I get the feeling telomerewhythere isn't a Bible-thumper - more of finding the middle ground between the actual Bible-thumper's "this is just what happened to Noah" and my (wrongly interpreted) "this never happened".

According to the Biblical account, people were planted as seeds by their father in their mother's womb, no genetics required. Oh, and you could make a cow have a striped calf by making it lie down next to straight wooden rods. So... whatever. Bible, schmible.

Yeah, except no. Over 200 civilizations have myths about floods. Most of them are regional only. Few have any mention of saving animals. Some have nothing to do with gods. And many of them bring in elements that are purely fantasy, such as the flood being caused by the tears of thousands of goats. So, nice try, but reality strongly disagrees with you.

It is unscientific to call a legend a theory.

... No, he's saying this might be part of the seed of the myth that grew into the flood story, not that the flood was an actual series of supernatural events -_-

Except... that didn't happen. You do realize they haven't released everything yet, right? Plenty of documents are being redacted.

... No. It's the same age everywhere. It's the *light* that's been reaching Earth for 30 years, not the object itself.

... What? Current airplanes move at hundreds of miles per hour, but a 100-mile-per-hour wind could easily take them out of commission. Are you confusing wind and air resistance?

Thing is, this is almost exactly the same engine that was used by Fallout 3, and it contains many of the same bugs. They've had plenty of time to squash them, but they just didn't.

That's where I think this is leading: an understanding that copying errors may not be errors, but intended results of a process we might not have been totally familiar with before.

I think we're getting into a disagreement on semantics here. If it's not copied 1:1, it's technically a copying error, even if it's selected for. You may be onto something, though; we thought it was a system for perfect copying, but it's starting to seem like the system wasn't meant for that in the first place. Surprise, surprise: evolution produces another imperfect mechanism.

A consistently-made error is still an error. Randomness is not a prerequisite for being called an error.

I didn't say the errors were random, now did I? I said the copying wasn't always perfect. Consistently incorrect copying is not perfect.

Genetic copying is not always perfect! Many researchers are left baffled, having only discovered this themselves several decades ago. Film at 11.

Further proof that there is no god.