U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

Well, i was reminded of "real life" because it's all smoke and mirrors. There's enough of a tip of the hat to science to make it seem plausible, and then there's the reference to "common sense," which is neither common nor sensible. Common sense tells us the sun moves around the earth, which is flat.

It seems to me to be pretty much the same MO, to create doubt.

Perhaps you could lead another witch hunt, Set.

It's definitely similar, but at the same time, slightly different than RL's approach.

At least this guy seems to write his own stuff. Which is good. And we haven't had anyone really attempt to challenge basic scientific assumptions since RL was around.

Back when RL was around I used to wonder how hard it must be for creationists to hang in there on these debates. First of all, they're horribly outnumbered. Beyond that, we've got the easy position, we are on the high ground calmly rolling down boulders of centuries old scientific fact. We don't need to prove anything, it's already been proven. The only thing that makes creationists even entertaining is that they don't play by scientific rules and can vanish in a puff of philosophical metaphysics or hysterical irrationality if cornered. If it weren't for the fact that they can cheat in their debating tactics, these debates wouldn't even exist.

Did I miss a witch hunt? Damn.

You know, "real life" was no dummy. Several times i caught him transcribing something verbatim, which allowed me to hunt it down online. His most famous was an attempt to say that someone had just "seen" a fragment of bone, and then claimed it was a human bone, and so many millions of years old. But he was dull-witted enough to transcribe verbatim, and i found a transcript of the article from which it was taken. The paeleoanthropologist referred to was working in a stratum which had been dated by radio isotope examination of the stone in which the fossils were being found. In addition, the article points out that given his expertise and decades of field work, the gentleman was easily able to identify such a bone as humanoid, and at a distance (i believe it was a metatarsal, which would be quite distinctive).

After that, he got better at re-writing the stuff before he posted it. His method definitely was to throw sand in the readers' eyes. He trotted out the "faint young sun" canard more than once. I came to the conclusion that he was an intentional BS artist because he so commonly repeated the same stories. The first time he brought out the "faint young sun" red herring, i assumed he really didn't understand the distinction to be made about atmospheric composition. The second and third time, i knew he was willfully blowing smoke.

Since the rest of what youve prepared is claptrap, I took one example of how you are being dense by design.

You seem to not wish to understand that mutation doesnt necessarily precede evolution . If you are playing a game in which you understand the concept , then perhaps you would have recalled the words of SJ Gould about mutation and evolution. I may have given you too much credit then. Maybe you only read that which agrees with a unyielding predetermined worldview.

Its good to have another participant in the debate, especially from an anti-evolution viewpoint.




Do you really think that? The theory of natural selection is being tested and verified every day. A THEORY:--all evidence asupports, and no evidence refutes. Im sorry that you dont think that evolution is being tested because you are dead wrong. SHow me some data that refutes it and by all means we need to discuss it. The closest anyone has ever come was a suggestion that a number of us gave to someone that BAT evolution is a "sudden appearance" . However, nothing in the sudden appearance refutes evolution because , when bats first appeared in the fossil record, speices of insectivores or multituberculates and other fossil genera of mammals had already existed.

The sequence of the entire fossil record is not "out of line" with an evolutionary model. Everything fits nicely . Goo visit a cladogram of the appearance of mammals and you will see.

Gawd you guys are dense!!

I have attempted in all my posts to address your comments. It has resulted in some 600 word posts on my part in which I number the points I’m making, ask questions and argue your stances " yet you pointedly ignore my points and then have the audacity (and ignorance) to write things like:

Yes thats my intention!!! Its called questioning the status quo - its a part of the scientific method.

Set couldn't find his way to a toilet.

Then address my 'own stuff' instead of commenting how its not plagiarised.

No you're just refusing to explain yourself - but instead make reference to some obscure research that you think I know. I don't. Take it that I am dense and EXPLAIN YOURSELF!! ( I notice farmerman that you like capitals so maybe using them will hear me.)

I've posted 3 or 4 messages that itemise specific arguments against Darwin's views and you HAVEN'T addressed any.

I am not going to itemise my arguments yet again, if you can't find them and address them logically and convincingly (without resorting to your usual dumb ass comments, see above) then I will assume that you all know dick. I mean legitimate support for Darwins views - not geological timescales - stick to biology and stick to Darwin's views of undirected mutation in small increments through natural selection. It's a cop out if you say evidence for evolution is found in fossils - dah!! - that's not Darwin's theory. I am not arguing that there were species on Earth that no longer exist and they appear less developed than a lot of what is here now - it is the Darwinian model of how life developed that is at issue.

Lets see who can pick up the gauntlet.

Call me a creationist (which a lot of people in other forums would be surprised to hear) but don't think for an instance that it replaces legitimate argument - it just makes arrogant idiots.

Finally its a small point but it bugs me - I'm a woman not a guy.

Then please pick a single point and be specific. It's very hard for us to go back through all your old posts and cherry-pick which items you think are the most important to your argument. You've trotted out a lot of stuff which is inaccurate so far and we've challenged you on it. So where would you prefer that we start?

P.S. Sorry to call you a guy if you're a gal. And just FYI, I believe that Farmerman has some injuries to his hands which make it difficult to type, so his capitalization and typos may not be intentional.

Bears repeating... "ALL evidence supports, and NO evidence refutes."

I've picked out 3 (as posted earlier):
a) Incremental steps cannot explain biological systems. When I look for explanations I get things like the 'three door model' or something like it which state that once a piece of the system (visual, auditory, etc) is realised, developed, found (whatever term you want to use), the knowledge of it is saved until the next piece in the puzzle is found, evolved (whatever term). But why would that knowledge be saved if there is no blueprint? How would the cell know what to save and what to discard? Especially as there is no intelligence involved. An analogy I often read is the monkey typing a sentence of Shakespeare. It is presented as the monkey types away and eventually will hit the right key. Once he does that information is stored and he keeps typing away until he has hit all the correct keys - hence he has typed a sentence of genius without knowledge of what he was doing. But someone somewhere knew what letters to save to build the sentence. So the process may be unintelligent but it has followed a pre-determined design.

2) We've never been able to morph one species into another. I see that there have been some advances in morphing species of plants into other species, but a lot of it seems that the classification of species becomes smaller and therefore the jump from one species to another is not as great as a whale to a walrus to a cow would imply.

3) Life is very robust in maintaining its genetic integrity. Mutations often end in disability, illness, death or inability to reproduce - never it seems is the mutation beneficial. Oops - I'm setting myself up here (I'm learning about you A2K lot) Before you find an example of a viral mutation that helps the virus in its mad reproduction ... I mean mutations in large multi-celled organisms - I'm talking cat, dog, cow, human, big stuff.

BTW I have heard of the Alvarez theory of meteoric impact and I think its very plausible. I also heard an interesting theory by a physicist in China, which I'm too tired to get into now (its late here) but I'll post it sometime - very radical and very interesting.

Farmerman's typos maybe due to hand problems (mine are due to poor spelling and lazy editing) but his capitals are not at all random.

Great then you'll have no problems drumming up some up

sorry , youre the one making the anti-evolution posts with no evidence behind it. Our job isnt to educate you in what science already says. If ya want to debar=te your point , get some points on the board. Are you sure youre not RL, that was one of his patented bullshit diversionary statements.

ARgumenst are assertions, Assertions without evidence (data) support myths and theology, not science. Your arguments are merely rants. If you wish to debate a point like "Intermediate fossils dont exist" please be specific. Which ones , under whose authority or study?

Despite your apparent intelligence and education, your argument, which I assume to be something like "Darwinian evolution doesn't work for me" is simply an argument from ignorance. The "monkey with the typewriter" is a classic version of that. Maybe if you have a look through here...

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

...we can discuss things more constructively.

Lloyd is generally accepted to be a man's name, so if you're "bugged," it's no one's fault but your own.

You say i couldn't find my way to a toilet. That's clearly an attempt to insult, although i've made no personal comments about you. Is that in what your argument consists? Is that what we are "dense" about? That this is a personal matter for you, and your only purpose it to ridicule?

Make a clear statement, and let people comment on it. When i spoke of creating doubt, i was pointing to someone who does not have a sound, scientific argument, and solely wishes to raise doubt about scientific theory without actually addressing scientific theory in scientific terms. That is clear, but of course, you can continue to make 600 word posts which distort the scientific terms of evolution, and which don't address specifics, and then you can come back to say that members here can't find the way to the toilet and that they are dense. That won't be any kind of argument, but i suppose it satisfies you.

When you "responded" to my remark about creating doubt, you were engaged in quote mining--which is to say, you took a part of what i had said, and made a snide retort, while ignoring the entire statement, while ignoring that my reference to creating doubt had a larger context. The larger context was creating doubt about science, while not actually engaging in a discussion of the science to which you object, in scientific terms. That is rhetorically dishonest.

You have three "points" which you want discussed. You begin with "Incremental steps cannot explain biological systems." Oh? And you know this because? That is an ex cathedra statement, a statement from authority, that is ipse dixit--a statement with no proof, no antecedents, upon which you intend to base your subsequent statements. Another way of looking at is as a "have you stopped beating your wife" question. If someone attempts to answer such a question by a yes or a no, one has implicitly accepted the premise that one beats one's wife, or has done in the past. The only plausible responses are either: "I have no wife.", or "I have never beaten my wife." Anyone attempting to answer the questions which succeed this statement from authority on your part will have implicitly accepted that statement from authority. It is sufficient to challenge the statement itself, it is sufficient to challenge an assertion that incremental steps cannot explain biological system, without being obliged to answer any questions which proceed from that statement.

Next, you state: "We've never been able to morph one species into another." Yeah . . . so? Who here has claimed that a theory of evolution predicts that one can "morph" one species into another? The basis upon which Darwin based his exposition of a theory of evolution was morphology. It was sufficiently robust that Wallace had also come to the same conclusion, and that both Darwin and Wallace were able to extrapolate the theory. That does not mean, however, that morphology is the only basis upon which a theory of evolution is founded, nor does it mean that falsifying statements which you make about morphology constitute a scientific falsification of a theory of evolution. There are at least two bases for declaring that speciation has occurred. That is the ability to reproduce reproductively viable offspring, and sexual isolation. So it is entirely possible that two plants or animals which are justifiably considered to be separate species could possibly reproduce a reproductively viable offspring, but they are still separate species because they are sexually isolated from one another--they are geographically separated.

Since Darwin's time, a theory of evolution has been supported by and refined by genetic studies. A theory of evolution does not rely solely on morphology, and in fact, morphology can be a false path. In another thread, Roswell introduced the subject of teosinte. Teosinte is the Mexican grass plant from which maize, or if you prefer, corn derives. Below is a picture of teosinte (on the left) beside an ear of maize in an early primitive form (the early primitive form of maize was reconstructed by crossing teosinte with an ear of Argentine popcorn, and then selecting the smallest ear):



You can read about the domestication of maize by clicking here, which will take you to an article by Eve Emshwiller, Ph.D., an Abbott Laboratories Adjunct Curator of Economic Botany, in the Department of Botany, at The Field Museum of Natural History. A point upon which you might be prepared to heap derision is that teosinte was crossed with Argentine popcorn to produce the ear of corn which resembles early maize. But it raises a significant point about morphology. It was by studying teosinte genetically, and by successfully crossing it with modern forms of maize that scientists came to the realization that teosinte and maize are members of a single species. The morphology alone would decree that although they may be related, they are different species, but genetics and successful cross breeding demonstrates that they are the same species. So, your statement from authority about "morphing" from one species to another is meaningless.

This is your third "point"--"Life is very robust in maintaining its genetic integrity. Mutations often end in disability, illness, death or inability to reproduce - never it seems is the mutation beneficial. Oops - I'm setting myself up here (I'm learning about you A2K lot) Before you find an example of a viral mutation that helps the virus in its mad reproduction ... I mean mutations in large multi-celled organisms - I'm talking cat, dog, cow, human, big stuff." Is there question in there somewhere?

The cell doesn't know what to save or what to discard. It can only replicate and some progeny might save something and other progeny might not. There is no guarantee that something will be there or not. You start from a premise that is false. The fact that it is there isn't proof that anyone knew it was needed any more than it not being there proves it wasn't needed.

That is incorrect.

The source you are using is simply incorrect. Just out of curiosity, what sources are you using?

Irrelevant and Incorrect (as you yourself noted below).

Cows and Walruses and Whales are more than just different species, they are whole different genera.
For anyone who is interested, here is one of the plant examples:
"Three species of wildflowers called goatsbeards were introduced to the United States from Europe shortly after the turn of the century. Within a few decades their populations expanded and began to encounter one another in the American West. Whenever mixed populations occurred, the specied interbred (hybridizing) producing sterile hybrid offspring. Suddenly, in the late forties two new species of goatsbeard appeared near Pullman, Washington. Although the new species were similar in appearance to the hybrids, they produced fertile offspring. The evolutionary process had created a separate species that could reproduce but not mate with the goatsbeard plants from which it had evolved."

We don't need to get that fancy. Mutation is not necessary in large complex genomes (like cats, dogs, cows etc) for evolution to occur. As we have discussed on many other threads, substantial morphological change, possibly beyond genera boundaries, can occur through little more than reproductive variation and selection.


Many people have mentioned volcanic activity as a possible contributing factor to the dinosaur's demise (and the Dekkan Traps are suspiciously located directly across the globe from the impact site and became active very near the time of the impact), Bob Bacher pushed the viral infection theory (but that didn't explain the loss of sea life) and others have suggested flowering plants may have contributed. It's likely that many factors pushed the dino's over the edge but the iridium layer can only be explained by an impactor.

And note (for any creationists watching), no mutations were required for this change, just a lot of selection to accentuate those pre-existing genes already available in the genome.

This is a very good example of what is already available in the genetic toolbox.

What do you think I'm doing?? How many times do I have to number and post my points before you see them - is this selective denseness?

No I am not the ghost of Christmas past, though you do seem haunted.