scientific method. What science actually gives you is information about how the Universe works. You can ignore that if you want, but since we live in the universe that's probably not such a good idea. Oh, and dipswitch: Y o u d o n e e d t o u n d e r s t a n d e v o l u t i o n t o c r e a t e n e w m e d i c i n e s Science offers reality, sucks to you if you find that shitty, but I actually would rather be more unhappy and know the truth than be blissfully unaware of what's actually going on. Oh, and you know what? I'm actually very happy anyway, so I win all round, and you're just another ignoramus in a world full of ignoramuses.
Sorry, their evidence is based on an interpretation of their evidence? Like my car is based on an interpretation of my car, right? Evolutionary theory is one of the best supported by evidence that we have. There's literally mountains of evidence supporting evolution, and nothing, not one, piece of evidence disputing it.
Agreed, evolutionary theory is, in effect, an interpretation of the evidence. Since it appears to interpret it so well it's accepted as a theory not a hypothesis. There's two ways of supplanting a theory. One is to find evidence contradicting the theory, this approach has been unsuccessfully tried for almost 150 years. The second is to come up with a theory that explains the facts better. And no, saying "nyah, nyah, I don't care about the evidence it just doesn't work like that!" is not a better theory.
It's Darwin's theory, not hypothesis. Dembski and Behe's argumentum ad ignorantiam is a hypothesis. However it is nice to see an IDist who actually understands that calling it a hypothesis is more snide than calling it a theory.
Even if this did break Darwin's theory, I'm afraid to tell you that you're gunning at the wrong target. Pure Darwinian evolution was superceded some time ago by the Modern Synthesis. If you want to attack evolution, it's probably better to attack current theory rather than Victorian Age thinking, wouldn't you say?
So, let's get this straight. You think that an "incomplete system" would be one where there's limited usefulness, but with potential for usefulness in future. In fact such a system would be contrary to evolution, since there is no plan of what may or may not be useful. So, let's just look at limited usefulness. How about the male nipple then?
As for the ocellus, you're completely missing the point. Whether there are other mechanisms to detect predators/prey is besides the point. The ocellus provides an additional, albeit limited assistence to that task. At the same time, it is exactly the kind of limited eye that creationists claim does not exist. It is, at most, 10% of an eye. Yet it provides an evolutionary advantage. So, the evolution argument that there would be numerous "transitional" features is met, and the creationist argument that there would not be is debunked. You don't get much simpler than that.
As for the flagellum, let's just get one thing straight: evolutionary theory is not your fake strawman of evolution. It does not have any problems with "neutral" mutations. I know this is a difficult concept to grasp, but when evolution talks about selection, "neutral" mutations are not selected against because, um, they're neutral.
Costs of mutation are cheap. Costs of expression of those mutations might be very expensive. Since a huge amount of the DNA sequence is indels, either the Creator was a blithering idiot, or there's something else going on.
And this is why you don't get evolution. Where have I said that sheer chance is the cause of life as we know it? Anyone who says something like that betrays a complete lack of the slightest understanding of evolution. Chance does have a role to play, but it is not the overriding role. The overriding role is natural selection, which is most certainly not random.
Oh, and BTW, it's not a viewpoint. It's a fact. We've seen the evidence in the fossil record, we've seen the occurance in the laboratory, we've seen it in the wild. We have the mechanisms, we have the details. We know how the "modification" in "descent with modification" occurs. We've run simulations. We've checked the results against all the other sciences. They're all in agreement. There's no disputing it. You might as well say that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
I feel a certain sympathy for the Creationist position, perhaps why I've bothered this long. You see, you're stuck in a bind. Either the Bible is fallible or the world is a lie. Since God created the world, and inspired the Bible, you're faced with a dichotomy. The Bible is very clear that God created the world, and not so clear on His direct authorship of the Bible. Technically, if the world and the Bible are in contradiction, then the world should take precedence, being a direct creation and all.
Instead, you've decided that the work of men (perhaps inspired by God, but men nonetheless) takes higher priority than His work as revealed in His creation. As such, you're idolators, putting a book above God. The only way you can reconcile that is to claim that the book and the world are not in conflict, no matter what evidence shows you to be wrong. As such, you're not just idolators, but dishonest idolaters. If not dishonest to others, then at the very least to yourselves.
A neutral mutation, by the way, can be one where the mutation does not express. A simple example is in indels. As such it has no biological cost, and as such cannot be selected for or against, at least immediately. Alternatively, it can be a slightly different way of doing the same thing. Where's the "cost" to the organism?
*blinks in disbelief*
And that's an example of efficiency? In one breath you're raving about how every mutation must provide benefit. In another you're telling me that a structure on the male body, which offers no direct benefit whatsoever to the organism, or it's offspring, is an example of design efficiency? Those nipples cost resources to make, and maintain (not many, admittedly). They're not an example of design efficiency at all. A much better design would be to place the "genetic template" for nipples on the X-chromosome, and to place an instruction on the Y not to have them express at all.
In fact male nipples would be my idea of a typical "neutral" mutation.
So, at no stage would one expect to find an organism with an "incomplete system", however one would expect to find many organisms with, as you put it "developing systems". You see, the question I have to ask, is what the hell is an "incomplete system"? If the stemma and ocellus don't qualify, what would? Oh, and BTW, the ocellus is found on adult insects. As for the article on the evolution of the flagellum, I'm not qualified enough to dissect its claims to a huge detail, but I certainly found the line of thought plausible at least. Your complaints about it seem to be based on a rather limited understanding of evolution, so if you don't mind, I think I'll stick with the authors expertise.
This is a complete mischaracterisation. Natural selection implies nothing of the sort. Useful traits survive better than their lack, sure. But neutral traits can survive, and many non-useful traits do too. Just have a look at the sheer idiocy of the pharynx as an example. However, at each step, each mutation was either beneficial or neutral. That does not mean that the overall design is good, but that's what we'd expect, because there was no design, merely a succession of small steps.
Still waiting to find out about the design efficiency of male nipples BTW.
The arguments for the flagellum work fine. Read a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum. From the conclusion: BTW, really interested here, how exactly do male nipples show design efficiency? I always thought they were bloody superfluous
If you're looking for "incomplete systems", have a look at Ocelli, Stemmata. Of course, the standard response to things like this is that they are not incomplete since they do fine for the animals concerned. This in fact is disingenuous at best, since the question was to show "incomplete systems" in existance now. Excluding by definition all organisms in existance now would make giving you examples impossible. However, personally, I don't believe that there are or ever were any incomplete systems. Then again I wasn't the one asking the question, was I?
If we were to have a time-machine, and were able to travel back to any time in the evolution of earth, we would likely never find an "incomplete system", certainly not one that survived. We would instead find many very complete systems, some of which gradually became coopted into different functions whilst still being "complete" in the sense that they made perfect sense for the organism involved at the time.
Well, a pet peeve of mine is people mischaracterising evolution
Evolution does not at all, implicitly or explicitly say anything about the origin of life. In fact it explicitly limits itself to replicating organisms. Anything before that is explicitly beyond it's purview. Now, many abiogenesis researchers are coming up with ways in which very simple pre-cell based replicators may have come into play. If these replicators fit the requirements for evolution, then in those circumstances, yes evolution would have something useful to say, and yes we would then be able to push the "starting point" of evolution back a bit. But I can't see that happenning any time soon.
Yes, yes, and yes. Getting back to the point, I did "look in the places that believers say the evidence is found", and the fact of the matter is the evidence for creationism isn't found there. All that you will find there is evidence that most of the people involved have not the slightest clue what they're talking about when they discuss science.
It's actually funny, because creationism to some degree kicked off my questioning. You see, I'd been brought up in RC, which has no real problems with evolution or science. It was only after I got involved with a bunch of reborns that I got exposed to creationism. It didn't sit well with me, so I started looking into it further and discovered that they were peddling worn-out, discredited old lies.
Not to say that something as simple as that was the cause of my rejecting religion, but it was one of the catalysts. I think your post exemplifies another catalyst pretty well too.
You see the problem for creationists is that "half an eye" does provide an advantage, at least more of one than having no eye. As an example, consider an animal that has some light-sensing patches, but cannot "see". Thos light-sensing patches provide an advantage. They can help the animal navigate, and if it suddenly goes dark, they can scurry around trying to hide, assuming that the shadow could have been caused by some predator.
There have been in fact simulations of the evolution of any eye from a patch of light-sensing skin. These simulations have shown very clear possibilities for the evolution of an eye where every step was more advantageous than the one before. Now, we don't know what steps were actually taken, since the eye is soft and squishy and doesn't fossilize well, but we have several pathways. Even more importantly, there are many, many animals who would have, compared to us, "half an eye", and they do fine. Compare our eye with the simplicity of the nautiloids, or the distance vision of an eagle, and it quickly becomes aparrent that we too do not have 100% of an eye.
The bacterial flagellum, and the blood clotting cascade have also been shown to have clear evolutionary pathways where each additional step was advantageous. Interestingly, the bacterial flagellum started off life not as a means of propulsion, but a means of attack, and was co-opted to movement.
Since evolution deals only with replicating life, and nothing else, how exactly do you expect to set the clock any earlier? It is a limitation of the theory. What it describes was not in existance before life began, therefore the theory has no applicability. Hardly arbitrary. The theory of plate tectonics doesn't apply to the Moon which doesn't have them, nor does it apply to the Earth just as it was forming. This is not a weakness of the theory, merely that it doesn't apply in those circumstances. Similarly, gravity doesn't explain nuclear fission, but that doesn't make gravity or atomic bombs any less real.
Hmm, dunno, I'm an athiest. I was brought up in a religious background, went to Church regularly, read the Bible several times over, and got Reborn. The ridicule from "buddies" I had to face came from Christians, and yes many of them were intellectuals.
So tell me, where exactly didn't I look?
Arguing against abiogenesis does nothing to harm evolutionary theory.
If you have a problem with it, no-one is insisting you believe it. You're welcome to your personal beliefs. However, you are (and have in your previous posts) disputing science based on those beliefs. No matter what evidence is put before you showing evolution to be correct, you would twist it or deny it because your faith does not allow for it. At least, unlike many Creationists, you seem to be willing to admit this. However, like many other Creationists you seem to feel that science must conform to your personal beliefs.
Keep in mind that if you're a biblical literalist, it is not just evolution you must deny, but also physics, astronomy, geology, archeology, and many others. They all point to an old Earth and contradict a literal reading of Genesis.
As I said before, you're welcome to your personal beliefs, but evangelising bad science based on those beliefs is not welcome.
I think you'll find that evolution is a lot more gradual than you give it credit for. The main reason that we expect to find "jumps" in the fossil record is precisely because it is gradual. To simplify, speciation is theorised to be "faster" for isolated species, since their smaller population allows for swifter distribution of advantageous genes. Once they expand beyond their range, if they have evolved enough advantages, they very quickly expand even further.
So, if we look everywhere on earth, except for at that original range, we will find a "sudden" appearance of that species. Even if speciation was not "swifter" in isolated populations, we would expect to find this. However, if we did ever find the original range (a VERY unlikely proposition), we would find the gradual fossil record for that species.
Perhaps because it's smack bang in a time period where our ancestor species came out of the water onto land, and happens to be coming our of water onto land?
As for your 3 camps, I'm firmly in 3, I don't believe in God myself, but I don't care whether you do. However, I do care when people egregiously misrepresent science.
Truthfully, we can't. First off there's no proof of anything in science. Secondly, we may indeed be descended from a different tetrapod species that made the leap from sea to land. However, we can trace our lineage to this time period, and this fossil shares many characteristics with our more fully land-based ancestors. As such it is a possible ancestor. Importantly, it's the first such one so clearly making the move from sea to land. It would certainly offer more advantage than no ear whatsoever. And I'd be fairly surprised if we did find any such fossils. Firstly, it begs the question of what a "hybrid" ear actually is. Secondly, the ear is comprised of very small bones, the kind that do not last, since they easily get wiped out by the fossilization process.
1. There is a lot more about this just that it's "an animal that we haven't seen before". It's a tetrapod like we are. We've found aquatic tetrapod fossils, we've found land-based tetradpod fossils. This one is between the two. It has land-based features (i.e. lungs and strong limbs), and fish-based features (i.e. fins and scales). As such it falls between the two "groups" of tetrapods.
2. They didn't "assume" the time period. They looked in riverine rocks which are dated to having been deposited between 417 mil and 354 mil years ago to find the animal. They knew the time period it should come from (from the dates of aquatic and land tetrapods fossils), and they knew the type of environment it would be found in (riverine). So, they went to an area dated to that time period, that was riverine in those days, and found the fossil.
3. (Since you conflated two points in no 2), the point is that it doesn't resemble "some other animal", it resembles two other animals, a marine tetrapod and a land tetrapod. Ergo, transitional fossil.
Keep in mind that possible genetic sequences are not "baked-in" prior to the event, but are generated as a result of evolutionary pressures and mutations.
Actually, I think you'll find that there is no controversy between creation and intelligent design. For example Abrahimic Creation asserts that a supernatural entity known as Jehovah created everything, Intelligent Design asserts that an unknown supernatural entity created everything.
Since Intelligent Design makes no theological claims, it is bad theology, and since both Creation and Intelligent Design are contradicted by the facts, they both make bad science.
I think you'll find that most scientists don't think they know it all. There wouldn't be much point in doing research if you did know everything would there? Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're the one with the doctorate in let's say some form of Christian theology. Now, let us further assume that some physicist, who has only read the Epistles comes along and starts preaching about the Word to your flock.
He completely gets it wrong, since he is ignorant of such important points as the Sermon on the Mount, the Resurrection (at least the details thereof), and so forth. I'm assuming that you, as our hypothetical Doctor of Divinity, would be horrified, and would attempt to correct him. In this situation, you're not saying that he might not have anything useful to add, nor are you saying that you know everything about the Word of God, you're merely saying that he isn't in possession of the complete facts.
The important point here is that you're better qualified at this than he is, and thus you're in a position to address his errors. When a preacher makes scientific claims, the roles are reversed.
Fair enough. I haven't delved into kernel architecture for some time. Whilst I was aware that NT had many microkernel-like features, and that OS X had many monolithic kernel-like features, I was not aware that this tradeoff had a name. To me Hybrid kernel just seems like a grey area between monolithic and microkernel. Sort of a bag where you shove anything that doesn't fully support one side or the other.
As a grey area, I wonder how grey the various kernels are in fact? I mean is OS X more "whiteish" than NT or vice versa?
Oh and BTW if you're going to make comments like "as much as Windows blows", you're hardly the one to be accusing anyone of disseminating FUD.
Pot kettle black...