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On 12/23/2011 10:01 AM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> On 23/12/2011 04:12 PM, Warp wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>>> Yesterday, I burned my copy of Darwin's Black Box. Just so you know.
>>
>>> I guess I could have just thrown it away. But I was worried that
>>> somebody might, you know, read it...
>
>> The creationist way of thinking seems to be: "Hah. These two examples
>> clearly show that the theory of objects falling down is bollocks. That's
>> enough for me."
>
> "Quod enim mavult homo versus esse id porteous credit."
>
> For what a man wishes to be true, that he more readily believes.
>
Trying to reconstruct it, so not sure I have it right, but here is
another: "Absurdum est ergo verum est"
Its is absurd, therefor, it is true.
Seems to be the ruling principle of much of creationism, and most of
religion.
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On 12/23/2011 4:17 PM, andrel wrote:
>
>> Last night we watched the 2009 "Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless
>> People" - very good. I particularly liked the bit where Robin Ince was
>> talking about how, if you reject the Theory of Evolution, you really are
>> rejecting the scientific method, and as such, shouldn't really be
>> 'believing' in anything like medicine because those use the same method
>> to be validated.
>
> I think that logically they should also try top get rid of all animal
> testing of drugs. It hampers companies in making money and it is useless
> anyway as man is not in any way related to e.g. mice.
> Then again, it is hard for me to understand their logic, if it exist at
> all.
>
The logic is two fold:
1. Just because they are not human does not mean that the specific
organ(s) being examined do not react to drugs in the same way as with
humans. A kidney is a kidney, or at least fairly close.
2. Isolated tissues do not include interactions with other substances
produced by the body, that may happen to be in the blood, or which get
reprocessed, post processed, or have different effects, on different
organs. Unless you use a living organism, of some sort, to run tests,
you cannot know if the drug that kills cancer in liver doesn't cause
brain cancer, or that the heart medication doesn't cause kidney failure.
The result isn't perfect, but, in reality, we know what like 10% of the
nuerochemicals in the brain actually do, probably 30% of what most of
the stuff floating around in our blood stream does to "major" tissue
groups, but not so much to others. What seems like a great benefit, like
taking a lot of Vitamin E, to X, Y and Z, and turn around and have some
crazy effect some place else, because we just don't know enough to be
sure what a large enough dose would do. We only, generally, know what it
does at *normal* levels.
The whole point of animal testing is to see if it has a lethal effect,
immediately, or over time, as a result of some unknown effect, on some
tissue that wasn't tested, or worse, that after floating through 4-5
different tissues, the body itself doesn't introduce changes to its
chemical composition which reverses the effect, negates it, increases it
unexpectedly, or turns it into something else entirely.
Its not perfect, by any means, but short of injecting prisoners, as test
subjects (in which case you are going to run out of them pretty fast),
there really isn't any other options. Those claiming otherwise are not
recognizing the limitation of the tests we can do, and why they exist,
nor how many more cases of, "Woops, it turns out that in humans this
does something bad!", you would get, if you didn't weed out the more
obvious glitches, interactions, and possible errors, even before it went
to clinical trials. Mistakes are lethal. Right now, such a mistake is a
1-2 every 5 years, and often they *had* warnings, which some guy working
for the company ignored. Without being sure that it won't do something
that can't be tested with a single, isolated, tissue type... It might be
2-3 per year instead, for all anyone can be certain of. But, it would
increase, because you can't test *every* tissue, or how the drug changes
*between* them, using a petri dish.
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On 24-12-2011 5:08, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 12/23/2011 4:17 PM, andrel wrote:
>>
>>> Last night we watched the 2009 "Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless
>>> People" - very good. I particularly liked the bit where Robin Ince was
>>> talking about how, if you reject the Theory of Evolution, you really are
>>> rejecting the scientific method, and as such, shouldn't really be
>>> 'believing' in anything like medicine because those use the same method
>>> to be validated.
>>
>> I think that logically they should also try top get rid of all animal
>> testing of drugs. It hampers companies in making money and it is useless
>> anyway as man is not in any way related to e.g. mice.
>> Then again, it is hard for me to understand their logic, if it exist at
>> all.
>>
> The logic is two fold:
>
> 1. Just because they are not human does not mean that the specific
> organ(s) being examined do not react to drugs in the same way as with
> humans. A kidney is a kidney, or at least fairly close.
[snip]
I am not sure you got the irony either. I start doubting my ability to
get any message across :( .
Anyway the point is that there are good reasons to test drugs in animals
before you use them on humans. Only, these reasons only make sense if
you think the two species are related.
In fact it was meant to just second Jim's opinion. I find it hard to
think of any treatment or modern equipment that not somewhere along the
line made use of a technique that implicitly used the relationship
between all living things.
In the lab we routinely add markers like GFP (green fluorescent protein,
a jellyfish gene) to a gene to see when that other gene is switched on.
The result is checked by PCR, another technique that uses a protein from
a bacterium to replicate DNA from another species. If you look at any
drug developed in the last decades they all are contaminated by
evolution. Either in the development, the research that was done to
understand the mechanism of the disease, or in production. The same
holds for many non-pharmacological treatments as well. One of my
research subjects is inherited cardiac arrhythmia, diagnosis uses the
sort of evolutionary contaminated methods mentioned above. On top of
that 'inherited diseases' as a concept is hard to grasp in a creationist
universe. (which, unfortunately, does not make them less likely to pass
on such a disease)
The, small, other point was that I am surprised that tea party-like
persons in the US do not seem to use creationism as a way to pass
legislation that makes it easier and more profitable to create new
drugs. While there must be a fair amount of people believe the one and
advocate the other. Either because of the reasoning above, or I simply
missed it because it was not reported in the papers here.
--
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the floor.
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> It's not that these people misunderstand science or aren't good at
> logical reasoning. It's that they don't *care* about science - they just
> desperately want everyone to believe in the Bible.
Of course creationists care about science. It's just that they like only
those branches of science that can be twisted to seemingly support their
arguments, while despising the branches of science which can't.
In other words, they engage in blatant cherry-picking. These creationists
have no idea whatsoever what, for example, the laws of thermodynamics really
mean or how radiometric dating works, but nevertheless they consider the
latter a hoax and a lie, while the former is good and well-established
science, just because they can use the former to attempt to justify their
claims but the latter contradicts them. (I have never heard any argument
whatsoever why they believe the laws of thermodynamics to be accurate and
good science, while at the same time denigrating many other branches of
science. They just are, because they say so. No explanation needed. If
nothing else, this is a double standard.)
--
- Warp
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On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:55:50 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> On 12/23/2011 11:00, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> "Oh, you don't feel well? Too bad you don't believe in the scientific
>
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/assets/images/
articles/2005/12/1218doonesbury_lg.gif
Good one. I never was much of a fan of Doonesbury, but I liked that
one. :)
Jim
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On 12/23/2011 19:28, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Methinks you missed the ironic twist in what he was writing, particularly
I got well and truly POE'd.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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On Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:01:39 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> On 12/23/2011 19:28, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Methinks you missed the ironic twist in what he was writing,
>> particularly
>
> I got well and truly POE'd.
Power Over Etherneted? ;)
Jim
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On 12/24/2011 4:20 AM, andrel wrote:
> The, small, other point was that I am surprised that tea party-like
> persons in the US do not seem to use creationism as a way to pass
> legislation that makes it easier and more profitable to create new
> drugs. While there must be a fair amount of people believe the one and
> advocate the other. Either because of the reasoning above, or I simply
> missed it because it was not reported in the papers here.
>
Well, in point of fact they are probably not animal rights advocates,
that tends to be leftist (which irritates the hell out of me, since why
the hell we seem to need both the gullible and stupid, along side the
smart and skeptical, on the side that promotes environmental causes,
animal rights, etc., is just incomprehensible). Second point, the
majority of them deny, or ignore, how much evolution effects such
research, and generally assume on some idiot level that having a map
means you know the name of every road, who lives in every house, every
job they do, and, to use the sort of stupid metaphor they might, which
church everyone one of them attends. What we have is a lot of lines, on
a sheet of paper, with a few labelled, and while we may know where the
guy on Dopamine A works, part time, we may have no damn clue where he
goes on the weekends, what sports he likes, or what he does on Sundays.
In short, they point out that we have a map, but they don't get that by
"map" we mean the equivalent of, "Using a blurry satellite photo, taken
from space, so we know where the fuzzy line are, which define the
general shape."
So, of course they don't promote creationism as a solution. To them
whether or not evolution or creation is true has **nothing at all** to
do with research, other than that one is some vast conspiracy being used
to make some cabal of professors rich (that they are not rich, doesn't
even occur to them, since we are also talking about idiots that either
belong to, or kiss the ass of, the 1%, and 'big pharma').
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On 12/24/2011 4:20 AM, andrel wrote:
> I am not sure you got the irony either. I start doubting my ability to
> get any message across :( .
Oh, and, in my own defense, I post commentary on at least three blogs
that have drive by stupid on them all the time, so I am afraid I have
blown out more irony meters that you have ever owned, and my current one
is only working part time, and held together with a paper clip, and
chewing gum. ;) lol
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On 25-12-2011 3:31, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 12/24/2011 4:20 AM, andrel wrote:
>> I am not sure you got the irony either. I start doubting my ability to
>> get any message across :( .
>
> Oh, and, in my own defense, I post commentary on at least three blogs
> that have drive by stupid on them all the time,
It is good to be reminded that on the internet there is always some
place where you might be perceived as a drive by stupid.
--
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the floor.
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