UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
ftfy.
quixotecoyote
Howling to glory I go
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quixotecoyote
Howling to glory I go
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Since I wasn't born the last time Neo-Darwinism was the state-of-the-art term, I'd rather use the appropriate phrasing.
Now, are genetic changes accumulating the same as genes accumulating?
Halfcentaur
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Yes. I really do empathize with him, as I often empathize with people to the point of it being a fault. But his attitude comes off as being far too arrogant for championing such a fringe theory.
I was raised as a Christian. I assumed evolutionary theory was correct merely because this was taught to me by being fascinated by animals and watching documentaries and spending so much time at the zoo as well as dreaming of growing up to be a naturalist or herpetologist. *It was never really an issue touched on in my public schooling*
In my teenage years, I became more and more of an agnostic, until finally realizing one day I just didn't see any reason to suppose there was any truth to the matter of religion for logical reasons I won't expand on at the moment as I don't want to turn this into an evidence for God discussion. But it had nothing to do with evolution. Evolution always seemed to be perfectly compatible with the Christianity I was indoctrinated in, a tool that a God would use for a system of stunning interrelations and fragile delicate patterns.
The thing is, as I strove to be more and more open minded in my teens and early 20s, becoming more and more agnostic,...I wasn't still positive evolutionary theory was true. I entertained any number of strange fringe theories and possibilities. Even once I was an atheist in my consideration, I entertained some of the more wild ideas and positions you'd expect. What's funny in that regard is the less religious I became about a God, the less I entertained evolution as being certain.
When I did finally study evolution of my own volition, it was never out of opposition to religion that I embraced the theory. It was through logic and reason that I realized it had to be true from the many correlations I'd discovered. There were far too many coincidences to not see it as a fact.
Randman's characterization of "evos" is just so insulting. I am honestly and earnestly to the best of my logical ability convinced about this topics validity, and don't take too kindly to being accused of being dogmatically indoctrinated by a racist and god hating engine of global intellectual persecution.
Regardless of if he's right or wrong, he needs to stop portraying "evo"s as being so generalized, even if he feels this is true based on what he's treated like. I can't blame him, but this doesn't excuse it at all. Especially if he's going to be interacting with actual scientists and educators.
If he honestly means to interact with these people, he has to accept how he seems in light of what he feels is true or not, and not take it personally. Which is extremely difficult to do with the contempt his own position is shown I realize.
But if he really means to do anything but lecture people and belittle others back and forth, he needs to learn how to communicate diplomatically in the face of hostility instead of relying on this "eye for an eye" variety of "I Know you are but what am I" tactics.
On a humerous note, his posts and usage of the word "evo" has had the song "We Are Devo" stuck in my head for the past three days.
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Simon39759
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To be fair, it can be considered to be.
The term is little used in real science and of little use but creationists latched into it as a mean to shift the goalposts and, so-doing, redefined: the original scientific definition is a bit vague, but consistent enough that one can safely say that macroevolution, evolution either on a length of time superior to a person's average life or above the species level [aka: speciation event] have both been observed.
Creationists use it pretty much as "Evolution for which the evidence are too overwhelming for me to pretend it never happened." So, this definition is not only different, but it is in contradiction with the original one.
As such, it could almost be considered a different word.
Certainly, microevolution in the creationist sense has never been used in science. It is after all a mere propagandistic tool...
quixotecoyote
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Funny. He had me thinking of an old nintendo game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.V.O.:_Search_for_Eden
Halfcentaur
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Ah, nostalgia,... *pines*
Admit what? What are you saying? That a population of organisms can diverge from its ancestors so far that they can no longer interbreed? Yes. That the descendants of that population might diverge even further? Yes.
In fact given enough time you might find as many different species as we see on this planet all descended from a common ancestor.
What mechanism exists to stop such diversification?
Halfcentaur
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He seems to imply in several posts that if evolution were true, all species would be able to breed and produce offspring.
This seems to imply to me that if families of human languages evolved from base languages, all related languages should be able to be understood and spoken fluently amongst the nations of the world.
But genes and sounds are different,.... so that doesn't apply I imagine.
devnull
Philosopher
Yes, I keep getting the unsettling feeling that it's being used in the same way as kike, spick or ******.
Cavemonster
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Refudiate has 189,000 entries.
If you look at the entries for "Neo-darwinism" you may have noticed that besides dictionary sources, the majority of the high ranking hits for the term were creationist or ID websites. What does that suggest to you?
Did you notice this quote from the wikipedia page, actually from their source citing the current popularity of the term?
Bolding mine.
Neo-darwinism in scientific circles most often refers to a previous synthesis early in the 20th century. It is clearly the adversaries of evolution who use the term most to refer to the Modern Synthesis.
If you want to do the argument by Google thing, count for me, on the first few pages, aside from dictionaries, how many uses of the term are by evolution proponents and scientists, and how many are by creationists/IDers?
The highest ranking page aside from wikipedia is a panspermia crank site. The next one is from an ID site. Not something what you'd expect to be the highest ranked results of a much-used scientific term, no?
catsmate
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Excellent work ANTpogo but, as you have seen, even when you bend over backwards to indulge them the IDiots will squirm, evade and lie to deny reality when it contradicts their superstitions.Just as I expected. You demonstrate conclusively that Heckel's work isn't held as gospel truth and randman demands you go back 40 or 50 years and prove that it wasn't back then.Thank you, ANTpogo; those are fantastic pictures, and clearly demonstrate that Heckel isn't the be-all end-all randman assumes. Very cool pictures of development of animals.
catsmate
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Wow you're lying again, who'd have thought it.
Goldschmidt: believed in species barriers that "the evolution of species marks the break between 'microevolution' and 'macroevolution'--that there is a 'bridgeless gap' between species that cannot be understood in terms of the genetic variation within species". Still believed in Evolution.
Broom: actually lost his job (at a religious controlled university of course) because of his support for, and promulgation of, evolutionary theory. You could try and get the man's name right rather than pasting straight from IDiocy websites. You managed it with Grasse after only a few corrections....
Grasse: I've corrected you on his particular lie several times, as have others.
Schindewolf: Again do try and do your own research rather than pasting the usual IDiotic rubbish, complete with misspellings. I assume you're referring to "large gaps" canard frequently trotted out by IDiots? This is covered at your favourite website.
Davison: also a believer in evolution, he postulated a different mechanism, the "semi-meiotic hypothesis" to explain evolution. Essentially, he proposes that "evolution" occurs at the level of the chromosome, not the gene.
Denton: his ramblings are covered in detail here and here so I'm not going to repeat these detailed debunkings.
A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
In the general Science and Technology thread, then? Or the History and Literature thread? I'm not sure which would be best suited, since on one hand, it is discussing a scientific topic, but on the other, it's really talking about the history of what's been used and said in science textbooks.
And it'll be a little bit before I can spend more time at the library (they're actually closed today completely, for spring break). They return to midnight hours next week, but I'll be out of town until Sunday. The weekend after that, I ought to be able to get back there (coincidentally, about the time I should get my copy of the 1963 Blue Book original edition in the mail).
That actually gives a good opportunity to plan out what I should get from the library on my return trip . Obviously the 1981 Gould book's diagram (and I might snag the whole chapter, if I can get the single-whole-page picture thing to work, since that'd go a heck of a lot faster than my other method), as well as the missing index from the 1966 revision of Modern Biology.
I didn't go in with any kind of plan last time, other than "get pictures of the Blue Book diagram in question and the surrounding text"; all the other pictures were an ad-hoc afterthought decided on at the time and on the spot. And I want to rectify that this time.
What else do you guys think I should look for, if anything?
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A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
In other randman news, I was briefly skimming the 9/11 Conspiracies Forum to get my mind off of all this other junk, when I encountered this thread, where I was, admittedly, really rather unsurprised to see our friend randman post stuff like the following.
So he's a Truther in addition to a Creationist. Whodathunk, right?
So he's a Truther in addition to a Creationist. Whodathunk, right?
He's a history denier all around then.
In paleontology "microevolution" generally refers to changes within species, while "macroevolution" refers to changes in larger clades (Linnaean genera, families, etc). I'm aware that it means something else in biology, but I can never remember what. In paleontology at least the terminology has been more or less abandoned, in large part because Creationists have corrupted the meaning of such words to the point where they're essentially useless (I think another part is because the definitions are not consistent across disciplines).
As for NeoDarwinism, the term is used, and references a specific paradigm. The paradigm has shifted since then. If you read the literature (the actual, peer-reviewed stuff, not the fringe lunatic stuff like Answers in Genesis) most scientists merely refer to "evolution".
What I find hilarious is that randman posts six names and declares "Evolution is overthrown!" I know Argument from Authority is a fallacy, but to put this in proper perspective, I had six professors in my undergrad alma matre alone teaching classes that specifically dealt with evolution. Freeman, Herron, Campbell, Reece, Marshak, CKlug, Cummings, Gould, Zimmer, Lutgens, Tarbuck, Ward, Grant, and Stanley have written books on the topic (or at least touching upon it--a few are geology books with chapters on the subject) that are sitting on my home shelves right now. At work I have many more--I brought more or less all my paleo textbooks to work, because they're useful for explaining to construction workers what terms mean, which means I have many more authors I could mention. I've been to conferences with anywhere from 10 to a few hundred people, most if not all of whom accept evolution as true. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Geological Society of America, the Paleontology Society, the American Association of Petrolium Geologists, Sigma Gamma Epsilon, the American Institute of Professional Geologists, and innumerable other professional and academic societies either directly accept the theory of evolution as being amply demonstrated or utilize it (I'm thinking of AAPG on that last one). I've personally spoken with researchers from Italy, Germany, Romania, Austria, Japan, England, the United States, Canada, and a few other countries (couldn't place their accepts, and there were more interesting things to talk about, like xanthid predation on ammonites), all of whom accept the theory as being demonstrated.
randman has presented six names. Most of whom actually say the opposite of what he's arguing they said. And he expects us to reject the work of THOUSANDS of researchers, both living and dead.
I Am The Scum
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So I'm seeing a lot of petty arguments about what things are called, and what some textbook authors may or may not have done 50 years ago, but I'm not seeing any evidence that evolution is false.
Brainache really nailed it:
This is the question. Randman, if you disagree with any of the propositions leading up to that final sentence, then point them out.
Brainache really nailed it:
This is the question. Randman, if you disagree with any of the propositions leading up to that final sentence, then point them out.
catsmate
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[off topic] I believe this kind of expansion of conspiratorial/irrational belief is caused by cognitive dissonance; they believe in their main idea (AGW denialism, 911, JFK, xianity, the NWO, IDiocy, the Federal Reserve.....) but find that, when confronted by reality, there are so many contradictions that they have to expand the field.
For example someone who believes that AGW is untrue has to account for the near unanimity of scientific acceptance of it's reality and therefore starts to believe that the scientific community is "in on it" and soon that there must be some shadowy cabal behind every event.............
Hopefully at this point they come to realise that this is nonsense and start to question their underlying ideas but this seems to be rather rare.
Sorry for the off topic interjection but the reasons for irrational behaviour are an interest of mine, far more so than the beliefs.