She -- her.
Eugenie Scott, PhD
Executive Director of the NCSE
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.
Say hello to "Bob" Dobbs for me.
The problem is that I used the word "propagate" in a fashion consistent with its dictionary definition, i.e., to engage in sexual reproduction.
You then replied that homosexual activity might help the species as a whole survive. Which is a non-sequitur, regardless of whether your statement was factually correct.
I was objecting to the change of subject.
Which is why it is so ironic that you use the word "responsive" to chide me.
For the nonce, do you have any specific evidence that homosexual behaviour does in fact help the breeding population? Peer-reviewed, well-designed studies are welcome.
Cheers!
And my point was, and continues to be, that reproduction isn't the only way to get survival advantage from sexual behavior.
You then replied that homosexual activity might help the species as a whole survive.
I did not. I suggested that homosexual behavior can be a survival trait in individuals of significant impact.
Which is a non-sequitur, regardless of whether your statement was factually correct.
No, your insistance that this argument somehow hinges on the definition of "propagate" is the non-sequitur.
I was objecting to the change of subject.
Than perhaps you shouldn't be so eager to do it.
For the nonce, do you have any specific evidence that homosexual behaviour does in fact help the breeding population? Peer-reviewed, well-designed studies are welcome.
Well, that would, I suppose, be appropriate, if it weren't so painfully obvious. Do you think maybe that presenting behavior in beta male baboons keeps them alive? Do you think staying alive might possibly have an impact on your reproductive chances? Do you have a theory as to how worker ants, with no reproductive capacity whatsoever, could have possibly come into existence--given your theory that only sex that produces offspring has a survival advantage? It's called Red Queen Theory, if you want to google it up.
That is because my first post used the word propagate in order to make a specific point. You raised a different point while (apparently) ignoring that I chose the word propagate specifically to convey sexual reproduction.
I was not disputing whether your point was factually correct; merely noting that it did not follow from what I had written.
To recap without flames:
My post introduced the thought, Homosexual behaviour cannot itself lead to new offspring, and therefore does nothing to promote the mixing of genetic material...kind of important to evolution.
You appear to be saying that homosexual behaviour can affect an *individual's* chances of survival; and that through social relations with other organisms, the behaviour can indirectly result in improved survivability for whatever social unit the individual is in. By multiplying this effect across numerous packs, tribes, pods, what have you, Too late to Google right now, but it does raise an interesting consideration: since the behaviour you describe is inherently social behaviour, it makes "nature vs. nurture" a more compelling issue. That is, if the social behaviour is learned, and since learning is an acquired characteristic--then if the social behaviour does confer a survival advantage, would that imply that acquired characteristics could be inherited? Or would it just mean that socialization to adapt to homosexuality in certain ways would become so advantageous that an otherwise "recessive" trait would not be rapidly deselected?
Cheers!
It might, but to what extent? Do the homosexual males later take mates, where otherwise they would have been killed? Or do they stay homosexual? If the former, is that necessarily a good analogy to homosexuality in other species or in other social settings?
That's why you need the controlled studies.
Moral values from the Bible. In Noah's Flood, every innocent unborn child was killed, every baby and toddler was drowned. It is a great contradiction for Christians.
About whether there is belief in a charlatan who lies and who gets priests/pastors to support lies for their own benefit, this is not proven one way or the other.
The priest/bishop/pastor class does not seem to do any work, and they get tax exemptions. This is a "moral value" that is good for them.
Especially, an Eve that was inferior by reason of being secondary in creation. A species with male and female components evolving via natural processes undermined claims that females were ‘by nature’ somehow different, separate, and morally weaker. Indeed, Darwin forced onto churches the radical notion that if some humans have souls, then all humans must have them, even women, Africans, Asians, American Indians, and “pagans”.
Wow - Yankees refusing to move to the South. How sad.
She -- her.
Eugenie Scott, PhD
Executive Director of the NCSE
Maybe God didn't write Genesis ...
Or was that a trick question?
"Are we cooperating or just sharing information?"
Yes.
"Moral values from the Bible. In Noah's Flood, every innocent unborn child was killed, every baby and toddler was drowned. It is a great contradiction for Christians."
God does quite a few things in the Bible along these lines. I can see why you would think that it constititutes enormous problems for the believer.
However, for reasons at the heart of conservatism qua conservatism, it is actually not even a small contradiction for Christians or Jews.
To judge God for killing innocent children would require a God's POV. Assuming such a POV was the prideful mistake made by the friends of Job when they presumed they knew God's will so well they could deduce from Job's circumstances what his crimes must have been.
Eric Vogelin referred to the presumption by human beings of a God-like point of view as the defining characteristic of leftism--- the premise lurking behind every utopia plan from the Thirty Tyrants of Athens to French Revolutionaries.
He called this presumption "immanentizing the eschaton."
Or, as David Horowitz puts it,
"All radicalisms are variations on the story of Babel. They are people trying to reach heaven (or build a heaven on earth) by human means. That is why they end in such misery and horror. Leftism is a form of idolatry in which human beings worship themselves as though they were gods and saviors.
I am an agnostic. I don't know whether God exists or not, but I do know that man is not God and that makes me a conservative."
"Darwinism is, bottom line, racist as Darwin's original title for 'origin of the species' shows."
And since you know that *races* was meant as subspecies and *variety* in those days, and not what we think of as human races (he didn't even mention human evolution in the Origin of Species), you do realize how silly your statement is, right?
"The thing that penetrates the fog to my way of thinking is the fact that Hitler was Roman Catholic and Rome embraces Darwinism. Darwinism is, bottom line, racist..."
At least your anti-Catholic bigotry hasn't lessened. Consistency is your only strong suit.
point out the bigotry.. now. That's not a request, it is a demand. I said nothing implicating Catholicism in other than it's own beliefs. If that is bigotry, it is Rome's bigotry, not mine. So, illustrate it. Show us the bigotry.
You self martyrdome types have no shame.
It's an open forum. If you don't want people picking up on comments you made, use FReepmail.
Witness what has been piled on Ann Coulter lately!
(Or just plain BOO!)
"The end of civilization as we know it - if SO many people as ignorant of the PROPER way Evolution works!"
Actually, I did no such thing. I listed some of the key things that motivated and reinforced Hitler's decision making process. I neither likened catholicism with Hitler or racism.
Learn to read english.
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