Posted on 05/12/2006 12:13:47 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
In his op-ed "Evolution's bottom line," published in The New York Times (May 12, 2006), Holden Thorp emphasizes the practical applications of evolution, writing, "creationism has no commercial application. Evolution does," and citing several specific examples.
In places where evolution education is undermined, he argues, it isn't only students who will be the poorer for it: "Will Mom or Dad Scientist want to live somewhere where their children are less likely to learn evolution?" He concludes, "Where science gets done is where wealth gets created, so places that decide to put stickers on their textbooks or change the definition of science have decided, perhaps unknowingly, not to go to the innovation party of the future. Maybe that's fine for the grownups who'd rather stay home, but it seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school."
Thorp is chairman of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina.
And had therefore been settled peacefully in the holy land for about 300 years at the time of the first crusade. Just how long do you think you are entitled to hold a grudge?
Not my hobby-horse. My comments were strictly about the sucker-punch to jes41. The argument might as well have been about manhole covers, for all I care.
The point was that he did not take the sacraments which were a nornal part of the Episcopal Church
Kick out the European invaders placemarker
That is correct. They were totally astonished that the Europeans could actually extend an army half a world away. Islam would not be a credible threat to any part of europe until about 300 years later, just as it had been 300 years before. it hadn't the resources or social/military framework to mount extensive campaigns far from its base. The crusades were mounted, and succeeded, in capturing the holy land--not, one may note, in eliminating a threat to european soveraignty--that is a construct of 20th century apologetics. The arab moslems were not persued into the desert--the holy land being captured, the story was over.
rofl. Doesn't deserve a response, you're just digging deeper.
Go cool off and get your hatred under control and her head out of the methane and come back when you've regained your composure.
If they had simply "settled there peacefully" I might agree with you. Southern and Central Iberia, however, is Spain, not the Holy Land, and as you've probably noticed, Islam stilll considers "Andalucia" (admitttedly a beautiful sounding name) to be theirs today.
But they did not--- they were and continue to be on the march.
I mean, they attacked the freaking Mongols! Who in their right mind does that?
I only used examples from Islam's eariest existence because I wanted to make the point that Islam has from its inception conquered via the sword and its dhimmitude laws, so, given their record of geometric expansion they were a serious threat to whomever they attacked.
As you probably know, I could have mentioned sililar later attacks on Russia, on Bulgaria, on Poland, on Indonesia, on the areas that became Yugoslavia,on the Austrians, on and on and on.
Nor do evolutionary algorithms used to design software have anything to do with the evolution of life via natural selection. They do not prove the thesis of natural selection anymore than using reverse engineering, which applies ID principles, proves ID.
Well, I hear you there.
I'd just say that, as far as I understand it, the Catholic Church's position has been that, evolution in the sense of change over time is "more than just a theory" and whether or not Darwin's theory of evolution via natural selection is true, what cannot be true is the "blindwatchmaker thesis" but only the last of these rises to dogma.
I don't know how early this article was written in--- I guess it must have been 1917 or earlier--- but it basically makes that point http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05654a.htm
That's a true point, but the algorithms do show that naturally selective algorithms can yield organization and increased complexity in a system - contrary to what many critics of natural selection theory wrongly believe.
Hey, now, get it right! It's not "feet".
"Look you said The honest ones agree with me in reference to Catholics and the Catholic Church Church."
That's an absolute lie. I said no such thing.
I agree--- such algorithms demonstrate that applying the model of natural selection outside of biology and inside biology has usefulness. But IDers, as opposed to some Creationists, don't dispute that. But as anti-IDers, I think you should admit that design inferences of the sort used in ID have TONS of applications outside of biology, reverse engineering being just one example.
The question ID wants to answer in the affirmative is whether ID has application IN biology or cosmology. Even Daniel Dennett in his book "Kinds of Minds" admits that design inferences are useful in biology as heuristics.
I'm sure you've heard it before: archeology, SETI (whther the SETI people like it or not), data-mining and police detection all employ design inferences. In the case of each of these besides SETI, such inferences are uncontroversially justifiable because human beings constitute intelligent causes.
In the case of reverse engineering, the engineer looks at a natural artfact and acts as though it were designed, simple as that--- he uses the design inference as a useful heuristic.
Now, does the use of evolutionary algorithms as heuristic prove that "that naturally selective algorithms can yield organization and increased complexity in a system - contrary to what many critics of natural selection theory wrongly believe."
Although one might argue about the role of the human designer of the "pre evolutionary algorithm" I'd agree with you that they DO prove such algorithms can do just what you say.
But IDers don't claim that they can't--- what IDers claim is that SOME examples of complexity are irreducible and SOME are highly specified (which, granting the IDers their premises, is not the same thing as being highly complex)and that these bear the earmarks of purpose. In other words, the design inference is positive rather than negative. Think of Hillary and her "lucky" Cattle Futures pick. The design inference in this case is an inference to the best explantion. It does not eliminate the possiblity of Hillary having struck it rich through sheer dumb luck, but it does offer a more plausible hypothesis-- that she had inside information. It's the difference between shooting an arrow and painting a circle around it, and calling your shot, aiming at a target and hitting it dead center. In both cases, the odds were against hitting the place where the arrow eventually hit. But in the latter case, we can say that the archer had skill, just as we reasonably infer that Hillary had help.
It seems to me that self-organization types like Stuart Kauffman and Stephen ("A New Kind of Science") Wolfram have something not too different to say--- they just explain that purpose differently. One of the problems wih evolutiuonary algorithms serving as proof, contra Wolfram, for pre-biotic evolution,is that it's proven very hard to make them without building into them some form of pre-existing capacity for self-replication.
Of course, that's not to say it won't be done.
Today, what we have to worry about is not the evolution of man, but the evolution of machine i.e. the Cornell Skynet project: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May05/selfrep.ws.html
Could be, but the original point was that Hilter could not have been a Catholic in good standing as he did not partake of the sacrements. I posted that in response to a post which inferred that he was, in fact, a Catholic in good standing.
He was Catholic in name only. Just like I was a Baptist in name only when I was an agnostic drug dealer. Sure, in a survey or census or whatever I would check the box next to "Christian," as opposed to Hindu or Muslim or animist. But, that was about it.
"Well it there it is right there in black and white The honest ones agree with me.
Just who are the "The honest ones agree with me." being you. Is it Darwin, Hitler, the Catholic Church, Catholics? Who agrees with you? The honest ones, who are the honest ones in your mind?"
Now do your homework and dig a little deeper. What post and quote was I specifically responding to with that quote?
Well, if you accept Martin as having been the world's foremost expert on cults, why do you call the Catholic Church a cult? Martin never did--- that's why Jack Chick couldn't stand the guy.
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