Pharyngula posted this amusing illustration this week, very funny! But what's really cool is the arrival of a new feathered dinosaur called Xiaotingia.
Now what's cool about Xiaotingia is that when placed into a cladistic matrix it groups together with Archeopteryx, what was considered the first bird awhile ago (and for awhile the only bird before the end of the Cretaceous.) BUT grouping them together pushes both of them OUT of the bird group and into the 'raptor' group of dinosaurs. So it turns out the great conundrum of paleontology has been solved! We now know Archeopteryx is a dinosaur, not a bird, something that was predicted in the early 80's by the great Gregory S. Paul. Paul, using our knowledge of evolution, made a prediction that later turned out to be true, SCIENCE WIN!
So are you asking yourself why is this in a Sunday Blasphemy post and NOT you dinosaur blog? Well, it turns out that the Creationists seem to think that this invalidates evolution! Ignore the fact that Archeopteryx has been considered a sister taxon to birds for quite a number of years, because science changed to fit the evidence that makes it false to the Creationists... My head it hurting just trying to attempt the mental gymnastics... Science is self correcting, when new evidence turns up and is proven to be true, we have to re-evaluate and incorporate that new knowledge into current thinking, something creationists refuse to do. We know the earth isn't 6,000 years old, we have trees older than that. We have evidence that Egypt was already a great city WITH writing about 100-180 years AFTER creation... I'm not sure if that would be possible to go from basically nothing to a fully civilized nation that fast... Adam and Eve would still be alive if you go by Creation science! Some other new thinking, is that the Big Bang wasn't the 'beginning' of the universe, it's just the last point we can go back to because the explosion obscures everything before it! Science Channel has some good shows on Wednesday!
And finally, we have this great webpage about God destroying the dinosaurs! It's a bit old, 1995, but since Creation science hasn't actually done anything except repeat verses from a 2,000 year old book this would be very modern thinking indeed! Enjoy as I did!
A few more tidbits to look over:
Taking down some IDiocy!
Why a crazy sect of Jews thinks it's OK to kill babies. Relax they used to do it all the time, Old Testament style!
And you may have noticed I haven't commented on the Norwegian Nut, I'm still not really sure if that was religiously motivated or rightwingish, or just plain crazy. It seems xenophobic so since I can't make up my mind I'm not going to play the blame game, Fox News can do that;) (Sarcastic yes?!)
Best!
Brett
36 comments:
Take it from someone who has had to deal with a lot of truly crazy people, including relatives with mental disorders. Crazy people are going to find a reason to be crazy regardless of any sort of religion, philosophy, video game, or rap music. The Norwegian psychopath's murders can't be blamed on religion or conservatism anymore then Pol Pot's Killing Fields or Mao's "Cultural Revolution" murders of millions of people can be blamed on atheism/communism. It's just evil psychotic people using whatever reasoning their fragmented minds can cobble together to justify their psychotic behavior.
On the subject of the big bang. There is also a developing school of thought in cosmology that we simply CANT see "past" the origin point of the Big Bang because all tools of observation we have are restricted to the physicals laws of the universe while the "before" point of the big bang would not be, rendering it unobservable.
I still can't get past that argument that the dinosaurs were ugly, therefore they must be Satanic. So animals are like the witches in the "Wizard of Oz" movie...only the bad ones are ugly.
It's probably not a good sign that I was more concerned that they were being mean to dinosaurs than that they were spouting silliness as if it were logic.
TheORKINMan,
As I said I'm not sure, BUT new evidence might come to light or a psychological test might shed more light on it. Right now I'll wait and see.
Big Bang stuff... well see if the Big Bang is part of our reality it must obey our realities laws. Another reality may have different laws but those laws may prohibit a Big Bang. Just like if we find evidence of the supernatural then that means its not untestable and outside of nature but part of the natural world we just don't understand... yet. Since we can test we can observe and study.) Of course cosmology isn't my strong point so I may be wrong but the logic is pretty sound.
heffison,
Yeah, I find even what some would call ugly cool and interesting. I think snakes are incredible animals, but most find them repulsive. Same goes with insects and amphibians. I think it's more like we don't like them so they are ugly.
There were a few lines of that that sound like they could be a cool movie premise! Satan and his corrupt angles ridding verses Jesus and his angelic host!
Best,
Brett
Well the argument is that the physical laws of our universe were created at the instant the Big Bang happened. Prior to that instant they did not exist. If you're ever bored and want to check out some really out there mind frying stuff you should look up "dark flow" which is an area of the universe that some cosmologists are suggesting may be the result of another universe "pushing in" to ours or possibly a segment of the universe where the laws of physics are completely different.
In any event on to dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are reptiles and all reptiles are evil because in the Garden of Eden Satan was a snake so obviously the rest of the reptiles are in cahoots with him. This idiot probably thinks we should finish the job with sea turtles rather then save them.
TheOrkinMan,
I have actually heard of Dark Flow. Freaky! But isn't the Big Bang predicated on the instability before hand? All it needed was one atom to weigh more than its neighbors and the 'Bang' was inevitable. The laws of gravity applied before, and after. Plus if the big bang wasn't the beginning then laws would need to be there before that. It's dizzying I will say that:)
Dinosaurs are archosaurs, descendents of reptiles but are more like birds physiologically. It's like calling mammals reptiles, we descended from reptiles but we are very different. Sorry, the fact that even today TV is STILL calling them reptiles bothers me. Since birds are dinosaurs then they are also reptiles but we don't call them that. Reptile still means slow and stupid to most.
But is a snake a snake if it has legs? Remember god removed the legs AFTER the incident.
I is amusing how he divided them up isn't it. Coldbloods bad (though dinosaurs were either warm or hotblooded, not cold) and hotbloods good. It might fry his mind to learn that some sharks are actually warm blooded.
Best!
Brett
Well Brett that depends on which cosmologists you ask. The cause of the Big Bang has as many credible theories as Baskin Robbins ice cream flavors. There is the school of thought that the four fundamental forces (Strong Nuclear Force, Weak Nuclear Force, Electromagnetism, and Gravity) were all at one point one solidified force until some sort of instability caused Gravity to break off from the other four. (Coincidentally I've thought for some time now that this theory could awesomely be part of a cosmic story told by someone like Jim Starlin and integrated into the DCU or MU.) Then you have the brane theory which supposes that there are actually two parallel branes and when they "touch" they cause a Big Bang and tons of oscillations, over time they straighten out then "touch" again. This provides for potentially other universes, a universal superlative and the possibility that our universe is not a closed system which is very intriguing. There's also the tried and true universal infinitely small particle theory that was in perfect balance, until at one point either the positive or negative spin element of it gained dominance resulting in the disparity between matter and antimatter in the universe. Each theory has it's own interesting implications as to the source and fate of the universe. Unfortunately much like the Phantom Stranger we will probably have 40 different origin stories for quite some time and all will be true and not true simultaneously because the technology to determine which theories are true or not true is just not there at this point.
HAHA! Awesome! SInce you know way more about this than I do. I have 2 questions:
1. Which idea do you prefer, or has the most evidence?
2. I read about an idea that at the end of a black hole there is another universe, sort of like an evolving tree. Not like the typical multiverse but similar. Have you heard anything about that?
I'd love to get a more science based origin for all comic universes, but I'm not sure if they'd want to retcon all that. I've only recently rekindled an interest in cosmology, usually I stick to paleontology and anthropology:)
Best!
Brett
As to #1. What I think is the coolest possibility is the brane theory. Simply because the heat death of the universe is a depressing thought and the brane theory could possibly provide an out to the ending of existance as these branes could conceivably be creating universes and "big bangs"/matter forever. As far as evidence I guess it would have to be #1 since at the very least we can observe the four fundamental forces currently whereas we cannot observe branes or universe creating particles :P
#2 I believe it was actually Hawking that proposed ~4-5 years ago that black holes actually funnel into white holes that exit out into the multiverse. This is all highly speculative and this explanation was put forward to explain a law of physics that black holes seemingly violate, which is the conservation of information(aka causality). Since then other explanations of how black holes may not violate this. The primary thought now is that as an object enters a black hole an image of it is "smeared" across the event horizon this preserving the information about it. This explanation IMO just kicks the can further down the road though as black holes eject mass via Hawking radiation and themselves eventually dissipate.
This all highlights why I'm a Christian that likes hanging around science minded people. I love my church but could never have this conversation there ;P
Ugh for not proofreading. Should say "Since then other explanations of how black holes may not violate this have been proposed."
So, Adam and Eve were Scots: the iParadise was sponsored by MacIntosh.
TheORKINMan,
Thanks! I'll have to look into that when I have some free time next week! I've got 5 more pages of TT 3 to do and NOW marvel wants an Anita Blake cover THIS week... No free time:(
dhr,
Mac is always better;) But I wonder what operating system they might have been running;)
Best,
Brett
>Mac is always better;)
Yep, I too am a Ma-nia-c.
>But I wonder what operating system they might have been running;)
the famous Hope-rating Sin-stem.
TheORKINMan welcome to the party! WooHoo! Glad to have you onboard.
I was curios of what you thought of the Kalam Cosmological argument as an explanation of a first cause and as argument against uncaused causes.
What is your own personal abiogenesis view? Where do you weigh in on the whole evolution argument?
Thanks,
Steve
Wow that's a lot to respond to for only about 4 lines of questions :P
I'll try to parse it out if you don't mind as there are a few ways to take your question so I'll just cover all my basis.
a.) "Evolution" unfortunately is a really large blanket term that describes a whole lot of processes that brought things from single celled organism to life as we know it today. If we are just looking at it as the general term, there is no question evolution happened in some form or another. Now there are individual parts of evolution that are way way way more speculative then others. Punctuated equillibrium for example is something that is proposed but has far less evidence backing it then other aspects of evolution. The mechanism by which we see these huge bursts in biodiversity in the fossil record over a short period of time is one thing that IMO has not been adequately explained and "they evolved faster because they needed to" is not a statement that neccesarily has a lot of factual evidence behind it. Mutation/natural selection etc... has never been observed to increase at that rate because of stress. In fact more often then not when stress outpaces an animal's ability to adapt they just die.... So I got kinda long winded but does that make sense? Evolution definitely exists but I just don't think we're entirely there on explaining how it comes about entirely yet.
b.) With abiogenesis this is one thing I WILL get up on my soap box on. There is almost ZERO evidence that supports the primordial soup randomly cobbling together life out of nowhere. We have been trying to replicate this process in controlled experiments for quite some time now and the best we've come up with is some amino acid formation but in the ridiculously alien, violent, adolescent Earth we're to believe that not only did all these particles randomly meet up and create life, but that that life survived the exceedingly hostile early Earth and replicated? That's a stretch. If you really think about the chances of these particles randomly coming together to create a living thing in just a random soup of chemicals, that's a small enough probability of happening. But then you also have to make the leap that they came together in a formation which not only created a living thing, but a living thing which self propagated. In effect you're saying random chance not only built a machine, but built a machine that can build other machines. It's just something that doesn't have ANY evidence behind it. As to what actually caused life to start on Earth who knows. My personal opinion is just that scientists have pigeonholed their own thinking. Obviously giant hand did not come out of the sky lightning in a bunch of cows and sheep therefore we MUST have come about via random chance and give themselves no room for looking deeper as to what may have occurred and considering possibilities that may be less "random chance" oriented(no I'm not talking about intelligent design). The good thing about science though is once new evidence comes to light about early Earth conditions(of which their is scant evidence currently) and new light is shed opinions will evolve ;P
c.) As for the Kalam cosmological argument I personally believe that God created the universe and that that view actually jives with a being who is omniscient and omnipresent. Currant scientific thought is that if you were to observe the universe from outside the universe you would actually exist at all points of space-time inside the universe simultaneously because time is in and of itself a property of the universe(thus someone on the outside would not be bound by it). Now once again this is just my personal belief. There is no actual scientific evidence that there even is ANYTHING outside of the universe and as to the first cause of the Big Bang we will all be taking dirt naps before we as a species find out conclusively.
Thanks, it sounds like we share a lot of common views.
I've greatly enjoyed the work of William Lane Craig and his explanation of the Kalam cosmological argument. I've tried unsuccessfully to get Brett to give him a read or listen to one of his debates.
I've also enjoyed Michael Behe's work on irreducible complexity at a cellular level, though I'm not ready to go all the way with him to theistic guided evolution. Again, haven't got Brett to bite on checking any of Michael's scientifically peer reviewed works.
I too am an odd duck. Arguing with my evolutionary friends for not giving Christianity a fair chance and with my Pastor and church friends for misrepresenting science and evolution.
Thanks for your insights and eloquence in sharing them!
Steve
TheORKINMan,
It's not that they evolve faster because they need to they they appear to evolve faster because the others who don't evolve die off. It's sort of an optical illusion. OR it could be they just don't have the competition that would limit their population, larger population will toss or more random mutations and if there is not check (ie;predator) those mutations will spread more rapidly.
Abiogenesis, well this one is still in it's infancy, but if that fossil from Mars is an actual fossil, then it shows life on 2 planets, that would mean life isn't that hard to make. Add to that the amino acids that have formed on comets... like the big bang all it takes is a little bit of 'spark' to set things in motion. We know all things are related, at least right now, I've heard rumors of some bacteria with different amino acids in their make-up, to go back to a 'soup' may not be pretty but that's were the evidence leads. It does not lead to a creator.
And as for the Behe books. Hs irreducibly complexity has been refuted and discredited since before he even published it. It was even found to be false in a court of law. Why on Earth should I waste my time reading it if it's been proven false over and over again?
Best,
Brett
See that's the box most minds seem to be stuck in. An either or situation where either there was a creator or it was random chance in a primordial soup. The statistics just don't add up on this one, if all it needed was a spark you'd think the very controlled experiments that are far less inhospitable to amino acid/life formation would have produced more then they have. There is a very big piece we are missing to what happened at the start of life. If there wasn't a creator then life in the universe would have to be astronomically rare. Something on the order of maybe 1-2 planets with life like ours per galaxy. My money is on some set of conditions we simply haven't discovered that makes life far more likely to spring up then just a chemical soup in a ridiculously inhospitable and unstable environment. At the very least there is far from enough data to simply state "this is what happened" or even "this is what probably happened". The fossil record dosn't even go far enough back to the origin of life. Let me throw this at you Brett, if that fossil from Mars suggests common ancestry with life from Earth that kinda blows the chemical soup theory right out of the water and suggests that something seeded both planets.
As for punctuated equilibrium, you just made my point Brett. We know that a bunch of new species appeared in an extremely short period of time, but the mechanism by which that occurs has never been observed nor is there any evidence of what exactly caused it in the fossil record. I actually made this point to my Bio professor and this is the major gripe I have with Bio education in public schools. They should tech what is fact as fact and what is still up for debate as up for debate. They absolutely should tech evolution as what happened.(And should not teach ID or whatever else) However just because we know that evolution happened it dosn't mean you package every bit of it as unopposed scientific law because it's not. My Bio prof's response was that I was technically right, but that lay students and non majors would simply be confused by the more complicated explanation which I found to be an absurd notion.
TheORKINMan,
You're looking for a 'new' mechanism, when the old one work fine, it just appears to be new. I think extinction of the specialized species that has happen over and over again with new species showwing up to take their place rather quickly is more than enough evidence. It happend in the cambrian, the triassic, the jurassic, the cretaceous, the tertiary to modern days. Whales are a great example of this.
It's not a law because of the parts we still don't understand. Like gravity, we're still trying to figure out the fine print;) We know it happens but are the causes the same every time?
It's not a 'box', it's where the evidence leads. We share far too many genes for us to no be related to everything on the planet. A omnipotent creator wouldn't need to use and reuse the same genes. He/she/it could simply make new ones. The 'statistics' that are often tosses around really aren't as outrageous as some would lead you to believe. Sure 1 in a million sound crazy, BUT it does not mean that it will take a million tried for whatever to happen. It could happen on the first or second. This webpages had a great breakdown of abiogenesis:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
There isn't any actual evidence for a creator. If you know of some, please let me know!
Best,
Brett
Brett,
If the archeopteryx proves one thing it isn't IDists, Creationists, or Evolutionists are right or wrong. It proves intelligent people can disagree. It also shows there is not one party line in the scientific community and also what is believed to be true by scientists and what is taught in school is different. Outdated info is kept as long as it supports evolution.
What's the point? Just this: even Evolutionist don't all agree on how to order the facts. There is dissension within the scientific community. Not everything is known, there is a lot of room for speculation. Speculation should not be grandfathered in as being fact. Teach the facts and also teach the holes in the theories.
Also you seem to think Behe has been refuted, that is proven wrong. Not to argue semantics, but his findings have only been opposed, not disproven. As with most scientific theories counter views have been made which are critical of Behe's findings. Remember this is scientists arguing with scientists. You seem to discount Behe's qualifications because he is a parcticing Catholic.
sp-practicing Catholic.
got a bad case of the morning fuzzy eyes.
Steve,
No, it proves that people will grasp at any straws, even ones that aren't there, to support their position. Outdated info is kept if it isn't proven false and there is some evidence to support it, if it's eventually is proven false it's changed. LIke it was changed here.
No not everything is known. If it was the world would be a very boring place. But we have learned a great deal. Sure we might not know exactly how evolution works every single time. But we know it happens, it works, we know some mechanisms. We have DNA, fossils and biology to back it up. We can use it to make predictions that turn out to be true, like the case of Xiaotingia. We are teaching the facts and the holes, if you would bother to actually learn that, the holes are important, because you never know when someone new will have the insite to plug those holes. The scientists aren't the ones who keep taking away from the teaching of evolution, that's you creationists. You chip away at it , removing anything you can from the text books, until it makes very little to no sense OR the teacher just doesn't bother with it. Like mine didn't in high school.
Facts are facts, that you refuse to accept them because it doesn't jive with your creationist thinking doesn't make them speculation. It just means that YOU can't change your ideas so they line up with the facts.
As for Behe, this is a perfect example, you want him to be right so even though he has been proven wrong at the Dover trial, with 17 different peer reviewed papers (number might be off, it was a lot!), you still believe him.
I discount him because he's been proven wrong and he's not a biologist. The fact that he and his ID buddies quote mine, lie for Jesus and are trying to force their religion into schools makes be not trust him and discount him.
Best,
Brett
Brett:
I think you overestimate the willingness of the scientific community to change. They DO change opinions when they are incontrovertibly proven wrong. But as a whole they can be just as resistant to change or new ideas as any other group of individuals, because they're human and not robots. The development of solar wind is a great example of establishment scientists trying to silence and "refute" Eugene Parker's solar wind work. Forget about religion or creationism or any of that stuff. I'm speaking purely on a rational level here. Academics have a severe attitude problem especially when it comes to their own work or fields of study. Most of the time this is GOOD because they challenge new theories and swat them down. Sometimes it turns out to be very bad because it stifles theories that are ultimately proven to be correct and perpetuates bad science in some instances.
I'll leave you with one other contemporary example that is ongoing. While not technically a hard science archaeologists have found themselves now in a major dogfight over the earliest parts of human history. Geologists have basically proven that the Sphinx MUST have been built at least several thousand years prior to the accepted date among archaeologists. Archaeologists absolutely refuse to accept this as they "know" that neolithic man did not have the tools to create such structures and that there were no undiscovered civilizations etc... based on what they have dug out of the ground to date so they simply dismiss the geological evidence. Well along comes Gobekli Tepe. Another monumental structure except this time it is conclusively dated to around 10,000 BC. Even older then the suggested age of the Sphinx. What is the archaeologists response? "We're still not wrong and everything in history went along as we said. Gobekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherer era humans." The fact that they refuse to even entertain any other possibilities is just an example of educated men being purposefully obtuse.
The ORKINMan,
See what you're not getting is that ANY new idea will be 'attacked' for holes. The stranger the idea the more it be put to the test. And while it might take some time to be proven if it's true like the solar wind idea it will eventually be taken as fact. Can religion say as much?
As for the Sphinx, it's not nearly a cut and dry as you state. A FEW people say it's 7 ,000 years old while other disagree... But besides the sphinx itself there is little to no evidence of an Egypt that old. The oldest Egyptian stuff has to do with the Scorpion King. This doesn't rule out anything it just means that more evidence if needed.
Best,
Brett
I've not read of any actual geologists which refute the water erosion work done by Schoch. Most people who oppose it are people who are trying to speak as experts out of their field aka out of their asses. Much like a lot of these intelligent design "scientists" who are scientists but not actually biologists/biochemists.
And it the existence of Gobleki Tepe undermines the position of the archaeologists significantly considering it has been carbon dated to 10,000 BC and archaeologists quite frankly have no explanation as to how this was possible other then "cavemen did it".
My main point in bringing up solar wind is that establishment scientists can be just as stubborn and unwilling to change as many other groups. The beautiful thing about science is the truth in it is ultimately absolute so it cannot be silenced forever.
This saying should be enblazened in everyone's minds:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I don't see there being any problem with Gobleki Tepe. if you want to call them cave men, but they were modern humans at that point. From when the last Neanderthal died around 32,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago they needed to have done SOMETHING. That's like 5 times as long as recorded history!
Just means civilizations might have existed before Egypt and Mesopotamia. Which I think is really cool! Of course this destroys the creationists 6,000 year old model, but that's fine with me;)
Best,
Brett
Brett I think perhaps you aren't familiar with what Behe actually believes in terms of evolution?
First off he is a recognized expert in his field of biochemistry. This kind of doesn't square with your statement that he is not qualified because he is not a biologist. Yes he is qualified, in the matters he is discussing you want a biochemist, not a biologist.
He also believes in many of the tenants of evolution.
Perhaps you don't want to so completely dismiss him since he agrees with many of your beliefs?
I don't think we want the rabbit trail of the mess which was the Dover trial.
Remember the first rule of discussing a matter is to accurately understand and reflect the opposite side. You don't want to distort their views or vilify them. I hope this is your intention. IDists are not trying to get Jesus taught in the classrooms. Most are not even attempting to get ID taught in the classrooms. It would be wrong to misrepresent their character of motives.
Steve
You're right Steve, I was getting him confused with Dembski. My bad. The POINT is he's not a good biologist, IC has been disproven, over and over again. THAT is what's important. It's like Jack Horner and his T.rex is a scavenger... bad science that they cling to even when shown to be wrong. Horner has at least come around in the last few years.
If someone agreed with me 99.9999% and then said something so incredibly stupid or insane that it was proven wrong over and over and over again, yet they continue to say it. Yes I would dismiss them.
Yes Steve the discover institue IS trying to get Creationism taught in schools they finally admitted it a few years ago it was all over the blogs I read. Somehow you seem to have missed that even after I pointed it out to you. If they didn't want it taught in classrooms Dover would not have happened. You're the one trying to show they are well respected scientist, when they themselves have shown they are nothing but snake oil salesmen. They have fooled you into thinking they are good people, they are anything but.
Oh and if you haven't seen it there is an AWESOME Godzilla movie from 2001 called Godzilla, Mothra and Ghidora... I caught the end the other day, I have it set to record on MOnday so I can get the whole thing!
Best,
Brett
And just to hit a few more things home:
Behe has acknowledged using "sloppy prose", and that his "argument against Darwinism does not add up to a logical proof".[n 10] Irreducible complexity has remained a popular argument among advocates of intelligent design; in the Dover trial, the court held that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large".[12]
From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
And:
Witnesses for the defense
October 17–19
Michael Behe was the first witness for the defense. Behe is professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and a leading intelligent design proponent who coined the term irreducible complexity and set out the idea in his book Darwin's Black Box.[24]
As a primary witness for the defense, Behe was asked to support the idea that intelligent design was legitimate science. Behe's critics have pointed to a number of key exchanges under cross examination, where he conceded that "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred",[25] and that the definition of 'theory' as he applied it to intelligent design was so loose that astrology would qualify as a theory by definition as well.[26] His simulation modelling of evolution with David Snoke described in a 2004 paper had been listed by the Discovery Institute amongst claimed "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design",[27] but under oath he accepted that it showed that the biochemical systems it described could evolve within 20,000 years, even if the parameters of the simulation were rigged to make that outcome as unlikely as possible.[28][29]
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
And what the hell, one more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe#Dover_testimony
Snake oil salesman.
Best,
Brett
Uhmm, usually a Snake Oil Salesman is selling something he knows to be a fraud, Behe isn't.
Remember it looks bad on you if you try to vilify someone with a different view when what you should want to do is accurately represent them and not defame their motivations.
I'm not a big fan of cutting and pasting snippets to answer complex subjects.
I think you are kind of doing that with the wiki stuff.
This happens a lot to Behe so he has created a series of responses, (you seem to equate disagreeing with disproving, so by your own logic, Behe has disproved the disprovers!) but here they are none the less:
http://www.trueorigin.org/behe08.asp
To be fair, I haven't read them since he released Edge of Evolution in 2007. I know he goes through the whole Dover fiasco on his blog, I'm not sure if he has updated the faqs with this info.
I think we did this little ring around the posey dance with his book Darwin's Black Box years ago. If there is one point you want to discuss, that is cool, it is impossible to address all of the points when you just scatter shoot a whole bunch of snippets which didn't originate with you.
Yes Steve that is what a snake oil salesmen is. Yet even after he has been proven wrong over and over again he STILL goes on about IC. He knows it's wrong he's pushing his ID creationism agenda, to get creationism taught in schools.
Dude there a pages and pages of this on the web, I sent you to the pages were I pulled them. I'm not going to go looking this stuff over an over again.
Behe has ZERO respect and even less credibility at this point. I will not take someone who lies for Jesus's word on anything. To even show IC as anything more than a creationist argument will require an outside source that is unbiased making those same claims. You only gulp it down because it agrees with what you WANT to be true, not what actually is true.
I don't want to adress it all because all of the ID stuff has been refuted but people far more credible than myself or anyone at the 'Discover Institue'.
Best,
Brett
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html
Down at the bottom (I left it all intact since it bothers you so much that I didn't put ALL the info in the quotes.
Clearly there was research doen that refuted IC in the 80's. So Behe is either the worst researcher in history, in which case I wouldn't trust what he said, OR he's leaving important information out that refutes his book. Either way I wouldn't trust him on anything.
And he was the guy with the most science knowledge in ID.
Sorry Steve, but maybe it's time to stop wanting things to be true and accept what actually is true.
Best,
Brett
'Satan and his corrupt angles'
So Satan invented angles? No wonder I hate Math. It was saving my soul.
And Set Squares/ drawing Triangles all add up to 180 degrees, and 180 divided by 3 is 60, which is 10 sixes or three 666's!!!!!
Oh my God!!! Quick, burn them Brett, save yourself from eternal damnation!!! ;)
Okay, to be more serious here, I am glad to meet another believer in a deity, like myself, yet who wholeheartedly believes in evolution (ThOrkinMan). I've always said they exist, just like me, but I needed someone with stronger faith to prove it.
Oh, and Brett, hope you do not mind me making a joke out of a typo. I remember years ago seeing someone who had just done a painting of The Crow, the James O'Barr character, and he painted the tagline from the books underneath it. But with a typo.
So instead of the spiritually moving 'Believe in Angels' instead we got 'Believe in Angles'.
M.O.R.
Huh, how on earth could I have made such a horrible, horrible mistake!!!
You're math is off a bit, 3 666's comes out a 54. Or is that the 'special' math;P You had me spooked for a second there as I use a triangel to draw;) Other than my pencils and erasers it's my only tool!
I certainly prefer people believing in angles to angels myself, I'm not partial to those right angles they're a bit twitchy;)
I didn't really think of the Crow as and angel, more like an avenging spirit from Native American mythology... I havent read the book in quite a while..
Jokes are fine, it's all in good fun:) I do dislike the grammer police, people who point out every little misspelling to make themselves seem superior. Mistakes happen, I can't spell for shit. Everyones brain is wired differently so maybe that's it:)
Best!
Brett
And as you can see from the above post, I cannot do Math to save my life. Reading I love, science I love, drawing, painting, 3d modelling I love.
But math...makes me break out in a cold sweat. My brother, my late dad, they can/ could do maths in their heads with no problems.
Occassionally, I can get maths right, but it is like throwing a dart at a dartboard with a blindfold on, rather than skill it comes down to simple Blind luck. My mum is the same, she cannot do math without a calculator.
Darn my genes.
But it is strange, I did try and work harder on my math skills, but I just could not get it. I am a mathematical dunce, which I have accepted. On the other hand, with my other weaknesses, such as drawing, or working in 3d modelling, or flash animation, or what have you, if I see a weakness, I do work hard to fix it. Seems like if it has something to do with creative stuff, I work hard to fix it or get better at it. If not, I avoid it like the plague. That's my brain, and I am stuck with it. Still, I do have a good memory, so that is not too bad.
The maths I was using was from the Bowfinger film, where Eddie Murphy's character, a member of a mock-scientology cult called the Truthseekers, I believe, is angry at the number of 'k's' in the latest script he has read. He complains to his agent that there are over 2000 uses of the letter 'k', which means there are over 300 uses of the word 'kkk' as in the Ku Klux Klan.
So the agent has to request the script be changed to reduce the use of the letter 'k'.
Sorry, that should be around 600 uses of the letters 'kkk'. And I am paraphrasing.
As one can see, Maths is just not my strong point.
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