--Reelin' In the Years by Steely Dan
First off, I am not a troll. Expressing disagreement is not trolling. I don't often comment although I follow
The article by Michael Torrice of ScienceNOW Daily News states: Many scientists (many of them! lots!) think that the tree evolved these metamorphoses --small, brown, blotchy leaves as seedlings, footlong spears with tiny barbs along the edge as a sapling, and rounded, nondescript green leaves as an adult tree, to avoid moas
The article is stating the tree somehow **knew** that moas were eating on it and so developed a leaf cycle with barbs to thwart the moa bird. That is ridiculous, that the tree could know such a thing as the type of predator eating on it and develop a countermeasure. That is my issue with this article.
It is also your disagreement with the article, that the tree somehow responded to the actions of a predator. We both agree the science in the article is wrong, although we hold different views concerning evolution and origins.
You and others here state that the article is wrong about how evolution works, that it is only chance mutation and natural selection that resulted in the lancewood tree devoloping barbed leaves, that it was not the actions of predators that caused the barbs. By stating such it is then apparent that:
I understand your explanation as to how the lancewood tree developed barbed leaves. You say it is from mutation and natural selection. That is a possibility. I don't disagree with it. However, I am convinced God designed the lancewood with enough genetic information to allow for a wide range of genetic expression so it can have a resonable chance to survive in a changing environment filled with a host of variables such as climate, predation, and soil type. This includes the genetic information for barbed leaves during a stage in a tree's life cycle.
I start with the premise that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other matter were created by God, and this matter was formed into living creatures including the lancewood tree. You start with the premise (I assume) that matter has always existed or it popped out of nowhere and it assembled itself on its own into living things mutating and being natural selected for over a long period of time to explain the species we see today.
You have your view, I have mine. You base your view on your interpretation of the data as do I. Regardless, I think we can both agree that the ScienceNOW article is scientifically invalid.
Did you learn that in bible-thumper class.
No, it is a conclusion derived from the application of common sense --trees do not **know** anything.
That was the most idiotic explain of Evolution I've ever heard
That is because The Theory of Evolution is an idiotic explanation. It is improbable, not logical, and completely ludicrous which this article is just one of many heaped upon many more testifying to that fact. There are just too many of these "lucky mutations" to be attributed to just chance such as spiders able to spin webs in the dark, not needing to be taught or even having to see their handiwork.
From the ScieneNOW article: Many scientists think that the tree evolved these metamorphoses to avoid moas
These "scientists", whoever they are, infer that 1) trees have the ability to know what kind of creature is eating its leaves and 2) trees can modify its genetic code to counter them. That is absolutely absurd. It is a fable.
If all the tree is just the result of random mutations which resulted in barbed leaves then why talk about the tree 'defending itself" and so forth?" Don't these "scientists" know their own definition of evolution? Why didn't they then state that the tree underwent a number of mutations resulting in barbed leaves resulting in the fortutious happenstance that moa birds were prevented from eating all the leaves, or only able to eat some of the leaves."? Why?
And how do we know that the barbs weren't beneficial, providing shelter for moa nestlings or other creatures? For all we know the leaves are indigestible or even poisonous to the moa so the barbs are there to prevent the moa from harming itself.
a new study suggests... the evidence is speculative...
Suggestive speculation. That's all it is.
How does the tree "know" it is being eaten by a bird, or anything for that matter? How many centuries of getting some leaves stripped off does it take for the plant to say to itself, "Hey, there's a bird --I **know** it is a bird and not an elephant that is eating on me so I'll add some information into my genetic code to grow some spikes to stop it." ?
No, the tree was designed with the information to have spike growth, the purpose (probably) to ensure that every tree does not become defoliated thus ensuring some will survive.
As a stiff-upper-lipper you probably know, America was mainly founded by religious dissenters from the Church of England. They believed the Bible, not the king and certainly not the pope, was the sole spiritual authority as well as THE ONLY acceptable explanation as to how life began. Such beliefs became embedded in the American constitution, the documents forming the foundation of the government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness">
Right there in our founding documents is the declaration that God created us.
This declaration is in conjunction with the first sentence in the bible "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." The bible goes on to say God created all life and also created humans, both male and female. It does not say how God did this, other than doing so from the dust of the earth.
Enter evolution. It says creatures change over time. Indeed they do, for example, bacteria undergo mutations and genetic recombinations resulting in different species of bacteria, some with resistance to penicillin, some that can digest previously undigestible substances. This is a proven fact backed up by enormous amounts of observed data. It is indisputable, just as it is indisputable that trees absorb water and nutrients from its root system, just as it is indisputable that water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.
In every instance, however, over hundreds of thousands of generations, the bacteria never change into amoebi or amphibians: they remain solely within the bacteria kind. In fact, there is zero evidence for any kind of creature (cat, dog, bird, deer, swine) ever becoming another kind such as reptiles becoming birds. There are supposed transitional forms like tiktaalik that is touted as "proof" that lizards became birds butthis is not any proof at all, just a possible interpretation of a few fossilized bones.
This is not an argument from incredulity, it is an argument from not accepting an impossibility, such as, it is impossible to accept that you donned scuba gear and a pair of feathered wings and flapped yourself up to the moon.
Building upon evolution is the Theory of Evolution. It says since living things can change over time (they can) then man was not created but evolved, over millions of years, from a simple cell to more complex cells to a snail-like creature to a rodent-like creature to an ape-like ancestor and then to humans. This is in direct contradiction of what the bible says and why the theory is opposed so vehemently: if the bible is untrue, Christianity is untrue.
Because the Theory of Evolution is not proven (except in the minds of some people), and that there is no evidence that humans evolved from an apelike ancestor only the speculation and assumption that humans did so, it is therefore unacceptable to have this theory taught as a fact when in truth it is only speculation, a possible explanation how humans came to be.
If some American institutions and groups of people would stop declaring the Theory of Evolution as fact and place it in its proper position, that is, it is an unobserved, unproven explanation as to the origins of all the species, then there would be no argument. Mutation? Speciation? Adaptation? There is no problem with such teachings as they are backed up by observation and testing. Issue is taken when adaptation and mutation are claimed to have resulted in all the life forms we see today, starting from a single-celled organism changing through millions of years.
The argument really goes further than the debate on origins, because you have to go back to where matter came from and how life arose from that matter. Basically, either matter has always existed and it moved itself to form living entities, or God has always existed and created matter and formed it into living entities.
Some people do not belief unliving matter can move itself and form stars and planets and life mindlessly and without intelligent direction so the default explanation is God. Others cannot accept the existence of God and have to conclude matter just popped out of nothing, or it always existed and came together on its own from a soup of random proteins floating around.
So there you go. In Britain most of the people have gone ahead and assumed the bible is false and the Theory of Evolution is true, and they have the numbers in academia, politics, the media to enforce that this is the view which is taught to be true to the exclusion of other ideas.
In America, a political war is being fought to establish which view of origins is to be taught. Those who don't believe in God do not want their children being taught God created us. Those who believe in God (mainly Christians) do not want their children being taught God did not create us.
Both sides argue that they are correct. Christians point to the bible and the existence of matter & living things as proof for God; non-Christians point to Darwin's theory as proof.
I don't want to argue here which is correct. You have to choose for yourself which you will believe as an authority for the explanation as to how life arrived on this planet.
You are correct that abiogenesis is not a philosophy on origins. It is a hypothesis, but what a person hypothesizes about tends to mirror one's philosophy concerning life. As I was typing I was thinking about philosophy, because those who espouse abiogenesis tend to hold to the philosophy/worldview that god does not exist.
I understand very well the difference between the Theory of Evolution and Abiogenesis:
Abiogenesis: the hypothesis/musings/nosepickings about how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter.
Theory of Evolution: well gee, if a species can change over time, like a wolf can become a poodle or birds can develop longer beaks then it stands to reason a lizard can become a bird. Why, I bet if that lizard species flaps its arms long enough and thinks hard enough about flying over a couple million years, heck, maybe a billion, and it wishes hard enough, them arms will sprout feathers and its bones will hollow out all on their own and golly gee whaddya know, we got ourselves a bird from a lizard! Change over time it could happen, coulda maybe coulda.
Yes yes I know: gradual changes over millions of years. Whatever. I reject it point blank. Period.
Theory of Evolution (as it pertains to humans): the belief (there is no proof of this --and don't point me to tedious, bloated "peer" reviewed baloney based on the presupposition the theory is true --I'm not reading anymore of that crap as my mind is made up already) that states humans and apes are both descended from a common ancestor. This common ancestor has never been found, only imaginative story telling and embellishment based on a few bones.
As a Creationist, I have to agree with you: Creationism --the assertion that God, who has always existed and who designed and created all things and all lifeforms, cannot be declared "science" because Creationism cannot be studied. No testing can be performed, and we can only guess how and when the creation event occurred. It is not repeatable as we are not gods. You can call the observation of the creation a science, such as studying plant life, but then you should call it Botany, not Creationism.
All that can be said of Creationism is that it is an explanation as to how matter came into existence and how it was formed into material entities like comets, planets, and living creatures. This explanation declares that the proof for the existence of a creator is the fact that matter exists, and that it is formed into arrangements that could not have come about by mindless random processes.
Trying to claim Creationism as science is the same as claiming Abiogenisis as science. Abiogenisis is a philosophy of origins piggy-backed on the tested, observed, documented, and therefore confirmed fact that over time, some creatures lose/have mutated genetic material which alters the appearance and/or life functions of future generations of that species.
ecologists think the internet could act as an early ecological warning system based on data mining human interactions
I think Aesop's fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf would probably apply here.
One reason it is a good idea to be polite to a policeman is because when you are stopped/detained for whatever reason, the policeman (or policewoman) is acting as on-the-spot justice. That person's decision can mean you get to go home free. If not, you may have to take off from a day of work to go drive around the middle of some cruddy small town an hour away from where you live, drive around that town trying to find a shabby courthouse, then find some place to park, and then wait around next to a line of down-n-outers for 2 hours to hear you have to spend $120 in court costs, or go to jail, or have your license to drive taken away for a month, or anything the judge pulls out of his bottom based on a sliding-scale rule of justice.
If the cop is having a bad day, doesn't like your attitude at the moment, then your infraction of the rules whether slight or definite is based in part on the whim and fancy of the police officer. It doesn't matter if you are innocent or not: you will have to go to court to prove you are innocent of the charge. You might even have to hire a lawyer to help prove that because it is your word against a cop's. Guess who usually wins in that case?
So it is in your best interest to be polite, not really out of fear of the policeman but out of the insane inconvenience of the judicial system which acts sort of like a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) on steroids.
Bureau of Open Source Software Technology: 80% of funds received
This bureau will consist of individuals attending seminars in the Bahamas and Hawaii to determine the best Open Source methods. Limo's will of course be required in all travel modes to ensure a comfortable atmosphere when deciding upon Open Source issues.
Result: Except for the Office of Open Source Technology, everyone will continue using existing vendors because there was no funding available to migrate all the databaes and custom applications to the Open Source format.
It is possible both are true to a slight degree, not so much a grand conspiracy but as a means for a few folks to prosper behind exaggerated claims swallowed by the gullible.
How did this leak out? Lies, all lies! Global Warming is real and true and happening and people are the cause of it.
It is true because I need that Global Warming Grant Money so I can study climate change from a necessity-based laboratory in the Bahamas.
Guess my senator didn't get the word to keep fanning the flames on global warming. Maybe a bigger donation will help, donation size contingent upon the size of the grant money...
Well put and well said. Excellent to point out Linux is a kernel.
As the speculation on Linux continues, "full of sound and fury signifying nothing", I'll keep plinking away using Fedora 10 not giving a whit about someone's delusions.
That's a false dichotomy. Matter could also have been preceded by something else, or exist in a loop
There is no evidence for this. Pre-matter? ??
some theoretical physicists are interested in the issue and who knows what they might come up with.
Yes, who knows what they'll come up with. Meanwhile, I'm not going to wait around putting my faith in their speculations.
what do we mean "has always existed?" I'll take it that you are meaning that your entity is older than the universe.
God transcends time. He has always existed. God's "age" as you put it is infinite. There was never a "time" God did not exist. There will never be a time God does not exist.
However, time started in the big bang, so in order for there to be a "before" we have to have a time frame outside of the universe, for which we have no evidence.
Time as we know it may have started at the big bang. However, regardless of when, we know now that matter is here. It came from somewhere. What time frame it came about is not the question. How it got here is the question. Not one person on this planet who has ever lived or is living knows the beginning of time. Matter either has always existed or it was created.
I see no reason to go along with the assumption that this other time frame exists (indeed if we accept one unevidenced time frame, why not two, or a hundred, or infinitely many?).
And I see no reason not to. I know matter exists. I don't know when time began or of other time periods outside the universe. I can only speculate like everyone else about that. I see matter. It is here. I can only ask where it came from, not when because I cannot go back in time or trace atoms to an origin.
We must assume that this entity has always existed in (at least) this second time frame rather than biting the dust in it right after starting our universal space-time, which I also see no reason to agree to.
Again, God transcends all time frames. God does not "bite the dust." God does not die. You assume God has not always existed or does not exist, I assume he does. The statement cannot be proven or disproven so it has to be taken on faith in our judgment based on our interpretation of the data: matter exists.
You posit it as a single entity--again with no reason to do so. The rest of your post is only apologetics that not only requires these assumptions, but introduces even more with just as little reason.
I assume, and am certain, God exists based on the premise that I know matter exists and matter had to come from somewhere, that it did not move itself some of it becoming living organisms that can see, hear, smell, speak, and reproduce. My whole belief stems from this certainty. The other alternative is God does not exist and matter moved itself and jumbled itself together by accident. That is not an acceptable or logical explanation.
Modeling paged and segmented memories is tricky business. -- P.J. Denning
