Posts by inrainbows

108

The JWD stigma about being "nice"

by changeling in

jw
friends

i'm back from a little jwd break and i'm happy to see that things are not as volatile as when i left.

however, some things never change.

and one thing that seems to be a constant around here is the mentality of some very intelligent and knowledgeble ones (in their own minds at least) that if you are "nice" you are some how emotionally needy and/or not too bright.. i don't think the "happy people" on the board have anything against people with high iq's.

inrainbows

Arrogance, willful ignorance, bad manners and cluelessness are not nice qualities.

Arrogance is, for example, presuming that after being so wrong about our religious beliefs we do not need to seriously re-examine our beliefs regarding the nature of god, 'holy books' and science that have been so wharped by our exposure to a cult.

Willful ignorance is refusing to inform oneself adequately when one has deficiencies in ones knowledge pointed out.

Bad manners is not conceeding error when one commits error, not giving credit where credit is due.

Cluelessness is wondering why people get annoyed when one displays one or more of the above qualities.

If you observe 'un-nice discussions' they often feature ex-cultists still clinging to cultic preconceptions and assumptions about the world being offended at the very idea they might not be adequately informed about a subject to be able to competently pass judgement, refusing to go and do anything about their lack of knowledge, not admitting they didn't know things or saying they were wrong when they were, and then being surprised at the reaction they provoke.

Obviously sometimes those who are more knowledgeable (and it is mostly about knowledge, not about intelligence) are irracable, caustic, unreasonable etc., without any real reason. Sometimes they are just pushed to it by the above described behaviour. People pretending to have a discussion when they are just repeating the preconceptions they started with that no facts will change are annoying.

Ego can have as much to do with the 'I'm not adequately informed about this subject but am going to pontificate anyway' crew as with the 'intellectual' crew.

People should be free to be warm and fuzzy as they like, but being warm and fuzzy in a serious discussion (on a discussion board) and being bruised by the reaction is a result of their unrealistic expectations. Warm and fuzzy works on warm and fuzzy threads. Proper discussion need mutual respect, but that is a two way street; the aforementioned behaviour is not respectful.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

Ho ho, what a suprise.

Not one ID or Creation supporter going anywhere near dolphins with vestigial rear limbs.

Ignoring contrary evidence is essential to maintaining those opinions.

NEITHER CAN EXPLAIN AVATISMS LIKE THIS.

So they don't even try.

Likewise, Madagascar, New Zealand and Australia are very stong 'testiments' to evolutionary theory.

So Creationists and ID'ers don't want to talk about them, do they?

Instead, it's all about 'slick gamesmanship', making what play they can with the amount of 'theoretical slack' that modern evolutionary thoery has without ever conceeding that none of this 'slack' actually falsifies the theory.

At the same time they ignore the much larger levels of 'hypothetical slack' their own incomplete belief systems have.

Auld Soul

With Rapidly Declining Respect,

Oh please. Your 'Respecfully' is nothing more than a conceit. You have already reacted to statements not even directed to you in a defensive fashion and not apologised for your error. Don't pretend to have respect you don't show, it's disingenuous.

Now, will you give a clear example of what would prove speciation to you?

Or is the idea of setting clear goal posts unattractive to you?

Because if you set them and it's proved you have to change your opinion, or if you set unreasonable ones that could not be expected to be proved due to the evidential and chronological constraints of the theory your unreasonable level of required proof could be exemplified?

Wadoma tribe has a high percentage of an aberrant 7th chromosome causing an apparent "ostrich" foot, yet they are human. Will their spotty fossil remains be pegged as a different species by later intelligent lifeforms perusing the remains of our planet?

No, because there's a difference between structural abnormality and speciation, and any alien species would be able to discern the difference between the two, as indeed can we.

Early images of H. neanderthalis were based on a diseased specimen. We now know the stooped ape-man image was inaccurate as we can tell the difference between normative H. neanderthalis and diseased ones.

Kung Bushmen (with an average height of just four feet, ten inches) in Africa inhabit the same continent with extremely tall Maasai. Surely these were different species, right?

We can already show from fossil remains that pygmatism is an environmental adaptation (as is gigantism) and does not necessarily indicate a speciation event (e.g. Shire Horses and Fabella's as an unnatural selection example, although that particular example would in the wild result in unstoppable gene drift between the two population as copulation is impossible without human assitence. Same is true with Toy Dogs and very large breeds). Any genetic analysis of remains would confirm this.

H. neanderthalis and H. sapiens were both human too. They may well have interbred. But at SOME point in the line of decent the genetic drift would mean a g x the power of n grand sire would be infertile when crossed with it's descendents.

The scientific names are just place holders of note, not the start of new chapters.

As much as you try and make out speciation to be a black/white transition, no contemporary evolutionist would ever say anything so obviously wrong and unsupported by the evidence. This does not mean that speciation does not extend to the point where interbreeding is no longer possible or that it does not result in 'macroevoution'.

Slick gamesmanship - and not very clever slick gamesmanship at that - will not answer the questions you have been asked that you avoid that show how inadequate your own hypotheses are.

Stop making ridiculous examples. You still haven't conceded using an example of a 'separate gene pools breeding event' to compare to a 'same gene pool breeding event' was a bad example, but then not conceding your errors is just part of 'ID' (or whatever you'd be happy with as a descriptor) apologist technique, no matter how many 'Respectfully's you tag your posts with.

Perry

I thought atheist evolutionists were for random events, given enough time of course
Perry, don't do this. The only persons who find this impressive are those who know as much or less about evolution than you.

For a start, it's not a question of being FOR random events. They just ARE, whether you are for them or not. I'm not FOR bad weather. It still HAPPENS.

For a second thing, you are just waving around tired old 'Creationist/ID misleading gambit #1', which is making it sound like evolution is a random process. It isn't. It might 'use' variation generated randomly as part of a process of natural selection, but that process is mind-buggeringly NON-random. The whole point of natural selection is that it is non-random.

Oh, and are theistic evolutionists somehow different?

Here’s an example of the ludicrous attitude of IDers and Creationists shifted into a different area of science. Hopefully it will show why people supporting such scientifically bankrupt hypotheses as ID and Creationism get the reaction they do from proper scientists;

“Me, I think Continental Drift is a lie and a conspiracy. I've spent many long hours observing continents and I have never seen them move. Yes, I know they can prove that there is SOME movement between continents on a measurable basis, but that would never be enough to smash India into Asia and create the Himalayas. I know they can also show supposed ‘fault lines’ between ‘continental plates’, but I remain unconvinced that these can ever separate to the extent that these misguided scientists say they do.
Likewise the 'flips' of magnetic poles that are meant to happen every now and then are just rubbish. No one can properly explain why they happen and even thought the evidence for this ties in with the evidence for continental drift I think this might be coincidental. Just as the shape of the East coast of South America, the West coat of Africa, and the similarity of the geology on these coastlines is coincidental.
There is a massive conspiracy to suppress the opinions of any scientist who does not fall in line with the modern theory of contintal drift. There is no way that the continents could be the shape they are unless they were designed that way by some external agency, but I am afraid I have no proof of the existence of this external agency other than my say-so, and no theory of how it happened other than my assertion.”

48

Flood? World's Oldest Living Tree -- 9550 years old -- Discovered In Sweden

by skyking in

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm.

the world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the dalarna province of sweden.

the spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.

inrainbows

Perry, why do you expect US to teach YOU about a subject you clearly already consider yourself to be well informed about to make sweeping statements about?

Don't you know how they calibrate C14 dating? If you don't, how can you say it is inaccurate?

Now, if you're willing to say "I don't know how they calibrate C14 dating and don't want to learn, please someone tell me", I'll tell you.

If you do know and have a question about it or criticism of it, then say that and I'll respond.

Anything else is just bluster and evasion on your part.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

Good points about occasional interbreeding in commonly cited ring-species. Of course, mules can sometime breed too.

The fact that a process takes place which means that interbreeding become vastly raregets ignored, and there doesn't seem to be any wish to consider the implications of such a process through real evolutionary time scales, i.e. that vastly rare might become none.

No attempt to document the clear signs that genetic drift is limited that one would expect.

And then of course the fundamental lack of trouserage both Creationism and it's cousin have; lack of theory. Forms of criticism than cannot assemble any form of theory themselves coherent enough to be subject to scientific testing or falsification.

I'll wait on responding to any post after 17.11 as I've not read them yet, having pecked this out between work. And now it is home time.

For now I'd love to know how this photo is explicable using the Creationist and ID hypotheses.

(hint, dolphins don't have anal fins... well, not normally)

Mmmm... this fits evolutinary theory.

It does not fit Creationism or ID.

Nor does this

"True human tails range in length from about one inch to over 5 inches long (on a newborn baby), and they can move via voluntary striped muscle contractions in response to various emotional states."

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex1

I'd also love to see someone fit the fauna of Australia, Madagasgar and New Zealand into an ID or Creationist format. Fits evolution like a glove. I suspect given that ring species was new to you guys that you may not grock me, but I can explain the question (obvious to anyone who's studied evolution) if need be.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

Auld

One might well use similar taxonomomical methods to speciate Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.

No, one might not. If you were to draw the typical ranges of taxonomical features of the above groups in the manner of a Linn diagramm, the area of overlap would be very high and preclude speciation even if they were not living.

Surely there is cause for speciation if one examines the social habits of each group during, let's say, the 400s to 800s AD.

No there is not, as there is proof of interbreeding in the mentioned periods. There is no proof of interbreeding in Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls, a classic example of a ring species, but then you wouldn't know that.

BSC is an example of science employing extreme bias in defining its terms so that it can be deemed correct.

Explain

There's "plenty there" alright, plenty of talk and plenty of eagerness to bolster Darwinist theory by whatever imaginative stretches may be employed to the task.

Please, don't get all Daily Mail. 'Bolster'? Like it needs it? And as you demostrate, you need to know more before you can be quite so authoratative.

There is nothing of any weight whatsoever when it comes to showing that one thing evolved FROM another thing significantly different in form and function, not using mere behavior or decoration to speciate.

Okay, define what level of difference in form and function would satisfy you. I am very aware in addition to not knowing the off-side rule you may well move the goal posts.

Define what would prove it to you. I get a sinking feeling nothing short of a giraffe popping out of an okapi's ass into your lap would do it.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

AuldSoul

I apologize for my obtusity. I couldn't find where that site addressed anything except arguments I (for one) never put forward.
Perhaps you could show how that site you linked to "covers" my response.

As I give that link BEFORE I direct comments specifically at you, you are not being obtude, you are being something else entirely. I am providing commentary about that film, not about your comments on that film.

I didn't really enjoy having the well poisoned, so to speak,

No need to be so defensive; it isn't all about your argument you know

but have now been exposed to some of its contents in such a way that I cannot fairly deny whether its contents are partially informing some of my viewpoints.

Eh? So, you are objecting (ignoring your mistake in thinking I was talking about your comments) to me providing a commentary on a duplicitious hack job because now you've been exposed to it you can't deny that it's position is partially influencing yours.

Wrong is wrong. Sort it out man.

That's like someone supporting viewpoints put forth in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion objecting to someone showing it is a forgery because they "have now been exposed to some of its contents in such a way that I cannot fairly deny whether its contents are partially informing some of my viewpoints."

A horse cross-bred with an ass produces a mule. A mule cross-bred with a mule produces what? I never argued, if you examine my statement carefully, that mules are always infertile. I said, in essence, that mules are not a viable species in their own right. I daresay you would not disagree with what I said, would you?

You actually said;

I believe that is why horses and asses can be bred to make a mule, but a male and female mule can't breed to make another mule.

I didn't say you specifically exluded any possibility of a mule breeding, I just corrected the absolute nature of your above quoted statement by noting in passing that trans-species corssbreds are sometime fertile. I did not claim mules were a species.

I showed the error in your thinking (mixing of two seperate gene pools being compared to mixing of same gene pool).

You have avoided address this major, gaping error in your argument.

I have also already provided an example (a very elementary one; not knowing about ring species when commenting on evolution is like not knowing the off-side rule when commenting on football) that shows extraspecial evolution takes place.

Instead of being so defensive I suggest you do the research suggested and come back to the discussion.

You obviously take care to inform yourself about how to defend opinions you have. Now whether you are willing to look at the flaws in the arguments you put forward when they are pointed out to you is another question. Like I say above 'Obvious[ly] Creationists et. al. avoid looking at them.'

If it is established, prove it.

Don't you think it a trifle arrogant to assume that the vast majority of scientists are satisfied by the proof of speciation by evolution because they're sloppy and don;t look for real proof. Maybe the problem is that you don't know enough?

As there may be something wrong with your ability to look for contrary arguments to your own opinion, here's a starter pack;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

Wow, Wikipedia, that took a loooooong time.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VA1BioSpeciesConcept.shtml

Ah, Google; took me a whole degree to learn to Google.

I am sorry for the sarcasm Auld. You may well take umbrage and use that as an excuse not to respond.

But you had already demonstrated a lack of willingness to inform yourself adequately to discuss this subject with competence by making such implicitly brash assumptions about the competence of the scientific community. You really only have yourself to blame. So temper my sarcasm with your arrogance, call it a draw, and do some research.

Someone in a pub making a hilariously misinformed statement whilst commenting on football would get laughed at, especially if they implied the commentators and referees got it wrong.

As in pub, so online.

That should be simple enough.

Yes, thus my reaction to you not knowing.

Back to the subject of known design . . . with the advent of Object Oriented Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Self-Modifying Code or Adaptive Code, comparisons which previously could not be effectively made between genetic code and known design can now be easily made. The great likelihood is that the more refined our known designs become in this vein of endeavor, the more closely similar examples of known design will become when compared with the sleek functionality of DNA, RNA, and mRNA.
I believe the wide variety of life that cannot mate but which shares a similar base set of code now has a very close parallel in known design

It is also predicted by evolutionary theory. Did you know that?

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

I don't know if this has come up in discussion of the Creo Propganda Flick;

http://pigeonchess.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/expelleds-intelligent-design-theory-this-is-your-daddys-creationism-part-i/

That about covers it.

Auld_Soul

I believe micro evolution is self-limited by its incapacity to specially extend beyond a certain point while maintaining viability.

What you seem to miss is that it is not progressing in any way like a horse-mule hybrid.

Yes, if you cross a horse with a donkey you get a mule and it is normally infertile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule#Fertile_mules

You are taking two differentiated gene pools and mixing them.

Likewise, take a monolingual French speaker from Brussels to Lisbon in one day and they will not understand a word of Portuguese.

If a male and female from the same gene pool that is subject to selection pressure mate, then you are not mixing two differentiated gene pools. You are mixing the latest version of the current gene pool.

If someone walks 5-20 miles then stays where they are for a few months, and repeat this process, then they will pick-up the lingusitic transitions around international borders; people NEAR permiable borders speak bastardised versions of their mother tounge mixed with that of the adjacent country. It doesn't go from pure French to pure Spanish to pure Portuguese. If you progress at slow enough rate you adapt to the changes.

Without being rude, you are making an elementary mistake that illustrates you need to study the subject at far greater depth as you are insisting things cannot happen based on faulty reasoning.

Now, the differentiating factor is whether you will accept this is true (all evidence points to it being so in this case) and rectify it, or carry on regardless as per the hard core of those opposing the commonly accepted model of evolution (which they don't know enough about to oppose competently).

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

Good point serotonin...

One can see how very small steps can cause speciation geographically by looking at 'ring species'. Obvious Creationists et. al. avoid looking at them.

Speciation in time occured the same way.

The whole 'transitional fossil' red herring employed by people of that ilk simply testifies to their deliberate lack of detailed knowledge of the subject. First of all because there are plenty of example (unless you quote from decades-old books or "Origin", a typical piece of Creationist (et. al.) deceit), and second because saying "where are the transitional fossils, there are none" is begging the question; it assumes that there would be something different about such fossils when in fact they would be virtually indistinguishable from those in generations before and after.

Given the rate of fossiliation of dead animals, the percentage of these fossils that have survived, the percentage of those that have been recovered, and the true nature of transitions, the level of evidence available is what you would expect.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

inrainbows

Dear Creationists and those using the Trojan Horse of ID.

Stop being such children. The "Boo hoo! Wah! Unfair!" routine only really convinces you.

Pure Bible-literal Creationism and ID are hypotheses. It is down to those supporting those hypotheses to provide the proof to life them from hypothesis to theory. It is not down to general science to prove your hypotheses.

Making out that your own inability to lift your hypothesis to the status of theory is anyone's fault other than your own is intellectual dishonesty.

Do people give credence to someone with a hypothesis of perpetual motion (for example) when they cannot make it a theory? No. Do they accept it is the fault of others (i.e. wicked bad conspiracy of scientists) that Mr Perpetual motion can't make his hypothesis a theory? No.

They reckon that it is someone who whilst maybe being very sincere is a little clueless scientifically speaking and is blaming their own failure on others.

There are millions of dollars in the Creationism/ID business given by sincere people to organisations who are pandering to those sincere people's beliefs by giving the Creationism/ID hypotheses the semblance of credibility.

But in the end everyone who really looks can see the Emperor has no clothes.

With the funding that they it is well within the abilities of the Creationism/ID lobby groups to make a decent scientific attempt to prove thie rhypotheses are valid theories.

They cannot. They know this.

So instead they do the only thing they can do; spread mis-information and blame someone else for their own inability to prove their own hypotheses.

48

Flood? World's Oldest Living Tree -- 9550 years old -- Discovered In Sweden

by skyking in

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm.

the world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the dalarna province of sweden.

the spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.

inrainbows

Sad to say as there is already loads of proof a literalistic Biblical Flood could not have happened, one more piece of proof that it didn't happen will make no difference to believers in the literalistic Biblical Food.

Their belief systems are not based on proof, they are based on presuppostion and assertion and they are selective with their evidence. Considering the amount of scientific papers on dating and evolution published in 20 years it's always funny how when you shake-down a Biblical literalist's apologisms, any quote from a real science paper is decades old, or our of context, or both.

Perry and Jcanon will believe what they want to believe no matter what evidence is produced to the contrary. It's a pathology. Now, the question is where is hooberus? LOL.