A scientific theory should be able to make predictions, be useful, be falsifiable, empirically testable, parsimonious, be correctable and dynamic.

dedalus on June 27, 2008 at 4:54 PM

I don’t know about parsimonious, but evolution is certainly falsifiable.

Akzed on June 28, 2008 at 4:54 PM

Christians argue that ID is non-denominational but why is that christians are the only ones pushing for its inclusion in public schools? Among the major religions, christians seem to stand alone on the topic…why is that?

DanKenton on June 28, 2008 at 4:58 PM

I’m not going to try and speak for all Christians but I will tell you why I think it’s important. People who know nothing of a subject are better informed than people who only have misinformation regarding that same subject.

For example, if you teach a child that the moon is made of green cheese, is this child better informed about what the moon is made of, than a child that was taught nothing on the topic?

You are better off being taught nothing than to be taught a lie. Evolution is a lie, it should not be taught. We damage our children with it.

Maxx on June 28, 2008 at 5:31 PM

Christians argue that ID is non-denominational but why is that christians are the only ones pushing for its inclusion in public schools?

Berlinski is a jew

Jonathan wells is a member of the unification church (moonie)

Chairman of Discovery’s Board of Directors was former Congressman John Miller, who is Jewish

Michael Denton is prominent in intelligent design circles, and he isn’t a Christian. Lee Spetner isn’t a Christian either. Antony Flew isn’t a Christian. Dave Scot, who moderates William Dembski’s blog and writes some of the material for the site, is an agnostic

link

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 5:41 PM

Yes, rather than slaughtered by the millions for the petty feuds of minor lords,

this doesn’t even pass the smell test. while they were being invaded by the muslims, and the vikings, they somehow had the time to kill millions all for some petty feud….right.

and of course those wars were so much more bloody than WWII, or WWI….yeah nukes and gas had nothing on those medieval dudes….

right.

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 5:50 PM

E1701 on June 28, 2008 at 2:23 PM

I enjoyed your post as well. Thank you for the education!

bridgetown on June 28, 2008 at 2:39 PM

why am I not surprised that left-wingers would like your post???

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 5:55 PM

another thing you say is:

, would at times be driven into the forests for the wolves, or starved to death if the family couldn’t support them without starving themselves.

this doesn’t pass the smell test either. when the church was at its strongest point in history, and is well known for its abhorrance of suicide..

“There was a remarkable continuity in Church medical ethics regarding suicide and euthanasia between the dawn of Christianity and the late Middle Ages. Medieval references to voluntary death were rare, suggesting that the actual practice of euthanasia had tapered off dramatically since the fall of Rome. Laws in some parts of Europe dictated that a suicide’s corpse be dragged through the streets or nailed to a barrel and left to drift downriver. The medieval ethos was distinctly uncongenial to any kind of self-murder.”
2003 Ian Dowbiggin, Ph.D. A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America

——————————————————————————–

“The ascendancy of Christianity, with its view that human life is a trust from God, reinforced the views of the Hippocratic school [which forbid euthanasia]. By the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, it culminated in the near unanimity of medical opinion in opposing euthanasia.”
1998 Michael Manning, M.D. Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: Killing or Caring?

link

again, you don’t know history as well as you think you do.

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 6:10 PM

Thanks guys, I just hate seeing history distorted to support any viewpoint. There are a lot of grey areas in what we know or can prove, and we can interpret events in different ways, but there was a key, underlying objective reality.

right4life: Would it kill you to reply in one post, so I’m not hunting through five? It’s very irritating, although I’m amused by how quickly you lash out at what generously could be called a semantic difference. Now, where to start.

yeah I sure did. its the typical language of dhimmitude when talking about the europeans.

A response like that should instantly disqualify you as any sort of objective historical analyst. Suffice it to say, in your political paranoia, you’ve somehow utterly missed that I agreed with your premise that the Dark Ages are a misnomer in social terms, because I dared point out that you castigated DaveS entirely unfairly. He was right, you were wrong - get over it.

first you say we don’t know what happened during the ‘dark ages’ except for major events, but you know the details of their lives and how miserable and brutish they were. uh ok…..and you think the Gulag, the concentration camps, the killing fields the tens of millions killed in the abortuary, the slaughter or Rwanda, the genocide of the armenians, the starvation of the Ukraine…do you get the picture???

Are you seriously suggesting that common life during the interregnum was actually *better* than that of the medieval period, of which we have much more information? What evidence do you have to support this frankly absurd proposition? And yes, proportionately to total population, even the events we call genocides today are a drop in the bucket next to events in our history. What made the Nazis unique was that it occurred in a first-world, technological nation, and that it was carried out in an industrial fashion… but even the total death count from the Holocaust is no more than the equal of the brief Mongol attempt to depopulate northern China to make more pasturage for their horses. They killed in excess of five million people in the campaign of invading the Caliphate and sacking Baghdad, and that ignores China, India, Russia, and Eastern Europe in that bodycount, and all from a far lesser population base.

Mao and Stalin have sheer numbers on their side, but that’s hardly surprising given the respective populations of the USSR and China. Proportionately, they were pikers next to some.

so you say. but of course constaninople survived. and someone like Alfred The Great came along..and somehow Oxford was founded…the book of kell..and somehow women like this managed to accomplish great things in the ‘dark ages’

I feel I should be allowed to reach through the screen and wallop you with the Ball-Peen Hammer of Intelligence Adjustment for that. If you had quoted the very prior sentence, I pointed out that Byzantium (capital: Constantinople) was very much a major regional player - indeed, during this period, as I also pointed out, they briefly recaptured much of the Western Empire under Justinian and the campaigns of Belisarius. But it was a temporary stopgap, and the Byzantines had only a moderate grip on Italy and North Africa, and when Belisarius was recalled to Constantinople, much of those gains were lost in a matter of a few short years; and even after he returned and recaptured Rome, it was a doomed measure that exhausted the Imperial treasury and resulted in no long-term gains.

The Book of Kells is evidence that there was a thriving monastic community… but this is hardly surprising, as I said already, and further, this was written from within the secure walls of an abby in Ireland - one of the few places in Europe virtually untouched by the fall of Rome. *Not* a good example.

Oxford was founded after the conquest of Britain in 1066 - effectively the beginning of the high medieval period, *not* the midst of the Dark Ages.

Alfred the Great was the most reknowned of the Kings of *Wessex*… ie, one of the small, largely irrelevant kingdoms and holdings that descended from the Roman manor system and Viking settlement… further ie, exactly along the lines of my description of the period.

Hildegard of Bingen - from the High Middle Ages (rather post-Dark Age, aka Early Middle Ages) and an *abbess*… again, going back to my point about the scattered control of the Bishop of Rome.

The Dark Ages, as I said earlier, saw a Europe that was beginning the process of feudalizing, and was chopped into lordships, small kingdoms (ala Wessex, Mercia, et al). It was the remnants of Roman nobles and their holdings, the Roman manor system, and the gradual settling of the formerly migrating barbarian tribes once the threat of Atilla was ended, each attempting to carve a piece out of the ruins of empire. On top of this, Christianity had assumed dominance over most of Europe, and the Bishop of Rome was able to exert some influence outside of Italy, but largely in the regions immediately around Rome. Catholicism itself at the time was largely in the domain of monasteries and abbeys scattered across the continent (except in Lithuania, which would not convert until subjugated by the Teutonic knights), and in isolated enough regions, were essentially independent of Rome while acknowledging its authority (Ireland is an excellent example of this, and to this day there remain procedural differences between the Irish Church and the mainland Church).

In other words, all of your examples have totally validated what I’ve said.

again you can say this, while admitting we don’t know the details of that time period??? huh??? am I missing something??

As any historian can tell you - and one is - there is a distinction between types of records, and surviving evidence. We have volumes of information from the Roman Empire… architecture, sculpture, writings from Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, manuscripts, art, murals… and Pompey was a motherload of information about how average Roman citizens lived at the peak of the Pax Romana, right down to what they ate, how they baked, and what they considered erotic. And we have similar volumes from the High Middle Ages onward… manuscripts, printed books (after 1445), diaries, letters, buildings, architecture, art, incidental descriptions, arms and armor… you name it. And there’s still massive gaps in what we truly know. The same can be said for Byzantium, Islam, Chinese dynasties, and even ancient Egypt.

But about the Early Middle Ages, specifically the Dark Age of the interregnum… very little. Most of what there was, was swallowed up by later development, or destroyed, or difficult to tell apart from later period evidence. But very little is not *nothing*, and I did not say any such thing. There is definitely enough to piece together a picture of life in the period on a general level… it’s the specifics we’re missing.

I would like to see some sources, rather than just taking your word…sorry. but again, you claim to know a great deal about the details of their lives, while saying we know nothing about their lives…..ok….

Ignoring the lovely strawman you’ve build there, I can give you a good one off the top of my head: The Social Dimension of Western Civilization Vol. 1 edited by Richard M. Golden. There’s a superb article in there about the social role of infanticide in Rome and post-Roman Europe through the Middle Ages. I don’t have the book handy at the moment so I can’t give you the specific article, but I can post that Monday if you’d still like. There are other good sources on the subject, though none I’m aware of online.

As late as 1300 though, it was written that “the sewers and canals of Europe echo with the cries of babes.” Indeed, the widespread practice of infanticide is the reason the Church eventually began allowing children to be raised to a monastic life from childhood, and why some of the larger cities of the period eventually established orphanages in the 12th century.

and of course after Rome fell to the barbarian invasions, the church was busy saving the knowledge of the ancient world, before islam of course, and planting the seeds for a rebuilding of civilization, and converting the barbarians….just a few things to keep them busy, which meant they probably didn’t have time to produce great operas…you know?

Which once again reinforces my original point… not much recorded history from the period, ergo, *dark*. As in obscured, in case there is some misapprehension here.

let see Charles Martel lived 53 years…while fighting the muslims…Charlemagne lived 67 year….and the average american lifespan in 1850 was 47…uh ok.

Again you didn’t read what I’d already wrote. Kings tended to have a longer life expectancy than the *average* unless killed in battle or by disease, which is why I explicitly said “unless you were clergy or royalty” from my original statement. Now you’re just embarrassing yourself. I assure you, the average lifespan of a citizen of Rome was not 47, it sure as hell was not 47 in the interregnum.

please provide documentation of this. Jerusalem was in christian hands, until the muslims took it over, the crusades were a defensive reaction to the invasion of europe by islam

and of course the sack of constantinople was terrible, but of course you have no condemnation of the muslim invasion of europe.

as I said, you have a dhimmi history.

Jerusalem was in *Persian* hands until a mere fifteen years before the forces of Islam pushed them back into Antioch and beyond. That was neither Christian nor Muslim, but prior to the conquest, they allowed Muslims and Christians alike to travel there as pilgrims. And when the Muslims captured it in 638, they allowed Christians pilgrimmage rights. For the next *four hundred years* it was ignored by Europe, because they were just climbing out of the Dark Ages, and Byzantium lacked the strength to recover it: and then it become sideshow to the battles within the Islamic world between caliph successors, and then a Turk/Arab split *over* the whole dhimmi matter (originally, non-Arab Muslims were also dhimmis).

The First Crusade had nothing to do with defense. The only areas Muslims controlled in Europe were tiny slivers of southern Italy and Sicily, and Spain. And those areas were also occupied for four hundred years before the crusades began. By your standards, Britain could rightly invade us tomorrow as traitors to the Crown… I mean, hell, it’s only been two centuries there. The idea that the crusades were defensive is revisionist pap. Islamic expansion into Europe was stopped cold by Charles Martel at Poiters, and never made another serious attempt.

And if you think I’m “condemning” either side, or that a historian should be issuing condemnations in the first place… well, you’re clearly no historian.

we live in a ‘golden age’ of technology, but our morals are darker than any in history.

Hey, what do I know, you’re clearly the expert here… no doubt things were so much more morally straight when adulteresses were stoned to death (and adulterers slapped on the wrist), and it must’ve been just dandy living under Chandaguptra… don’t see what the moral objection could possibly be to slow impalement.

Your willful and purposeful ignorance makes my skin crawl.

again a simplistic view of history. the ancients were smarter than you give them credit for. arrogance and condescension.

Ooh, shocker, another strawman. After all, it isn’t like I mentioned how much of a backward step the Dark Ages represented in terms of development compared to the Pax Romana, Athenian Golden Age (where they not only identified the Earth as a sphere, but nearly calculated its circumference… knowledge that did not become widespread in Europe until the Renaissance)…. oh wait, that’s right, I did.

sorry. perhaps you don’t know history as well as you think you do.

Or perhaps you should read your own link. That is in fact the very article I reference above. Well done. And within those daunting paragraphs, the argument made is that infanticide *was* widely practiced, but that this does *not* imply disregard or a lack of love towards the children who were *not* left to die. Quite the contrary. But that’s not the argument I was making. Bravo, another well-stuffed strawman.

this doesn’t even pass the smell test. while they were being invaded by the muslims, and the vikings, they somehow had the time to kill millions all for some petty feud….right.

As it happens - yes. There’s a reason the Muslims were so easily able to overwhelm the settled barbarians of Spain within such a short time (Mohammed was barely cold before they’d conquered Persia, captured Jerusalem, and grabbed North Africa and Spain). Because the many small lords spent much of their time bashing each other’s heads in! That’s how the first kings established themselves above their fellow manor-holders, and how eventually those kings, like Charlemagne, built empires. And this went on in Europe for the entire duration of the Middle Ages, and for most of the Renaissance as well.

And you want a comparison to WWII in Europe, you can’t do better than the Thirty Years’ War… though that’s Renaissance, not Dark Ages. Humans have never been limited by technology in their capacity for megadeath.

and then go on at great length to describe how ‘dark’ and terrible the time was…..hmmmmmm

It *was* a pretty terrible time. But it was regional, and it was no worse than others that had occurred in other parts of the world… and quite a bit less dark than some. But the primary point, which you have been dancing around throughout these epic posts, is that it wasn’t that bad. Wrong. It *was* that bad. But was *not* anarchy and barbarism, and many of the elements of modern civilization were forged in that fire. Dark Ages therefore as a term have fallen out of use, and when used, refer to the paucity of detailed information.

this doesn’t pass the smell test either. when the church was at its strongest point in history, and is well known for its abhorrance of suicide..

Yay, more ignorance. The church was *not* at its peak in the Dark Ages. The Church was *beginning* to develop that power, but did not truly reach that extent until the High Middle Ages. Again, while Christianity was dominant in Europe, it was primary in the form of monasteries and abbeys - the cathedrals had not yet been constructed, and it was not until 800 when Charlemagne established the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and submitted himself to the Pope for coronation that the Church even wielded political power outside of Rome. And that was limited for quite some time too, as the imperial crown was bounced around and out of the Carolingian dynasty, and the Carolingian Empire fractured into Frankish kingdoms (which were in reality totally independent, but all allowed the political fiction that they were together the Holy Roman Empire). The Church did not set itself as a totally seperate player until the Investiture Controversy in 1075 - an offshoot of Gregory VII’s Dictatus Papae, which for the first time gave the Church full authority over the lower hierarchy.

By the same token, Church injunctions against infanticide existed from the beginning (to the Church’s credit), but were not actually obeyed to a meaningful degree until the High Middle Ages and the Black Death… and ever after remained the choice of commoners to cover up illegitimacy.

Likewise, the Church voiced opposition to the concept of patricide/euthanasia from the start… but again, this was not enforceable until the High Middle Ages, and continued to occur anyway; given the choice between starvation for a family, and the death of an unwanted child or senile parent… the family won out. Cold, but true.

E1701 on June 28, 2008 at 8:46 PM

I only have time for one post, so I thought I’d stir the pot a bit.

1) Nothing cannot exist.

2) Therefore, something must exist.

3) Being cannot not exist.

4) Therefore, the something that must exist is being.

5) Therefore, being neccesarily exists.

davidk on June 28, 2008 at 9:10 PM

I am a Christian, active, and faithful. I believe God created the universe. I believe He used evolution.
ID is not a scientific theory. It does not hold up under scientific scrutiny.
Jindal is not being helped by those pressuring him to take these kinds of positions or calling for his removal over pay raises.

hunter on June 28, 2008 at 9:38 PM

Sir, you sound like a very level-headed person.

backwoods conservative on June 28, 2008 at 9:46 PM

ronsfi on June 28, 2008 at 9:04 PM

dhimmi morons of a feather, flock together.

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 10:58 PM

But the primary point, which you have been dancing around throughout these epic posts, is that it wasn’t that bad. Wrong. It *was* that bad

I couldn’t resist this one…in one sentence you say that…then

missed that I agreed with your premise that the Dark Ages are a misnomer in social terms,

have you ever had logic 101? or did you just forget to take your meds today?

too funny!! if I had time, I’m sure I could get a lot of laughs out of your posting…but hey, you’re a legend in your own mind…only

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 11:07 PM

Yay, more ignorance. The church was *not* at its peak in the Dark Ages. The Church was *beginning* to develop that power,

this is so amusing…you think political power is what I was talking about…and its the only kind of ‘power’ you think there is….totally laughable. Actually the church was at its peak during the time of the apostles and the persecution of the church…we’re now living in laodicea..

and ignorance such as you display is just more proof…

I should stop, but your post is so funny!!

right4life on June 28, 2008 at 11:16 PM

Here are some key facts about the new law.

Teachers are still required to teach according to state and local science standards. But under the law, a school district could permit a teacher to present additional scientific evidence, analysis, and critiques regarding topics already in the approved curriculum.

Teachers are still required to follow the standard curriculum, and school districts would still need to authorize what teachers are doing in order for the law to come into operation. Moreover, any teaching or supplemental instructional materials would have to be consistent with the prohibition of the promotion of religion in Section 1D of the bill. Finally, any inappropriate instructional materials could be disallowed under the bill by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Upon the request of a local school board, the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will be required to “allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” Assistance from the State Board in this area now will “include support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied.”

Teachers will be permitted to “use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.” But teachers using supplemental resources must first “teach the material presented in the standard textbook supplied by the school system,” and the State Board of Education reserves the right to veto any inappropriate supplemental materials.

The law is needed for two reasons. First, around the country, science teachers are being harassed, intimidated, and sometimes fired for trying to present scientific evidence critical of Darwinian theory along with the evidence that supports it. Second, many school administrators and teachers are fearful or confused about what is legally allowed when teaching about controversial scientific issues like evolution. The Louisiana Science Education Act clarifies what teachers may be allowed to do.

The law will not allow for inclusion of religion. Section 1D of the law clearly states that the law “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.”

Amy Proctor on June 29, 2008 at 3:07 AM

I don’t have enough faith to be an evolutionist.

Here’s why

Maxx on June 28, 2008 at 11:08 PM

I’ve listened to Dr. Berlinski on the radio a few times and he is the one that got me thinking about the magnitude of evolution. Although he has never answered my concerns directly he has expanded my view on evolution quite a bit by allowing me to reframe the debate by considering the probability within evolution. Then again he is only a mathematician and does really believe in evolution so he is a crackpot because honestly we all know deep down that anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution is just a crackpot that believes in an invisible Sky Daddy. Although nobody has shown evidence that god is invisible or resides in the sky but hey they must be right because they have unshakable faith in science. Well not all science or scientists but they do have great faith in the science and scientists that know the real truth. Well maybe only what they consider the real truth. All those other scientist are just crackpots and closet sky daddy believers.

Disclaimer
The previous was opinion and is not to be taken as fact nor was it directed towards any person, persons, alive, dead or born at some future date. It was in many cases generalizations and any resemblance to any persons, animals, beings, events, realities or sky daddies is coincidental.

jmarcure on June 29, 2008 at 7:43 AM

i am one of those frustrated folks that clings to their guns and Bible ..

literal six day creation, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, no way to eternal life but through him, etc.

personally, I don’t like the ‘intelligent design model’. it is a disingenuous position where one side attempts to convice the other side in it’s argument, then when they are ‘hooked’ the curtain is pulled back only to ‘reveal’ the man behind the curtain was God all along …

but, if the evolutionists want to explain something to me … more than happy to listen …

termites eat wood … funny thing is termites can’t digest wood. they need a little microbe in thier gut to break it down for them. without the microbe, the termite will starve. likewise, the little termite provides the necessary environment for the microbe. without the termite, the microbe would die.

which came first - the termite or the microbe?

AZ_Redneck on June 29, 2008 at 9:34 AM

Are you going to be OK man? You should go talk to someone. Seriously.

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 12:31 AM

you need to take off the tin-foil and get back on your meds, along with your friend NAPOLEON!!

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 9:45 AM

I don’t like this decision. Creationism is just a belief. There’s zero evidence to support it. You might as well teach our children about Dragons and Unicorns and The Easter Bunny.

SoulGlo on June 27, 2008 at 5:33 PM

Why not include this. It makes about as much sense as the ID faith.

Annar on June 29, 2008 at 10:41 AM

I don’t like this decision. Creationism is just a belief. There’s zero evidence to support it. You might as well teach our children about Dragons and Unicorns and The Easter Bunny.

SoulGlo on June 27, 2008 at 5:33 PM

Why not include this. It makes about as much sense as the ID faith.

Annar on June 29, 2008 at 10:41 AM

.
I have a degree in Physics and evolution is scientific on the order of Phlogiston and the ether in space.
.
It runs totally counter to any probabilistic approach to science and is logically the inverse of Thermodynamics in its trashing of probability.
.
The only reasonable explanation for the amazing and awesome complexity found in nature is the input of some super intelligent force.
.
Most reasonable people would agree that if I came into a room and found a note with the message Joe was here, the only sane conclusion I could come to would be that some human wrote it.
.
The evolutionists would say it evolved over 5 billion or so years.

FactsofLife on June 29, 2008 at 11:12 AM

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 10:49 AM

No one maintains that kind of rage unless they have some issues. I suspect as a child someone touched you inappropriately and now you are responding with rage in an attempt to assert some control. The angrier you become the less satisfying it is. You should confront the offender and reclaim your power. It’s not your fault and none of the invective you spray will hurt anybody with a firm sense of self worth and it will never make you feel any better. Accept that there are circumstances that are beyond your control and find the peace that comes with that acceptance.

Sincerely,

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 11:46 AM

No one maintains that kind of rage unless they have some issues

wow you have such amazing powers of psychotic analysis, sigmund!!

I’ve noticed that anyone who disagrees with liberalism in any way is full of hate and rage and is guilty of a hate crime!!

you should just accept the fact that you are unable to defend your positions except by impugning those you disagree with….it comes from basing your life on a lie!

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 11:57 AM

Why not just attempt a rebuttal? I know you like to try and get under people’s skin with this kind of stuff but really it’s kind of silly don’t cha think? Stop acting like a five year old and give a rebuttal to what’s been written if you have one.

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 12:03 PM

short answer is he can’t

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 12:06 PM

That’s because of the secret.

a clear case of projection there siggy fraud!!

I sincerely realize how laughably stupid you are!

keep spewing the drivel, its amusing!

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 12:10 PM

I’ve listened to Dr. Berlinski on the radio a few times and he is the one that got me thinking about the magnitude of evolution. Although he has never answered my concerns directly…

jmarcure on June 29, 2008 at 7:43 AM

What concerns?

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 12:18 PM

I promise that it is a safe place. If I see you there I will never mention it. You can still insult me and I will never speak of it to anyone here or anywhere else. Just try it. Try it.

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 12:21 PM

Many victims of sexual abuse feel guilt and confusion over having experienced pleasure at some level during their attacks. It’s normal to feel that way. It doesn’t mean you are Gay. You were just a kid. You don’t have to prove anything. Find someone who you connect with who was also abused and talk it out. Get it out. You will feel so much relief. You don’t have to be an angry outsider all your life.

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 12:30 PM

AZ_Redneck on June 29, 2008 at 12:31 PM

Perhaps they evolved together. At first not exclusive to each other but over time becoming more and more specialized until they reached symbiosis and could no longer survive with out each other. Seems a more likely explanation than them springing out of Krishna’s navel.

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 12:43 PM

Perhaps I will.

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 12:57 PM

right4life I am sorry for the mean things I said to you. I didn’t realize. You’re OK by me.

ronsfi on June 29, 2008 at 1:01 PM

OH YEAH … well explain this!!

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 1:05 PM

well a plausible pathway can always be imagined…remember evolution is all in all, and everything supports evolution!!

PRAISE DARWIN!!

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 1:06 PM

i am one of those frustrated folks that clings to their guns and Bible ..

literal six day creation, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, no way to eternal life but through him, etc.

personally, I don’t like the ‘intelligent design model’. it is a disingenuous position where one side attempts to convice the other side in it’s argument, then when they are ‘hooked’ the curtain is pulled back only to ‘reveal’ the man behind the curtain was God all along …

but, if the evolutionists want to explain something to me … more than happy to listen …

termites eat wood … funny thing is termites can’t digest wood. they need a little microbe in thier gut to break it down for them. without the microbe, the termite will starve. likewise, the little termite provides the necessary environment for the microbe. without the termite, the microbe would die.

which came first - the termite or the microbe?

AZ_Redneck on June 29, 2008 at 9:34 AM

The evolution of symbiotic relationships is pretty interesting. I don’t know the answer to your question. if you’re really interested, spend some time on google and look for the evolution of symbiosis. If I had to guess it would go something like this (but seriously, this isn’t supposed to represent something authoritative. it’s just me applying common sense and the little bit I know about symbiosis) -

Neither came first, they evolved together. Based on morphological and genetic similarities, termites and cockroaches share a common ancestor. At some point in the evolutionary history of termites they ate the same sorts of things cockroaches eat. One branch of proto-cockroach evolved to eat twinkie crumbs and box-glue.

The other, the termite branch, picked up an infection of wood-eating microbes at some point. This would have happened in an environment where there was heavy competition over limited food sources. Animals will try to eat pretty much anything if it means survival. The ability to digest wood is a nice survival advantage for the termite. You get a food source with virtually no competition. From the microbe’s standpoint, it can only digest wood that is broken into pieces. Outside the termite gut it has to wait for natural processes to break down the wood. Inside the termite gut it gets a nice, pre-chewed slurry whenever the termite gets hungry.

Over millions of years (not sure, but I think the termite species may even be hundreds of millions of years old), the termites got better at chewing the wood, and the microbes got better at digesting it; the microbes got better at surviving inside a termite gut, and the termite gut got better at making itself a cozy place for wood-eating microbes to hang out.

Both organisms have adapted so well to each other, that now one can’t live without the other. They’ve evolved co-dependence as a survival strategy. If you could look at how the relationship started, you’d find it was strained, tenuous, and inefficient; but it worked well enough that both organisms survived better. That’s sort of the flaw in your implication that since neither can live without the other, neither could have had an ancestor that would have survived: the relationship didn’t start out exactly like it is now.

RightOFLeft on June 29, 2008 at 2:05 PM

RightOFLeft on June 29, 2008 at 2:05 PM

Nice story, like so many other evolution stories, but the plausibility is zero.

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 2:13 PM

RightOFLeft on June 29, 2008 at 2:18 PM

My point is that one kind does not become another kind without input of information. Its never been observed and all genetic testing verifies that it can’t happen. So your story falls down as soon as you start talking about one thing become another. It just doesn’t happen. There is no mechanism for it.

All evolution stories are based on this same lie that one kind evolves into another. It’s like a boilerplate to explain anything, the tired old story always has the same ingredients… mutation, natural selection and long periods of time. But science has shown time and time again that no mater how much time you give it or no matter how many mutations occur or how much natural selection occurs, one kind doesn’t become another. The “kinds” are fixed, they don’t change except within a limited range of adaptation.

Read up on fruit fly experiments if you don’t believe me. Evolutionist have worked their brains out trying to make fruit flies become anything else. They have been at it for more than 60 years in various labs all over the world. The results have been no new species and no beneficial mutations.

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 2:35 PM

E1701 on June 29, 2008 at 2:52 PM

What’s your point? Are you nit-picking the fact that others played a role in disproving Spontaneous Generation? I listed Pasteur to make the post concise but others played a role. You mention Francesco Redi, Lazzaro Spallanzani is also credited as playing a role. But the history of the science was not the point of the post.

The point of my post was that Spontaneous Generation was a silly and rightfully discarded theory. But Darwin comes along and give us the same theory again with the stilts of mutations, natural selection and billions of years added on, that make the theory no more plausible.

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 3:03 PM

And my point is that the only hint of such a theory Darwin *actually* gave was his theory on the origin of life itself, which amounted to “spontaneous generation with lightning and goo” - but that had nothing to do with his theory of evolution.

Evolution is about the origin of species, not the origin of life itself, and Darwin is not the final say-so on the matter, any more than Pasteur was the final word on cell theory. That is the nature of theories.

But nowhere in any theory of evolution is spontaneous generation required. What you’re arguing is that while we can observe and even force fruit flies to change and even speciate, we cannot force fruit flies to become praying mantises, ergo evolution requires a spontaneous shift between “fruit fly” and “not fruit fly”.

Evolution requires no such event, and no such drastic distinction. Long term evolution is far more gradual. A fruit fly will not become a praying mantis because that ecological niche is already filled, and there are insects much closer in relation, form, and function to praying mantises that would fill that gap if it opened. No, if we fast-forwarded fifty thousand years, we would still find fruit flies. They wouldn’t be the same as our fruit flies, and would be unable to breed with our fruit flies… but they’d still be flies that eat fruit. They might be bigger, or they might be camouflaged, or they might be smaller. And there’d also probably be a half dozen surviving descendant species. One might be camouflaged, another the size of a modern house-fly, still another with a sharper proboscis to better penetrate the thicker anti-insect skins of human engineered fruits. Fast forward five million years though, and we’d be hard pressed to identify their original ancestors, especially since there could be a hundred descendant species (out of perhaps several thousand, most of which had already gone extinct). One might have grown to the size of a wasp, even developed defensive bristles, perhaps even a stinger. Another might have shed its wings and the original sharpened proboscis may have allowed it to develop into a flightless insect that can bore through coconut shells. And it’s also possible that there might be one that looks and behaves much like the distant ancestor we know, because that niche is still available… much like modern alligators and crocodiles compared to their 200 million year removed ancestor, or the modern ceolcanth compared to its ancestor.

If our species exists so long, the same will happen to us, even if we don’t engineer ourselves (which I think is much more likely).

One thing the fossil record can and does show without dispute, is that if there is a niche, *something* will fill it.

E1701 on June 29, 2008 at 3:58 PM

One thing the fossil record can and does show without dispute, is that if there is a niche, *something* will fill it.

E1701 on June 29, 2008 at 3:58 PM

do you have anything to back this statement of faith up?

oh I forgot dhimmis-for-darwin don’t need proof…in history, or science!!

too funny!

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 4:14 PM

This simply isn’t true[that genetic information is required to change from one kind to another]. First of all, you have to justify the statement that “information” must be inputted. This isn’t based on any known physical law

RightOFLeft on June 29, 2008 at 3:41 PM

Its not only true, its common knowledge. DNA is the plan by which life is built. The DNA molecule contains the information that make you what you are and an alligator what it is. Do you seriously dispute that?

No experiment has ever shown that incremental changes in genome over millions of years cannot result in large-scale structural differences.

RightOFLeft on June 29, 2008 at 3:41 PM

Actually this is exactly what the fruit fly experiments showed. There were many sets of flies undergoing experimentation all at the same time in many labs worldwide. The gestation period of a fruit fly is only eleven days. So they were able to move from generation to generation very quickly and artificially and dramatically increase the number of mutations. The results were zip. Lots of dead fruit flies, some missing wings or eyes etc. But nothing even close to a new kind or species.

You will have to forgive my use of the term “kinds” because I am not a geneticists, only a layman with an interest. I can’t use the term species because I don’t know where the boundaries are, they are sometime arbitrary. Even though I think old science used “kinds” and “species” is somewhat new.

In any case “kinds” has a very simple definition, it simply means any group of animals that can produce offspring with each other. By using “kinds” I don’t need to know where the boundaries of species are, which is a study unto itself.

Maxx on June 29, 2008 at 4:19 PM

would you like some of the references from the scientist involved with some of the experiments?

no reference you could provide could inform him of anything…cause he thinks he knows it all…

right4life on June 29, 2008 at 4:43 PM

I’m still waiting for my really long post to show up, r4l… someday. Posted it a couple of hours ago. I did not spare your willful ignorance and distortion of sources.

Maxx,

There are examples of known speciation other than fruit flies, but there is one of that type: Dodd, D.M.B. (1989) “Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila pseudoobscura.”

Reproductive isolation within a fruit fly population was achieved in only eight generations.

E1701 on June 29, 2008 at 5:22 PM

I’ve been reading through the comments on here on and off for the past c