The Top 10 Signs Of Evolution In Modern Man

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Here’s an interesting list of the Top 10 Signs Of Evolution In Modern Man.

10. Goose Bumps (Cutis Anserina)

Humans get goose bumps when they are cold, frightened, angry, or in awe. Many other creatures get goose bumps for the same reason, for example this is why a cat or dog’s hair stands on end and the cause behind a porcupine’s quills raising. In cold situations, the rising hair traps air between the hairs and skin, creating insulation and warmth. In response to fear, goose bumps make an animal appear larger - hopefully scaring away the enemy. Humans no longer benefit from goose bumps and they are simply left over from our past when we were not clothed and needed to scare our own natural enemies. Natural selection removed the thick hair but left behind the mechanism for controlling it.

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298 comments
1 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:29:37pm

Who knew ear wiggles were really evolutionary?

2 SummerSong  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:30:23pm

I did not know that!

3 lostlakehiker  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:31:31pm

Just ten? The list is endless if one cares to delve deeper.

We're moving into new niches, and that has prompted drastic and rapid evolution on the part of other species. Darwin's finches! One new niche: the city. For that matter, [Harpending and Cochran], the ghetto. Then there are the high-altitude niches, the deep-sea pearl diver niche, the Arctic, and so on.

4 MarineGrunt  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:32:36pm

What about tail bone,

In boot camp, one of the recruits had a inch long tail bone, DI named him cheetah.

5 laxmatt1984  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:36:12pm

If you honestly think evolution is false you suffer from self imposed ignorance.

6 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:36:23pm

re: #3 lostlakehiker

Just ten? The list is endless if one cares to delve deeper.

It didn't even get into hiccups and hernias. But I still found it interesting.

7 Kragar  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:36:27pm

Evolution Thread, uh oh!

I got signals, I got readings! In front and behind.

8 Outrider  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:37:04pm

re: #1 Sharmuta

Who knew ear wiggles were really evolutionary?

oughta make the Chosen One right happy.

9 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:37:38pm
10 notutopia  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:38:50pm

Yeah, well those left over appendages are still not evolving away fast enough.
Wisdom teeth removal...$ 2000.00
Appendectomy, laser......$12,000.00
Broken coccyx....... priceless...you literally cannot sit for weeks.

I love to watch my cats 180 degree radar ears! I wish I could strengthen those muscles!

11 Outrider  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:40:58pm
The appendix has no known use in modern humans and is often removed when it becomes infected. While its original use is still speculated on, most scientists agree with Darwin’s suggestion that it once helped to process the cellulose found in the leaf-rich diet that we once had. Over the course of evolution, as our diet has changed, the appendix became less useful.


Does this mean the vegans with their leaf rich diet, will have keep their appendix? Or are they in trouble if they had it taken out? ;-)>

12 Kragar  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:41:04pm

re: #10 notutopia


Broken coccyx

You watch your mouth!

13 experiencedtraveller  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:42:01pm

Number 5 Wisdom Teeth:

Early humans ate a lot of plants...

Thank you Ruth Chris...

14 opnion  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:43:10pm

According to this mornings network news programs, humanity has reached the evolutionary apex of intellect. The proof is that Obama has been elected.

15 Pietr  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:43:32pm

I missed the bang-but we have flames close to the Gaza cam.....

16 SummerSong  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:45:43pm

re: #15 Pietr

I missed the bang-but we have flames close to the Gaza cam.....

I think they are just lights...?

17 Walter L. Newton  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:46:18pm

re: #4 MarineGrunt

What about tail bone,

In boot camp, one of the recruits had a inch long tail bone, DI named him cheetah.

What was the Discovery Institute doing on base?

18 Kragar  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:46:40pm

re: #14 opnion

According to this mornings network news programs, humanity has reached the evolutionary apex of intellect. The proof is that Obama has been elected.

Speaking of the Messiah King, I think he's going to have a peasant revolt on his hands:

Obama: Unlikely to Close Guantanamo in First 100 Days

19 Outrider  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:47:06pm
If you watch a cat blink, you will see a white membrane cross its eye - that is called its third eyelid. It is quite a rare thing in mammals, but common in birds, reptiles, and fish. Humans have a remnant (but non-working) third eyelid (you can see it in the picture above). It has become quite small in humans, but some populations have more visible portions than others. There is only one known species of primate that still has a functioning third eyelid, and that is the Calabar angwantibo (closely related to lorises) which lives in West Africa.


Isn't this what saved Spock in Operation -- Annihilate! When he had to undergo the light treatment after getting infected by the parasites on planet Deneva?

20 HelloDare  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:47:21pm

My Jacobson’s organ is working just fine, thank you very much.

21 freedombilly  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:47:53pm

I get goose bumps every time I hear about the IDF shooting up some Hamas militant.

22 MandyManners  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:47:57pm

I thought goose-bumps warmed the body by getting agitated by clothing to help circulation speed up.

23 Shr_Nfr  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:49:24pm

Actually I would at the Bwitish to that list. They used to be a brave and useful people, but have now evolved into a bunch of morons. They are being replaced on the ecological niche by "Asians". It is estimate that the last Bwits will go totally extinct in Bwitain within this century. The Welsh on the other hand will continue to survive. Nobody can read the street signs in Welsh so they all get lost trying to get there. Glad grandad and grandmom got on the ship heading out in the latter half of the 1800s. [that is not a misprint]

24 Pietr  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:49:26pm

re: #16 SummerSong

I think they are just lights...?

Bottom left-looks like a fire to me....I do have the cam max magnified tho.....lot of drone sounds as well, 2 or 3?

25 MandyManners  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:50:26pm

Couldn't goose-bumps also be part of the body's ability to alert you to danger?

26 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:51:16pm
27 HelloDare  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:51:44pm

I read recently that some postulate that the appendix is a repository for beneficial intestinal organisms that may get wiped out when we get ill.

28 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:52:34pm
29 SummerSong  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:53:09pm

re: #24 Pietr

Bottom left-looks like a fire to me....I do have the cam max magnified tho.....lot of drone sounds as well, 2 or 3?

I just see two lights, shining down and a car in front. Yes, plenty of what I assume are drones and sometimes distant explosions.

30 opnion  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:53:11pm

re: #18 Kragar (Proud to be Kafir)

Speaking of the Messiah King, I think he's going to have a peasant revolt on his hands:

Obama: Unlikely to Close Guantanamo in First 100 Days


Will his supporters be angry , or will they make excuses for him?

31 HelloDare  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:53:52pm

God is far too busy to unhook the ear and goose bump muscles. He's got all those football fans praying to him every Sunday.

32 BBev  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:54:04pm

It's not all gone, when there is a fight or flight situation we also expand our mussels and thicken the neck, I know this first hand. I have been collecting rents in some very nasty areas and have been there done that.

33 SurferDoc  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:54:25pm

*Reaches a lone finger out, touches Evolution thread* Ouch! Damn!

34 Spiny Norman  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:54:28pm

re: #4 MarineGrunt

What about tail bone,

In boot camp, one of the recruits had a inch long tail bone, DI named him cheetah.

I had a girlfriend many years ago that had tailbone like that. It was especially weird looking when she was... ah,

Umm, nevermind.

35 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:54:47pm
36 lifeofthemind  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:54:55pm

Top 10 signs of human evolution:
1. Plumbing
2. Fred Astaire
3. Really good dentistry
4. 12 cylinder engines
5. Girls exercising with a Wii
6. Adoption
7. Combined arms operations
8. Literacy
9. Cantilevered I bean suspensions, and (drum roll please)
10. The concept of one merciful god who does not demand humans exact
       vengeance oh his behalf.

37 SummerSong  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:55:18pm

Pietr -

Aw well, now they moved the cam and zoomed into black nothingness.

38 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:56:51pm
39 LGoPs  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:57:16pm

What does it mean when journalists get a tingle up their leg?
*spit*

40 BBev  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:57:46pm

re: #37 SummerSong

Pietr -

Aw well, now they moved the cam and zoomed into black nothingness.

ya I know, still nothing

41 lifeofthemind  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:57:47pm

re: #38 buzzsawmonkey

...but I think you mean "I-beam."

Worked for Howard Hughes

42 Neo Con since 9-11  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:58:34pm

Interesting article but the human appendix really should not be called useless in modern humans. It provides a safe haven for the the bacteria that help us digest our food in case the bacteria are purged our killed due to food poisoning. Sort of a back up supply of our digestive bacteria.
[Link: www.foxnews.com...]

43 Pietr  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:58:56pm

re: #37 SummerSong

Pietr -

Aw well, now they moved the cam and zoomed into black nothingness.

I think they were trying to show some tracer fire, then-about mid screen. But the area I was watching is no longer on screen, 'cuz camera moved right and didn't pan back fully.....Sheesh.

44 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:59:01pm
45 Spiny Norman  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 2:59:14pm

re: #27 HelloDare

I read recently that some postulate that the appendix is a repository for beneficial intestinal organisms that may get wiped out when we get ill.

Or, it could be a spandrel, an evolutionary "side effect", with no actual practical purpose.

'Tis a mystery.

46 HelloDare  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:00:27pm

I've got my appendix cooking up a batch of moonshine.

47 LGoPs  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:01:42pm
The coccyx is the remnant of what was once a human tail.

It has evolved into being my cable provider.......

48 Occasional Reader  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:01:49pm

You know what I'd like to hear an evolutionary explanation for? Fainting. Never understood how that trait managed to survive (so to speak).

49 MarineGrunt  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:01:58pm

re: #17 Walter L. Newton

LOL, tell that to my DI.

50 victor_yugo  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:02:00pm

Top 5 signs of human devolution:

5. Penthouse Magazine
4. Larry the Cable Guy
3. Spider-man Saves Barack Obama
2. People who click the link in "Anna Kournikova Nude!" spam
1. Gaza

51 Outrider  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:05:03pm

re: #48 Occasional Reader

You know what I'd like to hear an evolutionary explanation for? Fainting. Never understood how that trait managed to survive (so to speak).

ask the metrosexuals when they are about to be mugged. It's a defensive mechanism. ;-)>

52 MarineGrunt  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:05:40pm

re: #34 Spiny Norman

Tickling her funny bone?

53 LGoPs  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:06:03pm

re: #50 victor_yugo

Top 5 signs of human devolution:

5. Penthouse Magazine
4. Larry the Cable Guy
3. Spider-man Saves Barack Obama
2. People who click the link in "Anna Kournikova Nude!" spam
1. Gaza

Add liberalism to the list. Liberalism is a purely human affliction. Rabbits for example don't suffer from liberalism. Do you know how I know that? Because they still exist. If there were liberals among rabbits, they'd preach that profiling wolves and other predators was insensitive and hurtful to wolves.......

54 Occasional Reader  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:06:46pm

re: #51 Outrider

ask the metrosexuals when they are about to be mugged. It's a defensive mechanism. ;-)>

You'd think that a tendency to drop unconscious when confronted by a predator, and therefore be unable to fight or flee, would be "selected out", you know?

55 Outrider  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:07:51pm

re: #54 Occasional Reader

You'd think that a tendency to drop unconscious when confronted by a predator, and therefore be unable to fight or flee, would be "selected out", you know?

that would be the obvious answer. As an non-expert, it was the best I could come up with. Works for the possum.

56 LGoPs  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:09:01pm

re: #48 Occasional Reader

You know what I'd like to hear an evolutionary explanation for? Fainting. Never understood how that trait managed to survive (so to speak).

It's an evolutionary response to hearing The One speak.......
/

57 MarineGrunt  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:09:29pm

re: #54 Occasional Reader

You'd think that a tendency to drop unconscious when confronted by a predator, and therefore be unable to fight or flee, would be "selected out", you know?

You mean like these?

58 LGoPs  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:10:11pm

Well that was a helluva short thread........

59 DoubleU  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:14:59pm

Humans evolved from geese?

60 Ayeless in Ghazi  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:16:46pm

Re the coccyx. We still have the genes for a tail in our genome.

[Link: www.sfgate.com...]

61 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:18:13pm

This is proof of evolution? Very sad evidence, bring something better.

This is akin to saying we evolved from a piece of wood since when wood is left in the hot sun, it loses moisture (sweating) just like we do. Fighting a losing battle with this one Chuck.

62 Ayeless in Ghazi  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:19:49pm

re: #61 Steak

This is proof of evolution? Very sad evidence, bring something better.

This is akin to saying we evolved from a piece of wood since when wood is left in the hot sun, it loses moisture (sweating) just like we do. Fighting a losing battle with this one Chuck.

Looks like we got another live one.

63 reine.de.tout  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:20:04pm

Ok, well, that was interesting, particularly:

#7, Extra Ear Muscles - I can use those muscles to wiggle my ears. But it is indeed a small wiggle.

#4 Third Eyelid - I've often wondered about that piece of tissue -why it's there, what does it do. It just always seemed odd to me.
and
#3 Darwin's Point - I actually went to my mirror to check! I do not have Darwin's point on my ear. It's gone.

Thanks, Charles, for this article! Thoroughly enjoyable.

64 reine.de.tout  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:21:46pm

re: #62 Jimmah

Looks like we got another live one.

Good grief!
They must have registered en masse, and then drew straws to see who would come out in the first wave, the second wave, etc.

65 Outrider  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:22:36pm

re: #64 reine.de.tout

Good grief!
They must have registered en masse, and then drew straws to see who would come out in the first wave, the second wave, etc.

seems we have another one on the Saturn thread.

66 Ayeless in Ghazi  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:26:46pm

re: #64 reine.de.tout

Good grief!
They must have registered en masse, and then drew straws to see who would come out in the first wave, the second wave, etc.

This one must have been one of the last to be chosen. His question indicates an individual of spectacular idiocy, even for a creationist (he will no doubt shortly tell us that he isn't a creationist, of course, as most creationists who post here do these days.)

67 Ayeless in Ghazi  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:28:17pm

re: #65 Outrider

seems we have another one on the Saturn thread.

A saturnist perhaps? I'll have to go look.

68 buzzdroid  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:30:15pm

and one of the top signs of DE-evolution in man is Islam.

69 buzzdroid  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:33:45pm

re: #59 DoubleU

Humans evolved from geese?

no - we share a common ancestor - the dinosaurs.

70 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:33:51pm

I would not be surprised to learn that there are some folks out there, so dedicated to denying empirical facts, that were God to split the heavens and shout to every soul in the world "I used evolution as a mechanism for Creation"!, they would brand Him an amoral, atheistic darwinist, and demand that He never be heard from again.

71 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:43:02pm

re: #61 Steak

That makes about as much sense as saying that mankind's capacity for evil is proof that there is no god.

72 Occasional Reader  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 3:55:57pm

re: #70 Slumbering Behemoth

were God to split the heavens and shout to every soul in the world "I used evolution as a mechanism for Creation"

Of course, there's a legitimate theological question as to why an allegedly "omnipotent" being would need a "mechanism" to do anything.

73 Wilderstad  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:07:13pm
The appendix has no known use in modern humans and is often removed when it becomes infected. While its original use is still speculated on, most scientists agree with Darwin’s suggestion that it once helped to process the cellulose found in the leaf-rich diet that we once had. Over the course of evolution, as our diet has changed, the appendix became less useful.

Experts now believe the appendix serves as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria after a severe gastrointestinal illness. So useless? Perhaps not.

74 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:14:29pm

I just can't get enough of these evolution threads. It almost seems desperate now that we're diving into vestigial organs. The list is a bit outdated - looks like there may be a good use for the appendix after all:

[Link: www.sciencedaily.com...]

(And I make good use of my wisdom teeth)

75 Ben G. Hazi  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:29:32pm

re: #74 stretch

I just can't get enough of these evolution threads. It almost seems desperate now that we're diving into vestigial organs. The list is a bit outdated - looks like there may be a good use for the appendix after all:

[Link: www.sciencedaily.com...]

(And I make good use of my wisdom teeth)

Too bad you didn't inherit any wisdom with those wisdom teeth....get behind thee, troll!

76 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:30:20pm

re: #75 talon_262

Too bad you didn't inherit any wisdom with those wisdom teeth....get behind thee, troll!

"troll" again? Can you support that assertion?

77 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:31:20pm

any research out there on nascent organs that are increasing in functionality? Seems there would be a bunch of that going on.

78 lifeofthemind  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:34:20pm

re: #77 stretch

any research out there on nascent organs that are increasing in functionality? Seems there would be a bunch of that going on.

Politicians growing extra fingers with built in sticky pads?

79 JamesTKirk  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:34:35pm

I think I'm due my first hat tip here.

80 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:34:53pm

re: #76 stretch

"troll" again? Can you support that assertion?

I believe the assertion can be supported:

Karma: -922

81 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:36:50pm

re: #80 Sharmuta

[Link: www.mwscomp.com...]

82 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:36:59pm

re: #80 Sharmuta

I believe the assertion can be supported:

Karma: -922

I'm thinking that just means I'm disagreeble to great scientific 'consensus' going on here.

83 Claire  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:38:16pm

re: #77 stretch

You mean, like the brain?

84 Buster Bunny  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:38:59pm

re: #77 stretch

any research out there on nascent organs that are increasing in functionality? Seems there would be a bunch of that going on.

ya .. 2 viagras and i can go all nite ;)

85 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:41:50pm

re: #83 Claire

You mean, like the brain?

would that be the public school brain, or the non public school brain?

86 leereyno  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:45:08pm

Heresy!

Don't you know that the devil put those goosebumps there to test your faith?

87 carefulnow  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:45:43pm

re: #77 stretch

The clitoris?

88 dedalus  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:47:36pm

re: #72 Occasional Reader

God makes adults from infants and infants from embryos. He may have put a process in place a few billion years ago be checking in periodically, rather than being hands-on with the creation of every genus or species.

89 Scorch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:56:54pm
Natural selection removed the thick hair but left behind the mechanism for controlling it.

Mother nature obviously missed a few people I have coffee with everyday. Genuine Sasquatch's. LOL

90 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 4:57:12pm

re: #87 carefulnow

That (plus multi-o's) is proof that god loves women and wants them to be happy.

91 Occasional Reader  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 5:03:29pm

re: #88 dedalus

He may have put a process in place a few billion years ago be checking in periodically

Then he wouldn't be omniscient or omnipresent.

92 dedalus  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 5:12:37pm

re: #91 Occasional Reader

Perhaps he isn't and we are just one of many experiments by a very-but-not-all-powerful creator. Though someone could look at evolution as part of a larger purpose by a God who still cares about them individually.

93 Age Of Freedom  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 5:14:07pm

This was a real pleasant read. Thanks for sharing, Charles.

94 goodin510  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 5:34:06pm

What I like about this article is that it describes some practical applications of evolutionary theory.

95 Charles Johnson  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:01:07pm

Creationist down-dingers going to town on this one:

CJW, dcbatlle, ericredwings, jweaks, mmmmmbiscuits, Rule303, sadatoni

96 winston06  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:01:24pm

i didnt know about this

97 winston06  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:02:40pm

re: #95 Charles

How can any one be a creationist after all these evidences? it's like being a 9/11 truther after all these evidences presented to them. It's so weird... What do they say about the star lights we see now? how about radio carbon?

98 winston06  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:04:43pm

EVOLUTION is not really the fact that we did descended from apes or whatever. It's how we constantly adapt to our environment. like the size of our food and our life style. It's pretty obvious what has happened in the past hundreds of millions of years/

99 leereyno  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:26:28pm

re: #97 winston06

How can any one be a creationist after all these evidences? it's like being a 9/11 truther after all these evidences presented to them. It's so weird... What do they say about the star lights we see now? how about radio carbon?

It's all the work of SATAN to make us doubt the word of God as passed down to us in Holy Scripture!

Fire and brimstone await those who doubt the absolute accuracy of ancient Jewish mythology as translated from Hebrew to Greek, then Latin, and finally into English!

Repent from your fantasies of facts and evidence! The Almighty is not bound by your feeble logic! Abandon reason or ye shall surely burn!

100 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:29:49pm

re: #64 reine.de.tout

Hmm, been watching this site since 2002. I have met Chuck personally a few times ( I live in Hermosa Beach, and frequent the strand he rides along). So, keep up that myth as well.

Chuck used to be an ultra-liberal. He changed his colors once he found out libs are insane. Maybe one day, his colors will change when he finds out what a bottom-less pit of ridiculousness darwinism is. Darwinism is NOT evolution, since I believe in certain parts of evolution, but Darwinism is a whole different concept. Darwinism is 'natural selection' and also includes genocide as a form of natural selection. It has no ground to stand on, just a philosophy that is even less stable than Scientology. The 2 are very closely related.

I am a creationist, you are a darwinist. Neither has more claim to evolution than the other. In fact, creation has a better story for evolution than Darwin ever did, if anything.

101 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:33:24pm

Another good argument against 'darwinism', or 'natural selection' is the existence of Extinction. If Darwin was right, there would never be an animal that goes extinct due to changing weather/ecosystem or even urban sprawl.

102 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:36:39pm

re: #101 Steak

And with that, you've shown you have no idea what you're talking about.

103 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:40:56pm

re: #102 Sharmuta

Yes Sharmuta, you have a very strong argument there! I cannot begin to attempt to debate all your well thought out points!

104 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:42:24pm

re: #100 Steak

"It has no ground to stand on, just a philosophy that is even less stable than Scientology. The 2 are very closely related."

Maybe you could expand a bit on this thought.

105 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:44:27pm

So Sharmuta, since you know EVERYTHING, how did life originate on earth? The world is DYING to know!

106 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:46:18pm

re: #104 jaunte

Jaunte, I'll extend the above question to you. Scientologists believe in alien beings infiltrated the souls of people on earth. Most (not all) Darwinists claim alien life forms seeded the planet. The ones who don't believe that, believe we came from mud. Just as absurd. So, where did life come from?

107 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:47:00pm

re: #106 Steak

You may need to do a bit more reading.

108 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:53:14pm

re: #105 Steak

The Music of the Ainur.

109 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:55:37pm
110 Steak  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:58:03pm

Again, another strong position with good debatable points Jaunte. I cannot handle all the facts being thrown at me. So far I have gotten these facts:

1. You need to read more
2. You have no idea what you are talking about!

I'll admit, these straight facts are beating me down, I might just turn to Darwinism. You have convinced me!
Look, I went to the same public schools you did, Darwinism and evolution was taught as fact, but never had a beginning. I am not religious, do not go to church, so you can throw out that straw man. Darwinism is like creating fact by this equation:

X+5=X, but nobody knows what X is. Where is the meat, as far as Darwinism?

111 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:59:11pm

re: #110 Steak

If you can't speak the language, you can't understand what's being said.
If you don't want to learn about it, you can just have a free ride.

112 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 6:59:53pm

re: #82 stretch

I'm thinking that just means I'm disagreeble to great scientific 'consensus' going on here.

Stretch, do you realize that all you do is poopoo? If you want a conversation, try to actually add something of substance; from the other end.

113 Charles Johnson  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:01:57pm

This sock puppet moron has never met me, and is now blocked from LGF again.

114 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:06:01pm

re: #106 Steak

Jaunte, I'll extend the above question to you. Scientologists believe in alien beings infiltrated the souls of people on earth. Most (not all) Darwinists claim alien life forms seeded the planet. The ones who don't believe that, believe we came from mud. Just as absurd. So, where did life come from?

I see this one is blocked already. Been lurking since 2002, and made 20 some posts, and then expects the world to listen? Woowoo.

115 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:28:22pm

re: #114 Naso Tang

This has kind of a ring to it, for a rotating title:

"Where is the meat, as far as Darwinism?"

116 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:33:15pm
117 scarshapedstar  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:33:27pm

re: #106 Steak

Most (not all) Darwinists claim alien life forms seeded the planet. The ones who don't believe that, believe we came from mud. Just as absurd. So, where did life come from?

I'm absurd? You're absurd! Gee, you are so insightful, Steak.

Let's start with panspermia.

It was recently proven that at least one multicelled animal - not just a bacterial spore or something - is capable of surviving in the vacuum of space for 12 days:

[Link: www.sflorg.com...]

Sorry if I just blew your mind. Sometimes reality is absurd, no? In any case, you can't categorically dismiss the possibility that a microbe survived a long deep space journey and landed here.

As to the possibility of life developing on earth, well, the whole "man came from mud" is a pretty embarassing strawman. We know that minerals, such as calcium carbonate, can catalyze (in conjunction with heat and UV radiation, e.g. sunlight) the formation of all the nucleic acids from simple organic compounds such as formamide - which forms abiotically and would have undoubtedly been present in the primordial soup. It's quite simple to envision an ocean awash with free nucleic acids.

Next up, a different reaction. Ribose can be synthesized abiotically by reacting formaldehyde with calcium hydroxide - again, these are not rare compounds:

[Link: books.google.com...]

So now we've got sugar and nucleic acids floating around. If you know anything at all about biology, and I hope you do if you're going to comment on this, you should know that these are the two key components of RNA and DNA. They will combine spontaneously, albeit infrequently, but the key part - the one that creationists are sadly unable to wrap their head around - is that this chemistry experiment took place across the entire planet for half a billion years. Eventually, I propose, a ribozyme (an strand of RNA that can catalyze reactions) formed that was capable of copying itself. This is an exceedingly unlikely event, but again, when you have a whole planet and half a billion years, you are certain to see some unlikely things. And really, it only had to happen once, at which point the molecule would spread like wildfire. And then one of its copies would be slightly different, slightly faster, and it would be even better at spamming itself, unwittingly crowding out its "parent". This is not to say that we have a living organism yet; it's more like a very primitive virus. An organism must be able to maintain an internal environment if it is to accomplish anything meaningful on its own.

Thus, the cell, the fundamental unit of life. For a ludicrously simple organism, the cell really just needs to be a membrane, to stop nucleic acids and such from floating away. In an aquatic environment, hydrocarbons (oils) will spontaneously form tiny micelles, aka bubbles, and you guessed it - the self-replicating ribozyme that was swallowed up by an oily membrane would suddenly have its own environment to reproduce in. From there, its "offspring" might even begin constructing membranes of their own... again, if you think this sounds improbable, I agree, but so was the Immaculate Reception. I'm talking about scales of time and space that no human fully comprehends.

Anyway, I hope that clears things up?

118 Throbert McGee  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:34:32pm

re: #90 Slumbering Behemoth

That (plus multi-o's) is proof that god loves women and wants them to be happy.

I saw this as I was scrolling up, and my first guess was "Jason Statham."

119 scarshapedstar  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:43:23pm

re: #116 herdgadfly

I'm kinda miffed as well, after spending all that time laying out my theories about the pre-RNA world, I don't get to see his lame response. However, when it comes to evolution, I think I can understand Charles perfectly on this one.

[Link: pandasthumb.org...]

Check it out. The US is all the way at the bottom, right on top of Turkey. And the further you go into Muslimland, the more they reject evolution. Shouldn't that give somebody at least a moment's pause?

120 winston06  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 7:47:19pm

re: #99 leereyno

hehe... i m scared :-D

121 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:14:08pm

re: #113 Charles

This sock puppet moron has never met me, and is now blocked from LGF again.

that was a bit excessive I thought - you remember everyone that you have ever met?

122 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:15:12pm

re: #112 Naso Tang

Stretch, do you realize that all you do is poopoo? If you want a conversation, try to actually add something of substance; from the other end.

I could if I ever saw a thread that was more than just a little bit biased. Do I earn a downding for that?

123 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:16:22pm

re: #114 Naso Tang

I see this one is blocked already. Been lurking since 2002, and made 20 some posts, and then expects the world to listen? Woowoo.

So, where did life come from? Do you believe entirely in naturalism, panspermia, or something else?

124 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:20:39pm
125 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:23:27pm

re: #117 scarshapedstar

that explanation ignores the improbabilities quite blissfully. This proof is nothing more than saying: "of course life arose from non-life, we're here aren't we?" Anything observable about life originating from non-life? Otherwise, it is just an unreasonable and unfounded faith.

And an organism can survive in the vacuum of space for 12 days? WOW. That means 25,000 years of travel from another system (where life arose how?) almost seems plausible!

126 J.S.  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:24:42pm

re: #109 buzzsawmonkey

Would provide your post with more up-dings, if i could...

127 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:27:27pm

re: #119 scarshapedstar

I'm kinda miffed as well, after spending all that time laying out my theories about the pre-RNA world, I don't get to see his lame response. However, when it comes to evolution, I think I can understand Charles perfectly on this one.

[Link: pandasthumb.org...]

Check it out. The US is all the way at the bottom, right on top of Turkey. And the further you go into Muslimland, the more they reject evolution. Shouldn't that give somebody at least a moment's pause?


right: Islam=Creationist so Creationist=Terrorist.

Well done - quite a stunning deduction there.

128 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:29:18pm

re: #122 stretch

I could if I ever saw a thread that was more than just a little bit biased. Do I earn a downding for that?

Any opposing opinions can be called biased. The downdings you earn are because you don't really express any opinions or, better said, knowledge; just oppositions.

129 Steve  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:30:12pm

My wife gives me goose bumps anytime she chooses.

130 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:34:13pm

re: #128 Naso Tang

Any opposing opinions can be called biased. The downdings you earn are because you don't really express any opinions or, better said, knowledge; just oppositions.

Okay here's one - I don't think public schools should use taxpayer funds to teach evolution. It is not 'scientific fact', it is not observable, it is not based on the scientific method. Evolution is taught because it is the foundation for the state religion of humanism. Evolution is an embarrassment to science.

131 [deleted]  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:34:33pm
132 swamprat  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:37:59pm

re: #130 stretch

Okay here's one - I don't think public schools should use taxpayer funds to teach evolution. It is not 'scientific fact', it is not observable, it is not based on the scientific method. Evolution is taught because it is the foundation for the state religion of humanism. Evolution is an embarrassment to science.

You sure told them.

133 Charles Johnson  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:39:09pm

The idiots are swarming tonight.

134 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:39:20pm

re: #132 swamprat

You sure told them.

that was not my intent - i thought he was asking me to express my opinion, so I obliged him.

135 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:39:44pm

re: #130 stretch

How do you explain the diversification of life on earth, and what empirical evidence to support that explanation do you have?

136 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:43:46pm

re: #123 stretch

So, where did life come from? Do you believe entirely in naturalism, panspermia, or something else?

The topic was evolution, not origins of life. This is a classic fallback of those who are only opposed to something, without any alternatives beyond mysticism.

Evolution does explain life from a simple starting point, but it does not even attempt to prove that start, even while it can speculate on the possible options based on what is known.

Panspermia is certainly a possibility, for Earth, but proves nothing about the origin before so even if it, panspermia, occurred it is irrelevant to the question of ultimate origin.

As to what I "believe"; I know that the universe is large beyond our imagination. I know that there is life in places on this earth that we would have thought impossible just years ago. I know that much of such life has no relevance to us humans, except perhaps as a seed for the next stage after us, and I see no reason to think that is not common elsewhere, nor that it is not a common, relatively, result of laws of chemistry and physics.

I do know with certainty however that there was no intelligence (other than perhaps a perverse one) in the design of life, human in particular, since we would be able to design much better bodies and lives for ourselves if we could (when we can), than the crippling system failures that some supposed intelligent designer came up with (take your pick, gods or aliens).

137 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:43:53pm

re: #135 Sharmuta

How do you explain the diversification of life on earth, and what empirical evidence to support that explanation do you have?

recall that this thread is about how vestigial organs are evidence for evolution. As I have said before, evolution must stand on its own. If it is a wrong theory, then it must be rejected entirely on that basis, not because one might be philosophically predisposed against any alternative. Scientific study does not work by awarding points first to one side, then the other. Just one contrary item can falsify a theory, no matter how much is vested in it.

138 swamprat  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:44:12pm

re: #134 stretch

I personally feel that deep within the asteroid belt there resides a small sphere, the size of a basketball, composed entirely of chocolate cake.

139 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:45:42pm

re: #130 stretch

I suspect I spent too much time typing my previous response. There is such a thing as knowledge and fact. Your ignorance is showing and I hope you get your dings.

140 Sharmuta  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:47:11pm

re: #137 stretch

Nice dodge.

141 dedalus  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:47:13pm

re: #125 stretch

Darwin's two theories didn't address abiogenesis. They do much to explain the diversity of species on the planet. Even a Creationist position relies on some generation of new species post-Eden.

142 solomonpanting  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:48:20pm

re: #130 stretch

Evolution is an embarrassment to science.

Some may think you're talking out of you're Sign #2.

(Here's your sign.)

And that's all I have to say about that.

143 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:49:06pm

re: #61 Steak

This is proof of evolution? Very sad evidence, bring something better.

This is akin to saying we evolved from a piece of wood since when wood is left in the hot sun, it loses moisture (sweating) just like we do. Fighting a losing battle with this one Chuck.

It is a full hodload of incontrovertible and perusable-at-will empirical evidence, that we all walk around with. You might as well deny your own body. Oh wait; you just did!

The only way that someone like you would accept evolution is if God Himself personally told you it was the means by which He created the species. And you would still ask Him to recheck.

144 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:49:35pm

re: #136 Naso Tang

The topic was evolution, not origins of life. This is a classic fall-back of those who are only opposed to something, without any alternatives beyond mysticism.

Evolution does explain life from a simple starting point, but it does not even attempt to prove that start, even while it can speculate on the possible options based on what is known.

Panspermia is certainly a possibility, for Earth, but proves nothing about the origin before so even if it, panspermia, occurred it is irrelevant to the question of ultimate origin.

As to what I "believe"; I know that the universe is large beyond our imagination. I know that there is life in places on this earth that we would have thought impossible just years ago. I know that much of such life has no relevance to us humans, except perhaps as a seed for the next stage after us, and I see no reason to think that is not common elsewhere, nor that it is not a common, relatively, result of laws of chemistry and physics.

I do know with certainty however that there was no intelligence (other than perhaps a perverse one) in the design of life, human in particular, since we would be able to design much better bodies and lives for ourselves if we could (when we can), than the crippling system failures that some supposed intelligent designer came up with (take your pick, gods or aliens).

The theory of evolution has certainly attempted to explain the origin of life, no matter how many times people here would like to try and deny the historical veracity of that. Evolution implies naturalism, but evolutionists have only recently discovered that life is too complicated to support a naturalistic origin. Its not good enough to say proof is forthcoming, as soon as the chaos theorists are done with their work. You really want to claim a naturalistic origin for life, but you have no scientific basis to do so. You want to claim that one species of a creature can spontaneously evolve into another species, but no one has ever observed this. If you are waiting for more evidence to turn up, fine, but that only clarifies that evolution has no true theoretical bases for the two toughest questions.

145 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:52:34pm

re: #74 stretch

I just can't get enough of these evolution threads. It almost seems desperate now that we're diving into vestigial organs. The list is a bit outdated - looks like there may be a good use for the appendix after all:

[Link: www.sciencedaily.com...]

(And I make good use of my wisdom teeth)

Umm..I believe that there were TEN examples mentioned, and you have only dismissed or denied TWO of them. BTW: I had to have my wisdom teeth cut out. It was hella painful.

146 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:52:55pm

re: #140 Sharmuta

Nice dodge.

alright - the Lord Almighty created everything and every creature - diversification was by design. Empirical evidence is everything I see that is uniquely and wonderfully made.

147 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:53:58pm

re: #137 stretch

Just one contrary item can falsify a theory, no matter how much is vested in it.

In science a contradictory item results in a revision or modification or enhancement to prior theory, not a rejection except perhaps for the most speculative of new theories. That is the very basis of the scientific process that you hold in such disdain, or ignorance.

148 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:54:37pm

re: #144 stretch

Just to take a small part of that:
"You want to claim that one species of a creature can spontaneously evolve into another species, but no one has ever observed this."

In your replacement for evolutionary theory, how do you distinguish between one species and another?

149 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:55:03pm

re: #85 stretch

would that be the public school brain, or the non public school brain?

That would be the human brain, which has increased in volume during each stage of hominid evolution.

150 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 8:58:25pm

re: #145 Salamantis

Umm..I believe that there were TEN examples mentioned, and you have only dismissed or denied TWO of them. BTW: I had to have my wisdom teeth cut out. It was hella painful.

I thought falsification only required one? Two should have been plenty. Just a quick search on "vestigial organs" will come up with a good number of "vestigial organs" that have previously been claimed by evolutionists, and subsequently shown to have purpose and design.

It is a lot like pseudogenes - assuming that all are 'junk' DNA, then finding the right experimental conditions that causes one to express, kinda blows the whole theory don't you think?

151 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:00:02pm

re: #149 Salamantis

That would be the human brain, which has increased in volume during each stage of hominid evolution.

but of course. Given the human brain, what has been observed to 'improve' for the length of time that anyone has been looking?

152 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:02:03pm

re: #144 stretch

As much as I hate to revert to ad hominems, it does happen and I can only reply that you are ignorant of the evidence you claim doesn't exist; but then most creationists are ignoramuses, other than those who are simply dishonest.

153 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:02:08pm

re: #148 jaunte

Just to take a small part of that:
"You want to claim that one species of a creature can spontaneously evolve into another species, but no one has ever observed this."

In your replacement for evolutionary theory, how do you distinguish between one species and another?

wait, are you regecting evolutionary theory based on what i wrote? If its your theory, then you pick the species that you want to evolve into another species. I say it can't, and hasn't, happened.

154 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:03:02pm

re: #152 Naso Tang

As much as I hate to revert to ad hominems, it does happen and I can only reply that you are ignorant of the evidence you claim doesn't exist; but then most creationists are ignoramuses, other than those who are simply dishonest.

not getting off that easy - you asked the question and made the statements. Now take a stand - do you believe in the naturalistic origin for life or not?

155 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:03:05pm

re: #100 Steak

Hmm, been watching this site since 2002. I have met Chuck personally a few times ( I live in Hermosa Beach, and frequent the strand he rides along). So, keep up that myth as well.

Chuck used to be an ultra-liberal. He changed his colors once he found out libs are insane. Maybe one day, his colors will change when he finds out what a bottom-less pit of ridiculousness darwinism is. Darwinism is NOT evolution, since I believe in certain parts of evolution, but Darwinism is a whole different concept. Darwinism is 'natural selection' and also includes genocide as a form of natural selection. It has no ground to stand on, just a philosophy that is even less stable than Scientology. The 2 are very closely related.

Evolutionary theory is random genetic mutation and nonrandom environmental selection. It does not include genocide, which is the intentional murder of an entire human racial or ethnic subgroup. And evolution doesn't have a damn thing to say about body thetans, clears, suls trapped in volcanoes, or the Overlords from Xenu, nor does it claim that we are direct descendents of clams.

I am a creationist, you are a darwinist. Neither has more claim to evolution than the other. In fact, creation has a better story for evolution than Darwin ever did, if anything.

Actually, umm, no. Creationists have an ancient myth, while evolutionary theorists have vast swaths of empirical evidence, like, for instance, the entire fields of genetics and paleontology. And the evidence presented in the thread article.

156 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:04:09pm

Time for bed; all I can say is that there have been creationists here who have been more creative than you, although that is a stretch.

Goodnight

157 Achilles Tang  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:04:36pm

re: #154 stretch

Yes

158 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:05:02pm

re: #101 Steak

Another good argument against 'darwinism', or 'natural selection' is the existence of Extinction. If Darwin was right, there would never be an animal that goes extinct due to changing weather/ecosystem or even urban sprawl.

Wrong. When members of a species can no longer survive to reproductive age in a changed environment in which their ecological niche has been rendered untenable, the species dies out.

159 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:06:11pm

re: #153 stretch

I'm pointing out to you that you must have some new science to replace the current theory with, not just handwaving and objections.

Other creationists have spoken about Biblical "kinds" of animals, but remain notably vague on when something stops being one kind and becomes another. Maybe you have an idea about that.

160 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:08:09pm

re: #147 Naso Tang

In science a contradictory item results in a revision or modification or enhancement to prior theory, not a rejection except perhaps for the most speculative of new theories. That is the very basis of the scientific process that you hold in such disdain, or ignorance.

Not at all. Recall that many popular theories collapsed on a single point: spontaneous life, the universal "ether", perpetual motion, etc... None of those theories were ever modified, they were flat out rejected. If the house of cards has no real foundation, then the whole thing will come down.

161 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:08:31pm

re: #105 Steak

So Sharmuta, since you know EVERYTHING, how did life originate on earth? The world is DYING to know!

re: #106 Steak

Jaunte, I'll extend the above question to you. Scientologists believe in alien beings infiltrated the souls of people on earth. Most (not all) Darwinists claim alien life forms seeded the planet. The ones who don't believe that, believe we came from mud. Just as absurd. So, where did life come from?

We're coming close to the answer to that question:

Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab
By Robert Roy Britt
[Link: www.livescience.com...]

One of life's greatest mysteries is how it began. Scientists have pinned it down to roughly this:

Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago — perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets — to create biology.

Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on.

The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction.

Sal: RTWT

162 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:13:31pm

re: #159 jaunte

I'm pointing out to you that you must have some new science to replace the current theory with, not just handwaving and objections.

Other creationists have spoken about Biblical "kinds" of animals, but remain notably vague on when something stops being one kind and becomes another. Maybe you have an idea about that.

And I'm saying you don't, because expecting a "better theory" means that the wrong stuff just hangs around that much longer. That is not good science at all. This is the same kind of thinking that got AGW to where it is now - several generations were not trained in critical thinking, but only to believe the 'consensus' and everything that they were taught by their 'betters'.

163 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:15:01pm

re: #161 Salamantis

We're coming close to the answer to that question:

Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab
By Robert Roy Britt
[Link: www.livescience.com...]

One of life's greatest mysteries is how it began. Scientists have pinned it down to roughly this:

Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago — perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets — to create biology.

Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on.

The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction.

Sal: RTWT


"The researchers...created molecules" I love it.

164 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:15:03pm

re: #162 stretch

"Not at all. Recall that many popular theories collapsed on a single point: spontaneous life, the universal "ether", perpetual motion, etc... None of those theories were ever modified, they were flat out rejected."

What were these theories rejected in favor of, and why?

165 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:17:05pm

re: #164 jaunte

"Not at all. Recall that many popular theories collapsed on a single point: spontaneous life, the universal "ether", perpetual motion, etc... None of those theories were ever modified, they were flat out rejected."

What were these theories rejected in favor of, and why?

biogenesis (life from life - L. Pastuer), the laws of thermodynamics (Lord Kelvin and others)

166 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:18:28pm

re: #130 stretch

Okay here's one - I don't think public schools should use taxpayer funds to teach evolution. It is not 'scientific fact', it is not observable, it is not based on the scientific method. Evolution is taught because it is the foundation for the state religion of humanism. Evolution is an embarrassment to science.

Your vast and massive ignorance of science is here on full display. Artifactual retroviral DNA evidenceconsclusively demonstrates that different species share common ancestors, and evolution has been observed, and is reproducable at will under controlled conditions, in Richard Lenski's lab. You may not like these facts, but facts they are, nonetheless.

I'll bet you don't even understand why artifactual retroviral DNA evidence is so damn strong. And you probably don't care to, because you falsely and irrationally fear that such knowledge might shake your precious faith, which it could not do, unless you are a Genesis Literalist - in which case you should be in Kentucky, handling rattlers and swilling strychnine from Mason jars.

167 jaunte  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:18:55pm

re: #165 stretch

So better science, better theories, replaced their predecessors.
Where is your better theory to replace the theory of evolution, and why is it a better theory? Can you make a positive argument in favor of something?

168 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:25:08pm

re: #166 Salamantis

Your vast and massive ignorance of science is here on full display. Artifactual retroviral DNA evidenceconsclusively demonstrates that different species share common ancestors, and evolution has been observed, and is reproducable at will under controlled conditions, in Richard Lenski's lab. You may not like these facts, but facts they are, nonetheless.

I'll bet you don't even understand why artifactual retroviral DNA evidence is so damn strong. And you probably don't care to, because you falsely and irrationally fear that such knowledge might shake your precious faith, which it could not do, unless you are a Genesis Literalist - in which case you should be in Kentucky, handling rattlers and swilling strychnine from Mason jars.

Actually, I have been reading up on this artifactual retroviral DNA - things are not at all as they seem (nor as you have asserted here). For example, the artifctual retroviral DNA (assuming common descent), gives a different phylogeny depending on the sequences that were compared.

So tell me, do you have full agreement in the evolutionist camp - did humans branch off first, or was it gorillas, then chimps, then humans?

169 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:26:41pm

re: #137 stretch

recall that this thread is about how vestigial organs are evidence for evolution. As I have said before, evolution must stand on its own. If it is a wrong theory, then it must be rejected entirely on that basis, not because one might be philosophically predisposed against any alternative. Scientific study does not work by awarding points first to one side, then the other. Just one contrary item can falsify a theory, no matter how much is vested in it.

But you have no such contrary item. You can offer not one single iota or whit of credible empirical evidence that contradicts evolutionary theory, while mountains upon mountains of empirical evidence supporting it has been produced in the past century and a half. IDers don't even do their own research, because they fear (which means that they know) that what they'll find will support the very theory against which they rant and rave.

And yet there is the red-shift coefficient of the Big bang echo background radiation and many different methods of radiometric dating, not to mention light for far distant stars, that conclusively demonstrates that the universe and the earth are vastly older than Young Earth creationists claim, and artifactual retroviral DNA that conclusively demonstrate shared ancestry between species, which falsifies the claim that they were created independently and as is.

170 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:27:11pm

re: #166 Salamantis

Your vast and massive ignorance of science is here on full display. Artifactual retroviral DNA evidenceconsclusively demonstrates that different species share common ancestors, and evolution has been observed, and is reproducable at will under controlled conditions, in Richard Lenski's lab. You may not like these facts, but facts they are, nonetheless.

I'll bet you don't even understand why artifactual retroviral DNA evidence is so damn strong. And you probably don't care to, because you falsely and irrationally fear that such knowledge might shake your precious faith, which it could not do, unless you are a Genesis Literalist - in which case you should be in Kentucky, handling rattlers and swilling strychnine from Mason jars.

Also, as I suspected, more and more of these "psuedogenes" are being discovered to have function and utility. It is not good science to claim that when something has no purpose under a given set of experimental conditions, to then claim that it has no purpose at all.

171 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:29:24pm

re: #169 Salamantis

But you have no such contrary item. You can offer not one single iota or whit of credible empirical evidence that contradicts evolutionary theory, while mountains upon mountains of empirical evidence supporting it has been produced in the past century and a half. IDers don't even do their own research, because they fear (which means that they know) that what they'll find will support the very theory against which they rant and rave.

And yet there is the red-shift coefficient of the Big bang echo background radiation and many different methods of radiometric dating, not to mention light for far distant stars, that conclusively demonstrates that the universe and the earth are vastly older than Young Earth creationists claim, and artifactual retroviral DNA that conclusively demonstrate shared ancestry between species, which falsifies the claim that they were created independently and as is.

Are you saying that you would define empircal evidence for creationism as something that could be tested under naturalisitic processes? That seems a bit tautological, don't you think?

172 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:34:50pm

re: #144 stretch

The theory of evolution has certainly attempted to explain the origin of life, no matter how many times people here would like to try and deny the historical veracity of that. Evolution implies naturalism, but evolutionists have only recently discovered that life is too complicated to support a naturalistic origin. Its not good enough to say proof is forthcoming, as soon as the chaos theorists are done with their work. You really want to claim a naturalistic origin for life, but you have no scientific basis to do so. You want to claim that one species of a creature can spontaneously evolve into another species, but no one has ever observed this. If you are waiting for more evidence to turn up, fine, but that only clarifies that evolution has no true theoretical bases for the two toughest questions.

Actually, the doctrine of irreduceable complexity remains as dead as the doornail that it was proven to be in the Dover trial. Because that so-called 'irreducable' complexity is all-too-reduceable.

And some of Lenski's e coli have evolved the ability to metabolize citric acid (the inability to do so has long been an indicator of the species), and since he preserved populations of them at regular intervals, he can activate certain of them and the mutation can be observed at will happening all over again.

But No! That's not good enough for the likes of you! Ignoring the necessity for thousands of generations to pass while incremental changes accumulate, and not caring that Lazarus couldn't live long enough to see what you demand, you insist upon seeing fish morphing into giraffes before your very eyes! If such a thing happened, it would not be a proof of evolution, but an example of God sticking His Finger into the world.

173 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:38:00pm

re: #146 stretch

alright - the Lord Almighty created everything and every creature - diversification was by design. Empirical evidence is everything I see that is uniquely and wonderfully made.

So all of those identical retroviral DNA sequences were not spliced by viral infection into the genes of the common ancestors of the different species that share them, but instead were God's way of lying to us by faking evidence?

174 Claire  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:39:45pm

re: #150 stretch

I thought falsification only required one? Two should have been plenty.

Stretch, are you actually attempting to argue that you have "falsified" evolution because the appendix may not be wholly vestigial? Or that since you have functioning wisdom teeth, that the whole theory is false? This is so bizarre, I don't even know where to start.

175 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:39:57pm

re: #172 Salamantis

Actually, the doctrine of irreduceable complexity remains as dead as the doornail that it was proven to be in the Dover trial. Because that so-called 'irreducable' complexity is all-too-reduceable.

And some of Lenski's e coli have evolved the ability to metabolize citric acid (the inability to do so has long been an indicator of the species), and since he preserved populations of them at regular intervals, he can activate certain of them and the mutation can be observed at will happening all over again.

But No! That's not good enough for the likes of you! Ignoring the necessity for thousands of generations to pass while incremental changes accumulate, and not caring that Lazarus couldn't live long enough to see what you demand, you insist upon seeing fish morphing into giraffes before your very eyes! If such a thing happened, it would not be a proof of evolution, but an example of God sticking His Finger into the world.

I like how Anne Coulter slams the Dover trial and Judge Jones in the last chapter of her book "Godless" - its a very amusing read.

And the e-coli thing AGAIN? E-coli evolved to E-coli. Proves absolutely nothing.

And no, I won't wait for the "necessity of thousands of generations to pass to accumulate changes" - you and yours want to control all the research funding, then come up with something REAL!

176 winston06  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:43:33pm

re: #130 stretch

why should state fund school to teach a stupid thing like creation?

177 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:44:30pm

re: #150 stretch

I thought falsification only required one? Two should have been plenty. Just a quick search on "vestigial organs" will come up with a good number of "vestigial organs" that have previously been claimed by evolutionists, and subsequently shown to have purpose and design.

It is a lot like pseudogenes - assuming that all are 'junk' DNA, then finding the right experimental conditions that causes one to express, kinda blows the whole theory don't you think?

You haven't falsified any of the examples. If the appendix has appropriated another purpose from that which it originally possessed in response to the exigencies of a changing environment (less plant-dependent diet), that is evidence FOR evolution, not against it. And the fact that you personally have no problems with your wisdom teeth changes not one whith the fact that many people have to have them surgically removed.

The former function of the pseudogene mentioned in the examples is well known; it was to produce Vitamin C.

And I hope you're not confusing pseudogenes with artifactual retroviral DNA. For one thing they have different sources (internal to the species vs. external to it).

178 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:45:36pm

re: #174 Claire

Stretch, are you actually attempting to argue that you have "falsified" evolution because the appendix may not be wholly vestigial? Or that since you have functioning wisdom teeth, that the whole theory is false? This is so bizarre, I don't even know where to start.

No, of course not. I was being sarcastic. The point is, and was, that claiming that any body part is "vestigial" is poor science. As has been demonstrated many times, organs that were previously claimed to be vestigial have subsequently been found to have a purpose (and in the meantime, the organs true functionality was ignored on the presupposition - another reason that evolution had been such an embarrassment to science).

Demonstrating that a particular body part has a function or not is based on assumptions of certain experimental conditions. In many cases, the conditions were not correct for the function to be expressed. The appendix is but one example of this assertion - it was not until the conditions following a massive uptake of anti-biotics were simulated, that the purpose of the appendix as a storehouse for gut bacteria was discovered.

179 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:47:36pm

re: #151 stretch

but of course. Given the human brain, what has been observed to 'improve' for the length of time that anyone has been looking?

Umm...practically all of civilized society?

That is, unless you think that people were driving cars to supermarkets where they could buy any food they desired, then returning to their climate-controlled homes to cybercommunicate ten thousand years ago.

180 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:51:02pm

re: #153 stretch

wait, are you regecting evolutionary theory based on what i wrote? If its your theory, then you pick the species that you want to evolve into another species. I say it can't, and hasn't, happened.

You mean like Tiktaalik crawling out of the sea? Or the ancestors of whales returning there?

181 avanti  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:52:57pm

re: #176 winston06

why should state fund school to teach a stupid thing like creation?

Why not add teaching that all the worlds languages stated with the tower of Bable too ? Why teach just one Genesis myth ? /s

"Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4). God, seeing what the people were doing, gave each person a different language to confuse them and scattered the people throughout the earth.

182 stretch  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:52:58pm

re: #179 Salamantis

Umm...practically all of civilized society?

That is, unless you think that people were driving cars to supermarkets where they could buy any food they desired, then returning to their climate-controlled homes to cybercommunicate ten thousand years ago.

so we evolved by going to college and learning from what others had done before us? how utterly phenomenal.

time for me to go - thanks for the discussion

183 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 9:53:36pm

re: #160 stretch

Not at all. Recall that many popular theories collapsed on a single point: spontaneous life, the universal "ether", perpetual motion, etc... None of those theories were ever modified, they were flat out rejected. If the house of cards has no real foundation, then the whole thing will come down.

You mean like the Genesis Literalist house of cards, when DNA, radiometric dating, and the Big bang background echo radiation red shift coefficient were discovered?

184 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:01:13pm

re: #162 stretch

And I'm saying you don't, because expecting a "better theory" means that the wrong stuff just hangs around that much longer. That is not good science at all. This is the same kind of thinking that got AGW to where it is now - several generations were not trained in critical thinking, but only to believe the 'consensus' and everything that they were taught by their 'betters'.

It's not a matter of belief, like it is for dogmatic religion; it's a matter of accepting empirical evidence; that's the way science works.

Some theories come and go. AGW is being progressively contrdicted by empirical science, and its erstwhile scientific supporters are defecting in droves. Other theories - the heliocentric solar system, universal gravitation, and evolution via random genetic mutation and nonrandon environmental selection - come and stay, and subsequent refinements to them only render them stronger.

185 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:05:16pm

re: #165 stretch

biogenesis (life from life - L. Pastuer), the laws of thermodynamics (Lord Kelvin and others)

Pasteur lacked the technological resources with which to evaluate biogenetic claims. And when energy is received from outside of a ssystem, like the biosphere receives energy from the sun, the law of entropy does not constrain the system.

186 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:07:29pm

re: #168 stretch

Actually, I have been reading up on this artifactual retroviral DNA - things are not at all as they seem (nor as you have asserted here). For example, the artifctual retroviral DNA (assuming common descent), gives a different phylogeny depending on the sequences that were compared.

So tell me, do you have full agreement in the evolutionist camp - did humans branch off first, or was it gorillas, then chimps, then humans?

Actuually, the scientific consensus, based upon the empirical evidence, is quite solid; gorillas diverged before chimpanzees did.

187 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:09:35pm

re: #170 stretch

Also, as I suspected, more and more of these "psuedogenes" are being discovered to have function and utility. It is not good science to claim that when something has no purpose under a given set of experimental conditions, to then claim that it has no purpose at all.

Once again, you fail to grasp the pivotal difference between internally sourced pseudogenes and externally sourced artifactual retroviral DNA sequences.

188 Claire  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:11:13pm

re: #178 stretch

Okay, I get it now. Humans were created in perfect form... in God's image or whatever, so any and every cell must have a purpose. Nothing hanging around, left over from millions of years ago.......Junk DNA, etc, Retroviral DNA............even looking for vestigial body parts is futile because there is no such thing by definition according to you............Gotcha.

189 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:12:36pm

re: #171 stretch

Are you saying that you would define empircal evidence for creationism as something that could be tested under naturalisitic processes? That seems a bit tautological, don't you think?

I would say that no empirical evidence for Genesis Literalist crationism exists, and tsunamis of empirical evidence contradicting it has been found, conclusively falsifying the contention. Unless you believe in a God that would lie to its creation by implanting false evidence throughout nature.

190 Dark_Falcon  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:17:10pm

re: #187 Salamantis

Once again, you fail to grasp the pivotal difference between internally sourced pseudogenes and externally sourced artifactual retroviral DNA sequences.

Sal, in the future may I suggest limiting your responses to [st]retch when he shows up. He'll never learn so my suggested response is:

GAZE

191 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:21:29pm

re: #175 stretch

I like how Anne Coulter slams the Dover trial and Judge Jones in the last chapter of her book "Godless" - its a very amusing read.

Yeah, right, shuuuuure; Ann Coulter is such a renowned and competent scientist...she ranks right up there with Ben Stein!

And the e-coli thing AGAIN? E-coli evolved to E-coli. Proves absolutely nothing.

It would be as if some humans were born with blue scaly skin, and the ability to drink strychnine and piss arsenic, while running marathons on the energy they derived from the process.

And no, I won't wait for the "necessity of thousands of generations to pass to accumulate changes" - you and yours want to control all the research funding, then come up with something REAL!

You can't wait that long, unless Ponce de Leon left you a map to the Fountain of Youth. Which is precisely the point.

And any researcher who can falsify evolutionary theory is guaranteed a lifetime sinecure at an Ivy League university, fat research grants in perpetuity, and a perpetual major mention in the history of science. Many have tried to grasp such a brass ring, all have failed.

Why doesn't the Disco Institute pump some of its many milllions into such scientific research? Because, if they honestly pursue it, they know, and fear, what they will find: the same genuine evidence for evolution that everyone else has found whenever they honestly looked.

192 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:22:33pm

re: #190 Dark_Falcon

Sal, in the future may I suggest limiting your responses to [st]retch when he shows up. He'll never learn so my suggested response is:

GAZE

No. I refuse to allow my silence in the face of such creationist crapola to be misconstrued as assent by those who visit this site.

193 Ben G. Hazi  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:25:25pm

re: #192 Salamantis

No. I refuse to allow my silence in the face of such creationist crapola to be misconstrued as assent by those who visit this site.

Notice he conveniently snuck out of the door when confronted by someone who could blow his "arguments" out of the water...

194 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:26:23pm

re: #178 stretch

No, of course not. I was being sarcastic. The point is, and was, that claiming that any body part is "vestigial" is poor science. As has been demonstrated many times, organs that were previously claimed to be vestigial have subsequently been found to have a purpose (and in the meantime, the organs true functionality was ignored on the presupposition - another reason that evolution had been such an embarrassment to science).

Demonstrating that a particular body part has a function or not is based on assumptions of certain experimental conditions. In many cases, the conditions were not correct for the function to be expressed. The appendix is but one example of this assertion - it was not until the conditions following a massive uptake of anti-biotics were simulated, that the purpose of the appendix as a storehouse for gut bacteria was discovered.

But what is not demonstrated is the idea that this function was that which the appendix was originally fulfilled. In fact, the function of cellulose breakdown when the human diet was vastly different makes much more sense. And of course there are also the original functions of all of those other examples cited in the article - examples which you have utterly failed to address, because you cannot.

195 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:26:57pm

re: #193 talon_262

Notice he conveniently snuck out of the door when confronted by someone who could blow his "arguments" out of the water...

It has always and ever been thus...;~)

196 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:29:27pm

re: #182 stretch

so we evolved by going to college and learning from what others had done before us? how utterly phenomenal.

time for me to go - thanks for the discussion

No, the point is that our evolved bigger brains allow us to conceive of, and therefore do, things that other hominids (chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, bonobos), which did not evolve them, cannot.

197 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:33:41pm

re: #176 winston06

why should state fund school to teach a stupid thing like creation?

For the same reason that they should teach astrology, and alchemy, and the Ptolemaic geocentric theory of the solar system, and the phlogiston theory of fire, and the herbal doctrine of plant signatures, and the air-earth-fire-water theory of the elements, and the spontaneous generation theory of worms from horsehairs and alligators from sunken river logs.

/

198 Dark_Falcon  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:36:26pm

re: #193 talon_262

Notice he conveniently snuck out of the door when confronted by someone who could blow his "arguments" out of the water...

He always does that. He's a sniper troll, firing away to annoy Salamantis and other sane people and then retreating when the return fire of logic gets too hot for him.

199 Salamantis  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:38:51pm

re: #163 stretch

"The researchers...created molecules" I love it.

Sure they did. Chemists do it all the time, by combining elements.

200 Dark_Falcon  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:48:51pm

Smoke still rising in Gaza. Intermittent gunfire.

201 Dark_Falcon  Sun, Jan 11, 2009 10:49:43pm

re: #200 Dark_Falcon

Wrong thread, sorry.

202 Seax  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:38:37am

Yes - my one of party tricks is...wait for it...
I can make goose bumps appear and disappear
on my arms and body at will...oooh ...ahhhhh
unfortunately the good looking ladies aren't
impressed - they usually just think it's weird...
does this mean I'm de-evolving or what...?

203 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 5:57:53am

I’ve got to say, this is a really lame article, from a scientific point of view.

What they are really talking about is the top 10 vestigial traits, and truth is, many of them are not so vestigial after all. Let’s run them down.

10: goose bumps are acknowledged to make us warmer. They seem to think that is vestigial since the invention of the parka, but in some situations that will save your life.

7: ear wiggling. Might be useful in attracting a mate, communications with people, etc. I mean how many people wiggle their ears to make other people happy? So questionable as a vestigial element.

6: they seem to think everything related to climbing trees is vestigial. Um, unless you are a lumberjack, I guess. Or you live in the jungle and are being chased by a tiger. Or you work in construction. Or you are a fireman. Or… well, I guess its not so vestigial after all.

5: teeth are hardly vestigial.

4: third eyelid might still keep out bad things.

3: its hard to call something vestigial if you don’t know what it is for.

2: you can’t call it vestigial if it serves a purpose. *rolls eyes*

1: contrary to this page, the usefulness of the appendix has been identified.

[Link: www.independent.co.uk...]

So that leaves 2 really good examples, but the rest either outright suck, or are dubious. And really the fact is that Darwinian evolution considers any needless traits to be generally harmful to one’s fitness, so we shouldn’t see very much that is vestigial.

Overall, a poor article.

204 Randall Gross  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 7:14:33am

I'd have really rather not had my vestigal wisdom teeth, they had to break them with hammer and chisel to get all four out since they were forcing my other teeth to overlap each other and chip by growing into their space sideways.

205 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 7:16:24am

Thanos

Yike, sounds bad. My sympathies.

206 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 7:41:25am

re: #203 A.W.

I’ve got to say, this is a really lame article, from a scientific point of view.

What they are really talking about is the top 10 vestigial traits, and truth is, many of them are not so vestigial after all. Let’s run them down.

10: goose bumps are acknowledged to make us warmer. They seem to think that is vestigial since the invention of the parka, but in some situations that will save your life.

Goosebumps cannot raise hair to trap warm air in the absence of hair to raise.

7: ear wiggling. Might be useful in attracting a mate, communications with people, etc. I mean how many people wiggle their ears to make other people happy? So questionable as a vestigial element.

And what animals are known to use ear wiggling to attract mates? Compared to, that is, those that swivel their ears in order to detect the presence and direction or enemies, predators or prey. I also haven't noticed an ability to wiggle one's ears mentioned as a selling point in personals ads.

6: they seem to think everything related to climbing trees is vestigial. Um, unless you are a lumberjack, I guess. Or you live in the jungle and are being chased by a tiger. Or you work in construction. Or you are a fireman. Or… well, I guess its not so vestigial after all.

There are many terrestrial areas, including the African veldt where fossils of our direct hominid progenitors are found, where trees are scarce, and fleetness and stamina of foot is far more valuable, which explains how we evolved for motre of those characteristics.

5: teeth are hardly vestigial.

But teeth that grow sideways in one's jaw are most definitely not intelligently designed. Instead, they are leftovers from when our diets consisted of more rough raw plant material and required more mastication.

4: third eyelid might still keep out bad things.

They are tiny and nonfunctional.

3: its hard to call something vestigial if you don’t know what it is for.

Long swiveling ears generally have points. We're talking the leftovers from our progenitors' ear points.

2: you can’t call it vestigial if it serves a purpose. *rolls eyes*

What we can say is that it serves other purposes than the purposes to which such structures were put in other species, including our close DNA relatives (balance when moving in trees, prehensile grasping).

1: contrary to this page, the usefulness of the appendix has been identified.

[Link: www.independent.co.uk...]

And iot most likely was not to use to which the organ was originally put (cellulose breakdown when our diet consisted of mainly raw, high-roughage foods). The fact that these last two have evolved other uses when their original uses became obsolete is a sign of evolution.

So that leaves 2 really good examples, but the rest either outright suck, or are dubious. And really the fact is that Darwinian evolution considers any needless traits to be generally harmful to one’s fitness, so we shouldn’t see very much that is vestigial.

Overall, a poor article.

Actually, umm, no. Characteristics can be positive, negative, or neutral. Neutral characteristics are neither selected against nor for; they just tend to attenuate over time and the passing of generations.

All of these examples are good ones. And your fuitile attempts to belittle, discredit and dismiss them are emotionally rather than intellectually anchored.

207 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 7:43:48am

re: #204 Thanos

I'd have really rather not had my vestigal wisdom teeth, they had to break them with hammer and chisel to get all four out since they were forcing my other teeth to overlap each other and chip by growing into their space sideways.

I went through the same thing. My wisdom teeth also lacked the jaw room to grow in vertically, so they were growing in sideways and pressing on my other teeth. And mine also required surgical removal, in pieces.

208 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 8:17:45am

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

Vestigiality describes homologous characters of organisms which have seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution.

Vestigial structures are often called vestigial organs, although many of them are not actually organs. These are typically in a degenerate, atrophied, or rudimentary condition,[1] and tend to be much more variable than similar parts. Although structures usually called "vestigial" are largely or entirely functionless, a vestigial structure may retain lesser functions or develop minor new ones.

In other words, a reduced function or different function still counts. Creationists have this misapprehension that vestigial always means completely useless, that's why they think pointing out that the appendix in man has a function different to it's original one is some sort of gotcha, when in fact that matches the definition of vestigial very comfortably.

209 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 8:35:12am

re: #182 stretch


time for me to go - thanks for the discussion

Stretch - You believe that the big story of the modern era is the triumph of magic over science.

There's a train waiting for you at platform 9¾. Don't let us keep you, moron.

210 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 8:41:59am

Salamantis

First, I think you think I am a biblical literalist. I am not. We are not disproving creation or not, just whether this is good logic.

> Goosebumps cannot raise hair to trap warm air in the absence of hair to raise.

Clearly you have never met a Scotsman.

But more seriously, if the article is saying that you have to have a lot of hair for some heat to be generated, they are wrong. But I will give you that on second reading the article is more ambiguous on this point than I realized.

> And what animals are known to use ear wiggling to attract mates?

Humans. Admittedly not a selling point, but you’ve never seen a guy try to impress a girl by doing something, well, weird?

> There are many terrestrial areas

Vestigiality (if that is a word) is about current usefulness... by definition, going back tens of thousands of years ago to find a time when many of our ancestors found it useless doesn’t make it vestigial today.

> But teeth that grow sideways in one's jaw are most definitely not intelligently designed

Didn’t say any of this was proving or disproving creationism/intelligent design. Those divine origin theories explain away all vestigialism as being the result of God’s plan, regardless. Remember faith in an ominipotent being is nonfalsifiable.

> Instead, they are leftovers from when our diets consisted of more rough raw plant material and required more mastication.

Right. Clearly you have never met a vegetarian, either.

> They are tiny and nonfunctional.

Movement is not the same as functionality.

> And iot most likely was not to use to which the organ was originally put

Well, that is true of many things. Originally the limbs of a bird were used to grasp, not fly, for instance.

> (cellulose breakdown when our diet consisted of mainly raw, high-roughage foods)

The fact that we can’t digest cellulose actually points toward a time when we were largely carnivorous.

> Neutral characteristics are neither selected against nor for; they just tend to attenuate over time and the passing of generations.

You are confusing Lamarkian evolution with Darwinian evolution. Traits do not attenuate. They are either selected for, or selected out. There is no neutrality. Why? Because everything in our bodies has a cost, in terms of blood and nutrients and thus is they are not useful, now, they are selected out. There is no “attenuation” in Darwinian evolution. That happens in Lamarkian evolution, but we haven’t considered that anything but a laughably bad guess since the 1860’s. I suppose next you will claim that giraffes got their long necks by stretching them to reach food?

> All of these examples are good ones. And your fuitile attempts to belittle, discredit and dismiss them are emotionally rather than intellectually anchored.

Seems you have the emotional reaction going. Because Charles J. cited it as evidence of evolution, you think anyone who questions it is, in fact, a creationist. But I specifically said that a lack of vestigiality is to be expected under Darwinism. So, if anything, a lot of useless traits is evidence of creation, not evolution. The fact that most things in our bodies has a purpose is proof of Darwinian efficiency, rather than design.

Which is not the say there are not vestigial traits, but they are rare and evolution will eliminate them forthwith. But we also have to remember that what we consider to be “vestigial” might actually be subtly useful, or merely useful in a way we don’t yet comprehend, such as the appendix.

By the way, if you have to know, I am a person who believes in created evolution. I.e. God created the big bang, knowing we would be the result. Which means I am fully comfortable with acknowledging the existence of God and evolution. Mind you that is just a guess. It could equally be that God created the universe just like he said in the Bible and only made it look like we evolved. But either way it comes out the same way: if we rule out the divine, evolution is the best answer.

211 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 9:12:40am
But I specifically said that a lack of vestigiality is to be expected under Darwinism. So, if anything, a lot of useless traits is evidence of creation, not evolution.

You don't understand - or wilfully misunderstand - what is meant by vestigial. You think that any organ or appendage that has a function - even though it may be greatly reduced as with goosebumps, or not the original function served as in the appendix - makes the term 'vestigial' inapplicable. For you, to be vestigial, a structure must have no function at all. You are simply wrong on that.

Again:


Vestigiality describes homologous characters of organisms which have seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution.

Vestigial structures are often called vestigial organs, although many of them are not actually organs. These are typically in a degenerate, atrophied, or rudimentary condition,[1] and tend to be much more variable than similar parts. Although structures usually called "vestigial" are largely or entirely functionless, a vestigial structure may retain lesser functions or develop minor new ones.

Btw, this attack on vestigiality is a common creationist talking point. But you are not a creationist, of course. And you use the creationists definition of vestigial, but again, you're not a creationist. To be honest, I think you are a creationist shit-stirrer of a type that we've seen many times before here. Readers of these threads aren't surprised anymore at the levels of dishonesty that creationists are willing to stoop to.

[Link: www.newworldencyclopedia.org...]

"Creationists often define vestigial organs as having no purpose, whereas evolutionists view vestigial organs as those that have lost their primary function, but are not necessarily functionless (Bergman and Howe 1990). (This contradiction is shown above, in the examples of the appendix and plica semilunaris). Thus, based on these opposing definitions, some creationists believe that there are no true vestigial organs, because some function can be discerned and because God is considered to have had a specific plan and purpose for all the structures of living beings."

212 leereyno  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 9:13:50am

Creationism: n. (See Willful Ignorance and Intellectual Dishonesty)

The best refutation of creationism is that its adherents must resort to distortions and misrepresentations in order to attack those ideas that do not align with it.

To a greater or lesser degree, virtually every single argument for creationism that I've ever read that attempts to cast doubt upon evolution through natural selection has done so by misrepresenting the latter.

When the only way you can deny something is to lie about it, that is what scientists like to call a scientific theory. Of course the creationists will have no idea what I mean by that, and that is just as well.

When the whole and complete truth of evolution is told, its validity becomes undeniable. This is why it is such a powerful idea. The more we learn about the natural world, the stronger the evidence for it becomes. To deny it by misrepresenting it is not only foolish, but profoundly dishonest and ignoble.

Belief is not a moral virtue. Anyone can believe anything. Believing is easy. The mark of intellectual honesty and integrity is the willingness to hold one's beliefs to account and to cast aside any that do not stand up to honest scrutiny. That IS a moral virtue.

213 Richard N  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 9:24:17am

"Natural selection removed the thick hair but left behind the mechanism for controlling it."

Really? I still have the thick hair, too. Damn!

214 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:06:16am

Jimmah

So Charles J. says: “Darwin says X and here is proof of X.”

I say, “Actually Darwin says Y and here is proof of Y.”

And you say “CREATIONIST! We have a creationist among us! Burn him! Burn him at the stake!”

As for the article, I mean my God, these people don’t even know we discovered the purpose of the appendix. To quote them: “The appendix has no known use in modern humans.” Except it does, and I cited a source to prove it. And you gloss right over that one.

I feel like I have been transported to the dark ages and I am trying to explain to the village elder “sure, if she sinks to the bottom, she isn’t a witch. But she will be dead, then, too.” That is the level of blind, ignorant irrationality I am getting from you.

And by the way, you do know that this site is not exactly National Geographic, right? In fact, listverse is an only slightly more controlled version of Wikipedia. [Link: listverse.com...]

You are bluntly a fanatic, who goes all apeshit at the first sign someone might be thinking about questioning your orthodoxy. You may think you are the height of rationality, but you are clearly irrationally swinging out at anyone you think is your intellectual enemy however much they are not.

Reread what I wrote and try actually responding to what I actual say as opposed to what your perceive as my motives.

215 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:10:41am
A.W.1: Salamantis
First, I think you think I am a biblical literalist. I am not. We are not disproving creation or not, just whether this is good logic.

Sal2: And I contend that it is good logic, and that your proffered alternatives are quite implausible.

Sal1: Goosebumps cannot raise hair to trap warm air in the absence of hair to raise.

A.W.1: Clearly you have never met a Scotsman.

But more seriously, if the article is saying that you have to have a lot of hair for some heat to be generated, they are wrong. But I will give you that on second reading the article is more ambiguous on this point than I realized.

Sal2: Neither nor the article is saying that. We are both saying that you have to have a lot of hair for radiated body warmth to be trapped under it. Unless you’ve found a way, in the absence of clothes, which we most assuredly didn’t arrive on the scene instinctively making and creating, for radiated body warmth to be trapped next to the skin under nonexistent hair. It’s not the sorta thing you can superglue.

Sal1: And what animals are known to use ear wiggling to attract mates? Compared to, that is, those that swivel their ears in order to detect the presence and direction or enemies, predators or prey. I also haven't noticed an ability to wiggle one's ears mentioned as a selling point in personals ads.

A.W.1: Humans. Admittedly not a selling point, but you’ve never seen a guy try to impress a girl by doing something, well, weird?


Sal2: I have seen hunters swivel their heads trying to detect prey because their ears won’t move independently like the ears of distant progenitors did. Of course, this movement of a larger portion of the body is more likely to alert the prey of the presence and location of the hunter. The same would go with trying to sense and avoid predators, and not clue them in on where one is.

But I have never, ever heard of ear-wiggling being employed as a common seduction device. And I sincerely doubt that it would attract or arouse many pubescent females. You’re stretching credulity so far here that your rubber band has snapped. Or else you run in circles I have no desire to visit.

Sal1: There are many terrestrial areas, including the African veldt where fossils of our direct hominid progenitors are found, where trees are scarce, and fleetness and stamina of foot is far more valuable, which explains how we evolved for more of those characteristics.

A.W.1: Vestigiality (if that is a word) is about current usefulness... by definition, going back tens of thousands of years ago to find a time when many of our ancestors found it useless doesn’t make it vestigial today.

Sal2: But tails were useful to our hominid progenitors before they left the trees and ventured onto the veldt. Not so much afterwards, though, which is why they became progressively vestigal.

Sal1: But teeth that grow sideways in one's jaw are most definitely not intelligently designed

A.W.1: Didn’t say any of this was proving or disproving creationism/intelligent design. Those divine origin theories explain away all vestigialism as being the result of God’s plan, regardless. Remember faith in an ominipotent being is nonfalsifiable.

Sal2: Identifiable “design” flaws, such as sideways growing wisdom teeth, the hole that male gonads drop through upon pubescence that leaves an abdominal weak spot prone to inguinal hernias (I’ve had three), the vertebral construction poorly suited for bipedalism that tends to herniated discs, kidneys and gall bladders that are prone to stones – all of these things, and many more, do not bespeak the kind of design an omnipotent and omniscient being would engineer, since they are drastic imperfections.

to be continued...

216 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:14:04am

continued...

Sal1: But teeth that grow sideways in one's jaw are most definitely not intelligently designed. Instead, they are leftovers from when our diets consisted of more rough raw plant material and required more mastication.

A.W.1: Right. Clearly you have never met a vegetarian, either.

Sal2: I used to be one due to medical necessity (cluster headaches, from which I no longer suffer following facial surgery) but I cooked my food. This action softens it and releases nutrients without the necessity of major mastication. But clearly, when we first arrived on the scene, we were no more cooking our food than we were making and wearing clothes.

Sal1: They (our third eyelids) are tiny and nonfunctional.
A.W.1: Movement is not the same as functionality.

Sal2: If we didn’t have the other two still left moving to periodically bathe our eyeballs, I think we’d all agree that the absence of their motility would be sorely missed, unless our eyes were built differently and didn’t require such a thing. But they DO require it.

Sal1: And it most likely was not to use to which the organ was originally put…

A.W.1: Well, that is true of many things. Originally the limbs of a bird were used to grasp, not fly, for instance.

Sal2: Yep. But they evolved, and now serve the second purpose, and no longer serve the first. When they’re not being used to swim (penguins).

Sal1: (cellulose breakdown when our diet consisted of mainly raw, high-roughage foods)

A.W.1 : The fact that we can’t digest cellulose actually points toward a time when we were largely carnivorous.

Sal2: Plants were always much easier to eat than were animals, because they didn’t run away or try to kill you. And we once ate everything raw. But as we mastered cooking fires, hunting tools, and later domesticated animals and plants, our diets radically changed.

Sal1: Characteristics can be positive, negative, or neutral. Neutral characteristics are neither selected against nor for; they just tend to attenuate over time and the passing of generations.

A.W.1 : You are confusing Lamarkian evolution with Darwinian evolution. Traits do not attenuate. They are either selected for, or selected out. There is no neutrality. Why? Because everything in our bodies has a cost, in terms of blood and nutrients and thus is they are not useful, now, they are selected out. There is no “attenuation” in Darwinian evolution. That happens in Lamarkian evolution, but we haven’t considered that anything but a laughably bad guess since the 1860’s. I suppose next you will claim that giraffes got their long necks by stretching them to reach food?

Sal2: You are quite wrong about this. Natural genetic drift will cause characteristics that are not either environmentally selected for against to attenuate over time, because there is neither any reason for them to be rejected nor any reason for them to be retained. Thus a mutation away from them, unless it is niche counterproductive in and of itself, is not itself selected against. The mutational change just takes a little longer, since it is purely random.

to be continued...

217 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:17:17am

continued...

Sal1: All of these examples are good ones. And your futile attempts to belittle, discredit and dismiss them are emotionally rather than intellectually anchored.

A.W.1: Seems you have the emotional reaction going. Because Charles J. cited it as evidence of evolution, you think anyone who questions it is, in fact, a creationist. But I specifically said that a lack of vestigiality is to be expected under Darwinism. So, if anything, a lot of useless traits is evidence of creation, not evolution. The fact that most things in our bodies has a purpose is proof of Darwinian efficiency, rather than design.

Sal2: Wrong again. I simply accept the evolutionary evidence proffered and the explanations for the various and sundry characteristics cited. They appear quite likely; your alternatives do not. The vast majority of things in our bodies either have, or once had, useful functions. The fact that some of these things are useful no longer is simply evidence of evolution in transit (after all, evolution continues apace, and we are all transitional forms). A lack of vestigiality would require that all characteristics be controlled by single genes; either they’re there, or they’re not. But evolution is not purely digital; there are analog elements to it. It can’t be that animals either possess or lack brains, for instance; some brains are bigger than others – an analog difference. And you are forgetting spandrels. Many more or less inefficient configurations, such as the panda’s ‘thumb’ that grows out of its wrist bone, are what is known as spandrels; evolution had to work with what was already there:

[Link: ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu...]

A.W. 1: Which is not the say there are not vestigial traits, but they are rare and evolution will eliminate them forthwith. But we also have to remember that what we consider to be “vestigial” might actually be subtly useful, or merely useful in a way we don’t yet comprehend, such as the appendix.

Sal2: Forthwith? Evolution takes many generations to effect a change; rarely is anything ever sudden or quick. And we are always evolving, so it’s no wonder that we might detect certain characteristics, such as increasing lactose tolerance, coming, but not yet here for everyone, and others going, but not yet gone. And some things, like the appendix, may be useful, but not in the way that they once were, while others, for instance wisdom teeth, are downright detrimental.

A.W.1: By the way, if you have to know, I am a person who believes in created evolution. I.e. God created the big bang, knowing we would be the result. Which means I am fully comfortable with acknowledging the existence of God and evolution. Mind you that is just a guess. It could equally be that God created the universe just like he said in the Bible and only made it look like we evolved. But either way it comes out the same way: if we rule out the divine, evolution is the best answer.

Sal2: I don’t think that a God that would infuse the book of nature with fake evidence in order to deceive Its creation would be worthy of much obeisance or respect. But it would still be the Big Boss, in spite of its ethical failings. Which is why I find your second alternative to be morally repugnant.

218 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:36:33am

re: #214 A.W.

Jimmah

So Charles J. says: “Darwin says X and here is proof of X.”

I say, “Actually Darwin says Y and here is proof of Y.”

And you say “CREATIONIST! We have a creationist among us! Burn him! Burn him at the stake!”

As for the article, I mean my God, these people don’t even know we discovered the purpose of the appendix. To quote them: “The appendix has no known use in modern humans.” Except it does, and I cited a source to prove it. And you gloss right over that one.

I feel like I have been transported to the dark ages and I am trying to explain to the village elder “sure, if she sinks to the bottom, she isn’t a witch. But she will be dead, then, too.” That is the level of blind, ignorant irrationality I am getting from you.

And by the way, you do know that this site is not exactly National Geographic, right? In fact, listverse is an only slightly more controlled version of Wikipedia. [Link: listverse.com...]

You are bluntly a fanatic, who goes all apeshit at the first sign someone might be thinking about questioning your orthodoxy. You may think you are the height of rationality, but you are clearly irrationally swinging out at anyone you think is your intellectual enemy however much they are not.

Reread what I wrote and try actually responding to what I actual say as opposed to what your perceive as my motives.

All you can do is harp on one example out of ten (an appendix that might possess a different function from one that it formerly possessed) to try to foist the appearance that you're the rational one, when you're trying to put forth the ideas that heat can be trapped next to the body in the absence of hair or clothes, that ear wiggling is seductive, that static eyelids all around would be hunky dory, and that cooked plants that have been domesticated and selectively bred for millennia are as easy to chew and digest as their raw wild forebears, among other fanciful bizarrities.

You can call that kind of stuff heterodox if you want, but I call it absurd and nonsensical, for good and sufficient reasons.

219 Basho  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:37:18am

re: #209 Jimmah

...You believe that the big story of the modern era is the triumph of magic over science.

LMAO! That's so hilarious because it's true.

220 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:55:58am

Sal

> And I contend that it is good logic

Well, good, let’s keep this to logic v. logic, shall we?

> and that your proffered alternatives are quite implausible.

Really? Even on the appendix?

I mean maybe you are right on ear wiggling, and goosebumps. I always allowed for that. That’s why I said:

> So that leaves 2 really good examples, but the rest either outright suck, or are dubious.

Look up dubious for me, please.

> We are both saying that you have to have a lot of hair for radiated body warmth to be trapped under it.

Well, goosebumps also warm you up by the muscle movement and it also releases oils into your skin, and we are getting to another one.

> Unless you’ve found a way, in the absence of clothes,

Why should we answer this question in the absence of clothes? That is not the way we live today. This gets into a dichotomy that exists when talking about anything related to evolution, biology, etc. We think of ourselves and all our creations as something outside of nature and evolution. They are not. So if we are going to ask whether goosebumps are useful, today, then answer the question by imagining the person in clothes rather than not.

So the modern human evolves with the assumption that we are going to wear clothes.

> I have seen hunters swivel their heads

Yes, like many things, it is no longer useful as originally intended.

> But I have never, ever heard of ear-wiggling being employed as a common seduction device.

You must define seduction very narrowly my friend. Here’s a hint. It is not merely the stuff in the immediate run up to sex. Look up the concept of chimpanzee “uncles” and learn something about long-term mating strategies.

> But tails were useful to our hominid progenitors before they left the trees and ventured onto the veldt. Not so much afterwards, though, which is why they became progressively vestigal.

Actually, according to the article, it just adapted to a new use.

> Identifiable “design” flaws

So, there are no vegetarians?

> the hole that male gonads drop through upon pubescence that leaves an abdominal weak spot prone to inguinal hernias

You didn’t have balls until you hit puberty?

And actually the ball drop, which actually happens pre-birth, is evidence of our close relation to women. Our testes start as ovaries, and then drop through our pelvis when the male hormones kick in beginning to differentiate ourselves from women.

> (I’ve had three),

Too much information.

> do not bespeak the kind of design an omnipotent and omniscient being would engineer, since they are drastic imperfections.

God can’t make us imperfect? Mmm-hmm.

Sorry, you are just not thinking deeply enough. Belief in an omnipotent God is nonfalsifiable. In other words, you can prove God exists, but you can never prove he doesn’t.

And the fact that you think this proves something about God demonstrates that this was an irrational attack in the first place. I mean you still can’t recognize the essential uselessness of attacking faith with science.

> This action softens it and releases nutrients without the necessity of major mastication.

Well, if you are cooking every night, you are probably not in the kind of situation where this will make the difference between life or death. That is the test.

> I think we’d all agree that the absence of their motility would be sorely missed

And the fact they do move means the third doesn’t need to, and can instead merely protect part of the eye socket. Which makes it functional. Duh.

> Sal2: Yep. But they evolved, and now serve the second purpose, and no longer serve the first. When they’re not being used to swim (penguins).

So the words you are looking for is “I am sorry, you are right A.W. and I was wrong.”

> Plants were always much easier to eat than were animals, because they didn’t run away or try to kill you.

[cont]

221 Ron Shaw  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:56:15am

How about?

God is and was the Big Bang which was the mechanism He used to create everything and might help explain man's earliest relationships with Him as he reportedly spoke, 'I AM, I AM.' In short he 'IS' possibly 'all.' God's realm, the Universe is infinite and our minds cannot effectively grasp such a concept. Some theorize that eventually, possibly billions of billions of years from now or by some possibly by 2012, all matter will be drawn back into that which was the 'Big' before the 'Bang.' All things great and small, including mankind is made of God-stuff or star-stuff as Carl Sagan wrote. Death may well be our personal journey back to the beginning of apparent nothingness yet everything which is back to the One, the Whole, God; maybe, a before Bang existence in God's embrace. God's DNA is growing, changing, expanding, imploding, exploding, Black Holes, White Holes, Galaxies, Nebula, Event Horizon's, Planets, Suns, Comets, Meteors, Atoms and infinitely on and on which continues in evolution just as all things, matter, energy, space, time is doing. We exist in God's domain, His Universe which is infinite. It is in essence the endless canvas which He created all that we know and do not know upon. An artist is known by his work and God tops this list. Free Will is our gift from Him which we have abused not Him. Our bad actions do not detract from His work, His masterpiece.
I believe, we are eternal beings just as star-stuff, God-stuff is. Our souls and the souls of those created in his likeness which is the likeness of 'being' throughout time, throughout His/our Universe will live forever in some fashion beyond our comprehension really...seemingly separate now but not and one day to be rejoined as One. Some in Science tells us of this eventuality. To deny evolution is to deny what 'is.' To deny God is to deny the creator of what 'is' and that you and I are.

This might be perceived by some as proof-positive that God is dead, but my 'maybe' interpretation would suggest strongly He is alive and eternal. He will never die. He is the essence of matter, energy and life.

Maybe?

222 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:56:29am

Sal (cont)

> Plants were always much easier to eat than were animals, because they didn’t run away or try to kill you.

They were easier to catch, I grant you, but to this day we can’t digest cellulose, but there is very little on an animal we can’t eat. We are more like the carnivores on this count, than the herbivores, although our full evolutionary history is mixed. The fact we can’t digest plants, in fact, is a vestige of that evolutionary history.

> Natural genetic drift will cause characteristics that are not either environmentally selected for against to attenuate over time, because there is neither any reason for them to be rejected nor any reason for them to be retained.

No, you are flat out wrong. Every useless part takes up energy, so it is a negative. There is no neutrality on this. When you use words like atrophy, you are applying terms from Lamarkian evolution, not Darwinism.

> But evolution is not purely digital; there are analog elements to it.

Wow, you don’t even understand the basics of genetics, do you? Mind you, a great number of digits can be used to mimic an analog effect, like the music on the mp3 player taken from an analog original recording, but down at the basic level, it is not analog.

> Forthwith? Evolution takes many generations to effect a change; rarely is anything ever sudden or quick.

Well, way to read what I wrote with a fair mind. When exactly did I say that evolution was quick?

> All you can do is harp on one example out of ten

Which even now you can barely acknowledge.

> I don’t think that a God that would infuse the book of nature with fake evidence in order to deceive Its creation would be worthy of much obeisance or respect. But it would still be the Big Boss, in spite of its ethical failings. Which is why I find your second alternative to be morally repugnant.

Well, look, if I die first, and I am lucky enough to meet God, and it turns out that my second theory was right, I will be sure to let him know you disapprove.

223 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 11:00:10am

Ron

Personally, i find arguing about God kind of pointless. Nothing can be proven. Which is not to say i don't believe, but i just don't see much point about arguing about it except to clear out some silly misconceptions such as the silly notion that it is possible to falsify the existance of an omnipotent God.

224 Basho  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 11:03:33am

Chemical Replicators:
[Link: scienceblogs.com...]
Fascinating stuff IMO.

225 Ron Shaw  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 11:25:38am

re: #223 A.W.

Ron

Personally, i find arguing about God kind of pointless. Nothing can be proven. Which is not to say i don't believe, but i just don't see much point about arguing about it except to clear out some silly misconceptions such as the silly notion that it is possible to falsify the existance of an omnipotent God.

I tend to agree with you where arguing is concerned.

Maybe? or why not? were the operative questions in my post. To believe or not believe in God, in evolution or anything worth discussion is a personal choice we make. Like politics, religion is or has become a rather pointless debate and yet we interact here at LGF and elsewhere about both in an effort to hopefully change minds, some votes or make a valid point or two here and there.

At minimum, for those who believe in God as well as evolution my modest alternative proposals tend to suggest by exclusion that denominations are not what is important or vital in believing. Throughout history and to this day many of mans' problems with man have occurred when organized religions clash and belief systems collide due to dogma.

But, like you have said much better than me, it is personal and not really worth arguing over. It is pointless. Maybe?

226 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:01:07pm

By the way, the Simpsons Game, which was released kind of near when the Simpsons movie was released and isn’t really related at all, explained the whole thing:

HOMER: Alright, uhh, Go-, God, is it? It's time for some answers! Who are we?

GOD: Here's the bad news. You're video game characters. You were designed by computer geeks in cubicles to run around and be controlled by other computer geeks in their bedrooms.

BART: We knew that, Birkenstocks.

LISA: Yeah! Explain to us the meaning of life!

GOD: Okay.. those computer geeks who control you, thing is, they're part of a video game too. You see, The Planet Earth is my most immersive, detailed video game yet, and I play it twenty four hours a day. It's great! You can get out of your car, have a family, I even put in a complete and wholly consistent fossil record for the nerds. So, The Simpsons Game, your game, is really nothing but a mini-game inside my Earth game, if you think about it.

LISA: So not only are we not real, we're characters in a mini-game inside another game? And the people playing us right now are the characters inside the game that you're playing.

GOD: Well, you're not just inside ANY game. The Planet Earth got a score of 96 on Meta-meta-critic.

(emphasis added)

So there you go, God, the fossil record, the meaning of life, explained. Your welcome.

227 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:35:34pm
Sal1: And I contend that it is good logic

A.W.1: Well, good, let’s keep this to logic v. logic, shall we?

Sal2: You mean instead of resorting to wildly implausible ‘just so’ stories like trapping heat with goosebumps and seducing ladies with one’s ear wiggles?

Sal1: and that your proffered alternatives are quite implausible.

A.W.1: Really? Even on the appendix?

Sal2: The notion that bacterial backup was always its purpose seems a bit outlandish to me.

A.W.1: I mean maybe you are right on ear wiggling, and goosebumps. I always allowed for that. That’s why I said:

“So that leaves 2 really good examples, but the rest either outright suck, or are dubious.”

Look up dubious for me, please.

Sal2: You seem to be gratuitously discounting many other fine examples, such as, for instance, wisdom teeth, Jacobson’s Organ, and the pseudogene for Vitamin C production.

Sal1: We are both saying that you have to have a lot of hair for radiated body warmth to be trapped under it.

A.W.1; Well, goosebumps also warm you up by the muscle movement and it also releases oils into your skin, and we are getting to another one.

Sal2: But it works soooo much better when it fluffs up heat-trapping hair. And in the absence of hair, that warmth radiates away quite rapidly. I think it’s quite clear that’s what its original purpose was. Shivering is an already present action that generates muscle heat, and surely oil production happens in the absence of goosebumps.

Sal1: Unless you’ve found a way, in the absence of clothes,

A.W.1: Why should we answer this question in the absence of clothes? That is not the way we live today. This gets into a dichotomy that exists when talking about anything related to evolution, biology, etc. We think of ourselves and all our creations as something outside of nature and evolution. They are not. So if we are going to ask whether goosebumps are useful, today, then answer the question by imagining the person in clothes rather than not.

So the modern human evolves with the assumption that we are going to wear clothes.

Sal2: But we didn’t start off that way in equatorial Africa. Ancient humans didn’t evolve with rainments in mind. That’s the important point that you refuse to grasp, either willfully or otherwise.

Sal1: I have seen hunters swivel their heads

A.W.1: Yes, like many things, it is no longer useful as originally intended.

Sal2: Most definitely not as useful as flicking one’s ears in the direction of a sound. And of massively dubious value in steming feminine libidos.

Sal1: But I have never, ever heard of ear-wiggling being employed as a common seduction device.

A.W.1: You must define seduction very narrowly my friend. Here’s a hint. It is not merely the stuff in the immediate run up to sex. Look up the concept of chimpanzee “uncles” and learn something about long-term mating strategies.

Sal2: I sincerely doubt if wiggling one’s ears at a lady will subliminally implant one’s sexual desirability in her mind, to blossom and bloom at a later date. Monkeys’ uncles are a different topic entirely.

Sal1: But tails were useful to our hominid progenitors before they left the trees and ventured onto the veldt. Not so much afterwards, though, which is why they became progressively vestigal.

A.W.1: Actually, according to the article, it just adapted to a new use.

Sal2: With massive morphological (mutational) alterations. Did God get it wrong the first time?

Sal1: Identifiable “design” flaws

A.W.1: So, there are no vegetarians?

Sal2: Sure, but you find very few of them these days eating vast quantities of wild plants raw.

to be continued...

228 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:39:39pm

continued...

Sal1: the hole that male gonads drop through upon pubescence that leaves an abdominal weak spot prone to inguinal hernias

A.W.1: You didn’t have balls until you hit puberty?

And actually the ball drop, which actually happens pre-birth, is evidence of our close relation to women. Our testes start as ovaries, and then drop through our pelvis when the male hormones kick in beginning to differentiate ourselves from women.

Sal2: you are correct as to when gonads drop, but they still leave an abdominal weakness that it has been my great misfortune to have fail multiple times. That can’t be construed by any stretch of the imagination as anything remotely approaching optimum.

Sal1: (I’ve had three),

A.W.1: Too much information.

Sal2: Just letting you know that I have bitter personal experience that the flaw is genuine.

Sal1: do not bespeak the kind of design an omnipotent and omniscient being would engineer, since they are drastic imperfections.

A.W.1: God can’t make us imperfect? Mmm-hmm.

Sal2: Buit why would a God want to? And isn’t there a contradiction embodied in the idea of imperfection proceeding from perfection?

A.W.1: Sorry, you are just not thinking deeply enough. Belief in an omnipotent God is nonfalsifiable. In other words, you can prove God exists, but you can never prove he doesn’t.
And the fact that you think this proves something about God demonstrates that this was an irrational attack in the first place. I mean you still can’t recognize the essential uselessness of attacking faith with science.

Sal2: I’m not; I’m attacking the plausibility of the commonly recognized attributes of God (omniscient, omnipotent, perfect) from a logical and philosophical position. In fact, the very idea of a simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent being is self-contradictory, like the idea of a simultaneously existing irresistible force and immoveable object. If a being were omniscient, it would have to know the future for certain, which would render it powerless to change it. But if it were omnipotent, it could change both its own mind and the future at will, which entails that it could not know it for certain in advance.

Sal1: This action softens it and releases nutrients without the necessity of major mastication.

A.W.1: Well, if you are cooking every night, you are probably not in the kind of situation where this will make the difference between life or death. That is the test.

Sal2: But before hominids even had fire, they not only didn’t have it to cook or keep warm beside, but also lacked it to fend off predators in the night. But they were chewing on a whole lotta raw wild tough plants. And weren’t getting much meat, either, before they figured tools out (weapons).

Sal1: I think we’d all agree that the absence of their motility would be sorely missed

A.W.1: And the fact they do move means the third doesn’t need to, and can instead merely protect part of the eye socket. Which makes it functional. Duh.

Sal2: Then could you kindly explain why Orientials need more third eyelid protection than other humans? Their third eyelids are much larger.

Sal1: Yep. But they evolved, and now serve the second purpose, and no longer serve the first. When they’re not being used to swim (penguins).

A.W.1: So the words you are looking for is “I am sorry, you are right A.W. and I was wrong.”

Sal2: No, that’s not it. “They evolved” means that I am right; the organisms got presented with ecological niches which were differentially exploitable by various mutations, and the most beneficial ones stuck, in an aggregational, cumulative process.

to be continued...

229 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:40:19pm

re: #214 A.W.


As for the article, I mean my God, these people don’t even know we discovered the purpose of the appendix. To quote them: “The appendix has no known use in modern humans.” Except it does, and I cited a source to prove it. And you gloss right over that one.

That's not what the appendix was originally for though is it? And does the appendix perform an indispensable function? Well I know a lot of people who don't have one so I'd suggest 'no'. It has a different and less important function than the one it had in our ancestors - that puts it well within the definition of vestigial and is clearly valid evidence for evolution. The correct definition of vestigial - the one that scientists use - has been provided for you more than once, it is very telling that you continue to shun it like your life depended on it.


You are bluntly a fanatic, who goes all apeshit at the first sign someone might be thinking about questioning your orthodoxy. You may think you are the height of rationality, but you are clearly irrationally swinging out at anyone you think is your intellectual enemy however much they are not.

This is a strategy that creationists have been choosing for a while now on LGF. Pretend to be a believer in evolutionary theory - or a qualified ' version of evolutionary theory' and then proceed to attack the post for being a bad argument in favour of evolution, the agenda being of course to try to insinuate that everyone on the site including the site owner is an idiot for being in any way impressed with it. "I believe in evolution but for different reasons than all you idiots! - you people know nothing of science!".

If pressured you will then of course rant and rave about being persecuted like a dark ages witch for daring to 'think for yourself'. But that is exactly where you were going with this anyway, from your first post on this thread.

You did not answer my post at all regarding your use and steadfast adherence to the creationist definition of 'vestigial', something you are continuing to do in your subsequent posts. It is only according to the creationist definition that the examples that you cite can be claimed to be non-vestigial. An odd thing to do for one who is not a creationist. But who do you think you are you kidding with that?

from 210:

Which means I am fully comfortable with acknowledging the existence of God and evolution. Mind you that is just a guess. It could equally be that God created the universe just like he said in the Bible and only made it look like we evolved. But either way it comes out the same way: if we rule out the divine, evolution is the best answer.

Let me get this straight - you believe in evolution in one breath, but put it on an epistemological par with genesis in the next- as an equally valid 'guess'? Isn't that a standard line of the ID crowd - to create a bogus 'equivalence' as a way of getting religion into the science class? And you think you are convincing anyone that you aren't just another creationist/ID troll? You're full of shit.

230 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:44:09pm

continued...

Sal1: Plants were always much easier to eat than were animals, because they didn’t run away or try to kill you.

A.W.1: They were easier to catch, I grant you, but to this day we can’t digest cellulose, but there is very little on an animal we can’t eat. We are more like the carnivores on this count, than the herbivores, although our full evolutionary history is mixed. The fact we can’t digest plants, in fact, is a vestige of that evolutionary history.

Sal2: You are wrong again. Our dentition is omnivorous, with plant-grinding molars in back (we just don’t need all those that we used to, so the very back ones are disappearing, although not nearly fast enough to keep up with our shortening jaws), and practically no protruding canines. We can digest plants; just not all of them. And our closest genetic relatives predominantly consume plants.

Sal1: Natural genetic drift will cause characteristics that are not either environmentally selected for against to attenuate over time, because there is neither any reason for them to be rejected nor any reason for them to be retained.

A.W.1: No, you are flat out wrong. Every useless part takes up energy, so it is a negative. There is no neutrality on this. When you use words like atrophy, you are applying terms from Lamarkian evolution, not Darwinism.

Sal2: You obviously do not understand the long term effects of unguided randomness on statistical percentages. If you have one jar full of white marbles, and another jar filled with half white and half black marbles, and periodically exchange one marble, eventually both jars will contain around ¼ black marbles, without any guidance necessary. If we substitute genes for marbles, and mutation for swapping, it can easily be seen that unused characteristics will naturally degrade over many generations. I did not use the term atrophy (from disuse within a single lifetime); I used the term attenuate (as in vestiginating as a result of not being selected FOR – although not against – over many generations). If every characteristic has to either not exist or have a present positive purpose, what is the present purpose of the plantaris muscle, which 9% of humans are born without, or the Darwin’s Point on human ears?

Sal1: But evolution is not purely digital; there are analog elements to it.

A.W.1: Wow, you don’t even understand the basics of genetics, do you? Mind you, a great number of digits can be used to mimic an analog effect, like the music on the mp3 player taken from an analog original recording, but down at the basic level, it is not analog.

Sal2: At the level of expression it greatly mimics analogality, which is why there are people of all sorts of different hair types and heights and IQs, rather than just a few standard ones.

Sal1: Forthwith? Evolution takes many generations to effect a change; rarely is anything ever sudden or quick.

A.W.1: Well, way to read what I wrote with a fair mind. When exactly did I say that evolution was quick?

Sal2: Forthwith, adverb: at once; immediately [Middle English, from forth with, along with, at the same time as.]

Sal1: All you can do is harp on one example out of ten
Which even now you can barely acknowledge.

Sal2: I have indeed acknowledged that the appendix, while losing its former function, may have fortuitously found a new one.

to be continued...

231 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:44:42pm

continued...

Sal1: I don’t think that a God that would infuse the book of nature with fake evidence in order to deceive Its creation would be worthy of much obeisance or respect. But it would still be the Big Boss, in spite of its ethical failings. Which is why I find your second alternative to be morally repugnant.

A.W.1: Well, look, if I die first, and I am lucky enough to meet God, and it turns out that my second theory was right, I will be sure to let him know you disapprove.

Sal2: You be sure and do that. Might doesn’t make right, even if that might is absolute.

232 Virginius  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:01:20pm

Peh. The Lord put in all 10 of those false trails, not to mention hundreds of tons of "fossils" and suchlike, when he created the heavens and the earth 6K years or so ago.

He has an infinite sense of humor, you see, and slaps His heavenly knee every time white-coated weenie scientists "discover" more "evidence" that seems to belie His work.

It's good to be the (ominipotent) King.

233 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:05:15pm

re: #221 Ron Shaw

How about?

God is and was the Big Bang which was the mechanism He used to create everything and might help explain man's earliest relationships with Him as he reportedly spoke, 'I AM, I AM.' In short he 'IS' possibly 'all.' God's realm, the Universe is infinite and our minds cannot effectively grasp such a concept. Some theorize that eventually, possibly billions of billions of years from now or by some possibly by 2012, all matter will be drawn back into that which was the 'Big' before the 'Bang.' All things great and small, including mankind is made of God-stuff or star-stuff as Carl Sagan wrote. Death may well be our personal journey back to the beginning of apparent nothingness yet everything which is back to the One, the Whole, God; maybe, a before Bang existence in God's embrace. God's DNA is growing, changing, expanding, imploding, exploding, Black Holes, White Holes, Galaxies, Nebula, Event Horizon's, Planets, Suns, Comets, Meteors, Atoms and infinitely on and on which continues in evolution just as all things, matter, energy, space, time is doing. We exist in God's domain, His Universe which is infinite. It is in essence the endless canvas which He created all that we know and do not know upon. An artist is known by his work and God tops this list. Free Will is our gift from Him which we have abused not Him. Our bad actions do not detract from His work, His masterpiece.
I believe, we are eternal beings just as star-stuff, God-stuff is. Our souls and the souls of those created in his likeness which is the likeness of 'being' throughout time, throughout His/our Universe will live forever in some fashion beyond our comprehension really...seemingly separate now but not and one day to be rejoined as One. Some in Science tells us of this eventuality. To deny evolution is to deny what 'is.' To deny God is to deny the creator of what 'is' and that you and I are.

This might be perceived by some as proof-positive that God is dead, but my 'maybe' interpretation would suggest strongly He is alive and eternal. He will never die. He is the essence of matter, energy and life.

Maybe?

Umm...stars have life cycles, but they do not evolve. They don't swap copying fidelity material with other stars and have little baby stars that share their combined characteristics. Likewise with the Universe. It began, and has changed in many ways since then, but we have yet to see it reproduce itself, much less produce another universe with different characteristics. And since the Universe, by definition, is All That Is, Was, and Will Be, and encompasses - in fact generates, by means of its matter/energy's gravitational field - all of spacetime, so there is no such thing as either a before or an outside, exactly what external environment could possibly exist to supply selection pressure on it?

234 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:10:37pm

re: #232 Virginius

Peh. The Lord put in all 10 of those false trails, not to mention hundreds of tons of "fossils" and suchlike, when he created the heavens and the earth 6K years or so ago.

He has an infinite sense of humor, you see, and slaps His heavenly knee every time white-coated weenie scientists "discover" more "evidence" that seems to belie His work.

It's good to be the (ominipotent) King.

It's awful hypocritical, then, for Him to include 'Thou shalt not lie' in his commandments to the very people he is using the whole book of nature to lie to. I think that Hell would be the eternal presence of such an ethically bankrupt deity; revulsion and nausea without end. It reminds me of a sadistic little kid pulling wings off flies for his own amusement.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I don't think any deity worthy of our respect, reverence, worship and admiration would ever even contemplate considering doing such a thing.

235 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:11:00pm

re: #232 Virginius

Peh. The Lord put in all 10 of those false trails, not to mention hundreds of tons of "fossils" and suchlike, when he created the heavens and the earth 6K years or so ago.

He has an infinite sense of humor, you see, and slaps His heavenly knee every time white-coated weenie scientists "discover" more "evidence" that seems to belie His work.

It's good to be the (ominipotent) King.

I'm not sure at this point whether to congratulate you on your satire or condemn you for your idiocy. (This happens a lot when one is dealing with this topic).

I have a feeling you were kidding though.

236 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:58:26pm

Sal

> stories like trapping heat with goosebumps

Its science. Eat it.

> The notion that bacterial backup was always its purpose seems a bit outlandish to me.

Then take up your argument with the writers of that article.

> You seem to be gratuitously discounting many other fine examples, such as, for instance, wisdom teeth, Jacobson’s Organ, and the pseudogene for Vitamin C production.

Wisdom teeth, it acknowledges, are useful for eating plants. Yes, Virginia there is such a thing as vegetarians.

As for the last two, well, there are two and I acknowledge 2 good example. Funny how that works.

> But it works soooo much better

Evolution made a choice, to sacrifice self-warming techniques for... well, I don’t know what, but clearly evolution saw an advantage in making most of us less hairy (with the big exception of us Scotsmen).

> Shivering is an already present action that generates muscle heat, and surely oil production happens in the absence of goosebumps.

And in some situations you might need more of both heat and oil.

> But we didn’t start off that way in equatorial Africa.

So?

> Ancient humans didn’t evolve with rainments in mind.

Well, I guess it depends how ancient you are talking about. (forgetting that evolution doesn’t have anything “in mind”—you better watch out, you will start sounding like a creationist)

> And of massively dubious value in steming feminine libidos.

And you continually fail to grasp that there is more to helping the mating process than what directly and immediately turns a woman on. You must be great company, you.

> Did God get it wrong the first time?

Have you noticed that you are the only one between us interested in talking about God in this thread?

> Sal2: Sure, but you find very few of them these days eating vast quantities of wild plants raw.

The fact is it can be useful in survival situations. And guess what? That is where natural selection occurs.

> That can’t be construed by any stretch of the imagination as anything remotely approaching optimum.

So, you, an alleged male, didn’t know where your balls were, and you are going to lecture me about science and the human body.

> Sal2: Just letting you know that I have bitter personal experience that the flaw is genuine.

Which helps me, how exactly?

> Buit why would a God want to? And isn’t there a contradiction embodied in the idea of imperfection proceeding from perfection?

Um, no.

> In fact, the very idea of a simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent being is self-contradictory, like the idea of a simultaneously existing irresistible force and immoveable object.

Actually I had shortened it to omnipotent, because if you are omnipotent, omniscience follows. And no, I don’t see any contradiction at all. God can do anything, and he knows everything. What is tough to grasp about that?

> If a being were omniscient, it would have to know the future for certain, which would render it powerless to change it.

Only if the future is certain. God could know exactly how everything would turn out if he did nothing, and exactly how it would turn out based on every possible intervention he could engage in. nothing even difficult about that idea.

> But before hominids even had fire

Oh, I remember a movie about that… quest for fire! It was cool!

> And weren’t getting much meat, either, before they figured tools out (weapons).

Right primates can’t catch predators without weapons. You don’t know much about baboons, do you?

> Sal2: Then could you kindly explain why Orientials need more third eyelid protection than other humans? Their third eyelids are much larger.

Hmm, the preferred term is Asians, by the way, although that is a flawed term itself.

But in answer to your question, yes, because what marks that group’s appearance is their evolutionary history in cold climates. Really this is human evolution 101, literally.

237 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 1:59:21pm

Sal

And incidentally you are getting to something which is actually evidence of evolution, the fact that Vietnamese people, who are not in a particularly cold climate as I understand it, still have cold weather adaptations.

> “They evolved” means that I am right

Only if you think I am arguing against evolution. Again, I am not. I am just saying that this list sucks.

> Our dentition is omnivorous, with plant-grinding molars in back (we just don’t need all those that we used to, so the very back ones are disappearing, although not nearly fast enough to keep up with our shortening jaws), and practically no protruding canines.

But that’s not how it always was.

> You obviously do not understand the long term effects of unguided randomness on statistical percentages.

No, that is exactly what I am talking about, but without incorrect terms like atrophy. You were the one talking about a thing shrinking from a lack of use in lamarkian terms. I was correcting you.

> At the level of expression it greatly mimics analogality

Again, the words you are looking for are “you are right and I am wrong, A.W.”

> Forthwith, adverb: at once; immediately

Again, look up the concept of “fair mind.” What is immediate in evolutionary terms and what is immediate in our daily lives are two different things.

> Might doesn’t make right, even if that might is absolute.

Hmm, yes, but it does make him smarter than you, which means he could be playing a game much deeper than you are capable of comprehending. But it is interesting that you have gone from trying to prove God doesn’t exist somehow to saying why you think he is a jerk.

Jimmah

> That's not what the appendix was originally for though is it?

So?

> And does the appendix perform an indispensable function? Well I know a lot of people who don't have one so I'd suggest 'no'.

Under evolution, a trait doesn’t have to be indispensible. It only has to make you more likely to survive. I mean if indispensible is the test, well, heck I guess our eyes aren’t needed, or our ears, or both of our kidneys... After all, we both know people who get along with out full use of those parts.

> is very telling that you continue to shun it like your life depended on it.

Yes, yes, keep reading my mind. Here is the truth. Arguments over definitions bore me. Call it whatever you want, but the argument they were making was that the traits are useless today, and they were flat out wrong in most cases, questionable in a few, and only clearly right in 2. If you have another word for “no longer useful but still there” please name it.

Well, I mean, besides “Kevin Federline.” :-)

> Pretend to be a believer in evolutionary theory - or a qualified ' version of evolutionary theory' and then proceed to attack the post for being a bad argument in favour of evolution,

Right, and no one ever makes a mistake when presenting evidence of it. I mean, again, they claim that the appendix has no use. That is flat-out-wrong.

I am sorry your pretending that this site, which is user created content just like Wikipedia, only with slightly more filtering, is somehow perfect and unassailable, is bunk. It is faith-based argument. You start with your conclusion and then anyone who questions it is not only WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, but they are demonstrating a disturbing lack of faith (cue Darth Vader music).

And I didn’t say all of the evidence was bad. I just said all but 2. Which makes the site lame, but leaves you those two. Those two examples were good and clear examples of traits that are no longer useful to the modern human, and thus vestigial signs of evolution.

238 A.W.  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 2:00:00pm

Jimmah (cont)

> the agenda being of course to try to insinuate that everyone on the site including the site owner is an idiot for being in any way impressed with it.

No, I never called you guys idiots. In you and Sal’s case, you are blind fanatics, that believe we can’t point out the factual inaccuracies of an article supporting evolution however glaring they are, at the risk of being deemed insufficiently impure. Which is precisely what you are doing.

Really, if anyone is discrediting evolution, here, its you. Every person who claims to believe in science has to be open to questions, whether it goes to the heart of what you assume about the world or just on smaller issues. You are not behaving like a rational person but a person working out some demons of yours.

> If pressured you will then of course rant and rave about being persecuted like a dark ages witch for daring to 'think for yourself'.

Nah, this is not persecution. As I said previously, this is as idiotically illogical as much of what went on in the witch trials, but it is not persecution because thankfully you can’t lay a hand on me.

But here, let me apologize for my impure thoughts. I am sorry. You are right. the appendix is useless. The article is perfect, as though given, by God...

> Let me get this straight - you believe in evolution in one breath, but put it on an epistemological par with genesis in the next- as an equally valid 'guess'?

Once you believe in an omnipotent God, then anything is possible. Why is that even hard for you to grasp? I mean that is tautologically true. All powerful = anything is possible.

> Isn't that a standard line of the ID crowd - to create a bogus 'equivalence' as a way of getting religion into the science class?

Not at all. ID says that creationism is literally true and supported by scientific evidence, but hides the ball with the actual creator. And as I have repeatedly said, even in the part you quoted, I don’t believe that. I stated unequivocally, but you are too fanatical to understand, that the scientific evidence supports evolution as generally understood. I have no desire to teach religion classes.

I have only said (in other contexts) we should do one thing, and that is to require teachers to say something like this:

“There are a lot of people who get very worked up about this. There are both believers and non-believers that think that by talking about the scientific evidence of evolution, that we somehow disprove the existence of the divine. We do not, and we cannot. Science begins with the assumption that what we observe is the result of natural and not divine phenomenon and seeks to explain it on those terms. A system of thought cannot disprove what it has assumed away in the first place. Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of the divine.

“But Science has proven that we can learn a lot by starting with that assumption—that there is no divine—we can learn a lot and control much of our environment. There is no question that without that scientific method—practiced often by the most devout—we would not have many of the cures of diseases we have today, and many of the scientific wonders we have around us, from our landing on the moon, to your videogame system at home. So it is useful to engage in that scientific method, and therefore I will ask you to put your faith, if you have any, aside and look at what the evidence shows.

“And if you have trouble reconciling science with your faith, I suggest you seek out spiritual counseling as appropriate.”

Its utterly fair and utterly true, so guaranteed to piss off everyone, I suppose.

239 Virginius  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 2:50:03pm

re: #234 Salamantis

It's awful hypocritical, then, for Him to include 'Thou shalt not lie' in his commandments to the very people he is using the whole book of nature to lie to. I think that Hell would be the eternal presence of such an ethically bankrupt deity; revulsion and nausea without end. It reminds me of a sadistic little kid pulling wings off flies for his own amusement.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I don't think any deity worthy of our respect, reverence, worship and admiration would ever even contemplate considering doing such a thing.

He does it because He loves you, man. He wants you to lighten up, join in his Body, and go with the flow. Where would Job be if he'd questioned not just God's methodology, but His motives? As our brave French brethren counsel, don't derange yourself.

240 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 3:35:35pm

AW, to cut a long story short, if you had been genuine in simply wanting to correct one or two inaccuracies in the post you could have done so without the dramatics you are putting on here. Instead you used the occasion as a launchpad for rants in which you accuse everyone who disagrees with your -frankly fucking idiotic - post, in which you try to discredit the whole article - of being a fanatic. A pattern of behaviour commonly sported by other creationist loons. If you really did believe in evolution as you claim, you'd understand where I was coming from and would have responded very differently. You responded by taking offence, screaming about everyone else's fanaticism , while taking care to insult us by suggesting that we were unthinkingly and sheepishly following Charles's lead. This is exactly how I'd expect a creationist troll to respond.

Right, and no one ever makes a mistake when presenting evidence of it. I mean, again, they claim that the appendix has no use. That is flat-out-wrong.

So the appendix has a minor function that the person who wrote the article was unaware of. Big deal - it still doesn't invalidate the appendix as an excellent example of an organ that has lost it's original function and taken on a different, less vital role (you do understand, I hope, that such an organ isn't likely to take on the role of something vital like the heart). Which as I said comes easily under the definition of vestigial that biologists use - although not the one that you use, which is the one that the creationists use.


I am sorry your pretending that this site, which is user created content just like Wikipedia, only with slightly more filtering, is somehow perfect and unassailable, is bunk. It is faith-based argument. You start with your conclusion and then anyone who questions it is not only WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, but they are demonstrating a disturbing lack of faith (cue Darth Vader music).

So where is that definition coming from then AW? What evil forces of misinformation have conspired to put it in place?

Merriam-Webster must be part of it too:

Vestigial
1 a (1): a trace, mark, or visible sign left by something (as an ancient city or a condition or practice) vanished or lost (2): the smallest quantity or trace b: footprint 12: a bodily part or organ that is small and degenerate or imperfectly developed in comparison to one more fully developed in an earlier stage of the individual, in a past generation, or in closely related forms

The definition of vestigial that was used when I studied biology at university was broad enough to include structures that had a reduced or different function to the one that the structure had in ancestral forms. None of the biologists I have read seem to share your dogma that to be vestigial a structure must have no function whatsoever. But the creationists do! Go figure.

241 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 3:57:02pm

re: #239 Virginius

He does it because He loves you, man. He wants you to lighten up, join in his Body, and go with the flow. Where would Job be if he'd questioned not just God's methodology, but His motives? As our brave French brethren counsel, don't derange yourself.

Go put on a coat and tie, climb on a bicycle, and knock on doors.

The Bud Light Guy loves me, man.

And I will NEVER stop questioning. Period.

242 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:00:10pm

For a better written and more nicely formatted version of AW's argument on vestigiality than he has been able to provide himself, have a read of this. It's from "Answers in Genesis": [Link: www.answersingenesis.org...]

Dawkins and others have claimed that this non-coding DNA is ‘junk,’ or ‘selfish’ DNA. Supposedly, no intelligent designer would use such an inefficient system, therefore it must have evolved, they argue. This parallels the 19th century claim that about a hundred ‘vestigial organs’ exist in the human body,12 i.e. allegedly useless remnants of our evolutionary history.13 But more enlightened evolutionists such as Scadding pointed out that the argument is logically invalid, because it is impossible in principle to prove that an organ has no function; rather, it could have a function we don’t know about. Scadding also reminds us that ‘as our knowledge has increased the list of vestigial structures has decreased.’14,15,16

While Dawkins has often claimed that belief in a creator is a ‘cop-out,’ it’s claims of vestigial or junk status that are actually ‘cop-outs.’ Such claims hindered research into the vital function of allegedly vestigial organs, and they do the same with non-coding DNA.

And remember, AW is not a creationist, it's pure coincidence that he just happens to cling for dear life to the same definition of 'vestigial' that enables creationist arguments like the one you see above.

243 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:01:56pm
Sal1: stories like trapping heat with goosebumps
A.W.1: Its science. Eat it.

Sal2: Actually, it’s NOT science. I CHALLENGE YOU to give me a SINGLE CREDIBLE LINK that says that goosebumps trap heat next to the skin! I TRIPLE DOG DARE YA!

Boy, that was fun!

Sal1: The notion that bacterial backup was always its purpose seems a bit outlandish to me.

A.W.1: Then take up your argument with the writers of that article.

Sal2: Why should I? Nowhere in that article you linked does it state that bacterial backup was ALWAYS the purpose of the appendix. How ever it does say that:

Wisdom teeth

Early humans had an extra row of molars to help with the vast quantity of vegetation they had to chew.

Coccyx

The remains of a tail lost long before man began to walk upright six million years ago.

Which are things I have been saying all along. Plus, people seem to suffer no ill effects from having it removed – which is an indication that its original essential function is no longer operative.

Sal1: You seem to be gratuitously discounting many other fine examples, such as, for instance, wisdom teeth, Jacobson’s Organ, and the pseudogene for Vitamin C production.

A.W.1: Wisdom teeth, it acknowledges, are useful for eating plants. Yes, Virginia there is such a thing as vegetarians.

Sal2: But short jaws causing wisdom teeth to grow in sideways in many people can’t be very useful for vegetation mastication.

A.W.1: As for the last two, well, there are two and I acknowledge 2 good example. Funny how that works.

Sal2: And the Darwin’s Point, and the fact that the tailbone isn’t used to anchor a tail any more, and the static nictitating eyelid, and the Plantaris Muscle, which 9% of us don’t even have, and muscles that allow us to barely and uselessly jog our ears, and goose bumps that try to fluff missing hair in a futile attempt to trap heat close to the body…

Sal1: But it works soooo much better

A.W.1: Evolution made a choice, to sacrifice self-warming techniques for... well, I don’t know what, but clearly evolution saw an advantage in making most of us less hairy (with the big exception of us Scotsmen).

Sal2: Check into neotony. Prolonged hairlessness – a juvenile trait – goes along with extended brain plasticity, allowing us to learn more for longer with our big brains.

Sal1: Shivering is an already present action that generates muscle heat, and surely oil production happens in the absence of goosebumps.

A.W.1: And in some situations you might need more of both heat and oil.

Sal2: And if you have to depend on goosebumps fluffing your nonexistent coat in order to hold more heat, you’re just gonna freeze.

Sal1: But we didn’t start off that way in equatorial Africa.

A.W.1: So?

Sal2: We were nekkid back then. No clothes.

Sal1: Ancient humans didn’t evolve with rainments in mind.

A.W.1: Well, I guess it depends how ancient you are talking about. (forgetting that evolution doesn’t have anything “in mind”—you better watch out, you will start sounding like a creationist)

Sal2: You mean like someone who said, in your #220, “So the modern human evolves with the assumption that we are going to wear clothes.” ? I don’t think evolution assumes anything. In fact, the sentence you criticize was precisely my rebuttal of this suggestion of yours that evolution might indeed have clothing in mind.

Sal1: And of massively dubious value in steming feminine libidos.

A.W.1: And you continually fail to grasp that there is more to helping the mating process than what directly and immediately turns a woman on. You must be great company, you.

Sal2: whatever else helps the human mating process along, in a vast majority of cases, it sure as hell ain’t ear-wiggling.

to be continued...

244 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:06:00pm

continued...

Sal1: Did God get it wrong the first time?

A.W.1: Have you noticed that you are the only one between us interested in talking about God in this thread?

Sal2: When one rejects the evolutionary explanation for a functional change, what the hell is one left with? A God who redid an organ’s purpose.

Sal1: Sure, but you find very few of them these days eating vast quantities of wild plants raw.

A.W.1: The fact is it can be useful in survival situations. And guess what? That is where natural selection occurs.

Sal2: These days, more people in survival situations might die from infected impacted wisdom teeth in the wild than could use the damn things to chew leaves.

Sal1: That can’t be construed by any stretch of the imagination as anything remotely approaching optimum.

A.W.1: So, you, an alleged male, didn’t know where your balls were, and you are going to lecture me about science and the human body.

Sal2: I misspoke about when they dropped. I’m 53 years old, and don’t remember my preteens that well. But you ad hominem distraction has not a damn thing to do with the fact that it’s a helluva fucked up ‘design’.

Sal1: Just letting you know that I have bitter personal experience that the flaw is genuine.

A.W.1: Which helps me, how exactly?

Sal2: So you’ll know that I know whereof I speak when I say that there had to be better ways to get the gonads in the scrotum than dropping them through a hole in the abdominal wall.

Sal1: But why would a God want to? And isn’t there a contradiction embodied in the idea of imperfection proceeding from perfection?

A.W.1: Um, no.

Sal2: So where’d the imperfection come from, then? Was a perfect being thinking imperfect thoughts, or taking imperfect actions?

Sal1: In fact, the very idea of a simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent being is self-contradictory, like the idea of a simultaneously existing irresistible force and immoveable object.

A.W.1: Actually I had shortened it to omnipotent, because if you are omnipotent, omniscience follows. And no, I don’t see any contradiction at all. God can do anything, and he knows everything. What is tough to grasp about that?

Sal2: Because, logically speaking, the two things on either side of your ‘and’ can’t simultaneously coinhere in a single universe.

Sal1: If a being were omniscient, it would have to know the future for certain, which would render it powerless to change it.

A.W.1: Only if the future is certain. God could know exactly how everything would turn out if he did nothing, and exactly how it would turn out based on every possible intervention he could engage in. nothing even difficult about that idea.

Sal2: But he still wouldn’t know which future would be happening until he chose it, so he would still not be omniscient.

Sal1: But before hominids even had fire

A.W.1: Oh, I remember a movie about that… quest for fire! It was cool!

Sal2: The movie was cool, but the actual mastering of fire was much cooler, I’ll wager.

Sal1: And weren’t getting much meat, either, before they figured tools out (weapons).

A.W.1: Right primates can’t catch predators without weapons. You don’t know much about baboons, do you?

Sal2: I know that our closest genetic relatives – chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans – aren’t known to have a high-meat diet. And don’t you mean “can’t catch prey”?

Sal1: Then could you kindly explain why Orientials need more third eyelid protection than other humans? Their third eyelids are much larger.

to be continued...

245 Ayeless in Ghazi  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:06:19pm

re: #241 Salamantis

Go put on a coat and tie, climb on a bicycle, and knock on doors.

The Bud Light Guy loves me, man.

And I will NEVER stop questioning. Period.

Heh. Looks like I was wrong to give that one the benefit of the doubt, Sal. I'm beginning to wonder btw - are all creationists constantly cranked up on meth-amphetamine these days? Or is there some other reason why they alll write that way?

246 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:09:33pm

continued...

A.W.1: Hmm, the preferred term is Asians, by the way, although that is a flawed term itself.

But in answer to your question, yes, because what marks that group’s appearance is their evolutionary history in cold climates. Really this is human evolution 101, literally.

And incidentally you are getting to something which is actually evidence of evolution, the fact that Vietnamese people, who are not in a particularly cold climate as I understand it, still have cold weather adaptations.

Sal2: Actually, the progenitors of modern Asians settled in southern Asia before straying north. And when you take pigmentation as a measure of evolution under different sunlight strengths into account, it is the Scandinavian Caucasians who adapted in that sense to the coolest latitudes – and they do not possess the nictitating eyelid to the same degree that Asians do. I find it highly telling as far as local evolution in response to environment goes that the two darkest peoples – Sub-Saharan African blacks and Australian Aborigines – are, genetically speaking, the farthest apart of any two racial/ethnic groups on the planet.

Sal1: “They evolved” means that I am right
A.W.1: Only if you think I am arguing against evolution. Again, I am not. I am just saying that this list sucks.

Sal2: Actually, it is your arguments against it that suck.

Sal1: Our dentition is omnivorous, with plant-grinding molars in back (we just don’t need all those that we used to, so the very back ones are disappearing, although not nearly fast enough to keep up with our shortening jaws), and practically no protruding canines.

A.W.1: But that’s not how it always was.

Sal2: That’s right. Vestigination is an evolutionarily ongoing thing. Just like environment, including diet, has changed to allow it.

Sal1: You obviously do not understand the long term effects of unguided randomness on statistical percentages.

A.W.1: No, that is exactly what I am talking about, but without incorrect terms like atrophy. You were the one talking about a thing shrinking from a lack of use in lamarkian terms. I was correcting you.

Sal2: You are now reduced to blatantly and abjectly lying about what I said – which is a fatal mistake, because the thread can be easily checked. Just click on the downward pointing blue triangle in the far upper right, select “Find on this page”, and type in the word “atrophy”. You will find that the only times I use the word are to deny your accusations that I ever used it in the first place. You’re well and truly busted on that.

Sal1: At the level of expression it greatly mimics analogality

A.W.1: Again, the words you are looking for are “you are right and I am wrong, A.W.”

Sal2: And just how many different digitally precise and distinct genetic height settings do humans have?

Sal1: Forthwith, adverb: at once; immediately

A.W.1: Again, look up the concept of “fair mind.” What is immediate in evolutionary terms and what is immediate in our daily lives are two different things.

Sal2: Just admit you chose a term laden with the wrong connotative (and denotative) baggage. I posted the dictionary definition to prove it.

to be continued...

247 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:12:08pm

continued...

Sal1: Might doesn’t make right, even if that might is absolute.

A.W.1: Hmm, yes, but it does make him smarter than you, which means he could be playing a game much deeper than you are capable of comprehending. But it is interesting that you have gone from trying to prove God doesn’t exist somehow to saying why you think he is a jerk.

Nope, I haven’t; I merely said that any God who would do what YOU YOURSELF SUGGESTED as an alternative, i.e. LYING to His own creation by faking evidence, would of necessity be a jerk, like any evidence-faking serial liar would be. And I didn’t try to prove that God didn’t exist; just that any God who COULD exist couldn’t logically have all those nifty Christian-imposed deific attributes simultaneously.

BTW: your snide and supercilious invocation of Dostoyevskyian magic, mystery and authority doesn’t work to forestall critical inquiry with me. You might as well be a witchdoctor shaking a gourd rattle.

248 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:32:23pm

A.W. says:

No, I never called you guys idiots. In you and Sal’s case, you are blind fanatics, that believe we can’t point out the factual inaccuracies of an article supporting evolution however glaring they are, at the risk of being deemed insufficiently impure. Which is precisely what you are doing.

Really, if anyone is discrediting evolution, here, its you. Every person who claims to believe in science has to be open to questions, whether it goes to the heart of what you assume about the world or just on smaller issues. You are not behaving like a rational person but a person working out some demons of yours.

To which I answer:

You know what I consider to be a wilfully blind fanatic? A person who says that there's some sort of genetic mechanism enabling us to engege in ear-waggling love dances. A person who contends that goose bumps trap heat in the air close to the skin. A person who asserts that static eyelids always were that way. A person who maintains that wisdom teeth, as prone to impaction in short jaws as they are, are good and useful things. A person who doesn't even address a now-useless foot muscle that almost a tenth of us aren't born with. And a person who insists that our tailbones were evolved from the beginning to help us sit up straight. And why?

So he won't have to admit that somewhere in our distant past, our progenitors had ears that swiveled, fur on our bodies, and a third functioning eyelid. That they had longer jaws built for grinding wild foliage. And that they had prehensile feet and tails.
__________________________________________________________

"I didn't come from no damn monkey! God made humans just as they are!"

/Jeez!

249 Salamantis  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 4:37:19pm

"Get your genes off me, you damned dirty ape!"

HeeHee!

250 Jed 1899  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 5:03:58pm

I recall a few kids in our school having six toes @ foot. Six fingers on @ hand. Not many limbs on their xtra-limb family tree.

251 Davehm  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 7:39:50pm

doesn't natural selection imply a selector?


just something to chew on

252 claire  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 9:19:23pm

re: #251 Davehm

Oh, right. Like nobody has ever "chewed" on that one before. The selector is the creatures environment and his ability to survive it with progeny.

253 Davehm  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:44:23pm

so the environment makes the selection...that implies intelligence

254 scarshapedstar  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 11:23:06pm

re: #125 stretch

that explanation ignores the improbabilities quite blissfully. This proof is nothing more than saying: "of course life arose from non-life, we're here aren't we?" Anything observable about life originating from non-life? Otherwise, it is just an unreasonable and unfounded faith.

I'm not convinced you know what you're saying here. First off, you seem to have a misunderstanding about probability. There are diseases that occur in only one in every 30 million people. That's about as likely as flipping a coin 25 times and getting heads each time. If you were to observe this coin toss, you'd conclude that something is wrong with the coin, and you'd probably be right. But the people still exist, because nature is flipping coins (so to speak) at a dizzying rate. Similarly, if a reaction only occurs one out a million times that the reactants meet, and the reactants meet a trillion trillion trillion times, it's virtually certain to happen.

Creationists frequently argue that there is simply no way for life to bootstrap itself in the manner I'm proposing, that inanimate matter can never preserve and pass down information without some driving force impelling it to do so. I've given you some non-trivial examples of how it can happen, according to pretty non-controversial facts about chemistry. And then you tell me that you want to see me do it.

Okay. First, check out the Urey-Miller experiment.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

Amino acids arising from decidedly dead components. I know you will have two objections here.

The first is that amino acids are not life, which I certainly agree with, but the purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate that the building blocks of cells can form on their own, not to create artificial life.

The second is that laboratory experiments aren't "real". That one is a little harder for me to swallow. You want me to show you proof that life has arisen spontaneously, in a lineage independent from every other living thing; essentially, an alien organism. This would be extremely hard to find, as evidenced by the fact that nobody's found one yet, despite the fact that it would be without a doubt the most earthshaking scientific discovery of all time. Why's it so hard?

1) Such an organism would almost certainly be at a profound disadvantage against every other life form on the planet. It's easier to make a rudimentary organism when there exists absolutely nothing that wants to eat it. However, in the present day, every single living thing needs carbon to survive, and they're ruthlessly good at finding it after billions of years of non-stop war. It might actually be easier to find a silicon-based alien organism, except that silicon isn't very likely as a substitute for carbon.

([Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

Short version: This may have happened, it may even happen today or tomorrow, but it really wouldn't have a ghost of a chance of surviving long enough for anyone to find it.

2) If this thing did manage to survive, it would be really hard to find. Firrstly, it would be microscopic at best, and much more likely sub-microscopic. Secondly, every single one of our techniques for detecting the DNA / RNA of unknown organisms relies on their common ancestry. You take a known sequence, preferably an extremely common one like the 16s rRNA subunit (basically, a gene sequence that every single living thing ever analyzed has in it) and sequence whatever sticks to it.

[Link: cat.inist.fr...]

There's no other feasible way to do it. This is our very best technology. We can't find DNA that we know absolutely nothing about, much less an organism that might not even have DNA.

255 scarshapedstar  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 11:33:05pm

re: #125 stretch

And an organism can survive in the vacuum of space for 12 days? WOW. That means 25,000 years of travel from another system (where life arose how?) almost seems plausible!

Life might have arisen there the same way it arose here. Have you been reading any of this?

Also, surely you realize we're talking about an ANIMAL surviving in space, and that the experiment only RAN twelve days. They might have lasted longer. Many bacteria, unlike these animals, don't need to breathe. But space has other hazards, like cold, heat, and radiation. Surely there's no organism that can survive all of this...

oh wait.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

Yes, the world's toughest bacterium, able to survive a thousand times the human lethal dose of radiation while frozen in a vacuum. Right here on earth. I'm not saying its ancestors came from another planet, but if you want to know what a spacefaring organism would look like, this is it.

Any other questions?

256 scarshapedstar  Mon, Jan 12, 2009 11:58:46pm

re: #254 scarshapedstarWe can't find DNA that we know absolutely nothing about, much less an organism that might not even have DNA.

Actually, I have to correct this statement. We can find random strands of RNA; however, it's a fool's errand. If I were to send a submersible robot to a deep-sea vent and suck up a gallon of water, and then sequence every bit of RNA in it, I would end up with trillions of strands of varying lengths, because RNA flies around cells like spam emails on the intertubes. DNA would be slightly easier to work with, but if I were to find a tiny alien genome it wouldn't have a blinking neon sign on it and it would look a lot more like a random piece of another organism's DNA.

Of course, there is no reason to believe that the hypothetical alien organism would contain either RNA or DNA. It might have an entirely different way of passing down information. In this case, finding it would be absolutely impossible given current technology. The only remotely feasible method would be using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to find the structure of every freakin' molecule, and hope you find something really bizarre, but this requires a pure sample and you can't purify something that you don't know exists.

Basically, as it stands, I would have to be God to give you the level of proof you're asking for, and it's not entirely clear that current conditions permit abiogenisis anyhow, so the whole thing may be a red herring. Or was that the point?

257 scarshapedstar  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 12:02:38am

re: #253 Davehm

so the environment makes the selection...that implies intelligence

If I roll some marbles down a playground slide and one of them comes out first, does that mean that the slide intelligently selected that marble to win? Or does it mean that the Marble God designed the marble? Both? Neither?

Chew away.

258 scarshapedstar  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 12:04:30am

Okay, actually, replace "marbles" with "rocks" in that one.

259 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 3:18:01am

re: #251 Davehm

doesn't natural selection imply a selector?

just something to chew on

No, it doesn't; not one possessing consciousness or volition, anyway. Nature - that is, the environment - selects which organisms get to live to reproductive age, and which do not.

260 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 3:18:58am

re: #253 Davehm

so the environment makes the selection...that implies intelligence

Your statement strongly implies that intelligence is what you lack.

261 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 3:28:33am

re: #255 scarshapedstar

Life might have arisen there the same way it arose here. Have you been reading any of this?

Also, surely you realize we're talking about an ANIMAL surviving in space, and that the experiment only RAN twelve days. They might have lasted longer. Many bacteria, unlike these animals, don't need to breathe. But space has other hazards, like cold, heat, and radiation. Surely there's no organism that can survive all of this...

oh wait.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

Yes, the world's toughest bacterium, able to survive a thousand times the human lethal dose of radiation while frozen in a vacuum. Right here on earth. I'm not saying its ancestors came from another planet, but if you want to know what a spacefaring organism would look like, this is it.

Any other questions?

The notion that the earth was either seeded from micro-organisms in meteorites or aliens in spacecraft kicks the evolutionary can down the cosmic road, but not off it, because both the micro-organisms and the aliens would themselves have had to evolve somewhere in the Universe, and do so within its lifespan (13.7 billion years, about three times as long as the age of the earth - 4.6 billion years). Plus, whether or not the earth was intentionally seeded, accidentally seeded, or life indigenously began here, once life - self-reproducing entities possessing high yet imperfect copying fidelity - was terrestrially present, evolution immediately began to act upon it via random genetic mutation and nonrandom environmental selection, and has continued to do so ever since.

262 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:01:25am

I wonder whether A.W. thinks that evolution and divergent speciation from a small number of ancient common ancestors applies to all terrestrial lifeforms, including humans, or whether he believes that humans are a special, sui generis exception, and divinely and independently created as is.

I'm guessing he rejects the scientific contention that humans and great apes share, and evolutionarily diverged from, common protohominid ancestors, even though DNA analysis empirically establishes it beyond rational and reasonable doubt.

263 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:08:58am

Jimmah

> if you had been genuine in simply wanting to correct one or two inaccuracies

Except there were not only one or two inaccuracies.

> you could have done so without the dramatics you are putting on here.

You and Sal introduced the dramatics by bringing in the ad hom argument. I made a logical argument and you two both responded with personal attacks.

> in which you accuse everyone who disagrees with your -frankly fucking idiotic - post, in which you try to discredit the whole article - of being a fanatic.

Try to diagram that sentence—oy vey!

Not everyone who disagrees with me is a fanatic. But you and Sal clearly are.

I didn’t say 100% of the article was wrong. But I did say it was poor because around 60% was clearly wrong, 20% was dubious and only 20% was clearly right.

> A pattern of behaviour commonly sported by other creationist loons.

Lol, so right after you accuse me of saying everyone who disagrees with me is a fanatic, you turn around and say because I think this article is inaccurate (and it undeniably is), that I must be a “creationist loon.”

You aren’t a very self-aware person, are you?

> If you really did believe in evolution as you claim, you'd understand where I was coming from and would have responded very differently.

You mean, I would have said that the appendix is not useful even though I knew it was?

Your first response to me as nothing more than an attack on my motives in questioning the apparent perfection that was this list that states “facts” contradicted by scientific evidence. Why should I be sympathetic under those circumstances? Why shouldn’t I conclude that you are a nut?

> This is exactly how I'd expect a creationist troll to respond.

Well, since you decide a person is a creationist by your psychic powers, I will take that as seriously as it deserves to be.

> So the appendix has a minor function that the person who wrote the article was unaware of.

“So the article is factually inaccurate. We must support it anyway because otherwise the evil creationists will be able to discredit us. And then they will call us fanatics who are incapable of reason.”

> Big deal - it still doesn't invalidate the appendix as an excellent example of an organ that has lost it's original function and taken on a different, less vital role

Actually the article that I cite indicates that it is its primary purpose, one that it could successfully serve for millennia in the wilds and is becoming less useful in modern society. Of course the Asian bird flu could finally evolve into a human carried version, and wipe out so much of humanity that the appendix is not so vestigial after all.

> you do understand, I hope, that such an organ isn't likely to take on the role of something vital like the heart

You two keep getting confused between “absolutely necessary to live for the next 15 minutes” and “useless.” There is something in between. Evolution doesn’t concern itself merely with immediate life or death, but things that help with long-term survivability, and advantage.

> Which as I said comes easily under the definition of vestigial that biologists use

I told you before, I am bored with definitional arguments. You want to come up with another word for “currently useless” fine by me. How about “Carteresque?” Oh, no, Jimmy Carter is useful, just not to the good guys.

I said right at the beginning that evolution tends to weed out the useless traits, so proving we don’t have many doesn’t disprove Darwin. The fact that some ID idiot thinks that we have to prove the utter usefulness of our bodies to prove the existence of God doesn’t mean he is logically correct. He is not.

264 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:10:00am

Jimmah (cont)

Let’s work out the syllogism, since you fancy yourself a logical person. Here’s my original point about evolution not tending to promote useless traits (which you claim I wrongfully call vestigialism):

1. Evolution tends to eliminate traits that harm your survivability.
2. Having a body form that is currently useless harms your survivability by taking nutrients.
3. Therefore evolution tends to eliminate body forms that are currently useless.

Therefore if we had a bunch of useless traits, it would tend to be evidence against evolution, not for it. And the fact that some creationist didn’t understand that, doesn’t mean I am a creationsit. I mean your syllogism works like this:

1. One creationist says X is evidence of creation.
2. A.W. says X is evidence of evolution.
3. Therefore A.W. is a creationist.

Except that syllogism doesn’t work, because you have not established that all creationists say X, and indeed my previous syllogism establishes that the creationist is logically wrong. The elimination of useless traits is precisely what you expect under evolution.

> So where is that definition coming from then AW?

Good reading comp, there.

Sally

> I CHALLENGE YOU to give me a SINGLE CREDIBLE LINK

“When I type in capital letters, it means I am shouting!” Lol

Well, we all know that the web has every piece of trustworthy knowledge. I mean that is where I learned that aliens caused 9-11. (yes, in case you are stupid, I am being sarcastic there.)

But fwiw, here:

[Link: www.almanac.com...]

Its worth noting that it serves another purpose: communication of fear. Which can also save your life.

> Nowhere in that article you linked does it state that bacterial backup was ALWAYS the purpose of the appendix.

It says it was its purpose in the wild. Admittedly doesn’t go through the entire evolutionary history, but, um, so? What do you think you prove by saying once it served one purpose and now it serves another? That sometimes evolution does that? I have not ever disputed that. indeed, I have given examples of that.

> Plus, people seem to suffer no ill effects from having it removed – which is an indication that its original essential function is no longer operative.

Well, then I guess your perfect and vaunted list is wrong, because it says the tail serves a purpose.

But again, just because you can limp along without a thing doesn’t mean it is useless. By that logic, our eyes serve no purpose

> But short jaws causing wisdom teeth to grow in sideways in many people can’t be very useful for vegetation mastication.

Well, try eating bark for 6 months and let me know.

> And the Darwin’s Point, and the fact that

“I am going to just repeat myself over and over and over until he says I am right.”

> Prolonged hairlessness – a juvenile trait – goes along with extended brain plasticity, allowing us to learn more for longer with our big brains.

Ah, so hairy men are stupid. Wow. How bigoted. Some of the smartest people I have ever known are brilliant. Indeed, that is a hairbrained thing to say. Get it!

> And if you have to

If you are not going to respond to what I actually said...

> Sal2: We were nekkid back then. No clothes.

Again, so?

> whatever else helps the human mating process along, in a vast majority of cases, it sure as hell ain’t ear-wiggling.

You small minded person, you. Really it is true how particularly the study of mating is a projection of one’s own hang ups.

> When one rejects the evolutionary explanation

And when did I do that?

> These days, more people in survival situations might die from infected impacted wisdom teeth in the wild than could use the damn things to chew leaves.

Really? Prove that.

> I misspoke about when they dropped.

Mispoke? Its your body. Duh.

265 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:10:50am

Sally

> So you’ll know that I know whereof I speak

Well, it might be useful if I deny there is such a thing as hernias. But is that what this is all about? You got a few hernias and concluded there was no God, a la Kyle on South Park with his hemorrhoids? I mean, seriously, why are you clinging to the need to preach to the world “I had a hermia!”

> So where’d the imperfection come from, then? Was a perfect being ... taking imperfect actions?

Yeah. Why is that hard for you to grasp, that being perfect doesn’t mean you can’t create imperfect things? All you have to grasp is that the imperfection is intentional.

For someone who apparently rejects faith, you haven’t really thought it through.

> Because, logically speaking, the two things on either side of your ‘and’ can’t simultaneously coinhere in a single universe.

Because you assume the future is set in stone and cannot be changed, an illogical and unsupportable assumption. Indeed, I find it odd that apparently you don’t believe in God but you do believe in unalterable fate.

> But he still wouldn’t know which future would be happening until he chose it, so he would still not be omniscient.

He wouldn’t know what he chose?

> I know that our closest genetic relatives – chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans – aren’t known to have a high-meat diet.

And the modern evolutionary scientist thinks that we lived much more like baboons than those other relatives.

> Actually, the progenitors of modern Asians settled in southern Asia before straying north.

That is contradicted by what my human evolution professor taught (who by the way was a hairy, but brilliant man). Take it up with him, but judging by certain statements you made, I would guess my knowledge is more current than yours.

> I find it highly telling as far as local evolution in response to environment goes that the two darkest peoples – Sub-Saharan African blacks and Australian Aborigines – are, genetically speaking, the farthest apart of any two racial/ethnic groups on the planet.

My understanding is that actually the aborigines are half black, half white, meaning half African, half Caucasian, and I mean even before the Europeans arrived. But I could be wrong. I admit that I find racial classifications so irrelevant that I don’t pay much attention. But if you are right, that is an excellent example of how similar environments produce similar traits.

> Actually, it is your arguments against it that suck.

Oh, you have wounded me so deeply with the name calling.

> That’s right.

And what is also true is that we were once a much more carnivorous species, like the baboons more than chimps, apes, and so on. We maybe be closer genetically, but as your yourself said genetic closeness is not everything.

> You are now reduced to blatantly and abjectly lying about what I said

I stand corrected. You said “attenuated” which is just as bad.

> And just how many different digitally precise and distinct genetic height settings do humans have?

I don’t even think the scientists know, yet. but they do know it is digital, because that is the only thing that is possible in genetics.

> Just admit you

No, it was a sign that you were deliberately misconstruing my obvious meaning.

> LYING to His own creation by faking evidence, would of necessity be a jerk

No one ever lies for a good reason?

> You know what I consider to be a wilfully blind fanatic? A person who says that there's some sort of genetic mechanism enabling us to engege in ear-waggling love dances. (goes on with like 5 other things I didn’t say)

Mmm, yes, you have killed that straw man there good and dead. Care to respond to what I actually said?

By the way, if my misstating your discussion of “attenuation” as atrophy is a fatal error, what is your repeated and in the face of my corrections, persistent misrepresentation of my arguments?

266 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:12:56am

Sally

> So he won't have to admit that somewhere in our distant past, our progenitors had ears that swiveled, fur on our bodies, and a third functioning eyelid.

Never denied it. Never denied that evolution was correct. But if you want me to, I’ll say it. we used to be hairier. We had swiveling ears. We had a third functioning eyelid. But that stupid list presents only 2 really good pieces of evidence of evolution and the rest suck or are at least dubious and don’t belong on a “top ten” list.

It’s a lame article. And why you are getting so upset about me pointing out its lameness is beyond me.

> I wonder whether A.W. thinks that evolution and divergent speciation from a small number of ancient common ancestors applies to all terrestrial lifeforms, including humans, or whether he believes that humans are a special, sui generis exception, and divinely and independently created as is.

Asked and answered, moron. But thank you for proving you are not arguing against me but your prejudicial views of anyone who disagrees with you about, apparently, anything. and like all prejudice, yours is irrational.

267 scarshapedstar  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:51:43am

re: #266 A.W.

But that stupid list presents only 2 really good pieces of evidence of evolution and the rest suck or are at least dubious and don’t belong on a “top ten” list.

Could you calm down and then elaborate?

I think that "Junk DNA" should be #1, because comparisons of noncoding sequences are pretty much the bread and butter of molecular phylogeny, but aside from that it's a good list.

268 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 8:05:22am

scar

yeah, i felt junk DNA as a good example. on the other hand the appendix is a terrible example. Go back to the top of this, use control F to find "A.W" and look at my first entry. then feel free to follow the thread as they all accuse me of being a creationist because i feel that this list is flawed.

i am sorry but this article is a wiki kind of thing, and like much of that sort of thing, sucks. Quality lay-created material is kind of rare.

269 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 9:34:12am
Sal1: I CHALLENGE YOU to give me a SINGLE CREDIBLE LINK

A.W.1: “When I type in capital letters, it means I am shouting!” Lol
Well, we all know that the web has every piece of trustworthy knowledge. I mean that is where I learned that aliens caused 9-11. (yes, in case you are stupid, I am being sarcastic there.)
But fwiw, here:

[Link: www.almanac.com...]

Its worth noting that it serves another purpose: communication of fear. Which can also save your life.

Sal2: Wrong. You contended that goosebumps trapped warm air next to the skin; the link asserts nothing of the sort. I quote it in its entirety:

Q: Do goosebumps on one's skin serve a purpose?

A: Those little bumps are the result of muscle fibers in the skin contracting. This contraction activity produces heat and raises the temperature of the body in an attempt to warm it when it's been exposed to cold.

Sal: So where goosebumps might produce heat, something that simple exercise – muscular exertion – also does, as does shivering, they cannot retain heat close to the body, which is what you maintained. Because the hair that they once fluffed on our ancestors has now effectively disappeared.

And facial expressions and the fight-or-flight response communicate fear much more noticeably.

Sal1: Nowhere in that article you linked does it state that bacterial backup was ALWAYS the purpose of the appendix.

A.W.1: It says it was its purpose in the wild. Admittedly doesn’t go through the entire evolutionary history, but, um, so? What do you think you prove by saying once it served one purpose and now it serves another? That sometimes evolution does that? I have not ever disputed that. indeed, I have given examples of that.

Sal2: And the appendix is another example of that. Which is why it was included in the list.

Sal1: Plus, people seem to suffer no ill effects from having it removed – which is an indication that its original essential function is no longer operative.

A.W.1: Well, then I guess your perfect and vaunted list is wrong, because it says the tail serves a purpose.

Sal2: But once again, not the original purposes of body balance while moving in trees and prehensile grasping.

A.W.1: But again, just because you can limp along without a thing doesn’t mean it is useless. By that logic, our eyes serve no purpose

Sal2: The phrase ‘suffering no ill effects’ doesn’t sound much like a ‘limp along’ to me.

Sal1: But short jaws causing wisdom teeth to grow in sideways in many people can’t be very useful for vegetation mastication.

A.W.1: Well, try eating bark for 6 months and let me know.

Sal2: I imagine masticating tree bark while suffering from impacted wisdom teeth might be painful enough to cause one to seriously consider starvation as an option. Certainly much more painful that masticating it without them.

Sal1: And the Darwin’s Point, and the fact that the tailbone isn’t used to anchor a tail any more, and the static nictitating eyelid, and the Plantaris Muscle, which 9% of us don’t even have, and muscles that allow us to barely and uselessly jog our ears, and goose bumps that try to fluff missing hair in a futile attempt to trap heat close to the body…

A.W.1: “I am going to just repeat myself over and over and over until he says I am right.”

Sal2: No, just until you substantially address them all. Which is why I restored the ones you cut. What about that Plantaris muscle that only 91% of us have, btw?

to be continued...

270 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 9:37:35am
Sal1: Prolonged hairlessness – a juvenile trait – goes along with extended brain plasticity, allowing us to learn more for longer with our big brains.

A.W.1: Ah, so hairy men are stupid. Wow. How bigoted. Some of the smartest people I have ever known are brilliant. Indeed, that is a hairbrained thing to say. Get it!

Sal2: Some of the smartest people you know are brilliant? That’s quite a tautology there. I suspect you meant hirsute. But why don’t you read up on the subject?

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

Sal1: And if you have to depend on goosebumps fluffing your nonexistent coat in order to hold more heat, you’re just gonna freeze.

A.W.1: If you are not going to respond to what I actually said...

Sal2: You’re the one who said that goosebumps trap heat…

Sal1: We were nekkid back then. No clothes.

A.W.1: Again, so?

Sal2: So we couldn’t depend upon nonexistent clothes to keep us warm back then. Nor fire, before we mastered its use.

Sal1: whatever else helps the human mating process along, in a vast majority of cases, it sure as hell ain’t ear-wiggling.

A.W.1: You small minded person, you. Really it is true how particularly the study of mating is a projection of one’s own hang ups.

Sal2: It rather sounds like you are the one with a hang-up; particularly, possessed by an ear-wiggling sexual fetish that the vast majority of humans thankfully don’t share.

Sal1: When one rejects the evolutionary explanation
A.W.1: And when did I do that?

Sal2: Every time you rejected the evolution of vestigiality.

Sal1: These days, more people in survival situations might die from infected impacted wisdom teeth in the wild than could use the damn things to chew leaves.

A.W.1: Really? Prove that.

Sal2: Get a case of infected impacted wisdom teeth, get yourself dropped off in the wilderness without any food or antibiotics, and see how well you fare on the local grub.

Sal1: I misspoke about when they dropped.
A.W.1: Mispoke? Its your body. Duh.

Sal2: It was my body forty years ago and more.

Sal1: So you’ll know that I know whereof I speak

A.W.1: Well, it might be useful if I deny there is such a thing as hernias. But is that what this is all about? You got a few hernias and concluded there was no God, a la Kyle on South Park with his hemorrhoids? I mean, seriously, why are you clinging to the need to preach to the world “I had a hermia!”

Sal2: Actually, I have had three. And I was concluding, from personal experience, that if the gonad-dropping mechanism that created a weakness in the abdominal wall that allowed a physiological predisposition for developing hernias were designed, it was most certainly not designed intelligently (more like piss-poorly), unless the designer was a sadist.

Sal1: So where’d the imperfection come from, then? Was a perfect being thinking imperfect thoughts or taking imperfect actions?

A.W.1: Yeah. Why is that hard for you to grasp, that being perfect doesn’t mean you can’t create imperfect things? All you have to grasp is that the imperfection is intentional.

Sal2: Which would call deific benevolence, or at least competence, into serious question.

A.W.1: For someone who apparently rejects faith, you haven’t really thought it through.

Sal2: Yes I have. See preceding remark concerning deific benevolence.

to be continued...

271 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 9:41:48am
Sal1: Because, logically speaking, the two things on either side of your ‘and’ can’t simultaneously coinhere in a single universe.

A.W.1: Because you assume the future is set in stone and cannot be changed, an illogical and unsupportable assumption. Indeed, I find it odd that apparently you don’t believe in God but you do believe in unalterable fate.

Sal2: A willful misrepresentation of what I said, and far from the first. What I said was (to repeat myself) that a deity could not logically be simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent, because if it were omniscient, it would know the future for certain, and would be powerless to change it, while if it were omnipotent, it could change both its mind and the future at will (no unalterable fate there), and thus could not know the future for certain in advance.

Sal1: But he still wouldn’t know which future would be happening until he chose it, so he would still not be omniscient.

A.W.1: He wouldn’t know what he chose?

Sal2: Not until He chose it (which is different from and precedes acting upon that choice). Or until She chose it. Or until It did.

Sal1: I know that our closest genetic relatives – chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans – aren’t known to have a high-meat diet.

A.W.1: And the modern evolutionary scientist thinks that we lived much more like baboons than those other relatives.

Sal2: It depends upon how far back you go. And they’re mostly vegetarian, too. They mostly use those nasty canines on each other, competing for mates, and to ward off threats.

Sal1: Actually, the progenitors of modern Asians settled in southern Asia before straying north.

A.W.1: That is contradicted by what my human evolution professor taught (who by the way was a hairy, but brilliant man). Take it up with him, but judging by certain statements you made, I would guess my knowledge is more current than yours.

And more current that the Encarta Encyclopedia?
[Link: encarta.msn.com...]

Sal1: I find it highly telling as far as local evolution in response to environment goes that the two darkest peoples – Sub-Saharan African blacks and Australian Aborigines – are, genetically speaking, the farthest apart of any two racial/ethnic groups on the planet.

A.W.1: My understanding is that actually the aborigines are half black, half white, meaning half African, half Caucasian, and I mean even before the Europeans arrived. But I could be wrong. I admit that I find racial classifications so irrelevant that I don’t pay much attention. But if you are right, that is an excellent example of how similar environments produce similar traits.

Sal2: Check the Encarta map; you ARE wrong – and hilariously so:
Or try this one:

[Link: www.bradshawfoundation.com...]

Or this one:

[Link: genographic.nationalgeographic.com...]

Or this one:

[Link: www.pbs.org...]

Sal1: Actually, it is your arguments against it that suck.

A.W.1: Oh, you have wounded me so deeply with the name calling.

Sal2: What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. But I said your arguments suck, not you. On the other hand, you demonstrate no compunctions whatsoever about labeling me a moron. (Quote from below: Asked and answered, moron.)

to be continued...

272 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 9:44:27am
Sal1: That’s right. Vestigination is an evolutionarily ongoing thing. Just like environment, including diet, has changed to allow it.

A.W.1: And what is also true is that we were once a much more carnivorous species, like the baboons more than chimps, apes, and so on. We maybe be closer genetically, but as your yourself said genetic closeness is not everything.

Sal2: Not so carnivorous baboons are (he proclaimed in his best Yodaspeak), if their published in-the-wild diet is to be believed Notice that animals are at the end, after a long list of vegetarian foodstuffs:

[Link: www.primatecare.com...]

Sal1: You are now reduced to blatantly and abjectly lying about what I said

A.W.1: I stand corrected. You said “attenuated” which is just as bad.

Sal2: And why is the empirical fact that some genetic characteristics attenuate over many generations ‘bad’? It sure as hell ain’t Lamarckian, which is what you falsely claimed.

Sal1: And just how many different digitally precise and distinct genetic height settings do humans have?

A.W.1: I don’t even think the scientists know, yet. but they do know it is digital, because that is the only thing that is possible in genetics.

Sal2: But with 3 billion base pairs in the human genome, we’re not talking coarse graining.

Sal1: Just admit you you chose a term laden with the wrong connotative (and denotative) baggage. I posted the dictionary definition to prove it.

A.W.1: No, it was a sign that you were deliberately misconstruing my obvious meaning.

Sal2: I’m no mind reader; I can only read the text you type.

Sal1: LYING to His own creation by faking evidence, would of necessity be a jerk

A.W.1: No one ever lies for a good reason?

Sal2: Someone might lie and say a nasty-flavored casserole tasted good, so one wouldn’t hurt one’s wife’s feelings, but to systematically fake shitloads of empirical evidence in both everyone’s bodies and in the fossil record in order to convincingly lie to billions of people over thousands of years can have no good reason.

Sal1: You know what I consider to be a wilfully blind fanatic? A person who says that there's some sort of genetic mechanism enabling us to engage in ear-waggling love dances. (goes on with like 5 other things I didn’t say) And I restore them: A person who contends that goose bumps trap heat in the air close to the skin. A person who asserts that static eyelids always were that way. A person who maintains that wisdom teeth, as prone to impaction in short jaws as they are, are good and useful things. A person who doesn't even address a now-useless foot muscle that almost a tenth of us aren't born with. And a person who insists that our tailbones were evolved from the beginning to help us sit up straight. And why?

A.W.1: Mmm, yes, you have killed that straw man there good and dead. Care to respond to what I actually said?

Sal2: I just did. And anyone who doubts it can read over your previous posts on this thread.

A.W.1: By the way, if my misstating your discussion of “attenuation” as atrophy is a fatal error, what is your repeated and in the face of my corrections, persistent misrepresentation of my arguments?

Sal2: Your argument has been that most of the cited examples of vestigination of human characteristics were logically flawed, and you have futilely attempted to support that assertion by suggesting some of the most ludicrous and laughable ‘alternative explanations’ this side of the Onion.

to be continued...

273 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 9:46:20am
Sal1: So he won't have to admit that somewhere in our distant past, our progenitors had ears that swiveled, fur on our bodies, and a third functioning eyelid.

A.W.1: Never denied it. Never denied that evolution was correct. But if you want me to, I’ll say it. We used to be hairier. We had swiveling ears. We had a third functioning eyelid. But that stupid list presents only 2 really good pieces of evidence of evolution and the rest suck or are at least dubious and don’t belong on a “top ten” list.

It’s a lame article. And why you are getting so upset about me pointing out its lameness is beyond me.

Sal2: What are surpassingly lame are your ‘alternative’ explanations, which compare to the ones provided in the article in question about as well as Aesop’s Fables compare to empirical studies of species habits.

Sal1: I wonder whether A.W. thinks that evolution and divergent speciation from a small number of ancient common ancestors applies to all terrestrial lifeforms, including humans, or whether he believes that humans are a special, sui generis exception, and divinely and independently created as is.

A.W.1: Asked and answered, moron. But thank you for proving you are not arguing against me but your prejudicial views of anyone who disagrees with you about, apparently, anything. and like all prejudice, yours is irrational.

Sal2: Ooh! Gratuitous name-calling! But the point is that the physiological examples proffered in the list are solidly empirically grounded (although the section on the appendix should have mentioned its adopted function along with its original one). What is irrational is for you to dismiss or ignore the assignation of vestigiality to those structures and the labeling of their former functions based upon solid empirical science, and to propose empirically unsupported ‘alternative explanations’ so on-their-very-face ridiculous and downright silly that they’d make a cow laugh.

274 Ayeless in Ghazi  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 10:26:02am

re: #263 A.W.

You and Sal introduced the dramatics by bringing in the ad hom argument. I made a logical argument and you two both responded with personal attacks.

Garbage. What I did was give my opinion on your motives given your hissy initial attack on the article, an attack that relies in part on a dogmatic definition of 'vestigial' that is used by creationists, not biologists. You introduced the dramatics by portraying yourself as a victim of a dark ages style witchhunt. Instead of making a genuine effort to clear up any misunderstandings, you chose to nurse your grievance and play a game in which those who had a problem with your idiotic initial post were cast as fanatics.

I didn’t say 100% of the article was wrong. But I did say it was poor because around 60% was clearly wrong, 20% was dubious and only 20% was clearly right.

You haven't made any convincing arguments to back your claim up. Where you do have a point about technical inaccuraccy, ie the coccyx example, it's mere nit picking, because it still counts as a vestigial structure, even if it is now known to have a reduced, non-essential function.


Lol, so right after you accuse me of saying everyone who disagrees with me is a fanatic, you turn around and say because I think this article is inaccurate (and it undeniably is), that I must be a “creationist loon.”

I spoke of your pattern of behaviour, not solely your opinion on the article. Twisting words - another creationist trait.

You two keep getting confused between “absolutely necessary to live for the next 15 minutes” and “useless.” There is something in between. Evolution doesn’t concern itself merely with immediate life or death, but things that help with long-term survivability, and advantage.

I understand that natural selection operates on percentages over different time frames. The problem is that you are denying that there is such a thing as a vestigial structure with a greatly reduced function, one that is no longer essential to the survival of the individual.

Which as I said comes easily under the definition of vestigial that biologists use

I told you before, I am bored with definitional arguments. You want to come up with another word for “currently useless” fine by me. How about “Carteresque?” Oh, no, Jimmy Carter is useful, just not to the good guys.

But your argument on the inaccuracy of the article depends on your chosen definition, a definition that you are clinging to like a limpet. So please, enough with the bullshit.

I said right at the beginning that evolution tends to weed out the useless traits, so proving we don’t have many doesn’t disprove Darwin. The fact that some ID idiot thinks that we have to prove the utter usefulness of our bodies to prove the existence of God doesn’t mean he is logically correct. He is not.

True - but the few vestigial structures that we do have are further evidence of evolution. That is all the article was saying - yet you opposed it vehemently with arguments weak enough and silly enough to grace any creationist talking points page.

275 Ayeless in Ghazi  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 10:47:01am
Let’s work out the syllogism, since you fancy yourself a logical person. Here’s my original point about evolution not tending to promote useless traits (which you claim I wrongfully call vestigialism):

1. Evolution tends to eliminate traits that harm your survivability.
2. Having a body form that is currently useless harms your survivability by taking nutrients.
3. Therefore evolution tends to eliminate body forms that are currently useless.

Therefore if we had a bunch of useless traits, it would tend to be evidence against evolution, not for it. And the fact that some creationist didn’t understand that, doesn’t mean I am a creationsit. I mean your syllogism works like this:

1. One creationist says X is evidence of creation.
2. A.W. says X is evidence of evolution.
3. Therefore A.W. is a creationist.

Except that syllogism doesn’t work, because you have not established that all creationists say X, and indeed my previous syllogism establishes that the creationist is logically wrong. The elimination of useless traits is precisely what you expect under evolution.

Nice conversation you're having with yourself there AW! Unfortunately it is complete strawmandery. My point was that your attack on the article relies on a combination of idiotic objections that any IDer would be proud of and a dogmatic interpretation of 'vestigial' that is favoured by creationists - that, together with your persecution fantasies and your slamming of your critics as fanatics spells out 'creationist moby' to me. It's not an outlandish suggestion - I've lost count of the number of times creationists have appeared on these threads bitching about the validity of the post while alleging that they only do so from the point of view of one who is concerned about the quality of scientific argument on offer.

But I could be wrong of course - you could just be an asshole who got his butt handed to him while making a failed attempt to seem clever on a blog. I'm open to that possibility too.

276 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 10:51:31am

Jimmah

> What I did was give my opinion on your motives

And how is that not a personal attack?

Clearly you wanted to categorize me as a young-earth creationist and dismiss me as a category and get others to do the same. Who exactly do you think you are fooling.

> Instead of making a genuine effort to clear up any misunderstandings...

...you attacked me personally. But I get it. You don’t have a duty to clear up any misunderstandings, but I do. You can attack me personally and I just have to be nice to you in return. But you don’t have to be nice to me. Who said do onto others what you would want done to you? Must have been some evil creationist.

> I spoke of your pattern of behaviour, not solely your opinion on the article.

My pattern of behavior being to question the article, which was in fact incorrect. Do you know how crazy you sound?

> The problem is that you are denying that there is such a thing as a vestigial structure with a greatly reduced function, one that is no longer essential to the survival of the individual.

Did I say there were no vestigial structures at all in the human body? Nope. So you just killed another straw man.

> But your argument on the inaccuracy of the article depends on your chosen definition

No, it depends on what function the word is serving. See if you are smart enough to understand the difference. I am guessing not.

> but the few vestigial structures that we do have are further evidence of evolution.

And I acknowledged two are good examples. Are you really going to take the position that anyone who ever denies something is vestigial is a creationist, however obviously it is not?

> weak enough and silly enough to grace any creationist talking points page.

I am sorry but the only one arguing from faith here is you.

277 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 10:52:17am

Sally

You know what? I don’t need to make a long response to you. Let’s start toward the end.

> But the point is that the physiological examples proffered in the list are solidly empirically grounded (although the section on the appendix should have mentioned its adopted function along with its original one).

Do you know how crazy that sounds. “They are all solidly empirically grounded. Oh, except for the one on the appendix which was wrong.” No, sorry, “all” doesn’t belong in that sentence and the fact you persist in insisting on its perfection even when that is factually untrue.

Here’s what is really going on. You are one of those people who claim to be an atheist, but in fact you are really mad at God, in part for giving you three hernias. And Darwinism then is comforting to you. In other words, you are basically right about Darwin, but irrationally so. And you are really invested in this, on an emotional level, so that if anyone says anything that you think might actually be opposed to Darwin and/or supporting the existence of God, then we get an irrational and vicious reaction.

And so in your blind fanatical rage, you swing at even those who agree with you on major points, such as that the scientific evidence supports the conclusion that evolution occurred pretty much as it is understood by modern scientists. I have tried now for two days to explain to you that I was not saying what you hallucinated that I said, but your hallucinations have only become deeper, imagining arguments I made in response to your arguments that I in fact never made. So how about this? From now on, go and make the arguments with yourself. You can pretend I responded saying, “the earth was created 6000 years ago on a Tuesday or something, and I have the scientific proof!” or whatever suits your needs. Because there is no point in arguing with a guy who literally hallucinates that you said something you didn’t, or is so dishonest you can’t argue with my actual points, but you kill repeated straw men in an attempt to exorcise your own personal demons.

In other words, this is about your own psychological melodrama and you can include me out. You are either hallucinatory or dishonest and either way, its pointless to argue with you. Oh, and it doesn’t help that you can never, ever admit you are wrong about any minor thing, however obviously you are. And either way, there is no point in dealing with you anymore.

Oh, and you are a moron and I don’t apologize for that. I mean you think you are the first person who ever had a hard time in life? Jesus H. Christ, you whiney baby. Hey, I am sure hernias are no fun, but there are people out there with real problems and you don’t see them going as apeshit as you.

278 Ayeless in Ghazi  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 11:11:27am

re: #274 Jimmah
Correction -

Where you do have a point about technical inaccuraccy, ie the coccyx appendix example, it's mere nit picking, because it still counts as a vestigial structure, even if it is now known to have a reduced, non-essential function.

279 Ayeless in Ghazi  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 11:36:41am
What I did was give my opinion on your motives

And how is that not a personal attack?

I questioned your motives based on what you were saying and the way you said it. I gave reasons.

...you attacked me personally. But I get it. You don’t have a duty to clear up any misunderstandings, but I do. You can attack me personally and I just have to be nice to you in return. But you don’t have to be nice to me. Who said do onto others what you would want done to you? Must have been some evil creationist.

Pathetic. There have been misunderstandings before on these threads that were cleared up without the hysterics that you have put on. But it seerms you cannot concieve of any other way of reacting.

I spoke of your pattern of behaviour, not solely your opinion on the article.

My pattern of behavior being to question the article, which was in fact incorrect. Do you know how crazy you sound?

The article was correct apart from the minor point about the appendix which has been dealt with. It is your idiotic objections that are incorrect and in fact laughable.

The problem is that you are denying that there is such a thing as a vestigial structure with a greatly reduced function, one that is no longer essential to the survival of the individual.

Did I say there were no vestigial structures at all in the human body? Nope. So you just killed another straw man.

Did I say that you said there were no vestigial structures at all in the human body? Nope! What you do is deny that structures which have a greatly reduced or changed function can be called vestigial, according to a definition that - ludicrously - rules the coccyx out.

But your argument on the inaccuracy of the article depends on your chosen definition

No, it depends on what function the word is serving. See if you are smart enough to understand the difference. I am guessing not.

LOL. What did I just write a post or two up - something about assholes trying to look clever, hmm?

And I acknowledged two are good examples. Are you really going to take the position that anyone who ever denies something is vestigial is a creationist, however obviously it is not?

No.

I am sorry but the only one arguing from faith here is you.

Yet your objections to the article are dumb enough to grace any creationist talking points page, as is evidenced by the simple fact that they do appear on actual creationist websites.

From Answers in Genesis, for example, a page called "Setting the Record Straight on Vestigial Organs"

[Link: www.answersingenesis.org...]

280 Ayeless in Ghazi  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 11:54:08am

re: #277 A.W.

Here we go...mask slipping further...this could almost be a line from Plan 9, it's that bad:

You are one of those people who claim to be an atheist, but in fact you are really mad at God, in part for giving you three hernias. And Darwinism then is comforting to you.

I'm sure thoughts of Darwin kept Salamantis going through his hernia nightmare. I know that any time I'm in mental or physical pain, I just close my eyes and contemplate the struggle for survival, the operation of natural selection on genes, and the emergence of new adaptations in response to changing environmental pressures. My troubles just melt away...

/

281 Yashmak  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 12:42:50pm

A.W.,
Having read through the entire exchange, it's pretty obvious that you're simply arguing for the sake of argument.

"Sally"?
"blind fanatical rage"?
"You are one of those people who claim to be an atheist, but in fact you are really mad at God, in part for giving you three hernias."?

These are not statements by someone who is interested in debate.

"there is no point in arguing with a guy who literally hallucinates that you said something you didn’t, or is so dishonest you can’t argue with my actual points, but you kill repeated straw men in an attempt to exorcise your own personal demons."

There's also no point in arguing with a guy who substitutes schoolyard insults (albeit with a highschool vocabulary) for measured responses. If you want to accuse Sal of blind fanatical rage, you might want to re-read some of your own comments here.

282 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 12:47:20pm

Jimmah

> I questioned your motives

Again, how is that not a personal attack when you question a person’s motives?

> There have been misunderstandings before on these threads that were cleared up without the hysterics that you have put on.

You mean without the personal attacks you started with. You came out on the attack. You came out with personal attacks. You came out hallucinating positions I didn’t take. It was an irrational response.

> about assholes trying to look clever

In other words, you don’t understand my point. Heh.

> No.

Then why did you start off the with the assumption that because I found 8 of those examples dubious to outright wrong, especially given that at least 1 you admit was wrong, that I was suddenly a creationist?

> Yet your objections

And yet you persist in the personal attacks.

> Here we go...mask slipping further...

“mask?” You act as though this reveals ideas that I hid. I have said forthrightly, since around the second or third round of this that I believe in created evolution, that is God created the big bang. I also allowed for the possibility that God did create the earth recently just like in the bible, but made it look like evolution occurred. Both are equally possible once you grasp what the term “omnipotent” means. And then when you tried to claim that meant I wanted to teach creationism in schools, I pointed out how I differed from those creationists, saying that either way, that means that the scientific evidence points toward evolution, big bang, etc. and I wouldn’t want the kids to be taught any different. I’ll add that those who claim that the evidence proves that dinos hung out with cave men are simply wrong.

How is anything I said to Sally inconsistent with any of that? Sally, like you, lashed out irrationally when I questioned the logic of a wikified “list” that you have already admitted was absolutely wrong on one point. The irrationality came from somewhere and that invites the question: where did it come from? It became obvious after a while in our exchange was that Sally was that variety of “atheist.” I mean, come now, we are both men of the world. You have never met an “atheist” who wasn’t really just really, really mad at God? So he spews illogical claims like there can be no God because God would have to be perfect and perfectly good, so no one would ever suffer. Notice how much he invested his atheism into the imperfection of the human body, particularly his own hernias which he gratuitously brought up. The fact he went there, gratuitously, supports my notion that this is what was really driving his concern, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he claims some other injustice or suffering drove it, too, if we could get him to speak frankly on the subject.

And that is not to say Darwin comforts him so much as the notion of God would enrage him, as demonstrated in his commentary. Is that outside your observation of human behavior? Its not outside of my experience, and indeed he is a prime example of that. Evolution means more to him than just a theory that fits the scientifically determined facts. He is clearly emotionally involved.

283 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 12:47:46pm

Jimmah (cont.)

Now if I had to guess with you, I would guess you are just punch drunk from creationists bringing forth their silly claims that they can prove the earth was created 6000 years ago, or whatever. I have been there myself. Years ago, I went to an academic private school and was bussed there with about 40 kids from a Baptist school and I let slip that I thought that God created evolution, and that in any case the scientific evidence supported evolution. I spent two years arguing with them every morning and every afternoon. But you need to get your head together enough to understand that you can have an intellectual discussion about whether this or that is particularly good evidence to support it. Scientists can and do discuss some of the things on the peripheral of the theory without questioning the theory. Most famously, for a long time we didn’t understand the mechanism of variance until we figured out genetics and plugged that in. less famously a few years back one guy had the theory of great leaps of evolution which was discredited enough that. The central theory survived because it was robust.

Anyway, short version, you need to figure out who your enemies really are on the topic of the basic viability of evolutionary theory. I’m not one of them.

284 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 12:50:47pm

Yash

Then clearly you didn't read my first post and their responses.

I made nothing more than a logical argument about the quality of the piece and they shouted CREATIONIST!

This because i dared to question a piece that they both admit now is flawed.

285 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 1:36:31pm
A.W.1: Sally
You know what? I don’t need to make a long response to you. Let’s start toward the end.

Since you are addressing me as Sally, I feel justified in addressing you as Root Beer. (A&W; get it?)

Sal1: But the point is that the physiological examples proffered in the list are solidly empirically grounded (although the section on the appendix should have mentioned its adopted function along with its original one).

A.W.1: Do you know how crazy that sounds. “They are all solidly empirically grounded. Oh, except for the one on the appendix which was wrong.” No, sorry, “all” doesn’t belong in that sentence and the fact you persist in insisting on its perfection even when that is factually untrue.

Sal2: Having one formerly essential function replaced by a newer, non-essential function (and if it were essential, people who have their appendixes removed would not be walking around suffering no adverse consequences) also empirically grounds that example as an instance of vestigination. I’m sure that when the appendix had the ancient job of breaking down masses of cellulose, it was much larger than it is now. And, btw: you said that I used the word ‘all’, which even your quote of me shows I didn’t use. But I’ll embrace your transparent lie, for it does not slime my position like you desire it to do.

And an imperfect design implies either a malevolent or incompetent (hence imperfect) designer. Which is a solid, valid and sound argument against deific intentional design, if that deity is considered to be perfect, and for an imperfect natural process: evolution.

A.W.1,: Here’s what is really going on. You are one of those people who claim to be an atheist, but in fact you are really mad at God, in part for giving you three hernias. And Darwinism then is comforting to you. In other words, you are basically right about Darwin, but irrationally so. And you are really invested in this, on an emotional level, so that if anyone says anything that you think might actually be opposed to Darwin and/or supporting the existence of God, then we get an irrational and vicious reaction.

Sal2: Actually, I’m Pagan. And I am not ‘irrationally right’ about evolutionary theory; I studied it and empirical evidence for it, as well as the philosophy of science and anthropology, as part of my philosophy ba and humanities interdisciplinary ma in college. You are right about genuine atheists finding it logically impossible to be angry at what they consider to be a nonexistent God, though. What I AM invested in is solidly logically and empirically grounded positions. And I have criticized your stance precisely because it is neither.

to be continued...

286 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 1:39:08pm
A.W.1: And so in your blind fanatical rage, you swing at even those who agree with you on major points, such as that the scientific evidence supports the conclusion that evolution occurred pretty much as it is understood by modern scientists. I have tried now for two days to explain to you that I was not saying what you hallucinated that I said, but your hallucinations have only become deeper, imagining arguments I made in response to your arguments that I in fact never made. So how about this? From now on, go and make the arguments with yourself. You can pretend I responded saying, “the earth was created 6000 years ago on a Tuesday or something, and I have the scientific proof!” or whatever suits your needs. Because there is no point in arguing with a guy who literally hallucinates that you said something you didn’t, or is so dishonest you can’t argue with my actual points, but you kill repeated straw men in an attempt to exorcise your own personal demons.

Sal2: My issues were, and are, with your many bizarre assertions. I was perplexed why anyone possessing intelligence and sanity would seriously assert such knee-slapping contentions, and conjectured that it might be because you embraced such deranged views as part and parcel of an irrational religious stance. But you apparently lack even that untenable pseudojustification.

A.W.1: In other words, this is about your own psychological melodrama and you can include me out. You are either hallucinatory or dishonest and either way, its pointless to argue with you. Oh, and it doesn’t help that you can never, ever admit you are wrong about any minor thing, however obviously you are. And either way, there is no point in dealing with you anymore.


Sal2: yeah, right, shuuure…like I never admitted that I was wrong about when gonads dropped? No, that can’t be it; I admitted that immediately. You see, I have no problem admitting that I am wrong, with one essential caveat: I actually have to be wrong before I will admit to it.

A.W.1: Oh, and you are a moron and I don’t apologize for that. I mean you think you are the first person who ever had a hard time in life? Jesus H. Christ, you whiney baby. Hey, I am sure hernias are no fun, but there are people out there with real problems and you don’t see them going as apeshit as you.

Sal2: My last hernia was several years ago, and hernias, while painful, are not life-threatening, unless they go untreated for a long time, and a loop of intestines pushes through and chokes off (that never happened to me). But last summer, I suddenly had an indescribably excruciating pain in my gut. I called a cab (no way was I gonna try to drive), and went to the local hospital. I stumbled into the ER screaming, and they triaged me in back right away.

It turns out that I was suffering from an acute attack of diverticulitis. A pocket in my colon had filled with detritus, swelled up and sealed away from the rest of the tract, and gotten infected and festered. The pressure had blown a hole in my outer intestinal wall, and flooded my entire lower GI tract with sepsis. They had me fill out a living will and rushed me into surgery.

I nearly died. I spent 12 days in the hospital, four of them on a morphine drip. It has taken me months to recover.

But I never mentioned that in the thread before now. Why? Because, although it can have genetic components (my mother had to have major surgery for the same thing when I was a child), most folks don’t suffer from it (not having such colonic pockets), so although it is a structural flaw, it is not widespread, and thus was not germane to the discussion.

Now don’t you feel like a complete and total ass? You should; you sure as hell look loke one.

287 A.W.  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 1:42:45pm

Sally, to repeat myself:

From now on, go and make the arguments with yourself. You can pretend I responded saying, “the earth was created 6000 years ago on a Tuesday or something, and I have the scientific proof!” or whatever suits your needs. Because there is no point in arguing with a guy who literally hallucinates that you said something you didn’t, or is so dishonest you can’t argue with my actual points, but you kill repeated straw men in an attempt to exorcise your own personal demons.

So go on, argue with yourself.

288 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 1:53:39pm

re: #287 A.W.

Sally, to repeat myself:

From now on, go and make the arguments with yourself. You can pretend I responded saying, “the earth was created 6000 years ago on a Tuesday or something, and I have the scientific proof!” or whatever suits your needs. Because there is no point in arguing with a guy who literally hallucinates that you said something you didn’t, or is so dishonest you can’t argue with my actual points, but you kill repeated straw men in an attempt to exorcise your own personal demons.

So go on, argue with yourself.

I figured that you would not acknowledge your own asininity concerning your 'whiny baby' and 'going apeshit' comments. That's okay; it is on full and abundant display on this thread, for all who read it to clearly see.

289 Salamantis  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 2:08:12pm

re: #284 A.W.

Yash

Then clearly you didn't read my first post and their responses.

I made nothing more than a logical argument about the quality of the piece and they shouted CREATIONIST!

This because i dared to question a piece that they both admit now is flawed.

The piece was incomplete, in one respect; it did not include the adopted use of the appendix as a non-essential storehouse of intestinal bacteria, in place of its once-essential function of digesting cellulose. But incomplete does not entail incorrect; else there would be only one, rather than two, possible alternatives in Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which states that any system complex enough to permit recursivity must be either incorrect OR incomplete.

You cannot credibly claim that the article was incorrect in any mentioned particular.

290 Ayeless in Ghazi  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 2:41:24pm
Again, how is that not a personal attack when you question a person’s motives?

When the questions have a reasonable basis. If it walks and quacks like a duck, seems only fair to suggest that we might be dealing with a duck. Course, it could always turn out to be an idiot in a duck costume...


You mean without the personal attacks you started with. You came out on the attack. You came out with personal attacks. You came out hallucinating positions I didn’t take. It was an irrational response.

No it wasn't. You were posting rubbish that looked like it was plucked from a creationist website. And when I pointed that out you reacted by proclaiming your martyrdom, which gets an 8.5 on my troll meter.

about assholes trying to look clever

In other words, you don’t understand my point. Heh.

No, it just means that you proved my point, again. Whatever point was on your mind, you failed to communicate it.

Then why did you start off the with the assumption that because I found 8 of those examples dubious to outright wrong, especially given that at least 1 you admit was wrong, that I was suddenly a creationist?

Again, you have to try to distort what was said. It was not the mere fact of your negative response to the article but the idiotic quality of your responses that made me think 'creationist'. Anyone can click on the links I have given here or do their own searches to find those same objections appearing on creationist websites.

The one that was wrong was not so much as wrong as incomplete - the appendix still qualifies as a vestigial organ despite the discovery of a non-essential function.

As for your attack on Salamantis, it's drivel of the lowest order. The hernias were not brought up gratuitously, they were brought up to illustrate a point about vestigiality. Regarding your hallucinatory tour of the innards of Sal's soul and all the damage you see there - do I honestly need to respond to such tripe? I think not.

Anyway, short version, you need to figure out who your enemies really are on the topic of the basic viability of evolutionary theory. I’m not one of them.

What you need to figure out is that if you go out into the woods in a duck costume and start walking and quacking like a duck, you are liable to get shot like a duck.

291 Yashmak  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 3:45:35pm

re: #284 A.W.

Yash

Then clearly you didn't read my first post and their responses.

I made nothing more than a logical argument about the quality of the piece and they shouted CREATIONIST!

This because i dared to question a piece that they both admit now is flawed.

Speaking of straw men, which you've accused others of presenting, that's exactly what you've done with this response. Instead of dealing with the points I've made, you try instead to claim I never read your first post. . .something you cannot, and do not know. In fact, I did, and all related responses. It was actually much easier than usual, as these D.I. vs Evolution topics usually run up to around 1000 comments. As if you hadn't already dug yourself enough of a hole, instead of dealing with the statement I made, you compound it by again posting the same infantile insults you posted in earlier comments "Sally, to repeat myself:"

I see alot of instances of Jimmah and Sal attacking your statements, but you stoop to attacking the person with alarming regularity.

292 Davehm  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 6:02:48pm

re: #258 scarshapedstar

Not to ruffle to many feathers...but you are an intelligent being and you did set those marbles (rocks) into motion, sort of like the planets (rocks) which are in motion... go figure
I find evolution hard to believe, take a look at the eye how can some believe that the eyeball, socket, eyelid, tear ducts, and eye brow all came into existence at random and then duplicate itself on the opposite side of the face... i just don't have that kind of faith.
the truth is that believe systems do have consequences, if you were to teach evolution as a fact like they do in the government school system then you would be telling a group of Jr. and Sr. high school students that they
1) came from slime (meaningless)
2) that they are nothing but animals (no better then the food on your plate)
3) that they came about by chance (thus making them a freak of nature)
4) that when they die they become worm dirt (meaning they have nothing to look forward to...hopelessness)

If I were to buy into that I'd say pass the Prozac and get me a gun.

293 jaunte  Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:39:10pm

re: #292 Davehm

"I find evolution hard to believe, take a look at the eye how can some believe that the eyeball, socket, eyelid, tear ducts, and eye brow all came into existence at random and then duplicate itself on the opposite side of the face..."

I agree, that does sound pretty ridiculous.

294 Yashmak  Wed, Jan 14, 2009 7:12:54am

re: #292 Davehm


I find evolution hard to believe, take a look at the eye how can some believe that the eyeball, socket, eyelid, tear ducts, and eye brow all came into existence at random and then duplicate itself on the opposite side of the face... i just don't have that kind of faith.

It's not hard to believe at all. Look at the wide variety of eyes found on the various creatures on earth! Some are VERY simple, involving only light sensitive cells. The eyes of insects are quite a bit simpler than ours, but are arrayed in greater numbers to compensate. Each creature's eyes have progressed in a manner that best suits the environment/circumstances in which that creature lives.

the truth is that believe systems do have consequences, if you were to teach evolution as a fact like they do in the government school system then you would be telling a group of Jr. and Sr. high school students that they
1) came from slime (meaningless)
2) that they are nothing but animals (no better then the food on your plate)
3) that they came about by chance (thus making them a freak of nature)
4) that when they die they become worm dirt (meaning they have nothing to look forward to...hopelessness)

Not at all.
1) They came from their parents. (meaningfull)
2) Humans ARE animals. That doesn't mean we're no better than food on a plate.
3) There's an approximately 30% chance of any given pregnancy resulting in a miscarriage. That means that, no matter if you like it or not, it's a FACT that we all came about by chance. I fail to see how that makes anyone a freak of nature, since we're all the same in that regard.
4) Belief in science doesn't rule out belief in an afterlife. Science makes no attempt to prove or disprove the supernatural. What you're describing, is a willful blindness to the facts upon which scientific theory is based. Science isn't trying to kill god.

If I were to buy into that I'd say pass the Prozac and get me a gun.

I fell bad for you, that acceptance of the human condition would drive you to Prozac. Billions of us (the religious included) are strong-minded enough to accept it and be happy.

295 Davehm  Wed, Jan 14, 2009 6:02:06pm

re: #294 Yashmak


good points Yashmak but I would like to add

1. Coming from parents doesn't mean anything, everyone who is alive came from parents.
2. Animals don't build altars, people do there's a difference
3. Jr. and Sr. high school kids are the ones getting the message.
4. a lot to cover here, I never said that science was trying to kill God or explain away afterlife and when it comes to evolution no one has ever witnessed the DNA from one species turn into the DNA of another species.
Last but not least I've never taken Prozac in my life, unfortunately a lot of kids in our government school system are on some form of antidepressant or another...and parents wonder why?

296 Yashmak  Thu, Jan 15, 2009 11:23:51am

re: #295 Davehm

re: #294 Yashmak


good points Yashmak but I would like to add

1. Coming from parents doesn't mean anything, everyone who is alive came from parents.

I see. So because it's true of everyone alive, it doesn't mean anything. If that's your criteria, then it doesn't matter WHERE we came from. . .it's meaningless because it's true for everyone alive. Maybe I'm missing some subtle distinction, but based on this on your statement here, it seems your original #1 slime-meaningless statment is pointless.

2. Animals don't build altars, people do there's a difference

Sure the do. We wouldn't have need for the word if we didn't.

3. Jr. and Sr. high school kids are the ones getting the message.

What? What difference does that make? My reply to your #3 applies to everyone equally, regardless of their age.

4. a lot to cover here, I never said that science was trying to kill God or explain away afterlife and when it comes to evolution no one has ever witnessed the DNA from one species turn into the DNA of another species.

Fortunately, we don't HAVE to see it happen to know it does. Laboratory populations of lizards have, in just a few generations, developed changes in their digestive tracts able to handle types of foods not eaten by the original population of lizard. In order for this to happen, the DNA of the latter generations had to have changed in order for their offspring to develop modified versions of their organs.

We've never witness the entire formation of a valley by glaciers either. . .it takes too long, but we can tell from examining the rock and debris left behind that a valley was formed in that manner. A forensic technician doesn't need to witness a murder, they depend upon the evidence at the scene. . . the trail of clues left behind by the murderer and victim. . .in almost exactly the same manner that scientists don't need to witness DNA changing to know that it occurred. The evidence is overwhelming.

Last but not least I've never taken Prozac in my life, unfortunately a lot of kids in our government school system are on some form of antidepressant or another...and parents wonder why?

Not sure what you're implying here. You don't think they'd be on antidepressants if they were taught religion in the science classroom? Who knows? Maybe they'd be less depressed if they learned science in the Sunday school classroom!

There's lots wrong with government schools, but you don't correct that by inserting something that is backed by ZERO evidence, something that fails the minimum requirements for consideration as science, into the science classroom. What you get, if you do that, will be students who will be the laughing stocks of the scientific community. . .students who will not be able to pursue science or technical degrees because what they have learned isn't science at all. That's no solution.

297 scarshapedstar  Fri, Jan 16, 2009 1:05:44pm

re: #292 Davehm

take a look at the eye how can some believe that the eyeball, socket, eyelid, tear ducts, and eye brow all came into existence at random and then duplicate itself on the opposite side of the face... i just don't have that kind of faith.

I don't either. But then that has nothing to do with developmental biology. Similarly, I don't believe that crayons spring fully formed from azalea bushes, and there's no reason for me to do so because the Crayola factory does a pretty good job on its own.

Our eyes are the proud product of millions of years of selection on much simpler eyes. I'm sure you will say that this is impossible, although that's a real head-scratcher of a statement, given that we can see some amazing visual evolutionary pathways in other animals. Take the molluscs.

Oyster eyes: Simple light-or-dark photosensors with no real protective coverings because there's not much to hurt. Oysters need to be able to see a shadow so that they can slam shut and burrow down. Their prey is microscopic, as they are filter feeders, so they really don't need to see anything else, not even to find a mate (they "broadcast" their eggs and sperm into the water, after all.)

Nautilus eyes: Very simple eyes, no lens, basically two pinhole cameras. Produces a very fuzzy image. Probably not used for hunting, either, but possibly used for mating and certainly for predator detection.

Cuttlefish eyes: Easily the rival of our own, and without a blind spot! If you're unaware that each of your eyes has a fairly big region, right in the middle, where it sees absolutely nothing... you'd certainly be forgiven, because our brains due a good job of covering it up. But it's there, as the following link will demonstrate.

[Link: www.blindspottest.com...]

Now, I'm sure you'll argue that God chose to put the optic nerve right in the middle of our retina and then he chose to have our brains fill in the gap, but this begs the question of why he didn't do the same thing to the cuttlefish. I would argue that the different structures in the cuttlefish eye (which still get the job done better than our supposedly "perfect" eyes!) show that there are many ways to make an eye, and theirs simply had a better result. Evolution makes things that are "good enough", not perfect. Nobody's keeping score. You eat, you reproduce, you survive, end of story.

And, I hate to break it to you, but once you have one eye it's really easy to make two. Please, I beg of you, enroll in a developmental biology course. Genes are, if nothing else, modular. This means that cells do not have their fate hard-coded into them. Rather, they can form a number of tissues depending on which signals they are receiving from other cells. In layman's terms, two cells in a developing embryo receive a coded message that says "make an eye!" and so they begin dividing into other cells to implement the Eye Protocol. If things go haywire, only one cell will get this message, and you get one eye. If things go REALLY wrong, you might end up, say, growing an eye on your foot.

the truth is that believe systems do have consequences, if you were to teach evolution as a fact like they do in the government school system then you would be telling a group of Jr. and Sr. high school students that they
1) came from slime (meaningless)

I don't know about you, but I'm proud to be a product of the physical laws of the universe. They're pretty cool once you understand them.

2) that they are nothing but animals (no better then the food on your plate)

Dude. We're animals. We eat, move, and bleed.

3) that they came about by chance (thus making them a freak of nature)

I don't understand this at all.

4) that when they die they become worm dirt (meaning they have nothing to look forward to...hopelessness)

298 scarshapedstar  Fri, Jan 16, 2009 1:09:27pm
4) that when they die they become worm dirt (meaning they have nothing to look forward to...hopelessness)

I don't see how this has anything whatsoever to do with evolution, do you? The Catholic Church has accepted evolution for decades now, and I assure you they haven't stopped preaching about heaven and hell.

If I were to buy into that I'd say pass the Prozac and get me a gun.

If "buying into" the preponderance of evidence that indicates better-adapted organisms will reproduce more successfully drives you to suicide, well, you really ought to be in a padded cell. And please don't be handling any sharp objects when you find out that the sun will come up tomorrow without God's hand pushing it along.


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