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To: AndrewC
You must have difficulty recognizing patronizing and belittling posts.

He addressed each of your points -- and skewered them on the facts. If you find that belittling or patronizing, sir, you're in for an extremely rough life.

BTW, would posting snide little cartoon pictures of Darwin be considered "patronizing and belittling" or is this a one-way street like racism is to liberals?

128 posted on 02/20/2004 3:58:34 AM PST by Junior (No animals were harmed in the making of this post)
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To: Junior
shocked and awed placemarker.
129 posted on 02/20/2004 6:10:52 AM PST by js1138
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To: Junior
He addressed each of your points -- and skewered them on the facts.

What facts did he present? He changed what I stated and then attacked that changed thing. I will only address the first "lie" he presented. I wrote ---And for a component to "remain" around it must be maintained, so will it will be either unchanged due to its criticality for its present function(maximum fitness and "unavailable" for cooption) or be driven towards criticality for that function(seeking maximum fitness and "unavailable" for cooption) as predicted by Darwinian evolution.

This is what he wrote --- Error #1: Note the rhetorical sleight-of-hand in the middle of the sentence, which magically changes from talking about how a component must be *useful* enough to be maintained, to (abracadabra) being *critical* and thus so indispensible that the organism can't survive without it performing its current function.

He has the gall to accuse me of sleight of hand yet he puts words into what I wrote. I said nothing about an organism or its survival(I have been arguing about genes and not organisms for goodness sakes). I stated "criticality for its present function". Do you know what a critical point for a function is?

Definition of a critical point: a critical point on f(x) occurs at x0 if and only if either f '(x0) is zero or the derivative doesn't exist.

And further note, I placed parentheses around "remain" for a reason. I realize that fitness can oscillate around the critical point.

130 posted on 02/20/2004 6:47:09 AM PST by AndrewC (I am a Bertrand Russell agnostic, even an atheist.</sarcasm>)
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