On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:18:41 +0200, andrel wrote:

> - nobody (at least no scientist) knows 'the chemical origins of life'

Now I didn't actually take high school biology, but I thought there had 
been some progress made in this area - autotrophs create organic 
compounds from inorganic compounds through photosynthesis - and I thought 
I had read a couple of things recently about some advances that had been 
made in understanding photosynthesis and even (maybe) in creating 
something that is capable of photosynthesis.

>  - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes
> close to being a controversy in the scientific field.

And even then it's not that controversial.  It's a relatively small 
percentage of scientists who study climate change who think climate 
change isn't happening.

Jim

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On 4/13/2011 15:31, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:18:41 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>> - nobody (at least no scientist) knows 'the chemical origins of life'
>
> Now I didn't actually take high school biology, but I thought there had
> been some progress made in this area

Progress, but nothing definitive like *actually* making life.

>>   - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes
>> close to being a controversy in the scientific field.
>
> And even then it's not that controversial.  It's a relatively small
> percentage of scientists who study climate change who think climate
> change isn't happening.

I think it's more controversial what to do about it.  And at least there's 
something that remotely *sounds* controversial about it, if you actually 
read the original source stuff.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> writes:

> On 12/04/2011 10:06 PM, Warp wrote:
>>    Following this from abroad, I don't know if this should be amusing or
>> frightening...
>
> And apparently the results are conclusive:
>
> http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf
>
> America is the most religious first-world country, and it also has the
> highest rates of crime, poor health, etc.

Highest rates of crime? Doubt it. The paper just speaks of homicide. IF
you look at violent crime where no one dies, other industrialized
countries are worse off, based on the statistics. I suspect some
fiddling around with the definition of "violent" is at play, but
still...

Homicides have more to do with a certain amendment than with religious
beliefs.

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Standard trope for them is that there are only a small number of 
> "Kinds", of which humans are the unique one, without any kin, and that 
> all the diversity came about shortly after the flood, when god simply 
> "poofed" all the variations into existence. They need this to be true, 
> otherwise the Ark and Noah's flood are not possible.

  The "kind" thing seems to be some kind of dogma invented by a few
creationists, an idea that for some reason has got very popular among
ID proponent. I don't really even understand why they are so fixated
about that "kind hypothesis" anyways, as if it was somehow crucial.
It's based on the interpretation of exactly one vague sentence in the
scriptures.

  Well, as said, it's just a generalization of aversion: They strongly
dislike *one* consequence of evolutionary theory (iow. the concept that
humans evolved from previous species, rather than being created), and thus
they extend their distaste to *all* of the theory, including the very
concept of speciation. (Personally I don't see anything in the Bible that
would make the concept of speciation such a horrendous abomination as ID
proponents seem to think.)

  Also, a significant portion of Christians don't believe in the literal
interpretation of the Noah's Ark story because of all the problems it would
present (such as how and why would all members of sibling species travel
from the Ark's landing point to the other side of the world, crossing vast
oceans, and without leaving any representatives of their species along the
way, either by living descendants or fossils).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Neeum Zawan <fee### [at] festercom> wrote:
> Homicides have more to do with a certain amendment than with religious
> beliefs. 

  The US is not the only western country where gun ownership is legal and
popular. It is not the explanation.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Now either those creationists are uneducated as to the multiple 
> definitions of the word 'theory' and which one actually applies when one 
> talks about the 'theory of evolution' (hint, it's not the 'hypothesis of 
> evolution' definition, which is what they push), or they are deliberately 
> misusing the word so as to push their dogmatic approach to trying to make 
> creationism seem like science.

  One big problem is that most creationists (and in fact most laymen,
regardless of orientation) don't even understand what the theory of
evolution is about. They attribute all kinds of misconceptions to it
(and also deny many undeniable natural phenomena as being evolution).

  Moreover, many ID proponents muddle the waters even more by mixing all
kinds of natural sciences as being part of "evolution". You'll see them
claiming that different fields of astronomy, astrophysics, chemistry,
quantum mechanics, geology, paleontology and other fields of natural
sciences are part of "theory of evolution", even though those have nothing
to do with the theory, nor even with biology.

  Ironically, they not only vastly expand what their mythical concept of
"evolution" covers, to include fields of science that have nothing to do
with it, they on the other end deny natural phenomena which are part of
evolutionary theory as being "evolution".

  I suppose this is a very typical case of building a straw man.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >>   - 'global warming' is perhaps the only thing mentioned that comes
> >> close to being a controversy in the scientific field.
> >
> > And even then it's not that controversial.  It's a relatively small
> > percentage of scientists who study climate change who think climate
> > change isn't happening.

> I think it's more controversial what to do about it.  And at least there's 
> something that remotely *sounds* controversial about it, if you actually 
> read the original source stuff.

  I would even go so far as to say that the controversial thing is not
what to do about it, but that many people actually oppose the rational
thing to do. "We should stop polluting our environment and depleting
natural resources." I don't even understand what rational reason there
is to oppose that idea. Is reducing pollution somehow a bad thing? Even
if there was no climate change and everything was just and absolutely
fine, we should *still* reduce pollution.

  Pollution causes harm to humans. That's a fact. The only controversial
thing in this whole thing is the people who want to continue polluting
the environment.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 13/04/2011 9:56 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yeah, faith and belief are close in meaning, but not exactly synonyms.
> Belief is closer to knowledge than faith, I think that would be fair to
> say - for example, one can believe that (for example) the theory of
> evolution is the way life developed on Earth, but that belief could be
> based on knowledge that the people who have studied it and reached that
> conclusion followed good scientific principles.
>
> It's a fairly fine distinction, I think.
>

Not that fine IMO

>> >  BTW Mid June is the date ATM.
> Good to know, keep me posted.:-)

Will do.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 4/13/2011 11:11 PM, Warp wrote:
>    Also, a significant portion of Christians don't believe in the literal
> interpretation of the Noah's Ark story because of all the problems it would
> present (such as how and why would all members of sibling species travel
> from the Ark's landing point to the other side of the world, crossing vast
> oceans, and without leaving any representatives of their species along the
> way, either by living descendants or fossils).
>
A lot of Christians are not Christians, save that they use the same 
name. Fundies are right about one thing, *most* Christians believe 
almost nothing "in" the Bible, even, in some cases, being willing to 
state that Jesus may not have been divine, but his ideas where sound, so 
they still call themselves Christians.

No, the major fundies latch on to things like "kinds" as a way to avoid 
dealing with the fact that they don't have much of anything else. ID 
uses it, to an extent, but only as a sort of "starting point", from 
which some limited, God driven, evolution took place, which produced all 
the variation. After all, if you only had a few hundred years to turn 
one bird into hundreds of thousands of species, the "genetics" had to be 
guided somehow, or front loaded. I have seen both arguments.

The only thing I am certain of is that after 10 years, the best the 
moron that came up with "ontological depth" for genetics has been the 
excuse that, "its real, even if I can't tell you how the hell to even 
try to define/calculate it!" Right, so.. your entire ID concept is 
predicated on evolution being impossible, based on a non-existent 
equation, to measure something you can't properly define, which you 
can't even give evidence exists in the first place. And you thought Behe 
had problems applying math and logic to the subject...

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On 4/13/2011 7:55 PM, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  writes:
>
>> On 12/04/2011 10:06 PM, Warp wrote:
>>>     Following this from abroad, I don't know if this should be amusing or
>>> frightening...
>>
>> And apparently the results are conclusive:
>>
>> http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf
>>
>> America is the most religious first-world country, and it also has the
>> highest rates of crime, poor health, etc.
>
> Highest rates of crime? Doubt it. The paper just speaks of homicide. IF
> you look at violent crime where no one dies, other industrialized
> countries are worse off, based on the statistics. I suspect some
> fiddling around with the definition of "violent" is at play, but
> still...
>
> Homicides have more to do with a certain amendment than with religious
> beliefs.
>
There is a lot of playing around with "violent" statistics. Some police 
departments have been caught, if I remember, but never properly 
sanctioned, for finding "inventive" ways of redefining things, so they 
don't seem as bad, or fall into certain negative statistics. Hell, just 
saw the blurb on the Los Vegas paper today, stating that the state might 
pass law that disposed of the requirement to do inquests, in cases of 
officer involved shootings. The cops don't seem to want it, from what 
little I glossed over, but some idiot, some place, is almost certainly 
trying to sweep something under the carpet by doing it. Why else remove 
a requirement that they investigate cause of death, and other matters, 
related to shootings involving an officer?

Mostly though, I seem to remember some irregularity between "self 
presented" testimony about certain sorts of crimes, as reported to the 
press, and those reported to state/national agencies responsible for 
tracking them, in which the self reporting was, inexplicably, more 
honest than the "official" reports. But, I suppose its possible I 
misremember (though, I doubt it).

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