A while back, I got a letter from a student at the University of Texas named Mark, who had been confronted by a group of those typically hysterical anti-choice people on campus. They made an assertion I’ve heard many times, and he asked me to counter it.
So there I was, walking along the University of Texas campus, enjoying an absolutely gorgeous day (it was 75 and sunny!) when all of a sudden I’m accosted by a huge structure covered with gigantic (10+ ft) pictures of 5-20 week old fetuses. Surprise! I’d forgotten all about our annual day of political theatre hosted by some pro-life group on campus. I started having a very cordial conversation with a couple of (very cute!) pro-lifers when one of them makes the astounding claim that “Every biologist would agree absolutely that life begins at conception”. I let it pass and then I call her on it after she says it a couple more times. Eventually she explains that she’s very confident in this statement because their ‘executive director” always says it, and claims that if someone proves him wrong he’ll eat the paper it’s written on.
Easy. I sent back a quick reply…I daresay that no competent biologist would take the position that these anti-choicers claim is universal among us.
Life does not begin at conception.
It’s an utterly nonsensical position to take. There is never a “dead” phase — life is continuous. Sperm are alive, eggs are alive; you could even make the argument that since two cells (gametes) enter, but only one cell (a zygote) leaves, fertilization ends a life. Not that I would make that particular claim myself, but it’s definitely true that life is more complicated than the simplistic ideologues of the anti-choice movement would make it.
I recently received more email from someone in this organization; the mail is from a David Lee, but is signed “R.”, so I’m not sure who I’m talking to. Whoever it is, they don’t quite get it, but are trying desperately to weasel out of the bargain now.
Dr. Meyers,
I’m in possession of correspondence between yourself and a University of Texas at Austin student by the name of Mark. Mark handed me a copy of his email addressed to you, and your email response addressed to him dated February 25, 2009, as citing evidence that would require me to eat the page upon which your response was printed.
Mark presented me your remarks as said evidence to be eaten because during the Justice For ALL Exhibit (www.jfaweb.org) presentation at UT-Austin several weeks ago I was heard to offer to eat the page of the biology textbook in use on the UT-Austin campus that asserts that “someone having human parents can be something other than biologically fully human, at any point in their existence.”
I proffered my eating-the-page challenge that day in response to numerous students’ claim that the offspring of two human parents was not biologically human until birth (in their defense most of them were not science majors).
I did not eat the page that Mark handed me that day because it did not contain the evidence I requested. Which is why I now write to you. You claim to have knowledge of such documentation.
In fact you make the bold assertion in your correspondence with Mark that “[Human] life does not begin at conception” followed by “…There is never a ‘dead’ phase — life is continuous. Sperm are alive, eggs are alive; you could even make the argument that since two cells (gametes) enter, but only one cell (a zygote) leaves, fertilization ends a life. Not that I would make that particular claim myself… .” (my bold and italics)
I’m encouraged that you don’t make the claim that human fertilization ends a human life; however in postulating the argument you seem to grant nebulous scientific credibility to those who might make such a claim? For what purpose? Surely not to discredit my position.
Unless you believe in the possibility of an extra-physical or metaphysical existence, I seriously doubt that you believe your own assertion that “…There is never a ‘dead’ phase — life is continuous.”
On what evidence do you base your assertion that “life is continuous?” Do you believe in life after death in some physical or metaphysical sense? If you mean by your assertion that at least one human self-directing organism must contribute living genetic material in order for a new member of the human species to come into existence I quite agree.
But you have labeled my assertion “simplistic” and “nonsensical” that sexually reproduced human life — I’ll go further than that — all new mammalian species members, have a beginning, and that that beginning is the conception of the species member.
So professor, you’re on the record; from a biology or human embryology textbook in use on an accredited university campus (your own University of Minnesota-Morris campus would be fine), please cite chapter and page that unequivocally states that “human life does not begin at conception.”
I look forward to your reply. Respectfully,
R.
Talk about complete, blind incomprehension…no, I’m not talking about life after death, since I don’t believe in that, either. I’m saying that it is absurd to talk about a life beginning at conception because it didn’t begin then: the precursors to the zygote were also alive. The only “beginning” of life that we could talk about occurred a few billion years ago, and even that wasn’t discrete, but the product of a gradual progression from chemical replicator to functioning cell, a cline upon which there was no point where one could say that everything before was dead, and everything after was alive. Life is a very fuzzy concept.
One thing you’ll notice is the frantic attempt to qualify everything by inserting the qualifier “human” before every mention of the word “life”, to the point where they are even adding it when quoting me! Alas, it doesn’t help them at all. I’m also confident that the freshly fertilized zygote is not human, either. There’s more to being human than bearing a cell with the right collection of genes.
Now this person wants a specific quote from a biology text that has the words “human life does not begin at conception” in it. That would be tough, because it’s a sentence that rather boggles the brain of any developmental biologist — we also tend not to write sentences like, “human beings are not flies”. We kind of expect that anyone intelligent enough to read the textbook doesn’t need their hand held in superfluous explications of the bleedin’ obvious. But you will find us saying simple things like that in email and conversations and even popular lectures to lay people…such as this talk by Lewis Wolpert.
Wolpert is, of course, one of the best known developmental biologists on the planet. He is also the author of a very good introductory text in developmental biology (Principles of Development(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)
), one that I use in my classes at UMM, and in this lecture (which you really should watch and listen to in its entirety, it’s very good), he does come right out and say the bleedin’ obvious.
What I’m concerned with is how you develop. I know that you all think about it perpetually that you come from one single cell of a fertilized egg. I don’t want to get involved in religion but that is not a human being. I’ve spoken to these eggs many times and they make it quite clear … they are not a human being.
There, that should help. When you go reaching for an authority in development, a professor at a small liberal arts college isn’t the sine qua non of the field (well, unless maybe you’re talking about Scott Gilbert…), but you really can’t pull rank higher than Lewis Wolpert.
Piltdown: “What do you understand by the expression “Kingdom of God” and how has the US Constitution in particular, or secular liberalism in general, helped to advance it?”
God loves social justice and freedom. That’s a Biblical truth. Read Amos. Understand what “righteousness” meant to the Prophets. Read Galatians. Consider what “freedom from the law” means in terms of individual conscience. Look at what Jesus talked about most (justice for the poor and oppressed), and then realize that He was the Kingdom of God drawn near.
And then consider what form of government does the most to achieve the goals dearest to God’s heart. Hint: it isn’t theocracy.
Then turn to the example of radical freedom set by Jesus and Paul . . . their inclusion of women among the disciples and heads of churches, their inclusion of slaves and gentiles. What does that example tell you about their rejection of the rigid social mores of their time?
Jesus rejected the Religious Right of His time in no uncertain terms. He taught a pared-down religion with only two basic precepts: Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Then factor in Paul’s insistence on religion localized within an individual and expressed through the fruits of the spirit.
Which political philosophy comes closest to exemplifying the inward value of individual freedom of conscience and outward value of care for others?
Piltdown: “Which is a greater affront to women – socially defined gender roles involving sexual taboos or violent, sadistic pornography?”
False dichotomy. Socially-defined gender roles were explicitly rejected by Jesus, so they’re a non-starter for His followers.
Violent, sadistic pornography has always existed, and probably will always exist as long as human beings remain human. But it flourishes where women have no power; Victorian England, for example, was an exemplar of both rigid gender roles AND of sexual sadism.
Your belief that women are “safe” when they stay in their Kinder, Küche, Kirche box is belied by history. Not only are they just as vulnerable to random male violence, but they’re far more likely to get beaten up, raped, and murdered by their own husbands and relatives.
Good Lord, man, don’t you ever read news stories or look at crime statistics? Don’t you know about honor killings, rape as a weapon of war, the history of domestic violence? Can you possibly not be aware that 80% of rapes are committed by male family members against women?
Are you truly ignorant of the incest statistics? Don’t you know that the single greatest predictor of incest is adherence to a fundamentalist religion?
And don’t tell me that “good Catholic men” are any damn better, because there’s absolutely no evidence to support your claim.
And finally, it strains credulity that any defender of the Catholic church can claim moral authority over anything at all, given its position as the single largest institutional promoter of sexual opportunism in the WHOLE DAMN WORLD.
My God, the frigging nerve of some people!
Piltdown Man #498:
Speaking as an ex-Christian, I think that Leigh’s contempt for such views as yours is actually much closer to the things that Christ supposedly taught in the Bible than your views are.
Well, Leigh has answered as a Christian, I’ll answer as an ex-Christian.
The ‘Kingdom of God’, depending on your denominations exact interpretation of the Bible, is either a mythical time, after Judgement Day, where all creatures and Man will exist in one kingdom, under the rule of a descendant of David, worshipping God, or, alternatively, it is a very amorphous ‘kingdom’ that consists, basically, of everyone who worships God, whether they are man, angel or anyone else. It is sometimes also used, by some denominations, to refer to the simple idea that God reigns supreme over everything.
As to how the Constitution advances the ‘Kingdom of God’, it doesn’t. It, in fact, quite specifically gives people the freedom to follow any religion they want, or none at all, and thus reject the whole idea of a ‘Kingdom of God’, if they so choose.
Not being a woman, I can’t answer this for certain, but I’d imagine both are offensive – and also aren’t mutually exclusive. What I’d imagine women want is the freedom to choose whether they engage in such ‘socially defined gender roles’ or not, as well as the freedom to not be subjected to volent and sadistic pornography.
As for your example of ‘violent, sadistic pornography’, which I assume that link to a 1978 Hustler cover you provided in post #468 is supposed to be an example of, I guess you saw the picture but didn’t read the writing. It says, ‘We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat.’ This was supposedly a quote from Larry Flynt. In other words, the cover was not intended as ‘pornography’, but as an illustration of what Hustler had been doing up until that point, where they pledged they wouldn’t do it any more. As to whether they actually lived up to that pledge, I do not know, as it is not exactly the kind of magazine I usually read.
You could try the witch hunts that took place between the 13th and 19th centuries, just to take one example off the top of my head. There, violence was not just advocated, but actually done on the authorization of the Pope. There’s a whole heap of other Christians, throughout history, that advocated violence against women, just because they were women, not because they were ‘witches’ (for example, look up the ‘Rules of Marriage’ written by Friar Cherubino in the 15th century).
If you want more modern examples, try things like the website christiandomesticdiscipline.com
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
You are joking, surely? The Catholic Church is at the root of some of the most violent and sadistic things to happen in history, from the witch hunts I mentioned above, to the Inquisition, to the Crusades, not to mention other things that are not directly violent, like placing Galileo under house arrest for a large chunk of his life, as he had the temerity to say that it was possible the Earth went around the sun, not the other way round, as that’s what the evidence and observations he was making were suggesting.
Congratulations, Jeff. :-)
Leigh Williams @ 501.
Leigh, your remarks are impassioned and obviously sincere but I would respectfully suggest that they suffer from a lack of charity. You seem to assume that anyone who doesn’t share your political views – the “Religious Right” as you crudely characterize them – are motivated by a desire to impede social justice and and exercise authoritarian control because they enjoy oppressing the weak. You are profoundly wrong in this.
Who would deny any of that? But if you’re going to claim that the best way to achieve these desirable ends is through an egalitarian secular order, you need to do more than just blandly assert it – because not only is there no necessary connection between egalitarianism and justice, there is arguably an active antagonism.
As for the Catholic Church, she has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to social justice. At the very time when the popes were pointing out the destructive errors of revolutionary socialism and communism, they were defending the rights of workers and attacking the excesses of monopoly capitalism ((Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno).
And read the Pentateuch to understand God’s predilection for a hieratic society that refuses to tolerate religious error.
As you well know, St Paul also had some decidedly un-PC things to say about women rendering due obedience to their husbands and sodomy being an abomination.
On the contrary, just as Jesus never attempted to foment an uprising against the Roman secular authorities, so he never denied the God-given authority of the Jewish religious leaders. He condemned them not for their theocracy but for their hypocrisy:
The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not.
And how is it an act of love for God or neighbour to allow His name to be blasphemed and His words ignored?
In the space of just two centuries, secular modernity has gone from this to this.
After Nietzsche had announced the “death of God”, his 20th-century disciple Foucault foresaw the inevitable death of man:
“Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disappear, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility … were to cause them to crumble .. then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”
So much for the imago Dei. This dismal trajectory had already been traced by far-sighted popes whose warnings were dismissed.
Is it an infringement of Christ’s law of love to accept this degradation without protest?
Christian feudal monarchy.
Did Jesus entrust Mary with the Keys?
And it flourishes considerably more today. Far be it from me to hold up the decadent Victorian era as a model of a well-ordered society, but are you seriously suggesting a Victorian child could wander into a newsagent and see magazines depicting women being fed into meat grinders on open display and freely available? Would such a thing have been conceivable in Salazar’s Portugal or De Valera’s Ireland or even 1950s America?
Of course such poisonous garbage existed then and could be surreptitiously acquired by those with sufficient money and influence. The fact remains that it was suppressed, not freely available.
Are you telling me that violent pornography does not exercise a corrupting effect? That those who produce it should be free to ply their trade undisturbed?
Produce your evidence to support your implied claim that wives of traditional Christians are “far more likely to get beaten up, raped, and murdered by their own husbands and relatives”.
Odd that – since we all threw off our cruel theocratic shackles long ago, shouldn’t everything be sweetness and light by now?
Shocking, all those Christian honour killings.
What does any of that have to do with religion?
As a matter of fact, I don’t know this. How exactly do these statistics define “fundamentalist religion”? For all I know it could include “fundamentalist” practitioners of voodoo or “fundamentalist” satanists. It’s a term so loose and vague as to be virtually meaningless, even when referring to “fundamentalist Christians”.
Your strident self-righteousness suggests a guilty conscience. And why not? “Liberal Christians” are basically Uncle Toms who have learned to love the World, the Flesh and the Devil. Good li’l Christians happy to burn incense to Caesar in return for a tolerant pat on the head.
If it had not been for the Catholic Church who sent missionaries to the ends of the earth, often to meet the most excruciating martyrdoms, you would never have even heard of the God of Israel or His only Son. And that’s a fact.
Pilty, your feeble pleas for us atheists to heed the idiotic dogma of your church is tiresome. You have no moral standing except in your feeble mind. You have had your say. We reject your dogma. Go away.
Yeah … but I survived Survivor!
Pilty, nobody seriously tried to remove you. But you need to understand that we have absolutely no use for your church’s dogma. You have presented it already, which means you have had your say. We aren’t going to agree with you, even with you posting the same illogic time and time again. So, if you want to stick around, don’t become obnoxious like the people who got banned. Have your say, then go away for a bit.
A pity, then, that its inevitable place for it in society is as something people only pay lip-service to when living otherwise entirely godless lives, and as the punchline for jokes about paedophile priests, anachronistic superstitions, and ‘three people walked into a bar’ jokes.
I love progress, don’t you?
Piltdown, yeah, you survived.
Proud, much? Vindicated?
You’re only on the edge of toleration, not beyond it.
:)
You mean the same missionaries who labored hard to destroy the cultures of every indigenous people they encountered? Are you saying that Vatican-approved vandalism, ethnocide and genocide (such as with the Southern Californian Indians) is a good thing?
Quite right. Torturing and/or killing people who commit thoughtcrimes, and/or stealing from them, is a sacred duty, and the fact that those doing the stealing and/or torturing and/or killing derive monetary benefit and/or pleasure from the screams of the dying is utterly incidental.
As I have argued many times before (and I have never ever seen a single effective counter-argument), if God is a real entity outside of your own bloodthirsty head, then “blasphemy” is utterly meaningless because no word nor action can possibly harm God. And it certainly cannot harm one’s neighbor.
All you do by suggesting that blasphemy is something terrible is imply that God does not exist outside of your own head; that the only reason that it is so terrible… is because it offends you.
The same imago Dei that Christians so enthusiastically tortured and killed in the name of that Dei, of course.
Fixed that for you. Because the question was not “Which political philosophy comes closest to exemplifying the Orwellian restriction and punishment of thoughtcrimes with torture, death, and property confiscation?”
Why is that even relevant?
And if he had, would you agree that the Church should therefore properly only permit women to become priests, bishops, cardinals and popes?
Odd, that – since Jesus, (allegedly) the son of God who (allegedly) died for our “sins” and (allegedly) resurrected, also (allegedly) brought a message of love for all, shouldn’t all Christianity have been all sweetness and light 2000 years ago?
@462
The fact of the matter is that someone will always be imposing their views on others where the law is concerned. If the religious guy doesn’t try to impose his ideas, by default the opposition will impose theirs.
I personally do not have a problem with imposing anyone’s views as law as long as it serves everyone equally.
I hope you know that many of our laws that are meant to keep you safe and prevent people from defrauding you are derived from religious sources.
The one that comes to mind first and foremost is slavery. It wasn’t until Moses said to Pharaoh, “let my people go”, that any serious consideration of the mass freeing of slaves was ever considered. The Christians preached freedom and were often killed for it. In this country, we weren’t the first to abolish slavery, but we were right in there with them. Even then, we had to fight a war to get the job done.
So I wouldn’t be so harsh on religious folks imposong their values of life and liberty on you.
If your god doesn’t exist, and your religiously inspired policies are hurtful to existing people, then why shouldn’t your agenda be opposed by others. Nobody should have to bow in any way to your inferior religion, certainly not by law.
Again Mover, you have nothing of interest to offer to the discussion.
I recommend this atheist pro-life girl: she defends the life of every human being (before or fter birth) with atheist arguments and science…
http://ravingatheist.com
Nerd of Redhead, OM@513
Whether or not an actual God exists or not is immaterial. The fact that of the 3 religions most Americans hear the most about, 2 of them profess individual freedom and liberty. We are currently at war with the more radical elements of the third.
It is that belief in a higher authority that forces most people to think twice before doing something really bad. You may argue that survival instincts have a major role in this equation and you’d be right. But without a common beliefs on a massive scale, such as 300M or so in this country, none of the advances in science that we avail ourselves and our families of, would exist.
Without Christianity there would be no Bill of Rights in the US Constitution and no federal level protections for individuals.
Of course, Mr. Obama and friends are trying to destroy all that. But it will be difficult.
Mover, godbots like you try to inhibit the freedom of existing peoples by trying to legislate their religious beliefs. That is not acceptable in a polytheistic country. Keep your religion to your church. Allow other peoples to make their decisions, even if it goes against your religious beliefs. After all, you can always say no to something other people find acceptable. Abortion is about the existing woman versus the fetus. In any sane society, the woman wins that battle every time.
If a person thinks that a human begins some time after conception, then when? – Mike
#18 I think and I believe you know that you put your foot directly in your mouth with your comment….
” For these people the difference is that god placed the soul in the fertilized egg. (BTW – which cells have the soul in a full grown human – it kinda gets blurred a bit there)”
BTW is that a question you are asking or a statement you are giving?
Which cells have the soul in a full grown human ?
Which cells have the soul in a full grown human.
either way you make the point for the opposition.
How do you suppose we determine if we are delivering part of the soul in sperm or egg ?
or
At what point is the soul introduced and to which cell.
By the way I am just a lay person who was searching for a way to have an intellegent conversation about the morning after pill when I stumbled upon this post.
As for you Evolutionists…..
Can you tell me why if we Evolved from a single cell somewhere; why has that stopped?
why can’t we fly yet or live under water?
Are you telling me that an proccess so advanced that could produce something as complex as the human body would just be happy with what it has and not try to improve on itself ?
Feel free to email me anyone
anthony.hargrave@yahoo.com
An inane question, but evolution is still going on, and will go on until all life on earth dies off. That is the nature of evolution. The rest of your questions are equally inane, and have nothing to do with anything. Poor deluded guy.
First of all NOR my question was not inane. It was very valid.
But maybe you can tell me how Humans are evolving. In what way are we any different than we were 1000 years ago. I know you will say that “evolution takes more time than that”
and i understand that point. However, how do you explain the fact that none of the major species have changed physically. Why can’t chickens fly yet. They are slaughtered on a massive scale. Wouldn’t nature try to protect them ?
I am not a science major, I am a soldier and am seriously looking for an answer from you guys.
If you want to call names and diminish my search then don’t reply.
Just remember that while you are debating whether there is a God or some random happening created us. I will be putting my ass on the line for that very freedom you so enjoy.
AH
AH, your questions are inane and you know it. Your attempts to rationalize otherwise show your desperation. Evolution can happen in twenty years for bacteria, which have 24-48 hour generations, but take 100,000 years or more for hominids, where the generation time is 20-30 years. You aren’t that smart if you can’t do the math, and most creobots can’t do math beyond 2+2=5.
Now AH, I will put the shoe on the other foot. Cite the peer reviewed primary scientific literature showing that any other theory than evolution (not Darwinism) is present in contemporary biology that has the explanatory power of evolution, and that there is scientific evidence for it. Until you can do so, with at least 20 citations for the last 10 years, you have nothing. Don’t come back until you have the citations. Bye.
what’s a “major species”? and how does the appearance of nylonase, DDT resistant mosquitoes, and citrate-eating e-coli bacteria not count? (and those are only the ones I could think of on the spot, there’s many more)
that’s backwards. chickens once could fly, now they can’t. and nature doesn’t “protect” or “want”, it just does. and chickens as a species are actually less likely to go extinct as long as they’re fat, tasty, and lay many eggs. and so, chickens grow to be fat, tasty, and to lay many eggs. :-p though actually, it’s humans that drive chicken “evolution” right now. it’s called domestication.
Boy, what a way to diminish your own sacrifice.
Yes. Yes, We evolved from a single cell somewhere. Some when. That somewhen is likely to be 700 million years ago or more. Where? A place that no longer exists.
Why has what stopped? The evolution of multicellular life-forms from single-celled forms? That happened numerous times in the past (brown algae, red algae, green algae+plants, fungi, animals). There is no reason to suspect that it has stopped. Several forms of life extant today (redundant, I know) are likely intermediates: e.g., Volvox, slime molds, Trichoplax…
the last time a soldier was putting his ass on the line for my freedom was in WW II.
Isn’t that the line Col. Nathan Jessup gives in A Few Good Men? Basically that, because he’s in the military, he can do what he wants?
AH, there are probably a million, give or take, papers in the peer reviewed primary scientific literature that directly and indirectly support evolution. Only a couple of papers that support another theory. You need to refute all the papers in the scientific literature, by publishing a rebuttal for each and every paper in the peer reviewed primary scientific literature. Getting blanket sweeps of “I don’t believe it” will be impossible, since each paper must be rebutted on its scientific merits.
As if you being a soldier means anything. We have many regulars who have been in service. Learn the science like they did. Start with this book if you are really interested, and not just jerking us around.
AH:
Educate yourself, A. hargrave. If you knew the first thing about evolution, you’d know right away that those questions are inane.
By the way, nobody can email you unless you provide an email address. The one you entered when you posted your comment is for the blog-owner’s eyes only. :-)
You wrote: “But maybe you can tell me how Humans are evolving. In what way are we any different than we were 1000 years ago. I know you will say that “evolution takes more time than that.”
I hate to disappoint you, but… How are we different? In these ways, to name a few.
Here, browse through this archive. It will keep you busy for a while (in a good way) and may help you get up to speed. If not, then perhaps you weren’t as interested in learning as you thought. *shrug*
Either way, best wishes, and be careful out there.
Yep. Him or Cartman: “You must respect my authoritah!”
I hope that when A Hargrave survives his service, he stops to think about all those God-debatin’ scientists he loathes so much whose research made his survival that much more likely. I mean, priests have been around for millennia, and yet it’s only since the advent of modern science that battlefield mortality rates really started to drop, through better weapons, better armour, better technology, and better medicine.
Here AH: why don’t you read a little bit about the modern military medicine that’s likely to save your ass (though I sincerely hope you never have to make use of it). Please note that NOVA is a science program.
By the way, if you ever get around to thinking about how amazing it is that you lived long enough to be able to serve those freedoms you so begrudgingly protect (hint: look up ‘infant mortality’), science says “You’re welcome.”
Among other things, humans are, on average, taller and longer lived than they were 1000 years ago due to the advent of superior hygiene, better diets, access to clean water and the development of vaccines and superior medicines.
That, and tolerance of lactose in adults has evolved at least twice in human history due to cultures with dairy-enriched diets.
Also, humans have evolved the ability to secrete the enzyme chitinase, enabling us to prevent dust mites and fungi from getting too chummy inside of our bodies.
Your questions suggest otherwise, actually.
That you use the terms “major species” and “changed physically” do not suggest that you “understand the point.” Furthermore, if “none of the major species have changed physically,” then please explain how people have been able to domesticate plants and animals, creating extremely showy creatures that are radically different from the ancestral breeds, such as comparing and contrasting domestic watermelon with wild watermelon, comparing wild tomatoes with beefsteaks, comparing telescope goldfish with wild carp, comparing orchid hybrids with their parent species, or comparing Pomeranians with grey wolves.
Also, new species have appeared, such as the London Underground Mosquito, which is descended from a population of European Gnats that became trapped in the sewers and tunnels of London over 100 years ago, or the Honeysuckle Maggot Fly that is descended from hybrids of the Blueberry Maggot Fly and the Snowberry Maggot Fly 200 years ago.
Chickens can and do fly. However, because chickens are pheasants, they are ground-dwelling birds that fly very poorly because they fly only when absolutely necessary, such as when they have to escape a mammalian predator, or when they want to survey their surroundings from a high vantage point.
Chickens are in no danger of extinction because humans breed chickens at a mindboggling rate specifically in order to both replenish the numbers of chickens used for food, as well as to create new breeds of chickens, both for consumption and aesthetic reasons. That you have to pose us questions like that is why we have grave doubts about your motives and your sincerity.
If you have to tell us this after posing such inane questions (“why can’t chickens fly?”), then dinars to donuts suggest that you were never searching for anything to begin with.
Tell us again why we should trust our lives and our freedoms with someone, like you, who is probably relishing the thought of us burning in Hell for all eternity while you and God laugh at our agony simply because we accept the evidence of reality, and don’t accept a literal interpretation of the Bible?
Oops, I missed the follow-up post with the email. My bad.
Most likely, Private Hargrave is probably going to pray that he comes home to a theocratic dictatorship where people are publicly executed for daring to contradict what the government says about the Bible on a daily basis.
Because evolution doesnt care about your Superman and Captain Nemo fantasies?
But,as jadehawk has pointed out to you,you have it backwards,our ancestors used to live under water,and used to fly around.
O.K
There were so many responses to deal with i’m not quite sure where to start.
First I should say to you all ” Calm Down ”
If I didn’t want a debate I wouldn’t keep comming back.
Now
As for many of you that are referring to my questions as inane; i find that offensive. ( maybe that is your goal…If so mission accomplished ) My questions may be juvenile to you but you are all obviously science majors of some sort and have had years to study your specific areas. I said that i wasn’t a science student but that i was a soldier ( which many of you have translated into me having some kind of superiority complex or ” Right to ” attitude. You couldn’t be more wrong. I was just giving some background. ( I know I may have put a few of you on edge with my comment about “Putting my ass on the line for …….” )I Admit, Uncalled for.
I am a lover of and have a great deal of respect for Science itself. I think that the fact that we can launch a missile from Arazona and hit a doorknob in Bagdad or that we can track the movement of a single microchip anywhere in the universe is mind boggeling. You better believe I am grateful for Kevelar,Jet fuel, band aids and deodorant for that matter. Someone mentioned NOVA. I enjoy that show and watch it often.
However the science of evolution is to me not as exact and defined as the physical sciences. 2+2=4 all day but evolution to me has to many holes in it. like my questions about the halt of human evolution.
O.K, here’s a question. Why is evolution select ?
some of you have called my questions inane but how did you get into the field that you are in. Didn’t you start asking the same questions ? I would’t think that you asking me how to load a 120mm round into a M1A1 tank was inane ( although elementary to me ) I would just realize that you didn’t know and that’s why you were asking.
NOR you asked me to refute all the documents pertaining to evolution. I can do that no easier than you can refute one book of the bible.
Kseniya
I appriciate your email and I checked out a couple of the links you sent.
However you started by saying ” Educate yourself, A. hargrave. If you knew the first thing about evolution, you’d know right away that those questions are inane.”
Let me say this again….I DON”T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT EVOLUTION.
I am a lay / Christian ( surprise )
Honestly i can’t explain it either. It’s just Faith.
Most of the time it’s easier to take what the bible says about creation than it is to believe that we just perfectly “happened” and not just us. If evolution is true than wouldn’t all species have originated from one single cell ?
Someone mentioned kicking me off of here… Why would you ?
What’s the use of having all your knowledge if you can’t argue your points and teach.
AH
Well there’s your problem right there.
Rorschach
It’s not about fantisies. It’s about the human nature to explore. We always want to go farter faster and are so curious. It would seem that nature would have allowed us to do the things that we can’t without technology.
Believe it or not I forgot to make a point.
Some of you were giving examples of things that were invented or researched by humans to improve, sustain or prolong life. I’m asking about nature making the changes or lack of. Nature didn’t pasturize milk Humans did.
I’m not attacking scientists just evolution.
AH
Are you serious REV.BDC ?
Can you track evolution to a single cell? or is it just faith that the numbers will eventually lead you there ?
Rorschach
If what you say is true wouldn’t that be De Evolution ?
Why would nature evolve us into something less than we were.
If our ancestors could fly and live underwater. wouldn’t that make the entire Earth and atmosphere around it our natural habitat ?
If that is so than why would nature push us out of our home?
If that is so than why would nature push us out of our home?
There is no direction built in to the evolution of a given lineage. Natural selection is a local near-optimizer. No points for past success, and no bias against what might look like ‘de-evolution’; if a loss of function produces a more nearly locally optimized phenotype, that phenotype will prosper. “Nature” has no goals, and there’s no better way to misunderstand its workings than to treat it as an agent.
AH, you still aren’t getting it. Evolution is the best science that describes the whole of biology. In fact, there is not another scientific theory that competes with evolution. This is a statement of fact. Science is only refuted by science. The burden of proof is upon you to show that you are right, not us, since you are making a claim against evolution. A million or so papers say we are right until you can show otherwise.
If you have another scientific (as opposed to religious ideas like creationism or ID) theory to propose, the way to do so is to write up a scientific paper, citing or providing the scientific evidence for it, and submit it to a peer reviewed scientific journal, like say Science or Nature. Until it is in the scientific literature, it won’t be discussed by scientists.
If you can’t see how evolution works, then read the Coyne book I referenced above. It may be available at your local library. Your questions are still inane, showing a deep ignorance of how science and evolution works.
NOR
It almost sounded like you were trying to help until the last sentence.
I have begun doing some reasearch from The TalkOrigins Archive. ( thanks for the lead Kseniya )
I would have enjoyed dialoging with you all but you seem to enjoy putting others down instead of trying to bring them to your level of understanding.
NOR as yo have just said: I don’t get it. I’m not a scientist so how could i possibly refute anything with anything other than what I know which is religion and creationism. That would be like me telling you to prove evolution but you can’t use science.
I’m learning from the archives that science does not accept creationism because it has no concrete evidence to back it up.
and believe it or not I understand the problem with the mutations that would have had to occur with Noahs family to produce the amount of diversities we have between humans.
I’m gonna continue with this because it has sparked my interest.
You all feel free to respond to this as i will come back to see what you have said. I’m just gonna keep quiet for a while until i have less INANE ( insert sarcasm here ) questions to ask if thats possible.
But i leave you all with this.
You say to Creationists ” show me proof of your God and we will listen ”
I say to you ” Show me the path to the single cell ”
( not just the human cell but THE SINGLE CELL )
I don’t believe that creationists are arguing that evolution occurs, but science wants to remove the one who said “Let It…”
I think if you would not ignore a creator we would not argue so much.
E-mails welcome
anthony.hargrave@yahoo.com
AH
Ahmanson supports Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to replace American democracy with a fundamentalist theocracy. In the society he favors, the death penalty would be required for “offenders” such as witches, homosexuals, incorrigible children, and people who disagree with the state religion (Benen 2000; Forrest and Gross 2004, 22-23,265-267).
Sound Familiar STANTON ?????
You should be ashamed that you couldnt come up with anything original
huh?
Um. The above is partially incorrect: the only flying organisms are insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats. None of them are ancestral to the human lineage.
Heh. Technically speaking, the entire Earth and atmosphere is indeed the natural habitat of the descendants of the original organisms that lived underwater, a few hundred million years ago.
It’s just that not all of those descendants are humans. Most are not.
Nature does not “push”, with any sort of intent. But some biological solutions to problems posed by specific environments are mutually exclusive with other biological solutions to other problems posed by other specific environments.
You said you were in the military, right? Warfare in desert environments is very different from arctic or winter conditions, or from naval conditions, or from mountain environments, or from plains environments. Each environment demands its own solutions.
Flexibility would of course be best — but flexibility can have costs as well, and isn’t always easy to achieve.
AH, there is no such thing as the SINGLE CELL, so lose that idea. It is not part of evolutionary theory. That sounds like a creationist idea, designed to make science seem absurd. We see a lot of those types of things here. These are usually what we call drive-by postings, where someone comes in with the inane question of the day (or hour), and leaves without waiting for an answer. Or if they wait around they disappear when we ask for evidence.
Also, science cannot use god as an explanation or a conclusion, so essentially science ignores god. If you must use god for an explanation, it isn’t science. Some theists have trouble with this. Scientists who are theists keep the science separated from the religion, and privately believe god supervised the science.
I have twice suggested Coyne’s book (now three times) as a place to start to learning about evolution. Or any or Richard Dawkins books. TalkOrigins is good, as it debunks AIG, the creationist site. Any good college level introductory text should have a chapter or two on evolution. I am not a biologist (I’m a chemist), so I can’t answer details about the biology.
This is an old thread, and your questions are off topic. If you are interested in learning further, look on the front page or two and there is a thread about Coyne. Ask your questions there.
There are a couple of ways of responding to this.
The first way is to point out that science already has an enormous amount of information about cells from a biological perspective. We know that they exist, that they come in many different forms and shapes and sizes. We know that the cells of multicellular life are highly specialized and highly cooperative, and are the result of two different types of cells coming together in a symbiotic union, probably more than a billion years ago. We also know that cells are highly complicated chemical systems that perform various types of chemical reactions, including the chemical reaction that enables them to grow (metabolism) and the chemical reaction that enables them to reproduce. So if you open up a book on cellular biology and microbiology and biochemistry, you’ll see a lot of what has been discovered about cells laid out.
Given all that we know about what cells are, the most parsimonious inference is that they arose from some set of chemical reactions that are not yet fully understood, but which can be investigated and tested. The origins of cells is a set of questions that can be asked by biochemists and organic chemists, and it is possible for them to arrive at answers — even if the answer is “it wasn’t this way” or “it might have been this way”.
You’ll note that this says nothing about God, one way or the other. This is the theologically noncommittal response.
And if we get into the response that addresses God, well… Do you think that God is something that can be tested scientifically? Do you think that God can be conclusively disproved as not having done something? Do you think that it can be conclusively shown that God does not exist?
If not, why not?
#547: And one of the obvious drawbacks of flexibility is that, to remain flexible, you can’t be optimized for any one activity, which means that, although you can do many different things, no matter which one you try to do at any given time, you will likely have to compete with specialists in that area who can do it better than you.
Since evolution is about the change in the characteristics in populations and requires heritable variation to get going, it technically can’t have begun with the first “single” cell (might not even have been a “cell”, of course). It would have begun with the second cell (or, more accurately, the first cell that was different in some way from all the previous cells, since it’s possible that the first few rounds of replication produced exact duplicates of the original without any mutations)
More likely than not, though, there was more than one spontaneous generation of life, and several different self-replicators appeared in various environments around the early earth more or less synchronously. But only one lineage ultimately survived to become LUCA for all subsequent life.
Ok Anthony, I apologize for characterizing your questions as “inane”. You have to realize that we get a lot of drive-bys here, a lot of people who cite all sorts of misinformation, claim to want to learn, but really have no intention of listening to anyone here, nor of reading the materials quoted or linked to, people who hold science in disdain while reaping its benefits every day of their lives.
No. That’s your fear talking. Science doesn’t “want” anything. It’s simply the best method we have for building some understanding of the universe we live in. If the discoveries made and conclusions reached happen to disprove the existence of a thunder god or a creation myth, well – that’s the way it goes. Deal with it like the adult that you are. Reality is what it is, and has no motives.
True, but people were drinking cow milk and goat milk long before Pasteur. Nature “provided” lactose tolerance, which proved to be a competitive advantage in agricultural societies. Lactose intolerance is normal in many populations. Tolerance is the beneficial mutation.
Here’s a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
The section titled “History of genetic prevalence” may be of particular interest.
nope. some of us are high-school drop-out artists. we just prefer to get the basics for ourselves before asking questions, because real people have limited capacity to answer the same inane questions, and you’ve been provided with more than enough basics to do your own homework. do read coyne’s book.
By the way, Anthony, nobody mentioned Pasteurization until you did. So… why did you? Lactose tolerance has nothing to do with Pasteurization. Did I miss something?
Kseniya
I was just making the point that some of the things that were being said were more human research and development than natural occurances.
I said I would be quiet for a while until I had more info / ammo. But I didnt want to leave you hangin so…
No need to reply….I’m Doing my homework on this.
BTW
Thank you …AA
Anthony
Then you didn’t understand what was being said, and your point was wrong.
Pasteurization is not lactose tolerance. Heating milk so as to kill microbes is not the same as the (adult) body producing enzymes that can digest milk sugar. Thinking that one has anything to do with the other, just because they both involve milk, is terribly confused.
Are you able to acknowledge that you were wrong? Are you capable of admitting that you misunderstood the original argument being made in the first place? This is an important point in itself.
MsA, Birth. Nothing else makes sense.