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Kansas Prof. Apologizes for E-Mail [referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" ....]
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Posted on 11/29/2005 9:31:13 AM PST by Sub-Driver
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To: Thatcherite
"Unfitness has a tendency to be selected out of the gene pool in the most final way."
Except where the natural processes are being screwed around with. As an example, I give you modern humans through the use of modern medicine.
281
posted on
11/30/2005 9:54:45 AM PST
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
To: cornelis
The concept of spontanaeity and abiogenesis, for example, are used to address either more or less contextual phenomena that provide the conditions for the possibility of an event. Your propensity for postmodernist bloviation is noted. Try saying it in English.
282
posted on
11/30/2005 9:57:32 AM PST
by
js1138
(Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
To: mware
I received my degree in Anthropology and Archaeology so find it repugnant to mock anyones religious beliefs.Really? Flat-earthers? People who think they are Marie Antoinette reborn? People who think they'll get 72 virgins in Paradise if they blow up a busload of Jewish women and kids? Crystal Healers? Magic Pyramid believers? Druids? People who think that George Bush Jnr is the Anti-Christ? People who belong to sects that endlessly predict the imminent end of the world? People who think that an African Dictator is Christ reborn? Numerologists? David Icke? What a sad straight-faced world you must live in.
283
posted on
11/30/2005 9:57:52 AM PST
by
Thatcherite
(F--ked in the afterlife, bullying feminized androgenous automaton euro-weenie blackguard)
To: mware
By no would I restrict his freedom of speech away from the classroom, I just question if he can be objective in his instruction with such personal animosity towards a religious belief.Let's suppose, instead, he had a strong religious belief, say in six-day creation. Would you question his ability to be objective in teaching a science class?
To: furball4paws
"Except where the natural processes are being screwed around with. As an example, I give you modern humans through the use of modern medicine."The activities of humans are part of the environment. Certain correctable conditions no longer constitute unfitness, in the current environment, by definition. Likewise domestic animal fitness is determined by their suitability for answering the needs of humans. No value judgement is implied by fitness. No absolute standard for fitness exists. The fit breed, the unfit don't.
285
posted on
11/30/2005 10:01:07 AM PST
by
Thatcherite
(F--ked in the afterlife, bullying feminized androgenous automaton euro-weenie blackguard)
To: Thatcherite
Thank fitness that the earth's wobble on its axis found a nice place to persist.
To: cornelis
Any organism can only be fit for the environment in which it finds itself. All living things are descended from a very long line of ancestors that met the fitness test.
287
posted on
11/30/2005 10:03:05 AM PST
by
Thatcherite
(F--ked in the afterlife, bullying feminized androgenous automaton euro-weenie blackguard)
To: Thatcherite
"You are just plain wrong here. There is no implied direction of fitness towards increasing order."
SJ Gould used to dislike the idea that evolution was a process of increasing order or complexity. After all a trilobite was highly evolved and fit its environment so well that it was one of the longest lived critters. People who are anthrocentric think all this happened so that man could emerge, but Gould said that the emergence of mammals and Man was not a foregone conclusion. Chance could have lead away from the mammalian line and today's Freepers could well have been colonial plants.
288
posted on
11/30/2005 10:03:30 AM PST
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
To: furball4paws
Well, from where I'm standing most of you *are* rebellious colonial plants.
289
posted on
11/30/2005 10:04:44 AM PST
by
Thatcherite
(F--ked in the afterlife, bullying feminized androgenous automaton euro-weenie blackguard)
To: Thatcherite; cornelis
The important point is that *fitness* is an a posteriori designation. You can only say something is fit or less fit after the genotype has already been fixed, and the phenotype has been formed, and said phenotype is placed in a specific environment. There is no way that an organism can *plan* the variation needed in order for the next generation to be *fit*. Natural selection is not a teleological (goal-directed) process.
290
posted on
11/30/2005 10:04:45 AM PST
by
CarolinaGuitarman
("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
To: CarolinaGuitarman
Thank you for making the point I was dimly groping for far clearer.
291
posted on
11/30/2005 10:05:47 AM PST
by
Thatcherite
(F--ked in the afterlife, bullying feminized androgenous automaton euro-weenie blackguard)
To: Right Wing Professor
I would suspect his objectivity in teaching a religion class under those circumstances.
292
posted on
11/30/2005 10:06:06 AM PST
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
To: Thatcherite
Well, I'm sometimes good for something. :)
293
posted on
11/30/2005 10:07:20 AM PST
by
CarolinaGuitarman
("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
To: cornelis
Fitness is preferable over unfitness. There is no "fitness," as Darwin called it, without conditions and elements that make biological motion take place toward increasing order, rather than decreasing order. Fitness is simply another way of saying an organism has reproduced. It is not a comment on order or disorder or complexity or simplicity. Bacteria is the modal form of life on earth. There is no tendency towards greater complexity, and the cellular machinery of "higher" forms of life is not significantly more complex than that of bacteria. Even genome length is not particularly correlated with what we loosely call complexity.
294
posted on
11/30/2005 10:09:20 AM PST
by
js1138
(Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
To: Thatcherite
I am in no way against modern medicine. But we have screwed around with the natural mechanisms of evolution because of it. The implication is that we cannot stop half way or our gene pool will be badly corrupted. So we must persist until we have the means to correct genetic defects by means other than natural selection.
295
posted on
11/30/2005 10:09:22 AM PST
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
To: Right Wing Professor
Actually I think that the topic is very well suited and the appropriate placement for the topic to be discussed.
As to the suitability of someone who has strong religious beliefs teaching certain courses, I have a very strong belief that conception begins at birth and have no problem in teaching life science.
296
posted on
11/30/2005 10:10:01 AM PST
by
mware
(That's Christmas with a C, not an X)
To: Thatcherite
What a sad straight-faced world you must live in. Respecting people, yes I can see how you would find that a sad world.
297
posted on
11/30/2005 10:11:13 AM PST
by
mware
(That's Christmas with a C, not an X)
To: Right Wing Professor; mware
He mocked only some religious beliefs, and he did so to a group of like-minded people.Mocking Christians--he's a real profile in courage. I'd like to hear the brave iconoclast's opinion of islam...
To: Thatcherite
and you are a puppet of an effete monarchy :-)
299
posted on
11/30/2005 10:11:27 AM PST
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
To: furball4paws
We managed to clean this up long enough to get to 300.
300
posted on
11/30/2005 10:14:30 AM PST
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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