Steve McIntyre has the scoop:
According to the University of Victoria, Andrew Weaver says:
the next generation of his climate model will address the influence of climate on human evolution—much like it’s now being used to examine the influence of humans on climate evolution”.
In breaking news, Climate Audit has obtained exclusive information on output from the first runs of Weaver’s “next generation” climate model. These are the first known climate model predictions of the future of human evolution. The results are worrying: take a look.
Click image for a larger version
Sturgis Hooper If evolution is a fact explain to me how we got from amino acid to DNA? Within DNA many wonderful thing happen, but as far as fa I know we do not know where the digital data came into being in this analog world. Funny “facts” are not what you think they are! Don’t think I am a creationist, the reality is we do not “know” how life evolved, we do know that DNA is what we call life at this present time, what we also do “know” we have no idea where DNA comes. When you can answer that question Evolution will be a fact but as far as I know that question remain unanswered unless you can enlighten me, which I highly doubt.
I also wonder if and when the bible thumpers whom claims we are in God image will do if we are lucky to stumble onto life the comes from somewhere else in our great universe. Those bible thumpers and evolutionist who think they have the answer today are going to be sorely disappointed sometime in the future, after all I assume you are well aware that the Newton’s laws stood for 200 years only to be swept away by Einstein’s, who was a lowly patent clerk whose theory of relativity was not even peer reviewed. swept Newton’s Laws away.
And now a hundred year latter we do know Einstein was not wholly correct. the unfortunate part about the evolution debate and the physics debate physics relies on math and it the math does not work they know the Physics theory has problems, unfortunately in most other science that is not true.
Evolution and Climate science fall in that category. I don’t believe you are one of those you are willing to agree with my point, My point is simple climate change and evolution is not proven. evolution does have a lot more going for it since the Mitochondrial DNA is solid evidence of evolution inside of DNA, but not where DNA cane from as and as to the evolution of DNA it is totally unknown. Now I have lay out how I feel about evolution and climate change even though you great statement of evolution is proven we know that is false now we come to to climate science, the unknown of climate science dwarfs anything if regular science or even evolution, and to the from what an an intelligent person must see it is to the most part it is pure fiction.
Sturgie, I will not debate you on this issue of Evolution is proven because I agree with the quote no point in debating with idiots since they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. An yes I do believe that anyone who state evolution it proven is and idiot, although I expect that might be and insult to idiots
To willingly reject freely available knowledge about the world you live in. To choose ignorance over truth. To not even know WHY you are wrong.
Sad.
To not differentiate between AN indefinite article AND a conjunction. Revealing.
(To obnoxiously pick grammatical nits. Cheap? Lame?)
🙂
You’re an insult to humanity.
Of course you won’t “debate” any scientist because you can’t. You’re an ignoramus on both on science and grammar.
For starters, you don’t even know what the theory and facts of evolution are. Evolution is about the origin of new life forms. It’s not about the origin of life from complex organic chemicals. That’s called abiogenesis.
Had you bothered to read even the tiny fragments of information about evolution on this blog, you’d know that evolution is a scientific fact, ie an observation, as well as a theory. Your false religion blinds you to reality.
I guess about one thing the Warmunistas are right. Among CAGW skeptics is a disturbing number of creationist ignoramuses.
Just a few further thoughts to clarify my previous offerings in this thread:
Some of the posts I have read seem to confuse faith and religion. Faith is an act of belief: finding truth in something without an offer of proof. Religion is a dogmatic practice of morals which may (or may not) solicit acts of faith. One can be faithful without being religious, and also one could be religious without being faithful. Indeed it happens quite a bit. Confusing faith and religion akin to confusing science and engineering.
Whenever you read the summary of some white paper put out by one of your respected peers and agree with its conclusion without reading the entire study, without repeating any of the tests, and without trying to craft your own experiments to disprove the theory, you have engaged in faith. You might trust that person by reputation and the logic of the presentation may seem reasonable and plausible, but if you just adopt it as “truth” without firsthand experience, then you’re accepting on faith the validity of the product.
And that is okay. If we all had to run around repeating every experiment and testing every truth, we’d all spend a lot of time repeating, and the body of our collective knowledge would never really advance. Accepting some information on faith is just practical. Indeed I would bet that most of what we all “know” we have taken on faith. Beyond science, how much of human history have we taken on faith? If an honest assessment of the percentage of knowledge we each adopt as “fact” or “truth” without genuine firsthand experience, the fraction would likely be staggeringly high.
So since so much of what we have to accept as truth must be taken on faith, then is it reasonable to sneer at those who practice religious forms of faith? Just because a truth is beyond the scope of firsthand experience, is it necessarily wrong for anyone to accept it? I’m not saying that everyone should believe these truths; that is a matter of personal choice. I am saying that the wholesale dismissal of the religiously faithful as irrational is hypocritical and inconsistent with what we all do when choose to take information on faith. To the point, some of what I have read in this thread goes a step further in narrow-mindedness to border upon bigotry.
Just because the news is filled with images of religious zealots engaging in irrational acts doesn’t mean you should cast us all in that same vein any more than you should lump all science as irrational because a few zealots of CAGW get to dominate the media. Some of posts in this thread made that logical leap, casting all faithful as illiterate bible-thumping rubes, and looking dismissively down their nose while standing at the alter of science using the same sweeping damnation that those in the CAGW camp use of the “deniers.”
I came to the defense of faith, not creationism, yet some here presumed that because I am Christian that I must be a creationist and of course that there is a contradiction between it and evolution. (There isn’t, and we can delve into that rabbit hole if it really makes a difference, but I doubt it does). As someone pointed out, the Pope has accepted evolution, and indeed most Christians have too long before that. However I would conclude that there is a decidedly thin amount of understanding of modern Christian doctrine in some who posted here, just as there is a rather thin amount of knowledge of science within the CAGW camp.
My original point is that having an open mind is consistent with good science, and faith and science are not incompatible, and in many ways they are complimentary. There are many of us out here, and throughout history, that use both science and faith to know their world and practice both with an open mind. I humbly suggest to those of you who wish cast stones to consider carefully the material of which their house is constructed.
It’s my impression that few if any here attack faith per se, but do strongly object to forming scientific opinions based upon faith rather than the facts.
Before it could be observed directly, the hypothesis that the earth orbits the sun was based upon inference from observations. Now that fact can be directly observed. There may have been a time in the 19th century when evolution had to be inferred from all the then available data, but since the genetic basis of evolution has been understood, it too has been directly observed, but also at the level of whole organisms.
It was always wrong to say the evolution was “just a theory”, since a theory in science doesn’t mean exactly the same as it does in common parlance. But now it’s correct to say it is both an observation, that is, a scientific fact, as well as a scientific theory. Maybe a little confusing, but in biology, “evolution” refers both to fact and theory, just as does “gravitation” in physics.
Just a few further thoughts to clarify my previous offerings in this thread:
Some of the posts I have read seem to confuse faith and religion. Faith is an act of belief: finding truth in something without an offer of proof. Religion is a dogmatic practice of morals which may (or may not) solicit acts of faith. One can be faithful without being religious, and also one could be religious without being faithful. Indeed it happens quite a bit. Confusing faith and religion akin to confusing science and engineering.
Whenever you read the summary of some white paper put out by one of your respected peers and agree with its conclusion without reading the entire study, without repeating any of the tests, and without trying to craft your own experiments to disprove the theory, you have engaged in faith. You might trust that person by reputation and the logic of the presentation may seem reasonable and plausible, but if you just adopt it as “truth” without firsthand experience, then you’re accepting on faith the validity of the product.
And that is okay. If we all had to run around repeating every experiment and testing every truth, we’d all spend a lot of time repeating, and the body of our collective knowledge would never really advance. Accepting some information on faith is just practical. Indeed I would bet that most of what we all “know” we have taken on faith. Beyond science, how much of human history have we taken on faith? If an honest assessment of the percentage of knowledge we each adopt as “fact” or “truth” without genuine firsthand experience, the fraction would likely be staggeringly high.
So since so much of what we have to accept as truth must be taken on faith, then is it reasonable to sneer at those who practice religious forms of faith? Just because a truth is beyond the scope of firsthand experience, is it necessarily wrong for anyone to accept it? I’m not saying that everyone should believe these truths; that is a matter of personal choice. I am saying that the wholesale dismissal of the religiously faithful as irrational is hypocritical and inconsistent with what we all do when choose to take information on faith. To the point, some of what I have read in this thread goes a step further in narrow-mindedness to border upon bigotry.
Just because the news is filled with images of religious zealots engaging in irrational acts doesn’t mean you should cast us all in that same vein any more than you should lump all science as irrational because a few zealots of CAGW get to dominate the media. Some of posts in this thread made that logical leap, casting all faithful as illiterate bible-thumping rubes, and looking dismissively down their nose while standing at the alter of science using the same sweeping damnation that those in the CAGW camp use of the “deniers.”
I came to the defense of faith, not creationism, yet some here presumed that because I am Christian that I must be a creationist and of course that there is a contradiction between it and evolution. (There isn’t, and we can delve into that rabbit hole if it really makes a difference, but I doubt it does). As someone pointed out, the Pope has accepted evolution, and indeed most Christians have too long before that. However I would presume that there is a decidedly thin amount of understanding of modern Christian doctrine in some who posted here, just as there is a rather thin amount of knowledge of science within the CAGW camp.
My original point is that having an open mind is consistent with good science, and faith and science are not incompatible, and in many ways they are complimentary. There are many of us out here, and throughout history, that use both science and faith to know their world and practice both with an open mind. I humbly suggest to those of you who wish cast stones to consider carefully the material of which their house is constructed.
sorry for the double post…not sure how it happened.
HTB:
I’m fully aware that the vast majority of Christians belong to denominations which accept the reality of evolution, whatever may be the personal opinions of their adherents. Among these denominations are the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic Churches and Mainline Protestant churches. Unfortunately there are also a lot of noisy cults that resist science, and their paid shills are particularly active in the US.
The Catholic Church learned its lesson when for so long it objected to the heliocentric theory on biblical grounds, because in the Bible the sun moves, while the earth is immobile. By the time of Newton, even a Puritan such as he was (writing a whole book on biblical chronology), knew that the Bible is not literally correct on scientific issues.
As Cardinal Baronio said to Galileo, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.
Catherine Ronconi says: As Cardinal Baronio said to Galileo, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.
Can I then understand that you do not count me as part of those “spouting anti-scientific nonsense out of total ignorance” worthy of banishment, or is your quote as close as it may come to a retraction? Since you quoted from a religious person on the subject of science, I will give you a scientist on the subject of faith:
“It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.” – Max Planck
What’s to retract?
If you spouted creationist lies, then my statement applies to you. If you didn’t, then it doesn’t.
What does Max Planck´s concept of God have to do with anything? I was writing about the ignoramuses commenting on this blog who base their opposition to science on their interpretation of the Bible and the lies about science which their false mentors of the Discovery Institute feed them.
As I’ve commented here before, the fools who imagine that the origin of species requires their “God” are as wrong theologically as they are scientifically. The whole point of faith is that it should be blind. Looking for evidence of a “Creator” is completely counter to at least the Calvinism that fundamentalists falsely imagine their religion to be. God intentionally remains hidden, or what is the value of belief, of the faith by which alone you can be saved? Of course Calvinists also believe that they are among the elect, already chosen to be saved, but that’s another issue.
Scholastics wrong imagined that God could be “proven”. It’s an entirely wrong-headed philosophical or theological exercise.
I should add that in Christian theology God has remained hidden for the past 2000 years. Before that He took human form as a man in Roman Palestine, before that spoke to Moses through storms and fires and before that also took human form, walked with Abraham and drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden. The OT imagines Him as the Greeks and other peoples with anthropomorphic gods imagined theirs, like people only bigger and immortal. In the OT, God sits on the edge of the earth and looks down at the people, who appear to Him as insects. Coins have been found in the Holy Land with the image of YHWH in a flying chariot, like a Levantine Apollo.
“If you spouted creationist lies, then my statement applies to you. If you didn’t, then it doesn’t.” – Catherine Ronconi
Your reluctance to be explicit shows a rather disappointing level of conviction in your position. It was you, was it not, that sat in judgment of the worthiness of the thought of others in this thread and called for their banishment based upon your opinion of what you had read. Am I an “ignorant” “anti-scientific” “nonsensical” “lying” “foolish” “ignoramus” according to your standard, or am I not?
You would do well to reconcile with the fact that most (if not all) of those Christian factions you credit with some level of enlightenment by acknowledging evolution also still hold fast to creationism and do not find an inherent contradiction between the two. Am I safe to assume that all of those insulting terms apply to them as well per your point of view, and they too should be silenced?
I may be new to this whole arena, but my experience is that the one lobbing the most insults and calling for the others to be silenced often has the weaker intellectual claim. Isn’t that what the CAGW crowd is doing now with “deniers?”
“What does Max Planck´s concept of God have to do with anything?” – Catherine Ronconi
It seemed to be more on point than Cardinal Baronio’s quote. Planck’s quote is not a remark on God as you suggested, it is a comment how congruent being faithful is to great scientific discovery; that enlightenment in faith is often doorway to enlightenment in science. In other words, you’d be surprised by what you might learn if you opened your mind.
Re: Hot news, evolution cools! 3/17/15:
Great cartoon! But what might Dr. Weaver have discovered about the link between climate and evolution in general? Notice the date on this more complete version of Weaver’s plan:
Weaver says the next generation of his climate model will address the influence of climate on human evolution—much like it’s now being used to examine the influence of humans on climate evolution. The Ring: The University of Victoria’s Community Newspaper, Back to the future, v. 33, no. 2, February, 2007. http://ring.uvic.ca/07feb08/weaver.html
That’s less than a promising approach. Besides, Weaver was a lead author on Global Climate Projections (IPCC doesn’t make predictions: [W]e have attempted to clarify that the projections are from models, and are not predictions. editor’s response to Gavin Schmidt, Ch. 10, Second Order Draft; science makes predictions), AR4, Chapter 10. IPCC assumes AGW exists, having adopted that conjecture into its own charter in 1998. Weaver accordingly adjusts the vocabulary of climatology to fit the dogma:
Global warming describes the average warming of the Earth’s surface temperature as a consequence of human activity. Weaver, Andrew J., Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming, Part One, 2011.
Did Weaver get his next generation model working in the years since 2007? Did it show that (manmade) global warming is deleterious to any beneficial evolution of man?
A good argument exists for a link between climate and evolution, but judging by Weaver’s writings, he is as likely to assume the answer, one way or the other, as he is to support it with science. The problem here is that biologists have done to evolution what climatologists have done to climate: destroyed the science.
To be perfectly clear, The Origin has this full title: The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection of the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. The longer title presumably contains the essence of Darwinism. But that title alone should have been enough to raise the hackles of any self-respecting scientist, biologist or not. It alarmed the creationists, believers in the immutability of the species and divine intervention, or not, and with good cause.
Like IPCC modifying its own charter in 1998 to assume AGW, Darwin anthropomorphized his Natural Selection, and did so from the outset of his tome. Natural Selection is imbued with motives, as in to preserve things. It is omniscient, able to see where the accumulation of changes leads. It has wisdom, able to decide the better path. And NS is all powerful, able to protect the favored race while guiding the others to extinction. In the main body of The Origin, Natural Selection exhibits knowledge of a direction to evolution, a power to extinguish deviations from the desired path, a power to coordinate genetics with extinction, and all to accumulate incremental changes in better and beneficial directions.
Darwin should have called it Supernatural Selection. Science has few rules, but one of them is zero tolerance for the supernatural, which is yet another reason science riles the fundamentalists.
And no, this is not the voice of anti-science. Science can actually rehabilitate the Theory of Evolution and expand its horizons. Darwinism can move away from Darwin 1.0 with its Natural Selection, its Struggle for Life, and Survival of the Fittest. It is to be replaced with Darwin 2.0, with (lower case) natural selection: the mathematics of crowding, survival of the net most prolific, and the pursuit of the positive reinforcements of feeding and reproducing.
Darwin 2.0, at least with respect to the fauna, is based on some observations. Here is summary.
• Species that exist today are those that have the ability to evolve because they have evolved to accommodate the ever-changing environment, e.g., climate change, changing composition of the atmosphere.
• To evolve, a species must not breed true; it must have genetic drift.
• Species form from varieties through genetic drift.
• Viable populations are those able to increase without limit as a matter of mathematics.
• Animals live in niches, a state space of life support parameters, which like whole of Earth have finite carrying capacity.
• When a niche is at capacity in any part of its life support parameters, the lid is on the pressure cooker — the population with the greatest growth rate will survive alone, crowding the others into extinction as a matter of mathematics.
• Hence, in long stable periods, evolution cools and varieties become stratified.
• Hence evolution is a property of entire populations, not of prolificity and not just of members of reproductive age.
• Hence evolution is enhanced by knowledge in the population.
• When a niche is not full, the lid is off, and new varieties emerge from the necessary randomness of reproduction.
• Hence the creation of radical new life forms following mass extinctions.
• To evolve requires assortative (preferential) mating in varieties.
• Hence viable species have two sexes, a sufficient number.
Darwin 2.0 has neither anthropogenic nor supernatural components. And as far as Anthropogenic Global Warming and its evolution are concerned, CO2 is a beneficial greening agent whose concentration in the atmosphere is short-lived and determined by Sea Surface Temperature and ocean currents. Darwin’s analysis of the fact of evolution is a record of the effects, in part, of natural climate change, the missing part of the AGW model.
Utter drivel and poppycock!
What is this “Darwinism” of which you speak?
Have you ever actually read “On the Origin of Species”? Darwin does no such thing as you so baselessly imagine. Natural selection is not only wholly natural, but a consequence of reproduction and variation. It’s as observable in action as the earth going around the sun.
But of course now that we understand how inheritance works, science knows of other evolutionary processes besides natural and sexual selection. Evolution has a come a long way since 1858, just as the theory of gravitation has since 1687.
Re: Catherine Ronconi 3/19/15 @ur momisugly 1244:
What is this “Darwinism” of which you speak?
>>1. Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Wikipedia > Darwinism
>>2. Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. Lennox, J., Darwinism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1/19/2010.
>>3. Darwinism[:] theory of the evolutionary mechanism propounded by Charles Darwin as an explanation of organic change. It denotes Darwin’s specific view that evolution is driven mainly by natural selection. Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, 2011.
>>4. ON THE ORIGIN OF DARWINISM, p. 428. THE CONCEPTS OF DARWINISM, p. 430. Campbell, N. A., Biology, 2d ed., 1990.
Have you ever actually read “On the Origin of Species”? Darwin does no such thing as you so baselessly imagine. Natural selection is not only wholly natural, but a consequence of reproduction and variation. It’s as observable in action as the earth going around the sun.
>>5. These individual differences are highly important for us, as they afford materials for natural selection to accumulate, in the same manner as man can accumulate in any given direction individual differences in his domesticated productions. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 1859, Project Gutenberg EBook, p. 26.
>>6. Not that, as I believe, any extreme amount of variability is necessary; as man can certainly produce great results by adding up in any given direction mere individual differences, so could Nature, but far more easily, from having incomparably longer time at her disposal. Id., p. 40.
>>7. Thus it will be in nature; for within a confined area, with some place in its polity not so perfectly occupied as might be, natural selection will always tend to preserve all the individuals varying in the right direction, though in different degrees, so as better to fill up the unoccupied place. Id., p. 48.
Direction, preservation, greatness, correctness, requiring vision, motive, power.
Utter drivel and poppycock!
It’s poppycock and drivel, all right, but it’s Darwin’s poppycock and drivel. Like Andrew Weaver and so many other on climate, Darwin anthropomorphized natural phenomena.
Re: Catherine Ronconi, 3/19/15 @12:44
P.S.
I left intelligence off my list: [Natural] Selection has vision, motive, power, and intelligence. Darwinism is clearly Intelligent Design.
[Natural Selection also needs a spell-checker. .mod]
Jeff Glassman
Point. I would, however, merely defy all who allow “only” Natural Selection – no matter how it is spelled – to write a Biology textbook without “capitalizing” either “Nature” or “Evolution”. rather, try to write it without ever using the “Designer-From-Above” verb tense.
Birds did not “evolve” wings” in order to” fly. Birds suddenly found they could fly (why were those muscles already there BEFORE they were needed for flying?) AFTER they evolved wings. And feathers. And very, light (hollow) bones. And tails. And pin feathers. And flight feathers.
Whales did not “evolve” tails in order to swim better. They could swim faster AFTER they evolved tails FROM the “bear-like” tails. Until their tails were effective – BOTH bear-like tails and non-linked tails were USELESS and should NOT have supported ANY further evolutionary advantages.
Whales did not “evolve” vast layers of fat “in order to” stay warm deep underwater.
Random genetic changes occurred, and apparently some of those changes allowed more xxxxx to survive. Yes. Likely true.
But, there was NO evolutionary advantage to ANY middle-not-yet-effective “random mutation”! Until a beaver’s flat tail was useful in slapping mud and swimming, WHY did it continue to get bigger and flatter?
But “why” did the changes in the middle – BEFORE any advantages occurred to the tens-of-thousands of generations of whales that did not have “tails” (could not swim fast yet) but did still have legs (still had excess drag) and did not have vast layers of fat (could not dive deep yet) and did not have baleen and immense tongues yet (and so could not yet eat their modern plankton/krill/shrimp as food, yet had lost their “bear-like-teeth” (and so could not eat seals and walarus or fish either) and did not have and have noses in front of their eyes (and so could not yet “blow” their lungs efficiently. ALL of these changes were needed, but “why” were ANY of them “successful” before the whole animal was created?
How can a “hopping” not-yet-flying-yet-no-longer-legged-and-fast-running-dinosaur be competitive?
How did a turtle or tortoise stay competitive and still be so slow BEFORE its shell grew together but when its head and neck could not yet retract?
What did a spider use its web-spinners for BEFORE they became effective? BEFORE the web itself became “sticky” and yet the other parts were still smooth (climbable)? Why were these web-spinning “deformities” passed on to future not-yet-spiders BEFORE they were fully useful? Did the “hole” for the spider’s web exist long before the web-spinning genes “evolved” ? Why?
Do you really want answers?
Can you read a book?
All of your questions and more are answered in MANY books. One of the best is “The Greatest Show on Earth” by Richard Dawkins.
You are so wrong, it’s not even funny. Just sad. And disturbing that anyone capable of writing basic English could be so twisted.
Study biology and get back to me in four to six years.
As I said, utter drivel and poppycock.
You cite people other than Darwin to the effect that “all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce”. Darwin of course said no such thing about all species, indeed quite the opposite, but it doesn’t matter whether he did or not, since evolutionary theory in the 21st century is far beyond just natural selection, important as that process is.
The fact is that evolution, that is, the origin of new species from existing species, is a fact, arising from many processes besides but including natural selection.
I really don’t know why so many anti-scientific activists are hung up on Darwin but not Newton, when both biology and physics have evolved beyond the work of these ground breakers.
The fact is that both Newtonian physics and Darwinian biology work perfectly well within their spheres, but science now also recognizes other explanations for the facts of gravitation and evolution.
Jeff Glassman March 19, 2015 at 3:22 pm
The proper term to refer to evolution via natural selection is darwinian, not “Darwinism”, just as we speak of newtonian gravitation, not Newtonism.
As you have been shown at embarrassing length, your assertion that Darwin’s sometimes capitalizing “natural selection” means that he anthropomorphized the concept is not only baseless but ridiculous.
RACookPE1978 March 19, 2015 at 5:02 pm
You are wrong to assert that “there was NO evolutionary advantage to ANY middle-not-yet-effective “random mutation”! Until a beaver’s flat tail was useful in slapping mud and swimming, WHY did it continue to get bigger and flatter?”
Beaver evolution is actually quite interesting. Their teeth became adapted for gnawing wood only after their ancestors had already adopted a semi-aquatic life style. Every incremental increase in tail size conferred a selective advantage in this case, so was preferentially passed on to the next generation. No mystery there.
The evolution of whales is even more interesting. The ancestors of whales went through stages in which they lived somewhat like otters, then like seals, then manatees. As with beavers, their tails became more adapted to aquatic propulsion with each passing generation.
I don’t know why you find any of this difficult to credit. Whale fossils plainly show the development from terrestrial artiodactyl (more closely related to hippos than deer, cattle, pigs, camels, sheep, goats or antelope) to modern cetaceans, a descent confirmed by genetics, embryology, anatomy and every other line of evidence.
Several species have made the trip from ocean to land to ocean several times…
Whale evolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03
Evolution of baleen whales:
https://ecologicablog.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-evolution-of-baleen-evidence-from-molecules-and-morphology/
Jeff:
The poppycock is all yours, not Darwin’s as you so absurdly imagine.
RACookPE1978 March 19, 2015 at 5:02 pm
Nobody, either in 1858 or 2015 ever said that evolution precedes only by natural selection.
That’s just one of many evolutionary processes. I don’t know why or how the misconception that natural selection is the only evolutionary process could have arisen. Darwin never said any such thing. His theory of evolution was attractive because it included natural selection, which is a fact. It appears that religiously motivated enemies of science must be behind the travesty of Darwin that natural selection is the only driver of evolution. Darwin never said any such thing, although the process is very important.
The majority of speciation events probably aren’t from natural selection, but the higher you go, the more important it becomes. This is an active area of biological research. As I’ve written before, speciation is probably dominated by rapid evolutionary processes like polyploidy (genome duplication and multiplication) and hybridization. But the evolution of new genera, families, orders, classes, phyla and kingdoms is increasingly controlled by natural selection and other “directional” processes.
Consider the transition for instance from lobe-finned fish to tetrapods, ie “amphibians”. While stochastic processes such as reproductive isolation may well have played a part, the main impetus for the development of the new “class” Tetrapoda was the selective advantage conferred by being able to haul out onto land.
In the billions-of-years-long view of things, Natural Selection really is the primary engine. There are minor alternate theories, etc., but they have yet to earn a place outside the footnotes.
So there’s nothing inaccurate or wrong about referring to Evolution by Natural Selection, regardless of the delusions of god’s li’l buddies.
While that is the finest rendering I have ever seen of a much-repeated and well-known theme from all UNESCO approved world history books, which is the highest possible complement for the cartoonist, I do have one small objection. Through much personal experience and through wise counsel passed down for over 3,000 years in our unapproved history book, I know that man is not, has never been, and never will be an ape or any other of those primates. Human kind is either far above the ape in understanding and will, or by groveling and unwise thoughts and choices he sinks far beneath the ape in understanding and will.
And whatsmore, this sinking beneath the level of ape is rapid enough to occur within one single lifetime. In the life of a country, the descent of man only requires one very spoiled, corrupt, and unthankful generation to undo all good society. It does not take millions of years, nor even the 200,000 years estimated to develop our stunning pre-frontal cortex we now possess, to lose whatever advantage this extra grey matter affords us. Every life and every nation makes choices and reaps what it sows. So on balance, is it really a sign of unintelligence to give thanks each day, and together each week, to the One who made male and female, and for the love and purpose we might enjoy in our brief time on earth?
Giving thanks to an imagined One is neither intelligent nor unintelligent except in so much as it promotes or detracts from your enjoyment of a brief configuration of elements as a member of the subspecies H. sapiens sapiens, without thereby detracting from the enjoyment thereof by other members of the subspecies.
I suppose that is a nice enough gospel of sorts. In fact I am sure many here will be quite warmed by it. (:
Although, my experience leads me to conclude that people need to watch very, very closely what a particular group says about origins and the past, because they are in reality stating what they want to use for a future crafting of society. In other words, animals reduced to pens, breeding, and vegan local only organic foraging is now the undeniable political object of these same people who claim we were once apes and orangutans. The scientific paradigm of the Anthropocene Age requires this to save the “fragile planet” from environmental “tipping points” set off by any and all human life – agriculture, energy, personal transportation, children and homes. They even hate cattle and chickens – and the farmers who raise them – for heaven’s sake. So rational doubts should now arise, it is to be hoped, that this scientific paradigm will decidedly “detract from the enjoyment thereof by other members of the subspecies.”
I recall something about remaking economies and societies carried out in the 1900’s, before this call to the Great Transformation to a low carbon economy. It seems to me sometimes that God Himself is an empiricist and that it is the trendy intellectuals and scientists that are ignoring the verifiable experimental results of their own philosophies, eugenics, and social experiments to treat people like programmable, drugged up, managed androgynous hominid creatures. The good book says He is restraining all of this by His love and providence, but He will lift restraint one day. Isn’t it clear the experiments for a godless, debauched, scientifically-based and managed society were carried out, and the results were deadly?
Zeke:
The “group” which you appear to fear consists of those who look only at the evidence, ie, the works of “God” as revealed by nature, not words written by people almost 2000 to over 3000 years ago in an attempt to understand and tell stories about their tribal god, to make him look better than the competing petty deities. In fact they were happy just to make YHWH the chief god, not the only one. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” means the same in Hebrew as in English. Go ahead and worship Baal or the Golden Calf, as long as I’m Number One.
The pagan Nazis and atheist Communists were effectively no more nor less murderous than Christians when they held comparable power.
Evil is a human thing, not constrained by belief systems. In fact, belief systems of all kinds, whether political ideology or religion, apparently make people more murderous.
Catherine Ranconi says, ” In fact, belief systems of all kinds, whether political ideology or religion, apparently make people more murderous.”
As usual, it has been rewarding to talk with you. Thank you for that observation. Let me restate that just a little, so that it is clear. Men love their theories and are deeply devoted to them. Devotion to theory is what really motivates all work in history, economics, political activism and science. No one starts with an objective neutral frame of reference, and proceeds with the evidence where ever it leads.
I suppose adherents of grand scientific theories build character in the rest of us. Putting up with their claims of objective knowledge, pristine-as-the-driven-snow neutrality, and uniquely unbiased inquiry develops our patience and longsuffering. Cheers Catherine Ranconi.
Climate change “science” has caused a global dimming of the average human IQ…
Wow … people not believing evolution is true, as in humans descending from a common ancestor with apes, do not belong on a blog criticizing others for their (probable) mistakes in the scientific process (e.g., CAGW). Some of your views on evolution are simply wrong and preposterous … and are analogous to people approx. 500 years ago demanding that Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo were doing poor science and didn’t really know what they were talking about when stating the earth was not the center of the universe, and the earth actually (yes it was hard to “believe” at the time) revolved around the sun.
It is ironic that much of the best data used against CAGW is from historic and prehistoric records which show we are within normal, natural ranges of climate variability of the earth’s past. The reason it is ironic is that in the study of evolution millions of prehistoric data (fossils) that have been collected since Darwin’s time (as opposed to the few he had at the time of his theory), and their consistency has overwhelmingly demonstrated that descent with modification has gone on for some 4 billion years on our planet.
If you truly study the fossil record with rationality and rigor you will be amazed at how obvious and well proven this is. The so-called “missing link” between humans and apes has been found over a hundred times since Darwin … but you crazed ideologues, or people half educated in science or philosophy, simply don’t care how many are found. GO STUDY BETTER, and you will discover you are not only related to the apes’ ancestors, but that if you go back far enough your ancestors(and mine) were amphibians and cockroaches. Hard for you to believe, but sorry … it’s true. Some of you seem to love to study, so go take a course (at a major university) in archaeology, evolutionary biology, geology, genetics, physical anthropology, etc.
Jake:
Even more amazing: If NOT A SINGLE FOSSIL had ever been found, overwhelming evidence from a wide range of scientific disciplines would still prove evolution beyond any possible doubt.
That’s one of the more pitiful aspects of the evolution-deniers: they cling so tightly and loudly to the “missing-link/gap-in-the-record” nonsense they’ve been taught, that they can’t even comprehend how meaningless their words are.
Our ancestors weren’t cockroaches. Perhaps you meant that we share a common ancestor with insects, which is of course true, but that was in the Precambrian. The ancestor of chordates like us and of arthropods like cockroaches were already separate in the Cambrian.
“Amphibians”, in the form of tetrapods which hadn’t yet evolved shelled eggs (to evolve into amniotes), were however our ancestors, emerging in the Late Devonian and diverging in the Early Carboniferous.
And for those that don’t know …
A scientific “theory” means much more than a “fact”. It is a set of facts which are many, growing in number, and so consistent – that they create a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature. Most lay people (nonscientists) think of “theory” as what actually is termed an “hypothesis” in science. A scientific theory is continually supported by, and not falsified by, more and more facts that continue to be gathered over time. For example, evolutionary theory, so fits in this category that it is literally the backbone and basis of modern biology. We as modern humans owe much to it’s discovery and continued study.
Wow, what great arguments. “Jake,” “Catherine Ronconi,” and the others who sustain faith in evolution as being “scientific fact” sure have a lot to discredit creationists: just review the comments: they have: “take a class,” you are dumb,” “trust the experts,” and “yes, evolutionary theory was wrong, but we have a new-and-improved theory now .”
tmtisfreeactually contributes by 1. not throwing out insults and 2. providing a link for further study.
I am glad I jumped off of that Scientism crazy train in my 30s.
Oh- there was a remark that there is no such thing as Scientism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
Pretty much what I said, earlier.
TheLast: Why bother presenting evidence when you won’t read it, acknowledge it and/or understand it.
The comprehensive, unassailable proof is available. Right there within reach. Easily accessible. You can’t refuse to read the proof and then claim there is no proof.
It is YOUR JOB to place that information into your brain and adjust your understanding of the world accordingly.
Do you seriously imagine that because a false concept rates a Wiki entry, ergo it must be something real?
No wonder you believe in the fairy tale that God made every living thing independently, poofing them into existence. One instant, no chickens, next instant, chickens!
What a hideous, repulsive monster is this imaginary deity of yours, to create parasitoid ichneumon wasps. Who would worship such a cruel sadist?
What an incompetent, stupid designer your idiotic deity is, to give humans muscles and other features we don’t need and to have created such laughably badly made feet.
Re: Capitalizing Natural Selection:
The best reasons to capitalize the phrase natural selection are (1) that Darwin did, and (2) to make the same distinction Darwin made:
>>This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic. Bold added, Darwin, On The Origin of the Species By Means of Natural Selection of the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 1859, Gutenburg eBook, p. 40.
At one point, Darwin capitalized Struggle for Life. Bold added, id., p. 195. In the 5th edition, Darwin modified the first sentence above, adding Spencer’s characterization of Darwinism, writing,
>>This preservation of favourable variations, and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Bold added, id., 1869, p. 92.
Another good reason is to underscore that Darwin gave Natural Selection God-like powers, violating a principle of science. Too bad that Spencer was wrong. It’s the math, the survival of the normalized population with the fastest growth rate.
What then are we to make of Motte’s 1729 translation of Newton’s Principia, “Rational Mechanics will be the science of motions resulting from any forces whatsoever”, or the Law of Conservation of Energy?
Or how about Einstein’s own “Relativitätsprinzip”?
True, capitalization rules are different in German, but so were they in 17th, 18th & 19th century English from now. Look at the Declaration of Independence, for instance.
Sorry, but your argument from capitalization is just plain ridiculous.
Sorry, but your argument from capitalization is just plain ridiculous. The rules for capitalization were different in 1858 from now. Also in the preceding centuries and for some time thereafter. Read the original of the Declaration of Independence, for example, to see what was capitalized in the late 18th century.
Did James Clerk Maxwell in 1864 imply God-like powers for capitalizing (and italicizing) “Dynamical Theory” and “Electromagnetic Field”?
How about the Law of Conservation of Energy?
Catherine Ronconi, 3/20/15 @ur momisugly 9:10:
Sorry, but your argument from capitalization is just plain ridiculous. The rules for capitalization were different in 1858 from now.
Darwin sometimes used Natural Selection, and sometimes natural selection for identically the same thing. Are you actually suggesting he was following a rule? Be careful what you call ridiculous.
A real old guideline was to capitalize defined words and phrases, e.g., your Maxwell quotations. That rule is passé in Post Modern Science, where, as Popper, its founder, says, Definitions do not matter. Popper, K.R., Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, 1979, p. 311. Regardless, capitalizing defined words and phrases still exists widely as a rule in many company and government style manuals. It has much to offer in team writing, and it is widely practiced in industry where Modern Science prevails to the exclusion of PMS.
Read the original of the Declaration of Independence, for example, to see what was capitalized in the late 18th century.
What’s your point in referring to 18th Century orthography? All nouns were capitalized in the Constitution. Perhaps this is your notion of evolution, but that’s not the evolution on this thread.
Aside: Doesn’t these passages from Darwin just cry out for capitalization?
>>Can we wonder, then, that nature’s productions should be far “truer” in character than man’s productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship? Darwin, On the Origin (1859), p. 41.
He explained:
>> Although natural selection can act only through and for the good of each being, yet characters and structures, which we are apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted on. Darwin On the Origin, (1859) p. 41.
We’re all guided by a Higher Authority, who is known by his Good Works.
How about the Law of Conservation of Energy?
>>Only proper names attached to the names of laws, theorems, principles, etc., are capitalized. Chicago Manual of Style, 13th Ed., 1982, ¶7.118, p. 221. CMoS is better suited for literary works than science writing.
If you need any more help, don’t be shy about posting your questions.
Jeff,
As usual, you could not possibly be more ridiculously wrong.
The Constitution most certainly does not capitalize every noun, such as “defence” and “day”, and it sometimes capitalizes non-nouns, like “Least”. How hard would it have been for you to check before posting such a falsehood?
The fact that Darwin did not always capitalize “natural selection” alone should have told you that your preposterous argument is, well, ridiculous.
Before hatching this cockamamie concept, it would have behooved you to read widely in mid-19th century scientific literature and correspondence. To take but one example, consider capitalization in this January 1857 letter of Darwin’s to William Sharpey, Secretary of the Royal Society. Will you have us believe that “Natural History of the Region”, “Coal”, “Glacial”, “Expedition” and “Geologist” signify God-like action?:
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2206
Down Bromley Kent
Jan. 24th—
Dear Sharpey
Having never especially attended to the Natural History of the Region in question I really am quite unable to offer any special points of research. And as far as general suggestions go, I cannot add to the Instructions published in the Admiralty Manual.— As it seems that there will be a Geologist attached to the Expedition it seems superfluous to remark, that a collection of the Carboniferous plants from the Coal of that Region would preeminently possess high interest. So again with Glacial action, more especially in regard to sea-borne erratic boulders, it would be highly desirable to ascertain their extension southward, inland, & to what elevation on the land.—
I wish sincerely I could aid in any suggestions, but it is really not in my power.—
Pray believe me, Dear Sharpey | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
I could produce thousands of similar letters to and from Darwin with capitalization far from today’s standard. Your argument is, in a word, ridiculous. Also ludicrous, laughable and preposterous.
Catherine Ronconi, 3/20/15 @ur momisugly 1:12 pm:
Throughout most of the eighteenth-century, it was common for drafters to begin every noun with a capital letter, just as Germans do today. This convention was fading by the time the Constitution was drafted (1787), but Gouverneur Morris, who actually penned the final document, elected to follow it. That is why nouns in the original Constitution are capitalized.
However, Morris made a few mistakes, and some nouns were left without capitals. They include: “defence” in the Preamble, “credit” in Article I, Section 8, Clause 2 (the congressional borrowing power); “duty” in Article I, Section 9, Clause 1; and “present” in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
Two years later, when (under the guidance of James Madison) the First Congress drafted the Bill of Rights, it elected to drop the capitalization rule. Nevertheless, a few mistakes crept in: Several of the nouns in the Bill of Rights were capitalized.
The capitalization or non-capitalization of a word has no substantive effect, although when used to introduce a phrase it can serve as a clue to meaning.
Natelson, R., The Constitution: capitalization, http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/04/the-constitution-capitalization/
Total balderdash!
Look at the Declaration of Independence. Did Jefferson and the secretary of the Congress accidentally forget to capitalize “events”, “people”, “bands”, “powers”, “earth”, “station”, etc?
Whoever wrote that nonsense which you quoted is totally ignorant of 18th century English.
Put please, by all means, keep digging your hole deeper & darker.
For some reason my prior comment on capitalization in Darwin’s letters is awaiting moderation, but please look at this famous entry from Dr. Johnson’s 1765 dictionary to see how ridiculous is your baseless assertion about noun capitalization in 18th century English:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dic/johnson/oats/oats.html
Another famous entry:
http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/?p=5660
Or consider Blackstone’s Commentaries, the Bible of late 18th century English common law students:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_intro.asp#1
Only a total ignoramus, like your anonymous “source” would imagine that all nouns were capitalized in 18th century English.
Wait for my prior comment on Darwin’s usage to be approved, then get back to us. Thanks.
I notice no source for your italicized citation. No wonder, since it’s ridiculously wrong, as any reader of 18th century English literature would know.
Please begin the education you should have had before making your ridiculous claim by reading the 1749 novel Tom Jones (the arrows let you flip thrlugh the pages):
https://archive.org/stream/tomjones03fielgoog#page/n8/mode/2up
Or any other 18th century English work.
Re: Capitalization & Darwin,
As mpainter suggested on 11/5/2014 @ur momisugly 1:38 pm, pay no attention to the foul mannered trio (naming familiar names). They are epithet-hurlers (e.g. on this thread, balderdash, drivel, ignorant, lies, poppycock, ridiculous), bolstering what must be their needy egos with factless or anecdotal, random posts, eschewing any substantative dialog.
Instead, here is a link to a well-written and even informative little article on capitalization in the Declaration of Independence. Thurman, J., In Defense of Cursive, The New Yorker, 7/5/2012. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/in-defense-of-cursive
A spoiler: While Jefferson was the lead author of the Declaration (along with J. Adams, Sherman, Franklin, Livingston, and Madison), he was a reliable atheist, bothering not to capitalize even god. His draft was officially transcribed in ancient ink for engraving by engrosser Timothy Marlack, who would capitalize everything in the Germanic style, according to a Benjamin Franklin conjecture.
The article quotes a modern writer at Slate, Jonathon Lackman, PhD, [2010 dissertation: Mud and Glory: Art-Critical Invective in Paris: 1844-1876], author of Capital Embellismhent: Why do Tea Parties uppercase so many of their nouns?. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2010/11/capital_embellishment.html . After an interesting history of capitalization in various eras, Lackman shows how he has deduced the following scenario: the modern Tea Party, a religious right organization, writes in that 18th Century style, believing they are respecting the style of Founding Father Jefferson, ironically an infidel in his time, hence mistaken on two counts, because what it mimics is the artistic flourishes and occasional misspellings of a proletariat copiest of the day. If [heavy caps] succeeds too well, we may all end up subscribing to the Tea Party’s concept of Freedom, Lackman warns.
>>More Capitals, less Das Kapital!. Id.
Are yoU still flOgging the SubjecT of capitALIZation in thE 18th ceNtury? BaCk on pLAneT EArth, PUnCtuatioN DoEsn’t REally m A t T e r. ?noissergid sseldne siht yhw oS
Content, not form.
Seriously, for the sake of us simple, ground-based life forms who may have been napping in the back of the classroom… Can you (in fewer than 100 simple words) summarize what point you are trying to make?
Re: takebackthegreen 3/20/15 @ur momisugly 7:05 pm:
Can you (in fewer than 100 simple words) summarize what point you are trying to make?
The operator of an IPCC climate model predicting a human influence on climate, but which subsequently failed, spoke in 2007 of plans to use that model to predict the influence of climate on human evolution, where the existing biological model, Darwinism, never had predictive power. The models are similar for their misattribution of natural causes to human or human-like influences, but that similarity does not mean that two useless models can be meaningfully synchronized. An alternative model for evolution fully based in science does show natural climate to be a cause of evolution.
First, the Theory of Evolution is absolutely predictive.
Second, I meant What point is being made with the endless obsessing about capitalization?
Mpainter began the name calling. He’s so divorced from reality that he called those advocating the position with all the evidence behind it crackpots, while refusing to accept any evidence or offer any in support of his patently absurd position, instead making lunatic assertions contrary to all physical reality, while claiming superior geological expertise.
Birds of a feather flocking together.
You just keep compounding falsehood upon ever crazier falsehood. Jefferson was as far from an atheist as is possible. He was a Deist, ie he believed in the One God, but not that Christ was His Son. The reason he resisted the concept of extinction so long was that he felt God could not make creatures so imperfect as to die off. He believed in the Great Chain of Being until the evidence for extinction became too great and late in life he accepted its reality, but still cited the workings of God (you can read all about it in one of his letters to Adams). Your ignorance is astounding, and your willingness to spout falsehoods out of such profound ignorance even more shocking.
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/species-extinction
Jefferson believed fervently in an almighty Creator. Whether he capitalized in his first “Rough draft” or not, the text of the Declaration shows what was considered standard in 1776, ie a mix of upper and lower case initial letters different from common practice today.
You’ve been shown over and over again the evidence that all nouns were not capitalized in the 18th century, as you falsely claimed, on no authority at all and without a shred of evidence.
You have been badly misinformed. It would have been easy to check, so you have no excuse.
Jefferson most certainly did believe in God, which term he capitalized. How hard would it have been to search for “god” in his correspondence?
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16784/16784-h/16784-h.htm
Jefferson was not an atheist, but a deist or unitarian.
Jefferson probably also had a favorite color and type of underwear.
The important religious facts about Jefferson are 1) his religious views accommodated the enslavement of other humans, as do all 3 versions of the Abrahamic God, as well as his special little boy, J.H. Christ himself; 2) he had an especially strong dislike of organized religion and its perpetrators–I mean its clergy; and 3) he repeatedly, clearly and unmistakably believed in a strict wall of separation between Church and State.
None of which seems remotely relevant to climate change… But, since we’re (unfathomably) discussing boring, plagiarized Bronze-age myths that people still believe on “faith,” I’d like to point out my faithful belief that if Jefferson were alive today, he would view slavery as the horror that it is, and would most certainly be anti-theist. He would also have the courage to get in front of a CSPAN camera and say both things.
My long reply failed to post, so I’ll just observe that Jefferson was not an athiest. He was a Deist, who resisted the concept of extinction for religious reasons:
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/species-extinction
The text of the Declaration as printed shows what was considered standard form, regardless of how TJ wrote his first “Rough draft”. You have not a shred of evidence supporting your baseless assertion that all nouns were capitalized nouns in the 18th century. As in the 19th, the standard was different from now, but more were capitalized then than now, but not all. As you have been repeatedly shown.
Re: Catherine Ronconi 3/20/15 @ur momisugly 7:30 pm:
You have been accused of hurling invectives, and you respond by saying in effect, he started it, salted with another handful of invectives (e.g., crazier, lunatic, divorced from reality, patently absurd, claiming superior[ity]). You cannot be considered a serious poster, and you’re lucky to get this much attention.
I imagine that in Jefferson’s day a certain heat from the witch burnings still hung in the atmosphere. It took a great deal of courage and possibly a bodyguard or two to admit to being an atheist. It was political correctness with a death penalty. Neither you nor I can attest to Jefferson’s religious beliefs, but Jefferson famously said, Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my god and myself alone. I suggest you take Jefferson’s advice.
I did. I asserted nothing about Jefferson’s religion. I cited from authorities, i.e., Judith Thurman, a prize-winning journalist, and Jon Lackman, PhD, where Jefferson’s religion was tangential. If you don’t agree, take it up with them.
Besides, you’re picking the fly specks out of the pepper. The subject is the use of capitalization, the subject treated by both Thurman and Lackman, and by me, taking the lead first from Darwin’s own writings. Natural Selection was his defined word, and according to some standards still found today, appropriately designated by capitalization, and a phrase needing differentiation from its meaning in ordinary English. It also is worth preserving because it suggests a holy origin, suiting Darwinism’s Intelligent Design.
If you want a dialog on the subject, my advice is turn off the noisemaker and write something substantative.
Are you nuts? It would appear so, even loonier than your buddy Mpainter.
Do you really not recall asserting that Jefferson was “was a reliable atheist”?
I guess it should have been obvious from the get go, since your claim that Darwin “anthropomorphized” natural selection was based on his sometimes having capitalized the process, which is ridiculous.
As you have been shown over and over again, Darwin capitalized all kinds of words that nowadays aren’t usually capitalized.
Pointless to try to educate a whacko and of course impossible to engage in a dialogue with one.
Re: Catherine Ronconi 3/21/15 @ur momisugly 7:38 am:
… nuts … loonier
Do you really not recall asserting that Jefferson was “was a reliable atheist”?
Is this a test to see if I, too, recall things that didn’t happen? Aim before you shoot. What I wrote was a synopsis of Thurman’s article, made plain under the heading A spoiler:. 3/20 @ur momisugly 4:32 pm. Could the problem be that you don’t know what a spoiler is?
I guess it should have been obvious from the get go, since your claim that Darwin “anthropomorphized” natural selection was based on his sometimes have capitalized the process, which is ridiculous.
Didn’t happen! I led you personally and by the numbers through Darwin’s process of imbuing his Natural Selection with human powers. ¶¶ 5, 6, & 7, 3/19 @ur momisugly 3:22. In quotations ##5 &6, Darwin expressly gives Natural Selection (as it appears over 20 times in the Origin) the same powers as man demonstrates in husbandry. Moreover, Darwin went much further than mere anthropomorphizing natural selection. In my post to you personally on 3/20 at 10:40 am, I gave you two quotations from The Origin showing that Darwin thought Natural Selection came from a Higher Authority (my translation of higher workmanship) and that it worked for the Good (my capitalization) of the species. This isn’t anthropomorphizing, it’s deifying and it’s anti-science. Your only responses (apparently, because you routinely fail to cite what you are critiquing) was to misunderstand, immediately above, and to say ridiculously wrong [3/20 @ur momisugly 1:12 pm].
As you have been shown over and over again, Darwin capitalized all kinds of words that nowadays aren’t usually capitalized.
Where exactly was that shown? Regardless, the issue is not what Darwin in general capitalized. Darwin frequently, though not consistently, capitalized Natural Selection, which is my principal, though partial, justification for doing so here. He also capitalized Struggle for Life and Survival of the Fittest. Other Darwin capitalizations are frequent, and irrelevant. As I pointed out to you on 3/20 @ur momisugly 10:40 am, your claim that Darwin was following some 1858 rules of orthography was, to be kind, improbable.
… whacko … .
You seem to misread deliberately just to bolster your ego by casting epithets.
By the way, in my recounting of your invectives, I left out ludicrous, laughable, preposterous. They could be sung to the tune of My Funny Valentine. This pattern could be interpreted as insulting, but considering the source, they are excused.
Jeff Glassman says, “By the way, in my recounting of your invectives, I left out ludicrous, laughable, preposterous. They could be sung to the tune of My Funny Valentine.”
Ya each day is Valentine’s Day around here!
It’s amazing how snide you are regarding issues that have no merit, having been thoroughly addressed. Every single objection. Every question. You aren’t even beating a dead horse. The carcass has been collected and you are beating the chalk outline.
Jeff Glassman March 21, 2015 at 9:47 am
So let me get this straight. You summarized the work of a guy who is so ignorant about Jefferson that he claims he was an atheist, in support of your position about Jefferson’s use of capital letters. All in effort to support your entirely evidence-free inference about the wholly imaginary implications of Darwin’s use or non-use of capitals. Which claim you continue to assert even after being shown that Darwin capitalized all kinds of words that could not possibly have anything to do with capitals implying anthropomorphism, and when by your own admission he didn’t always capitalize “natural selection”.
Sorry, but that’s just flat out nutty!
Thomas Jefferson was a Francophile. His sympathies were with Europe and all of its atheist/agnostic trends, but esp. with France. He and John Adams had a long correspondence after their protracted political rivalry was over. John and Abigail Adams both had a deep and lifelong faith, and John Adams wanted to bring his friend around before their deaths. But their main difference was about Jefferson’s huge, enormous, blindingly daft error in regarding the French Revolution as the equivalent and/or the natural outcome of the American Revolution. John Adams in the end was persuasive enough to win an admission from Jefferson that the French Revolution was not in the spirit of the American Revolution at all, but was a mass execution, and did not obtain the same results.
@Zeke
Jefferson and Adams were in accord on religion, despite Adams’ coming from a Puritan background. Both were deists, not atheists. Abigail Adams, too. They didn’t have to bring him around. All of them were monotheists but questioned the divinity of Christ, ie they were unitarians, not trinitarians
Jefferson and the Adamses all believed in an almighty creator and saw the hand of providence in the Patriots’ victory in the Revolution. If anything, Jefferson was more religious than the New Englanders, although perhaps more anti-clerical.
As for his sympathies for the French Revolution, you’re right. Adams was more pro-English and was ridiculed for it (“His Rotundity”). But IMO Jefferson never went as native in France as Franklin did. That’s why Adams and Jay were sent over to rein the old lech in.
I am well aware that history is being re-written to remove Christians from American history and from science history. This re-writing of history is aggressive and shameless. (Apparently we even have a President claiming that Jefferson was a Muslim sympathizer, had a Qu’ran and that Islam is woven into the country’s founding.)
My caution to anyone is that if a member of the Cannabis Generation’s mouth is moving, speaking or writing publicly about any Christian, or any passage of the Bible, you should consider that the opposite is much closer to the truth.
Madison, Adams, and Washington made their faith in the Word and the Savior (Y’shua) clear in speeches and writings. They did understand that they worked along side natural philosophers and even trendy European intellectuals. They each warned that even a society based on individual freedom has no solid foundation if there is no love, integrity, duty, and grace of God in people’s hearts.
This is how history is re-written: Once a Christian dies, atheist/agnostic academics suddenly become experts in what the departed really believed. This altering of the actual Christian faith of scientists and historical figures is especially easy to accomplish on the internet.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear… If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you.
— Thomas Jefferson, to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787.
More importantly: Who cares? Belief in fairy tales doesn’t matter anymore than eye or hair color except in very narrow circumstances. Nothing obsesses believers as much as figuring out all the minutiae of their stingy little belief system and how it matters in the world.
It is abusively boring.
The very fact that intelligent people who are knowledgeable about science bother to engage this nonsense is like feeding pigeons: it gives them sustenance, it attracts more pigeons, and your surroundings end up covered in sh*t.
I have read in the good book that during a siege by the Assyrians in the land of Israel in the 8th century BC, dove droppings could be sold for several days’ wages. Therefore we have historic record that at least in the worst circumstances dove scat has some nutritional value.
UNESCO approved versions of world history, on the other hand, have nothing like that dove s#&^ recommend it, and even less of taste to the heart and mind. And it should give many people pause to wonder why the UNESCO World Empire bunch is so anxious to wipe out our book, to undo agriculture, energy, and personal transportation, and expunge our contributions to freedom, science, and history.
I remind everyone here that there are many historical models and ways of interpreting the past. One person may hold the geographical view, one the unhistoric view, one the economic view, one the great-man interpretation of history. There is no more worthless historical paradigm than the one glorifying the conquering empires of the past – least of all Rome. In the scriptures, empires are portrayed as aggressive and unnatural chimera, assembled from the worst of the conquered nations. They are portrayed as conquering and “trampling the residue under the feet.” The world empire that is coming will be the worst of all of the past world empires – Babylon, Assyria, Greece and Rome – put together. In our writings and prophets, these truths are recorded accurately, and for our good.
inre: Thomas Jefferson quotes. One more for good fun.
“As for France and England, with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of robbers and the other a den of pirates. And if science produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine, and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest, and estimable as our neighboring savages are.”
Well Zeke, you should probably update your playbook. Because that quote doesn’t mean what you think it does. I won’t spoil the fun of figuring it out for yourself.
Also, I would’ve cut it off before the word “savages.” Guess who he was referring to? Not exactly his noblest moment…
Yes, good fun indeed.
Those who assert that Adams believed that Jesus was the son of god are rewriting history. Or have never bothered to read it. I don’t know for certain about George Washington, because he didn’t write about his beliefs, but he probably was a unitarian, like James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and other Founders. Franklin was probably the closest to being an atheist, late in his life, but no one can say for sure. He did object to Jefferson’s original language in the first draft of the Declaration as too religious.
From reading the letters between Jefferson and the Adamses, I know that they were in accord that Jesus was not divine. That makes them technically not Christians, same as Lincoln, but they were theists. (The young Lincoln was probably an atheist, however. Those who knew him best said so, but he might have gotten more theistic in the terrible years before his death.)
The Adamses were unitarian. They were active members of the First Parish Church in Quincy, which was unitarian from at least 1753. Like John’s, Abigail’s theological views evolved over time. In 1816, late in her life, she wrote her son and future president J. Q. Adams, about her religious beliefs then:
“I acknowledge myself a unitarian – Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father … There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.”
She expressed similar sentiments to her daughter and to Jefferson. The fact is that the most important Founders and their families were deist and unitarian, that is, they believed in a god but not in the divinity of Jesus.
Evolutionist believe a super outer space meteor delivered the key to start this life evolving circus. The movie Prometheous with multi million dollar CGI however is more convincing…Evolution circus began when the bald, oversized pasty white guy seeded life with a chirality potion.
When your Daddy is a meteor, you have to assume outer space rocks are smarter than terrestrial.
@Prometheus
Whether microbes arrived on earth in meteorites or developed here independently has nothing to do with evolution, which is not about the origin of life.
Evolution explains the observed changes that have occurred (and not occurred) in life on earth after it arose here, by whatever means.
It is, as many have noted in comments above, an observed fact that new species (and higher taxonomic classifications) have evolved from ancestral forms.
Nor should this fact surprise anyone. People have created new species out of existing ones for thousands of years. Domestic sheep can no longer produce fertile offspring with their ancestral species, for instance. Corn cannot reproduce on its own, let alone produce fertile offspring with its wild ancestor teosinte. Now we can create new species in the lab, both gradually over time, as in selective breeding experiments with insects, or rapidly, as with bacteria and yeast through simple mutations, plants through polyploidy, and even animals (to include insects but also “higher” animals) via hybridization.
The last common universal ancestor of all life forms now alive on earth lived quite a while after the first appearance of organisms on this planet.
Organic chemical evolutionary mechanisms played a part in the development of life from its constituent parts (which do exist in abundance on meteorites), but biological evolution requires biology and biochemistry, ie replication and metabolism, to exist before it can operate.
If it is so easy to disprove Christianity, why are the arguments here so based on vitriol and insult?
Humorously, that only fulfills prophecy.
Sowerby sez:
“Those who assert that Adams believed that Jesus was the son of god are rewriting history. Or have never bothered to read it. I don’t know for certain about George Washington, because he didn’t write about his beliefs, but he probably was a unitarian, like James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and other Founders.”
“Other Founders:”
—The majority of the Founding Fathers were devout Christians. In recent decades, we hear a lot about the handful who were Unitarian and deist or atheist because this is in vogue in higher education.
George Washington, as best as we can tell, was a devout, Bible-reading Christian.
During the Revolutionary War, he sent a letter to a general regarding how to direct the revolutionary soldiers in order to stay healthy. The letter is not that long, and is an interesting read. Anyone can access it here, or elsewhere by googling “washington peeks-kill orders general”
http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-100970598-bk
“Soldiers are not supposed to be acquainted with the Art of preserving Health; they are little versed in Books; but, to the Honour of American Soldiers, it is allowed that no men in Christendom of the same Occupation are so well acquainted with their Bibles: Let them, once more, read the History and Travels of the Children of Israel while they continued in the Wilderness, under the Conduct of Moses; and let them consider at the same Time that they are reading the History of a great Army, that continued forty Years in their different Camps under the Guidance and Regulations of the wisest General that ever lived, for he was inspired. In the History of these People, the Soldier must admire the singular Attention that was paid to the Rules of Cleanliness. They were obliged to wash their Hands two or three Times a Day. Foul Garments were counted abominable; every Thing that was polluted or dirty was absolutely forbidden; and such Persons as had Sores or Diseases in their Skin were turned out of the Camp*. [Here GW footnotes Numbers 5:1]
“The utmost Pains were taken to Keep the Air in which they breathed, free from Infection. They were commanded, to have a Place without the Camp, whither they should go, and have a Paddle with which they should dig, so that when they went abroad to ease themselves, they might turn back and cover that which came from them**. [Here, GW footnotes Deuteronomy 23:12.]”
I hardly see Washington gushing over some “bronze-age pigeon – sh yte” in such an effusive manner if he did not believe this.
The truth is that the Old Testament, in the Exodus narrative, simply has some public health stuff and other stuff that is FAR different than any other legend-writing, fable, etc.