lucaspa

But you are still finding a theological flaw in Fundamentalism and in the Argument from Design. If we are speaking strictly from science and looking for an "intellgent designer", that designer could have any personality at all, including being stupid and sadistic. All the designer has to do, from a scientific standpoint, is manufacture the plants and animals. It is only from a theological standpoint that "bad" designs are unacceptable. You have too narrow a view of history. You are looking at just now. Let's take the two periods in history: the spread of Christianity in the 1st and 2nd centuries and the spread of Islam in the 9th and 10th centuries. Both were done peacefully. In each case you have vast numbers of people who gave up the "faith of their fathers" and went for a new faith. And you can't say that is because "someone proselytised the change". Yes, someone needed to inform them of the new theory, but that does not mean they had to accept it. If you take this view, then people adhere to evolution only because it is what "they are told". People do not have to stay in the faith of their fathers. As you noted, many in each generation do not. They decide that that theory doesn't work. Now, why can't you accept that the people who do stay in a theory do so because the theory works for them? Notice the "choose". People don't usually believe what they are told when it contradicts their experience. We can take this out of religion and look at other situations. When whites in the military were put in contact with blacks and served alongside them, they stopped believing in the "faith" that blacks were inferior and instead looked upon them as equals. If people choose to believe what they are told, it is because what they are told matches up to the evidence. If you are really serious about that statement, what you have done is say that everyone here accepts every scientific theory on faith! Because we choose to believe what we are told in scientific papers and books! Are you sure you really want to try and tell us that the people who accept science are doing so because of faith? Congratulations. While trying to belittle faith as something less than science, you have managed to put both of them on the same level! Assertion without data. SkepticLance, have you ever talked to theists? Better yet, have you ever listened to theists? It doesn't look like it. Instead, you are making assertions without any idea what you are talking about. The vast majority of theists have some kind of religious experience: but one that is consistent with the faith that they are in. As I said, most people don't just "believe what they are told" if what they are told goes against their personal experience. Some sources to read up on ideas concerning the origin of agriculture: http://www.life.umd.edu/classroom/bsci124/lec24.html http://courses.washington.edu/anth457/agorigin.htm http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0030410&ct=1 http://www.comp-archaeology.org/AgricultureOrigins.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070601173931.htm ROFL! Way too simplistic. When do you put the seed into the ground? Too early and frost might kill it. Too late and the crop doesn't mature until winter kills it off. What type of ground? Different plants require different soils. And, of course, we haven't even gotten to depth in the ground. For many plants, put the seed too deep and the seedling doesn't break ground before it runs out of energy stored in the seed. So it dies. Different plants have different depths for germination. How do you prevent the plants you want from being overrun with other plants (weeds)? You can't just "wait", a farmer must be active during the growing season. So no, I don't think it is going to be possible to teach any of the other apes to do agriculture. The evidence we have shows that they do not have the long term planning or attention span necessary.

We'll have to see where the work leads, if anywhere. It is going to take a lot of very good data to convince people that "group selection" does not reduce to individual selection.

OK. Learn something new every day. So you are using "zero derivational" as = "hijacked"?

Uh, no. Yes, some people will try to cling to a theory in the face of falsifying information. But remember, Big Bang replaced an established theory: Steady State. You say "But if you ask the experts in either theory, they can both point to hard data." This is exactly why "data for" a theory is not very important. ANY theory will have "data for". This is why "data against" a theory trumps. You can decisively falsify via deductive logic, but you can't "prove" by either deductive or inductive logic. Genetics wasn't known. Inheritance was known. The prevalent theory at the time was "blended characteristics". And no, natural selection did not work under blended characteristics. However, Darwin stuck to natural selection 1) because the observations of all the parts of it was irrefutable, 2) it was a bulletproof deductive argument, and 3) it accounted for observations. Look, before you mangle history even more than you are, please read Desmond and Moore's biography Darwin. It will give you the correct social, political, and theological background of the times in which Darwin lived. "Survival of the fittest" is a shorthand or soundbite version of natural selection coined by Herbert Spencer. It is not "other theories". Natural selectoin was appropriated and misused by Social Darwinists for "blue blood genetics controlling the worl". Wrong. Literacy in England and American in the late 19th century was greater than it is today. Oh good grief. Pioneer, this is a science forum, which means you should at least try to get the history of science right. Darwin used "natural" because he was already discussing, as you noted, artificial selection used by human breeders. Darwin was saying that this type of selection also happens in nature. Hence, natural. Here is Darwin's summary of natural selection. Please note that it is a deductive argument: if the premises are correct, then the conclusions must be correct. I've tried to help you by bolding the premises and conclusions -- the "ifs" and "thens". "If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, [then] assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.] Who did he hijack it from? Before then, a "paradigm" had been used simply as "an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype". Kuhn invented a new definition.

"Paradigm" was a word coined by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Nature of Scientific Revolutions. In Kuhn's term a "paradigm" was almost a worldview. For instance, Kuhn called geocentrism and Ptolomaic epicycles a "paradigm" because it encompassed a means of viewing the entire cosmos and our place in it. Kuhn viewed the shift to heliocentrism as a "paradigm shift" because it was an emotional and psychological change for every scientist as well as a shift in theory. Most scientists and philosophers of science have rejected Kuhnian "paradigms" because Kuhn insisted that shifting from one paradigm to another involved mostly emotional content rather than data. IOW, a new paradigm, according to Kuhn, was not any more supported by the data than the old, but it offered a "better" emotionally satisfying story. Scientists like to think we change theories because of the data, not emotion. Also, Kuhn insisted that paradigms defined reality rather than describe it. Thus, according to Kuhn, in 1400 the sun really did go around the earth but with the paradigm shift to heliocentrism then the universe changed and now the earth orbited the sun! Scientists reject that type of shift in objective reality. Creationists/IDers love Kuhnian paradigms because of the major role emotion plays in paradigm shifts. Thus, they view the shift from creationism to evolution as being due to the emotional appeal of atheism. Of course, then scientists are reluctant to give up evolution, in this view, because it would mean giving up atheism. So, I would suggest giving up the term "paradigm" rather trying to decide whether evolution is a paradigm. After all, Kuhn eventually gave up the term himself in a later book. If you've got to borrow a term from the philosophy of science, Imre Lakatos' term of "research programme" would be more appropriate.

You need what is called an "inverted microscope". In this case the light source is on top and the objective lenses are underneath the stage. Thus they are closer to the bottom of the petri dish or culture dish and can focus in on it. Go to Google and search under "inverted microscope". If you are looking at mammalian cells, you want a "phase contrast inverted microscope".

I have not seen an evolutionary biologist talk about "true loss of complexity". As I said, in biology "complexity" is a very loose term. We see it a lot from IDers as tho it is "real", but they don't define it either. In the whales, the tail fin is not a replacement for legs. Remember, many whales still develop rudimentary bones of the pelvis and legs. The forefins are modified forelimbs, but they have all the bones of the land-dwelling forelimb. So I don't see that as any type of "loss of complexity" but rather "modification for a new function". The sequence to a loss of genes seems to be quite long. First there is supression of expression of the gene. That stretch of DNA now has no function and can be mutated without affecting the individual. Since the gene isn't expressed any mutations are hidden from natural selection. It seems to me (and we will have to do some checking to see if I am correct), there are two basic outcomes (and maybe many more shades of those outcomes): 1. If it gets turned on again it will have a new function. That function could be either beneficial, neutral, or deleterious (depending on the function and environment). OTOH, if not expressed that stretch of DNA does represent an energy cost during reproduction: individuals without that stretch would not have to expend so much energy. 2. So if there is a mutation that eliminated the DNA sequence it would be a selective advantage. However, addition of a suppressor represents new DNA and new complexity: don't do what you are programmed to do.

This is different. Horizontal or lateral gene transfer is taking parts of DNA and sharing them across species lines. Endosymbiosis is when an entire organism was incorporated into another organism. Imagine 1-2 billion years ago. There are lots of species of bacteria and Archaea and lots of species of eukaryotes. Some of the eukaryotes may even have been multicellular. The eukaryotes have a nucleus but they are not necessarily engaging in sexual reproduction: lots of unicellular eukaryotes reproduce by fission just like bacteria. Bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes are all doing some form of oxidative phosphorylation (ox-phos) in the cytoplasm. Some bacteria and some eukaryotes are photosynthesizing in the cytoplasm. Then one species of unicellular eukaryote is parasitized by a bacteria that is very good at ox-phos. This parasitism becomes mutualism over the course of generations as both bacteria and eukaryote adapts. Both gain. The bacteria gains if it is less pathological because it now doesn't kill the host and the eukaryote gains a more efficient source of energy in the ox-phos of the bacteria. Then each specializes: the eukaryote no longer makes the ox-phos enzymes and the bacteria no longer makes most of the metabolic enzymes. Both save in terms of energy cost in not having to make all the proteins and duplicate them. But the eukaryote-bacteria endosymbiosis is benefitting because it produces energy more efficiently and abundantly than eukaryotes without the bacteria. Thus this particular eukaryote symbiosis replaces all eukaryotes. After that happens the eukaryotes with mitochondria diversify again and have many species. One of those species then undergoes another symbiotic event with a photosynthesizing bacteria to have chloroplasts. Again, this symbiosis is beneficial because the bacteria is more efficient at photosynthesizing than all the competitors and benefits in the eukaryote in not having to make all the proteins for metabolism -- it uses the eukaryotes anabolic pathways and, of course, the energy from ox-phos in the mitochondria from the earlier endosymbiosis. That still doesn't provide compelling evidence of prokaryotes before eukaryotes. Prokaryotes could still have been a simplification of eukaryotes as a parasitical/disease form. It was only after that simplification to prokaryotes that endosymbiosis took place. Remember, the characteristics of eukaryotes are the nucleus and introns in their DNA. The web page never suggests that the nucleus came from endosymbiosis. Rather, endosymbiosis gives some organelles within eukaryotes. So, life could still have started as eukaryotes and prokaryotes represent evolutionary simplification and loss of traits. Thank you for the other examples of contemporary endosymbiosis in progress. They are not as well-accepted as mitochondria and chloroplasts. That endosymbiosis still apparently happens between contemporary eukaryotes and prokaryotes provides strong evidence that it happened in the past, but it doesn't do anything for "prokaryotes first" rather than "eukaryotes first".

If you have a vacuum, then you don't have any atoms or particles. Including the particle you are looking at! many of the original experiments were done with light particles on water. If you in vacuum, no water.

It's not your convictions that creationism insults. It's science. Creationism is a falsified scientific theory. Creationists don't respect science in that science has already falsified creationism. Remember, creationism was the accepted scientific theory before 1831. Scientists (all of whom were theists) showed it to be false. Now, if you are using "convictions in the power and worth of science" as a means of justifying your belief that deity does not exist, then you aren't respecting science, either. Because science doesn't tell you that. Technically, you developed. Biological evolution applies to populations, not individuals. And I bet part of that "change in environment" is the importation of mice.

Nice attempt at a joke, but not quite the same thing. After all, Bin Laden is only "missing" in that we don't know where he is. Other people do have that knowledge and Bin Laden is not missing at all! However, the "no missing links" in the hominid lineage is so very, very untrue. The argument is not to use this false analogy, but point out all the transitional individuals that make a series of "missing links" that connect A. afarensis to us, H. sapiens thru 2 intermediate species.

Science isn't very good at "rating". When we deal with hypotheses, they are either true or not. There is no way, using deductive reasoning as science mostly uses, to rate the "probability" of a hypothesis being true. Some people have tried to introduce Bayesian statistics to determine the "probability" of a hypothesis being true. Archives of Internal Medicine requires a Bayesian analysis with each paper. But there are some severe problems with Bayesian statistics. As to your example, you could ask her whether she can duplicate the pictures in no-ghost situations by different sets of lighting. If she can get flares where she is pretty sure there are no ghosts, then her pictures are what we call "artifacts". I don't see how. Each idea has to be taken independently. SJ Gould was well-respected as a scientist, but some of his ideas were out and out wrong. Someone has given the example of Linus Pauling and vitamin C. I think the best thing to ask people is whether the theory has ever appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. "Real" scientists convince other scientists; they don't go to the lay public. When they do, they usually do so only with already well-supported theories. You can see this with William Demski on the ID side with his CSI. He never does articles in the scientific literature, but only books for the general public. OTOH, you see it also with Dawkins' recent crusade against theism. Is he publishing his ideas that deity does not exist in scientific journals? No, he's doing so only in books for the general public. Pauling never published his vitamin C theory in any biomedical journal; he only made claims in media to the general public. So, if the theory or idea has not passed peer-review, if the person cannot convince his stubborn colleagues who are most versed in the field, then the idea/theory has a lower reliability.

Yawn. Such things have been around a long time, including several older versions on YouTube That isn't your best example because it is usually associated with abnormal cells function -- transformation and cancer. Better examples are 1) gene duplication, 2) chromosome duplication, and 3) translocation. All end up with more DNA but in the first 2 and in most of the third the cells are normal. Not so much "repent" as "now please believe in our god of a literal inerrant Bible"

Your answer is in the essay "The Beginning", in Is God a Creationist? Edited by Roland Frye, pp. 44-50. by Richard W. Berry IC isn't defined as being "so complex". Massive complexity does not confer irreducibility. Behe's definition of IC is "a single system which is composed of several well-matched,interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." -Michael J. Behe "Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference" http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/behefig1.gif There are man-made structures that do meet the definition of IC. Behe's classic example is a mousetrap. Remove any of the parts and the trap doesn't function -- as a trap. However, your question is really whether there is any process other than manufacture by an intelligent entity that can produce complex strutures that occur "naturally". Darwinian evolution can produce any so-called "IC" structure: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html Bullshit. First, faith is not "independent of evidence". Faith is based on evidence; it just isn't the subset of evidence that science limits itself to. Second, science is based on 5 statements of faith about the nature of the physical universe. Beyond that, science is based on 2 statements of faith necessary to search for any truth. Third, the empirical evidence over the last 500 years of modern science shows that people who do science have had faith. It appears that your faith that science and faith are incompatible is independent of evidence.

jsisipat: Find a geological journal like The Journal of Geology or Geology. Look up the "instructions to authors". Write up you idea in that format and submit it for peer-review. That is how you "register" an idea in science: publish the idea in a peer-reviewed journal. However, don't be surprised if the paper is rejected. Offhand, I can think of quite a bit of existing data that falsifies your theory.

For whatever reasons, this thread got entitled "what is and isn't science". Oh boy. That title, people, is what is called the Demarcation Problem. Scientists and philosophers of science have tried various ways to say what is and isn't science for over 2500 years (it goes back to Aristotle). All those ways have failed. Either they leave out what is in science, they include what we consider not science, or both. Most quantum physicists have concluded that single events at the quantum level do not have a cause. Personally, I like this (not that it matters to the universe what I like or don't like). If every event has a defined cause and we live in a strictly deterministic universe, then free will and meaning disappear from our lives. If everything we do is strictly caused by something that has gone before, and you can trace this back to First Cause, then my life was irrevocably set then. I'm just a biological robot going thru the motions. Why should I bother? However, if there are events that are not caused by previous events, then the future is open and my actions are not strictly determined by what has gone before. There have been physicists -- like Bohm -- that have tried to reintroduce strict determinism into quantum mechanics. Again, on a personal level, I'm happy they have failed. Playing "dirty" with the data violates the ethics we expect from scientists. So I would hope that Elas will get specific with that charge of having a scientist's work misfiled in arXiv.

No, this isn't about a group. This is individual help. It is what is reported by those who claim personal experience of deity. We then have another bit of bad science here. Parsimony is not used to evaluate theories. The simplest theory is not the correct one. Just look at signal transduction and transcription control, where parsimony has been thrown out the window for decades. I expect we will have to go over that in more detail because it is an established atheist dogma. Ockham's Razor was about the description of phenomena, not evaluating hypotheses. The example Ockham used was "An object moves because of an impetus". Notice that "because of an impetus" is an hypothesis to explain why the object moves. Ockham noted that movement is just change in space over time. Therefore the statement should be "an object moves". It explains people's personal experience. It explains why there is a Christian religion. In science, there are still 2 questions where direct action by deity is a possible explanation: 1. Why does the universe exist at all. 2. Why does the universe have the order it does instead of some other order. Beyond that, there is the untested hypothesis of whether deity is needed for any of the processes studied by science to happen. Darwin knew this and included that hypothesis in the Fontispiece to Origin: "The only distinct meaning of the word 'natural' is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once." Butler: Analogy of Revealed Religion. Methodological Materialism makes it impossible for science to test this hypothesis. If you've got away around MM, then don't waste your time here: the Nobel Committee is waiting. There are different theories about deity, but when you get down to people's experiences, they are remarkably similar. Let's face it, Lamarck and Darwin looked at the same data but came up with very different theories about how species change, didn't they? Because hypotheses come first and then comes the evidence. Look, the problem here is that you are not representing science correctly. And that is the danger of militant atheism: it wants to change the basic nature of science for faith purposes. Karl Popper did an accurate job of describing how science works. "I thought that scientific theories were not the digest of observations, but that they were inventions -- conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations, with observations which were rarely accidental but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38. If I cannot put forward a hypothesis until I have "evidence", then nothing I have ever published would have been done. Your view of science -- if you could enforce it -- would stop science in its tracks. Here you have finally hit upon something, but haven't thought it thru. Yes, we have shared beliefs that all of us accept as "fact". But in terms of science they are not. As I stated previously, science is just as agnostic about Zeus as Yahweh. Theists are not. They have decided that this particular theory of deity is wrong. What you haven't asked is: how did they do that? And weak atheism won't stand to critical scrutiny. It must either become agnostism or go to what you call "strong atheism". What you are describing is why some atheists say they believe as they do. But it doesn't answer the question we really want to know: does deity exist? Actually, the annoyance goes the other way: it is atheists who refuse to accept the burden of proof. I saw with iNow and now with others the Shifting the Burden of Proof Fallacy. Theists (of whatever theory) proffer evidence in the form of experiences that have been written down. Atheists deny the validity of the evidence but never provide any evidence that deity does not exist. If we were simply discussing in a faith situation, I would accept that. BUT, Dawkins and others -- like you -- claim to use science to say that deity does not exist. But then can't find the scientific evidence and so try shifting the burden. Do you mean you don't have evidence or that there is no possible evidence? I've already given you 3 possible evidences that, if true, would falsify Yahweh and Judeo-Christianity. I'll give you another: if you can find an authentic writing from one or more of the disciples that they made the whole Resurrection up, that would falsify the christian god, wouldn't it? So, there is evidence that, if it existed, would falsify the christian god. But this applies to every good scientific theory, doesn't it? That's the whole point about being falsifiable. That you can't falsify Yahweh is just too bad. You are in the position of any scientific theory without evidence to falsify it: you must consider it possible. That means your choice to believe deity does not exist is a matter of faith. That's fine. I've no quarrel with you having that faith. The problems arise when you try to present that faith as "fact" and/or part of science. This is where you need to read into the literature of theology. Theists have decided that hundreds/thousands of theories about deity are wrong. How did they do that? What science has done is shown that belief in god-of-the-gaps does not work. It emphatically has not shown god is not necessary. Back up to Darwin quoting Butler in the Fontispiece of Origin. Deity may be necessary for any of the processes studied by science to work at all. That's where the limitations of how we do experiments called Methodological Materialism (or Naturalism) comes in. For you to say that the supernatural is unnecessary means that you don't understand the limitations of science. Again, you are doing bad and inaccurate science. As I said, it's not your belief I'm objecting to. Be atheist if you wish by all means. But don't use misrepresentations of science to rationalize your belief. No, it's not. That's the Shifting the Burden of Proof fallacy. As I posted, both sides have a "burden of proof". Define "proof". That is inaccurate. There are far more people with personal experience of deity than there are people who claim to have seen Sasquatch. Just because you have not had such experience does not make their experience invalid. This is not fair. In terms of abortion, abortion foes start with a different premise than the pro-choice group. Anti-abortionists say that a fertilized ovum is a human being in the ethical/legal sense. If you make that premise, then opposition to abortion logically follows. There are flaws with that premise and some hypocrisies within anti-abortion groups, but the premise itself does not really come from religion. Particularly for Christians, scripture is unclear when human life begins. Fundamentalism is not belief in deity. It is belief in a particular interpretation of a particular scripture. If you look around in Canada, you will find that it is the same as the USA has been: the major opposition to Fundamentalist interference in science via creationism has come from Jews or Christians. As to being appointed to scientific ethics panels, that is proper. Science is not a system of ethics. Ethics come from sources outside science. And all those sources should be represented when ethics are being discussed. BTW, Dawkins made a positive statement in the title of his book, didn't he? The God Delusion Therefore Dawkins has the Burden of Proof (even by the warped view of the burden of proof being used) to "prove" that God is a "delusion". Where is Dawkins' peer-reviewed scientific paper to do that?

If you don't mean "thought", then what do you mean? "Will" implies thought, either on the part of the plant or animal or infused by some other thinking agent: like humans programming our smart weapons to have the "will" to hit the target. No, what he is saying is that living organisms have evolved feedback loops that regulate the chemical reactions in the cell. That way the cell doesn't make too much of something. It's very common for the end product of a synthetic pathway to inhibit the pathway. The more end product is made, the slower the pathway works and the less end product is made. A classic example is the synthesis of the amino acid isoleucine from threonine. The pathway is threonine to alpha-ketoglutarate to alpha-acetohydroxybuyrate to dihidroxy-beta-methylvaline to alpha-ketomethylvalerate to isoleucine. Isoleucine binds to the enzyme that catalyzes that first step from threonine to alpha-ketoglutarate and stops the whole process. What we are presenting to you are only very well-supported theories, so well supported that they are facts. That you said this worries me: it implies that you are going to look for a "will" beyond natural selection no matter what data we present to you. I'm afraid that there is a point in science where you really can't hide behind "a lot of stories in which scientists were wrong". You need to accept the data unless and until some new data (which we haven't been able to find and probably doesn't exist) is found.

It is mentioned in any evolutionary biology textbook. Remember, each trait comes with a benefit and a cost. Think of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, particularly those that synthesize beta-lactamase to deactivate penicillin. Yes, it works in an environment where there are antibiotics, but it means the bacteria is spending energy to make an additional enzyme. When the antibiotics are removed, those strains are at a competitive disadvantage because their "complexity" is using more energy than is needed. "loss of traits" is common. In addition to the examples SkepticLance gave, think of the blind mole rat that no longer has eyes, birds whose ancestors had teeth, and whales whose ancestors had legs. BUT (and in biology there is usually a "but") "complexity" is sometimes a tricky word. Because natural selection can only add information, not subtract it, many of those traits lost come at the expense of additional "complexity" at the level of genes. For instance, in the blind mole rat, the loss of the eye is not indiscriminant, but rather the addition of tanscription factors that suppress the development of most of the eyes, but keep some minor parts of them for circadian rhythms: 6. J Diamond, Evolving backward. Discover 19: 64-71, Sept. 1998. However, SkepticLance's example of Mycoplasma genitalium is a true loss of genes as it earns its life as a parasite. As SkepticLance said, viruses may also be a product of the same type of evolution.

Yes, it does depend on what the hypothesis is, doesn't it? And yes, eliminating genetic diseases such as Tay Sach's or Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy would be genetic engineering. OK, people, I'm not objecting to genetic engineering just because it is genetic engineering. What I'm trying to do is get you to start critically evaluating hypotheses and reasoning about them. Sorry, I am a teacher and can't help but do that here, too. The hypothesis was: all genetic engineering in humans or plants (except determining sex) is good. In science, when you have a hypothesis, the procedure is to try to falsify the hypothesis: to show it to be wrong. For SkepticLance and Halogirl (sorry to single you out, but you have been the most vocal cheerleaders), this meant that they should have been critically looking for cases and reasons why and how GM could have negative consequences. Instead, all they have been looking at (with the notable exception of Halogirl on GM the sex of the person) is positive effects. So I come along and try to do the falsifying. In the hopes that they will learn that this is the method to employ and, in the future, apply it to other ideas both before and after they post them. Now, everyone, if the hypothesis had been: all genetic engineering is bad. Then I would have been trying to falsify that! And using the examples of genetic diseases and some crops to say that there were some cases where GM would be, and has been, beneficial. If that confuses people, remember that it all depends on the hypothesis! And the hypotheses we've been working with have that "all" in them. If instead you break this up into many hypotheses for individual cases, then I would be evaluating possible consequences for each individual case. For those who like to hear personal opinions, my personal opinion (hypothesis) here is that GM has some potential for benefit in some very limited cases. Cases where we can definitely identify a deleterious genetic trait in either humans or species that we are exploiting and then correct it. BUT, in general, I hold to the position that natural selection is much smarter than we are and it is impossible to predict future environments. Therefore we mostly let natural selection do its work and keep as much variation in the population as possible so that, if the environment changes, at least some individuals will have variations that will work in the change. We do as much as possible with other technology instead of GM. In particular, no tinkering based on our present idea of what is "beautiful" and recognizing that other traits, such as physical strength or athletic prowess, is not always what is needed.

I agree. Given the individual's prior statement about his feelings, the studies can detect neurological differences. (BTW, I don't see a study looking at maternal love, yet you stated that people could tell the difference.) However, none of the studies have looked at individuals that they did not know the prior state of "love" and determined whether they were, in reality, in love, did they? This gets back to some of the limits of science, as described by Futuyma: "It is important to recognize that not all "facts" are susceptible to scientific investigation, simply because some observations and experiences are entirely personal. I cannot prove that someone loves his or her child. The emotions that any individual claims to have are not susceptible to scientific documentation, because they cannot be independently verified by other observers. In other words, science seeks to explain only objective knowledge, knowledge that can be acquired independently by different investigators if they follow a prescribed course of observation or experiment. Many human experiences and concerns are not objective, and so do not fall within the realms of science." Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial, the Case for Evolution, 1995, p 167. You say "This in itself should allow for prediction and replication." But does it? We need the studies taking unknown people and determining whether they are "in love" and, if so, which particular person. By which you mean that it coincides with your own faith? Or does it "resonate" in that you agree that what he states as "fact" you also think are "fact"? Atheism can't stay as "nothing more than a description of people that are not theist". I'll give Singham credit for realizing that. At a minimum, atheism must make the positive creeds: "I believe in a purely material universe that conforms to naturalistic laws and principles. I believe that the life we have is the only one we will have, that the mind and consciousness are inseparable from the brain, that we cease to exist in any conscious form when we die, ...the fact that all arose purely by the working of natural laws." The first 2 are necessary to be an atheist. If you think that Butler's hypothesis is accurate, you can't be an atheist. The second is a logical creed from the other two. This one: "I believe in the necessity for credible and objective evidence to sustain any belief and thus deny, because of the absence of such evidence, the existence of each and every aspect of the supernatural." may be an essential creed. Or you may view it as a necessary rationalization to reach the other 2 creeds. This one: "I choose to live the dignified and exhilarating life of a free-thinker, able to go wherever knowledge and curiosity takes me, without fear of contradicting any dogma." is simply untrue. Singham is not a "free-thinker"; he has sold himself to a particular dogma and will not allow his curiosity or any knowledge to go anywhere but atheism. In fact, his rationalization above specifically denies such knowledge. He is afraid of contradiction atheist dogma.

Mathematically, yes. But we don't have a mechanism that would result in exponential decay of nuclei, as you note. Otherwise, it's apples and oranges. In the case of medicines, you are referring not to the "breakdown of medicines" but rather the elimination of them from the body. http://www.4um.com/tutorial/science/pharmak.htm And yes, a constant fraction is eliminated per unit time. This is due to the volume of distribution -- which is constant. As drug is eliminated, it's concentration drops because a lesser amount of the drug is distributed in the same volume. There is only a certain amount of blood volume that can pass thru the kidney per unit time. So the constant fraction is due to the constant fraction of blood that is passed thru the kidneys. The equation is: Cl = kel x Vd But none of that applies to decay of nuclei, does it?

You said "The world moves on, and we learn from our mistakes. There are literally thousands of types of potatoes, and many are now being introduced as breeding stock." My reply was "not always". That meant that we do not always "learn from our mistakes" because we went to a clonal banana after the potato famine. And we are still making the same mistake because, even after that clonal banana was wiped out in the 1930s, we are still dependent on another clonal banana. Thank you for making my point. GM means we are going to have more and more crops that are going to be clonal. Skeptic, my point is that natural selection is a lot smarter than we are. GM tries to have us substitute for natural selection. Since we are dumber than natural selection, I can see several ways for that to end badly. We started the problem because we went to a clonal Cavendish variety. You want to "solve" the problem by going to another clonal variety -- a GM one. But don't you see? What other disease is out there waiting to hit the GM variety? GM is running the Red Queen's race. Changing the ratio of sexes would have social consequences -- China is facing some of that right now. You don't think that the process of GM to get what you consider "beautiful" people is also going to have social consequences? Some people have already brought those up: at first only the rich will have the opportunity. SkepticLance thinks the cost will come down. How long? If it is a generation, what is the social disruption as the have nots look at what the have's are getting for their children (especially if it is health) and their kids are not. People have started revolutions for less. So, Halogirl, how many killed in social unrest do you consider worth GM for "healthier" and more "beautiful"? The problem I have is that "better, faster, stronger" assumes that those are always good things. What about intelligence or situational awareness or even resistance to disease? Most traits are polygenic and most genes contribute to more than one trait. I said above to Skeptic that natural selection is a lot smarter than we are. And both of you want to chuck out natural selection and use us instead? Does that make sense? Say you have a genius designing an airplane. You fire him and put the village idiot on the job. Do you really want to fly in that plane? That's that analogy I see in genetic engineering. Humans are the village idiots compared to natural selection. This point is essential to your argument. You need to document this. What are the scientific papers that back this claim. I ask especially because what we consider beauty now in females would have been unhealthy for 99.99% of human history. Quite a bit possibly for the human race. Halogirl, this gets to the heart of your desire to GM people: you can't read the future. Look at artists in the past and see what their ideal of female beauty was. It was a plump female. Think about the "why" of that for a minute, because it gets back to SkepticLance's point about linking health and beauty. For our current high fat, high calorie diet, what would we have to do to physiology to keep people slim? Make them very high metabolism so that they burn off all the calories they are taking in. Remember, we are altering people by GM, not altering their eating behavior by sociology. So, suppose we do this for everyone. Now we have a population of slim people that can eat whatever they want in whatever quantities they want and they stay slim because their metabolism will burn it all off. There are such people today. A few. But now everyone will be this way. And then an asteroid or comet hits the earth, changing the climate and making food a lot scarcer. What happens to everyone with high metabolism that require 5,000 to 10,000 calories per day? They have no reserves of body fat -- we've eliminated that. You can see what happens: they all starve. There simply isn't enough food for them to keep going. Congrats, your GM to have people more "beautiful" and "healthier" in our current environment has ensured that the human species becomes extinct when the environment changes. Are you sure you want to play with the survival of the human species this way?

Those are separate topics. So let's go to the origin of life. I posted the answer to that one back on 3-21. Let's try again: "As to how to get life from non-living chemicals, there are several possible ways to do this. The one I like best is "protein first". Heat a mixture of amino acids to have them form proteins. The proteins will then spontaneously form cells. The cells are alive. You can do this dry (as in a tidal pool) or at underwater hydrothermal vents. http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/ http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html " Read the references. If you don't understand, then ask questions about them. The protocells survived because there wasn't anything that was going to kill all of them. There were no predators, no disease, and whatever natural disaster happened, there were so many protocells in so many places that nothing could kill them all. Think of bacteria today. There are lots of natural disasters that could cause humans to go extinct, but bacteria would survive them. Living beings don't have a "top priority" like you are using the term -- "every animal's aim is to keep itself alive". That phrase again implies conscious decision on the organism's part -- each animal saying to itself "I must stay alive". That isn't what happens. There are only a few species that may have consciousness on the level of humans and would think in those terms. We are the only species we know for sure thinks that way. You can't extrapolate us to every other animal. Instead, as I said, trying to stay alive (for multicellular animals with a brain) and struggling to survive when injured or faced with obstacles (like fighting to swim in a flood) is a product of natural selection. Any individual ancestors that did not struggle but gave up did not leave the alleles to give up to its descendents. Only those lucky few with the alleles for fighting in those circumstances survived and thus every individual is descended from them and have the alleles that cause that behavior. The animal itself doesn't have an "aim to keep itself alive", just a set of behaviors that is controlled by its genes. The animal itself is unaware of this and does the behavior because, very loosely speaking, the genes tell it to. For plants and animals without a brain and a very limited set of behaviors, they are designed by natural selection to survive in their present environment. Otherwise, it's a matter of luck. A plant doesn't try to "keep itself alive" when a herbivore comes to dine on it. It's unlucky enough to get eaten. But the herbivores don't eat all the plants. And let's face it, individual organisms and species do die, from a number of causes. 99.9% of all species that have ever lived on earth are extinct. They didn't survive.

What books? What interactions? You have made the assertions but so far have offered no sources. I'm asking for the sources and you keep giving me more undocumented assertions. Then please provide us the sources for "fully documented cases" of human/chimp sex. My sincere apologies. I meant Ecoli. My mistake.