Posted on 01/28/2005 4:28:41 PM PST by metacognative
Dang, I almost missed that when I skimmed the thread ;^D
Yes but you immediately knew it was a typo and should be lack of intellectual honesty or intellectual dishonesty.
Classic.
You are really that unself-aware?
You are the living breathing embodiment of it here on these threads.
Proof that you are all about bearing false witness on a lot of good people and NOT about truth and honesty. Why are some Christians so evil. I thought your religion taught otherwise.
And that provoked the passion of the person who sent me a 6 page answer complete with the links, mostly broken, to the proof of evolution? I never said I was against the science or that I did not accept it. Actually, I never saw the post that contained a passage that you reference either. I stand by my statement. Aditionally, I am uncertain why you feel the need to start a dialogue concerning my question concerning a comment made by someone other than yourself.
See what I mean, you darwinuts don't care to discuss the modern scintific problems with evolution. It's all religion and denigration.
You don't think it's significnt that one of your top sources works for a man who claims to be the second coming of Jesus?
Ooh. Aah. Out-of-context quote-mining as an excuse not to have to actually deal with the rest of the material. How typically creationist.
Son, just how stupid do you think the lurkers are? Do you really think they won't notice how dishonest you're being by failing to address the rest of that discussion?, or that they won't notice how you're utterly unable or unwilling to address the fact that the material as a whole shows that your earlier accusation was entirely off base and groundless? Here it is *again* -- maybe you'll get a clue *this* time:
Now, if you'll bother to try to wrap your head around more than one sentence at a time, do you have any actual gripe with the ENTIRE POINT and not just one fragment of it yanked out of context? Yes or no.
Peppered moth photographs, staged and otherwise. Wells raises a fantastic stink about the fact that the photographs of peppered moths in textbooks, showing light-colored typicals next to dark-colored melanics on differing backgrounds, are staged. But the point of such photos is not to prove the truth of the 'classic' story, it is to illustrate the relative crypsis of moth morphs on different backgrounds. Those who feel that their innocent faith in insect photography has been betrayed should consider the fact that most photos of insects in textbooks are probably staged; insects are, after all, small and difficult to photograph. The facts that peppered moths are sparsely distributed and, well, camouflaged also make them difficult to photograph.
But as it turns out, the differences between staged and unstaged photos are minimal. Readers who wish to see unstaged photos of peppered moths are advised to look up Majerus' Melanism: Evolution in Action. Majerus says that all of the peppered moth photos taken by him in the book are unstaged. Readers should consult the figures which are listed below. It may be possible to get permission to include the photos, but until then descriptions shall have to suffice.
(For those with foggy memories of their texbooks, English peppered moths come in three general phenotypic categories: typica, the pale, original 'peppered' form of the moth; carbonaria, the almost black melanic form; and insularia, which includes a range of intermediate-colored moths.)
Figure 6.1 (a), p. 118. Black-and-white photo, edges blurred. A rather dark (almost black) insularia moth, resting apparently on a tree trunk (bark fills the background). The moth is slightly darker than the background.
Figure 6.1 (b), p. 118. Black-and-white photo, middle of moth slightly blurred. A light form of insularia (still more heavily peppered than a typica), resting on a thick tree branch (branch width is about 3/4 that of the moth).
Figure 6.3, p. 122. Black-and-white photo, middle of moth slightly blurred. A typica hanging underneath a hazel twig.
Plate 3, between pp. 146-147, has colored photos. Six photos are shown (the first five are Majerus'), and the captions are quoted, with my comments in brackets.
(a) "Typica and carbonaria forms of the peppered moth on an [sic] horizontal birch branch." [This situation, with two moths close enough together to photograph at once, is very rare, basically only occurring if two moths are meeting to mate.]
(b) "A pair of peppered moths on a twig at dawn. The carbonaria male is much less conspicuous than the typica female." [The carbonaria moth is quite blurry.]
(c) "A carbonaria peppered moth in shadow under a horizontal branch, showing how this positioning may reduce the likelihood of detection." [The moth is being viewed head-on and is indeed difficult to see.]
(d) "Typical form of the peppered moth at rest during the day in hazel foliage." [Head-on view, the moth is hanging underneath a thick twig.]
(e) "An intermediate, insularia form, of the peppered moth." [A 'classic' view, the moth is well-matched to its background, which is apparently tree bark.]
(f) "The non-melanic form of the peppered moth from North America, Biston betularia cognataria (courtesy of Professor Bruce Grant)." [A 'classic' view, the moth is well-matched to its background, which is a lichen-covered surface.]
It should be noted that Majerus is concerned to show his readers aspects of the peppered moth story that they do not get in textbooks; thus the focus on insularia forms and on moths in branches (Majerus is a proponent of the view that peppered moths most commonly -- but not entirely or even almost entirely -- rest on the underside of branches and thick twigs in the forest canopy). Even so, there are several photos that show peppered moths, on tree trunks, on more-or-less matching backgrounds. And guess what? These photos look no different than 'staged' photos of moths on tree-trunks. The most 'staged' aspect about a 'staged' photo is that two differing moth forms are shown side-by-side, but Majerus' first two photos from Plate 3 indicate that even this is not impossible. So the entire photo issue is a mountain made of a molehill.
It should also be noted that several (four) of these unstaged photos have some (minor but noticeable) degree of blurring (e.g., part of the moth will be out of focus). Insects in the wild do annoying things like move and fly away, and are often encountered in poor-light conditions, resulting in less-than-perfect photos. As scientific documentation of observations this is unimportant, but flawed photographs are exactly the kind of thing that are avoided in textbooks, and this is precisely why staging insect photos is a common practice for textbooks (as well as things like nature shows).
It is not the part of a free people to discard matters of reason or faith for the sake of political expedience, or out of a concern for what other people think. If this is the motivation behind those who promote the philosophy of evolution as a necessity in the basic science classroom, then they may kindly take their position next to that of the Taliban.
Meanwhile there is no such thing as a "theory of evolution." There are not enough scientific facts to back it up. What you have is a philosophy couched in scientific terms, for it is nothing more than a hopeful recapitulation of history that is not, and cannot be, the object of empirical science. Even a little child knows that just because two things look the same they do not necessarily have a common source. Evolution, insofar as it attempts to tell history beyond what has been recorded by man, does not deserve to have the word "theory" associated with it.
Educated fools are nothing new. Let them keep their philosphies in a classroom of their own so the curious can partake as they wish, but please do not consider the rest of the world stupid for rejecting the charade.
They glued the moths to the trees. That's pretty funny.
Second Thoughts about Peppered MothsCan you understand why people like me are leary of dogmatic evolutionists?When biologists looked beyond Birmingham and Dorset, where Kettlewell had conducted his experiments, they found discrepancies between Kettlewell's theory and the actual geographical distribution of melanic moths. For example, if melanic moths in polluted woodlands enjoyed as much of a selective advantage as Kettlewell's experiments seemed to indicate, then they should have completely replaced typicals in heavily polluted areas such as Manchester (Bishop and Cook 1980, Mani 1990). This never happened, however, indicating that factors other than selective predation must be affecting melanic frequencies...
After the passage of anti-pollution legislation, the proportion of melanics decreased north of London (as expected), but inexplicably increased to the south (Bishop and Cook 1980; Jones 1982). In The Netherlands, the decline of melanism took another twist. As air pollution declined, not only did the frequency of typicals increase, but also the frequency of an intermediate form which was almost as dark as melanics, suggesting a more complex change than was seen in Britain (Brakefield 1990).
bahahahahaha!!! Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee, or you'd owe me a keyboard...
I heard a speaker, Dr. Jerry Bergman, who pointed out that WWII era Germany had the most PHDs per capita.
Since you didn't answer it -- and chose to just repeat your earlier blockheaded mistake -- I repeat the question, Beavis:
"Now, if you'll bother to try to wrap your head around more than one sentence at a time, do you have any actual gripe with the ENTIRE POINT and not just one fragment of it yanked out of context? Yes or no."(Readers are invited to observe and assess the level of reading comprhension, intellectual honesty, ability to maintain focus, and argument complexity of the anti-evolutionist in his native habitat...)
Dawkins is an aggressive atheist who scorns spirituality.
Dennet wants creationist concentration camps.
I'm OK with Well's evidence.
Ninety percent of americans are "creationist".
A small minority of 'darwinuts' think they have established religion [and federal grant money]
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=14107
Also, I estimate 95+% of the people polled don't even know enough about evolution to even draw any conclusions.
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