I met up with some of the Greenlees recently, all well and good and enjoying freedom
That's good to hear.
Posts by cofty
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25Hello from Scotland - it has been ages....
by The Scotsman inwell how the devil is everyone?
i have not been here for a long time........totally lost track of what is going on in jw land, apart from the little bits i hear from family members still in.
(they say everything is swell and that armageddon is just round the corner).... :).was hearing that anniesland congregation in glasgow has been (or is about to be) disbanded.
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cofty
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48
Evolution doesn't happen today...WRONG...
by HowTheBibleWasCreated inlast year i had a brother tell me that one proof evolution is false is that he doesn't see it happening today... i was going to bring of viruses evolving so fast that new vaccines must be developed each year but felt he was too closed minded to receive it.
today i was listening to the audio book of 'an ancestors tale- richard dawkins' and noted oe point that shined through.. here is evolution happening>>>.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html.
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cofty
Monkeys and typewriters - The trademark of somebody who nothing about science.
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340
Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
Thanks Searill. The question of origins is interesting. I suspect that when we know the answer for sure we will find that life is as inevitable as a rock rolling down a hill. Jeremy England is doing interesting work on this from the perspective of physics and entropy.
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Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
Fisherman why don't you do a little research before spouting lies?
Do you enjoy being ignorant of the facts? Are you never embarrassed to make a public display of your ignorance?
I could describe the fossil evidence for the evolution of the phylum Chordata but what's the point? You have never read anything useful in your life - your not going to start now are you?
Do your own research - here are some key terms..
Jawless fish; hagfishes; Heterostracans; lampreys; Osteostracans; Anaspids; Placoderms; Cartilaginous fish; Acanthodians.
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Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
Cofty, is there any chance you could you put your series into a PDF and upload it somewhere? It would be really useful to have it as a single document. - Splash
Interesting idea. I will look into that.
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48
Evolution doesn't happen today...WRONG...
by HowTheBibleWasCreated inlast year i had a brother tell me that one proof evolution is false is that he doesn't see it happening today... i was going to bring of viruses evolving so fast that new vaccines must be developed each year but felt he was too closed minded to receive it.
today i was listening to the audio book of 'an ancestors tale- richard dawkins' and noted oe point that shined through.. here is evolution happening>>>.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html.
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cofty
Anthony Flew was senile. William Dembski and Jonathan Wells have no such excuse.
Stop cherry-picking out of context quotes from the internet and read some actual books.
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Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
Fisherman - That is one of those dumb things that creationists keep telling each other but none of them ever check to see if it's true.
It isn't.
We have an embarrassment of riches of transitional forms.
I have even described some of them to you in the Evolution is a Fact series but you are too lazy/prejudiced/arrogant/ to bother to read it.
#11 Tiktaalik
An amazing fossil discovery illustrates the transition of life from sea to land.#16 Aquatic Mammals
An excellent sequence of fossils illustrates the evolutionary journey of whales from land to sea.#18 Fish Fingers
The evolution of limbs is mapped out in an amazing sequence of ancient fish fossils.#20 Lucy in the Sky...
An exceptional fossil of a 3 million year old hominid.#21 Footprints in the Sand...
Footprints at Laetoli show our Australopithecus afarensis ancestors were bipedal 3.6 million years ago.#23 Faunal Succession...
The consistent sequence of fossils found in the rocks can only be explained by evolution.#24 The Origin of Your Inner Ear...
How the bones that reptiles eat with became the bones that we hear with.So then what evidence do you have for your ill-informed assertions?
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340
Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
The concept of the 'selfish gene' is a very useful way of understanding evolution. Bodies - whether that is a human, fish, insect or oak tree - are vehicles by which genes travel through time.
Combinations of genes that build bodies that are better at leaving copies of those same genes, by definition leave more copies.
Sexual reproduction shuffles the pack allowing favourable combinations to travel together and freeing them from less effective genes.
The vast majority of our genome consists of code that contributes nothing to the phenotype but hitches a free ride alongside the much smaller percentage of code that does the real work.
Keep in mind that the phrase 'selfish gene' is a metaphor. There is no agency or teleology. Genes that build bodies that are unselfish and cooperative members of social species are successful 'selfish genes'.
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340
Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
In Prothero's book he mentioned some birds and an island where the food source changed to nuts. So then, the birds that had beaks that could break open the nuts for sustenance already existed on the island, it isn't like over time they developed, but they now had an advantage? I could swear that I've read about animals that adapted to different climates and such. So that was incorrect?
Yes it's misleading to talk about animals 'adapting' to their environment. Species adapt individuals don't.
This is well illustrated in the following study of feral pigeons - Something Darwin didn't say...
Imagine a population of finches where one or a few have a slightly stronger beak. In normal times it offers no advantage but if the environment changes so that seeds are less plentiful these individuals will get more food and even if it is by a small percentage leave more offspring. Big strong beaks don't happen suddenly but by numerous incremental changes.
Edited to add - You will find the sort of 'adaptation' language in some biological texts. It's a sort of shorthand as is talk about 'design' which refers to a correlation between form and function. It's important to recognise these or they cause confusion. Sometimes the author is just ill-informed especially in the popular press.
Oh, so we didn't evolve from chimps. Right, that's linear and not accurate. As the tree branches grew on this tree of life there was a limb that was common to us, but the branches off of that limb were different, gradually so of course and over time.
Yes that's right. Life is a tree not a ladder. Most of the branches were dead-ends. More than 99% of species that ever lived went extinct before humans appeared.
in some ways, evolution does kind of end with us, barring some strong change in environment.
There is probably some truth in that although it is controversial. The human species will go on changing insofar as there will be changes in the frequency of alleles in the human gene-pool. However our mastery of our environment has probably reduced the selective pressure that was faced by our ancestors. Evolution also shapes us from the neck up. I wonder if that is where we might see more rapid change.
So these illnesses come out because we can no longer procreate? With men still being able to procreate and women not being able to after a certain age, are there higher percentages of genetic illnesses found in the female population? Or am I missing this point altogether?
Not quite. The point is that individuals who have genetic defects that result in death or incapacity at an age before they leave offspring don't get passed on and tend to get removed from the gene-pool. Illnesses that tend not to appear until after we have produced copies of our genes are unseen by natural selection and tend to accumulate. There is a related reason why you shouldn't marry your cousin. Harmful recessive genes accumulate with impunity because we usually have another good copy. Close relatives are more likely to share the same defects resulting in all sorts of issues for offspring. This is becoming a real worry in some insular religious communities.
Oh, and are we related to the plants too? If I have to throw them in the mix my brain my break, lol
Yes absolutely!
For billions of years only 'simple' prokaryotic organisms existed like bacteria and archaea. An amazing event of endosymbiosis led to the advent of more complex eukaryotic cells. This made multicellular life possible. The problem of energy production was overcome by the mitochondria that were once free-living bacteria existing inside every cell. Bacteria produce energy across their surface membrane but the bigger a blob gets the surface gets relatively smaller compared to the volume. Cells began to specialise and build large complex bodies where the job of replication was assigned to just the sex cells. [Cancer is an illness where a cell has gone native and reverted to individual uncontrolled reproduction]
The origin of complex cells...
Multicellular life includes plants and animals although in fact it is not so simple to differentiate. If you look for 'cladograms' on google images you will see examples of how the tree of life develops.
Here is an interactive tree you can play with...
Dawkins book "The Ancestors Tale" covers this in detail
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340
Calling Cofty and others regarding evolution
by dubstepped inso i have started down the path of trying to understand evolution, and to get the linear lies that the jws planted in my head out of it.
i bought an audiobook called "evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters" by donald prothero.
i heard it recommended on an atheist podcast that i listened to.
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cofty
I am a creationist and a staunch evolutionist. I see nothing about one that precludes the other. - Searill
I'm interested in how you reconcile the two. Do you resort to supernatural solutions to difficult design challenges or do you adhere carefully to methodological naturalism?