# The Vatican admits that Darwin was on the right track



## Sonal (Oct 2, 2003)

Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin -Times Online

Darwin's theory of evolution has been declared compatible with Christian faith.

Not looking to start another (pardon the pun) religious war here, but this seemed like big news to me.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Very interesting. Yes, this would be big news.


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## MACenstein'sMonster (Aug 21, 2008)

Meh. 

Wouldn't this kind of acceptance be on the same level as OJ Simpson admitting to the murder of Nicole Brown?


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

Of course, the big news is they buried the hatchet in record speed time - for the Vatican, considering that just a few years ago, they were still grappling with the fact that Giordano Bruno used a telescope to discover craters on the moon. At this pace, they should be able to "reconcile" with Einstein by the year 2174...

I wonder if they will ever patch things over with Judas Iscariot?


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

No, it's a BIG deal.

Hopefully now we can get those creationist morons to STFU.


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## chasMac (Jul 29, 2008)

chas_m said:


> No, it's a BIG deal.
> 
> Hopefully now we can get those creationist morons to STFU.


Wishful thinking; owing to a little thing called the reformation, they care little for what the the bishop of Rome has to say.


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Oh, that Vatican! Always one step ahead of the times.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

chas_m said:


> No, it's a BIG deal.
> 
> Hopefully now we can get those creationist morons to STFU.


Problem is, most of those "creationist morons" do not pledge allegiance to the Pope anyway. That's only for RC's. Still and all, there's a very interesting book written by Lee Strobel called The Case for a Creator. I absolutely do not believe in the biblical story of creation as anything more than an interesting archetypal and universal story, but we do have to remember that Darwin's theory of evolution is also a _theory_, not fact. 

Darwin himself admitted to a number of details that would render his theory indequate for explaining the origin of species. For one, it describes the how of evolution, but not the _why_. It does not account for the pre-Cambrian explosion that is part of the fossil record, for example. It also does not account for why an organism evolves from one form to another unless a certain kind of cellular intelligence is also passed on in the actual DNA throughout the history of an organism or a species. Fascinating reading. For me, creationism and evolution are both theories, nothing more.


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## chasMac (Jul 29, 2008)

The "Just a theory" retort is the weakest refutation of the "Theory of evolution", and usually heard only from religious crackpots. Colloquially, we have come to use the term "theory" as speculation, however:

...in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena. In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors--the historical reality of evolution--is not a theory. It* is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun.* Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved "facthood" as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution;" it simply has not been an issue for a century.

- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 1986, Sinauer Associates, p. 15


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

One little step at a time...the Vatican is famous for taking little steps. A lot more however than the evangelicals ever took...or will take. Should I even mention some of the other religions? I think not. Kudos to the Catholic hierarchy for at least acknowledging Darwin's theory.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

I thought Darwin was a talking dolphin…


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> but we do have to remember that Darwin's theory of evolution is also a _theory_, not fact.


Just to clarify, evolution is both a fact and a theory. 

There are the observable facts of evolution (e.g. the fossil record, the DNA sequences of living and extinct species that perfectly match the phylogenetic predictions of the fossil record, the numerous observed examples of evolution in nature over the past century and a half, and the empirically reproducible laboratory examples of adaptation and speciation over only a few years under appropriate conditions), and there are the theoretical models of the molecular mechanisms underlying these processes (most of which have now been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt).



> Darwin himself admitted to a number of details that would render his theory indequate for explaining the origin of species.


Of course. Like any scientific theory, evolution is easily falsifiable. Any one of an infinite number of testable predictions could be used to unequivocally falsify the fundamental predictions of evolutionary theory. Over a century and a half of effort, no one has made any observations that do anything but support evolutionary theory. 

And make no mistake... there's no better way to succeed in science than by overturning a popular theory. It's not just the creationists who've been trying to falsify evolution over the past 150 years.

Any one of another infinity of potential observations could force biologists to make fundamental changes to the theory. Indeed, even during Darwin's time, advances in the field of genetics had been made that eventually required a significant re-analysis of the foundations of evolutionary theory. But this reanalysis yielded an even better theory. Now called the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, this re-analysis provides even greater explanitory and predictive power, and provides the foundation for all modern biological sciences.

There are no scientific theories with more support than evolution.



> It does not account for the pre-Cambrian explosion that is part of the fossil record, for example.


Actually, it does. In fact the neo-darwinian synthesis predicted discontinuous 'saltatory' morphological evolution before the precambrian explosion was observed. The pre-cambrian explosion is now one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the current model of evolutionary processes we have.



> It also does not account for why an organism evolves from one form to another unless a certain kind of cellular intelligence is also passed on in the actual DNA throughout the history of an organism or a species.


Um... I'm pretty familiar with this field (I've been working intimately with the data for the past few decades), and I have no idea what you're talking about here. 

One thing that evolutionary theory is absolutely clear on is that no intelligence is required. Random changes (mutations) lead to diversity, and selection leads to survival of variants that work. That's all that's necessary to explain all the observable phenomena.



> For me, creationism and evolution are both theories, nothing more.


For someone who understands the logic of science, and the evidence of nature, evolution is an amazingly well-supported theory, and creationism is a fairy tale that makes no testable predictions.

You're obviously free to believe whatever you like. But if logic and evidence are part of your belief-forming mechanism, evolution is supported beyond any doubt, and creationism is simply a silly idea that primitives dreamed up in absence of any knowledge.

Cheers.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

ChasMac, I couldn't have written that better myself. Great Chas' think alike.

(Bravo to bryanc too)


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

bryanc said:


> Um... I'm pretty familiar with this field (I've been working intimately with the data for the past few decades), and I have no idea what you're talking about here.
> 
> One thing that evolutionary theory is absolutely clear on is that no intelligence is required. Random changes (mutations) lead to diversity, and selection leads to survival of variants that work. That's all that's necessary to explain all the observable phenomena.


One example that Strobel uses in his book (again, a good read, especially if you believe in the scientific method) is the evolution in automobiles from one product year to the next. For me, I like to study the evolution of the electric guitar. There are a number of changes, hopefully improvements, between say a 1957 Stratocaster and and a 1962 Stratocaster, including a five-position pickup switch and the emergence of rosewood fretboards. Many improvements are actually quite subtle, like the composition of pickups or the type of wood used.

Similarly, one can see incremental improvements between cars of successive years, even though they may look much the same on the surface. To compare a 1962 Cadillac to a 2006 Cadillac would represent huge changes, a little like the difference between cro-magnon and modern man. But in the case of automobiles and electric guitars, there is a team of designers and engineers, intelligent designers if you will, who decide what to keep and what to discard as a product line is overhauled. Without some intelligence to actually monitor the process, how would changes take place?

I agree that creationism is a fairy tale, a myth, but a very useful one. All cultures have imaginative explanations for the origins of things. One can appreciate the merit of the literature without having to throw out the book. Evolution can explain a great many things, but it fails to explain _why_ an organism evolves, just as the big bang theory fails to explain what caused the big bang in the first place. Science is not infallible, and often modern people look at science as a mystical omni-potent entity the same way older civilizations regarded religion. 

How does the organism know which genes to pass on and which ones to discard? In the absence of an intelligent designer that can monitor the evolutionary process, I am suggesting that an intelligence exists at the DNA level of all things _in themselves_ that moves evolution along. I am suggesting that we are the very ghost in the machine that we have been searching for. Some call it God, some call it nature; it is invisible and impossible to prove, but it is here nonetheless. In my world, science and mysticism are simply two different ways to describe the same thing.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> How does the organism know which genes to pass on and which ones to discard? In the absence of an intelligent designer that can monitor the evolutionary process, I am suggesting that an intelligence exists at the DNA level of all things _in themselves_ that moves evolution along.


This represents a gross misunderstanding of the mechanism of evolution. Organisms don't decided which genes to pass along and which to discard. Mutations accumulate and get passed on. Variants that with advantages have more progeny, variants with disadvantages have fewer or none. As the process continues, disadvantageous variants are removed from the gene pool and advantageous variants accumulate. No intelligence required.

It doesn't even require DNA. Evolution works on any information system that has the properties of variation and selection. We use it to generate computer programs, chemicals, and there is increasing evidence that the same mechanism applies to space-time systems.

The efficacy of this mechanism is well-understood and has been demonstrated many times in many different contexts. It works.

Comparing biological evolution to the guided evolution of manufactured objects is a common, but fundamentally serious conceptual mistake.

Cheers


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## Glipt (Aug 7, 2003)

*The religion of Darwin.*

http://www.ehmac.ca/attachment.php?attachmentid=7104&stc=1&d=1234624026


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

bryanc said:


> Comparing biological evolution to the guided evolution of manufactured objects is a common, but fundamentally serious conceptual mistake.


I agree with bryanc on this point. I remember people opining at one point that homosexuality was the result of the Earth dealing with overpopulation--as though the Earth had a mind of its own, and knew just how to tweak things to get it right. If I were a sentient Earth, I'd just shake everyone off.

Most biological organisms we know have an innate capacity to reproduce because those that don't have disappeared almost immediately. It has nothing to do with the intelligence of DNA. The DNA of species too dumb to get it on is terminated.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Glipt said:


> http://www.ehmac.ca/attachment.php?attachmentid=7104&stc=1&d=1234624026


The irony is delicious.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

Glipt said:


> http://www.ehmac.ca/attachment.php?attachmentid=7104&stc=1&d=1234624026


I see this sort of thing a lot. Science develops testable theories that predict observable phenomena, but which conflict with religious dogma, and many people make the inference that science is a religion.

Science is the opposite of religion. Scientists don't have faith in Darwin or anyone else. We observe reality and try to explain it with the simplest hypotheses we can. Darwin came up with a winner. The only reason he gets so much attention is that, like Einstein and others who established paradigms that turn out to match observable reality very well, evolutionary theory turns out to be so astoundingly robust and widely applicable. 

The cartoon would be funny if it weren't for the fact that lots of people actually seem to think that science is a religion, and that intelligent design is a valid scientific theory. As it is, it's kind of like a racist joke. Not very funny because the beliefs portrayed are sadly prevalent.

Cheers


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

The difference between science and religion is simple: science HOPES to be proven wrong, religion FEARS being proven wrong.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

bryanc said:


> I see this sort of thing a lot. Science develops testable theories that predict observable phenomena, but which conflict with religious dogma, and many people make the inference that science is a religion.
> 
> Science is the opposite of religion. Scientists don't have faith in Darwin or anyone else. We observe reality and try to explain it with the simplest hypotheses we can. Darwin came up with a winner. The only reason he gets so much attention is that, like Einstein and others who established paradigms that turn out to match observable reality very well, evolutionary theory turns out to be so astoundingly robust and widely applicable.
> 
> ...


You've just reinforced my point. Darwin's is a theory of evolution, not a fact, because it is not testable. Oh sure, you can see minor adaptations in fruit flies since they have such a short life span, but nothing on the scale of human evolution. Personally, I like Charles Darwin's theory and the way it forced the church to rethink its position, just as it did when the existence of egg cells was discovered and the church had to then invent the doctrine of immaculate conception in order to cover its arse as far as JC not being contaminated by original sin. 

What you appear to be saying, it seems to me, is that it's either science or religion. Well, I happen to reject both models as inadequate for explaining our existence very well. Really, you should take a look at Lee Stobel's book before you assume you know what it says. Like I said, it's a good read.


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

Sonal said:


> Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin -Times Online
> 
> Darwin's theory of evolution has been declared compatible with Christian faith.
> 
> Not looking to start another (pardon the pun) religious war here, but this seemed like big news to me.


You have to distinguish between various branches of the Christian church, and also major differences between the present day Church and the mediaeval Church. Roman Catholics as a group are actually pretty rational these days, as are the mainline Protestant denominations like the United Church, Anglican Church, etc. The rabid creationists are mostly confined to Protestant denominations that hate Catholicism as much as they hate Darwinism and science in general.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Gerbill said:


> You have to distinguish between various branches of the Christian church, and also major differences between the present day Church and the mediaeval Church. Roman Catholics as a group are actually pretty rational these days, as are the mainline Protestant denominations like the United Church, Anglican Church, etc. The rabid creationists are mostly confined to Protestant denominations that hate Catholicism as much as they hate Darwinism and science in general.


True point. There are a number of people who identify themselves as Christian as think of Catholics as somehow non-Christian, even though all Christian denominations would appear to have sprung from the RC faith at some point, the same as all RC's sprung from the Jewish faith at some point.

In fact, if you ever want to rile a white supremacist sometime, try telling them that they pray to a Jewish God.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

"In fact, if you ever want to rile a white supremacist sometime, try telling them that they pray to a Jewish God." Very true. I mention this reality when I was teaching down in southern Georgia. It did NOT go over well with this person.


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

fjnmusic said:


> True point. There are a number of people who identify themselves as Christian as think of Catholics as somehow non-Christian, even though all Christian denominations would appear to have sprung from the RC faith at some point, the same as all RC's sprung from the Jewish faith at some point.
> 
> In fact, if you ever want to rile a white supremacist sometime, try telling them that they pray to a Jewish God.


 There's an interesting history of the Nazis trying to deal with the overwhelming biblical evidence that Jesus was a practising Jew. They ended up rewriting the Bible, eliminating the Old Testament outright, and their tame Lutheran-derived church went along with it! To their great credit, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany opposed the Nazis as much as they could - it was a fine line they had to walk to avoid being suppressed altogether.

Read more here:

Religion in Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

chas_m said:


> The difference between science and religion is simple: science HOPES to be proven wrong, religion FEARS being proven wrong.


Nonsense. None of them want to be proven wrong and either can be just as rabid about it if they don't like the person doing the proving.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> You've just reinforced my point. Darwin's is a theory of evolution, not a fact, because it is not testable.


Uh... are you talking about "evolutionary theory"? The theory that predicts natural genetic variation within a population will give rise to individuals with greater and lesser reproductive success, and that the genes encoding traits giving greater reproductive success will become more abundant in subsequent generations? Because that theory makes obvious testable hypotheses, which have been tested and found to be correct.

The larger implications of this theory, that, for example, genetically encoded adaptations will accumulate in populations, resulting in eventual reproductive isolation and the formation of novel species, have also been tested and found to be correct.

The molecular mechanisms by which the novel genetic characteristics are formed have been the subject of intense investigation since the 1950's, and many are now very well understood, but some (such as gene duplication by retrotransposition) are only now really becoming clear.



> Oh sure, you can see minor adaptations in fruit flies since they have such a short life span, but nothing on the scale of human evolution.


What are you talking about? Human evolution is moderately well recorded in the fossil record, but there are plenty of other taxa who's life history lends them to better fossilization (such as the Echinoderms) and for which we have fantastic, uninterrupted fossil records of speciation for billions of years. What greater scale could you ask for?

You seem to be laboring under a common logical misconception: the fallacy of the heap: If I have a heap of sand in my driveway, and someone comes along and takes one grain of sand away, I still have a heap of sand, right? So it follows that a minor change, like removing the grain of sand, does not qualitatively change the heap. But it is obviously true that if one grain of sand were removed every day *FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS* eventually the heap would be gone.

This is the core problem many people have with understanding evolution. The time scale is so vast that it's difficult to imagine the tiny changes accumulating into anything significant. But they do.

speed x time = distance. We know the speed, we know the time, so it's pretty easy to infer the distance. 



> What you appear to be saying, it seems to me, is that it's either science or religion. Well, I happen to reject both models as inadequate for explaining our existence very well.


You're obviously welcome to your opinion. But humanity has relied on religion more-or-less exclusively for tens of thousands of years, and has only in the last century or so started employing science in any significant way. Science unarguably does a better job at providing an understanding of how nature works, but it is not science's job to tell people how to behave. Nevertheless, I'd argue that the secular worldview whose ascendence seems to correlate with scientific advances provides a much happier and healthier cultural paradigm than the superstitious one it replaces.

Regardless, science and religion *are* mutually exclusive, in that faith is the opposite of skepticism, but some scientists are religious people (personally, I don't get this, but people are complex). I do find it interesting that, in a culture where something approximating 90% of citizens are religious adherents, scientists are disproportionately non-religious. Biologists, in particular, are vastly less religious than the general public (back in 2000, I believe the numbers were about 50%).



> Really, you should take a look at Lee Stobel's book before you assume you know what it says.


My argument is with what *you* said, not with what Stobel says. I haven't read his book, but I may do so if I can find the time. I have a lot of higher priority reading these days.

Cheers


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Well, good to see you're keeping an open mind about it, Bryanc. I think you misunderstand me. I have great respect for science and I have great respect for religion, but I see neither as infallible. Strobel, who starts as a believer in Darwin himself, has interviews with great scientists who study evolutionary theory, experts in their respective fields, who reveal that evolutionary theory is not quite as bullet-proof as the average citizen who takes the word of science as "gospel truth" believes it to be. 

In other words, you have to be familiar with the weaknesses in your arguments as well as the strengths. It may surprise you to find out that evolutionary theory is full of holes that haven't been explained yet. But that's probably not what you want to hear.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

fjnmusic said:


> Well, good to see you're keeping an open mind about it, Bryanc. I think you misunderstand me. I have great respect for science and I have great respect for religion, but I see neither as infallible.


But you appear to be pushing the idea that science thinks of ITSELF as infallible, which is a fundamental error. RELIGION thinks of itself as infallible, but science not only believes itself FALLIBLE, that concept is the very basis of science itself!


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> I have great respect for science and I have great respect for religion, but I see neither as infallible.


Only one of them claims to be.



> Strobel, who starts as a believer in Darwin himself...


The language used here illustrates exactly the problem. Anyone who is a "believer in Darwin" is not a scientist. Science doesn't operate on revealed truths or dogma handed down by profits. Darwin was just a guy who figured out how to make sense of the data (as it happened, Alfred Wallace had the same insight, and if neither Darwin nor Wallace had figured it out, someone else would've, because the evidence is unequivocal).



> evolutionary theory is not quite as bullet-proof as the average citizen who takes the word of science as "gospel truth" believes it to be.


Anyone who takes anything as "gospel truth" is a fool.



> It may surprise you to find out that evolutionary theory is full of holes that haven't been explained yet.


Care to provide an example?

I'm well aware of the active frontiers of progress in evolutionary theory (I work in one of them and have colleagues in many others), but I wouldn't characterize the aspects of our understanding of evolution that remain weak or untested as 'holes' so much as opportunities to advance our understanding.



> But that's probably not what you want to hear.


Well, it depends on what you mean by "holes." As I said, there are many gaps in our knowledge, and these are opportunities for progress. And it's worth noting that every such gap that has been filled since Darwin proposed the paradigm in 1859 has strengthened and further supported the theory. If we were lawyers, we'd have declared the case proven beyond any reasonable doubt over a century ago.

I'm always annoyed at what the crypto-creationists try to promote as "holes in evolutionary theory" because they are invariably not problems for evolutionary theory per se, but rather complex ideas that the lay public find confusing, and which make great ammunition in the creationists' intellectually dishonest campaign to spread FUD about evolution. If you can give me some examples of these 'holes' I may be able to distinguish the FUD from the science for you.

Cheers


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

I am not a crypto-creationist, and I am likewise annoyed when someone can be so dismissive about an opinion that is different from their own. If you are an evolutionary scientist yourself, that's great. Perhaps you have a decent explanation for started the whole big bang in the first place, which appears to have been a necessary pre-cursor to everything else. If you believe in the scientific method, of course.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> I am not a crypto-creationist


I didn't mean to say you were... sorry. But, not having read this book you're talking about, and being all too familiar with the tactic, I'm suspicious that these 'holes' you say the author talks about are simply examples of these tired old high-school debating tactics, which are of no scientific merit whatsoever, but are very effective at confusing people who haven't got the educational background to see through them. That's what I was referring to as crypto-creationism.



> Perhaps you have a decent explanation for started the whole big bang in the first place, which appears to have been a necessary pre-cursor to everything else.


That has nothing to do with evolution. I'm a biologist, not a cosmologist. Any ideas I might have about the big bang would be of no more significance than those of your local baker or social worker.

Indeed, that you would even ask such a question in this context suggests you have very little understanding of what evolutionary theory deals with, let alone the mountains of mutually-supporting evidence that so overwhelmingly and unequivocally verifies its predictions.



> If you believe in the scientific method, of course.


The first step in the scientific method is formulating a question about some aspect of nature. As for the origins of the universe, I can get that far, but can't even begin to develop testable hypotheses that may address this question, let alone preform any tests of those hypotheses. But rather than fabricating a story and claiming I know The Answer(TM), I have the intellectual honesty to simply say "I don't know."

One of my biggest problems with religions and other mystical charlatans throughout history is that they've filled people's heads with bullsh*t stories to the extent that most people are not even able to recognize what they don't know any more. As Mark Twain said "it's not what we don't know that's the problem; it's what we do know that ain't so."

The greatest strength of science isn't that it allows us to discover things we didn't know, but rather that it allows us to discover that what we thought we knew was wrong. Science is incredibly good at self-correction. The fact that evolutionary theory remains unfalsified after a century and a half of rigorous testing can really only be explained by its fundamental truth.

Cheers


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

*Perhaps this will help*










Evolutionary theory has been undergoing rapidly accelerating iterations of the lower-right-hand loop illustrated on the science side of this diagram for about a century-and-a-half.

Cheers


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## arminia (Jan 27, 2005)

Nova just had the story of the Dover Pa trial where the school board tried to get ID into the class room. Of the 5 ID guys I believe only 2 showed up to testify and weren't impressive at all. Of course the judge ruled against the school board and all were defeated in the next election.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

fjnmusic said:


> To compare a 1962 Cadillac to a 2006 Cadillac would represent huge changes, a little like the difference between cro-magnon and modern man.


More of a case of de-evolution - where over the course of a number of years, the god named GM took something that was utterly cool and swank and turned it into a plastic turdmobile that people don't want to be caught in, dead or alive. Same with your example of Stratocasters, where even though a 62 is "improved", the 57 is much more desireable and much more valuable.

Darwin never did address de-evolution, but we see it all the time, where something is "improved" to the point that it is a useless piece of junk ready for the ranks of the extinct. Besides, who is to say that Modern man is a real improvement over Cro-Magnon - since Cro-Magnon lived within a sustainable lifestyle in harmony with nature and even left cool rock paintings - while Modern man built stuff like Times Square and the Gardiner Expressway, and has to ship their refuse hundreds of miles to Michigan...


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Bullfeathers, EP. Any given specimen of a '57 Strat is going to be more valuable because (A) it's older and therefore very likely rarer at this point and (B) it's that much closer to the prototypical (and dare I say, Platonic concept of a) Strat. It's not more valuable because it's technically a better player or a richer-sounding instrument, it's because it's closer to the originating year of an iconic design.

[Sorry for the derailment. Train's back on the rails, thanks.]


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

^^^
Perhaps, but who wants the CBS Fender stuff? beejacon

But certainly, my car anaolgy entirely holds water, and not just because the 62 Caddie is older or nearer the original thing, but because it was superior and more luxurious in all regards. It's sad when a modern Cadillac makes one want the qualities and luxury of the Cimmaron (or a Vega)...


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

I'll take an early CBS Strat any day. You know, anything sticks around long enough, it becomes rare. Guitars are no exception. I'm seeing people getting excited about production guitars coming out of early 80s Japan. So it goes. I can't afford pristine samples of early 60s Fender stuff, never mind the glory days when "Stratocaster" and "Broadcaster" were brand new terms in the popular music world. But I can certainly afford to dabble in cool gear from subsequent decades. I kick around on the planet long enough, and keep what specimens I have long enough, it might be quite the collection to pass on.

Or it might not, too; a gamble is a gamble.

In any case, plenty a music forum I've participated in has featured the kind of rarified corksniffery your pre-CBS comment is so redolent of, so I'll take my leave now.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Funny, my strat is a '62 vintage re-issue, built in Japan in 1985. Lake Placid blue, just like the originals. But perhaps because it wasn't original, I was also not afraid to "improve" it by putting into Fender noiseless pickups--and I'm very happy I did. The bridge pickup now sounds a lot more telecaster-like than the original tinny sound that it came with and make a lot more use out of the guitar. Of course, I would be the intelligent designer in this case (I've also put together a bass guitar from a $10 Samick body and a Franken-tele as well), as well as the good Fender people on both sides of the Atlantic.

The whole point about bringing up cars and guitars is that it would be extremely unlikely for these parts to have come together by chance, let alone be manufactured to exactly the right specifications to work with one another. And cars and guitars are NOTHING compared to the intricacies of animals and human beings. That all these elements came out of the primordial soup and just happened to come together perfectly is nothing short of miracle. 

Now, I don't really give a flying pteradactyl whether you believe in god or its counterpart in science, nature, but either way, one must be crediting the invisible hand that puts all of these components together and makes sure they work, and modifies them as necessary. This is evolution in layman's terms. But whether there is some supernatural man-like deity, which I consider to be metaphorical, or whether it is the life force itself in all things that is doing the doing, _ something_ must propel every living organism from one step to the next.

This is the "why" part of the equation I was referring to in an earlier post, which Darwin's theory of evolution is silent on. Because it is also difficult to surmise why an organism evolves, and science can only verify educated and observable guesses, this aspect falls beyond the purview of science and would seem to sit more comfortably in the realm of metaphysics. Science is normally concerned with what and how, because "why" can only ever be a hypothesis. Sure, species evolve, but why? Who decides that this new form is an improvement on the last one? Or that a '57 strat is better than a '62 strat or an '85 strat or an '09 strat? Since '57 strats are no longer made, evolution would suggest that the newest version is superior_ simply because it has survived_.

This is a rather simplistic explanation of one of the arguments in Lee Strobel's book, The Case For a Creator. I have to be honest; I was quite prepared to pick apart every argument I would for "intelligent design," in it, since the idea of a tinkering deity is not something I am comfortable with. But the book is written well and to me, quite persuasive. I certainly have a great deal more respect for science after reading it, but at the same time I can see why scientists can be just as resistant to let go of old belief systems as anyone else. The world and the universe is a pretty amazing place, and the fact that life exists at all, let alone as abundantly as we see here on earth is nothing short of a miracle. With or without a creator.


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

This has been a great debate. One of the sanest and most level headed on this subject in ages. 

I was once a bad physics student. I learnt a bit about gravity. Gravity is an interesting subject, much like Evolution. Laymen refer to the 'Law of Gravity', scientists on the other had simply have a few theories about it. Newton, Einstein and others have contributed to our knowledge. 

But for all the research and knowledge that we have about gravity, which subject do we actually know more about and have a better understanding of?

Evolution! And as far as I know, by a long shot!

Gravity we have string theory, gravity waves, dark matter, anti-matter, etc. People understand gravity intuitively. You drop something, it falls. We have lovely formulas to describe it — yes we can build towers with our knowledge, send up satellites, go to the moon and predict astronomical events. Does science really understand it? No, not yet. We're getting closer, but as far as I know not yet (hey I was only a 'bad' physics student so I'm not up on everything).

Evolution and genetics explain a lot. The science has gone beyond the pretty pictures, beyond the hypothesis, to the point of engineering. 

And by the way, you can't cherry pick what science you believe in or don't. You either take the whole ball of wax or you don't. And if you want to argue against Evolution, please try to have a Master's degree in a closely related subject first. 

Present company exempted. The folks on this forum know how to debate!


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## chowmainia (Mar 13, 2008)

thank you for the very interesting discussion. i have also recently found this topic quite fascinating, however, i don't quite understand why a belief in god is necessarily incompatible with evolution. i am not a biologist but isn't evolution simply a mechanism of how diversity in species is achieved (namely via the environmental selection of advantageous mutations eventually resulting in a new "improved" specie)?
Evolution seems to be good at explaining "the origin of the species" once you've got a fully functioning life form that can produce progeny, but i'm not sure it has actually addressed the "origin of life" itself and i am not sure if there has been any universally or well-accepted scientific theories that have adequately address such an issue. 
I would assume that the very first life form would have to come about through some sort of "spontaneous generation" ( but i thought that louise pasteur had already disproved that although his experiments are somewhat outdated). 
I think i remember reading somewhere that Francis Crick, the nobel prize winner for his discovery of DNA, proposed that life on earth originated by Panspermia (basic life forms were spread to earth by an intelligence through the use of space travel). which to me sounds like some sort of "intelligent design/creation" thing and yet seems compatible with evolution.
I think science simply explains how things work. while the questions of meaning and purpose is within the realm of philosophy (some of which eventually become religion). So i don't think that science and religion need to be mutually exclusive.
At any rate if people are at all interested. i happened to stumble on this website that has debates between "professional" (for lack of a better word i guess) theists and atheists.
- View Single Post - WILLIAM LANE CRAIG COMPREHENSIVE DEBATE LIST

thanks again for reading my post and for the discussion


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

fjnmusic said:


> This is the "why" part of the equation I was referring to in an earlier post, which Darwin's theory of evolution is silent on. Because it is also difficult to surmise why an organism evolves, and science can only verify educated and observable guesses, this aspect falls beyond the purview of science and would seem to sit more comfortably in the realm of metaphysics. Science is normally concerned with what and how, because "why" can only ever be a hypothesis. Sure, species evolve, but why? Who decides that this new form is an improvement on the last one?


Why, because 100,000 years ago one of my relatives ate the slower ones, the cheetah in that tree 1/2 a km away got the stupid one. And the one my relative and the cheetah didn't get was smart and fast. And my relative didn't eat that blue plant over there as it tastes horrible!


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Yes, but how did that information get passed on genetically? I mean, it takes a long time for genes to mutate, I would presume, so who reminds your genes today about that encounter with the blue plant thousands of years ago?


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Perhaps it is that your genes don't need the reminders. They themselves are doing the reminding for you, working as a deep subroutine you are not even aware of. Many of our physical processes work in this manner. Most, even.

This is why gut instincts are often correct.

I admit it's not a very scientific answer. Call it a hunch!


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> The whole point about bringing up cars and guitars is that it would be extremely unlikely for these parts to have come together by chance, let alone be manufactured to exactly the right specifications to work with one another. And cars and guitars are NOTHING compared to the intricacies of animals and human beings. That all these elements came out of the primordial soup and just happened to come together perfectly is nothing short of miracle.


This is one of the oldest and most classic misconceptions regarding evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory most explicitly does *NOT* propose that modern complex organisms arose spontaneously from the 'primordial soup.' That would be a miracle.

Early organisms were very simple, and wouldn't survive ten minutes in a modern ecosystem, because their descendants have undergone so much advantageous selection, and are therefore so much better optimized.



> Now, I don't really give a flying pteradactyl whether you believe in god or its counterpart in science, nature, but either way, one must be crediting the invisible hand that puts all of these components together and makes sure they work, and modifies them as necessary. This is evolution in layman's terms.


No. That is absolutely the opposite of evolution. That's exactly the position of intelligent design and it is simply a modern form of creationism dressed in scientific jargon.

Evolution very explicitly makes the case that advantageous adaptations will accumulate *WITHOUT ANY INTELLIGENT INTERVENTION*. 
This can be mathematically demonstrated for information systems with the properties of biological systems, and has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt in all biological systems examined.

The only testable hypothesis that has come out of ID is the idea of "irreducible complexity" which was completely refuted decades ago, yet the intellectually dishonest proponents of this idea continue to promote it as a 'valid scientific theory.' It's not. 

To the extent that ID makes testable predictions, the predictions have been tested and found to be wrong. The modern versions of the "theory" don't make testable predictions, and therefore cannot be considered by science.

ID is not science.



> _ something_ must propel every living organism from one step to the next.


This idea has been absolutely and unequivocally shown to be false. Nothing other than the logic of variation and selection is necessary to result in adaptation and speciation.



> Who decides that this new form is an improvement on the last one?


Ecology decides. If a new variant is more successful at reproducing, it is, by definition, "an improvement" and its genes will become more abundant. That's all there is to it.





> This is a rather simplistic explanation of one of the arguments in Lee Strobel's book, The Case For a Creator.


Ah... it's one of the "The Case for..." series. I didn't recognize the author's name initially, but I should have. This guy is a famously dishonest Christian apologist who makes a very good living flogging propaganda to the faithful.

Even the most cursory search brings up dozens of hits completely discrediting this book as a sham. The "experts" interviewed are ID proponents, not scientists, and no credible scientists were interviewed at all. Strobel sets up strawman "evolutionary" arguments, which the IDers knock down, but never points out that the original arguments are not what evolutionary biology contends. On top of all that, he's funded to to write this crap by the "Discovery Institute" and the "Center for Science and Culture", both of which are Evangelical Christian FUD factories who's sole purpose is to discredit the science of evolution in the US.

You really should check your sources before you swallow stuff like this.



> But the book is written well and to me, quite persuasive.


I have no doubt it's very well-written... that's what these folks do. But if you had any training in biology, you'd have seen through their bogus claims. What's infuriating about this sort of thing is not that naive laypeople fall for it, it's that the proponents are well-aware of the dishonesty, because they've been busted on it hundreds of times, but they keep peddling it knowing that most people aren't going to catch them. They don't care about science, truth, or even honest debate... they're just promoting their political agenda; which is to get evolution out of schools to start, and to convert the US into a theocracy in the long run, and they don't care how much they have to lie to do it.

But don't take my word for it... do some googling... check out the Lee Strobel, the Discovery Institute and the "experts" in evolution he interviewed (great 'scientists' like Jonathan Wells, Stephen Meyer, William Lane Craig and Michael Behe). Then have a look at what the American Association for the Advancement of Science has to say about ID.

This 'debate' is purely political. The science is very easy to understand and entirely one-sided, but the sociology and politics are complex. I don't blame you for being sucked in by the rhetoric, but I hope you'll do a little looking around at other sources, and do some critical thinking.

Here are a few links to get you started:
Another Case not Made: Lee Strobel's Case for a Creator
Lee Strobel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Intelligent design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reviews of Creationist Books | NCSE


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

chowmainia said:


> i don't quite understand why a belief in god is necessarily incompatible with evolution.


They're not. It's just that evolutionary theory, like most scientific advances, provides a natural explanation for phenomena that religions often use as examples of miracles. Evolution allows us to understand the complexity of life without having to say "god did it."

Of course that doesn't prove that god didn't do it. So you can go on believing that Zeus made all the butterflies if you like. It just means that there's no need for magical explanations.




> i am not a biologist but isn't evolution simply a mechanism of how diversity in species is achieved (namely via the environmental selection of advantageous mutations eventually resulting in a new "improved" specie)?
> Evolution seems to be good at explaining "the origin of the species" once you've got a fully functioning life form that can produce progeny, but i'm not sure it has actually addressed the "origin of life" itself and i am not sure if there has been any universally or well-accepted scientific theories that have adequately address such an issue.


Right again. Evolution does not address the origins of life (let alone the origins of the universe). This is not to say that evolutionary mechanisms are not widely considered to have been important in pre-biotic life (variation and selection will generate self-stabilizing complexity in any information system... so pre-biotic organic polymers may well have evolved before there were any 'organisms' per se). But the field of science concerned with the origins of life is called "abiogenesis" and it's the preview of organic chemists, not biologists.



> I would assume that the very first life form would have to come about through some sort of "spontaneous generation" ( but i thought that louise pasteur had already disproved that although his experiments are somewhat outdated).


It's an interesting field, certainly. There has been some significant progress over the past few decades, but abiogenesis is certainly no where near as advanced as evolution, and we will probably never know, with any certainty, how life arose on earth. We may some day soon have figured out some organic chemistry that could've done it, but it's pretty much impossible to know for sure what happened so many billions of years ago.



> I think i remember reading somewhere that Francis Crick, the nobel prize winner for his discovery of DNA, proposed that life on earth originated by Panspermia (basic life forms were spread to earth by an intelligence through the use of space travel).


I think Crick's idea is that comets may have seeded earth with self-replicating organic molecules, not that space aliens came an put life here.



> I think science simply explains how things work.


Yep. It just pisses me off when pseudo-scientists put on lab coats and claim their bullsh*t is a 'valid scientific theory' and should be taught in science classes, despite their never having provided a shred of supporting evidence, let alone dealt with the howling logical inconsistencies in their arguments.



> while the questions of meaning and purpose is within the realm of philosophy (some of which eventually become religion).


I'd suggest you've got that backwards... some ideas emerge from religious thinkers that are eventually refined into philosophy, not the other way around.



> So i don't think that science and religion need to be mutually exclusive.


Well, most people agree with you, but I disagree on the grounds that faith and skepticism are diametric opposites. To do science, you need to be skeptical. To be religious, you've got to have faith. I don't understand how someone can do both of these at the same time.



> I happened to stumble on this website that has debates between "professional" (for lack of a better word i guess) theists and atheists.
> - View Single Post - WILLIAM LANE CRAIG COMPREHENSIVE DEBATE LIST


Watch out for that Craig dude... he's one of the Fudmeisters on the payroll of the Discovery Institute. His job is to spread confusion about science in general and evolution in particular.

Cheers


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> it takes a long time for genes to mutate, I would presume,


Do not presume. Pull out a biochemistry textbook and look it up. Mutations are occurring rapidly in all of your cells. The average mammalian cell looses about 10,000 purine bases a day due to spontaneous hydrolysis of the glycosidic linkage between the base and the ribose sugar in the DNA backbone. Any one of these can result in a heritable mutation if it's not repaired.

Mutations are very abundant. Most are 'silent' in that they have no detectable phenotype, but that's at least partially due to molecular 'buffering' (chaparonins, and feed-back mechanisms that keep genes expressed within desirable ranges, for example), and this, in turn, leads to sudden shifts in phenotypes when a sufficient & mutually compatible load of mutations accumulates in a single genome.

Of the mutations that cause phenotypic change, by far the majority are deleterious. But what can be deleterious in one context can be an advantage in another, so even the 'deleterious' mutations can thrive in certain ecological niches. Finally, there are rare advantageous mutations (usually these become advantageous only when the environment the organism in question lives in has changed, or when the organism has access to a previously un-colonized environment where a different phenotype is optimal). Such advantageous mutations rapidly spread throughout a population and become the dominant sequence.

So any given organism will appear to be almost supernaturally well-adapted to its environment at any given time. But if you take it out of it's normal habitat (or it's environment changes), mutations will quickly accumulate that will result in adaptation to the new ecology fairly quickly.

Genetic systems are what is known in computing as 'hill-climbing algorithms'. Constantly adapting until they reach a local optima. Using this analogy, the ecosystem is a series of valleys and peaks, where each peak represents an ecological niche. Organisms will occupy the peaks, but natural variation will always keep a distribution, so that when the peaks move, some individuals will be on the shoulders of that new peak, and begin climbing and colonizing the new peak.

Cheers


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## arminia (Jan 27, 2005)

"But don't take my word for it... do some googling... check out the Lee Strobel, the Discovery Institute and the "experts" in evolution he interviewed (great 'scientists' like Jonathan Wells, Stephen Meyer, William Lane Craig and Michael Behe). Then have a look at what the American Association for the Advancement of Science has to say about ID."

A couple of these guys testified at the Dover Pa trial. Behe especially looked and sounded like a dope.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

This thread has either evolved or mutated into something that it originally wasn't! beejacon

I do not think the Vatican or the Church was "opposed" to Darwin, in that the Theory of Evoloution was and remains compatible with the moral truth of the Bible. This would be different from the Protestant view, where all truth is derived from the Bible, rather that being filtered or processed by a Church Cathecism; and it would be especially a problem with the more hard core Calvinist sects which look at the Bible for all kinds of truths.

Besides, Darwin was never a part of the Catholic Church, but rather, was "put down" by reactionary elements within the Church of England, and was "put down" even more by those of Dissenting Churches that were more bent on literal teachings as derived from reading the Bible. His work was a convenient lightening rod for those who were in opposition to his well known grandfather, Erasmus, and his philisophical treatments.

As for the Vatican - this is fast turn around time, as the Church does take it's time when it comes to such decisions.

But look at it this way, in recent news, the San Diego school board has just "forgiven" Pete Seeger for being a "Communist" in the early 60's - something even more crazy than anything the Vatican can dish out. At least Darwin did something more controversial than singing some campfire songs to school children. Now that the precident is set, it's time for the Nixon Administration to appologize to The Smother's Brothers...


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

bryanc said:


> Do not presume. Pull out a biochemistry textbook and look it up. Mutations are occurring rapidly in all of your cells. The average mammalian cell looses about 10,000 purine bases a day due to spontaneous hydrolysis of the glycosidic linkage between the base and the ribose sugar in the DNA backbone…


And I could probably use a new "Johnson rod" while I'm at it (George Costanza in reference to Seinfeld's futile search for a mechanic to replace Puddy). Of course you're talking in a realm that I do not profess to understand, and the jargon will win every time, but the condesending tone I can do without. Ironically, discrediting the author is a tactic I see often used by religious zealots to discredit more progressive religious thinkers like Tom Harpur and John Shelby Spong. It does not make your argument more convincing. I am also suspicious of Strobel's motives, but at least I read the argument before cutting it down. Isn't science concerned with exploring all alternatives before drawing a conclusion?

Thing is, each of us is free to believe whatever we want. If I choose to believe in both a god-like invisible hand as well as Darwinian evolution, because I see the two as complementary, then that is my business. If you choose to believe that faith and skepticism can never work together, then that is your right. I am interested in the conversational aspects of this subject, not in being told that what I believe is wrong or misguided or naive, and I have really have no interest in showing you where you are wrong or misguided or naive.

I appreciate the links you provided as I always try to look beyond the source to see what else might be informing the opinion, but I think you have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. If I'm not mistaken, no proponent of evolutionary theory, including yourself, has yet explained the "why" of evolution; only the "how." And for me, the "why" is really kind of the point.

It's like telling students to memorize that "a negative times a negative equals a positive" but then failing to explain why or provide a real-world example that a student can understand. I have asked this question to many a math teacher who replied "gee, I never thought about that." I am a humanities person, but I've also read a great deal of Rudy Rucker in my time, and so far, I am the only person I know who has come up with a half-decent explanation of _why_ "a negative times a negative equals a positive." 

Be careful about assuming that a person has nothing worthwhile to contribute to a debate just because their field of specialty is different from your own or from who you would perceive to be the experts on the matter. Everyone has a story to tell.

Peace out.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

bryanc: it's tiring, isn't it?

You would think that someone who comes into a thread and identifies themselves as a working professional biologist -- ie has studied and trained and knows what the hell they are talking about -- would cause the people who don't know to say "well, I guess I was mistaken then," since your work *wouldn't exist* if anything OTHER than evolution was true.

But ignorance has gained an undeserved confidence over the past 30 years, that allows it to pretend to be on a level playing field with knowledge and fact. I'm not sure why this happened -- it seemed to start around the time Reagan got into power, though I'm not blaming him specifically -- but it's been a very demoralising trend for those of us who wish to see the human race progress.

In part, I think the mass media has a huge responsibility -- ever since the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, we get the concept of "shouting heads reciting talking points" being given equivalence to learned experts, flat-Earthers and other dead-end (or just plain nutty) theories brought on to "balance" reality, etc.

If you're wondering why the world seems so off-kilter, here's the problem: stupidity is given equal weight to non-stupidity.

Case in point: recent discussions of the US stimulus plan almost never involved any actual economists (ie people who understand the concept). Apart from Paul Krugman (who routinely spent all of his time swatting down incredibly ignorant assumptions), you NEVER saw any actual economists discussing how we got here, what the stimulus will do, what it won't do, and what measures within it would be the most effective.

Public discourse, particularly as handled by the traditional media, is mostly retarded.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> Of course you're talking in a realm that I do not profess to understand, and the jargon will win every time, but the condesending tone I can do without.


Sorry, I wasn't trying to be condescending. But in all honesty, it's not really possible for someone to make a critical analysis of one of these publications unless you've had some basic training in the subject matter. The ID proponents are masters of obfuscation, and actively cultivate new strategies to trick the naive into believing that they're 'honest scientists' who are just trying to get fair consideration for an exciting new theory.



> Isn't science concerned with exploring all alternatives before drawing a conclusion?


Absolutely. But when you've got a theory that provides excellent explanatory power for all observable phenomena, and some religionists present an alternative that provides no explanatory power and makes no testable predictions, it doesn't get much traction. ID got some attention in the scientific community when it was first introduced in the mid '90s, but, because the few predictions they made were immediately falsified and the remainder of their argument was full of logical inconsistencies, it didn't get much time after that. ID has, however, done a great job of wrapping itself in the mantle of scientific jargon and claiming that it's not being given fair consideration due to some global atheist conspiracy.

As soon as I (or anyone else) encounters some data inconsistent with evolution, there will be a lot of excitement about a possible revolution in biological understanding. Until then, the IDers aren't going to get much more attention from scientists who've got real work to do.



> Thing is, each of us is free to believe whatever we want.


Not scientists. We're forced to believe what evidence and logic compels us to believe.



> If I choose to believe in both a god-like invisible hand as well as Darwinian evolution, because I see the two as complementary, then that is my business.


Absolutely. Just don't try to claim that your beliefs are supported by science.

Cheers


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

chas_m said:


> here's the problem: stupidity is given equal weight to non-stupidity.


Don't confuse ignorance with stupidity. Ignorance can be corrected.

The problem in the case of the evolution "debate" (I use the quotation marks, because the scientific debate was settled over a century ago) is that there are people who are using the healthy skepticism and curiosity of the intellectually honest but naive citizens against them. By generating the appearance of confusion, doubt and dissent among scientists where there is none, and simultaneously cloaking their own cocktail of mythology and pseudo science in enough jargon and presenting it with enough apparent authority and charisma they've been able to generate some pause even among trained scientists. It's no wonder that these dishonest masters of marketing are successfully bamboozling the lay public.

And the fact that the vast majority of the public lack the sophistication to understand how ID fails so spectacularly to meet the criteria of science can be laid directly at the feet of science educators (including yours truly). So it is poetically just that the public we've failed to educate is now being turned against us by people exploiting their lack of education.

Hopefully it isn't too late, and we'll be able to maintain the rigor of science long enough that support for ID will wane.

Cheers.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Thanks for the clarification, bryanc. In spite of my love for atheism and agnosticism, I am probably having a hard time abandoning my RC roots completely, as I am still looking for what causes an organism to evolve from one incarnation to the next. "It just does" doesn't quite do it for me, and it seems like that's where the scientific investigation is stopped at the moment. I'm sure I need to study more, but if evolution involves any choices along the way, then one must assume some kind of consciousness that makes that choice. But then, how does one prove that consciousness exists?


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## chowmainia (Mar 13, 2008)

bryanc said:


> They're not. It's just that evolutionary theory, like most scientific advances, provides a natural explanation for phenomena that religions often use as examples of miracles. Evolution allows us to understand the complexity of life without having to say "god did it."
> 
> Of course that doesn't prove that god didn't do it. It just means that there's no need for magical explanations.


Please correct me if i misunderstand you. so are you saying that evolution is an arguement against god because it explains the complexity of life through purely naturalistic means without the need for supernatural intervention (although it does not directly contradict the idea of supernatural intervention)?
so,theoretically, in order to completely rule out the existence of god, would one then have to be able to explain everything in the universe by naturalistic means?

and since the above mentioned event is unlikely to occur within our lifetime (i would presume) how do we determine when there is enough naturalistic explanations to confidently rule out god? is there a scientific method for determining such a threshold of knowledge where we can say "we have now accrued enough naturalistic explanations regarding our natural world that we can safely say that the possibility of god is negligible"?




bryanc said:


> I think Crick's idea is that comets may have seeded earth with self-replicating organic molecules, not that space aliens came an put life here.


i also found the journal where crick published his directed panspermia. i have included the abstract in an attachment (i hope it works).




bryanc said:


> Well, most people agree with you, but I disagree on the grounds that faith and skepticism are diametric opposites. To do science, you need to be skeptical. To be religious, you've got to have faith. I don't understand how someone can do both of these at the same time.


I am assuming, again correct me if i am wrong, that the context with which skeptical and faith is being used in your explanation is that being skeptical means "to believe according to the evidence" and faith means "to believe in the face of contradicting evidence" (as per your previous diagram). Is there good contradicting evidence against the existence of god (i assume that is what you mean by religious belief)? (You have mentioned that evolution simply forgoes the need for god but doesn't rule the possibility out.)






bryanc said:


> Watch out for that Craig dude... he's one of the Fudmeisters on the payroll of the Discovery Institute. His job is to spread confusion about science in general and evolution in particular.
> 
> Cheers


Thanks for the warning. I will be sure to listen to these debates with a grain of salt. that's why i'm interested in these debates. cuz if either side tried to pull a fast one, the opposing guy is there to call him/her on it. which can be very difficult to tease out on your own if you don't have the background yourself and you are just listening to or reading one side of the story without an opposing idea right next to you.


i apologize for asking so many questions. i know that these are difficult and deep issues that can't obviously be resolved through one thread in a forum. but i appreciate your insights.

thanks


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

fjnmusic said:


> Thanks for the clarification, bryanc. In spite of my love for atheism and agnosticism, I am probably having a hard time abandoning my RC roots completely, as I am still looking for what causes an organism to evolve from one incarnation to the next. "It just does" doesn't quite do it for me, and it seems like that's where the scientific investigation is stopped at the moment. I'm sure I need to study more, but if evolution involves any choices along the way, then one must assume some kind of consciousness that makes that choice. But then, how does one prove that consciousness exists?


Thats the same aspect of evolution that I just can't get my head around. I look for instance at an eyeball and you see the precision of its structure that is required for it to operate properly. Remove a lens or cornea or have it the wrong shape, wrong size, wrong cellular structure and the animal possessing it is blind. For the first creature to have mutated to create the first working eyeball, would there not have had to be billions of years of mutation in a creature to go from no eyeball to a working one? Wouldn't there have to be creatures over millions of years with an unfunctioning developing eye that mutation was perfecting to become a fuctional eye? Or would the mutation not have to have taken place in one shot resulting in a functioning eyeball? Maybe someone more knowledgeable about evolution can easily explain this for me.

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

chas_m said:


> Case in point: recent discussions of the US stimulus plan almost never involved any actual economists (ie people who understand the concept). Apart from Paul Krugman (who routinely spent all of his time swatting down incredibly ignorant assumptions), you NEVER saw any actual economists discussing how we got here, what the stimulus will do, what it won't do, and what measures within it would be the most effective.


This is because it was sold as "HOPE."


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

MacGuiver said:


> Thats the same aspect of evolution that I just can't get my head around. I look for instance at an eyeball and you see the precision of its structure that is required for it to operate properly. Remove a lens or cornea or have it the wrong shape, wrong size, wrong cellular structure and the animal possessing it is blind. For the first creature to have mutated to create the first working eyeball, would there not have had to be billions of years of mutation in a creature to go from no eyeball to a working one? Wouldn't there have to be creatures over billions of years with an unfunctioning developing eye that mutation was perfecting to become a fuctional eye? Or would the mutation not have to have taken place in one shot resulting in a functioning eyeball? Maybe someone more knowledgeable about evolution can easily explain this for me.
> 
> Cheers
> MacGuiver


Exactly. Evolution can be used to explain how things change once they already exist, but it offers nothing to explain where life came from in the first place. And it is still ineffective at explaining _why_ things change, unless there is some consciousness at whatever level, even an automatic one, that knows to adopt the traits of the organism better suited to long term survival. Thing is, Darwin himself did not view his theory as the be-all and the end-all. It is his disciples, I believe, that have turn evolutionary theory into a religion of its own.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

The organism doesn't need to be told to evolve. The fact that organisms mutate and why they mutate is well understood. Most mutations do NOT benefit the organism. Nature does not care whether the mutations work or not. Those with successful mutations breed more successfully than those who don't--sometimes they kick their asses. End of story.

You can still see God in this as the Prime Mover, without having science bite back.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

Macfury said:


> The organism doesn't need to be told to evolve. The fact that organisms mutate and why they mutate is well understood. Most mutations do NOT benefit the organism. Nature does not care whether the mutations work or not. Those with successful mutations breed more successfully than those who don't--sometimes they kick their asses. End of story.
> 
> You can still see God in this as the Prime Mover, without having science bite back.


The concept of God is superfluous. It needlessly complicates and is completely unnecessary to the explanation.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

rgray: My feeling is that, if you believe in God, there are plenty of opportunities to do so in a way that doesn't require a scientific showdown.


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

Macfury said:


> Those with successful mutations breed more successfully than those who don't--sometimes they kick their asses. End of story.


Which leaves me to wonder. What would make an organism mutating toward vision with a developing, non functional eye more successful than one without that is equally blind? Wouldn't it have to have some sort of basic functionality from the earliest mutations to give the creature the advantage of natural selection? If yes, then what are the odds that a mutation actually enabled the development of all the variables necessary for a working eyeball in one or more mutations?

Why would a dinosaur in the early stages of developing wings and feathers that don't actually do anything be more successful than the dinosaur with fully functional arms? I would think its more likely these mutations would hamper the creatures chances of domination or basic survival?

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

MacGuiver said:


> Which leaves me to wonder. What would make an organism mutating toward vision with a developing, non functional eye more successful than one without that is equally blind? Wouldn't it have to have some sort of basic functionality from the earliest mutations to give the creature the advantage of natural selection? If yes, then what are the odds that a mutation actually enabled the development of all the variables necessary for a working eyeball in one or more mutations?


Here's a possible explanation:

Evolution: Library: Evolution of the Eye



> The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.
> 
> Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.
> 
> In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.


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## eggman (Jun 24, 2006)

Macfury said:


> Here's a possible explanation:
> 
> Evolution: Library: Evolution of the Eye


And we're still finding out more - from the BBC back in January '09 an interesting alternative structure to the "conventional" eye.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | 'Spookfish' has mirrors for eyes



> "That must give the fish a great advantage in the deep sea, where the ability to spot even the dimmest and briefest of lights can mean the difference between eating and being eaten."


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

Macfury said:


> Here's a possible explanation:
> 
> Evolution: Library: Evolution of the Eye


Thanks for that Macfury. 
But even reading that explanation still leaves me with lots of why's like when the author says "over time a lens formed". Why a lens? Why not hairs or bone? Seems to be too many amazing coincidences in those random mutations. I guess I lack the faith in chance that is required to embrace evolution wholesale.

Cheers 
MacGuiver


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

fjnmusic said:


> if evolution involves any choices along the way, then one must assume some kind of consciousness that makes that choice.


Given that there are effectively infinite possible places for a rain-drop to land when it falls from a cloud, is some 'choice' being made when the drop hits the screen of my iPhone? The same thing happens when certain individuals in a population survive and reproduce, and others do not. The diversity is generated by chance, and the 'choice' is made by the environment. No consciousness is necessary.

As for the evolution of the eye, I can understand why, looking at the complexity of the modern mamallian eye, one might be amazed that such an intricate structure could have evolved, but our failure of imagination is not a problem for evolutionary theory. As it happens, the intermediates in eye development are fairly easy to understand: Light sensitivity yields an advantage over competitors lacking light sensitivity (the biochemistry of light sensitivity is fairly simple and has evolved many times independently). Protecting light-sensitive organs by elaborating pits for them is then advantageous, and also serves to generate a structure that is not only light-sensitive, but provides directional information. Covering such a light sensitive pit with a membrane to protect it is useful, but that membrane has to be thin in order to let light through. That sets conditions to favor mechanisms that thicken/toughen that protective membrane without impairing it's ability to transmit light. Crystalins evolved from keratins, allowing this membrane to express a specialized protein that allows it to remain transparent, and provide good protection for the light sensitive membrane beneath it. Now it's a lens. But now the animal has a situation where the lens is exposed (and prone to damage), so the process repeats itself, giving rise to the cornea. Having already got a lens, we not need another in front of it, so the cornea remains a simple transparent protective membrane.

Organisms with these sorts of intermediate eyes can be found in nature and the fossil record.

Also, interestingly, the eye is built backwards, with several layers of vasculature, extracellular matrix and neural tissue between the lens and the light sensitive cells. This is because these elaborations evolved subsequently to the simple pigment-spot-in-a-pit. It's terrible design, but works well enough that it provides a competitive advantage.



MacGuiver said:


> But even reading that explanation still leaves me with lots of why's like when the author says "over time a lens formed". Why a lens? Why not hairs or bone? Seems to be too many amazing coincidences in those random mutations.


Because mutations that led to hair or bones would've been disadvantageous, and selected against. Hardly an amazing co-incidence. Evolutions selects what works and then builds variations on that... the variations that work better continue to evolve, the variations that work worse die off.

The exact same process is used every time your immune system responds to a novel infection.

You might find it an amazing co-incidence, miraculous even, that your body has a beta lymphocyte that is making an immunoglobin with an amino acid sequence that *just happens* to be a good (but not perfect) match for the viral coat proteins of viruses you haven't even been exposed to. But it does, because during your development the ancestors of your beta lymphocytes mutagenized themselves, scrambling their genomes so that each of their progeny would make a random sequence of amino acids in the binding sites of their immunoglobins.

If you happen to be exposed to one of these viruses, there will, just by chance, probably be a beta lymphocyte somewhere in your spleen that is able to bind that virus by virtue of the random sequence of amino acids in its individual immunoglobin sequence. When it binds a pathogen, it becomes activated and starts proliferating rapidly... but it also mutagenizes itself, so the resulting population all express different variants of the immunoglobin at random. Most of these variants will bind the virus worse, and the cells with those mutations die. Some variants will bind better, and those cells continue to proliferate and mutate. Eventually you wind up with antibodies circulating in your blood that seem almost supernaturally well-adapted to recognizing that specific pathogen, even though you were only exposed to it a few days ago.

If you didn't understand the process of evolution, and you looked at the amino acid sequences of the viral coat proteins and the antibodies that bound them, you'd think it was a miracle. The chances of such perfectly complementary sequences occurring by chance are literally astronomically small. And yet they do occur by chance... but with the power of selection constraining the proliferation of variants. So no intelligence or wild co-incidences is necessary. This happens every time you get a cold.



> I guess I lack the faith in chance that is required to embrace evolution wholesale.


What you lack is the understanding of the mechanism. The process of evolution is a logical consequence of the properties of biological (and certain other) systems. No faith is required.

Cheers


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

MacGuiver said:


> hy a lens? Why not hairs or bone? Seems to be too many amazing coincidences in those random mutations. I guess I lack the faith in chance that is required to embrace evolution wholesale.


Perhaps some animals developed hairs or bone and these animals didn't do as well
as those who developed translucent skin. I think that one of the things we lack as humans is the ability to work with odds greater than numbers we can visualize. So if we think of 100 billion animals breeding, we have no concept of what the chances are of one of them developing a useful mutation.

Humans, on the other hand, pass on DNA indiscriminately. Even the worst example of human DNA can produce a dozen progeny, all of which survive and breed.

Note: I am not arguing against the existence of God, but noting what seems reasonable or possible.


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## Glipt (Aug 7, 2003)

"Prof Partridge made up a computer simulation showing that the precise orientation of the plates within the mirror's curved surface is perfect for focusing reflected light on to the fish's retina."

Thats cool. It would have been much more significant if it was found to be only half focused or not quite precisely oriented.


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## Glipt (Aug 7, 2003)

(the biochemistry of light sensitivity is fairly simple and has evolved many times independently).

I see (no pun intended) nothing simple about the biochemistry of light sensitivity. There is a staggeringly complex interaction of molecules, ions and electricity just to register the collision with a photon and transmit that information to the optic nerve, to say nothing of the process involved for the brain to interpret what that signal means. The quoted evolution of the eye is just what Darwin said. He merely described types of eyes that already existed. They are all here now and all exist in the fossil record.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

I don't believe it's simple either---but neither is the fact that I sense warmth, determine direction by sound or can tell the difference between different types of objects pressed against my skin.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

MacGuiver said:


> But even reading that explanation still leaves me with lots of why's like when the author says "over time a lens formed". Why a lens? Why not hairs or bone? Seems to be too many amazing coincidences in those random mutations. I guess I lack the faith in chance that is required to embrace evolution wholesale.


That is the main "foible" of pure Gradualism that makes some things within the Theory inconsistent. However, people like Stephen Jay Gould pushed forward the concept of Punctuated Equilibrium, where for long periods of time, Evolution is static, punctuated by various bursts when the accumulated body of changes comes to the fore.

Thus, a mass extinction leads to a furious burst of speciation. Once dinosaurs became extinct, it opened the door to the proliferation of Mammals (as well as their decendants, the Birds). And this happened quickly, with most Mammalian orders set in a very short time span perhaps as short as a million years, and the remaning time to refine and adapt, with the successful surviving the long haul.

For instance, within the DNA of the Cat is the required genetic codes to "enable" the saber-tooth feature. So in an era of megafauna, saber-tooth cats of all sorts (lions, tigers, bobcats, etc.) proliferate to take advantage of large game. But once the megafauna became extinct, those cats with the saber-tooth feature became extinct. But if megafauna returned, cats would once again pick up in the latent feature because they could take advantage of this. "Redundant" code is not deleted from the DNA, but can live on in the future when there is advantage. And the speciation that leads to such adaptation is not a gradual thing, but proceeds at a rapid rate.

As for eyes. It is obvious that some ancient ancestor found advantage in having a light sensor. It may not have been a predator-prey thing, but a precautionary thing, because in the early atmosphere of the Earth, lacking ozone, UV radiation was a certain killer - so there would be advantage in sensing how much light there was, so that the creature was not fried by radiation. Once this was developed, the use exploded, as there were many other advantages. And early eyes became more refined, from simply being sensors to being arrays of sensors, to being a very refined instrument adapted for survival on land. These adaptations tended to "explode" out of the equilibrium, until a new equalibrium was achieved.

As for God - Evolution, Punctuated Equilibrium, and everything "scientific" is entirely compatible and interlinked with a theology of a Creator, as no degree of science will ever be able to "know" what happened when the Universe was 10^-35 seconds old, and will never "know" how information was created in the first instance. And like Evolution, our beliefs in God is ever changing and becoming ever more refined and intergrated into our lives, as our morality and ethics are ever advancing towards truer freedom...


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

chowmainia said:


> Please correct me if i misunderstand you. so are you saying that evolution is an arguement against god because it explains the complexity of life through purely naturalistic means without the need for supernatural intervention (although it does not directly contradict the idea of supernatural intervention)?


That depends on the justification for the existence of god in the first place. One of the common (if lame) justifications for proposing the existence of gods is to explain things we don't understand. In such a case, every time science explains something using natural mechaisms, it weakens the case for the existence of that god. This is the famous "god of the gaps" and this is the god that needs to fear science.

Most modern theologicians have abandoned that argument, and simply say "fine, science can have its natural explanations, but that doesn't prove that our gods aren't *also* participating." Or even better, that gods *are* the laws of nature that result in these natural phenomnea, so no scientific advances are not going to make *our* gods disappear!



> so,theoretically, in order to completely rule out the existence of god, would one then have to be able to explain everything in the universe by naturalistic means?


Yes, in order to absolutely prove the non-existence of a god-of-the-gaps you'd have to explain all the phenomena in the universe. Obviously this is impossible, which is one of the reasons science makes no claims of disproving the existence of any gods.

But any sensible person, who, when taught that thunder is the noise caused by angry gods stomping their feet, and then discovering that thunder is the expansion of heated air caused by discharges of static electricity, will become skeptical when the priests who talked about angry gods stomping their feet say that eclipses are caused by gods forgetting to pay their power bills.

My point is not that science can answer all questions about nature, but that religion can't answer *any* questions about nature (or anything else, except perhaps the nature of the hopes, fears and psychological illnesses suffered by primitive cultures). And the continuous progress of science in developing a better understanding of the universe makes it more and more reasonable to assume that no supernatural explanations need to be considered for any phenomena.



> how do we determine when there is enough naturalistic explanations to confidently rule out god?


Since a theist can always claim that their god lives in the gaps of our knowledge, or is embodied by the natural processes we have described, there is never any way to convince someone who wants to believe that their god doesn't exist. It's like trying to prove that Santa Clause doesn't exist. Just because you can explain the toys under the tree without resort to the supernatural doesn't prove that the supernatural doesn't exist.

My point is that the addition of gods to the scenario adds no explanatory power, and adds an infinite amount of unexplained complexity (how do you explain the existence of gods? Where did they come from?!?). So it is not only the most egregious breach of parsimony, it serves no purpose to add gods to our theoretical framework. 




> i also found the journal where crick published his directed panspermia. i have included the abstract in an attachment


Good job finding that. It appears that he is promoting the completely untestable idea that aliens seeded earth with life.

One of the neat things about science is that we have no ultimate authorities. Winning a Nobel Prize will get people's attention, and they'll listen to your ideas, but the ideas will receive the same scrutiny regardless of who you are. You'll note that this crazy idea was published back in the 70's and it's certainly no more widely accepted today than it was then. In science, it doesn't matter who you are, all that matters is the evidence and logic supporting an idea.



> I am assuming, again correct me if i am wrong, that the context with which skeptical and faith is being used in your explanation is that being skeptical means "to believe according to the evidence" and faith means "to believe in the face of contradicting evidence" (as per your previous diagram). Is there good contradicting evidence against the existence of god


It depends on the kind of god you're talking about. All of science is effectively evidence against a "god-of-the-gaps" in that everything that was previously believed to be the province of magical gods and has now been shown to be due to natural phenomena leads by extension to the conclusion that such gods don't exist (although it does not, and effectively cannot absolutely prove this). The more modern type of god, who makes no claims about being the cause of natural phenomena (or does so only in that natural processes *are* the manifestations of the existence of gods) is not susceptible to contradictory evidence.

One of the things I love to ask theists is "what evidence would convince you that God does not exist?" It is very easy for me as an atheist to describe evidence that would convince me that God does exist, but I've never met a theist who will articulate how they could be convinced that they're wrong.

Because most modern theists have been trained to believe in a god for which there not only is no evidence, but for whom there can be no evidence, the complete lack of evidence for the existence of gods is not a problem. 

But I'd define faith as "belief without evidence" which is to say that beliefs held in the presence of contradictory evidence or beliefs held in the absence of evidence are both based on faith. So for most modern theists, there isn't contradictory evidence so much as absence of evidence, but the belief is still based on faith.



> Thanks for the warning. I will be sure to listen to these debates with a grain of salt. that's why i'm interested in these debates. cuz if either side tried to pull a fast one, the opposing guy is there to call him/her on it.


Not necessarily. Look at the Craig's debate history. He's paid by the creationists to tour the country doing these debates, and the dates are set up by local evangelical churches. The opponents are often hapless academics (usually grad students or biology faculty) that have no debating experience. When I was at the U of A, they tricked on of the most soft-spoken members of the philosophy department into coming to one of these things, stacked the audience by bringing in bus-loads from churches all around the provence, and then never even plugged in the philosophy prof's mic. If you review transcripts of these things, you'll find that on the occasions when the creationists get called on their factual inaccuracies, they don't take it out of their arguments in the subsequent debates... they'll try re-using the same lies over and over, knowing that most of the audience won't recognize the intellectual dishonesty being employed.

These folks are really the worst sort of deceitful anti-intellectual cretins imaginable. It's worth listening to their 'debates' as an exercise in critical thinking and as a tour-de-force in spin and obfuscation, but don't trust any of the biology you hear.

Cheers


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Wasn't it Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC) who said:



> If cows have gods, their gods look like cows.


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## MACenstein'sMonster (Aug 21, 2008)

Quick show of hands for all of those who didn't see this turning into a "Evolution vs Creation" thread?


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

MACenstein'sMonster said:


> Quick show of hands for all of those who didn't see this turning into a "Evolution vs Creation" thread?


It's all about Evolution vs. Creation - and nothing about the lengthy interlude between some seminal event hundreds of years ago and when the Vatican finally issues their "response". Soon we shall run into Godwin's Law, where Hitler will be blamed for either being a Creationist or an Evolutionist, or at least some user will be accused of some Hitlerlike attribute.

So that is one hand up, knowing that this thread was a Bullet Train running off the rails, across the Sea of Japan, and clear across Korea into Tsingtao... beejacon


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

Glipt said:


> I see (no pun intended) nothing simple about the biochemistry of light sensitivity. There is a staggeringly complex interaction of molecules, ions and electricity just to register the collision with a photon and transmit that information to the optic nerve, to say nothing of the process involved for the brain to interpret what that signal means.


You're looking at the complexity of the eye after billions of years of evolution. The biochemistry of light sensitivity is simple in that lots of proteins change configuration as the result of absorbing photons of various energies. These changes in configuration are often linked to signal transduction systems that regulate various aspects of cell behavior (including membrane depolarization in modern photoreceptor cells).

Lots of living organisms use various and sundry light-responsive bits of biochemistry to mediate physiological changes. There's nothing miraculous about any of it.

Cheers


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## chasMac (Jul 29, 2008)

MACenstein'sMonster said:


> Quick show of hands for all of those who didn't see this turning into a "Evolution vs Creation" thread?


Is it any wonder? It is likely that this debate will rage on forever, it is after all a matter of (eternal) life and death.


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

chasMac said:


> Is it any wonder? It is likely that this debate will rage on forever, it is after all a matter of (eternal) life and death.


Ya, too true. 

But this is one of the only debates that I have ever seen on this subject with any class. Makes one proud of the crowd that hangs around EhMac.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

+1 :clap:


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

bryanc said:


> Because most modern theists have been trained to believe in a god for which there not only is no evidence, but for whom there can be no evidence, the complete lack of evidence for the existence of gods is not a problem.


Bryan
On what grounds do you claim there is no evidence of God? Have you actually earnestly looked for it without prejudice and found none or is it simply the default claim of the atheist? I've seen volumes of evidence to support my faith.

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MACenstein'sMonster said:


> Quick show of hands for all of those who didn't see this turning into a "Evolution vs Creation" thread?


I think the point of the discussion I've been trying to have is to point out that creationism is alive and well, but has adapted to the modern scientific environment by cloaking itself in scientific jargon.

The evolution vs. intelligent design thing was just about making it clear that intelligent design is just creationism, and that it doesn't solve any scientific problems.

What worries me is that naive but intelligent people can be hoodwinked into thinking that Intelligent Design Theory is actually a valid scientific position, and that genuine credible research scientists are investigating this possibility. If enough people are tricked into believing this (by touring speakers like Craig, Behe, Dembski, and their ilk, or by books like "The Case for a Creator") the pressure on politicians (most of whom are, like the general public, essentially scientifically illiterate) to legislate creationism into the science curriculum will become irresistible. That (and direct political lobbying) is the primary goal of the Discovery Institute. They've been working at it for a few decades now and they've made significant advances (primarily in the US, but also around the world).

I can think of very little more offensive than people actively trying to sabotage the already very difficult task of teaching science. Which is why I am so intent on making the faults in ID clear.

Cheers


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## MACenstein'sMonster (Aug 21, 2008)

bryanc said:


> I think the point of the discussion I've been trying to have is to point out that creationism is alive and well, but has adapted to the modern scientific environment by cloaking itself in scientific jargon.
> 
> The evolution vs. intelligent design thing was just about making it clear that intelligent design is just creationism, and that it doesn't solve any scientific problems.
> 
> ...


I'm not a religious person, but some people need their faith. It keeps them going especially in tough times. Therefore, it'll be a never ending battle/discussion as some push one or the other beyond their own needs and try to force it upon others. But we all must do what we feel compelled to do. I take no side in this discussion really, as I know it doesn't matter ultimately.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

MacGuiver said:


> Bryan
> On what grounds do you claim there is no evidence of God? Have you actually earnestly looked for it without prejudice and found none or is it simply the default claim of the atheist? I've seen volumes of evidence to support my faith.
> 
> Cheers
> MacGuiver


Bryan is not postulating the existence of "god". The Burden of Proof is not on him. Burden of proof falls to those who do postulate the existence of something others cannot see.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> Bryan
> On what grounds do you claim there is no evidence of God? Have you actually earnestly looked for it without prejudice and found none or is it simply the default claim of the atheist? I've seen volumes of evidence to support my faith.
> 
> Cheers
> MacGuiver


I suspect you and I have different ideas about what constitutes evidence for the existence of gods. I have certainly given the topic a great deal of thought (I did a minor in philosophy as an undergrad, and this was the topic of a lot of reading and discussion). It seems obvious at the outset, that such an extraordinary claim (the existence of supernatural entities of any kind has to be considered the most extraordinary claim possible), extraordinary evidence would be required. For example, if you tell me it's raining where you are, I'd be inclined to believe it without requiring any more evidence than your word. If I thought you a dishonest sort, I might go so far as wanting to see a picture of the wet streets. But if you tell me you've got a dragon in your garage, I'm going to want evidence more compelling than a few scorch marks on the driveway.

As far as evidence for the existence of gods I'd be perfectly happy with the sorts of evidence reported to have occurred in the bible... having a burning bush talk to me, angles preforming miracles, etc. But I'd want to be convinced that it wasn't some simple trickery, so I'd want to see these miracles reproduced under controlled conditions. Of course, if there really is a god, and She really want's me to believe in Her, She'd have no trouble figuring out how to convince me (and, indeed, would be responsible for my skeptical nature in the first place, so, could've saved Herself the effort by simply making me more credulous to start with). When I was young and less well acquainted with world religions and the very sound anthropological/sociological/psychological evidence that religions are simply memetic viruses, I tried praying for evidence in the form of a dream. I asked that I be given the winning lottery numbers in a dream, with the deal being that I'd donate all the winnings to charity. Never had any dreams about lottery numbers.

Fortunately, as I matured, I realized that not only did I have no need for gods, everyone I've met who has come to this realization is better off free of these superstitions.

At this point, the only possible benefit to believing in god that I can imagine is for someone in a hopeless, horrible circumstance, but one in which their beliefs give them comfort.

Cheers

P.S. Let me ask you now, what evidence has convinced you of the existence of the Christian God, rather than Zeus, Shiva, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? And, more importantly, what evidence would convince you that your God does not exist?


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

rgray said:


> Bryan is not postulating the existence of "god". The Burden of Proof is not on him. Burden of proof falls to those who do postulate the existence of something others cannot see.


Nobody mentioned proof? Bryan said there is no evidence. I have no proof of God but for me, the evidence is substantial.

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> Nobody mentioned proof?


He doesn't really mean "proof" in the mathematical sense. In logic, the burden of evidence is on the claimant. By making the claim that god exists, you take on the burden of evidence for that claim.

As it is an extraordinary claim, you must provide extraordinary evidence. Even if you were able to provide such extraordinary evidence, it wouldn't necessarily prove that god exists, but it would then be the task of the skeptic to provide an adequate alternate explanation.

But I really am curious as to what you contend is evidence for the existence of the supernatural.

Let me help you out: feelings aren't evidence of anything but activity in your brain. Love, the look in your children's eyes, the amazing coincidences that happen, order and beauty in nature, near-death experiences and answered prayers all fail as evidence for the existence of the supernatural. Another classic that's been completely refuted is the fact that the physical constants of our universe fall within some very narrow constraints that allow the existence of matter and complex structures. If you've got something novel (especially something objective/empirical), I'm sure there are many here who'd love to hear it.

Cheers


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

MacGuiver said:


> Nobody mentioned proof? Bryan said there is no evidence. I have no proof of God but for me, the evidence is substantial.
> 
> Cheers
> MacGuiver


That's semantics. According to the OED, proof = evidence establishing a fact, while evidence = information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. The thesaurus says they are interchangeable.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

bryanc said:


> He doesn't really mean "proof" in the mathematical sense. In logic, the burden of evidence is on the claimant. By making the claim that god exists, you take on the burden of evidence for that claim.



Exactly. Thank you for your clarity.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

bryanc said:


> My point is not that science can answer all questions about nature, but that religion can't answer *any* questions about nature (or anything else, except perhaps the nature of the hopes, fears and psychological illnesses suffered by primitive cultures).


This however, shows that you do not understand that science and religion are harmonious, and work to explain different phenomena. Science can describe those things that can be observed or measured; while religion describes that of morality and ethics. Religion never set out to describe psychological illnesses - though in a state of ignorance, people would describe a person as being possessed by spirits - since religion does not describe that which is measurable or observable, and science was not developed enough to fill the information gap.

The Vatican was never "opposed" to Evolution - it has simply stated that Evolution and the corpus of work that has developed around it, is completely harmonious with established Church teachings. I think the story was the breakneck speed at which the Vatican made this pronouncement!

As for the fundamentalists, they are a different deal since they believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible - thus the Bible for them is the font of "scientific truth", rather than being the font of "moral truth". And when it comes to educaton, especially in the US, it is a real affliction that I beleive is caused by the want of separating God from the People, and thus, having school that is devoid of religious instruction. And without proper religious instruction, with people of all sorts reading whatever they want into the Bible without reference to a corpus of Church teachings, and devoid of precise study on the part of highly trained theologians and philosophers - one is bound to crack out looniness.

It would be the same in science, if scientists published whatever they wanted without peer review, without other people testing theories and looking for holes. Science would be as crackerjack as fundamentalism if these things were not in place, and thus, people would be all about "cold fusion" and "the Piltdown Man" if it wasn't for a system that science adopted - a system that parallels the system used within the Church in pursuit of the Truth.



> Good job finding that. It appears that he is promoting the completely untestable idea that aliens seeded earth with life.


Actually, it is entirely testable - we just have not advanced enough to test it. It is entirely possible, or probably, that the Earth was seeded with at least the basics to create life as we know it. Comets and other cosmic deritus brought the basic building blocks to Earth; amino acids are commonly found in interstellar gas clouds; we have a controversial meteorite that may have evidence of "life" and may have originated on Mars. 

Considering that man is still challenged with exploring the Earth itself, with new finds of species and life on a regular basis - it is just a matter of time before we find life elsewhere (or at least extinct life on say, Mars, where conditions on the surface are unfavourable for life as we know it).

So the fact stands that there is a possibility or probability that aliens could have seeded Earth - and to believe in this, or not to believe in this is more of a philisophical question until science can provide an answer one way or the other.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

EvanPitts said:


> ...it is just a matter of time before we find life elsewhere (or at least extinct life on say, Mars, where conditions on the surface are unfavourable for life as we know it).


What about silicon-based life...Oh, the Hall of Ages!


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

Macfury said:


> What about silicon-based life...Oh, the Hall of Ages!


You just never know what we will find in the future - some intrepid scientist may discover evidence that a brain once existed in the minds of a species called **** Sapiens Corrupticus, commonly known as "The Politician".

Silicon shares many of the same chemical properties as Carbon, so it is entirely possible; and I think the numerous chemical bonds that Sulphur has can also lead to some other kinds of hitherto unknown life. It wasn't long ago that they discovered life at the bottom of the ocean, huddled around volcanic vents - so everything is possible considering our paltry understanding of the Universe.

Star Trek may not be that far away - but I don't think there are any Klingons around. I think Estonians and Finns will be far more common in the grand scheme of things. Besides, Kingons will certainly avoid Earth once they get an earful of Hillary Clinton - that will scare them into having to return to the home world to cry to their mommies. (But then, Hillary may be too much for even The Dominion).


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

Bryan
If asking for winning lotto numbers is the extent of your research I think its safe to assume you've never researched the supernatural much further than the latest issue of Skeptics Magazine. I'd hope and assume your much more diligent seeking evidence in your study of biology than religion.

Why not Zeus? Pagan god, culturally insignificant. Not an historical figure. Yet to meet or hear testimony of a deaf man hearing, lame man walking or blind man seeing credited to Zeus.
Shiva? Same as Zeus
Flying Spaghetti Monster? Gives me heartburn. 

As for the evidence that I've found that convinces me of my faith, there's little use of me wasting time since you insist that miracles work like lab experiments. If it takes a lab experiment to convince you of God I can assure you, you'll die an atheist. One thing I will toss out is the miracles that occurred in Fatima, Portugal around 3 shepherd children in 1917. It was well documented, witnessed by thousands and much of the world media.

As for what proof you could provide to convince me there is no God? If you or someone else could invoke the name of the flying spaghetti monster and restore someone's sight or spontaneously heal someone of cancer, that would do it. Since Jesus is just another FSM, it should be possible to get the same results praying to it.

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Fascinating discussion, gentlemen and ladies. Followers of the FSM are known as Pastafarians (for what it's worth).


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> ...never researched the supernatural...


If god is so concerned about my believing in Her, surely she'd make some effort to reveal Herself, as opposed to hiding the evidence of Her existence.



> I'd hope and assume your much more diligent seeking evidence in your study of biology than religion.


I apply exactly the same rules of evidence to everything. In order to be evidence, it's got to be objective and reproducible under controlled circumstances.



> Why not Zeus? Pagan god, culturally insignificant. Not an historical figure.


:lmao:



> One thing I will toss out is the miracles that occurred in Fatima, Portugal around 3 shepherd children in 1917. It was well documented, witnessed by thousands and much of the world media.


The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".



> As for what proof you could provide to convince me there is no God? If you or someone else could invoke the name of the flying spaghetti monster and restore someone's sight or spontaneously heal someone of cancer, that would do it.


Um... wouldn't that be evidence that the FSM is also a god? I was looking for what you would take as evidence that Jesus was just a man (if he existed at all) and/or that the entity you call 'God' does not exist.

The point, of course, is that for the faithful, no such evidence can be conceived of, which proves that it is the faithful, and not the atheists who are closed-minded.



EvanPitts said:


> This however, shows that you do not understand that science and religion are harmonious, and work to explain different phenomena. Science can describe those things that can be observed or measured; while religion describes that of morality and ethics.


I understand that fine. I just don't think religion succeeds. I've never encountered a useful moral argument that is based on religion.

In fact, given the definition of morality commonly used in philosophy ("a code of behavior an agent applies to themselves when they are not constrained by external consequences"... i.e. your morals determine how you behave when you think no one is watching), most religions put people in a position where morality no longer pertains at all. If you believe you are continuously observed (both in thought and action) by an omniscient police officer/Judge, your good behavior can't be attributed to your morals... it's just self-interest.

One of the best arguments I've ever heard for the prevalence of religion in human cultural evolution is that it helps mitigate against the fact that most people don't develop beyond the second or third stage of moral development, and religion keeps people in line even if they're only at the first stage. Any culture that relied on its citizens developing to the fifth or sixth stage of moral development would descend into anarchy pretty quickly.

As Seneca said, "Religion is what the common people see as true, the wise people see as false, and the rulers see as useful."

Cheers


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

bryanc said:


> I apply exactly the same rules of evidence to everything. In order to be evidence, it's got to be objective and reproducible under controlled circumstances.


MacGuiver: Would God would expect a human made according to his design to apply different levels of proof to different classes of phenomena?


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

bryanc said:


> If god is so concerned about my believing in Her, surely she'd make some effort to reveal Herself, as opposed to hiding the evidence of Her existence.


If God wants mankind to have free will and a relationship with him based on mutual love, being as obvious as the sun in the sky would defeat that goal. You'd have no choice but to acknowledge him which would contravene your free will. Sorta like how everyone slows to 100km/h at the sight of a police cruiser on the 401. Many happily choose to follow the speed limit but most would be forcing themselves to slow down against what they really want to do.



> I apply exactly the same rules of evidence to everything. In order to be evidence, it's got to be objective and reproducible under controlled circumstances.


Which is why no evidence will convince you. 



> The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".


I don't need a lab experiment and a peer reviewed study to convince me of all truths. I believe my wife and children love me yet I haven't had the need to subject her to a scientific investigation to come to that conclusion. I "believe" they love me based on evidence but I have no means to measure, chart or graph the data. I view God much the same.



> Um... wouldn't that be evidence that the FSM is also a god? I was looking for what you would take as evidence that Jesus was just a man (if he existed at all) and/or that the entity you call 'God' does not exist.


No, it would simply prove that what I claim miraculous and the atheist claims unknown mechanism of the body, mind over matter, power of positive thinking etc. etc. is really just that. We know for fact the spaghetti monster is the invention of some childish atheists to ridicule people. If all that Christendom credits to the miraculous is actually natural, your beloved monster should be able to do no less proving my God is just another childish invention.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

brianc said:


> I apply exactly the same rules of evidence to everything. In order to be evidence, it's got to be objective and reproducible under controlled circumstances.





MacGuiver said:


> Which is why no evidence will convince you.


If it doesn't meet those standards, it isn't evidence. It is 'anecdote'.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> If God wants mankind to have free will and a relationship with him based on mutual love, being as obvious as the sun in the sky would defeat that goal.


How so? Does the fact that most of the people with whom I have relationships obviously exist make the relationship less important? I don't understand how hiding Her existence from us makes having a 'relationship' with God somehow easier/better.




> Which is why no evidence will convince you.


No. I simply require the same sort of evidence I require for convincing me of any similar claim.



> I don't need a lab experiment and a peer reviewed study to convince me of all truths.


As I said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't require the same sorts of evidence to convince me of things I know are possible, and common as I do to convince me of unusual, extraordinary, or even fundamentally paradigm-shifting contentions.

Christians contend the most extraordinary things are true without even the most feeble evidence in support of this contention. The only reason so many people are willing to believe this is that they (for their own personal reasons) *want* it to be true.

Of course, I can understand wanting to be the favored child of an enormously powerful magical sky-daddy, but, I have to say, if I were making up imaginary friends, I think I could do a better job WRT the whole sado-masochistic passive-aggressive power-tripping thing. At least the FSM doesn't go into genocidal rages when someone pisses him off.



> No, it would simply prove that what I claim miraculous and the atheist claims unknown mechanism of the body, mind over matter, power of positive thinking etc. etc. is really just that. We know for fact the spaghetti monster is the invention of some childish atheists to ridicule people. If all that Christendom credits to the miraculous is actually natural, your beloved monster should be able to do no less proving my God is just another childish invention.


I see... so the whole 'western medicine' thing - with all that curing people based on a scientific understanding of disease - doesn't impress you?

Cheers


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

> I see... so the whole 'western medicine' thing - with all that curing people based on a scientific understanding of disease - doesn't impress you?


Sure its impressive. Did I say it isn't? Unless you're saying the FSM miraculously created western medicine then I haven't a clue what the heck this has to do with anything I said?


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> Sure its impressive. Did I say it isn't? Unless you're saying the FSM miraculously created western medicine then I haven't a clue what the heck this has to do with anything I said?


Modern science (or, more appropriately, the engineering based on it) routinely performs what was considered miraculous only a few years ago.

If you look at unexplained phenomena, call it a miracle, and then say it's evidence for the existence of your god, firstly, I don't see how it's evidence for the Christian god, as opposed to Allah, Zeus, Odin, or any of the thousands of other gods that humans have made up over the centuries, and secondly, you're simply worshiping a god-of-the-gaps. We don't understand all phenomena now, and we may never understand some phenomena, but our lack of understanding isn't evidence for the supernatural.

Perhaps most importantly of all, if we, as a society, accept "god did it" as an adequate explanation for what we don't understand, we're not going to make much progress in developing a real understanding of things that may be very important in taking control of our future.

Cheers


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## Sonal (Oct 2, 2003)

MacGuiver said:


> Why not Zeus? Pagan god, culturally insignificant. Not an historical figure. Yet to meet or hear testimony of a deaf man hearing, lame man walking or blind man seeing credited to Zeus.
> Shiva? Same as Zeus


Shiva doesn't really work that way.... it's not really his thing.

But he's pretty culturally significant to roughly a billion people.


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

> Modern science (or, more appropriately, the engineering based on it) routinely performs what was considered miraculous only a few years ago.
> 
> If you look at unexplained phenomena, call it a miracle, and then say it's evidence for the existence of your god, firstly, I don't see how it's evidence for the Christian god, as opposed to Allah, Zeus, Odin, or any of the thousands of other gods that humans have made up over the centuries, and secondly, you're simply worshiping a god-of-the-gaps. We don't understand all phenomena now, and we may never understand some phenomena, but our lack of understanding isn't evidence for the supernatural.


:yawn:I know this is the atheistic response that gets trotted out everytime someone claims a miracle and an atheist doesn't want to believe it but has no rational explanation to refute it. I'm saying prove to me its just a gap in our knowledge by simply reproducing a miracle invoking the FSM. Feel free to try Zeus, Odin and the gang too. If its just a natural phenomena, pray in his name and heal a blind man or someone of cancer and I'll join your cause.



> Perhaps most importantly of all, if we, as a society, accept "god did it" as an adequate explanation for what we don't understand, we're not going to make much progress in developing a real understanding of things that may be very important in taking control of our future.


Thats just atheistic elitist hooey. Many if not most of the greatest medical and scientific discoveries in history and in the present day are accredited to theists. For the record, there's no shortage of professed atheists which wouldn't exactly top the scales on an IQ test. You need to get over your idea that atheism is somehow the realm of the intellectual.


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

Sonal said:


> Shiva doesn't really work that way.... it's not really his thing.
> 
> But he's pretty culturally significant to roughly a billion people.


I'm not saying he's culturally insignificant, simply he's insignificant in my culture so Shiva isn't even on the radar.

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

MacGuiver said:


> Many if not most of the greatest medical and scientific discoveries in history and in the present day are accredited to theists.


:yawn: Another unsupported statement that definitely needs a reference to have any credibility.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> I'm saying prove to me its just a gap in our knowledge by simply reproducing a miracle invoking the FSM.


If you can reproduce a 'miracle' by invoking *any* god, I'll be interested. Until then I'll see your anecdote and raise you a completely untestable hypothesis.

Cheers


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> For the record, there's no shortage of professed atheists which wouldn't exactly top the scales on an IQ test.


"for the record"? Is this meant to imply you have some data? Because all the data I've seen says that religious adherence is strongly negatively correlated with education in general, and scientific education in particular. I've not seen a statistical analysis of relgiosity vs. IQ, but I'll bet you it's been done and that the correlation is significantly negative (I'd bet a beer that the r^2 is > 0.8, which, for social sciences, is pretty damn good). Perhaps someone in the social sciences can dig up some actual data to address this point?

Obviously, among the millions of people who are not religious adherents you're going to find individuals that are all over the spectrum WRT any particular trait you care to measure. What's your point?

Cheers

[Edit:] I couldn't resist, and just a few seconds of googling yielded this recent publication in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence:

Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations
Richard Lynn, John Harvey, Helmuth Nyborg
Intelligence 2009 volume 37 pages 11-15. 

Abstract: 
Evidence is reviewed pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief in the United States and Europe. It is shown that intelligence measured as psychometric g is negatively related to religious belief. We also examine whether this negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief is present between nations. We ﬁnd that in a sample of 137 countries the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God is 0.60.




So I was off on the correlation. Personally, I'm very skeptical of data like this, but the people in the social sciences seem to make a big deal out of it.

Cheers


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

bryanc said:


> Perhaps someone in the social sciences can dig up some actual data to address this point?


Atheists score 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, *3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions*. The intelligence–religiosity nexus: A representative study of white adolescent Americans _Intelligence_ (2008) 37(1), 81-93

For an interesting comparison, in our study of marijuana use and IQ, heavy marijuana users scored approx 4 points lower than controls. Current and former marijuana use: preliminary findings of a longitudinal study of effects on IQ in young adults _CMAJ_ (2002) 166 (7) 877


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

rgray said:


> For an interesting comparison, in our study of marijuana use and IQ, heavy marijuana users scored approx 4 points lower than controls. Current and former marijuana use: preliminary findings of a longitudinal study of effects on IQ in young adults _CMAJ_ (2002) 166 (7) 877


So you're saying that, on average, an atheist pot head is smarter than a theist?!?

I know several pot heads who'll find that amusing... of course, they find their toenails pretty amusing on occasion.

Cheers


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

bryanc said:


> So you're saying that, on average, an atheist pot head is smarter than a theist?!?


 Now you're trying to get me in trouble. 

The numbers are what they are... feel free to form your own conclusions... 

(In fairness, SD for IQ is 15 points)

Now where did I leave my toenails... :clap: :clap: oh yeah, there they are - right on top of my toes... Cool!


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

rgray said:


> Now you're trying to get me in trouble.
> 
> The numbers are what they are... feel free to form your own conclusions...
> 
> ...


You left out this little nugget.


> *Atheists were third highest in the study overall, behind Jews and Anglicans.* [6] "I'm not saying that believing in God makes you dumber. My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical," says the professor.


Seems the smartest folk are Jewish or Anglican.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

So back to the Vatican for a moment. I've often wondered, when they elect a new pope and release the white smoke, does it mean they've found an infallible candidate, or does the candidate only become infallible once they become pope? When speaking on matters Ex Cathedra, of course.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

My understanding: the Pope declares himself infallible only on certain matters and announces this before his pronouncement. Only the Pope has the right to declare something infallible, and this is a power granted to all Popes by God upon taking office, not beforehand.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Interesting. So how did they get God to agree to sign these powers into the contract, I wonder?


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

fjnmusic said:


> Interesting. So how did they get God to agree to sign these powers into the contract, I wonder?


This is how Jesus set up the Church before he died.



> Peter acknowledged him as "... the Messiah, the son of the living God”. Christ responded by saying: "... you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.... He added:* “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”.*


So basically Jesus was saying "I'm leaving you in charge and I'm giving you authority to speak for me on earth to guide the church." 
There's an unbroken line of popes from Benedict right back to Peter and yes the pope is only considered infallible when speaking on matters of faith and morals and he declares it so. 

Cheers
MacGuiver


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Which brings up another question. We continually quote these things ol' JC said, word for word, and read some pretty specific meaning into what seem to be some pretty metaphorical coded references, but we forget that these word-for-word transcriptions _can't_ be what JC said, since English didn't even exist yet. Is it possible that the meaning in Hebrew or Greek may have been somewhat different?


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

MacGuiver said:


> This is how Jesus set up the Church before he died.
> 
> So basically Jesus was saying "I'm leaving you in charge and I'm giving you authority to speak for me on earth to guide the church."
> There's an unbroken line of popes from Benedict right back to Peter and yes the pope is only considered infallible when speaking on matters of faith and morals and he declares it so.
> ...


Another interesting point. It seems the doctrine of infallibility didn't come about until the First Vatican Council in 1870, so unless JC was making a guest appearance, this concept couldn't have come from Him at all.

What is Papal Infallibility? Examining the Catholic Doctrine of Papal Infallibility


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

fjnmusic said:


> Interesting. So how did they get God to agree to sign these powers into the contract, I wonder?


The Pope acquired those powers the night before the Battle Of Milvian Bridge, when God told Constantine to paint the sign of the cross on the shields of the army.

The "power" was an implicit power developed to stem the tides of various heresies - and was only made into a "real" power as a result of the First Vatican Council. But it is only logical, since the Pope is the absolute head of the theocracy, and thus, what he says goes (or you're out)...


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

fjnmusic said:


> Which brings up another question. We continually quote these things ol' JC said, word for word, and read some pretty specific meaning into what seem to be some pretty metaphorical coded references, but we forget that these word-for-word transcriptions _can't_ be what JC said, since English didn't even exist yet. Is it possible that the meaning in Hebrew or Greek may have been somewhat different?


On this one, the Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and whatever dialect you can imagine have been carefully compared. The differences are minuscule and actually help to bolster the accuracy of the text, rather than minimize it.


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## Glipt (Aug 7, 2003)

bryanc said:


> You're looking at the complexity of the eye after billions of years of evolution. The biochemistry of light sensitivity is simple in that lots of proteins change configuration as the result of absorbing photons of various energies. These changes in configuration are often linked to signal transduction systems that regulate various aspects of cell behavior (including membrane depolarization in modern photoreceptor cells).
> 
> Lots of living organisms use various and sundry light-responsive bits of biochemistry to mediate physiological changes. There's nothing miraculous about any of it.
> 
> Cheers


No I'm not. I'm looking at the complexity of light sensitivity which had to exist "billions of years ago" for the eye to reach its current state of "complexity".

Origins of Helix?Coil Switching in a Light-Sensitive Peptide? - Biochemistry (ACS Publications)

I see nothing simple about this. It may be that I can understand it, but it doesn't make it simple. Indeed I understand your well constructed sentence quoted above, but if I repeated it to most people they wouldn't know what I was talking about. For someone who has studied auto mechanics, Henry Fords first internal combustion engine my seem simple. However there is no doubt that it was designed. In general when we observe something beyond a certain level of complexity we infer design. A cave most likely came about by natural means. A modern home most likely was designed by someone. Over the years that design has gradually improved in small incremental steps (or evolved) to conform to modern building codes etc. If I found an ancient arrowhead, I would have an easier time imagining it was formed by purely natural processes than the grass that it was found under. Just because something is designed doesn't mean it should be considered a 'Miracle'.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

Glipt: That's a link that should be changed.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

Glipt said:


> In general when we observe something beyond a certain level of complexity we infer design.


Yes. But the central lesson of evolution is that that inference is incorrect WRT biological systems. Any system that exhibits the properties of variation and selective reproductive success will yield complexity and apparent design without any intervention (intelligent or otherwise).

Cheers


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

bryanc said:


> Yes. But the central lesson of evolution is that that inference is incorrect WRT biological systems. Any system that exhibits the properties of variation and selective reproductive success will yield complexity and apparent design without any intervention (intelligent or otherwise).
> 
> Cheers


Besides, the 'inference of design' vis a vis complexity is just another untested (untestable?) hypothesis. There is no data to confirm that complexity requires design.


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## MacGuiver (Sep 6, 2002)

bryanc said:


> Yes. But the central lesson of evolution is that that inference is incorrect WRT biological systems. Any system that exhibits the properties of variation and selective reproductive success will yield complexity and apparent design without any intervention (intelligent or otherwise).
> 
> Cheers


I have one question regarding this. If it all hinges on reproductive success, why would we no see creatures with forming organs or tissues that really do nothing at all but they're still there because they haven't impaired the creatures reproductive success. If its as random as you say, I would think this should be very common in all living creatures.

Thanks
MacGuiver


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

MacGuiver said:


> I have one question regarding this. If it all hinges on reproductive success, why would we no see creatures with forming organs or tissues that really do nothing at all but they're still there because they haven't impaired the creatures reproductive success. If its as random as you say, I would think this should be very common in all living creatures.


I would think such tissues would begin to show up in humans in particular, since the environment no longer weeds out the weaker of us. Question is, what EXACTLY would we be looking for?


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Interesting direction this thread's going in. I suggest that the environment might well be only temporarily suspended as a factor for weeding out bad genes re humanity. All we need to see is mass contagion or the devastating effects of high-yield, high-magnitude nuclear or biological war; such massive setbacks would mean, for the vast percentage of earth's remaining human population, a return to a far more primitive, mercenary (and probably preventative) health care regimen, and a return to the kinds of life spans our predecessors considered normal.

The environment is, at all times, waiting in the wings.

Should we manage to curtail our worst instincts as tribalist, sectarian peoples, we could avoid nuclear or chemical war. Although that's bound to be tough, seeing how man nations are in the nuclear club now and how many thousands of nuclear weapons exist. The world has seen some nasty brushes with this stuff within the past several decades and few people really want to see what happens when we go full bore with it.

But contagion is another matter altogether. That is where I think the environment could really surprise us. Contagion could really mess up our ideas of progress, not to mention starkly challenge notions of civil obedience.

In any case, my guess is that we don't see the development of new organs in our evolutionary progress because it's such a slow and deliberate process that the timelines involved are beyond human grasp. You would have to look at how the species has changed using stepping stones of millennia, not mere hundred-year segments.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

Max: I was wondering if humans may be capable of passing on small clumps of cells that neither help nor hurt the organism. Since most humans procreate, it's possible that the clump could be passed on. 

But what would constitute proof that this is the failed formation of a new adaptive organ? Four cells in the same place, three generations running?


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

MF: If we do pass on "clumps of cells" (a genetic strain, perhaps?), I wouldn't be surprised... and yes, those strains would have to prove their utility over a long period of time.... and should they be an evolutionary dead end, they would eventually go away.... much like a vestigal tail is modern evidence of something which might have worked for a species eons ago and is still working its way through the system as a whole.

But really, I don't know. The only thing I'm convinced of is the fact of the timelines involved being quite boggling to the layperson... and, I'd add, to biologists themselves.


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

Max: I'm not sure anything "goes away" because it provides no function. I suspect that the process is more along this line--organisms with smaller or less developed versions of the same worthless organ or "clump" can freely pass along this info without harming their ability to survive and procreate.


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Yes, thanks for the clarification, MF. I agree with you on that. Some traits we inherent are largely neutral in terms of their ultimate impact on our survival as a species.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

MacGuiver said:


> I have one question regarding this. If it all hinges on reproductive success, why would we no see creatures with forming organs or tissues that really do nothing at all but they're still there because they haven't impaired the creatures reproductive success. If its as random as you say, I would think this should be very common in all living creatures.


Good question! What you're talking about are "evolutionary vestiges" and they _are_ quite common. Whales have vestigial hind legs, you and I had tails as embryos but only a vestigial coccyx as adults. We still have the muscles necessary for rotating our ears (to help localize the direction a sound is coming from) but our ears no longer rotate, so these muscles don't serve any useful purpose anymore. Birds have all the genes necessary to make teeth, but they don't use them any more (but they can be triggered with the right signaling molecules, so the expression "rare as hen's teeth" isn't quite accurate when being used to describe things that don't exist). The list of such vestiges is almost endless, and all of it is compelling evidence for evolution (and strong evidence against intelligence being involved).

It's also very common for organs or structures that have become less/unimportant for the fitness of an organism to be 'co-opted' to new functions (often referred to as "exaptation"). This happens very frequently at the molecular level, especially when gene duplication events result in redundant copies of genes. One of the best anatomical examples that people like to talk about is the vermiform appendix in humans, which is a vestige of an organ that our purely herbivorous ancestors used to digest cellulose, but which we now use as a refuge for beneficial gut bacteria.

Glad to see you asking questions that indicate you're thinking about the process more clearly now.

Cheers


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

I think this response to an invitation to debate ID is really good.

A brief summary:



> Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

Canadian scientists figure it all out: we're just a bunch of chemicals.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

bgw said:


> I think this response to an invitation to debate ID is really good.


If you were a mediocre lab scientist like Behe, and you could choose between doing the lecture circuit with the "Discovery Institute" and living it up on the church's dime, or working to meet the rigorous tests of science in the lab, which would you choose?

Cheers


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

bryanc said:


> If you were a mediocre lab scientist like Behe, and you could choose between doing the lecture circuit with the "Discovery Institute" and living it up on the church's dime, or working to meet the rigorous tests of science in the lab, which would you choose?
> 
> Cheers


I once worked in a building that also housed the offices of a major hardcore Christian fundamentalist group. Two things drove them: money and control.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

CubaMark said:


> Canadian scientists figure it all out: we're just a bunch of chemicals.


Canada finally catches up to Batman! Holy pile of chemicals, Robin!


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

I always thought we were a barrel of monkeys. Hmph.

I like this thread.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

*Tibetans developed genes to help them adapt to life at high elevations*





> Researchers have long wondered why the people of the Tibetan Highlands can live at elevations that cause some humans to become life-threateningly ill -- and a new study answers that mystery, in part, by showing that through thousands of years of natural selection, those hardy inhabitants of south-central Asia evolved 10 unique oxygen-processing genes that help them live in higher climes.


(ScienceDaily)


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