Posts by Half banana

42

Evolution is a Fact #10 - Non-Coding DNA

by cofty in

every cell in your body contains a big book of how to build another you.. although it's approximately 3 billion letters long only a small fraction of it contains instructions on making humans.. imagine trying to use a workshop manual but it reads like somebody messed up at the publishers.

there are a few paragraphs of meaningful text followed by pages of gibberish, another page or so of useful instructions then 9 more of random words.

some of it looks like copies of original text but full of typing errors.

Half banana

There is not much rhyme or reason in the size of a genome. The human with 3.1 billion base pairs is seven and a half times more than the puffer fish, Fugu rubripes (of crazy Japanese dining fame) which has 400 million base pairs.

As you mention Cofty, the interesting bit is that much of the of human DNA code is duplicated and we seem happy to drag around so much redundant coding without effect or biological stress. It bears the evidence of evolved biology and not the work of an idealized perfect creator. Scientists hoped to find uses for the duplications but the greater interest these days is in epigenetic factors i.e the circumstances or environment of gene transmission.

The puffer fish expresses most of all its genes which, having a backbone, makes it a useful organism to use in researching evolutionary change. A bit like the genetecists old favourite, the fruit fly Drosofila, which has just four large chromosomes.

How about the loblolly pine, Pinus taeda which has seven times the size of the human genome with 21 billion bases? The smallest known genome belongs to is a symbiont bacterium living inside a bug which has just a paltry160 thousand base pairs.

It looks like chance at work here in the arbitrariness of genome size and the randomness of duplication, but by getting to know a bit about DNA one can only marvel at Mother Nature’s refined methods.

Fisherman might I suggest you are confusing your assertions with the philosophical notion of Karl Popper who pointed out that the only useful information was that which could be falsified. Facts are good because they can be falsified! But you must show the evidence...

Science proceeds by disproving things as well as predicting and testing by experiment. You could falsify evolution and biological data, they are real things; hence we are dealing with factual evidence however if you falsify data as a scientist you will be dismissed and disgraced.

On the other hand you cannot falsify God's love anymore than you can prove or disprove God since there is no data on him... and therefore he/she/ it is a factual irrelevancy.

150

Start A Butterfly Garden!

by Bonsai in

jw
friends

time to take a break from debating religion.

take in a breath of fresh air and be healed by the wonders of nature around you.. how many of you have a garden?

how many have a nice flower patch to go with your vegetable garden?

Half banana

Thanks for info Kaik, your problem sounds like it’s related to getting the rhodo established. (Neither bone dry nor waterlogged during the winter?) The chaste tree is uncommon here but will grow. I love Prague and the beautiful countryside in Bohemia. I have walked in the Sudeten lands and in places with names which are very forgettable if you don’t speak the language! I remember seeing large blue gentians in the mountains flowering at the feet of the red-berried mountain ash.

Xanthippe, don’t forget to put your borage leaves in a jug of Pimms in the summer. It’s unusual to have cucumber flavoured leaves.

Where do you live Talesin, looks like you enjoy (or is it endure) a cold winter?

It is interesting to see the differences in climate from the posts in far-flung places. Here in UK (I’m in Oxfordshire, central south England) for the first time ever I’ve had to mow the grass twice during the winter; at the end of December and end of February...unprecedented! The daffs began flowering here in early Feb and have continued through to April.

I managed to persuade a specimen of the florist’s Jasmine, the tender Chinese species Jasminum polyanthum to survive through the previous winter outdoors and last December it was ten feet ten feet tall and full of flower. Although I then wrapped it up well we had two successive nights of hard frost in Feb this year, which browned off many of the evergreen leaves...but it hasn’t died. The fragrance is delicious. I also managed to over-winter a large canna lily, alias ’Indian shot’ by putting it in my garden shed and protecting it from frost... just little things which keep us gardeners happy!

150

Start A Butterfly Garden!

by Bonsai in

jw
friends

time to take a break from debating religion.

take in a breath of fresh air and be healed by the wonders of nature around you.. how many of you have a garden?

how many have a nice flower patch to go with your vegetable garden?

Half banana

I meant Czech not Czeck

24

The Jehovah’s Witness bagged themselves a Big One when they got Professor Raj Kalaria, to speak about his belief

by Watchtower-Free in

uk scientist helps christian cult to promote creationism.

the jehovah’s witness bagged themselves a big one when they got professor raj kalaria, above, to speak about his belief in creationism in a new video posted online by the cult.. keralia is currently a deputy director of the newcastle centre for brain ageing and vitality, newcastle, and a professor of neuropathology at newcastle university, uk.. when ex-jehovah’s witness lloyd evans, who runs jwsurvey, discovered that an april 2016 jw broadcasting episode featured keralia, he decided to:.

reach out to newcastle university to find out whether it endorses the academic’s stance on evolution, and found myself in a rather frustrating email exchange with helen rae, the media relations manager at the university’s faculty of medical sciences .. after much to-ing and fro-ing, an official statement was finally forthcoming ….

Half banana

Yes Bohm, the facts as scientists have shown demonstrates an evolving human brain evidenced from the endocasts (moulds taken from inside crainia) of our pre-human forebears. Bi-pedalism allowed for development of the human head. With cunning and manual dexterity being a part of the evolving human pedigree the brain expansion took place filling out the face and removing by degrees the eyebrow ridges and the cranial ridge (strongly in evidence in gorillas). There is no directional pattern towards humanity since other genera split off and still exist like gorillas and orangs.

Where in this scientifically recorded development did god intervene and make a "complex human brain". He didn't...the guy at Newcastle Raj Kalaria is not to be believed.

A professorial chair is normally given to those individuals who know authoritatively and broadly about things...not to believers because of their beliefs.

24

The Jehovah’s Witness bagged themselves a Big One when they got Professor Raj Kalaria, to speak about his belief

by Watchtower-Free in

uk scientist helps christian cult to promote creationism.

the jehovah’s witness bagged themselves a big one when they got professor raj kalaria, above, to speak about his belief in creationism in a new video posted online by the cult.. keralia is currently a deputy director of the newcastle centre for brain ageing and vitality, newcastle, and a professor of neuropathology at newcastle university, uk.. when ex-jehovah’s witness lloyd evans, who runs jwsurvey, discovered that an april 2016 jw broadcasting episode featured keralia, he decided to:.

reach out to newcastle university to find out whether it endorses the academic’s stance on evolution, and found myself in a rather frustrating email exchange with helen rae, the media relations manager at the university’s faculty of medical sciences .. after much to-ing and fro-ing, an official statement was finally forthcoming ….

Half banana

It sounds to me that this man is not a very objective scientist to draw this conclusion:

"after reading the Bible, (I) decided that there could only be One True God, and this was the one that created things as complex as the human brain."

He decided on the basis of reading the Bible (which was polytheistic in its early texts) that there must be one god and not myriads. Where does he supply evidence for monotheism? Does it follow that the human brain was created by this one god? Not at all, it is just a belief.

In other words it is merely his opinion since he gives no solid basis for it. For example, the notion that a god exists is the same premise for all believers and yet it has to be agreed there is no concrete evidence for god and equally no evidence that he does not exist. This balance does not make a god more likely. Unless evidence could be found no one should proceed on the basis of belief. If he uses mere belief in his professional life of old age related care he would be dismissed.

It is here where the friction lies and the JW org takes advantage of it; where a scientist gives personal opinions which are sanctioned as acceptable only on the basis of his or her academic status.

Fortunately the scientific world attracts fewer believers these days but those who are can be pounced on for theist quotes.

150

Start A Butterfly Garden!

by Bonsai in

jw
friends

time to take a break from debating religion.

take in a breath of fresh air and be healed by the wonders of nature around you.. how many of you have a garden?

how many have a nice flower patch to go with your vegetable garden?

Half banana

Kaik, I'm curious as to where you live, is it the Czeck Republic? The reason I ask is because crepe myrtles don't flourish well in the UK because they need a lot of strong sunlight to flower. If your mountain laurel has died and rhododendron is not doing well; is your soil acid enough?

42

What Are the Top JW Issues That Just Burn Your Buns the Most?

by Wild_Thing in

jw
friends

which ones make you the maddest?

covering up of abuse, shunning, failed end of world predictions?.

my list is long and heavy, but the top 3 that set me off the most are:.

Half banana

The pathologically held belief that God is directing the WTBTS when the evidence is that they have never got anything right in 137 years.

43

I was disfellowshipped because of Satan

by elbib in

during co visit, i took him for a bible study i was conducting.

during the session, the householder said he believed satan was not a person, but personification of evil within us.

i left co to handle householder’s doubt.

Half banana

How interesting Elbib, I hope you always stick to good reasoning and the strength of your convictions.

I was a JW for 25 years and during all that time I held the same viewpoint as you and the householder did, even though I wasted my time as a pioneer I could not see Satan as a creature or person but as a personification.

From your experience it looks like they now have a religious police mentality to stifle any clear reasoning among the rank and file to maintain doctrinal purity.

The GB say we are the bosses who make up the doctrines and it's your job to just obey...

I hope you feel comfortable with your new found freedom.

18

Evolution is a Fact #35 - Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

by cofty in

genes only get copied to future generations if the bodies they help to build succeed in surviving and reproducing.

these sort of genes thrive in the gene pool and genes that build unsuccessful bodies don't.

this blindingly obvious fact is at the very core of understanding evolution by natural selection.. being born, finding food and shelter, escaping predators, fighting opponents, attracting a mate and raising the next generation - the challenges faced by living things are daunting.

Half banana

meant to say...it is an uncomfortable thing to view but a perfect paradigm of evolution.

18

Evolution is a Fact #35 - Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

by cofty in

genes only get copied to future generations if the bodies they help to build succeed in surviving and reproducing.

these sort of genes thrive in the gene pool and genes that build unsuccessful bodies don't.

this blindingly obvious fact is at the very core of understanding evolution by natural selection.. being born, finding food and shelter, escaping predators, fighting opponents, attracting a mate and raising the next generation - the challenges faced by living things are daunting.

Half banana

The sand tiger shark takes the biscuit in demonstrating the crudest form of survival of the fittest. I am reminded as Xanthippe mentions; Darwin's ichneumon wasp and also I add the critter from Alien.

Tennyson's line "red in tooth and claw" was carefully used by TH Huxley and as an outstanding marine biologist, wouldn't he just have loved to have discovered the tiger sand sharks unique gestation? It is an uncomfortable to view but perfect paradigm of Evolution.

Science is about progress and it took until 1948 before intra-womb cannibalism was discovered.

Devoted parenting can be found but there is no sentimentality in the real scientific world of nature.