Denial of Evolution VI.

[Robittybob1]

I understand and I'm glad you clarified.
It was important to my dad. He taught me to pray.
And he died when I was nine.
I won't lie. I sometimes feel closer to him through following what he taught.
But, he was all about love and not teachings about hell.
Fire and brimstone though, yeah, not a good teaching method to me either.

But just understand how a statement like that can seem dismissive to someone like me.

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes and all that jazz...

Who can argue against that! I'd walk in your shoes even if they don't fit.

 

[Trippy]

I'm not saying you were coerced or abused to believe in god, only that you might be conditioned so, it's very common. I call this a form of non-physical abuse, especially when it includes an element of fear (of hell). I think it's abusive to condition children that there is a being watching you all the time, who will send you to a very bad place if you behave wrongly.

It is arguably emotional abuse.
Is there a difference between "Believe in god or face eternity burning in the fiery pits of hell" and "Don't force me to choose between you kids and your stepmum, or I will choose your stepmum"?

 

[wegs]

Who can argue against that! I'd walk in your shoes even if they don't fit.

Aw, that is a sweet saying.

It is arguably emotional abuse.
Is there a difference between "Believe in god or face eternity burning in the fiery pits of hell" and "Don't force me to choose between you kids and your stepmum, or I will choose your stepmum"?

Lol I know. But here's the thing. If ppl are only following God out of fear, then i wonder if they understand the faith they supposedly believe in. There are Christians who wear their faith like an albatross. What a drag that would be.

Hey everybody!
We could get into the teachings on purgatory for kicks and giggles!

I'm joking!!!


Anyways...There are good and bad elements in every segment of society.

 

[leopold]

It was important to my dad. He taught me to pray.
And he died when I was nine.
I won't lie. I sometimes feel closer to him through following what he taught.

then you go right on doing it wegs, to hell with these people AND their opinions.
it certainly WILL NOT lessen you as a person.

to claim that wegs parents are abusers is simply unbelievable.
disgusting actually.

 

[wellwisher]

DNA includes a double helix of water, which is well known, but left out, so we can do magic tricks and appeal to the atheist god of chaos for chance. This is more than oversight.

Yeah, that statement is pure bullshit. The DNA molecule is a double helix, water does not form a double helix. The "magic tricks and appeal to the atheist god of chance" stuff is just drivel, non-sense, garbage, the ravings of the wild loon.

The water forms the double helix because the DNA evolved in water. The quote below, if we ignore water, would be attributed to the god of chaos, who can magically cause the DNA bonding to get weaker.

In DNA, the bases are involved in hydrogen-bonded pairing, close to the 0.28 nm bond length found between hydrogen-bonded water molecules in liquid water. The aqueous environment causes a slight lengthening (~1%) of the DNA hydrogen bonds, and weakens them significantly (~50%)

.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

to claim that wegs parents are abusers is simply unbelievable. disgusting actually.

Huh??? If a parent threatens to merely whip his kid with a belt if he does something really dreadful like shooting at his neighbor's dogs or joyriding in a stolen car, our culture calls that abuse. But if a parent threatens him with eternal damnation in Hell for merely refusing to believe in a stupid fucking fairytale that is responsible for more wars than almost any other cause, that is not abuse?

You're going to have to explain this. It's religion that's "disgusting."

Or maybe you don't have a TV so you don't know what the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews are doing to each other in the name of their imaginary "God." The same damn one!!!

 

[spidergoat]

then you go right on doing it wegs, to hell with these people AND their opinions.
it certainly WILL NOT lessen you as a person.

to claim that wegs parents are abusers is simply unbelievable.
disgusting actually.

Lots of parents do things out of love that I would call abusive, like spanking. It doesn't mean they are bad people, just misguided.

 

[gmilam]

then you go right on doing it wegs, to hell with these people AND their opinions.
it certainly WILL NOT lessen you as a person.

to claim that wegs parents are abusers is simply unbelievable.
disgusting actually.

In light of the current conversation, does anyone else find it ironic that Leopold is damning people to hell?

 

[rpenner]

the primary question of the conference was can the process of speciation be applied to the grander scale of macroevolution and their conclusion was no, it can't.

Since leopold has been corrected on this misunderstanding so many times in this thread and others, at this point I think it's reasonable to characterize the comments above either as an outright lie, or as some sort of willful delusion. The only other possibility is that he simply lacks the raw intelligence necessary to properly parse the wealth of additional information and perspective that has been placed before him.

Really, at least one of these things has to be true.

So BAD, MAD or SAD, is it?

It's a useful trilemma and while it may be a false trilemma (analogous to the more common case of false dilemma) it is up to leopold to present evidence and actually argue for a fourth possibility. To do anything else would simply ignore the first law of holes and more firmly cement in the minds of all readers is that leopold is the opposite of a reliable conduit of fact and reasoned argument in biology. Distinguishing between the three hypotheses is largely pointless over the internet where questions of sincerity, intent and identity can't be reliably verified within the bounds of etiquette and each is completely sufficient to explain why leopold presents such trivial falsehoods at the expense of his own reputation.

just what are you ragging on me about now rpenner?

As this is a science forum on a science board, you should trivially realize that the most parsimonious hypothesis as to the subject of [POST=3090769]post #1480[/POST], a post without any quotes, would be agreement with [POST=3090758]post #1479[/POST] by Rav which calls out for criticism one line of your [POST=3090626]post #1473[/POST]. To do otherwise would be a sign of fundamental incompetence in reading comprehension, some sort of delusion of grandeur that every post mentioning you must be addressed to you, or willful deceit and trolling. (That's SAD, MAD or BAD in my shorthand trilemma hypothesis to explain why you post trivially untrue things.)

leopold does not deny he is BAD/MAD/SAD nor does leopold contest his reputation in presenting fact and reasoned argument is very poor nor does he present an alternate explanation for this phenomenon which would result in a rejection of the hypothesized trilemma. leopold apparently concedes his reputation is too low for him to assert scientific claims without support. Indeed, his claims have no support and his sources contradict him.

Even Roger Lewin writes in his 1980 Research News article that "Changes above the species level - involving the origin of new species and the establishment of higher taxonomic patterns - are known as macroevolution." -- thus for Roger Lewin, speciation is macroevolution.

At no point was speciation dismissed as a part of macroevolution -- a nonsense assertion since any macroevolutionary change is speciation as per Darwin's title: On the Origin of Species and the definition of macroevolution. You literally are claiming the paleontologists were rallying in the 1980's against common descent with modification when the big news was the tempo of macroevolutionary change in a particular population was more variable than traditionally assumed.

i can only assume WHY their conclusion was no,

"No" is not a conclusion -- it's an answer to a question. You fail to state what the question was and therefore have not allowed your reader to know what the topic of discussion was, let alone the conclusion. Nor do you say who "they" refers to. "They" wasn't all biologists. "They" wasn't even a majority of researchers spoken to in a certain 1980 paleontological conference. "They" turned out to be reporter Roger Lewin's best guess of what a majority of paleontologists at the conference would say, and was refuted as a consensus opinion by letters written by scientists and published in the journal Science. So what is this Roger Lewin citation at issue? I'm guessing that you mean the following one-liner:

The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.

The emphasized part indicates that even Roger Lewin recognizes he is not talking about a consensus opinion. But speciation is not a "mechanism" underlying microevolution. By definition, every speciation event is a macroevolutionary phenomenon and no "mechanism" of any kind. So Roger Lewin's personal misunderstanding of the 1980 conference published as a "Research News" piece for the journal Science in 1980. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/210/4472/883.extract
The big question of the conference of Macroevolution (held by the Field Museum of Natural History, October 16-18, 1980) was there such a thing as a macroevolutionary pattern (not mechanism) that could not be studied with the tools of genetics, development, mutation and the adaptive filter of natural selection. See T.J.M. Schopf, "Macroevolution: The Fifth Dimension?" Paleobiology Vol. 6, No. 4 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 380-382

and i assume it was because of the state of the fossil record.

Making this assumption just reinforces the folly of relying on you as a source of fact and reliable arguments. If you want to know what evidence a scientist holds as worthy for swaying minds on a scientific topic, you read his peer-review scientific articles. This you have not done, so your assumption is in a vacuum of ignorance and apropos of nothing.

this assumption is apparently valid because gould asserts essentially the same when he speaks of "functional disparity" in the record.

Since Gould does not come to the conclusion that speciation is not macroevolution, it's irrelevant what you think "functional disparity" means in this context. It just relates to variability of morphology within a clade. But as in the case of dogs, high "functional disparity" does not necessarily indicate the variability is an indicator of distinct species.

That's a refinement, not a rebuttal. A similar refinement would be an analysis of children's books in a library being refined from counting how many times each book is checked out to making the observation that books like "Santa and me", "The Big Book of Ghosts" and "Easter Egg Ideas" have strongly modulated rates of usage in certain times of year.

There was no response to this discussion of the principle of correspondence and how approximately true synopses of data remain approximately true even when better synopses become available.

The rhythm changes of stasis (slow change) and punctuation (rapid change) are against a time scale of millions of years or tens of thousands of generations, so the assumption of stepwise change in Darwin's theory and the Modern evolutionary synthesis is nowhere discarded.

speciation wasn't discarded but they had no conclusion on how much of this speciation applied to macroievolution.

Incorrect. All speciation is macroevolution. Microevolution, on the other hand, is change in allele frequencies in a population that do not result in speciation.

again we come back to gould and his comment about the record in general.

Be specific. Gould isn't quoted in mentioning "functional disparity" in Roger Lewin's article.

he said that this disparity occurs throughout much of the record.

Which is not germane to the discussion since neither Roger Lewin nor Stephen Jay Gould claimed speciation was a mechanism or not a part of macroevolution.

But you don't base your claims on the scientific papers accepted today, nor on the totality of scientific papers that came out of one particular conference, nor on the demonstrably unreliable write-up of the conference by one reporter, but only on an alleged memory of a claim that was nowhere in that unreliable write-up.

and you know this how?
i suppose you have a transcript of the conference on hand.

Roger Lewin's unreliability is demonstrated when he writes stuff that doesn't parse as sensible and when people say they don't hold the opinions Roger Lewin attributes to them. So we have a variety of evidence, from alternate coverage of the conference by actual scientists, from the papers that were presented at and written after the conference, from people writing letters to Science complaining that Roger Lewin didn't do justice in his reporting, and from direct contradiction from his named sources. See "Another creationist out-of-context quote" and [POST=3082432]Post #497[/POST].

The report did not make the nonsense claims that macroevolution (speciation) was not macroevolution -- no one who understood the factual pattern of common descent with modification could honestly make that claim. But you did make that claim:

the primary question of the conference was can the process of speciation be applied to the grander scale of macroevolution and their conclusion was no, it can't.

Thus the SAD/MAD/BAD trilemma is not an ad hominem fallacious attack on why all your posts are rubbish, but a hypothesis without discussed alternative on why historically so many of your posts have been rubbish. (Like accusing people of re-writing historical documents which didn't match with your claims.) It's pointing to an area where we think you could possibly personally improve.

where have i done this, show me the post.

Sigh. Just because you are acting like you are losing your mind is no reason to suspect we forget your wildly inappropriate behavior.
This charge isn't original to me, it was made at least as long ago as [POST=3082141]AlexG's post #439[/POST]. Then in [POST=3082323]post #489[/POST], you demonstrated this pattern again. (This is a repeat of your claim from [POST=3079310]#195[/POST], [POST=3079359]#198[/POST], [POST=3079446]#205[/POST], and [POST=3079521]#212[/POST].) As James R points out in [POST=3082558]#510[/POST] and Rav make a video for you in [POST=3082590]post #517[/POST] you were complaining that someone edited out a page number "884" that you mistakenly included in your [POST=2716879]2011 enshrinement of the Roger Lewin article[/POST] because you were too lazy to edit the PDF-to-text translation to remove unnecessary hyphenations and material from other than the column you wanted to extract.

If your problems allow it, it has been recommended in the past that you read and study the evidence for macroevolutionary change and our current understanding of it so your posts would seem more informed. To date, I've seen no evidence that you took us up on this trivial challenge for someone with college-level reading skills.

If you like, you can even quote any whole paragraph from it and ask further questions. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ (8 pages + Glossary)

You have many thousands of posts on this forum that you force us to read because you are too lazy to actual state your position in a logically coherent and well-reasoned essay. But you ignore our attempts to get you to read good scientific material. Do you have a vested interest in seeming ignorant?

 

[wegs]

Huh??? If a parent threatens to merely whip his kid with a belt if he does something really dreadful like shooting at his neighbor's dogs or joyriding in a stolen car, our culture calls that abuse. But if a parent threatens him with eternal damnation in Hell for merely refusing to believe in a stupid fucking fairytale that is responsible for more wars than almost any other cause, that is not abuse?

You're going to have to explain this. It's religion that's "disgusting."

Or maybe you don't have a TV so you don't know what the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews are doing to each other in the name of their imaginary "God." The same damn one!!!

What u describe, indeed sounds dreadful. But I didn't have anything like that type of upbringing.
If anything, I remember him praying with me as a little girl. it really wasn't bad at all.
I understand why you think as u do, Fraggle.
I see the same things u see.

But know that not all Christians are brainwashed beings.

 

[James R]

look at this thread, you can't even say "i don't believe such and such" without being accused of "being in denial".

This entire thread has been about people saying "I believe such and such" and people responding with "Well, there are actually no reasonable grounds for holding that belief". And when you're shown that the opposite of what you believe must be true, yet you go on insisting that what you believe is true instead, that's when you're in denial.

the article from science i posted alluded to the lack of data concerning evo, pay close attention how these posters address this fact.

I heartily endorse this advice!

I urge posters to pay close attention to exactly what leopold has presented and how he has presented it, and also to how more knowledgable posters have addressed leopold's arguments. This thread, as I said before, is a textbook example of how this sort of thing should be done. It's a triumph for the evolutionists here.

frankly i don't see how we can even discuss this matter without an adequate definition of life.

I think we can all agree that things that have DNA are or have been "alive". That's enough for the purposes of this dicussion, surely.

the primary question of the conference was can the process of speciation be applied to the grander scale of macroevolution and their conclusion was no, it can't.
my internet is being upgraded as we speak, gotta go for awhile until its done.

Macroevolution is speciation.

If you think it isn't, then tell us what you think macroevolution is.

 

[leopold]

You're going to have to explain this.

sorry fraggle, i got caught up in the heat of the moment.
although i stand by my post i must also apologize for making it.

It's religion that's "disgusting."

probably, or more properly propagandized religion.

Or maybe you don't have a TV so you don't know what the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews are doing to each other in the name of their imaginary "God." The same damn one!!!

i don't see such a thing, and you're right, i don't watch TV.
the biggest pile of trash in my house is my TV, actually commercial TV.

 

[rpenner]

At the risk of leaving significant posters out, which I am sure to do, I'd like to congratulate the following posters in particular (and in no special order):

AqueousId, Rav, rpenner, Trippy.

Keep up the good work!

Yes. Ignoring stops them sending you PMs.

Sigh. Just because you are acting like you are losing your mind is no reason to suspect we forget your wildly inappropriate behavior.

As James R points out in [POST=3082558]#510[/POST] and Rav ma[d]e a video for you in [POST=3082590]post #517[/POST] you were complaining that someone edited out a page number "884" that you mistakenly included in your [POST=2716879]2011 enshrinement of the Roger Lewin article[/POST] because you were too lazy to edit the PDF-to-text translation to remove unnecessary hyphenations and material from other than the column you wanted to extract.

Do you have a vested interest in seeming ignorant?

when you're shown that the opposite of what you believe must be true, yet you go on insisting that what you believe is true instead, that's when you're in denial.

Likewise, if someone of the opposition in this debate would, hypothetically, put one of your four highlighted members on ignore, that would be disservice to their cause. It would be evidence of a position so precariously untenable that only by mechanical censorship could they preserve their loathsome denialism.

 

[leopold]

This entire thread has been about people saying "I believe such and such" and people responding with "Well, there are actually no reasonable grounds for holding that belief". And when you're shown that the opposite of what you believe must be true, yet you go on insisting that what you believe is true instead, that's when you're in denial.

the only real thing i can state for a fact is "i think, therefor i am", even that might be questionable.
but you're right, i don't believe "things become alive and develop a conciousness".
life doesn't come from non life, it's never been demonstrated otherwise.
like i said before, the concept is absurd. oops, ridiculous.

If you think it isn't, then tell us what you think macroevolution is.

i posted a link from berkely that gave a definition of macro evolution.
paraphrased it's speciation over millions of years.

 

[Trippy]

Aw, that is a sweet saying.


Lol I know. But here's the thing. If ppl are only following God out of fear, then i wonder if they understand the faith they supposedly believe in. There are Christians who wear their faith like an albatross. What a drag that would be.

Hey everybody!
We could get into the teachings on purgatory for kicks and giggles!

I'm joking!!!


Anyways...There are good and bad elements in every segment of society.

It seems to me that you have somewhat missed the point that was being made...

 

[Trippy]

What u describe, indeed sounds dreadful. But I didn't have anything like that type of upbringing.

Aren't you the lucky one then.

But know that not all Christians are brainwashed beings.

That, I suppose would depend on your definition of brainwashing.

 

[Trippy]

Meanwhile, science and evolution nail it yet again as yet another transitional species is found. I present to you Thor's Hero Shrew.

 

[billvon]

I'm not saying you were coerced or abused to believe in god, only that you might be conditioned so, it's very common. I call this a form of non-physical abuse, especially when it includes an element of fear (of hell). I think it's abusive to condition children that there is a being watching you all the time, who will send you to a very bad place if you behave wrongly.

That's as accurate that saying that atheist parents are effectively child abusers, since they are in effect telling their children "I will beat you within an inch of your life if you claim to believe in God."

Both sorts of parents are strawmen.

 

[wellwisher]

Humans are the only species who exhibit religious behavior. This can be inferred from the observation that God is not of physical and sensory reality, and therefore would not make it possible for an animal to achieve natural selection. This behavior, which allows humans to leaves sensory reality also allowed humans to leave the path of natural selection because of the free will and imagination created.

ALthough many humans can transcend, not all humans seem to have this capacity. I mentioned the impact of water on evolution. This is relatively new science and therefore is not as well known or taught. It transcended sensory reality until technology caught up. Rather then living in the darkness of chaos the faithful think in terms of the light of reason and truth; right brain output.

 

[wegs]

That's as accurate that saying that atheist parents are effectively child abusers, since they are in effect telling their children "I will beat you within an inch of your life if you claim to believe in God."

Both sorts of parents are strawmen.

Yep, agreed.

It seems to me that you have somewhat missed the point that was being made...

No. I didn't miss the point. I just didn't find it relevant to the discussion.
It was a polarizing comment, in truth.
HAVING SAID THAT, he clarified what he meant. That he wasn't insinuating that I was abused.
Not that it would matter, but again, it is a statement that sort of distracts from the discussion.

Elephants are large and grey, too. I don't think anyone doubts that many ppl abuse religion and abuse their kids through it.
No argument there. But, it didn't seem relevant to the discussion at the time. So, it took me aback.

All we have is the "written" word so he clarified and perhaps given the context, I misinterpreted his motive.