Jeez, can you fail to do simple math? Current California minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. A half time employee is earning roughly $600/month at that rate. Not anywhere close to where a single adult can live alone without roomates in the Bay Area.
In what kind of screwed up fantasy economy does a person expect to live independently in his own apartment by stacking boxes for less than 20 hours a week???
That's a pretty generous plan, if it offers health insurance to part-time employees after a year. Sure, health insurance is expensive though, not every part-time employee is going to be able to afford it if that is their only family income. Sounds like a good employer though.
The issue with Walmart is that the company opposes labor unions -- if the workers at a store try to unionize, Walmart shuts down the store and puts them all out of a job. They have the resources to pull that kind of shit.
If my company had employees, and they were trying to form a union, I'd "pull that kind of shit" as well, whether I had the resources or not. I'd rather go back to working for someone else, where at least I have the freedom to quit whenever I like, than to get put in the position where I can be legally blackmailed.
Typically we draw phylogenies (family trees for species) with branch lengths proportional to genetic distance. (I.e. time, as measured by a putative molecular clock.) We know that, if we were able to plot the phylogeny measured by a real clock, the tips (current species) would all lie at the same time (the present.) If our phylogeny has its many tips nearly aligned, then we believe we have a good molecular clock, and we can estimate how good it is. If (as not infrequently happens) a particular gene or group of genes give a tree with poor tip alignment, we conclude there is no good molecular clock for this gene/group of genes, and we don't use it for dating divergences. If we see a lineage which systematically has branches too long or too short, we infer a change in the clock rate on that lineage, and take care to account for this when dating divergences within that lineage.
I don't understand how this is really possible. Unless you have an ancient DNA sample from a common ancestor of a set of modern species, how can you know you're accurately establish these branch lengths. I thought it was just a matter of attaching the branch as far back as was dictated by the genetic distance to make the tip of the branch line up in the present. I guess if you have enough species and multiple genetic sites, then there won't necessarily be a solution if the mutation isn't relatively constant?
I have reason to believe the molecular divergence date couldn't be so badly wrong, and the evidence against it seems thin to me.
What data is the human-chimp divergence date based on? If we have a genetic marker that currently mutates at the same rate in both humans and chimps, are we assuming that it always mutated at that rate for the last 5 million years? I'm assuming that with present technology we can only use relatively modern DNA samples for this purpose. So it's hard for me to imagine where we would get the sufficient data points to be confident in this.
Eh? Since when is an opinion a valid argument for science?
Er, opinion supported by evidence is what comprises science. That and finding new evidence, and adjusting your opinions accordingly. Ain't nothin else in it.
The observation that aspects of living forms seem to be too complex, or fit together in too coordinated a way to come about as proscribed by the leading theory, is a valid argument for a science.
Already said, but it bears repeating: No, it's not. It's the argument from ignorance, or, if you wish, the argument from personal incredulity,
I can respect the characterization of it as an argument from personal incredulity, but not an argument from ignorance. The scientists who advocate it may be religious, but they are not ignorant of the subject. But it's incredulity on claims being made as "scientific" that there is no evidence for...
What is it that you think there's insufficient evidence for?
To start with, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that it is even possible for a new type of organ or system to evolve through the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection. I could go on from there to the larger claims being taken on faith, (such as the claim that all new organs and systems did evolve by that mechanism) but that would be an excellent starting point to prove.
these aren't attacks on religious people (pro tip: really good whiners use the phrase "people of faith" for maximum martyrdom); they're attacks on taking Bronze Age myths seriously, which is a ridiculous thing to do--it deserves ridicule, and damn skippy we're going to serve it up.
What's the point? There can be discussion, such as to how seriously people should take Bronze Age or Stone Age myths, histories, laws, prophecies, and philosophical and religious works. We could even discuss the basis by which many people credit certain of those works to God and find a limitless source of enlightenment within them. Or we could ignore each other and not waste our time. But those who just start ridiculing, even in the absence of even an attempted discussion, only cause mutual antagonism, and will themselves fail to be taken seriously by rel... people of faith.
Feel free to look at the recent comments list of anyone mocking creationism in this thread. I'd wager you that most if not all of them think about "anything else".
As long as we agree that taking things too literally is deserving of ridicule. (PWNED!:-))
You mean swallow and breathe? If you can't hold your breath for long enough to swallow your food, you maybe in critical need of some cardiovascular exercise. However if you have a better design for how a dual-use mouth can lead to both the lungs and stomach, and usually get the air air to the former and the food to the latter, please feel free to draw up a plan, put it on an alter made of 12 uncut rocks, and burn it with sacrificial fire, so God can take a look. I'm joking......any number of rocks works fine.
- We have to keep our blood constantly warm while other animals don't have to. - Our eyesight sucks compared to a lot of animals. If "God" can design such good eyesight for some animals, why not design this for himself and us? - Our hearing sucks compared to a lot of animals. - Did the designer fail Gravity 101? Why are the woman's intestines continually slamming against the uterus and in some cases causing pain and bleeding? As if it was "designed" for walking on 4 legs... - Cancer? Is that some kind of stack overflow in the DNA programming by "God"? - There are a few gases like CO that we can't smell and that would kill us. Why didn't "God" design us in a way so we can smell them? A practical joke mayhaps? - What kind of engineer puts the pleasure center of the body inches away from sewers?
Our bodies aren't supposed to be perfect replicas of the Divine Form; they are rather the outer forms that support and respond to our spiritual forms. For a more detailed explanation of this please feel free to see my other post in this thread, here. To address a few of your specific points, many animals have greater senses than humans because those animals a specialized manifestations of particular aspects of the divine form that correspond to those senses. The Divine Form is perfect, the natural human form is not perfect. It is the container of the flawed spiritual human, not of the Divine Itself. "God's eyesight," as you refer to it, is omniscience. Natural disease in humans exists as the manifestation of spiritual disease in humans. The reproductive organs (they're "reproductive organs" not just "pleasure organs" by the way) and the end of the digestive system exist where they do because it is the lowest part of the human form (the limbs being considered extensions of where they are attached, not "lower" parts). And the spiritual sphere of reproduction, which makes one with the sphere of genuine love between a man and a woman, contains everything from the inmost of the soul to the ultimate of the body. Thus conjunction between man and woman is designed to be a conjunction of everything from the highest and inmost to the lowest and outermost. And that delight and that love is designed to contain all other genuine delights and all other genuine loves. See Swedenborg's book "Conjugial Love"
- Why is it that a hyena can pretty much eat shit and not get sick of it, yet us, designed in the image of "God" would die from that or get very sick?
Clearly, you've never seen the African Savannah episode of "Man vs. Wild."
Depends on what you mean by "attacks". If I tell you that I believe my cat can fly, are you not free to say "wow, what a ridiculous thing to believe". Does that count as an attack? Are you supposed to say, "yes I respect your beliefs very much and lets include them in the school curriculum and here is some money and tax breaks for you"
By attacks I am specifically referring to preemptive strikes. Like if a study on dogs came out, if I said, that Clark is such an idiot, he probably believes dogs can fly. It is extraordinarily rare for one of these threads to start by a position being expressed by a theist or creationist. They are almost always started as an unprovoked mocking of creationists by atheists. If challenged, they invariably defend the mocking as constructive towards the general discourse, when the fact is that it breaks down reason on both sides.
Personally, I try to avoid mocking, even of beliefs I think someone has to be mentally deficient to believe, which are by no means uncommon here! I am greatly aided by the fact that as a young adult I was a strong socialist and a strong agnostic, and thought very little of those who weren't. If I had not previously held such ridiculous views, I'm sure I would be much quicker to judge and mock those who hold ridiculous views today.
What you fail to take into account is that many species have much more inert genetic material, i.e. more base pairs in their DNA that don't encode for anything. And when changes happen there, nothing happens to the species. In addition, much of what is left might be "critical" genes that can't be changed without causing inviable individuals.
Although this is often claimed, I find it highly improbable that the DNA that doesn't code for proteins is "inert". The experimentation along these lines is extremely sparse, and I don't think is even close to sufficient to justify the claims of "junk DNA". Similarly, we can study the present rate of DNA mutation in animals, but the evidence concerning mutation over other timescales seems extremely limited. Since morphological changes in species seem rather sudden compared to relatively inactive periods, it seems like the possibility that mutation in general is also highly sporadic should at least be allowed for.
If we're created in the image of your god, does he have a tail bone and an appendix? If not, why didn't he fix that in us? Did something go wrong? If he does, why? They only serve negative purposes for humans.
The appendix is a useful organ which may or may not have a vestigial origin. However, I agree that a tail bone is evidence which supports the theory which humans evolved from a form that once had tails. Humans evolving into their present form has doesn't imply that the form they have been and/or are still evolving into is not the image of God. I've never heard of the tail bone having a "negative purpose" in humans.
The real image of God is the human soul, and I believe the evolution of the natural form of humans and animals follows the evolution of the spiritual form. Further, that the corruption of the human spiritual form has lead to corruptions of the human natural form. For example, the eustachian tube in Homo sapiens is very problematic, and the middle ear in general. It could be argued that neither are necessary. However in Neanderthals, this wasn't the case. The eustachian tube was much larger, wouldn't have been prone to blockages or infection, and its perpetually being open, together with the Neanderthals' large nasal cavities and nostrils would have played an important part in their hearing ability -- an aspect of that sense which we have almost entirely lost. (You can do a simple experiment using ear plugs to show that, when yawning, we can still hear through our nose and mouth, even alter the tone of the sound by changing the shape of our mouth -- a built-in equalizer. [Bats use this ability extensively, which is why they have "nose leaves" to act as directional third ears])
However, Occam's razor tells me that the simpler explanation is true: God was created in the image of humans.
Occam's razor only suggests that explanation to those for whom the body of evidence lacks any information about the spiritual realities of mankind. For you, I agree it's a reasonable conclusion. For those of us who have the spiritual evidence, that evidence eliminates the possibility of correctness of that explanation. That strongest of that evidence is the direct experience of God. Like other direct experience, like the direct experience of the truth of the laws of logic, such experience is far stronger and more significant than any sensory evidence can be. That does not mean that our understanding is magically correct, or that our theories are infallible. They are clearly not. But we do know that any theory which excludes God's direct intention from the origin of man is necessarily wrong.
To be fair, it could be argued that neodarwinism doesn't necessarily do this. I think that neodarwinism as an explanation for macroevolution fails on strictly logical grounds, the quantification of those grounds being the goal of ID. I would summarize the failure by the fact that a system following a gradient toward a local minima, even if the shape of that gradient is changing due to environmental changes, simply does not branch out into increasingly complex solutions. It is just contrary to how the mathematics of such a system would have to work.
Because of my understanding of the relationship between the spiritual world and the natural world (something today, but possibly not forever, considered outside the possible realm of "science"), I believe that the spiritual evolution in all life forms, specifically the inherent tendency of all life forms to the form of the Origin of life, i.e. God, is the driving force behind the macro-evolution of their natural forms. However, I fully expect that one day we will discover additional natural mechanisms by which DNA mutates, not randomly, but towards specific goals, dictated by who-knows-what physical process. While it won't convince any materialist of a spiritual cause of evolution, I greatly look forward to that day, as it will hopefully provide a more nuanced view
Apparently the 98% genetic similarity with chimpanzee doesn't convince you.
The reality behind this statement is that 1% of our DNA is 98% similar -- the 1% that encodes proteins. I happen to believe that chimps and humans share an ancestor, but suggesting that this is somehow proven by the fact that we are made up of 98% the same proteins is baseless.
That's fine and dandy. But why must kids be forced to learn religion tarted up and presented as 'science' when it ain't no such animal? The only 'design' in Intelligent Design is to get it past the people who'd reject overt religious programming in favor of science.
The observation that aspects of living forms seem to be too complex, or fit together in too coordinated a way to come about as proscribed by the leading theory, is a valid argument for a science, even if the argument is motivated by religious thoughts, and even if the evidence doesn't exist to resolve that argument one way or the other. (Truly, the debate is almost infantile, "it couldn't happen that way" "yes it could" "no it couldn't" "yes it could"). But those considerations are exactly what will most likely motivate the next generation to figure out how to get the evidence to shed more light on the process of evolution, and what truly is and is not possible under the leading theory. I believe these questions are resolvable -- it's just a matter of making the discoveries.
Personally, I'm agnostic. I don't have a clue if there is a god, where it hangs out at, or what it wants. I also believe everybody else is in the same boat.
So you're agnostic on God, but you take a position on whether anyone else knows about God? Come on. You don't know if other people have a relationship with God. Admit it.:-) That said, I used to take the exact same position.
It does get confusing what exactly they're talking about. If anyone has a subscription to Nature (or feels like paying $30 to read the article:-( ), the paper is on the website.
I expect they will adjust the molecular clocks to reflect the new knowledge and make a new guess. But the lesson of this whole discovery is that the current models for molecular clocks seem to be a bit lacking.
I suspect so. However, IANA Molecular Biologist, but seeing how some species (like cockroaches, and probably many species of bacteria) go virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, while other species (like humans) seem to undergo relatively drastic changes in some very tight timeframes, it's hard for me to imagine that the "molecular clock" can be all that precise or predictive. It seems most likely that it must stop and start too irregularly to be a good clock.
Towards the end of our research period we came across some fossil teeth that MAY be identified as coming from the after the split between gorilla and human ancestors. Not only that, they MAY be earlier than the previously proposed date for the gorilla an human split.... This whole article reeks of conditionals
They found fossil teeth. They identified them as coming from after the gorilla-human split. They dated them to 10.5 mya to 10.0 mya. Their colleges agreed. Using such conditionals is how responsible scientists and scientific journalists speak. You MAY have been conditioned in favor of absolute and sweeping "scientific" statements from watching Al Gore movies.
Non-news. Pass it by.
Independent informed opinions from the article:
"This is a major breakthrough in our understanding of the origin of humanity," Yohannes Haile-Selassie, a physical anthropologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Paleoanthropologist Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University in Ohio... described the fossils as "a critically important discovery," a view echoed by several other scientists who had read the paper or seen the artifacts.
Yep, I expected this would provoke the inevitable attacks on religious people by that predictable band of/.ers who apparently never think about anything else.
Most people who follow "tomes of old," myself included, believe that humans evolved from apes. For the large majority of believers they're orthogonal subjects, and evolving from apes does not preclude being created in the image of God, any more than evolving from a zygote does.
While this is great research, even if it can be demonstrated that the higher energy particles traveled faster, this is not a prediction specific to String Theories, but as the arstechnica.com article points out, this is common to most quantum gravity theories. Still, it would be an awesome thing to prove.
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
Doesn't sound like a judiciary that has no power now does it? That's right, they have the power to decide constitutionality of ALL laws, treaties, etc. Jefferson and the founding fathers knew the importance of a judiciary that could occasionally put a stop to things that are unconstitutional. You would be wise to accept that the judiciary may just be the last thing standing between us and a totalitarian, fascist state that would make us all slaves.
Did you read what you quoted? Do you know what a case is? Do you think that a case and controversies are laws? Do you need me to diagram that sentence for you?
Nothing in the Constitution has given [federal judges] a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them... But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch --Thomas Jefferson, 9-11-1804
You mean in the EXACT same way that congressional war powers were transferred to the executive branch by the open-ended use of force legislation made by the congress? I will point out that that was NOT a declaration of war, something that ONLY the congress can do per the constitution. For your argument to hold water the President's nullification/ignoring of an unconstitutional law/redistribution of powers requires that he also not accept anything less than a full declaration of war from the congress before assuming his role as commander in chief. Without that declaration technically he cannot assume war powers PER THE CONSTITUTION.
You may want to re-read the Constitution. It places no such contingencies on the president's command-in-chief power, nor connects it in any way with the power of Congress to declare war. The check of the power of command-in-chief is in the power of Congress to raise armies and to fund them. The president was fully the commander-in-chief of the armed forces before, during, and after the "authorization of force" was passed. Passing such an "authorization" is good (although it should not be called that) because it formalizes the fact that the government is united in its intentions. But to believe that it is somehow necessary for the president to authorize his Constitutional power is completely unfounded. Such "authorizations" are relatively recent. Washington and Jefferson both (if memory serves) went to undeclared war without them, against Indians in the West and Muslims in the Mediterranean. In some, but not all, of those conflicts, Congress passed resolutions declaring their concurrence with such actions, but they were never framed as "authorizations," or declarations of war.
The President does not have the power to simply ignore any law he disagrees with regardless of the reason. The law must be challenged or changed, not simply ignored, otherwise it is still breach of law. I would very much like for you to demonstrate the portion of law that grants the President the power to ignore any law he disagrees with.
I've never suggested the President can ignore a law simply because he disagrees with it. Just like the Judiciary, the president must obey the law, and the Constitution is the highest law. If a law of Congress is at conflict with the law of the Constitution, the law of Congress not *may*, but *MUST* be disregarded in favor of the Constitution.
I would also point out that various abuses by this administration run counter to the argument that the current President is upholding the constitution in all of his actions, there are many cases which in fact demonstrate breaches of the constitution. Specifically prisoner abuses and removal of habeas corpus for detainees is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, which the US is a signatory thereof and that agreement supersedes any other law as it is an international treaty (this is true, go read on how treaties work). And in addition to the Geneva Convention, portions of the 4th and 5th amendments are breached by these abuses as well, not to mention the supremacy of habeas corpus as codified by English Common Law (800 years old) which the Constitution itself is predicated upon.
I don't know what you mean by "prisoner abuses." Do you mean you believe that the president ordered the National Guard to form captured prisoners into naked pyramids? As for the rest, you are being manipulated by extreme rhetoric which is not based on fact. 1) Habeas corpus has never, by any country, in the history of common law, before or after the Geneva Convention, been automatically extended to all prisoners of war. Nor would it be wise to start doing so now. 2) The Geneva Convention legally applies to "lawful enemy combatants," not "unlawful enemy combatants." 3) Everything the administration is doing in re enemy combatants is precisely as prescribed by the law of Congress, specifically the
How well-established something is has no bearing on its legitimacy. Judicial review is legitimate insofar as it is a matter of applying the law of the Constitution to the case being decided in preference to the law of the legislature. It is completely illegitimate insofar as it is a matter of applying their own sense of values to the law, or substituting their own law for either constitution or statutory law.
And the commander-in-thief routinely overrides the written law of the Congress with his bullshit "signing statements". When he uses the "unitary executive" horseshit to additionally cut the courts out of the process, he symbolically wipes his asshole with the Constitution by revoking it's stipulation of three equal branches of government.
No, the president has used signing statements to do what all presidents should do -- put on paper the executive position on how the Constitution applies to the law being enacted. As the whole premise of the constitutional system is that none of the three branches should further the extra-constitutional actions of any of the other branches, every president Democratic and Republican, should include such statements as they apply to laws. Failure to do so makes future constitutional claims much more questionable, and allows for ad hoc claims that are disingenuous. I sincerely hope that the next president, Democrat or Republican will keep up the practice, as the mere fact of it furthers the understanding of people of how the Constitution describes the checks and balances.
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In what kind of screwed up fantasy economy does a person expect to live independently in his own apartment by stacking boxes for less than 20 hours a week???
That's a pretty generous plan, if it offers health insurance to part-time employees after a year. Sure, health insurance is expensive though, not every part-time employee is going to be able to afford it if that is their only family income. Sounds like a good employer though.
If my company had employees, and they were trying to form a union, I'd "pull that kind of shit" as well, whether I had the resources or not. I'd rather go back to working for someone else, where at least I have the freedom to quit whenever I like, than to get put in the position where I can be legally blackmailed.
I don't understand how this is really possible. Unless you have an ancient DNA sample from a common ancestor of a set of modern species, how can you know you're accurately establish these branch lengths. I thought it was just a matter of attaching the branch as far back as was dictated by the genetic distance to make the tip of the branch line up in the present. I guess if you have enough species and multiple genetic sites, then there won't necessarily be a solution if the mutation isn't relatively constant?
What data is the human-chimp divergence date based on? If we have a genetic marker that currently mutates at the same rate in both humans and chimps, are we assuming that it always mutated at that rate for the last 5 million years? I'm assuming that with present technology we can only use relatively modern DNA samples for this purpose. So it's hard for me to imagine where we would get the sufficient data points to be confident in this.
Er, opinion supported by evidence is what comprises science. That and finding new evidence, and adjusting your opinions accordingly. Ain't nothin else in it.
I can respect the characterization of it as an argument from personal incredulity, but not an argument from ignorance. The scientists who advocate it may be religious, but they are not ignorant of the subject. But it's incredulity on claims being made as "scientific" that there is no evidence for...
To start with, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that it is even possible for a new type of organ or system to evolve through the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection. I could go on from there to the larger claims being taken on faith, (such as the claim that all new organs and systems did evolve by that mechanism) but that would be an excellent starting point to prove.
What's the point? There can be discussion, such as to how seriously people should take Bronze Age or Stone Age myths, histories, laws, prophecies, and philosophical and religious works. We could even discuss the basis by which many people credit certain of those works to God and find a limitless source of enlightenment within them. Or we could ignore each other and not waste our time. But those who just start ridiculing, even in the absence of even an attempted discussion, only cause mutual antagonism, and will themselves fail to be taken seriously by rel... people of faith.
As long as we agree that taking things too literally is deserving of ridicule. (PWNED!
You mean swallow and breathe? If you can't hold your breath for long enough to swallow your food, you maybe in critical need of some cardiovascular exercise. However if you have a better design for how a dual-use mouth can lead to both the lungs and stomach, and usually get the air air to the former and the food to the latter, please feel free to draw up a plan, put it on an alter made of 12 uncut rocks, and burn it with sacrificial fire, so God can take a look. I'm joking...
Our bodies aren't supposed to be perfect replicas of the Divine Form; they are rather the outer forms that support and respond to our spiritual forms. For a more detailed explanation of this please feel free to see my other post in this thread, here.
To address a few of your specific points, many animals have greater senses than humans because those animals a specialized manifestations of particular aspects of the divine form that correspond to those senses. The Divine Form is perfect, the natural human form is not perfect. It is the container of the flawed spiritual human, not of the Divine Itself. "God's eyesight," as you refer to it, is omniscience. Natural disease in humans exists as the manifestation of spiritual disease in humans. The reproductive organs (they're "reproductive organs" not just "pleasure organs" by the way) and the end of the digestive system exist where they do because it is the lowest part of the human form (the limbs being considered extensions of where they are attached, not "lower" parts). And the spiritual sphere of reproduction, which makes one with the sphere of genuine love between a man and a woman, contains everything from the inmost of the soul to the ultimate of the body. Thus conjunction between man and woman is designed to be a conjunction of everything from the highest and inmost to the lowest and outermost. And that delight and that love is designed to contain all other genuine delights and all other genuine loves. See Swedenborg's book "Conjugial Love"
Clearly, you've never seen the African Savannah episode of "Man vs. Wild."
By attacks I am specifically referring to preemptive strikes. Like if a study on dogs came out, if I said, that Clark is such an idiot, he probably believes dogs can fly. It is extraordinarily rare for one of these threads to start by a position being expressed by a theist or creationist. They are almost always started as an unprovoked mocking of creationists by atheists. If challenged, they invariably defend the mocking as constructive towards the general discourse, when the fact is that it breaks down reason on both sides.
Personally, I try to avoid mocking, even of beliefs I think someone has to be mentally deficient to believe, which are by no means uncommon here! I am greatly aided by the fact that as a young adult I was a strong socialist and a strong agnostic, and thought very little of those who weren't. If I had not previously held such ridiculous views, I'm sure I would be much quicker to judge and mock those who hold ridiculous views today.
Although this is often claimed, I find it highly improbable that the DNA that doesn't code for proteins is "inert". The experimentation along these lines is extremely sparse, and I don't think is even close to sufficient to justify the claims of "junk DNA". Similarly, we can study the present rate of DNA mutation in animals, but the evidence concerning mutation over other timescales seems extremely limited. Since morphological changes in species seem rather sudden compared to relatively inactive periods, it seems like the possibility that mutation in general is also highly sporadic should at least be allowed for.
The appendix is a useful organ which may or may not have a vestigial origin. However, I agree that a tail bone is evidence which supports the theory which humans evolved from a form that once had tails. Humans evolving into their present form has doesn't imply that the form they have been and/or are still evolving into is not the image of God. I've never heard of the tail bone having a "negative purpose" in humans.
The real image of God is the human soul, and I believe the evolution of the natural form of humans and animals follows the evolution of the spiritual form. Further, that the corruption of the human spiritual form has lead to corruptions of the human natural form. For example, the eustachian tube in Homo sapiens is very problematic, and the middle ear in general. It could be argued that neither are necessary. However in Neanderthals, this wasn't the case. The eustachian tube was much larger, wouldn't have been prone to blockages or infection, and its perpetually being open, together with the Neanderthals' large nasal cavities and nostrils would have played an important part in their hearing ability -- an aspect of that sense which we have almost entirely lost. (You can do a simple experiment using ear plugs to show that, when yawning, we can still hear through our nose and mouth, even alter the tone of the sound by changing the shape of our mouth -- a built-in equalizer. [Bats use this ability extensively, which is why they have "nose leaves" to act as directional third ears])
Occam's razor only suggests that explanation to those for whom the body of evidence lacks any information about the spiritual realities of mankind. For you, I agree it's a reasonable conclusion. For those of us who have the spiritual evidence, that evidence eliminates the possibility of correctness of that explanation. That strongest of that evidence is the direct experience of God. Like other direct experience, like the direct experience of the truth of the laws of logic, such experience is far stronger and more significant than any sensory evidence can be. That does not mean that our understanding is magically correct, or that our theories are infallible. They are clearly not. But we do know that any theory which excludes God's direct intention from the origin of man is necessarily wrong.
To be fair, it could be argued that neodarwinism doesn't necessarily do this. I think that neodarwinism as an explanation for macroevolution fails on strictly logical grounds, the quantification of those grounds being the goal of ID. I would summarize the failure by the fact that a system following a gradient toward a local minima, even if the shape of that gradient is changing due to environmental changes, simply does not branch out into increasingly complex solutions. It is just contrary to how the mathematics of such a system would have to work.
Because of my understanding of the relationship between the spiritual world and the natural world (something today, but possibly not forever, considered outside the possible realm of "science"), I believe that the spiritual evolution in all life forms, specifically the inherent tendency of all life forms to the form of the Origin of life, i.e. God, is the driving force behind the macro-evolution of their natural forms. However, I fully expect that one day we will discover additional natural mechanisms by which DNA mutates, not randomly, but towards specific goals, dictated by who-knows-what physical process. While it won't convince any materialist of a spiritual cause of evolution, I greatly look forward to that day, as it will hopefully provide a more nuanced view
The reality behind this statement is that 1% of our DNA is 98% similar -- the 1% that encodes proteins. I happen to believe that chimps and humans share an ancestor, but suggesting that this is somehow proven by the fact that we are made up of 98% the same proteins is baseless.
The observation that aspects of living forms seem to be too complex, or fit together in too coordinated a way to come about as proscribed by the leading theory, is a valid argument for a science, even if the argument is motivated by religious thoughts, and even if the evidence doesn't exist to resolve that argument one way or the other. (Truly, the debate is almost infantile, "it couldn't happen that way" "yes it could" "no it couldn't" "yes it could"). But those considerations are exactly what will most likely motivate the next generation to figure out how to get the evidence to shed more light on the process of evolution, and what truly is and is not possible under the leading theory. I believe these questions are resolvable -- it's just a matter of making the discoveries.
So you're agnostic on God, but you take a position on whether anyone else knows about God? Come on. You don't know if other people have a relationship with God. Admit it.
It does get confusing what exactly they're talking about. If anyone has a subscription to Nature (or feels like paying $30 to read the article :-( ), the paper is on the website.
I suspect so. However, IANA Molecular Biologist, but seeing how some species (like cockroaches, and probably many species of bacteria) go virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, while other species (like humans) seem to undergo relatively drastic changes in some very tight timeframes, it's hard for me to imagine that the "molecular clock" can be all that precise or predictive. It seems most likely that it must stop and start too irregularly to be a good clock.
They found fossil teeth. They identified them as coming from after the gorilla-human split. They dated them to 10.5 mya to 10.0 mya. Their colleges agreed. Using such conditionals is how responsible scientists and scientific journalists speak.
You MAY have been conditioned in favor of absolute and sweeping "scientific" statements from watching Al Gore movies.
Independent informed opinions from the article:
"This is a major breakthrough in our understanding of the origin of humanity," Yohannes Haile-Selassie, a physical anthropologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Paleoanthropologist Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University in Ohio... described the fossils as "a critically important discovery," a view echoed by several other scientists who had read the paper or seen the artifacts.
Yep, I expected this would provoke the inevitable attacks on religious people by that predictable band of /.ers who apparently never think about anything else.
Most people who follow "tomes of old," myself included, believe that humans evolved from apes. For the large majority of believers they're orthogonal subjects, and evolving from apes does not preclude being created in the image of God, any more than evolving from a zygote does.
* That scientists had always agreed about the global cooling problem. /. had always been populated by retirees who had never had sex.
* That
While this is great research, even if it can be demonstrated that the higher energy particles traveled faster, this is not a prediction specific to String Theories, but as the arstechnica.com article points out, this is common to most quantum gravity theories. Still, it would be an awesome thing to prove.
Killing babies is a good example, because I assume you think it's wrong, because nearly everyone in the world does. Did you read my post?
Did you read what you quoted? Do you know what a case is? Do you think that a case and controversies are laws? Do you need me to diagram that sentence for you?
Nothing in the Constitution has given [federal judges] a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them... But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch
--Thomas Jefferson, 9-11-1804
Because the hold office for life, and are unaccountable for their actions to the people or to the people's representatives.
You may want to re-read the Constitution. It places no such contingencies on the president's command-in-chief power, nor connects it in any way with the power of Congress to declare war. The check of the power of command-in-chief is in the power of Congress to raise armies and to fund them. The president was fully the commander-in-chief of the armed forces before, during, and after the "authorization of force" was passed. Passing such an "authorization" is good (although it should not be called that) because it formalizes the fact that the government is united in its intentions. But to believe that it is somehow necessary for the president to authorize his Constitutional power is completely unfounded. Such "authorizations" are relatively recent. Washington and Jefferson both (if memory serves) went to undeclared war without them, against Indians in the West and Muslims in the Mediterranean. In some, but not all, of those conflicts, Congress passed resolutions declaring their concurrence with such actions, but they were never framed as "authorizations," or declarations of war.
I've never suggested the President can ignore a law simply because he disagrees with it. Just like the Judiciary, the president must obey the law, and the Constitution is the highest law. If a law of Congress is at conflict with the law of the Constitution, the law of Congress not *may*, but *MUST* be disregarded in favor of the Constitution.
I don't know what you mean by "prisoner abuses." Do you mean you believe that the president ordered the National Guard to form captured prisoners into naked pyramids?
As for the rest, you are being manipulated by extreme rhetoric which is not based on fact. 1) Habeas corpus has never, by any country, in the history of common law, before or after the Geneva Convention, been automatically extended to all prisoners of war. Nor would it be wise to start doing so now. 2) The Geneva Convention legally applies to "lawful enemy combatants," not "unlawful enemy combatants." 3) Everything the administration is doing in re enemy combatants is precisely as prescribed by the law of Congress, specifically the
How well-established something is has no bearing on its legitimacy. Judicial review is legitimate insofar as it is a matter of applying the law of the Constitution to the case being decided in preference to the law of the legislature. It is completely illegitimate insofar as it is a matter of applying their own sense of values to the law, or substituting their own law for either constitution or statutory law.
No, the president has used signing statements to do what all presidents should do -- put on paper the executive position on how the Constitution applies to the law being enacted. As the whole premise of the constitutional system is that none of the three branches should further the extra-constitutional actions of any of the other branches, every president Democratic and Republican, should include such statements as they apply to laws. Failure to do so makes future constitutional claims much more questionable, and allows for ad hoc claims that are disingenuous. I sincerely hope that the next president, Democrat or Republican will keep up the practice, as the mere fact of it furthers the understanding of people of how the Constitution describes the checks and balances.