PLACEMARKER
Posted on 03/09/2006 6:55:14 PM PST by Greg o the Navy
AN EXAMINATIONS board is including references to “creationism” in a new GCSE science course for schools.
The physical capacity for a lion to overtake a human could just as easily be ascribed to intelligent design as it could be ascribed to some natural force made up from imaginary whole cloth. Natural selection is typically employed as a post facto explanation that could cover anything from a flip of the coin to virtually any reality. It does not belong in the realm of hard, empirical science, but in the realm of philosophical musings upon history.
Ok, I probably could answer your question, if you can tell me just how many WOLVES did they start with?
A hell of a lot more than "five". Every single DNA study of dogs indicates an amount and kind of genetic diversity that, barring vast unlikely bizarre scenarios (like ridiculously coincidental mutations which just "happen" to mimic diversity of ancestry), which could only have come from not only a decent sized ancestral population of wolves, but also multiple *different* introductions of wolf genes into the dog lineage. For example:
Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic DogThus my point -- it's ridiculous of you to use dogs as an example of the kind of genetic diversity that "could" arise from an original population of only five ancestors, because the specific genetic diversity found in dogs has been determined, multiple times by independent methods, to be *far* beyond what could have resulted from such a small starting population.
If you tool the trouble to right click on theimage you would get this:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/
Following the links you get this:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=38
The physical capacity for a lion to overtake a human could just as easily be ascribed to intelligent design
You're entirely missing the point. But then I've gotten used to that.
as it could be ascribed to some natural force made up from imaginary whole cloth.
Again, the point you missed: If you think that natural selection is "imaginary", try outrunning a hungry lion sometime.
Natural selection is typically employed as a post facto explanation that could cover anything from a flip of the coin to virtually any reality. It does not belong in the realm of hard, empirical science, but in the realm of philosophical musings upon history.
You clearly haven't a clue -- there have been *vast* numbers of studies which have established both a) the reality of the effect of natural selection on genetic evolution, and b) the fact that many genes in the genomes of humans and other species have been shaped by natural selection.
I'm getting pretty tired of endless waves of people who don't know the first thing about biology making arrogant but false pronouncements about the "lack" of research and evidentiary support for various tenets of evolutionary biology, when in fact that support has been meticulously and voluminously well-established, and the speaker's statement is based not on an actual lack of support, but only on his blissful ignorance of its existence. (I may have to make that into a keyboard hotkey.)
Now go waste someone else's time.
I think you are forgetting that Fester and Elsie are here to discredit religion, and doing a fine job of it.
You faith in "natural selection" as hard, empirical science exceeds my own faith that where there is organized matter performing specific functions, there is evidence of intelligent design. You may confess your faith as loudly and doggedly as you please, yet it is plain that "natural selection" carries no more weight scientifically than Kipling's "Just So Stories."
I hate to ask, but could you post me back the list of links (besides the standard)?
My laptop ws reformatted and I lost all my local bookmarks and I somehow overlooked bookmarking it on FR)
I am back in the game, amigo.
Jeeze -- where to start?
We have Fact A, and Fact X. We can certainly conjecture Fact A leading to Fact X. We hold an object at waist high (Fact A). We turn our back while holding it. We drop it. We turn back and see it is on the ground. What are we to suppose?
1. Creationism: God took the object and placed it on the ground.
2. Science: Some measurable and observable force affected the object which resulted in it being on the ground.
1 is Faith. 2 is Science. Your assertion is so silly you might as well posit that physics is a result of Shakespear's Much Ado About Nothing.
I subscribe to the idea that the distinction between natural and supernatural is not a scientific one, but only semantic. Just because we understand something does not necessarily turn it into something "natural."
LOL
I have to get on a plane now. I am sure many Creationists are hoping the angels that hold it aloft will not be distracted (thanks, folks).
I just hope that the equipment, atmospheric conditions, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the people, will be sanguine.
I'll check in shortly (unless the angels look away).
You are so clueless. The evolution of secondary sexual characteristics is a type of positive feedback system. Small differences between juveniles and adults are accentuated as the genes of the males who fruitlessly try to mate with juvenile females are bred out of the population. Genes of the males who prefer adult females due to their secondary sexual characteristics are propagated. Meanwhile postpubescent females who don't develop secondary sexual characteristics do not succeed in passing on their genes as effectively because the males aren't interested in them. The same mechanism acts to develop secondary sexual characteristics in the males and attraction towards adult males in the female.
How do you expect to refute the theory of evolution when you are so ignorant about how it works?
[js1138, responding to tallhappy:] If you tool the trouble to right click on theimage you would get this:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/
Following the links you get this:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=38
Oh, it's much worse than that -- in order to issue his snotty insults against me, implying that perhaps I was hiding something and that I was somehow grossly remiss for not holding his hand and explicitly telling him where the photo image came from, tallhappy had to be:
1. Too stupid, lazy, or dishonest to use the fact that I had clearly stated that we were talking about a skull Coyoteman had brought up in a post, in order to go back to that post which included the *same* photo image and follow the link which Coyoteman had *supplied* to its source . This is what tallhappy laughably tries to call "zero reference" to the origin of the photo image. I figured that anyone reading my post would be competent enough to refer back to the original Coyoteman post, but hey, I grossly overestimated part of my audience.
2. Too stupid, lazy, or dishonest to right-click the image and hit "properties" to read the site from which it originated. But wait, it gets worse than that! See #3...
3. Too stupid, lazy, or dishonest to READ THE IMAGE URL HE HAD TO HAVE GOTTEN FROM THE IMAGE IN ORDER TO INCLUDE IT IN HIS OWN POST. While writing his post, tallhappy inserted the following HTML code in order to display the image: <IMG src="http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/photos/15000.jpg"> Just how stupid/lazy/dishonest does he have to be to type or copy that into his own post, then claim he doesn't know where it came from? Hey, stupid: It came from http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils, just like it says on the URL you put into your own post. Duh!
4. Too stupid, lazy, or dishonest to do a Google on the fossil's label (KNM-WT 15000) or nickname ("Turkana Boy") which would have quickly turned up verification that the photo I posted was indeed of that particular fossil specimen. Here's another view, from NationalGeographic.com, one of the sites such a Google search returns:
No, instead, tallhappy would rather dishonestly pretend that I left the reader with no way ("zero reference", ROFL!) to verify that image if they wanted to, and that he was therefore "justified" (in a "transparently cheap excuse" kind of way) in issuing another one of his snotty posts full of insulting innuendo, like "You can make up anything you want, draw any pictures you want." (no, making things up is tallhappy's habit, not mine -- *I* at least have a conscience which prevents me from doing that), and "No one will ake [sic] you seriously (except buffoons) if you can't support every statement you make" (actually, no one will take tallhappy seriously if he keeps issuing blatantly false slanders and making extremely basic screwups in elementary biology and making childishly petulant, pathetically pointless, and fundamentally dishonest emotional outbursts like this one), and "You might want to start with the origin of the picture" (when tallhappy "might want to start" with being honest enough to admit that I had provided plenty of ways for interested readers to check the source of the image).
Just how much more pathetic and puerile can he get?
[If you want to be on/off the "tallhappy makes a fool of himself again while lamely trying to insult somebody" ping list, FreepMail me.]
[natural selection as a man-made construct]
Darwin was quite familiar with the results of selective breeding of pigeons, dogs, cattle, race horses, and other domestic animals.
In the Galapagos he saw what were obviously finches that were somewhat specialized with respect to food, and that they had somewhat different beaks, seemingly designed for the foods they ate.
(One of) his "AHA" moments was when he realized what was going on: if a dog breeder only lets the smallest dogs reproduce, he eventually winds up with terriers and chihuahuas. If the most abundant food is nuts, we eventually wind up with finches with parrot-like beaks.
IN one case the bigger dogs aren't allowed to breed; in the other case, the finches with the duck-like beaks starve
What exactly is wrong with this?
Yes. Look up "sexual selection" sometime if you want to *begin* to have the most elementary education on this topic, the kind of basic knowledge that someone really ought to have before they attempt to discuss or critique evolutionary biology. For starters, see the brief intro to sexual selection in Introduction to Evolutionary Biology. Also, since you are obviously over 130 years behind on your education, check out the sections on sexual selection in On the Origin of Species (1859).
(Also, minor changes in physical appearance does not function as working proof for molecules-to-man evolution.)
No one claimed that it did. Go try your straw man fallacy on an audience uneducated enough not to catch you at it.
The reality of evolutionary common descent is based on far more than that -- something you'd know if you bothered to learn about a subject before you tried to attack it and those who understand it.
I really object to his portrayal of it because it sounds like he's saying that a woman thinks, "Hmm, men seem to really like big breasts, I guess I'll just tweak these genes so that my daughters end up with big breasts." It's silly, simplistic and completely inaccurate.
Of course in modern times if that's all she's concerned about she just waits until her daughter's a teen and then pays a few thousand for augmentation. :-D
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