Evolution 101

@Jpsy,

Quote:

Ok, what book, written by a respectable evolutionary biologist, have you read.

I might not have made myself clear. I don't regard being an "evolutionary biologist" as respectable; I regard it as a waste of a life.

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@gungasnake,

I question your judgement. You quote members of the discovery institute who don't do real science. So, apparently you respect people who engage in psuedoscience & think they are doing something with their lives. Anyways, don't reply to that.
I'm waiting on your response as to why everything I have just told you about the whale is not evidence for evolution, and then go a step further and tell me why ID provides a better explanation.

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@gungasnake,

So you freely admit that, in all the years in which you've engaged in "Quote mining" of reputable scientists, you've never actually read what it was they really said?
INNTTEERESSTTING.

Your arguments , then, have never been based upon having ANY knowledge about the various science findings. It was mere gainsay based on an indefensible worldview.

That's rather cowardly. You start more of these"evolution is a sham" threads based on some individual quote from ICR folks or some "science blogger" that Freep picks up .
As I said to you seven or eight years ago, "Wheres all this promised research conclusions about "intelligence in the Galaxy" that the Discovery Institute promised, or where are the articles that "strongly evidence" that Schweitzer's finds are "YOUNG EARTH CREATION" in action.
Where is the proof that the Paluxy River" hominim" footprints really were made along side of footprints of dinosaurs.
Your beleiefs and worldviews have been cobbled together by fraudulently representing evidence that really didn't occur by people who wish to continue the fraud. They count on people not being educated in science enough to know that they are being duped by the Austens, Behes,"Dr Dinos', Gish's etc. None of the ICR or Di folks have any commitment to truth and sound evidence. They only have a clear interest in upholding Creationist garbage.
Now you've really solidified the bases of your "opinions" . Its all been fear of the consequences of accepting organic evolution because your religious beliefs are being tested.

So then, you are also dismissing the findings of real science that is presented by deeply religious scientists like Daniel Fairbanks o Ken Miller. (there are scads more but I don't make lists like you).

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@farmerman,

Oh god, he's been at this for 7 or 8 years. 7 or 8 years he been at this and he hasn't bothered to pick up a book that describes the science and vast amounts evidence supporting evolution by a biologist whose been actively studying it his whole life. What are you afraid you might find Gunga?

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@Jpsy,

well, you got him to admit that"he doesn't open any books". That's a FIRST admission. Ive been giving him links with the hope that hed at least pop in and skim. Apparently not.
Looks like gunga is dim for a reason.

Gunga's most recent arguments have to do with the "Age of the Earth'. When Schweitzer et al discovered and worked over a series of fossils from Hell Creek Montana, the thing that gunga was quoting were his sources of reationists that argue that the T rex in which they found "soft tissue" could not really be a mid Cretaceous age. Their argument was that "no tissue could remain pliable for65 to 100 million years"
He therefore didn't read any of the articles by Schweitzer and crew about how that "soft tissue" had to be extracted fom hard rock matrix and they extracted it by using Hydroflouric acid to dissolve the silica.

There are fossils much older than Cretaceous that show more organic remains than "petrified remains' (chitin, "waxes",pure carbon, resin=amber) There are even examples of flexible "sandstone" from certain formations. Gunga just keeps repeating the Creationist mantra that "if its flexible its gotta be young'

Youll see, he retreads this stuff several times a year

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@farmerman,

It is incomprehensible, after all this time, that you continue to imagine that criticising the DI and the ICR is on a level with a scientific critique of the widespread acceptance of evolutionary principles on social consequences grounds.

You have been asked to read the Malthusian Respectability and Marriage chapter (18) of Desmond and Moore and have shown no sign of having done so. You are refusing to address the question of how mind derives from matter.

Here's the first paragraph of Chaper 29--"Horrid Wretches Like Me".

Quote:

By 1856 THE YOUNG GUARD was organizing. Huxley, Hooker, Tyndall and their fellow travellers were discussing strategy and marking out enemies. First on their list of priorities was to claw more power for London's science lecturers and gain a greater 'command over the public'---and the public purse. They saw themselves as grossly underpaid compared to the clerical naturalists of Cambridge and they bitterly resented it.

Isn't that what you are up to?

Your focus on the DI and the ICR, easy as it is, is provincialism and nothing to do with science. It's just a turf war in a local setting.

Islam's attitude to evolution theory is a more difficult target.

Professor of biology Michael Denton, in his book entitled Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, wrote--

Quote:

To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalelled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity… (a complexity) beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man.

That's just one cell.

W. R. Bird wrote in “The Origin of Species Revisited”--

Quote:

The most elementary type of cell constitutes a ‘mechanism’ unimaginably more complex than any machine yet thought up, let alone constructed, by man.

And yet, at Dover, a whole organism, the flagella, was compared to a pump and in evidence. To use such a comparison in the service of undermining and presumably in abolishing our cultural foundations is ridiculous. One might not be exaggerating if it was labelled seditious.

What the DI and the ICR do is neither here nor there. They are not the only ones who don't do science.

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@spendius,

Quote:

You have been asked to read the Malthusian Respectability and Marriage chapter (18) of Desmond and Moore and have shown no sign of having done so. You are refusing to address the question of how mind derives from matter.

Ive read it a number of times before your stupid question. If I can remind you, you wanted me to read D&M and discuss some point. I was out in the field and I stated CLEARLY that I didn't have the book at hnd. When I arrived home several days later. IASKED YOU what was your question. Then you posed some STUPID ASS question about Greta van Sustern. If that was supposed to be something worth my time then I shall send you an invoice. My time is worth moe than your beer soaked questions regarding lingerie, GLBT issues, and how fainthearted women are.
I refuse to acknowledge such Idiocy.

If a question is worthy of consideration Ill try it out. If I make a decision that questions are ROT, Ill ignore them as I see fit.

As far as the rest of it, Isnt Michael Denton a "fellow" at the iscovery Institute?? You seem to miss the big pictures in your own quote mining. efforts

Your DM Chapt 29 fails to show that the subsequent pages discuss the growing expertise of Huxley in comparison to the "old church guards" at the Universities who claim to be "naturalists' and , like OWen, are just shills for the church.

I don't focus on the ICR and the DI, they have, by virtues of guys like gunga and Herald, focused ON SCIENCE and are , by their own charter, attempting to water down science taching in schools ( A subject that you always conveniently ignore)

Quote:

Islam's attitude to evolution theory is a more difficult target.

No it isn't, Orthodoxy , be it Islamic, Judaic, or Christian is all based upon Fundamentalism. PERIOD, No difficulty at all. Main line Islam is like Notre Dame , they accept and embrace Organic Evolution(with or without theistic "coaching")

Your "flagella" reference is being made without any understanding of the use it was presented in Dover. IT WAS FIRST EMPLOYED BY AN IDER. It was soundly debunked as a "fully formed" mechanism by Ken Miller. You've failed to bring that up.

You continue with the long masses of writing and Im waiting for the day that you finally understand something of what you speak.

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@Jpsy,

Quote:

What are you afraid you might find Gunga?

It might be that gunga is afraid of society becoming a vast stud farm with reproduction strictly controlled by a centralised, purportedly scientific, bureaucratic elite with carefully selected males being provided with assignations with carefully selected females in what are officially designated as "Love Suites". The offspring being immediately removed to state nurseries for approved socialisation to avoid any influence from idiotic parents.

Assuming you are opposed to such a process, Jpsy, which I don't necessarily assume, what would you suggest we do to avoid it happening in a society with Big Science calling all the shots?

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@farmerman,

Quote:

If I make a decision that questions are ROT, Ill ignore them as I see fit.

As if we need reminding of that.

I asked you about Chapter 18 of D&M because I think it raises some interesting issues. There was no point in doing so unless you knew the contents and I asked you to revisit the piece in the hope, which looks to be a forlorn one, that we might engage our minds on the issues it raises.

I am well aware that D&M were busy shafting Darwin.

I gather Prof. Denton claims to be an agnostic.

What is your objection to watering down science teaching? All my posts are watered down. Do you seriously think that schoolchildren are ready for undiluted science in the biological and sociological and psychological realms? When the PMG burned Reich's books it was because the public was not ready for undiluted science. And I know from long experience in pubs with what must have been a reasonable sample of the general public that they are not ready for undiluted science in those disciplines, however predictable objects sliding down inclined planes are.

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@farmerman,

And what difference does it make to an argument that it is "beer soaked"? Which mine wasn't. If it had have been I mean.

If "beer soaked" is to be taken to mean "not worth listening to" you have thereby granted yourself a licence to ignore whatever suits your convenience. Which is why you have tunnel vision.

Notwithstanding that every significant shaman gets "something soaked" and that millions of conversations take place everyday under the influence of a wide range of substances all of which you, with a flick of a finger, declare "not worth listening to".

Party conferences and conventions are piss-ups. One of the more successful tribes in northern Europe used to discuss every important issue twice. Once sober and once skenning drunk.

Your puritan petticoats are showing fm. The rejection of pleasure.

Imagining you fuckers in charge is sufficient to turn a man grey. That's the reason you are a derisory minority of noisemakers. At least we can laugh at the priests but there's no laughing at peer-reviewed instrument readings.

Maybe we prefer telling it how it isn't to telling it how it is. Romance is at stake.

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Darwin gave the definition of evolution.

Darwin defined evolution as "descent with modification," the idea that species change over time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor.

Ok?? biddee, biddee, that’s all folks.

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@spendius,

Quote:

Spendius said @farmerman

“It is incomprehensible, after all this time, that you continue to imagine that criticising the DI and the ICR is on a level with a scientific critique...

Your focus on the DI and the ICR, easy as it is, is provincialism and nothing to do with science. .”

I wondered if anyone else had noticed that.

Where did you go spendius?

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@Leadfoot,

he died, I miss him. His arguments didnt bother with subtle avoidance> He actually READ all the things we argued. He never messed with patent arguments like" complexity of life is proof enough"

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Sorry to hear that. Wish I could have met him before he left.

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@Leadfoot,

with him, everything was literature. I always thought he was a Jesuit priest, good soldier but an agnostic.

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