Evolution debate: State board should reject pseudoscience

Columbus Dispatch ^ | February 17, 2002 | Editorial

[PatrickHenry]

Sorry to jump in there in your stead. You baited the hook, you can work him as you like.

You can have him if you like. You're doing fine.

[oldcats]

"Yes evolution should not be taught as a scientific theory. It should not be allowed in the schools until they can give clear, incontrovertible proof that macro-evolution does indeed occur (which they cannot)."

Can you give clear and incontrovertible prrof of creationism...or any theory?

Oldcats

[VadeRetro]

The good news for theistic types is that there's already a theological explanation. The bad news for fundies is it's proof of Hinduism.

[scripter]

What is the evolutionary explanation. The text at the source says "He is reported to have a 4in 'tail' caused by genetic mutations during the development of the foetus."

[VadeRetro]

Do you have a list of g3k's other greatest misses?

There was the time he claimed that no one had ever ever ever given him the evolutionary story on that impossible animal, the platypus. I only link that one when he's been exceptionally over-the-top scummy with his NOBODY EVER POSTS THE PROOF nonsense.

[Junior]

From this site:

According to this site:

One out of every 16 children is born with defects. Most of these are minor, such as the babies born with tails. When a baby is born
with a tail, the doctors cut it off right away. Most people do not know if they had a tail.

[VadeRetro]

What is the evolutionary explanation. The text at the source says "He is reported to have a 4in 'tail' caused by genetic mutations during the development of the foetus."

Just a wild guess from a B.S. in Psychology, 1972: the mutation turned on his existing tail vertebrae genes. Do you know you have the gene to synthesize vitamin C but it's disabled by another slice of genetic code somewhere?

[VadeRetro]

Click here.

From an "Evo-Devo" Lecture Series.

The point being that turning genes off can be an advance. Sometimes they're only turned off in specific locations, so they're still sensitive to natural selection.

[VadeRetro]

1972

1971. I wasn't trying to seem younger, honest!

[VadeRetro]

Regarding Gould's Answer to Creationist Quote-Miners, you said:

Your quote is a complete misrepresentation of Gould's position.

So I said:

I defy you to falsify it by going back to the linked article and showing where he actually intended to say something else.

Quite a turn-around you attempted there. How dare I refute your and medved's misleading misquotes with a lengthy, accurate, in-context, and on-target citation from your favorite victim?

So anyway, I defied you and you clammed up. I still say that Gould has repudiated your abuse of him. Please show where he really meant to say you were right.

[Junior]

1971.

Damn, old man! That was the year my wife was born, and the year I entered 1st grade.

Not to make you feel old, or anything ...

[Junior]

Careful, you might trigger its "Slimer and the Ghostbusters" subroutine.

[VadeRetro]

Not to make you feel old, or anything ...

When I want to feel younger I can always suck my thumb.

[AndrewC]

so take it or leave it as you will:

I'm afraid I will have to leave this at the incredulous level until further verification comes in.

Officials in Java will not permit chips of the fossils to be used for age-dating so the researchers instead dated water buffalo teeth dug from the same site.

The buffalo teeth were age-dated using two techniques, uranium decay and electron spin resonance, which measures electric charges added to tooth enamel by natural radioactivity over time. The work was performed at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Wolpoff said the buffalo teeth may have come from a different deposit and age than the human fossils, making the dates unreliable.

[PatrickHenry]

Do you have a list of g3k's other greatest misses?

He has often been asked for evidence of his creationist mumbo-jumbo. He never has any serious response.

[AndrewC]

Just a wild guess from a B.S. in Psychology, 1972:

I mistook "from a" for "from the" and froze for a second.

That's a joke, just a joke :^)

[VadeRetro]

You have discovered why Bachelors of Science never write their degree abbreviation after their name the way MSs and PhDs do. But the one's just "more" and the other's "piled higher and deeper."

[AndrewC]

Speaking of psych, one was always unprepared for the next strange vision when passing by the psych labs,-- a host of blinded white mice with eyes stitched shut, bespectacled sages in white labcoats using a banana attempting to coax a fugitive simian to relinquish its aerie in a high corner of the lab etc.

[Nebullis]

That doesn't look quite like a vestigial tail. Not that I've ever seen one, but caudal growths, sometimes referred to as vestigial tails, are short and located on the midline. This looks left of midline. It could be a lipoma or something else.

Anyway, I get embarrassed when stuff like this is trotted out as evidence for evolution and try to distance myself from it. Congenital malformations of this type are under the control of (mutant) developmental genes which utilize expression gradients to direct other genes. Over or under expression of these genes result in additional fingers, additional limbs, extra coccyx length and effects of that nature. The presence of a mutation in such a control gene is an indication of more than one developmental problem. In the case of "vestigial tails" other congenital malformations coexist, primarily spinal bifida, not exactly a vestigial condition.

There's no doubt that the same developmental genes play a part in tail development in other mammals as they do in spine formation in humans. But there are a whole series of genes which function together to make a tail. The suggestion with a misnomer such as "vestigial tail" is that these genes are dormant in the human genome, and, rarely, are activated to produce a tail. Such is not the case. If it was, we'd be looking at a larger issue of evolution reversibility and other serious conceptual issues.