The Canadian science minister who first refused to answer a question about his support for religion because it was querying his personal religion has now flip-flopped and said that he does accept evolution. Only it’s a very twisted version of evolution. What does it mean when he says something like this?
We are evolving every year, every decade. That’s a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment. But that’s not relevant and that is why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong.
I’ll tell you what it means: it doesn’t matter whether he believes in any kind of evolution (and trust me, that explanation doesn’t touch the subject), because we can tell right away that the man is an incompetent moron who is going to flush Canadian science down the tube.
The guy is a chiropractor.
Science fail.
My state requires insurance companies to include chiropractic in their coverage. It’s no surprise to find out that chiropractors are very aggressive at getting involved in politics.
This guy makes Sarah Palin sound almost coherent.
What’s infuriating is that the Tories won more seats than previously in the last election. Despite being held to minorities both times, we still get stuck with peterrookes like this in positions of authority.
The sad thing is, and I say this as a proud small-L liberal (and formerly proud big-L Liberal who can’t vote for the party with its current pro-Iraq invasion leader), the crap he’s spewing would be just as at home coming from the mouth of a New Agey leftist.
Unimpressive. As the Canadian Cynic said, there’s nothing there that a creationist would necessarily disagree with. From a science minister we can reasonably expect more.
Somewhat OT, but I thought this anti-creationist youtube video would go over well with the locals.
Good lord,what a douchebag.And he is in charge of science in Canada? I really fear for the human race sometimes….
We are gathered here today not to mourn the death of Canadian science, but to celebrate its life.
It doesn’t do much good to say you “believe in evolution” when it is very clear that you don’t even understand what evolution is.
Why would the prime minister appoint someone who is not only clueless about science but a member of a profession that is actively hostile to science?
Stephen Harper has some explaining to do.
I think Gary Goodyear needs to ‘evolve’ himself a less thick skull.
jeez, if you have to phrase it as a “belief” in the first place, you don’t know the first thing about science.
Harper doesn’t seem to be making his cabinet appointments based on nebulous concepts like ‘competence’. I think it’s primarily based who’s the first to give him a standing ovation every time he baits the opposition.
Fortunately the Conservatives don’t have a whole lot of power now. Though I guess we’ll have to see if the Liberals deem cuts to science programs worth supporting while they bide their their time. I seriously doubt that would ever be something an election would get called over.
I believe the word Mr. Malaprop was looking for was adapting.
Goodyear – flat once again. Maybe they can use him as a coffee table or an umbrella stand.
Was this just a politician’s answer, genuine stupidity, or a mixture of both?
But the good news is that Goodyear is being skewered in the media. This quote is my favorite:
Canadian science minister = not real scientist
Canadian bacon =
Stephen Harper rushed to the pools last October hoping to get a majority on the basis that:
a) He hadn’t done a bad job
b) The Liberals were in disarray
c) In case Barack Obama won in November
I won’t go into the gory details, but Canadians were collectively smart enough NOT to give him that majority, and a more progressive Liberal/NDP/Bloc Quebecois coalition is waiting in the wings to potentially vote these clowns out of Government (something you can do in Parliamentary systems).
So now we have the tables turned – a progressive, Science-friendly government in the US, headed by a person more popular in Canada than any local politician, and a Canadian Science department headed by this buffoon. I sincerely hope the Conservatives do not survive many more months, and the Liberal PM in waiting, Michael Ignatieff, has been a Professor at Harvard.
I actually cannot understand what he’s talking about.
Is he saying the sun is heating up the cement so we all need to wear high heels rather than running shoes?
Does he wear high heels? Should I buy some?
I wish we didn’t elect bozos like this, but,
Harper and his party were almost trounced before Christmas.
Harper does not want to lose power, and he will not let this bring him down. The science community here is now aware of it, and will keep an eye on where science funding goes.
I’ve also gone to a chiropractor for hip and lower back issues. Deep massage and heat, and a crack of the joint cleared it up. A few times, I needed a second visit. Around here, Chiropractors are more akin to physical therapists, and don’t practice quackery. Medical Doctors here will actually recommend them, as they don’t do joint manipulations themselves.
Chiropractors — at least the traditional ones — believe in vitalism, a life force which can’t be detected by science, but which can be manipulated by healers who have the Right Sensitive Stuff. They’re starting out philosophically as pseudoscientists.
This then sounds a bit like the half-assed understanding of “evolution” espoused by the spiritual folks who believe in vitalism, the paranormal, and various versions of woo. They visualize evolution as the progression of the Life Force along a Great Chain of Being. I suspect Goodyear is really talking about our adapting to our environment as we both progress.
Stephen Harper rushed to the pools last October hoping to get a majority on the basis that:
a) He hadn’t done a bad job
b) The Liberals were in disarray
c) In case Barack Obama won in November
I won’t go into the gory details, but Canadians were collectively smart enough NOT to give him that majority, and a more progressive Liberal/NDP/Bloc Quebecois coalition is waiting in the wings to potentially vote these clowns out of Government (something you can do in Parliamentary systems).
So now we have the tables turned – a progressive, Science-friendly government in the US, headed by a person more popular in Canada than any local politician, and a Canadian Science department headed by this buffoon. I sincerely hope the Conservatives do not survive many more months, and the Liberal PM in waiting, Michael Ignatieff, has been a Professor at Harvard.
I find Gary Goodyear’s explanation of evolution completely baffling. Has walking on concrete sidewalks with high heels altered women or something? Even worse, Marc Garneau, the Liberal science critic and a former astronaut and head of the Canadian Space Agency, has said the Mr. Goodyear’s personal beliefs are not at issue and the Liberals would not see any problem with having a creationist as Minister of State for Science and Technology. I have written to the PM (getting the “Thanks for writing!” e-mail back) but I will also write to the Liberals about their position on science as well. What is going on here?
Maybe he was saying that the sun made his head too hot and he cannot think any more.
WTF, Oveur?
Yet another moron who has no clue what “evolution” means. I thought Canadian schools were better than ours here in the US, but this makes me wonder.
Can science tell us how it feels,
Evolving feet to fit high heels?
We search the DNA for clues
Adapted for our running shoes;
The Goodyear view (it never tires)
Proposes footwear lights the fires
That drive our human evolution,
And cracking backs is one solution.
I think the way his view computes
His mother must wear army boots.
I think he wanted to say, “If ‘belief’ is my penis and ‘evolution’ is a little boy, then I belief in evolution.”
“… we can tell right away that the man is an incompetent moron who is going to flush Canadian science down the tube.”
PZ, I think you may have missed your calling given your penchant for describing things succinctly, to the point and spot-on.
This guy’s understanding of evolution is incomplete. He didn’t say anything at all about two mosquitoes in a mud hole.
Recall that this is a day after the initial kerfuffle. Knowing it would come up again, he had a full day to craft this response. *shudder*
Can any Canadians explain exactly how much sway Goodyear has over science in Canada? I understand he’s a Minister of State, which is a junior level position, but I don’t really get Canadian politics that well. I’m just another ignorant American in that regard.
wtf is he talking about?
Even if this guy understood what it is and accepted evolution as a fact (assumptions that both appear to be questionable), the fact that he is a chiropractor, in other words, a subspecies of quack, is enough to make it a disgrace that he is a science minister. What will be next? A counterfeiter as minister of finance?
That Goodyear quote made me cry. Finding out Marc Garneau doesn’t have a problem with a creationist as Minister of Science and Technology makes me want to die.
@uknesvuinng #30
To be honest, I know more about the functioning of the American government than I do about my own… it comes from going to highschool in the States and the existence of shows like the West Wing without any Canadian counterparts, I guess. Still, it makes me feel badly as a Canadian sometimes.
Anyway, I too was absolutely horrified at this response. This guy is miserable, and I hope he doesn’t actually have much power.
Then they should be licensed as physical therapists, not as their own ‘health profession’. As far as I can tell, most are fairly good physical therapists, but almost all of them have proven willing to engage in therapies that are not indicated by the symptoms being shown. When the only tool you have is a massage, you really shouldn’t be treating pneumonia.
The Tories are losing support fast… it’s almost like they’re trying to get themselves launched out of government. And I say this as a one-time card-carrying party member. There are a good many people like me who have been looking over the last couple of years and coming up with “WTF??” For years they were good at keeping religion from obviously colouring their politics, but they’ve become more brazen, I think.
Unfortunately, the rest of the major parties in Canada are little better. The Liberals are probably more rational, but are certainly as corrupt. The NDP are questionably sane, and think that anyone who is employed owes all their money to people who aren’t. The Green Party is a good one-trick pony, but are otherwise questionably sane as well. The remaining 1/6 of our elected parliament wants to break up the country and really couldn’t give a damn about Canada as a whole.
What we need is a “none-of-the-above” vote followed by an election with totally new people. Alas, that’s never going to happen.
Huh? Sounds like Lamarkism to me, which is I guess a ‘theory of evolution’, albeit a long discredited one. Someone needs to ask him if he agrees that the modern Evolutionary Synthesis is the best explanation for the diversity of life on earth, and if not, why not.
Scientists should pressure him on this, because the evidence so far is pointing to him being a creationist, and it’s pretty dumb to appoint some-one who holds anti-science beliefs to the position of science minister. It would be like appointing a germ-theory-of-disease-denialist to the position of minister for health.
I hope that Canada’s many excellent science departments can co-ordinate on this. Their future funding is at stake.
I may be being paranoid here, but a preoccupation with the varying intensity of the sun is making a small voice in the back of my head wonder wether that implies he denies anthropogenic climate change as well…
I may be being paranoid here, but a preoccupation with the varying intensity of the sun is making a small voice in the back of my head wonder wether that implies he denies anthropogenic climate change as well…
We are evolving every year, every decade. That’s a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun,
Hmmm that seems like kind of an odd thing to say.
whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else,
Great, he got some chiropractor stuff in there.
whether it is running shoes or high heels,
Great, more chiropractor stuff.
of course we are evolving to our environment.
Thanks for providing some excellent chiropractor examples for illustrating the point!
But that’s not relevant and that is why I refused to answer the question.
Yeah I wonder if he answered any other irrelevant questions. Probably not!
The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong.
Well there you go. He only answered questions about science and tech strategy.
This is of course complete nonsense. He couldn’t come close if he tried.
Let’s not exaggerate Goodyear’s power or influence. To say that he’s “in charge of science” is not accurate.
He’s a “minister of state,” one of 11 recently appointed. A minister of state has no department, and it’s much more of an advisory position than an executive one.
The theory is that a minister of state provides additional focus on a particular area. However, such positions are often seen as a way to give people a title without making them a full member of cabinet.
As I understand it, ministers of state are seldom if ever members of any of the key cabinet committees, and often don’t attend all cabinet meetings.
In other words, even if Goodyear really wanted to damage science, he has very limited power to do so. Example – his name was associated with the recent cuts, but it would not have been his decision on the size or timing of the cuts.
I’m not suggesting that there is no reason for concern, but it would help to keep things in perspective.
@ #30
Canadians have no choice over which elected members get which posts. Since Stephen Harper is in charge he appoints whomever he likes to whatever positions he wants. One would hope that he would choose competent and knowledgeable people, but Conservatives seem to be ideologically driven by business and money. Harper removed the position of Science Adviser when he was elected, so there is no one to oversee or comment on the scientific ramifications of government decisions.
It seems that their drive in the science and tech area is more related to what will sell well and make good money in the short term and not investing in research that may not have immediate benefit.
I’d hedge a bet that most Canadians are not aware of what the Harper government has done to shred science. Our politics are simply not as interesting or polarizing as American politics. People tend to vote based on feelings and whether the current government has screwed up enough to piss them off.
It’s about as much as you can expect from a politician. They won’t answer a question to begin with. When it looks like they’re going to lose face because they didn’t answer, they answer but in a way that at best isn’t any answer, and at worst is answering a question that wasn’t asked with an answer that is still wrong.
Note that Canadian Ministries are run very differently from US Departments, in that generally only the top person (the Minister) is a politician or political appointee. All the people who actually do the work (the deputy ministers, assistance deptuties, directors, etc.) are career bureaucrats who generaly know what they’re doing.
So despite his cognitive handicaps, Goodyear can’t actually “flush Canadian science down the tube”. Let’s not give the man delusions of grandeur.
I think you need to be pragmatic about it. Of course Canada needs to butcher their science standards, otherwise Americans won’t be able to continue making fun of them. They’re sacrificing themselves, to make you look smarter!
Is he saying the sun is heating up the cement so we all need to wear high heels rather than running shoes?
Yes, I think that’s it.
Does he wear high heels? Should I buy some?
Yes, everybody should all wear high heels.
Very true. The trend for the last 20+ years has not been to vote FOR the best party but to vote AGAINST the worst party.
This has led to the string of minority governments we have had over the last while because there isn’t universal agreement on which party is the worst, and there’s a lot of others to choose from.
Voting in Canada is much like this:
A Canadian dies and is greeted by Saint Peter. Peter tells the man he must choose between three hells.
The first hell is very hot and he sees a lot of people burning in bright orange NDP fire. Liberal hell is freezing cold and he sees people shivering and clamoring. In the Tory hell, he sees people standing in shit up to their waist but they look quite happy. They are drinking a cup of coffee and are chatting with each other. So the bad person says to Peter, “I choose the Tory hell with all the people standing in shit up to their waist.”
So Peter admits the bad person to the Tory hell. He gets a cup of coffee and feels quite comfortable. Suddenly he hears a beep from a loud speaker that says, “Attention. Attention. Coffee break is over. It’s time to stand on your head now.”
When I heard him quoted early this morning,
it was a source for great merriment for me.
Oh how I will rib my Canadian friends and enjoy
their humble apologies!
No one “believes” in evolution. You’re either convinced of its accuracy or not. Or, tragically, you choose to believe in something else, evidence be damned. This guy obviously falls into the latter category. As I understand it, there’s no easy way to oust this nitwit, which is a shame.
On environmental issues the Green Party angles left of the NDP. But on economic and social issues they seem to cleave well right of the Tories.
There’s one word that fits this answer:
EVASION.
And Goodyear has none of these … he’s a minister of state, and does not run a department. He may have some influence, but he has almost no real power.
PZ, maybe the next time you come up to Ontario you and I can take Gary out for a beer and he can get us to accept Hey-Zeus as our personal saviors.
WOW, Canadian Cynic made it PZ blog,… Damn now I have lost a bragging point with my fellow blogger,… DAMN YOU CYNIC!!!
~rant off~ Anyhoo, oh sweet Jebus and Great Flying Spaghetti Monster,… PZ stop pointing out Teh Stoopid up here in Cana-Duh. Seriously PZ, we are working on getting rid of these fucking retard neo-clowns and Sky Faerie beliefs.
Oh, after this humiliation, I need my Friday Cephalopod, you got any we use as Science Minister? Maybe a cuttlefish?
Oh well, at least you guys in the USA know that Teh Stoopid doesn’t stop at the border.
@#52 Scott Belyea
“And Goodyear has none of these … he’s a minister of state, and does not run a department. He may have some influence, but he has almost no real power.”
Well, surely a good thing, yet it is still somewhat disturbing that this figurehead was appointed anyways.
Perhaps Goodyear right now is just trying to evade the question, because that is usually what playing semantics is all about.
WOW, Canadian Cynic made it PZ blog,… Damn now I have lost a bragging point with my fellow blogger,… DAMN YOU CYNIC!!!
~rant off~ Anyhoo, oh sweet Jebus and Great Flying Spaghetti Monster,… PZ stop pointing out Teh Stoopid up here in Cana-Duh. Seriously PZ, we are working on getting rid of these fucking retard neo-clowns and Sky Faerie beliefs.
Oh, after this humiliation, I need my Friday Cephalopod, you got any we use as Science Minister? Maybe a cuttlefish?
Oh well, at least you guys in the USA know that Teh Stoopid doesn’t stop at the border.
I’ll tell you what it means: it doesn’t matter whether he believes in any kind of evolution (and trust me, that explanation doesn’t touch the subject), because we can tell right away that the man is an incompetent moron who is going to flush Canadian science down the tube.
it’s a kind of dictatorship of PZM.
Trust who ? you ? no.. no sorry….man….
#52 And Goodyear has none of these … he’s a minister of state, and does not run a department. He may have some influence, but he has almost no real power.
In correct, Gary -Flintstone- Goodyear is the Minister of Science and Technology here in Canada and is in charge of that Department, which includes all government funding to scientific research. The Conservative Party of Canada (the CPC) has been pushing to do a majority of funding of Scientific Research that has greatest possibility of producing revenues in the Private Sector. So things like Evolution Research and other areas where no solid cost/benefit analysis is possible or where the research is being done to just further our current understanding of the natural world is going down. In short this is a back door method of corporate welfare, not necessarily bad.
But we can basicly kiss good bye research on Environment, Global Climate Change and anything else these Ludites think is worthless. Yes, knowledge is worth while if there is profit, otherwise it leftwing, Marxist bullshit in their eyes.
come on ducks, quack it : “Hail Myers!”
it’s a kind of dictatorship of PZM.
Trust who ? you ? no.. no sorry….man….
Oh look, the poop & penis guy’s back. Huzzah.
Simple Simon, the one quacking around here is you. Or are you bleating your morally bankrupt religion?
He sidestepped the question. Our economic policy evolves every day. The tree in my year evolves every day, getting 1 year older every 365 days.
Chances are he believes the earth is 6,000 years old, Noah had a big boat full of dinosaurs, and microevolution can occur but macroevolution can’t.
If anyone knows what cult he belongs to, they can figure out his beliefs.
Canada has caught the American disease, a serious one. We would give you some sympathy but we are too busy being sick ourselves.
Oh, that’s done already. And very cleverly. They say they’ve given money for research by building those brand new buildings. They get to pose in front of them cutting ribbons for the press, and giving contracts over to their friends (or the Liberal’s) in the construction business. A win-win situation (for them).
But come and visit them. Good luck finding an actual scientist inside.
I’ve seen about half the new profs (untenured) leave starved for funding. Those that are left have reduced their teams by more than half, starting with those “costly” research professionals. In double the space, three quarters of the people gone, you can hear the crickets singing as you come in.
Now ask me again why I’m leaving research.
#52 And Goodyear has none of these … he’s a minister of state, and does not run a department. He may have some influence, but he has almost no real power.
In correct, Gary -Flintstone- Goodyear is the Minister of Science and Technology here in Canada and is in charge of that Department, which includes all government funding to scientific research. The Conservative Party of Canada (the CPC) has been pushing to do a majority of funding of Scientific Research that has greatest possibility of producing revenues in the Private Sector. So things like Evolution Research and other areas where no solid cost/benefit analysis is possible or where the research is being done to just further our current understanding of the natural world is going down. In short this is a back door method of corporate welfare, not necessarily bad.
But we can basicly kiss good bye research on Environment, Global Climate Change and anything else these Ludites think is worthless. Yes, knowledge is worth while if there is profit, otherwise it leftwing, Marxist bullshit in their eyes.
I was hoping you were going to update the story after I caught the CBC radio story on the way home last evening. I don’t care whether or not he “believes” in evolution or not, the fact is from his answer, he is absolutely clueless about what evolution is.
I just put his statement in my notes to have my sophomore evolution students rip apart…I guarantee they know much more than Goodyear does.
#52 And Goodyear has none of these … he’s a minister of state, and does not run a department. He may have some influence, but he has almost no real power.
In correct, Gary -Flintstone- Goodyear is the Minister of Science and Technology here in Canada and is in charge of that Department, which includes all government funding to scientific research. The Conservative Party of Canada (the CPC) has been pushing to do a majority of funding of Scientific Research that has greatest possibility of producing revenues in the Private Sector. So things like Evolution Research and other areas where no solid cost/benefit analysis is possible or where the research is being done to just further our current understanding of the natural world is going down. In short this is a back door method of corporate welfare, not necessarily bad.
But we can basicly kiss good bye research on Environment, Global Climate Change and anything else these Ludites think is worthless. Yes, knowledge is worth while if there is profit, otherwise it leftwing, Marxist bullshit in their eyes.
I think that so many “points” have been missed in this that the Conservatives will of course be able to wait it out and let it slip under the waves. The “influencers” (close circle) of this minister are NOT rocket scientists and he will be (is) undoubtedly influenced in making government policy on all sorts of expenditures. The minister “sets direction” and policies can be subtly influenced without grand pronouncements. The consistent rejection of the “scientific method” in favour of “we believe” statements is not being pursued by the press or the opposition. Even Marc Garneau PhD in Engineering, astronaut, and the Liberal’s science critic let Goodyear off the hook.
The language is also extremely loose. “I believe” should be reserved for articles of “faith”. “I accept”…. the overwhelming body of scientific evidence regarding evolution and the origin of species – would be more appropriate for someone who understands science and the constant growth in either supporting or undermining evidence. The Christian right has been extremely successful in equating religious “belief” with scientific “belief” and has allowed an unbelievably sloppy CNN style “debate” to be the basis on which people make decisions. A failed education system has served them well! Ironically, as has been pointed out subsequently, Goodyear’s “example” in his discussion with Jane Taber was of “adaptation” and not evolution.
The Harper government has shown disdain for the scientific method in its dismissal of research on safe injection sites and youth criminal justice. (“ivory towers”). Minister Goodyear’s lame, “of course I believe in evolution”, during his discussion with Jane Taber on CTV alluded ONLY to the “evolution” of a species, in his example humans. However, it was apparent that he was deliberately avoiding the question of the evolution of humans FROM a pre-human line. The defense of the minister has ranged from “his beliefs are irrelevant to his conduct as a minister” to “it is a violation of his rights to attack his beliefs”. If it is OK with Canadians that the federal minister of science repudiates the scientific method, then, hey, no worries!
I used to think Canada might be a saner version of the United States, but this debacle has forced me to change my mind. I really feel sorry for you, Canadians. :(
Depends. Here in Quebec (though we’re probably an outlier as canadian provinces go), you can find the same sort of quack as you can find under the name “chiropractor” in the states. Except they call themselves “specific” chiropractors.
My dad once went to see one for his migraine headaches because his sister (who saw him without success for her thyroid problem which finally necessitated hospitalisation). No need to say that it didn’t do one whit of good. My dad stopped seeing him when he actually hurt him while manipulating his neck.
And from relatively recent news, in Ontario at least they’ve also got these neck-manipulating, stroke-inducing quacks.
His comments do make it pretty clear he is a creationist, and as such it is, of course, terribly depressing to see him as the science minister of a country. However, there is actually one very positive message about the state of science in Canada, hidden in the reaction Goodyear, that most people seem to be overlooking. He has to pretend to “believe in evolution” to try and maintain some credibility.
In the states, a rather large number of conservative politicians will publicly boast about their denial of evolution, and their popularity does not suffer for it. If only evolution was well enough understood here that the deniers had to go underground or fear being ostracized.
I find people’s own tangential ideas about a theory or fact pretty humurous because it normally shows a major gap in their understanding of a subject, expecially this loonies out-take on evolution. It is unfortunate that people can have such an influencial and powerful position and yet come across as such an idiot. He’s a minister of science and doesn’t beleive in evolution… at least I can say that I didn’t vote for this guy.
So he thinks that Parmenides was wrong when he said that nothing changes (although they appear to do so), and that means he believes in evolution.
I guess he just had to drive home that fact that he’s not simply a science incompetent, he’s merely fully incompetent at thinking.
Don’t worry, Gary, we really didn’t doubt it.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
This “controversy” is the most interesting event Gary Goodyear can claim. For most of his political career, he’s been a whiny, hissy little bitch who needs to be told to shut up more.
I find people’s own tangential ideas about a theory or fact pretty humurous because it normally shows a major gap in their understanding of a subject, expecially this loonies out-take on evolution. It is unfortunate that people can have such an influencial and powerful position and yet come across as such an idiot. He’s a minister of science and doesn’t beleive in evolution… at least I can say that I didn’t vote for this guy.
Julius #38
That was my first thought as well. He’s a jewel, ain’t he?
Ennui @16
not real author of Canadian Shakespeare?
#66 – Zorpheous:
No, there is no such entity as the “Department of Science and Technology.” As I explained, Goodyear is a “minister of state” – no department and hence no executive capability.
Government funding for science in Canada is not consolidated within one department. Environment, Fisheries & Oceans, Natural Resources, and National Research Council are examples of departments/agencies which have science funding. The first three are departments with a responsible Minister; NRC is an agency reporting through the Minister of Industry.
Goodyear’s power is a great deal less than some people posting here seem to believe.
sorry for the multiple post PZ, but I keep getting a posting error on this end, please feel free to delete the dups,…
and can you delete Goodyear as well,…
Oh and just for the added chuckles, feel free to rip off my Gary ~Flintstone~ Goodyear cartoon
http://thewingnuterer.blogspot.com/2009/03/gary-flintstone-goodyear.html
The extent of the “influence” is clearly highly variable!
Let us hope that in this case it is indeed close to nil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_State_(Canada)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Goodyear
The extent of the “influence” is clearly highly variable!
Let us hope that in this case it is indeed close to nil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_State_(Canada)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Goodyear
#77, Scott, not wishing to pick a fight with you, but it is you who doesn’t understand how things work up here in Canada. Yes, Goodyear is a Minister of State, his area of influence is Science and Technology.
To be a little more specific about it; Prior to 1990, the responsibilities of the Industry, Science and Technology portfolio were divided between the now-defunct post of Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and a Minister of State for Science and Technology.
In 1995, the portfolio was merged with that of the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to create the post of Minister of Industry. In the appointments to the Cabinet of Canada of October 30, 2008 under Stephen Harper the portfolio was reintroduced and given to Gary Goodyear.
This ministry is responsible for managing Government Funding Grants for Scientific Research. If you think for one second that controlling the purse strings of science research dollars isn’t power, then you need to shake your head. Oh and yes, other ministries do scientific funding that are germane to their areas of influence. Goodyear is across the board and handles a lot of areas that are overlooked or are not covered other ministries or allow individuals another shot at the brass ring or gain addition funding via other research programs.
Goodyear is a Scientific Luddite and a moron,… and an embarrassment to all rational think Canadians.
Yes, usually ranging in recent years from minimal to nil, particularly when it comes to matters of spending.
I’m not trying to downplay Goodyear’s role; what is becomes depends largely on what he’s able to make of it through persuasion and perceived competence/influence. But whatever he can make of it, it will be a lot less powerful than some posters here believe.
We’re in a period of profound doublespeak in Canada. Most of our ministers are named for what they are against. Eg, “Minister for the Environment”.
Don’t blame me, I voted for the guy that inhaled.
The reality is that Gary Kookyear, does not really accept basic scientific fact because he does not have any idea what scientific fact is.
Kookyear used to teach at Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College
http://www.garygoodyear.com/EN/about_gary/
where they base their philosophy on the idea the human body has restorative processes to maintain a natural state and the role of the of the chiropractor is to assist those curative abilities. That certainly will cure your cancer or whatever diseases you have as chiropractic does have problems with immunization.
http://www.cmcc.ca/ABOUTCMCC/WhoWeAre/tabid/245/Default.aspx
Maybe in NL, Newfie got lucky and you were not hurt by a chiropractor for what would have gone away by itself. Here in Ontario, detox diets, subluxations, magnetic therapy, homeopathy, herbology, colonics, colored-light therapy, megavitamin therapy, radionics,( somethng like the one PZ recently highlighted) bilateral nasal specifics are all practiced to varying degrees.
However, as noted Kookyear does not have much real power and what he said about science on February 25 can be found here, which no doubt was written by department members.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1325461
As I noted in the previous thread, we do have some whacko people, but the system self corrects in many respects. Right now, things have died down to where it is yesterdays news.
This is the kind of thing that makes my blood boil: on no other force of him being a tory and christian, the Globe and Mail runs a front page story saying that he’s clearly a creationist and attributing accross the board budget cuts to this. I’ve always liked a division between politics and religion, and agreed full heartedly w/ goodyear saying his religious views were private, but this was just used as more proof. When goodyear did come out to say he believed in evolution the only answer clear to you was that he was ‘covering up’. Nice work.
Stick to biology you bufoon, pharyngula seems apt: your understanding of politics is still in its developmental stages.
I think it needs to be four things need to be clarified:
1) Education is a provincial responsibility NOT a federal one. This means that the education curriculum of grades K-12 are controlled by a provincial authority – i.e. everyone, but Alberta is pretty safe.
2) Universities are autonomous bodies. They receive funding mostly from the provincial governments, and student fees. They also raise their own money from various donations, and co-operative efforts with various interest groups and private industry. Much of this is used to fund research. The federal government funds are almost exclusively for research.
3) The actual funds are allocated by an independent body. The largest pool of funds is controlled by the National Science and Engineering Council (NSERC) — these grants are almost impossible to obtain by grad students, but are virtually guaranteed for a research professor.
4) the minister does not control how much funding is given, this is set in the budget.
Thus, we have a minister that doesn’t control any funding for basic education, and isn’t responsible for how much or where the funding goes for his own portfolio. He basically has a title on a broom closet somewhere, and is only responsible for ceremonial duties.
Still it is embarrassing.
Zorpheous, I can cut & paste from Wikipedia just as well as you can. If you insist on regarding a minister of state as a substantive power in the allocation of government funding, I’m sure I won’t be able to persuade you of the reality.
And spare me the condescending “up here in Canada” … I’ve lived in Canada all my life.
Bye …
osted by: Scott Belyea | March 19, 2009 1:16 PM
The extent of the “influence” is clearly highly variable!
Yes, usually ranging in recent years from minimal to nil, particularly when it comes to matters of spending.
This is true,… if one understands that we have PM, one Stevie Harpy, that is a complete control freak and everything is controlled via the PMO and the backroom policy wonks. Goodyear is the figure head and frontman for his area,… now whether Harpie has allowed his MP doggies a little more leash and removed their muzzles (which seems to be the case in point) Then Goodyear has more power and influence. Goodyear may also be the “Badyear” spokesman to do all the nasty cutting in the science area to allow Harpie the excuse to point his finger at Gary and say “It was his fault” (which is a Mike Harris tactic) So to say Goodyear is without power maybe true, but that only means that he is the finger puppet of Harpie, which is like Smooth peanutbutter is completely different from Crunchy Peanutbutter,… Goodyear vs Harpie, same shit, different day.
Does his response remind anyone else of the movie Spies Like Us when Emmett Fitzhume said, “Well, of course, their requests for subsidies was not Paraguayan in and of it is as it were the United States government would never have if the president, our president, had not and as far as I know that’s the way it will always be. Is that clear? “
While I have no problem accepting evolution as a Christian, there are far too many fundamentalists on this blog (including its owner) who have no idea how to converse and disagree respectfully. Ironic that the man being attacked for not believing in evolution has shown more decorum than those attacking him, betraying his attackers lack of, what they would call, evolution.
I’m not really a National Post reader (it’s fairly right wing-once owned by Conrad Black), but this columnist seems to take a decent run at Goodyear. Many of the comments to his posting though are of a fundie nature.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1405201
While I have no problem accepting evolution as a Christian, there are far too many fundamentalists on this blog (including its owner) who have no idea how to converse and disagree respectfully. Ironic that the man being attacked for not believing in evolution has shown more decorum than those attacking him, betraying his attackers lack of, what they would call, evolution.
Apologies. I mistakenly put “owner” rather than “poster” for this blog. Dr Myers seems to take a very strong, offensive language regarding Dr Goodyear (“incompetent moron”).
do we seriously think that one incompetent cabinet minister will actually have an effect on canadian science? i would bet good money that more than a few of my profs would take exception to the statement that the quality of their work is somehow proportional to the quality of the minister in charge of science and technology.
Not if he’s properly ridiculed it won’t.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
How, how, how does such a person get to be a science minister? We can only hope that overblown bureaucracy will insulate this guy from having any real influence on Canadian science.
I am a Canadian and I am so embarrassed!
So then, Mr Myers, what we should take away from this is that you won’t admit that you’re wrong.
Another concern/tone control. We don’t care to converse respectfully. It doesn’t get peoples attention. We got yours, for example.
*headdesk*, Another concern/tone troll. DOH.
Nobody said that the scientists’s quality of work will be diminished. But you have to admit that restricted funding tends to retrict what work you’re able to do. Like I explain over and over to all the people who don’t understand why I’m leaving, scientists are also human beings with bills to pay and lives to live. If I can’t earn a living with science, I will definitely stop doing it, since, like the vast majority of people, I can’t afford to work for free.
Harper and his minions already have cut down, or rather failed to increase, which with inflation amounts to the same thing, funding for the the CIHR, the biggest contributor to all health research institutes in Canada. For many young profs, this has been disastrous enough to slash their careers to practically nothing. I’ve seen many leave for other jobs.
@Biologista — as I’ve mentioned, he has no authority to set funding, let alone the curriculum, for either any educational institution. I’m not even sure he’s allowed to chose his socks.
These junior minister positions are usually just a reward for giving the PM a BJ.
@Patty #99.
I noticed that your blog is aptly named – you’re a total asshole. If you actually think that what Goodyear states is anything near evolution, then are more clueless than he.
“I noticed that your blog is aptly named – you’re a total asshole. If you actually think that what Goodyear states is anything near evolution, then are more clueless than he.”
Which you’re arguing based on this whole “adaptation is not evolution” nonsense.
Which personally got me thinking: waitaminit. Isn’t adaptation a fundamental principle of natural selection, which is a fundamental principle of evolution?
So I did some checking. And wouldn’t you know it, but I was right.
Who, precisely, is it who’s clueless here?
And what to do with the many scientists who are also religious and who share the same thoughts as Mr. Goodyear. Once again, the “scientists” think they should be telling people what to believe.
As science has become politicized, it has taken on many of the obnoxious traits of political discussion. Too bad, really…because science has done itself a great disservice to lower itself to that position.
It seems to me remarkable that some people would be trying to remove the theory of natural selection from evolutionary theory so they can justify labeling people as creationists.
I’m very concerned about what science’s “defenders” are doing to science.
Well, the US has a President who hasn’t got the foggiest idea about economics. What is your point, liberal fascists?
“[W]e can tell right away that the man is an incompetent moron who is going to flush Canadian science down the tube.”
I think you missed it, PZ. The Conservatives are the party who have already pulled the chain on science in this country. Goodyear is only the largest lump swirling around in the bowl at the moment.
What minister, handed the science portfolio, would not memorize a pat, trite, inoffensive little answer in readiness for the day the question dropped into his lap? This is either incompetence or the usual Conservative devotion to ideology over facts. See also Linda Keene, Insite, and the Science Council (killed by Mulroney)/Science Advisor (killed by Harper).
The Conservative party would prefer that we keep earning our money in this country by chopping bits of it down and digging other bits up for sale outward, rather than attempt to stimulate anything like real innovation.
Goodyear just happens to be the guy they’re paying to “communicate with the public on science.”
Of course the Conservative Party of Canada spells “communicate” s-t-o-n-e-w-a-l-l.
Since when is the US President obligated to know about economics? He employs a cabinet and a wide variety of advisers for a reason.
A science minister does need an understanding of scientific fundamentals. But on that note, how do people who claim to revere science justify ignoring key elements of a scientific theory in order to deride someone else’s understanding of that theory?
Why the dishonesty?
Which you’re arguing based on this whole “adaptation is not evolution” nonsense.
Which personally got me thinking: waitaminit. Isn’t adaptation a fundamental principle of natural selection, which is a fundamental principle of evolution?
So I did some checking. And wouldn’t you know it, but I was right.
Who, precisely, is it who’s clueless here?
That would be you.
Adaptation and evolution are two separate concepts. Adaptation is the basis for evolution, but adaptation per se is not sufficient. Many well-adapted species die out due to chance, and many less-well-adapted species live on for the same reason.
Moreover, Goodyear is labeling adaptation (changes within an orgasim during its lifetime) as evolution (changes within a population over a long period of time). This is something that creotards are infamous for – they intentionally talk pure gobbledygook in order to confuse the uneducated – looks like you swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
Aaron Perry:
“…betraying his attackers lack of, what they would call, evolution.”
This suggests that you have the notion that evolution is a progression from “lower” to “higher” forms. This is a common perception, but it’s wrong.
Evolution doesn’t have any kind of goal. It’s just a change in the genetics of populations over time. It can occur as a result of some kind of natural selection, or of genetic drift. But suggesting that an organism “lacks” evolution just doesn’t make any sense. All extant organisms have been evolving just as long as one another.
Adaptation and evolution are two separate concepts. “Adaptation is the basis for evolution, but adaptation per se is not sufficient. Many well-adapted species die out due to chance, and many less-well-adapted species live on for the same reason.”
ROTFL
My dear lord you are just as stupid as I thought you are. I’m going to explain how in just a moment.
“Goodyear is labeling adaptation (changes within an organism during its lifetime) as evolution (changes within a population over a long period of time). This is something that creotards are infamous for – they intentionally talk pure gobbledygook in order to confuse the uneducated – looks like you swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.”
So Goodyear’s comments affirming his belief in evolution refer to adaptation, and you insist he isn’t talking about evolution.
Yet, by your own admission, adaptation is the basis of evolution — anyone who understands the role of natural selection within evolution understands this. Goodyear talks about adaptation as evolutionary process in his evolution-affirming comments, and you want to insist that anyone who points this out to you is clueless?
Oh my dear fucking lord it is to laugh.
Before these particular comments from you I just thought you were ignorant. It was amusing to me, but forgivable. I generally don’t hold stupidity against stupid people.
But now, it turns out, you’re just another dogmatic, intellectually dishonest, witch hunter who is bound and determined to see what they really want to see — a creationist — in Gary Goodyear.
I would suggest you need to take your ideological blinkers off and take your sorry ass elsewhere, but considering the general intellectual quality of most of the commenters on this blog, I’d suggest you are truly at home.
@John Luft, it’s ironic that it is always the religious side that gets it bass awkwards. It’s the creotards that are pushing the political game because they know that creationism/ID isn’t science. There is NO debate on that. To say that there is anything to their side of the argument is sure politics, and nothing else.
What is even more galling is that organized religion is the absolute most closed-minded, political machine ever created. If you have a doubt then just read about the inquisition, or the laws about heresy.
Wait let me guess, you’re just upset because you can’t ram your idea of what is right down other people’s throats these days. I guess you’re also upset because you can’t smite your neighbours for working on the Sabbath, or your kids when they mouth off to you. God life sucks when you can’t smite someone that really needs it, eh?
Goodyear’s press has spurred an insightful perspective on the issue of what passes as “basic science” in government financing: http://www.entangledbank.com/?p=194
“It’s the creotards that are pushing the political game because they know that creationism/ID isn’t science. There is NO debate on that.”
Remember what I said about dogmatic?
You could barely be more wrong about this.
Creationism isn’t a science — it’s a religious belief. I’m in complete agreement on this.
But Intelligent Design is a scientific theory — it’s an ill-conceived and clumsy scientific theory that draws extremely poor conclusions, but a scientific theory nonetheless.
Yup, Patty you are definitely up there on the grand scale of fuckwits. You may think you are intelligent, but you are on a science board here, and you are clearly showing yourself to be one ignorant dumb ass.
I always find it amazing that people like you who haven’t got clue one as to what they are talking about are so convinced that they are right.
Now let’s try this again, and I’ll type slow so you can understand….adaptation is one of the fundamental mechanisms of evolution. It is NOT evolution per se.
Let’s see if this helps,
An ass has two ears, and a head.
You have two ears, and a head.
Therefore you are an ass.
Ok, well maybe that didn’t clear it up in your case.
But Intelligent Design is a scientific theory — it’s an ill-conceived and clumsy scientific theory that draws extremely poor conclusions, but a scientific theory nonetheless.
Oh jebus, Patrick, you clearly don’t know jack shit about what constitutes at Scientific Theory. ID was Creationism repackaged to attempt to get it Creationism into the classroom. It was religious bullshit then, it is religious now. Stop embarrissing yourself, before PZ minions tar and feather you of the simple joy of it.
What does someone’s religious beliefs have to do with running a portfolio.
You leftists are all the same, slamming christianity for no good reason.
Would you all make the same comments if Goodyear was a Muslim? Don’t think so.
@Patty #116.
Read the Dover case. They used the “Pandas and People” book to show that it was merely a global replacement of “ID” for “creationism” and “Designer” for “God”. It isn’t science anymore than fairyology would be.
Yup, Patty you are definitely up there on the grand scale of fuckwits. You may think you are intelligent, but you are on a science board here, and you are clearly showing yourself to be one ignorant dumb ass.
Oops,… too late, LOL
Patrick Ross #116 wrote:
What is the theory of Intelligent Design?
Does it have a possible mechanism, and a testable model? I don’t think it’s specific enough to merit the term “theory.” Young Earth Creationism at least makes predictions.
Okay, enough with the misinformation.
First of all, as stated in a Nature editorial Harper ‘killed’ a position (Science Advisor) that had only been created in 2004 and was given an awful budget and practically no real power at all at the time. He replaced it with an 18 member advisory council made up of government administrators, business people, university administrators and scientists themselves. So yes, he ‘killed’ the Science Advisory position and created an 18-person panel to help replace it.
Second of all, what is this nonsense about ‘science going down the drain ever since the Conservatives were elected’. Insite, an experimental drug harm reduction program is NOT SCIENCE, its SOCIAL POLICY. The budget for the three major funding councils has gone up in every year except this latest budget where they were asked to identify cost savings through a comprehensive review of their activities. Oh no, horrors. In total the three groups cut something along the lines of $150 million dollars over the next 4 years. In exchange, Harper gave the science community $5 billion dollars in order to construct new buildings and increase lab space (anyone who’s been at a Canadian university knows this is a constant complaint). Gives on one hand and takes away in the other, not great, but not a ‘flushing down the drain’.
As to Goodyear’s position on evolution, I find the whole thing ridiculous. As some people are pointing out it appears that he believes in a ‘form of evolution’ but are now nitpicking at which kind of evolution he believes in and some are suggesting that scientists ‘push’ him on the issue. Very well, how about we get some physicists to push him to see if he knows the details of the proposed multiverse theory and whether he believes that or not. Or can he give a detailed explanation for his position on the viability of quantum computing? Or maybe we should push him on his views on the second generation nuclear reactor cycle and see if he believes that it is feasible. He is a chiropractor and a politician, not an evolutionary biological scientist, or a physicist or a nuclear technician. To demand that he understand the exact details of evolutionary biology is excessive. Its the same as demanding that he understand the basic principles of quantum mechanics (how many armchair scientists here know anything about quantum mechanics at all? – how many medical doctors even know anything about quantum mechanics). Quantum mechanics is a basic physics concept that is fundamental for any research in physics, yet I guarantee you that most people and probably almost every politician at any level of government hasn’t got clue anything about it beyond the name.
Probably Goodyear doesn’t understand evolutionary science. Is that horrible? No, of course not. Marc Garneau (the Liberal science critic) was an engineer, Jim Maloway (the NDP science critic) was a B.A in Political Science and worked as a liquor inspector. How deep is their knowledge on any particular science topic?
His position is that of an administrator for the program and an advocate at the cabinet table for science funding. He does not decide which programs get funding and how much, that is left to scientists through the funding councils or universities through their decisions to construct labs. If he does his job well (and NSERC’s president has had nothing but praise for him) then his religious beliefs should not matter. If he allows his religious beliefs to interfere with legitimate scientific research then its cause for concern.
#119
If the Muslim said he was Islamic Creationist or and Islamic ID’er, YUP! Teh Stoopid is not confined by borders, race or religion.
Well, Snowbird, that’s interesting. But let’s take a look at what you said:
“Adaptation is the basis for evolution.”
And you insist that Goodyear’s comments refer to adaptation.
Goodyear affirms his belief in evolution, continues to elaborate by talking about evolutionary process, and somehow this makes him ignorant of evolution and a secret creationist?
This just doesn’t add up the way you want it to.
@jimbo, what makes you think we are all leftist, and not christians. I voted for Harper — which is a real embarrassment now, and will never happen again. I’m also an officer in the Canadian Forces, and I am a Christian – United Church of Canada. I even attend service at least three times a month, unless my duties prevent me.
However, I’m was a science major, and think evolution is the only thing that explains what we see here. I also think that someone who know what the hell they are talking about shouldn’t be anywhere near a science portfolio, even if it means squat. It’s a total embarrassment.
And finally, you right-wing nutters are all the same – a smug attitude that you have God on your side…get stuffed!
Let me remind everyone that Patrick’s blog is Nexus of Asshattery. He thinks he’s Don Rickles and Behe all rolled into one.
“What is the theory of Intelligent Design?
Does it have a possible mechanism, and a testable model? I don’t think it’s specific enough to merit the term ‘theory.’ Young Earth Creationism at least makes predictions.”
Intelligent Design, according to my understanding, studies biological life for evidence of engineering principle. They do this at both the macro- and micro- level. They use the presence of engineering principles to conclude that life must have had a designer.
Now, I know I don’t have to explain the flaws of the theory to you.
For one thing, the vast majority of the principles applied in engineering were originally observed in the natural world. For another, the complexity of design doesn’t suggest an intelligent designer, considering that simplicity is the hallmark of good design.
And that’s just for starters.
That being said, bad science is still science. Based on the validity of its conclusions, ID is terrible science. Based on what it could eventually teach us about life, there is merit to it, so long as one overlooks the rather incredible leaps of intellectual faith it demands.
Hey Minions of PZ Place.
When you are finished bash Patrick Ross around and he is little more than a greasy smear on these blog pages, give us a call and me and a few other Canadians will come down here and clean up what is left and take it home to the Great White North.
In the meantime, pass the popcorn, this is going to be fucking hilarious to watch has Patsy get pummeled ~giggle~ there should be a law about things this much fun,…
jimbo #119 wrote:
The theory of evolution is accepted by people with many religions, and with none. If Mr. Goodyear is being “slammed,” it’s not for his religious beliefs per se, but for his scientific ones. Even if he is not a creationist, this quote still suggests that his understanding of evolution is too poor for a ‘science minister’ to hold. The most charitable interpretation is that he’s inarticulate.
Not everyone on the blog is a “leftist” — whatever that means.
On what basis does it draw conclusions?
Did I fall asleep and miss the Discovery Institute press conference where they put forward testable propositions?
ID doesn’t even make it to the conjecture stage.
NO! STOP! I’M BEGGING YOU!
Do not engage Patrick Ross on this (or any other) topic. Take it from someone who’s been down that road many times, Mr. Ross (or “Twatsy” as we like to call him up here in the Great White North) is a master of arguing in bad faith. His most common rhetorical strategy is to deliberately misunderstand your point, then attack the misunderstanding. It’s what he does, perpetually and relentlessly, as you have already noticed.
If you need to be warned off, here, let me help.
Now just let him rant, and move on. Trust me, I’m trying to save you the grief.
Patty #115, you really are moving further away from reality. I’m starting to worry for your sanity — well not really, but you should look into it.
Yet again, you are trying to pawn-off adaptation as being equivalent to evolution. Would you promise your significant-other a car and then give her a tire, cuz tires are an essential part of a car, so therefore, they are by themselves cars? No, you’d get a lesson you’d never forget.
The phrase ‘if your parents didn’t have any children you won’t either’ comes to mind. Think about it.
So, once again, Goodyear is talking nonsense. He is using the words evolution to talk about adaptation. If I used Satan when I referred to God, don’t you think you’d notice?
“On what basis does it draw conclusions?
Did I fall asleep and miss the Discovery Institute press conference where they put forward testable propositions?
ID doesn’t even make it to the conjecture stage.”
Please. Do I really have to do this?
Intelligent Design draws the conclusion that a designer must have been present because of the evidence of engineering principles which, as previously noted, were discovered because they were within nature in the first place.
But I’ll remind you that Richard Dawkins himself admitted that Intelligent Design isn’t so unacceptable a theory if someone insists that the designer was a space alien or something.
However, based on the fundamental flaws of ID, Dawkins’ version shouldn’t be considered any more acceptable on a scientific basis than the ID-proves-there’s-a-god variety.
Sounds to me like you’re the incompetent, narrow-minded moron.
“Mr. Minister, when did you stop beating your wife?”
“I refuse to answer such a ridiculous and irrelevant question”
Next Day’s Headline “CONSERVATIVE minister REFUSES TO DENY BEATING WIFE”
Of course, if Goodyear was liberal, muslim or sikh we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Patrick Ross #128 wrote:
What’s the mechanism?
What sorts of predictions would it make?
What would falsify it?
What is ‘the designer?’
I still don’t think it comes up to the level of ‘theory.’ It’s not specific enough.
“Yet again, you are trying to pawn-off adaptation as being equivalent to evolution.”
And you’re trying to pawn adaptation off as something that has nothing to do with evolution. If only you could go back in time and take those “basis of evolution” comments back, eh?
“Would you promise your significant-other a car and then give her a tire, cuz tires are an essential part of a car, so therefore, they are by themselves cars? No, you’d get a lesson you’d never forget.”
I certainly wouldn’t give her a car without the tires.
“So, once again, Goodyear is talking nonsense. He is using the words evolution to talk about adaptation.”
No, you’re talking nonsense and arguing around the facts to try and twist Goodyear’s words into admission of being a “secret creationist”.
Goodyear affirmed his belief in evolution, then continued to elaborate by talking about the role of adaptation within evolution.
You yourself admitted that adaptation is the “basis of evolution”.
“What’s the mechanism?
What sorts of predictions would it make?
What would falsify it?
What is ‘the designer?’
I still don’t think it comes up to the level of ‘theory.’ It’s not specific enough.”
You’re either too stupid to recognize an answer to your questions, or too dishonest enough to acknowledge it.
Either way I’m done with you now.
@ Patrick Ross;
Heritable adaptation is (one of) the bases of evolution. I think we all kinda intuitively got that part.
They refer to somatic adaptation, yeah. Believe it or not, stuff you do with your body is not actually heritable, unless you can change your genome in the process.
You’re damn skippy it makes him ignorant of evolution. Buddy seems to think wearing shoes is itself synonomous with evolution.
If you are done with us, we are done with you. Time for you to fade into the bandwidth like a good little troll.
“Do not engage Patrick Ross on this (or any other) topic. Take it from someone who’s been down that road many times, Mr. Ross (or “Twatsy” as we like to call him up here in the Great White North) is a master of arguing in bad faith. His most common rhetorical strategy is to deliberately misunderstand your point, then attack the misunderstanding. It’s what he does, perpetually and relentlessly, as you have already noticed.”
That’s amusing coming from someone who has to concoct a seedy web of lies in order to convince himself of this.
And it’s hard to accept an admonition of “arguing in bad faith” from the king of bad faith arguments, including the ad hominem attack, arbitrarily re-drawing the boundaries of debate, and his more commonly favoured tactic, lying.
It was inevitable. Patrick Ross — an undergraduate student in sociology, by the way — will now proceed to lecture the entire Pharyngula audience on how biological evolution really works.
I saw this coming.
You were warned.
P.S. You’ll know the discussion is over when it turns out that Patrick is, curiously, the only one who understands evolution, while everyone else is a LOL, ROTFL retarded idiot.
As you can see, we’re getting close. Any minute now.
You’re either too stupid to recognize an answer to your questions, or too dishonest enough to acknowledge it.
Either way I’m done with you now.
Translation, I know I am getting my ass kicked so I’m going to declare myself the winner and move on. Classic Paddyboy
Evidently, someone has to. Sadly.
I mean, not all of them needed to be educated about evolution. Some of them merely needed to be goaded into admitting the facts. They knew, they just didn’t want to admit it, and still don’t.
Have we seen the designer in action? If not, then what is the whole point of ID?
Patrick Ross #138 wrote:
I didn’t see an answer in your post to me: did you put it in your answer to someone else?
I don’t think that “using engineering principles to conclude that life must have a designer” gives us any sort of mechanism or model — particularly with no information on what sort of designer we’re dealing with, or how it worked, or what purpose it might have had. How could it be tested? I’m trying to come up with some sort of observation which would falsify it, and can’t think of any.
If you went into it and I missed all this, could you perhaps explain it some other way?
Hey Cynic, pull up a chair and have some popcorn, this is really funny to watch.
PS, I already said I would remove the greasy smear of Paddyboy once PZ minions have finished bashing to a greasy spot. Shit it is the least I could do.
Come on Paddy, don’t give now, not when we having so much fun watching you make an ass of yourself.
“Have we seen the designer in action? If not, then what is the whole point of ID?”
We don’t even need to not see a designer in action to know ID theories are likely false.
Have you been paying attention?
No it doesn’t look for engineering principles. Paley did so, sort of, but Darwin showed that these principles were absent. ID now tries to avoid predicting that any engineering principles will be found, and they claim that we’re being unfair when we demonstrate the lack of engineering in organisms.
Really? Principles like Calculus and Euclidean geometry were found in the natural world? While I wouldn’t deny that empiricism (primarily non-biological) has played some role in producing engineering principles, the fact is that engineering is vastly different from biological evolution, and it produces very different effects. Some overlap exists, but not nearly so much as you suggest.
And complexity could very well be a mark, along with others, of design. Extremely simple artifacts are often difficult to differentiate from “natural products,” while complex mechanisms like the Antikythera mechanism are immediately identifiable as the results of design.
Yet the Antikythera mechanism has all of the other expected results of design, like rationally configured lines, gears, and meshing of the various components. It is not “simply complex”, it is a complex of simpler design principles, like the use of mathematics, straight lines, and thought that goes beyond merely inherited information (it may be derivative, but if so, at some point there was a creatively designed, rationally thought out mechanism that leaped beyond gradualistic evolution).
So no, it won’t do. Complexity isn’t meaningless to design (many designed objects wouldn’t do much without being complex, so simplicity can only be the hallmark of design in a subset of cases), but it isn’t much of a mark by itself–particularly not after evolutionary theory has explained the manner of complexity that exists in life.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Patty, CC is right. You have absolutely no ability to comprehend an argument. Did you parent’s have any children that survived?
Ok, so let’s try this again…s-l-o-w-l-y. I will assume that you are toilet trained…although you certainly love to shit on the floor here. That is an adaptation to your environment. There are no genes that would make you sit there, it is something you learned. Same can be said about reading, writing, and typing on a computer. There are all adaptations to are environment.
Another example, you have a set of identical twins, one is adopted to a family in Chicoutimi (Quebec), and another is adopted to a family in Hong Kong. In 30 years do you think that they will have much in common, even language? These are adaptations. Let’s further assume one of them loses their legs in a car accident. The adaptions made will be even more pronounced. Now, these twins marry and produce offspring. They are going to pass on similar genes despite anything they’ve done in adapting to their environment. This is the adaptation that Goodyear wants, and this is why he’s full of shit.
The adaptation that creates evolution are those that make reproduction more likely. These adaptations are very slow, and may be invisible to the naked eye. Right now there may be mutations that will resist HIV, if HIV were to attack every human on earth, these people would produce offspring and then HIV would no longer be a threat.
Do you understand?
We need to see a designer in action to determine whether there’s any validity to the concept. As evolution can give the illusion of design, the fact that “something looks designed” is no guarantee it is – especially on a biological level.
Two questions – what did the designer do and how can we test for that? If you can’t answer those, then why should we consider ID a science at all?
“No it doesn’t look for engineering principles. Paley did so, sort of, but Darwin showed that these principles were absent. ID now tries to avoid predicting that any engineering principles will be found, and they claim that we’re being unfair when we demonstrate the lack of engineering in organisms.”
My sources contradict you.
“While I wouldn’t deny that empiricism (primarily non-biological) has played some role in producing engineering principles, the fact is that engineering is vastly different from biological evolution, and it produces very different effects. Some overlap exists, but not nearly so much as you suggest.”
I’ve suggested nothing of the sort.
The engineering principles I speak of aren’t exclusively found within biological life, but all manners of materials and natural structures.
You’re attempting to oversimplify the argument.
“Complexity could very well be a mark, along with others, of design.”
But not, necessarily, of good design.
“Extremely simple artifacts are often difficult to differentiate from ‘natural products,’ while complex mechanisms like the Antikythera mechanism are immediately identifiable as the results of design.”
I can think of many examples of this. A stone arrowhead, for example, could potentially be mistaken for an ordinary rock. One could never mistake the bullet for something naturally occurring within the natural world.
“Complexity isn’t meaningless to design (many designed objects wouldn’t do much without being complex, so simplicity can only be the hallmark of design in a subset of cases), but it isn’t much of a mark by itself–particularly not after evolutionary theory has explained the manner of complexity that exists in life.”
Well, I would once again draw you back to the distinction drawn between good design and bad design.
The notion that whichever intelligent designer one favours would have to be a poor designer doesn’t exactly help the theory.
I’d also draw you to an interesting factoid: the simplicity argument, I must confess, isn’t actually my own argument. It’s an argument I witnessed the distinguished Dr Myers use against Kirk Durston in a debate here at the University of Alberta. As a matter of fact, it was one of Myers’ few quality arguments.
“We need to see a designer in action to determine whether there’s any validity to the concept.”
No, we really don’t. Paying any amount of attention to the logical fallacies contained within the theory itself should lead us to discard it long before we approach the testing phase.
“As evolution can give the illusion of design, the fact that ‘something looks designed’ is no guarantee it is – especially on a biological level.”
I concur with you fully on this particular point. Didn’t you notice?
You weren’t paying attention.
Ah, but Snowbird, let’s go back to Gary Goodyear’s comments in question.
Goodyear talks about adaptation to the intensity of the sun.
Science supports the idea that skin colour is an adaptation to comparative intake of Vitamin D through the sun’s rays, one which was naturally selected through evolutionary process.
One could also hypothesize that walking on concrete triggers the human body to adapt by growing additional fat and cartilage deposits in the foot, and differentiating bone structure throughout the foot and leg. Someone once told me there’s a study that supports this hypothesis, but I can’t seem to find a corroborating source right now.
You’re a mindless ninny, iow. If you can’t produce good evidence, as apparently you can’t, you lose.
No, I’m trying to make it worth something. If you’re just saying that our principles came from nature, the fact that all that we know is “nature” means only that our principles came from our world. Which tells us nothing, much as you are wont to do.
It is when one is making the Antikythera mechanism, or a supercomputer, which you’d know if you even could read properly.
So, you could never mistake a mangled and weathered bullet for native lead? You’re an idiot, it could happen in some cases.
But yes, I’m more than aware of the fact that the Antikythera mechanism would be betrayed as designed through its use of bronze. If you weren’t obtuse, I wouldn’t have had to get into that aspect, because that wasn’t the aspect I had brought up. Indeed, the rational aspect, which I particularly mentioned, does extend to the production of the bronze of the mechanism, and your inability to grasp that fact is only par for the course.
Which answers my point not at all, you mindless drone.
It’s not very interesting, and it means nothing to me. First, I don’t know if you’re portraying Myers’ argument correctly (you blundered through just about everything else), and, if you did, it doesn’t matter. Arguments from authority amount to nothing.
Since you can’t actually address what I wrote meaningfully, nor apparently are able to read what I wrote competently, you’re failing to support your previous BS, and either repeating your ignorance or compounding it with more idiocy.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Eric @123
“Probably Goodyear doesn’t understand evolutionary science.”
“My entire background has been in science, and my personal beliefs are not important,” Mr. Goodyear repeated.
So not knowing one of the fundamentals of science leaves Kookyear without a lot of background, and he fails to see that the two are not mutually exclusive.
Bill Forbes @#86:
Oh, we understand politics very well, it is the system of nepotism and snake oil dealing that enables a clueless quack to become minister of science in Canada.
The fact that Mr. Goodyear initially answered a question as to whether or not he ‘believed’ in evolution with: ”I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate” demonstrates that he is unable to keep science and religion separate.
Goodyear now half-heartedly admits that “we are evolving to our environment,” but this is just dodging the issue. A creationist could have said that. Accepting evolution is accepting that all life forms on earth are actually interrelated, that all current life forms descended from past life forms, which were in most cases vastly different. It means accepting that fifty thousand or so generations ago our own ancestors were furry and went on all fours. Even a politician should be able to make up his or her mind about this. It is indeed far simpler than quantum mechanics, but apparently much harder to accept. In a way this is ironic, since quantum mechanics is at heart even more damaging for religious beliefs than the theory of evolution.
” … you’re failing to support your previous BS, and either repeating your ignorance or compounding it with more idiocy.”
Mr. Davidson, repeating his ignorance is what Mr. Ross *does*, as I’ve seen repeatedly at other blogs. It’s all iteration and reiteration for that social rodent.
#92:
The problem, Aaron, is not one of fundamentalism, however that term might apply to atheists. The problem is most typically with what religious people term “respect”.
So people who disagree with evolution, usually religious people get put out because people like PZ do not “disagree respectfully.” On the surface, that seems like a fair comment.
But, and this is the hitch, disagreeing with evolution is like disagreeing that 3 is larger than 2. People who would take that position are in a position that is irrefutably, inequivocally, absolutely wrong. Their position has not earned respect, does not deserve respect, and should not be respected by anyone. People taking a position that 3 is greater than 2 are going to be ridiculed for it, and rightfully so.
With evolution, it’s not a matter of disagreeing respectfully – one side is demonstrably, totally, completely and fully WRONG, the other side may not be perfectly right, but they’re pretty damn close and have the evidence and years of research to back up that assertion.
The religious position is also not respectable because it is clearly based on a peculiar bias. The arguments used against the ToE are never used against other scientific theories for which there is, in fact, less evidence of their veracity. The Theory of Gravity as it currently stands has less supporting evidence than ToE (the theory predicts gravity waves and gravitons, neither of which has been observed experimentally, for example… that is a pretty major shortcoming…), but you don’t see religious people spouting Intelligent Falling from the God Made The Earth Suck So We Don’t Fly Off It Institute. This despite the fact that the ToG directly contradicts a literal Biblical view of how the universe is put together. In effect, gravity is still “magic” but it is magic with known empirical rules that work pretty well at the macroscopic level and have for hundreds of years.
This suggest that opposition to ToE is not based so much on issues of fact or evidence but merely on unscientific dogma. Again, that is not a respectable position, and nobody is bound to “disagree respectfully” with it. It should be shouted down with extreme prejudice.
Oops, I left a “not” out of the last sentence of the third paragraph. doh.
Patrick Ross @154
“One could also hypothesize that walking on concrete triggers the human body to adapt by growing additional fat and cartilage deposits in the foot, and differentiating bone structure throughout the foot and leg”
Assume this is true. The part I do not understand is how this fits in with evolution.
Dear PZ Myers,
You allegedly are a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Given your extensive knowledge you should have no difficulty explaining the fact that existence of life on planet Earth violates Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Would you be so kind to offer us dumb Christians a plausible scientific explanation for what we call a miracle of life before you start calling names and casting stones on us??
Would it be too much of us if we were to check your qualifications by asking you such simple question before we accept your harsh judgement?
Dear PZ Myers,
You allegedly are a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Given your extensive knowledge you should have no difficulty explaining the fact that existence of life on planet Earth violates Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Would you be so kind to offer us dumb Christians a plausible scientific explanation for what we call a miracle of life before you start calling names and casting stones on us??
Would it be too much of us if we were to check your qualifications by asking you such simple question before we accept your harsh judgement?
Karol, your forgot your themodynamics. Whether a chemical (also biological) process can go is dependent upon the Gibbs equation: ∆G = ∆H – T∆S. If sufficient enthalpy is present, the unfavorable entropy term can be overwhelmed. So sir, you are a liar and bullshitter.
Didn’t you get the memo?
Karol Karolak P. Eng #162-3 wrote:
No it doesn’t.
Your problem is solved! And, so easily, too. You don’t have to worry anymore.
Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. Neither does biology in general.
One of the ways we can tell you are one of those dumb Christians is that you offer up your incomprehension of a basic physical principle as if it were evidence against our existence.
Posted by: Karol Karolak P. Eng. | March 19, 2009 6:02 PM
Dear PZ Myers,
You allegedly are a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Given your extensive knowledge you should have no difficulty explaining the fact that existence of life on planet Earth violates Second Law of Thermodynamics.
LOL, ROTFLMAO, life on this planet does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Anyone who dares claim to be a P.Eng knows this.
But lets give you a chance Karol, first explain to us your understanding of the second law and then (second) show us your thermo model for life and then (third) explain how it violates the the 2nd law. I await your answer on pins and needles.
If you can not do Steps one and two then I question your right to use P. Eng. after your name
Over 20 years ago Isaac Asimov answered the “Second Law of Thermodynamics objection”.
#169 Himself, you’re stealing my giggles, DAMN YOU!!!
oh well,… it would have been more fun to Karol flap around on the floor, LOL. The creationist seem to forget about that huge ball or fire the circles the flat Earth that God created 6000 years ago. Shit is evolution were to violate the second law, sexual reproduction would also violate it too ~giggle~
Would you be so kind to offer us dumb Christians a plausible scientific explanation for what we call a miracle of life before you start calling names and casting stones on us??
Sure, as soon as you tell us why you consider it a miracle, and exactly what your definitions of “miracle” and “life” are.
When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much, daddy sticks his penis into mummy’s vagina. Daddy’s sperm fertilisings mummy’s egg and thus the process of creating a new baby is born. The code passed down my Daddy and Mummy doesn’t replicate perfectly, errors creep in and the baby has mutations in it’s genetic code. Then the baby grows up and becomes a daddy or mummy and the process is continued. Mutations keep happening each time, and occasionally these mutations give an advantage, and those mutations will eventually seep throughout a population. The species will change, it will evolve…
How does this violate the physics of heat transfer?
‘Tis, great quote. Since it’s somewhere in my Asimov collection, I’ll have to look it up. I think I know where it might be…
Why should anyone care about another person’s private views on religion? If I don’t share that view, I do not have the right to criticize his beliefs. This is called freedom, and what my family and so many others fought for when they came to America decades ago. A journalist who takes a cheap shot and ambushes someone, gets no respect from me. I have respect for Christians and atheists alike, providing they don’t try to impose their views on me. The press has no right to expect an answer to every question. Some questions are simply in bad taste.
‘Tis Himself’
It seems that you are the only clown on this forum who makes a lame attempt to answer my very simple question.
I will try to focus you a bit so we do not have to look at the whole Universe in order to explain what is happening on molecular level.
Lets try again: What exact mechanism of molecular interactions is used by living organisms in order to overcome Second Law of Thermodynamics and create what we Christians call a Miracle of Life??
A journalist who takes a cheap shot and ambushes someone, gets no respect from me. I have respect for Christians and atheists alike, providing they don’t try to impose their views on me. The press has no right to expect an answer to every question. Some questions are simply in bad taste.
Tommy Davis would certainly agree!
A journalist who takes a cheap shot and ambushes someone, gets no respect from me. I have respect for Christians and atheists alike, providing they don’t try to impose their views on me. The press has no right to expect an answer to every question. Some questions are simply in bad taste.
Tommy Davis would certainly agree!
Just what part of evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics? How do you think a child grows if not from simplicity to complexity?
David #174 wrote:
Mr. Goodyear was not asked about his religion. He was asked about evolution, and he interpreted that as a question about religion. That implies that he feels that there is a conflict.
If a person’s religious views conflict with modern science, then it is very much in the public’s interest to know this, in a science minister who would be supporting the scientific community and its theories. Sorry, but there is no secret special immunity you get to have when you turn your “private” view into a matter of public concern.
David @174
Admittedly the question was badly phrased, but it is Kookyear who changed the context, got out a big shovel and started digging. Politics requires an ability to respond in an appropriate way, not create a furor.
I believe the sun is going to come up tomorrow. I have no empirical evidence unless I get out and start doing some measurements, and then give a probability, but I could say; based on current knowledge, yes. How smart would it be to say that is none of your business what I believe. Sorry, I just do not see how it was a loaded entrapment question. Now if you asked Stockwell ( Doris ) Day, that question, yes it would be entrapment, but he is not the Minister in charge of science.
I think there is a small error in the original post. PZ writes:
I think he meant to write:
Goodyear was not asked some inappropriate question about his “religion” in the first place — not that I think it’s necessarily inappropriate.
Religious people can’t have it both ways. They can’t insist that their religious beliefs are the most significant, important beliefs they have, guiding them in all that they think and do — and then act shocked, shocked I tell you, if someone asks them what these beliefs are, and if they specifically impact anything they’re planning on doing.
I have respect for Christians and atheists alike, providing they don’t try to impose their views on me.
Yes, because Christian politicians NEVER try to impose religion on us…
*facepalm*
Karol Karolak P. Eng.,
“We’ve done that one already”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/entropy_and_evolution.php
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html
Karol Karolak (I’ll ignore the argument from authority attempt) #175
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not require that every part of a closed system move from a more complex or energetic position to a less complex or less energetic position. So long as the total energy in the system is moving towards entropy, then the Second Law is conserved.
Or to put it in another way, the mechanism you’re demanding is the fucking Sun, you incredibly stupid person.
Kel:
“Just what part of evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics? How do you think a child grows if not from simplicity to complexity?”
I get the impression that he thinks that that is a miracle too. He’s also shifted the goalposts. Originally he claimed that life contradicted the SLoT. This was shown to be false. Then he moved from a hard apologetic to a soft one. That is, now he’s asking that people explain the exact mechanism by which entropy decreases locally (since it’s well established that this is possible, and thus the claim of a contradiction is wrong).
There have been a few papers on the thermodynamics of photosynthesis (which is really at the root of how life maintains itself). Of course, there’s no point in linking to them (Google should bring up a few, anyway), because after that, he’ll undoubtedly push the goalposts farther back into the history of evolution and declare victory as soon as there’s no certainty of the exact mechanism by which this occurs.
Using the SLoT as an objection to evolution (or life existing without being sustained by magic) puts a pretty strong upper bound on how interesting it will be to talk to someone.
Posted by: Kel | March 19, 2009 7:02 PM
Lets try again: What exact mechanism of molecular interactions is used by living organisms in order to overcome Second Law of Thermodynamics and create what we Christians call a Miracle of Life??
Just what part of evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics? How do you think a child grows if not from simplicity to complexity?
Kel,
Try to plant steel hammer in your back yard, water it well and see it grow into Mercedes. When you do that than we can talk that there is no difference between living organisms and nonliving matter.
Lets try again
No, let’s not, you nitwit. Not until you define “miracle” and “life”.
Also, you don’t understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. AT ALL. Read up on it.
You haven’t established the living organisms have to overcome the 2nd law.
That’s your problem, you have some silly notion that life is violating it.
It is not.
*facepalm* life is replicating, steel hammers are not replicating. It’s a fact that life replicates and it’s a fact that there is variation as per the genetic code. The code changes through subsequent generations and thus over time life evolves. That is the difference between a steel hammer and an organism. You know what your parents did to conceive you? They didn’t ask a stalk to deliver you from God, they rubbed their genitalia and you are a result of that process. You come from your parents, they come from their parents. A hammer and a mercedes are both manufactured by humans, you are a biological entity with the capacity to reproduce the same way that your parents did.
Karol, it is called Gibbs free energy you failure of freshman chemistry. The ∆G in the Gibbs equation, ∆G = ∆H – T∆S. The change in free energy is equal to the change enthalpy minus the absolute temperature times the change in the entropy. You are an engineer, do the math. That means if the enthalpy, the heat given off or absorbed (say from the sun) of the system is sufficient the entropy term is overwhelmed. But if you passed general chemistry, you knew that, and are being knowingly stupid.
Kel wrote:
You’re a romantic at heart, aren’t you Kel? :)
Karol Karolak P. Eng.,
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve read all week and that’s after 4 days of Survivor Pharyngula!
He gets the meanings of evolve and adapt mixed up. He probably doesn’t know what either word means.
As my 5 year-old self complained to my bother about the scripture teachers at school – “they told me that God made me, so I told them my Mum and Dad made me”
It should be obvious. Reproduction happens yet is an imperfect process. This imperfection is inheritable. Therefore evolution happens. Instead we get people whining about the laws of heat transfer as if it’s actually an issue. It would be nice if they could come out and admit they reject evolution purely for religious reasons as opposed to clutching at straws that simply aren’t there. Yet another instance of Lying for JesusTM
That should say mother, not bother.
And above it should say stork, not stalk. Brain not working right today.
When a mommy genital and a daddy genital love each other very much….
I tell ya, I feel that we Canadians have pretty much inherited the Bush administration that you American folks finally just lost. It’s ridiculous, and for the first time during the course of my scientific training I feel that I may be left with no promising career options in this country, but will be better off moving to the US. It’s unbelievable what our current government is doing and their willfull ignorance towards science and technology. It makes me sick and frightened for my future.
Feynmaniac,
Thanks for the link;
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/entropy_and_evolution.php
Here is the answer from PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota.
“Entropy and evolution
Category: Evolution • Science
Posted on: November 10, 2008 12:09 PM, by PZ Myers
One of the oldest canards in the creationists’ book is the claim that evolution must be false because it violates the second law of thermodynamics, or the principle that, as they put it, everything must go from order to disorder. One of the more persistent perpetrators of this kind of sloppy thinking is Henry Morris, and few creationists today seem able to get beyond this error.
Remember this tendency from order to disorder applies to all real processes. Real processes include, of course, biological and geological processes, as well as chemical and physical processes. The interesting question is: “How does a real biological process, which goes from order to disorder, result in evolution. which goes from disorder to order?” Perhaps the evolutionist can ultimately find an answer to this question, but he at least should not ignore it, as most evolutionists do.
Especially is such a question vital, when we are thinking of evolution as a growth process on the grand scale from atom to Adam and from particle to people. This represents in absolutely gigantic increase in order and complexity, and is clearly out of place altogether in the context of the Second Law.
As most biologists get a fair amount of training in chemistry, I’m afraid he’s wrong on one bit of slander there: we do not ignore entropy, and are in fact better informed on it than most creationists, as is clearly shown by their continued use of this bad argument. I usually rebut this claim about the second law in a qualitative way, and by example — it’s obvious that the second law does not state that nothing can ever increase in order, but only that an decrease in one part must be accompanied by a greater increase in entropy in another. Two gametes, for instance, can fuse and begin a complicated process in development that represents a long-term local decrease in entropy, but at the same time that embryo is pumping heat out into its environment and increasing the entropy of the surrounding bit of the world.
It’s a very bad argument they are making, but let’s consider just the last sentence of the quote above.
This represents in absolutely gigantic increase in order and complexity, and is clearly out of place altogether in the context of the Second Law.
A “gigantic increase in order and complexity” … how interesting. How much of an increase? Can we get some numbers for that?
Daniel Styer has published an eminently useful article on “Entropy and Evolution” that does exactly that — he makes some quantitative estimates of how much entropy might be decreased by the process of evolution. I knew we kept physicists around for something; they are so useful for filling in the tricky details.
The article nicely summarizes the general problems with the creationist claim. They confuse the metaphor of ‘disorder’ for the actual phenomenon of entropy; they seem to have an absolutist notion that the second law prohibits all decreases in entropy; and they generally lack any quantitative notion of how entropy actually works. The cool part of this particular article, though, is that he makes an estimate of exactly how much entropy is decreased by the process of evolution.
First he estimates, very generously, how much entropy is decreased per individual. If we assume each individual is 1000 times “more improbable” than its ancestor one century ago, that is, that we are specified a thousand times more precisely than our great-grandparents (obviously a ludicrously high over-estimate, but he’s trying to give every advantage to the creationists here), then we can describe the reduction in the number of microstates in the modern organism as:
Now I’m strolling into dangerous ground for us poor biologists, since this is a mathematical argument, but really, this is simple enough for me to understand. We know the statistical definition of entropy:
In the formula above, kB is the Boltzmann constant. We can just plug in our estimated (grossly overestimated!) value for Ω, have fun with a little algebra, and presto, a measure of the change in entropy per individual per century emerges.
Centuries are awkward units, so Styer converts that to something more conventional: the entropy change per second is -3.02 x 10-30 J/K. There are, of course, a lot of individual organisms on the planet, so that number needs to be multiplied by the total number of evolving organism, which, again, we charitably overestimate at 1032, most of which are prokaryotes, of course. The final result is a number that tells us the total change in entropy of the planet caused by evolution each second:
-302 J/K
What does that number mean? We need a context. Styer also estimates the Earth’s total entropy throughput per second, that is, the total flux involved from absorption of the sun’s energy and re-radiation of heat out into space. It’s a slightly bigger number:
420 x 1012 J/K
To spell it out, there’s about a trillion times more entropy flux available than is required for evolution. The degree by which earth’s entropy is reduced by the action of evolutionary processes is miniscule relative to the amount that the entropy of the cosmic microwave background is increased.
This is very cool and very clear. I’m folding up my copy of Styer’s paper and tucking it into my copy of The Counter-Creationism Handbook, where it will come in handy.”
Ignorance of secularists knows no bounds and all that clown disguised as biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota can muster is some lame argument that life does not violate Second Law of Thermodynamics in a global sense because energy is supplied by a Sun and therefore local increase of entropy is offset by decrease of entropy of local Sun.
Lets cut pseudoscientific crap here and put some soil, water and a pea seed in a black steel box, weld it shut so it is airtight and keep it at a steady teperature of 300K for two weeks and after that period open the box and see if that seed tried to germinate despite lack of any sunlight??
If it did can our scientist explain to us what mechanism was utilised to accomplish germination???
Funny thing is that secularist clowns take a Second Law of Thermodynamics as a religious creed that cannot be violated no matter what despite of the fact that this blatant violation of Second Law of Thermodynamics takes place billions of times every microsecond on the face of this planet right in front of their nose and is driven by a very simple mechanism that even children in elementary school understand when it is explained to them properly.
Dear PZ Myers,
You allegedly are a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Given your extensive knowledge you should have no difficulty offering us better explaination of the fact that existence of life on planet Earth violates Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Would you be so kind to offer us dumb Christians a more plausible scientific explanation for what we call a Miracle of Life than complete BS that you offered your dumb readers, before you start calling names and casting stones on us??
Would it be too much of us if we were to check your qualifications by asking you again for simple straight forward explanation of such a very simple question before we accept your harsh judgement?
I will try to focus you a bit so we do not have to look at the whole Universe in order to explain what is happening on molecular level.
What exact mechanism of molecular interactions is used by living organisms in order to overcome Second Law of Thermodynamics and create what we Christians call a Miracle of Life??
Cheers,
Holy fuck Karol, are you that fucking stupid? WHAT IN THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS? Just asserting that it does is not an argument, demonstrate the impossibility of evolution through thermodynamics before saying that evolution violates it.
Karol Karolak,
For the love of Wotan, don’t copy-and-paste like that. It makes it impossible to read. Just link to the original post and add your
commentsbarely coherent creationist drivel below.Or, better yet, take the steel hammer you’re obsessed with and cram it up your ass. Sideways.
Karol, it’s quite simple, actually.
Evolution, as defined as “descent with modification” is a process to which the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not apply to (2nd Law only applies to “closed systems”). Furthermore, creationists refuse to realize that a system is capable of maintaining its own order by contributing to the disorder/entropy of another adjacent system. The best example of this I can think of is how the vast majority of life on earth stays alive thanks in direct part to the radiant energy the sun emits. Sun accumulates more entropy as it continues to burn its fuel reserves while life on earth continues to flourish because of the plants that use a tiny fraction of the sun’s radiating energy to photosynthesize.
Boy, and engineer who pulls numbers out of his ass. We don’t want to have anything to do with what such an imbecile worked on. There is a mistake somewhere. Why don’t you be a good boy Karol and find it on your own. It is there.
Karol, are you actually going to engage anyone here in argument? If so, can you answer #172 please?
Nerd, that would require Karol to pull his swelled Christian head out of his holier-than-thou ass, first.
Karol,
You do realize by trying to keep it at a steady temperature you are injecting energy into the system, right?
Feynmaniac:
“You do realize by trying to keep it at a steady temperature you are injecting energy into the system, right?”
That, and it has plenty of stored chemical energy.
Poor guy. Another victim of the Kruger-Dunning effect.
If he realized this, Feyny, you honestly think he would have been stupid enough to spout that?
Wow….Americans caring about Canadian politics. Shouldn’t you be more worried about what Paris Hilton is up to? You moron. Maybe you should worry more about how your country screwed the world economy. Thanks
It’s really quite pathetic just how oblivious Karol is. You’d think that (s)he would at least be able to argue the points he’s bringing up, instead (s)he’s ignoring any attempt to engage him/her on the matter and still asserting without any evidence that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Come on Karol, start engaging in conversation about the matter rather than Lying for JesusTM
I wonder what he thinks about the human heart and external energy sources?
So this Canadian science minister, knowing that he was going to have to say something about evolution, couldn’t think of anything to say about evolution, except for some chiropractor stuff about high heels or something. And he’s the Canadian science minister.
Oh I see…it’s because the 2nd Law of thermodynamics is a law which is obviously a trillion times more likely to be true than a poncey little theory of evolution (to take a random theory out of science)?
Of course it does – in the battle of ideas laws always win – don’t they?
‘Cos the only thing we really know is true is the Law of God and that comes straight out of your fucking head.
Come now, really – Karol a brand new fuckwit with a message, come to wank himself off here for the glory of his own thought.
If you’ve come here to get torn to shreds, fine, but please:
Don’t start with the fucking second law, cack-for-brains, give us – oh I don’t know – no transitional fossils….
Prepare to eat your face.
It has been an embarrassing few days to be a Canadian, but thank you for your interest and thanks very muchly for kicking creationist, ID and Harper Party ass all over the place.
Life in Canada suddenly feels less lonely, more inclined to hope with people like you looking out for us.
If only we can get over the initial shame of being laughingstocks on the international stage…
If only we can get over the initial shame of being laughingstocks on the international stage…
Oh that’s okay. Welcome to the club! Welcome to the American continent. People used to look up to us for maybe a couple years or something, but now we’re all a bunch of creationists chiropractors who don’t want to come from no stinkin monkeys.
Posted by: Feynmaniac | March 19, 2009 8:28 PM
Karol,
Lets cut pseudoscientific crap here and put some soil, water and a pea seed in a black steel box, weld it shut so it is airtight and keep it at a steady teperature [sic] of 300K for two weeks and after that period open the box and see if that seed tried to germinate despite lack of any sunlight??
You do realize by trying to keep it at a steady temperature you are injecting energy into the system, right?
======================================
Feynmaniac,
I am proposing clean conversion box in order to cut pseudoscientific crap and misterious connection between the entropy of the Sun and life on planet Earth.
I do supply energy, but since there is no sink for that energy other than biological process inside of the box all of that energy that goes missing (energy radiated in minus energy radiated out) inside of that box (make it sainless steel box to eliminate rusting) gets used in a process of decrease of entropy.
Yes, I’m beginning to doubt that he is an engineer, ;p.
Well at least he didn’t reject the the existence of the sun.
Creationist don’t seem to be able to grasp even the most elementary aspects of thermodynamics. People who have taken a chemistry, physics, or biology class in high school shouldn’t be making these mistakes.
Ah, but Snowbird, let’s go back to Gary Goodyear’s comments in question.
Goodyear talks about adaptation to the intensity of the sun.
Science supports the idea that skin colour is an adaptation to comparative intake of Vitamin D through the sun’s rays, one which was naturally selected through evolutionary process.
One could also hypothesize that walking on concrete triggers the human body to adapt by growing additional fat and cartilage deposits in the foot, and differentiating bone structure throughout the foot and leg. Someone once told me there’s a study that supports this hypothesis, but I can’t seem to find a corroborating source right now.
You can’t find that study because it doesn’t exist. I’m starting to think that you are really a troll because no one can be on a science board, and be that ignorant.
The only way you can argue the last paragraph is
a) via Lamarckian evolution, which has been long discredited; or
b) stick your fingers in your ears and yell lalalalala while everyone is telling you that evolution just doesn’t work that way.
If you’ve read even one thing on evolution you know that adaptive traits are not passed on, and that evolution is not predictable. The latter type of bullshit is often seen in the sensational media reports that state that blonds are going to become extinct, or that computers will cause us to develop massive brains, skulls and asses.
Now you’re just talking out of your ass Karol.
Let’s narrow this down a bit. Just what part of the evolutionary process violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Is it the vertical transfer of genes or is there another part of the process that cannot work because of thermodynamics? Please bring your argument beyond an assertion.
Karol Peng – thinking isn’t your first language, is it?
the opposition Liberals in Canada also have an idiot waiting to take over the portfolio when they get elected – note he is an astronaut…
On Tuesday, Liberal science critic Marc Garneau said that believing in evolution is not a job requirement for the science minister.
“It is a personal matter. It is a matter of faith.… I don’t think it prevents someone from being a good minister,” said the former astronaut, who has been a vocal critic of the government for its cuts to the three granting councils that fund university-based research in Canada.
—
http://www.functionsofnature.com
yes I am looking for a patron so I can finish the bloody thing without worrying about paying rent and any offers to leave this pathetic non-country and move south would be most welcome
Karol could be an engineer. Most of the engineers outside of chemical engineers haven’t had any thermo beyond general chemistry, if general chemistry was required at all. So (s)he could just be ignorant, rather than intentionally stupid. But to come to a science blog and not check your facts, where people who may actually know something (and taught) basic thermo? Not the brightest idea in the world. But then, creotards aren’t the brightest bulbs on the market.
the opposition Liberals in Canada also have an idiot waiting to take over the portfolio when they get elected – note he is an astronaut…
On Tuesday, Liberal science critic Marc Garneau said that believing in evolution is not a job requirement for the science minister.
“It is a personal matter. It is a matter of faith.… I don’t think it prevents someone from being a good minister,” said the former astronaut, who has been a vocal critic of the government for its cuts to the three granting councils that fund university-based research in Canada.
—
http://www.functionsofnature.com
yes I am looking for a patron so I can finish the bloody thing without worrying about paying rent and any offers to leave this pathetic non-country and move south would be most welcome
Karol, you are just the type engineer that I put up with every day. The know-it-all engineer who is an expert at every subject known to man. Yet, you probably passed your engineering courses with a bare 60% and that was only after you cheated you ass off. I’m guessing you were also one of them smarty pants that was forced into civil engineering cuz you couldn’t get into something better. Yet, you wear that metal ring of yours like it means you are the keeper-of-all-knowledge.
You know bupkiss about science, and you wouldn’t know a proper experiment if it drilled you up the ass.
Hey Yanks……mind your own business……best to concern yourselves with your failing economy, your do nothing president and your protectionist Congress……keep your nose in before someone bites it off!
PZ Myers since you are the one who calls Gary Goodyear an “incompetent moron” I find your silence deafening.
Come on now Mr. Mayers I know that you would love to offer your secular readers very simple physical explanation how living organisms can move from simple form to complicated form by a process of selective conversion of random (heat) vibration of atoms and simple molecules.
No God involved at all, process so simple that if an when you see educational aid used to show and explain this process to elementary school children going to Christian school you will burst laughing.
Are these your final words on this matter???
========================================
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 19, 2009 6:12 PM
Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. Neither does biology in general.
One of the ways we can tell you are one of those dumb Christians is that you offer up your incomprehension of a basic physical principle as if it were evidence against our existence.
I am proposing clean conversion box in order to cut pseudoscientific crap and misterious connection between the entropy of the Sun and life on planet Earth.
You don’t know what entropy is, moron.
This commenter who keeps telling “Yanks” to mind their own business sounds like a sockpuppet troll.
@226 so it’s ok for us to comment on their politics, but they can’t comment on ours?
Karol Karolak,
Who is this Mr. Mayers you speak of?
Also, you picked a bad week to show up.
The writer of this opinion piece is a moron who judges before he knows the facts,(very little of what you read in a Canadian far left-wing “news”paper can be counted on as fact) the first fact being the whole bloody quote is not only taken out of context but is wrong, but hey good on ya Mr Biologist for your very scientific open mind LOL, probably believe in man made climate change too being so open minded.
I can only see this as a secularist’s attack on a person of religion and secularists attack out of shame for the petty vindictive and deviant lifestyles they chose to prove their progressiveness, Their one hope is that there is no God and they pray for this daily. Grow up buddy most scientific discoveries made in the USA were by people of religion,(it ain’t the middle ages where they burn those who question LOL) heck the states is way more religious than Canada, way more.
Me, I’m spiritual but recognize no God. I however have no problem with those that do, unlike Mr Biologist( my love is a biologist and it never made her a genius so spare us your hyper ventilating Doc) and as a Canadian…mind your own freakin country, your President is an idiot or a communist you pick which, Both are dangerous.
Karol, why are you avoiding Gibb’s free energy? Perhaps it doesn’t say what you want it to? But that only makes you look stupid. Which you are. The sun me boyo. It supplies energy (enthalpy) to the earth. That can overwhelm local problems with entropy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t exist.
I’m thinking this one does subscribe to the heart beats for a lifetime with no external energy source” theory as well.
I want foreigners laughing at this fool. Unlike other countries, no names, we Canadians tend to value world opinion.
Professor P Z Mayers here…you are a complete idiot. You know nothing of science. Your questions are incoherent. Your tone is crazy. Fuck off troll
I know that you would love to offer your secular readers very simple physical explanation how living organisms can move from simple form to complicated form by a process of selective conversion of random (heat) vibration of atoms and simple molecules.
It has been done. Multiple times. On this thread alone. You are pathetic. Go away, you sad little creature.
#232 Me, I’m spiritual but recognize no God. I however have no problem with those that do, unlike Mr Biologist( my love is a biologist and it never made her a genius so spare us your hyper ventilating Doc) and as a Canadian…mind your own freakin country, your President is an idiot or a communist you pick which, Both are dangerous.
bullshit, your a right-wing-Ayn-Rand-sycophant fundie!! And a sock puppet to boot.
Karol, quit lying for Jesus and actually engage people here in debate. Show that your argument is right instead of just asserting it, answer objections to your reasoning and demonstrate that your position is correct… or is it you don’t actually have an argument?
How sweet it is to read this statement and know that it is completely untrue.
Karol Karolak P. Eng #199 wrote:
Huh? Am I wrong here, or is this not so much an argument against evolution, as it is an argument for vitalism?
I’m trying to figure out what the “very simple mechanism that even children in elementary school understand” is supposed to be. I don’t think he means the Power of God. They don’t refer to God as a “mechanism.” Life energy? Orgone? The Creative Force?
Professor P Z Mayers,
Here is a deal for you:
You publicly apologise to Mr. Gary Goodyear on your blog and if and when you do it I will provide you with very simple explanation how living organisms on this planet keep on braking Second Law of Thermodynamics by selective utilisation of random (heat) vibration of atoms and molecules.
You already proved it that you do not know the answer to my simple question in November of last year and you repeated your opinion tonight so there could by no doubt in anybody’s mind that when you went to insult Mr. Goodyear you were dumb like a bag of nails on the issue of the most elementary question of biology.
You can tell real man of science by his willingness to admit that they do not know the answer to the question posed to him, and a his willingness to admit to mistakes.
So far all I see is great dose of ignorance and arrogance.
The writer of this opinion piece is a moron who judges before he knows the facts
Enlighten us. What are the facts?
the whole bloody quote is not only taken out of context but is wrong
Do you have proof for that?
probably believe in man made climate change too being so open minded.
What are your specific problems with the scientific consensus about AGW?
the petty vindictive and deviant lifestyles they chose to prove their progressiveness
Those damned married monogamous liberals! They’re doing it on purpose!
Wait, what?
Their one hope is that there is no God and they pray for this daily.
Pray to whom? Do you even know what atheism is? Do you know how absolutely moronic this statement is?
Grow up buddy most scientific discoveries made in the USA were by people of religion
Which means what? That religious people are smart? By that logic, black people and women are stupid. Wow, bigotry is fun!
heck the states is way more religious than Canada, way more.
To its utter embarrassment, yes.
Me, I’m spiritual but recognize no God.
Define “spiritual”. Go on, I double-dog dare you.
I however have no problem with those that do, unlike Mr Biologist
Nobody here has a problem with people being religious. Ruling a country according to religious principles, or trying to put religion into science classes is what we object to.
But if you spent 10 minutes reading this blog before your vile, vacuous rant, you would have known that. Douche.
my love is a biologist and it never made her a genius
Awesome. You talk about your partner like that in public? You must be a treasure to be with.
as a Canadian…mind your own freakin country
Whence, oh whence, all this sand in your vagina?
your President is an idiot
For values of “idiot” of “noted Constitutional Law educator” and “editor of Harvard Law review”, of course.
or a communist
You don’t know what communism is. Use the Google-machine before using big words, it saves a lot of embarrassment.
But hey, welcome! Spring is truly bringing a bumper crop of morons.
Namely yours.
There are two major energy sources effecting the Earth.
The lesser source is radiation, which is the ultimate source for the Earth’s internal heat. Radiation is what keeps magma (google it if you don’t know what magma is) hot, causes volcanoes (remember, google is your friend) to erupt and do other energetic things, and causes tectonic plates (google “plate tectonics”) to move.
The greater source of energy is the Sun.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho it’s hot
The Sun is not
a place where we could live
but here on earth there’d be no life without the light it gives
We need it’s light
We need it’s heat
We need it’s energy
Without the sun
Without a doubt
There’d be no you and me
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Iron
Copper
Aluminum
and many others
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow a million earths could fit inside
and yet the sun is only a middle-sized star
The sun is far away
About 93 million miles away!
and that’s why it looks so small
And even when it’s out of sight
the sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat
The sun gives light
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun’s atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of
Hydrogen
Carbon
Nitrogen
and Helium
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees
Once you have some vague understanding of the concept of the Sun, we’ll discuss the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. You’re obviously a slow learner, so I don’t want to overburden your brain with too much information at one time.
Sastra,
Yeah I read it that way too. This, with the original “second law violates evolution” argument, makes me realize that he/she has no understand of science.
So this rules you out right?
Karol. You have been answered. Read this. If you don’t refute it, you’re an idiot AND an asshole.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#thermo
Utterly pathetic. What question? Mumbo-jumbo about an idea you don’t understand.
You have the god delusion – and it’s you, right?
Quick banning for this nasty nutcase, I reckon.
‘Tis Himself Re: TMBG:
Thank you. I was thinking the same thing.
One knows that he/she is dealing with a vapid moron is when said vapid moron proffers an explanation for any moronic claims made as though it were some sort of bargaining chip.
Karol Karolak P.Eng #242 wrote:
Hm. If he’s not a vitalist, I suggest “Physics Crank.”
Perhaps he has, working secretly on his own, managed to discover a new theory of “selective utilisation of random (heat) vibrations of atoms and molecules” — and suddenly all is to be explained. They laughed at him at The Academy. Fools. He’ll show them. They’ll see.
I just hope he’s not working on a ray gun powered by selectively utilized molecular vibrations. Karolak is an excellent moniker. Too good. It’s ominous.
For the record, since there seems to be some uncertainty on this matter, “Karol” is a male name.
Tis Himself,
What is average radiation teperature of the local Sun on Kelvin scale?
What is average power of radiation of the Sun measured at the surface of the Earth per square meter of Earth surface??
I hope PZ doesn’t just give in now and issue a full apology. I hate to see professors cry.
What makes Karol think that the millions of scientists who have studied the natural world for the good majority of their life are all so incompetent that they’ve neglected the role of heat physics? Furthermore, what makes Karol think that asserting that evolution violates thermodynamics on this blog is going to be met with the same incredulity that he has at the notion? And even further, given it’s a common creationist tactic, what makes him think that by saying it he’s actually bringing something new to the table that we’ve all conveniently neglected? Surely anyone who has ever read anything on creaionism / evolution has come across SLoT because it’s regurgitated over and over again.
Do you take us for fools Karol, or is this your equivalent of The Atheists Nightmare. Because while it’s as asinine as Ray Comfort’s banana fetish, it’s nowhere near has hilarious. It’s actually quite pathetic on your part.
I ask again, what aspect of the cycle of life violates SLoT? Where does your understanding on the matter lie? Or are you just here as a Liar for JesusTM?
Durward
60% of scientists in the United States expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God (SOURCE ). Also, 93% of the NAS, which consists of leading scientists, also expressed disbelief or doubt ( SOURCE). Of course that doesn’t answer whether or not God exists, but it does mean your statement was probably wrong.
How does does this, or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics prevent bacteria or insects from developing resistance and or immunity to antibiotics and pesticides used against them?
More than enough to satisfy both life in general and evolution in particular not conflicting with your mistaken ideas about thermodynamics laws.
Mr Peng asks
Careful now, he dosen’t speak englich so good, comes from a long line of village idiots, and thinks the sun is the moon’s mommy. Go easy on the fool…not!
Hmm… Lets see, a professional engineer who hasn’t had any chemistry since high school or freshman year, versus a PhD. chemist who can honk since he passed P-chem at the graduate level. Guess who has the clearer idea of who is full of fecal matter Karol. And your questions are all irrelevant.
Karol, we can observe the following facts:
Now how does any of that violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Because someone told him that God said so.
It varies with the season, the latitude of the observer, the slope of the ground, the weather, and time of day, but as an average, figure about 400 W/m^2 give or take.
That’s a LOT of power.
Stu | March 19, 2009 10:04 PM
Karol. You have been answered. Read this. If you don’t refute it, you’re an idiot AND an asshole.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#thermo
Since best and a brightest of secularists on this blog Stu proposed that I answer another bright Secularist theory here it is:
==============================================
“Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.”
This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, “No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body.” [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, “The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease.” Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.
However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can’t have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?
The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don’t violate any physical laws.
==========================================
Argument starts with misinerpretation of Second Law of Thermodynamics in order to difuse contradiction mentioned by the Chistians.
It follows the same path as previous argument failing to explain mechanisms at play that allow for violation ofSecond Law of Thermodynamics. New lame argument is introduced and tries to use formation of crystaline structures as evidence of natural creation of order from disorder in non living matter.
Last argument is very lame as formation crystaline structures follows exactly Second Law of Thermodynamics as crystals are the lowest energy level arrangements of atoms in given space under given pressure when such crystals are formed.
Who is next??
What is average radiation teperature of the local Sun on Kelvin scale?
Hitting the Schlitz early, are we? “Radiation teperature”?
Anyway, if you meant to ask “surface teMperature of the Sun in degrees Kelvin”, the answer is around 5778K. Remember, my mentally impaired friend, there is a new invention called Google.
What is average power of radiation of the Sun measured at the surface of the Earth per square meter of Earth surface?
Depending on where you are, about 1360W.
Now, before you pass out from your nightly glue-sniffing… did you have a point, or are you truly too fucking stupid to use Google?
Karol,
The effective temperature at the sun’s surface is 5778 K [Source]. Why you are asking I’m not sure.
The average power per square meter given by the sun is about 1366 W [Source]. This gives the Earth about 1.740×1017 W.
As has been pointed out, this much, much more than enough for life and evolution.
Post #265 seals it for me — Karol is just trolling and laughing his ass off.
IIRC, 1360 is the theoretical insolation for a flat disk perpendicular to the plane of the Earth’s orbit at the mean distance from the Earth to the sun.
Because the Earth is a spheroid, rotates, and is not flat, the average amount of solar radiation on any give square metre of the Earth’s surface is quite a bit less.
If you look at the instantaneous solar radiation on the lit side of the Earth, it’s around 1000 W/m^2.
In any case, it’s plenty to do whatever you need to do.
This is not a scientific argument. This is a religious statement. Religion cannot refute science. Only science can refute science. God cannot be used to either explain a scientific observation or be the conclusion of the observation. Science ignores god, if he exists. Science cannot refute religion, but it makes religion look silly because religion can’t adapt to new information. So you try stupid ways to defend you illogical religion. We are very amused.
Feynmaniac: we really have to delegate a bit better. Heh.
Snowbird: agreed. The sad sack is either on glue or trolling.
I really want to know just how evolution violates thermodynamics. At what step in the cycle of reproduction does thermodynamics get violated?
Secularist clown on this blog cannot find even most basic information and answer even the simplest of questions but they keep on yapping at anybody that does not agree with their views. Here are some simple answers regarding local Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
Temperature of surface (effective) 5 778 K
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
The solar constant is the amount of incoming solar electromagnetic radiation per unit area, measured on the outer surface of Earth’s atmosphere in a plane perpendicular to the rays.[2] The solar constant includes all types of solar radiation, not just the visible light. It is measured by satellite to be roughly 1,366 watts per square meter (W/m²),[3] though this fluctuates by about 6.9% during a year (from 1,412 W/m² in early January to 1,321 W/m² in early July) due to the earth’s varying distance from the Sun, and typically by much less than one part per thousand from day to day
And the christian clown has no idea of thermodynamics. Quit while you are behind.
I’m calling Poe on this. No way could this guy be for real. There are several people here who have answered all problems you’ve raised and have asked you to be more objective. Saying “evolution violates the SLoT” is not an argument, it’s an assertion. You’ve been asked several times to show how you’ve come to this conclusion or even just what part of the evolutionary process is in violation of that, yet you’ve done neither. And you call us the clowns? Dunning-Kruger effect…
Oh Karol, you’re adorable. Two people, independently, answered your questions before your pedantic little wankfest there.
Can I get a plonk? This one is not even Survivor-worthy.
I wonder when Karol is going to cut the mindless copying and pasting and actually get around to explaining how evolution actually violates the 2nd Law.
Probably in the Year of the Porcupine, on the same day Professor Myers apologizes for calling Gary Goodyear a moron.
Karol @ 273,
Karol, are you going to demonstrate that thermodynamics makes evolution impossible or just keep asking irrelevant questions?
If he had any real science, the peer reviewed primary science journal citations would be coming fast a furious. If all you have is a pile of fecal matter, irrelevant questions and other forms of bobbing and weaving are all you have.
It occurs to me there is also another reason evolution doesn’t violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – and that is it’s the 2nd Law of THERMODYNAMICS. As such, it is only really valid for describing the conversions and motion of various unconscious energies, primarily thermal, in thermodynamic processes. This means it cannot really account for the actions of entities that have some level of consciousness that may actively work against the normal workings of these laws and/or thermodynamic systems in which they are contained. For example, if we were to define ‘the Earth’ as a thermodynamic system, as this argument demands, in the same way that evolution is impossible, due to the 2nd Law, the invention of the refrigerator is also impossible, as the refrigerator creates a local area of lowered temperature within this thermodynamic system.
I’ve probably missed something there, but it seems the idea of evolution being impossible because of the laws of thermodynamics is just blatently absurd.
Kel asked:
Hmm, I think I know the answer to this one…
A quick google search of Karol resulted in some very interesting links:
http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?&id=697346&dn=y
http://fightforjustice.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-personal-message-of-hope-for-anyone.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070511.wbaby0512/CommentStory/specialScienceandHealth/home
The writing patterns and name suggest Karol is German. Karol, bubelah, if nothing else, can you answer whether you are?
Damnit, Karol is Canadian. This is not a good thread for Canada’s reputation.
Twin-Skies, I guess that means I have to retract my statement on him being a troll — he’s just a total wackaloon!
WOW!!!! Is this stupid or what? If the existence of life on earth violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics then….How and why are we here?
Hmmmm, not sure what sort of mental illness is associated with the belief that the entire world is not real and no one including oneself exists. Solipsism maybe?
Secularist clowns take a Second Law of Thermodynamics as a religious creed that cannot be violated no matter what despite of the fact that this blatant violation of Second Law of Thermodynamics takes place billions of times every microsecond on the face of this planet in every living organism and is driven by a very simple mechanism that even children in elementary school understand when it is explained to them properly.
Arrogant and ignorant secularist clowns on this blog keep on twisting my question claiming that I am bringing up violation of a Second Law of Thermodynamics by living organisms as an evidence for existence of God. They claim that life does not violate creed of God of secularism that says that violation of a Second Law of Thermodynamics is not possible. Who are religious zealots with a closed mind posting on this blog?? I am asking again clowns on this blog, can you please go back to my original question.
Dear PZ Myers,
You allegedly are a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Given your extensive knowledge of molecular biology and modern molecular physics you should have no difficulty offering us better explanation of the fact that existence of life on planet Earth violates Second Law of Thermodynamics than BS you wrote so far.
Once again, would you be so kind to offer us dumb Christians a more plausible scientific explanation for what we call a Miracle of Life than complete BS that you offered your dumb readers, before you start calling names and casting stones on us??
Would it be too much of us if we were to check your qualifications by asking you again for simple straight forward explanation of such a very simple question before we accept your harsh judgement?
I will try to focus you a bit so we do not have to look at the whole Universe in order to explain what is happening on molecular level.
What exact mechanism of molecular interactions is used by living organisms in order to overcome Second Law of Thermodynamics and create what we Christians call a Miracle of Life??
You can answer my question by providing single word (a name of a very common and very simple mechanical device)
Nothing per se. That is also not the issue. And BTW, the head of the US NIH with a budget far larger than the total Canadian R&D budget is….a Moslem. He doesn’t get slammed because he isn’t stupid.
The issue is that he is an ignorant incompetent moron who knows nothing about science and he is the….Minister of Science and Technology.
You christofascists are all the same. Putting incompetent stupid people in positions of power that they can’t possibly do well. Then watching everything collapse into chaos and depression.
This is the American disease which you Canadians have caught. Michael Brown of FEMA was clueless and we lost New Orleans and thousands died. George Bush was cluelessm destroyed the economy, and now the USA and the rest of the world are heading into a depression. Not to mention the piles of dead bodies in Iraq for a pointless, expensive war.
We know what a christofascist world would look like. We already started down that road. Ultimately, we would end up sitting on a pile of rubble, skinning a rate for dinner, and chanting, “Jesus loves all the little zygotes.” The only difference between us and the Canadians, they would be sitting on snow covered rubble and freezing their asses off.
I’m going to go out tonight and use the law of thermodynamics to it’s advantage. I’m going to eat a nice cooked steak before it cools to room temperature and drink a nice cold beer straight from the fridge before it warms to room temperature. Can’t wait. Here’s a question to you Karol, how many beers does it take to break my brain enough to think that “God did it”?
“Going to flush Canadian science down the tube”?? That’s a very bold prediction, and I care to put my money elsewhere!
^And by that I mean, Canadian science is resilient as hell. Goodyear is still a moron and needs to be fired.
Maybe it’s time for the Rest of Canada to stop voting in Christianist crooks in Parliament?
-a concerned Québécois.
So Karol the moron posts the exact same copy and paste idiocy he came in with as a rebuttal?
He’s a textbook example of a “Dumb Christian”
Looks like we have some people auditioning for the next season of Survivor! Pharyngula.
Stanton,
I will make it very easy for you; single word describling simple mechanical device that is commonly used on molecular level by all living organisms in order to overcome Second Law of Thermodynamic. It works by selective utilisation of random (thermal) vibration of atoms and molecules. The fact that this process is selective allows creation of more complex forms with higher stored energy level than stored energy level of atoms and molecules that are used in that process.
Since you are dummb like a bag of nails and you do not comprechend anything what I wrote above you can look for a name of character from a very well known old movie that featured Nicholson as a main character and a nut case.
Cheers,
Secularist clowns take a Second Law of Thermodynamics as a religious creed that cannot be violated no matter what despite of the fact that this blatant violation of Second Law of Thermodynamics takes place billions of times every microsecond on the face of this planet in every living organism and is driven by a very simple mechanism that even children in elementary school understand when it is explained to them properly.
I must apologize because I just had a major ‘road to Damascus’ insight. Seriously, you’re not an asshat, you actually have a grasp on reality, and your opinions are spot on.
PZ ought to issue an apology at once, and shut the blog down, cuz he’s been shown up.
Excuse me while I go take a shower – I feel so dirty after saying that.
Karol, you remind me of someone:
I’m having a hard time figuring out if Karol is arguing that the 2nd law isn’t actually a law (since it is so easily overcome), or if all of life is “magic” because it so easily ratchets its way past the 2nd law.
Karol is the worst of the worst: A fundie tard with severe Kruger-Dunning syndrome.
Talking to him will be as worthwhile as talking to a tape recorder. With a wonky erase button.
Karol Karolak is a very odd bird who thinks one of the gravest problems in Canada is baby trafficking. Here is a letter to the Queen. And here is the Google search for Karol Karolac. Have fun reading the links.
NOoo, sorry but that’s absolutely the wrong answer. Consciousness or any other active biological process depends on chemically stored energy and thermodynamic processes.
Sorry, I’ve been busy … can I assume that our favourite self-absorbed Canadian chew toy “Patrick Ross” finally announced that he was clearly smarter than everyone here, then flounced out in a sanctimonious huff, patting himself on the back all the way over his intellectual superiority? It’s kind of what happens all the time when Patrick is involved.
Up here, we’re used to it by now.
Karol Karolak, Master of Delusion, ended #265 with:
Love that swagger, Karol. Highly justified.
I’m used to the saying “pride comes before a fall” but for you it comes afterwards as well.
And still you have not established that life violates the SLoT.
kook
I see our religitard still thinks he has a point.
Karol, the second law of thermodynamics has never been violated. If it could be violated with impunity, there would be perpetual motion machines powering the world. I don’t see any.
The biggest mistake idiots like yourself make is to define the system too narrowly. One must always take external considerations into and out of the system, which they fail to do. For example, the earth receives a large amount of energy from the sun. So in defining the system to study for violation of the second law of thermo, the sun must always be taken into consideration, or you are deliberately lying. But then, religitards do that constantly. The second law is binding on both secularist and christian.
When the sun is included in the system, then the apparent violation of the second law on earth goes away. The sun becomes the place where entropy increases faster than the entropy decreases on earth. This is well know by all except idiots. It is time for you to cite peer reviewed primary scientific literature, or to shut up.
Repeating your lies does not make an argument, nor does it make the lies true. It just shows repeated stupidity on your part.
This is what I love – some dumbass talks shit about thermodynamics, and almost no one cares about the implications when said idiot *doesn’t even know what the laws of thermodynamics mean.*
Well, flame wars is a misnomer. Flame carnage, mutilation, extermination, and annihilation are more like it. But it’s a brilliantly entertaining waste of energy.
You’re all hollering at NO ONE. There’s NO ONE THERE. Karol is a VAPID IDIOT. He may even be mentally ill. But you’re attempting intelligent conversation with him.
As you all know, CREOTARDS DO NOT CARE ABOUT REASON, EVIDENCE, OR FACT. SAME FOR TROLLS. All they want is to be taken seriously, which validates their belief systems and goals. You think you’re kicking their teeth in, but that’s all they need to feed. I know I’m not offering any satisfying alternatives here.
You can’t reason unreason. But you can pummel the shit out of it, and it still comes back.
Karol is a rightwing troll, and a moron. He will never demonstrate who life violates the SLoT (I like that TLA, thanks) because it can’t be done.
Anyhoo Karol is one of those bible thumping, Jesus freaks that wants to enslave women so that are nothing more thank baby making machines for Jebus. He hangs out at places like Small Dead Animals, a rightwing, libertarian blog which is home to some of whackest collection of Canadian racist, Jebus freaks and other assorted trash.
Karol is living proof that even the educated professional can be a complete fucking retard if they set aside reason and logic and embrace the belief in the magical sky fairies.
Jesus Fucking Christ, I’m embarrassed to be a Canadian Engineer right now. Jebus, even Patrick Ross was attempting and making more sense than Karol, and that is truly a sad statement,…
To PZ minions, let me apologize on behalf of all Canadians whom have function brains. People whom hang out at Small Dead Animals (or Small Brain Dead Animals as some of call it) are equivalent to American Freepers
Damn this has been embarrassing to read.
Owlmirror @299, my first thought was Maxwell’s demon, not the Brownian ratchet.
Invited by secularists at Globe & Mail waging war on Convervative government, two pseudoscientific clowns who seem to have no clue about epigenetics jumped on Gary Goodyear and made themselves look like fools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Evolution
Although epigenetics in multicellular organisms is generally thought to be a mechanism involved in differentiation, with epigenetic patterns “reset” when organisms reproduce, there have been some observations of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (e.g., the phenomenon of paramutation observed in maize). Although most of these multigenerational epigenetic traits are gradually lost over several generations, the possibility remains that multigenerational epigenetics could be another aspect to evolution and adaptation. These effects may require enhancements to the standard conceptual framework of the modern evolutionary synthesis.
Epigenetic features may play a role in short-term adaptation of species by allowing for reversible phenotype variability. The modification of epigenetic features associated with a region of DNA allows organisms, on a multigenerational time scale, to switch between phenotypes that express and repress that particular gene.[33] Whereas the DNA sequence of the region is not mutated, this change is reversible. It has also been speculated that organisms may take advantage of differential mutation rates associated with epigenetic features to control the mutation rates of particular genes.[33]
Epigenetic changes have also been observed to occur in response to environmental exposure—for example, mice given some dietary supplements have epigenetic changes affecting expression of the agouti gene, which affects their fur color, weight, and propensity to develop cancer.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090319.wcoevolve20/BNStory/specialComment/home
Does Canada’s science minister really see the evolutionary light?
ARNE MOOERS AND DOLPH SCHLUTER
From Friday’s Globe and Mail
March 20, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT
Does Gary Goodyear really get this evolution thing?
In an interview with The Globe and Mail that was published on Tuesday, our federal Minister of State for Science and Technology oddly dodged questions about whether he believed in evolution. Scientists were quick to point out that having someone in charge of science who was uncomfortable with one of its most important principles might not be such a good thing. Later in the day, the minister set the record straight, saying: “We are evolving every year, every decade. That’s a fact.” Tempest in a teacup, all cooled down, let’s move on to the economy.
But if one listens to the rest of the quote, Red Rose whitecaps reappear. Mr. Goodyear says this evolution is “to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment.”
What on earth can he mean? Does he really think the human species is changing generation by generation to be better able to walk in high heels?
As a chiropractor, Mr. Goodyear well knows that a life of walking in high heels does all sorts of bad things to one’s back, and I’m sure he can look at an X-ray and tell in an instant whether the patient is a high-heels or flats kind of girl. This is science, but it isn’t evolution.
Mr. Goodyear seems to be confusing evolution with development, a common mistake. Individuals develop by year and by decade as a result of their interactions with their environment – leathery skin, curved backs, strong calves. But evolution is when genes change from generation to generation. If everyone wore high heels all the time, and a minority of people were genetically predisposed not to tip into oncoming traffic, then this genetic trait might become more common in the next generation of high-heel wearers. That would be evolution associated with wearing high heels. We know of no evidence that this is taking place. The same goes for walking on cement, in running shoes or in brogues.
Now, intensity of the sun really is associated with past evolutionary changes in our species. The evidence is strong that light skin in northern climes, where there is less sun, is an evolved adaptation for aiding the production of vitamin D, which we all need. The ability to digest lactose is another evolved adaptation in people from cultures that raised cows for milk. In fact, much or even most of the common variations we see among groups of humans living in different parts of the globe is the result of past evolution in our species. We are indeed the product of past evolution, and there is every reason to think that, collectively, humans are still evolving, generation by generation. But this takes a bit longer than “every year, every decade.”
We hope we are wrong about Mr. Goodyear’s understanding. He can set us straight in a flash, and we hope he does. He just needs to say that he wasn’t serious about the shoe thing and that the evolution to which he was referring is the evolution to which we are referring. But if we aren’t wrong, and his record-setting was another odd dodge, then this is a serious issue that should be debated more fully.
Past evolution is the reason why wearing high heels, giving birth and running on pavement all hurt. It is also integral to human genomics research, it is the reason behind serious multiple drug resistance in our hospitals, it is the reason we can’t yet engineer a cure for HIV-AIDS, why we get cancer, and why we spend billions on pesticides every year.
Evolution, in other words, is integral to much that Mr. Goodyear must take an interest in. Does he get it? If he really doesn’t, he won’t be alone – a sizable minority of Canadians and a few MPs still don’t understand what evolution is and how it works. But, unlike most of us, Mr. Goodyear is responsible for a large science budget and is making important decisions about science and its role in our future.
Canadian society as a whole should be asking whether someone in such a position should be better informed. As a man passionate about science and as a chiropractor, we’re confident he would want to get it right.
Arne Mooers and Dolph Schluter are professors of evolutionary biology at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, respectively.
I have a standard response to anyone who starts yapping about the Second Law of Theremodynamics:
“Please state the Second Law. Be technically accurate and complete.”
Inevitably, the answer is painful gibberish along the lines of, “Um, order always goes to disorder. Right?” I have never had anyone state it correctly.
For additional entertainment value:
“Please state the First (or Third) Law of Thermodynamics.”
The point there is to demonstrate that the speaker knows nothing whatsoever about thermo and is mindless regurgitating creationist pap.
Feel free to try either one of those tactics. They’ve never failed me yet.
Karol Karolak,
tl;dr – try actually writing something for a change, instead of just cutting and pasting things we’re going to ignore. Then check it for coherence before you hit ‘post’ – you fucking clown shoe dipshit.
Because Gary Goodyear presents a grossly inaccurate definition of evolution, it is extremely obvious that he does not care, let alone is passionate about science.
And neither is Karol, a textbook example of a “Dumb Christian.”
Nerd of Redhead, OM @307,
Look around you idiot if there were no local violations of Second Law of Thermodynamics there would be no life on the face of this planet. Life, you idiot, is a perepetual motion machine that has been in motion on the face of this planet for million of years.
If the Second Law of Thermodynamics did not apply in the Universe you would have life everywhere in the Universe, on: Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon, and asteroids just to name few.
Life exists in very narrow range of teperatures and in presence of very specific configuration of atomic elements.
Life exists only on a planet Earth as we know so far, and that tells you that the existence of life is a very rare occurence and not some kind of general propensity of non living matter.
Finally some of you managed to figure out that I was pointing at Brownian ratchet as a mechanism that is used by living organisms to overcome limitations imposed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Not that it will make any difference because most of you secularist clowns have minds like concrete: all mixed up and permanently set.
Hey, I just got back from hospital where they removed the fence post stuck in my eye. They just pushed it out through the hole it made in the back of my head. Easy.
Now I realise that evolution does not obey the Law of Gravity so evolution ‘theory’ is wrong. Isiah Newton was right after all! I’m right too, admit it and everybody else is wrong. Dang.. Still can’t find that All-Cap key, it’s here somewhere…
This enters with Barb’s assertion of the heart beating for a lifetime without an external power source as one of the most stupid thing ever posted here.
The only thing mixed up here is you, Karol Karolac.
Whining and screaming about how wonderful life is does not make for a demonstration of how life allegedly violates the 2nd Law.
If Karol weren’t so arrogantly stupid, he would realize that living organisms maintain their own growth and order without violating the 2nd Law by contributing to the disorder and entropy to the environment around them. That, and only idiots would think to apply the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to the accumulation of inherited mutations, much in the same way only a raving lunatic would demand the application of government penal codes to the manufacture of pumpkin tempura.
Karol the religitard, I am a scientist, working for 30+ years. Evidence is what counts, and my mind changes with the evidence. You have presented no evidence, just made inane claims. That the the product of a closed mind. Show me the evidence that the second law of thermodynamics is wrong, say with a perpetual motion machine, that can be examined and confirmed by scientists, magicians, professional debunkers, and competent engineers, and I would believe you. Otherwise, if you want to invoke god, you must show physical evidence for your imaginary deity. Say an eternally burning bush, which would also show the second law of thermo is wrong. So, if you are a man of itegrity, either produce the evidence or shut the fuck up. Welcome to science.
Dang, I have real case of the Rev. BDC typo cooties today. The next to last sentence in #319: man of integrity…
And Karol, any local increase in entropy is allowed, provided enough enthalpy is added to the system. To say otherwise is a damned lie (you know it to be a lie, but state it anyway, which adds the damned).
I’m familiar with Brownian ratchets. They do not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics; in the absence of a temperature gradient between the ratchet and their environment, they cannot produce net positive work.
To everyone else, I would like to join the other Canadian engineers here in offering my apologies for Mr. Karolak.
Karol is living scientific proof that evolution is a reversible phenomenon. Who of thunk?
From Cana-Duh
(very Duh with people like Karol in it)
Zorpheous
Sure the pea seed germinated. Seeds germinate in the dark all the time. Do you realize that the entire interior of the earth is dark? And seeds grow in soil.
Seeds germinate using their stored energy in the form of starch, oils, and proteins. So where did that food energy come from? Ultimately the sun. You will find that as the seed germinates, the amount of food and energy goes down as it is converted into seedling and some is lost as energy. Without an additional power source like the sun, eventually the seed runs out entirely and dies.
This is grade school level biological science. Karol knows less biology than a school kid. And this whole process is completely in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. While Karol is a dumb xian, there is something else going on here. Mental illness or Alzheimers or something. Even children aren’t that stupid.
Nerd of Redhead, OM @319
Let’s try again.
Look around you educated idiot if there were no local violations of Second Law of Thermodynamics there would be no life on the face of this planet. Life, you scientific idiot, is a perepetual motion machine that has been in motion on the face of this planet for million and millions of years.
If the Second Law of Thermodynamics did not apply in the Universe you would have life everywhere in the Universe, on: Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon, and asteroids just to name few.
Life exists in very narrow range of teperatures and in presence of very specific configuration of atomic elements.
Life exists only on a planet Earth as we know so far, and that tells you that the existence of life is a very rare occurence and not some kind of general propensity of non living matter.
You want to conduct an experiment to convince yourself that violation of Second Law of Thermodynamics taks place here it is:
We will make two identical stainless steel boxes, we will prepare two identical pails of soil, two equal amounts of water, two equal numbers and size pails of pea seeds. We will grind in a blender one pile of pea seeds and put it into one box with water and soil and weld box airtight.
We will put another pile of whole pea seeds in another box with soil and water and weld it airtight as well.
We will have two identical large Dewar containers that we will put our boxes in and we will fill containers with equal amounts of warm water at 35 deg C and we will close Dewar containers and leave them both in cold storage at same temperature for couple of days (two weeks let say). After these two weeks we will check temperature of water in both Dewar containers.
Guess where temperature of water will be higher and why???
Karol, show me the citation from the peer reviewed scientific journals. Or shut the fuck up. Religitards are too dumb to design good experiments. And your experiment is dumb, and doesn’t prove what you think it proves. I know. I design experiments for a living. Quit while you are behind. You will never be ahead.
Uh, this guy is an engineer? Anyone know what he was responsible for designing so I can stay far, far away from it? I wouldn’t want to be near any building or bridge he had any part of.
A Brownian ratchet will only work in the presense of temperature non-equilibrium. Similarly a chemical ratchet will only work in chemical non-equilibrium. We can see that virtually all non-equilibrium states on the surface of the earth are caused by the sun pumping energy into the system (short of radioactive processes that cause volcanos, etc). Thus life is maintained by non-equilibrium energy transfers driven by the sun.
No sun implies equilibrium, no energy transfer, no life.
Karol, if you think your inane experiment proves what you want, here is what you must do. Carry out the experiment. Then write it up and submit it to an appropriate peer reviewed scientific journal. Say Science or Nature. Make a name for yourself. Win a Nobel prize. But until you publish you have nothing but bad ideas.
This isn’t true. Mechanical engineers study a great deal of thermodynamics, but the emphasis is on machines such as heat engines. Thermodynamics as it applies to chemistry or biology- well, that’s another matter.
Vigorous assertion doesn’t mean much around here, my friend. Can you defend, with a literature citation, these asserted Second Law violations? If the Second Law has been falsified, I would think finding the relevant article should be trivial. And with respect to calling Nerd an idiot–this is supposed to help you make your case exactly how?
On environmental issues the Green Party angles left of the NDP. But on economic and social issues they seem to cleave well right of the Tories. – amphiox
Really? Having visited their website, I see no evidence of particularly right-wing stances on social and economic issues (although they do appear right of the US Green Party and most European Green parties). What were you thinking of?
@Karol: What’s more likely? That the entirety of decades of investigation into cell metabolism should be flawed or that you misunderstand a concept?
If you find the chemical reaction necessary for life that breaks the Second Law, please let us know.
Karol #324:
With my educated idiot’s eye, I see some subtle flaws in your proposed experiment. Would you like to know what they are?
The stupid, it blinds! And I’m starting to wonder if that’s intentional – it’s not like Harper lets his minions off the leash to speak on their own behalf as a rule (and they had plenty of time to form a coherent response that was at least superficially science literate). Bear with me for a minute… Harper has consistently followed in Bush/Cheney/Rove footsteps in terms of strategy (same think tanks, same thoughts). He was also a lobbyist for corporations that want to privatize Canadian healthcare (so he’s in the pockets of privatizers and has a profit-over-patients approach to public health). He won the last election via a divide and conquer strategy by very purposely inciting drama that pitted Franco Quebec against Anglo Canada, and East against West. His core voting base are religious people on the hard right (Harper himself belongs to an evangelical church that believes in the apocalypse – just the kind of guy you want planning the future, one who doesn’t think there is one!).
What this drama does is take the attention off the funding cuts and diverting of funds from pure science into corporate R&D (an investment Canadians don’t profit from, multinational corporations do) by making it all into a religious issue (not only a religious issue but one that’s also involved in science and medicine). It makes the discussion an emotional one instead of a rational one about real issues like the role of science in the public sphere (and whether we should fund R&D in the private sphere with no residual royalties on the investment when inventions or discoveries turn a profit) and the benefits of pure research, what the difference between science and pseudoscience is, etc.
All of this allows Harper to try to generate (so far with some success) division in the country. (And all just in time to ride the coattails of the Fundie uproar over Agnostic bus ads.) Now, most Canadians I know are moderate or lapsed in their religious beliefs. However, two populations of believers are growing in Canada. Fundamentalists (both Born Again Christian and Sikh and Islamic Fundies) and new age believers of woo (as the Boomers feel their age and have to confront/deny their mortality). Which is Goodyear? Hard to know really but chiropractic is an profession where the fundie right and the new age left meet (to share a glass of grass cuttings and handful of supplements, and to do some sciency appearing rituals using technology). It also has appeal to lots of mainstream, well off liberals who are seeking “wellness”.
Essentially Harper/Goodyear are trying to stir up a hornets’ nest by poking a God stick in people’s eye in the hopes that the mildly religious and moderate users of woo will feel personally insulted by people who believe in science or who are atheist who call Goodyear stupid. What we need to remind average Canadians is that Fundamentalism doesn’t just mean God’s soldiers from Alberta but also those who want Sharia law to legally override Canadian civil law within their religious community (it’s worth bringing up since many Christian Fundies are also vehemently racist and anti-Islam). We need moderate Canadians to understand that this isn’t about religion, it’s about basic competence and having a government that focuses on reality-based thinking (and believes there’s a future to sustain!). And that it was Goodyear himself who made this into a religious issue (when he should have been, as science minister, educating people about how evolution is a well established theory and not a belief and has nothing to do with religion because it’s science).
This is typical of Karol, sadly, when he getting his ass handed to him he changes the argument, moves the goal post, etc,… He use the Ann Coulter Scientific Method of Debating.
1) State your question
2) Setup you oponents argument
3) demand them to prove the strawman you set for them
4) Ignore any ration debate or facts
5) When naughty language or bad names are directed at you, declare victory
6) If you lose the debate, declare victory anyways
You guys should read some of the crap Karol has written on Canadian Blogs, the guy is a complete retard and thinks science and engineer are tools to political ends.
Don’t even get him started on his views about feminists (ie a feminist is a female person who has a functional brain in karol’s book)
The guy is a complete waste of bandwidth and oxygen.
Karol, you please Shut The Fuck Up and stop embarrassing Canadians and Engineers.
I remember learning undergraduate thermodynamics. The formulae were simple, the consequences quite baffling – many scientists have spent whole careers on elucidating their meaning.
So, Mr Peng – do as you’ve been asked. State the laws of thermodynamice (let’s see if he can find and use an equation editor, eh?) but you can’t use cut and paste.
Simple, moron, but you won’t do it.
‘Cos one of their consequences is that you can’t get ordered thoughts from a pile of misfiring neurons.
Locally, this is untrue.
What manner of fucktard is this “Karol”? I’m thinking of middle-aged man, unruly wisps of hair, squint glasses, who shuffles round using a plastic bag as a briefcase to hold his important papers. He lives alone, in squalor, probably with a cat, (who understands thermodynamics far better than he does) and only goes out to do a little shopping every day, things in tins mostly, and is known in the neighbourhood as a muttering nutter.
He’s a weird, nasty, deluded old man.
And now he’s here.
Thanks God!
@326
Perhaps and engineer in the sense of driving a little choo-choo around the same oval shaped track in the basement.
Posted by: astromcnaught | March 20, 2009 9:52 AM
A Brownian ratchet will only work in the presense of temperature non-equilibrium. Similarly a chemical ratchet will only work in chemical non-equilibrium. We can see that virtually all non-equilibrium states on the surface of the earth are caused by the sun pumping energy into the system (short of radioactive processes that cause volcanos, etc). Thus life is maintained by non-equilibrium energy transfers driven by the sun.
No sun implies equilibrium, no energy transfer, no life.
==============================================
Holly shit, I must be dead as my body teperature is at steady 36.6 deg C. That means I must be rooting inside as the Brownian ratchet will only work in the presence of temperature non-equilibrium that means only on the surface of my skin.
According to leftards; since we do not use Sun’s energy to drive our metabolic process it means that we can only break organic food down. All this complex DNA in all the cells of my body must come from sunflowers than.
I knew that ancient Egiptians an later on hippes were up to something really good.
Any new ideas or arguments???
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Search ResultsCell – Forespore Engulfment Mediated by a Ratchet-Like MechanismWe suggest that ratchet-mediated engulfment minimizes the utilization of … Cancer Cell, Cell, Cell Host & Microbe, Cell Metabolism, Cell Stem Cell …
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http://www.mitochondrial.net/showabstract.php?pmid=9724962 – 33k – Cached – Similar pages –
Trends in Molecular Medicine – Related ArticlesKinesin Is an Evolutionarily Fine-Tuned Molecular Ratchet-and-Pawl Device of … Cancer Cell, Cell, Cell Host & Microbe, Cell Metabolism, Cell Stem Cell …
https://cellmetabolism.org/trends/molecular-medicine/relatedArticles?articlePii=S1471-4914(06)00069-4 – 132k – Cached – Similar pages
Yawn, still nothing Karol. When will you get some real evidence. You have nothing, you will have nothing. Because you believe a lie.
Ok people, lets end this. We have to Karol back to Kate’s place and fix the gate so that our Canadian IDiots stop infecting our neighbours to the south with Teh Stoopid (damn they Americans have enoung of Teh Stupid of their own, they don’t need ours too)
Karol, one very simple question
HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?
As for Mr. Gary Goodyear, how does he think the Earth is?
These are not question about religion, these are science questions.
Not a word he says makes any sense at all does it?
I bet he’s “known to health services”.
Heh, instead of “believe in science” I should have wrote “people who consider science the best means to explore the world and universe and figure out how things and people/bodies work”. Hard to get away from that “belief” meme once it’s got out!
It should also be pointed out what kinds of benefits pure science provides for Canadians (and humanity at large) – such as research into preventative medicine, fitness, inexpensive treatments, environment, health and the environment, etc. The picture being painted at the moment is that pure science is useless or impractical, it needs to be shown why impure science is actually much less practical due to bias and profit-motive (making money isn’t in and of itself a practical goal for science, it is for businessmen). There’s a parallel with how Harper is trying to destroy art and intelligent discourse in Canada by a variety of means, including trying to kill the CBC and only fund commercial entertainment, how the Arts Council is being defunded and censored, and generally avoiding intelligent discourse himself in favor of patronizing statements. Clearly Harper thinks Canadians are really, really stupid (rather than being decent enough people that we have a hard time imagining that anyone would be so brazenly….brazen!). We should all be offended – not at each other but that we have a government that considers us so stupid that they’ll lie to our face and patronize us.
PS. If this blows up in Harper’s face, expect Goodyear to resign from the position since Harper is willing to sacrifice anyone or anything to feed his ambitions. Seems to me that Harper sent Goodyear out to test the water and see what else he can get away with – too bad the coalition is dead in the water just when we need it! And the Liberals are falling all over themselves not to offend anyone who’s a creationist!
Mr. Karlok, I am aware of molecular ratchets. There was a great article on them in Scientific American some time ago. Unfortunately for your delusions, not one of the examples you cite violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Not one of them extracts heat from a single reservoir and produces positive work with no other side effects.
Take the last paper you cite, for example. Did you read it? If you did, did you miss this?
In case you never took a basic cellular biology class, ATP is the cell’s basic ready reserve of chemical energy. These ratchets run on chemical potential.
On the original story, I take it that this clown will soon be laughed out of office? One of the many things I enjoy in this debate is how furious the Creationists get when they’re laughed at – though of course their belief system deals with this by asserting that they are christ-like in enduring it.
Still, those clever, witty Canadians won’t stand for this, will they? As we all know, just being a creationist should be enough to disqualify anyone from high office on the grounds of mental insufficiency, and I can’t see this bozo will last much past the ridicule universally heaped on his back. So, can we have the Maple Leaf Rag at full volume please?
#339: “Any new ideas or arguments???”
Yes, that you answer my question.
Can you find a chemical reaction necessary for life that violates the second law, and provide it?
Life exists in very narrow range of teperatures and in presence of very specific configuration of atomic elements.
Gee a temperature range of 270K too 670K is a narrow range? Karol just keeps dishing out Teh Stoopid in toxic quantities and expects us to eat his shit.
Stop Karol, you are embarrassing yourself, Canada and Canadian Engineers.
Heh, instead of “believe in science” I should have wrote “people who consider science the best means to explore the world and universe and figure out how things and people/bodies work”. Hard to get away from that “belief” meme once it’s got out!
It should also be pointed out what kinds of benefits pure science provides for Canadians (and humanity at large) – such as research into preventative medicine, fitness, inexpensive treatments, environment, health and the environment, etc. The picture being painted at the moment is that pure science is useless or impractical, it needs to be shown why impure science is actually much less practical due to bias and profit-motive (making money isn’t in and of itself a practical goal for science, it is for businessmen). There’s a parallel with how Harper is trying to destroy art and intelligent discourse in Canada by a variety of means, including trying to kill the CBC and only fund commercial entertainment, how the Arts Council is being defunded and censored, and generally avoiding intelligent discourse himself in favor of patronizing statements. Clearly Harper thinks Canadians are really, really stupid (rather than being decent enough people that we have a hard time imagining that anyone would be so brazenly….brazen!). We should all be offended – not at each other but that we have a government that considers us so stupid that they’ll lie to our face and patronize us.
PS. If this blows up in Harper’s face, expect Goodyear to resign from the position since Harper is willing to sacrifice anyone or anything to feed his ambitions. Seems to me that Harper sent Goodyear out to test the water and see what else he can get away with – too bad the coalition is dead in the water just when we need it! And the Liberals are falling all over themselves not to offend anyone who’s a creationist!
Or could violate it.
I state my question again, paranoid moron, state this law technically – not cut and paste – and show us you know how to use, or even write, a simple formula.
Then, try to explain how life violates this. Easy, huh?
I can only assume Karol Karolak P Eng (really, what sort of wally includes his degree in his handle?) is going for “stupidest troll in Pharyngula’s history”. Keep trying, Karol Karolak P Eng, you’ve got some stiff competition to overcome!
Why majority leftards posting on this blog are so aggressive, arrogant, ignorant and plain supid???
http://www.theannainstitute.org/stwh.pdf
SCARS THAT WON’T HEAL: THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF CHILD ABUSE
By Martin H. Teicher
Maltreatment at an early age can have enduring negative effects on a child’s brain development and function….
Adaptive Detriment
Our team initiated this research with the hypothesis that early stress was a toxic agent that interfered with the normal, smoothly orchestrated progression of brain development, leading to enduring psychiatric problems. Frank W. Putnam of Children’s Hospital MedicalCenter of Cincinnati and Bruce D. Perry of the Alberta Mental Health Board in Canada have now articulated the same hypothesis. I have come to question and reevaluate our starting premise, however. Human brains evolved to be molded by experience, and early difficulties were routine during our ancestral
development. Is it plausible that the developing brain never evolved to cope with exposure to maltreatment and so is damaged in a nonadaptive manner? This seems most unlikely. The logical alternative is that exposure to early stress generates molecular and neurobiological effects that alter neural development in an adaptive way that prepares the adult brain to survive and reproduce in a dangerous world.
What traits or capacities might be beneficial for survival in the harsh conditions of earlier times? Some of the more obvious are the potential to mobilize an intense fight-or-flight response, to react aggressively to challenge without undue hesitation, to be at heightened alert for danger and to produce robust stress responses that facilitate recovery from injury. In this sense, we can reframe the brain
changes we observed as adaptations to an adverse environment.
Although this adaptive state helps to take the affected individual safely through the reproductive years
(and is even likely to enhancesexual promiscuity), which are critical for evolutionary success, it comes
at a high price. McEwen has recently theorized that overactivation of stress response systems, a
reaction that may be necessary for short-term survival, increases the risk for obesity, type II diabetes
and hypertension; leads to a host of psychiatric problems, including a heightened risk of suicide; and
accelerates the aging and degeneration of brain structures, including the hippocampus.
We hypothesize that adequate nurturing and the absence of intense early stress permits our brains to
develop in a manner that is less aggressive and more emotionally stable, social, empathic and hemispherically integrated. We believe that this process enhances the ability of social animals to build more complex interpersonal structures and enables humans to better realize their creative potential.
Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children. Stress sculpts the brain to exhibit various
antisocial, though adaptive, behaviors. Whether it comes in the form of physical, emotional or sexual
trauma or through exposure to warfare, famine or pestilence, stress can set off a ripple of hormonal
changes that permanently wire a child’s brain to cope with a malevolent world. Through this chain of
events, violence and abuse pass from generation to generation as well as from one society to the next.
Our stark conclusion is that we see the need to do much more to ensure that child abuse does not
happen in the first place, because once these key brain alterations occur, there may be no going back.
Try this, Karol: take two stainless steel boxes. Put some explosives and a timed detonator in each, but with the detonator connected to the explosives in one and not in the other. Seal the boxes and store in a cool place. When you hear a muffled bang, take the temperature in both boxes. If they differ – one long-overdue Nobel prize for Karol!
How old is the Earth Karol?
Okay, this is no longer funny. Karol is Klearly Klinikally insane. I’m out.
@Geek.
If you are able to hear a bang in one box that box will differ in total energy.
Karol, you were off topic, and have provided absolutely no evidence to support your inane claims. What a religitard. It seems to take god to make really delusional people.
Where’s my Friday Cephelopod? I needs some squidly goodness
“Why majority leftards posting on this blog are so aggressive, arrogant, ignorant and plain supid???”
You’re the one posting goofy cock-eyed flame-baits on how life violates the second law of thermodynamics and have yet to provide a single example of it doing so, yet we’re the “aggressive, arrogant, ignorant, and plain stupid” ones?
I suggest you google irony.
@spurge
Damn! That’s why Karol is Nobel prize material and I’m not.
I think @353, Karol Karolak has probably given us a clue as to the origin of his psychopathology. Why else this completely OT comment? Karol, childhood abuse does indeed have long-term consequences, but good psychiatric treatment can help; if I’m right, I strongly advise you to avail yourself of it.
Child abuse. Child abuse!
What is this now Survivor? You are showing all the signs of severe derangement – you are obviously clinically insane.
Don’t put him up for eviction and give him all that attention, just ban the nut now.
POST LINKS!!! DO NOT CUT AND PASTE WHOLE ARTICLES.
Damn.
Posted by: Fifi Lamour | March 20, 2009 10:59 AM
….. Seems to me that Harper sent Goodyear out to test the water and see what else he can get away with – too bad the coalition is dead in the water just when we need it! And the Liberals are falling all over themselves not to offend anyone who’s a creationist!
============================================
Fifi Harper sent Goodyear not so much to test waters oo what he can get away with but to provoke leftards who suffer from short fuse syndrome.
This nonsense that you clowns posted on this blog in response to Goodyear’s provocation is the ammunition that Conservatives will use in the future to show that leftards in Canada are undereducated, ignorant, arrogant and aggressive bunch of clowns who demand that Canadian taxpayers pay for their scientific mediocrity.
You did so well yesterday and today by posting over 300 comments filled with hate, and rage that after a show like this Liberano boys will keep away from you for a long, long time.
Karol
Your lambasting of the political left does nothing for your lack of arguments.
So may I say, from the right of the political spectrum, you are an idiot.
I know, I know, it is an ad hominem attack, but when you are presented with facts and well reasoned arguments, you just ignore them.
But at least you did admit to being a dumb christian in your first post, and then continued to repeatedly prove your stupidity by your many, many, many posts.
You can stop now, we get the picture. You are an idiot.
Hopefully PZ is preparing the dungeon for you right now.
Tschüss
Michael Brown of FEMA was clueless and we lost New Orleans
What? New Orleans isn’t there anymore? When did this happen? I could have sworn I watched a football game from there just a few months ago. Must be that durned mainstream media were lying to us again, and the game was played in a studio in Hollywood. Just like the moon landing, come to think of it.
CosmicTeapot
Your leftie friends asked for peer reviewd articles in support of my argument about Brownian ratchet mechanism.
After I posted one page of Google search results (see my post @340: Search: the web pages from Canada, Web Results 1 – 10 of about 24,900 for cell metabolism ratchet) I have not head back from him ever since.
All that you secular clowns had to offer as “facts and well reasoned arguments” were two lame articles, where one of them was written by a pseudo scientist that runs this very blog.
Fact that life exists only on planet Earth as far as we know it today stares in you face and you keep on ignoring it and you run back to your false God of secularism, and claim that Charles Darwin was his prophet.
Charles Darwin was a real scientist and he made his discoveries for the glory of Christian God and if he lived today he would never want to have anything to do with you pseudoscientific clowns posting on this blog.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
Quote from Wikipedia on Charles Darwin
“This neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who shrewdly sent him to Christ’s College, Cambridge, for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican parson.[15] Darwin began there in January 1828, but preferred riding and shooting to studying. His cousin Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting which he pursued zealously, getting some of his finds published in Stevens’ Illustrations of British entomology. He became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow and met other leading naturalists who saw scientific work as religious natural theology, becoming known to these dons as “the man who walks with Henslow”. When exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paley’s Evidences of Christianity.[16] In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming tenth out of a pass list of 178.
Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June. He studied Paley’s Natural Theology which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature.”
Karol Karolak P.
Stop avoiding the question, how old is the earth?
I am still alive, and you sir are mentally ill. Even your rants make no sense. I discovered long ago the tree of life, and am upset to see mad half-wits, such as yourself, traduce nature.
And, for the record, I fully endorse Professor PZ Myers and his views.
You, sir, should be in an asylum.
Good day.
“Your leftie friends asked for peer reviewd articles in support of my argument about Brownian ratchet mechanism.
After I posted one page of Google search results (see my post @340: Search: the web pages from Canada, Web Results 1 – 10 of about 24,900 for cell metabolism ratchet) I have not head back from him ever since.”
As someone pointed out earlier these mechanisms don’t violate the second law because they put out less work then the energy needed to operate them. Given that the articles themselves were pretty clear on that, I’ll assume reading isn’t your strong suit.
“All that you secular clowns had to offer as “facts and well reasoned arguments” were two lame articles, where one of them was written by a pseudo scientist that runs this very blog.”
Your links don’t agree with your premise. Why should someone waste their time looking for counterarguments when you haven’t even made a decent argument yet?
We could cite articles on every metabolic reaction in a living cell as evidence, and you could simply say “Well that isn’t it.” Frankly, that’s why the onus is still on you to provide EXACTLY where the second law is violated.
“Fact that life exists only on planet Earth as far as we know it today stares in you face and you keep on ignoring it and you run back to your false God of secularism, and claim that Charles Darwin was his prophet.”
We haven’t even established that Earth hold the only life in the solar system yet, and you’re generalizing in regards to THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.
Also, quit quote-mining Wikipedia. If you even bothered to read the entire article you’d know that Darwin became agnostic after he noticed that there was no evidence that required a god to justify. You’re incompetent even by troll standards.
Come Karol,
How old is the Earth, stop avoiding the question and answer it.
This guy is an insult to the trolls we have. We need a different word. He even fails at being a troll.
Karol the religitard, the burden is upon you to prove yourself. Now, you need to go through all the links and show us that the alleged ratchet mechanism is truly a Brownian one, and not just a figment of your imagination. Good luck there. Then you have to show that there is no natural scientific explanation for the observations. Good luck there. And if you want to include god, you must show physical evidence for your imaginary deity. Good luck there. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to write up and submit the paper to the peer reviewed primary scientific journals. Looks like you have a lot of work to do. Get cracking, and don’t post again until you can say the paper is in press.
I think Karol’s post #353 just created an equation
violated by priest as alter boy
+ regular school yard beatings for being a total shit
+ barely passing engineering school
= 63 year old sniveling coward with a God Complex who is too fucking stupid to see he’s been PWNED
BTW Karol I have some news for you, putting your PEng on a letter that has nothing to do with your area of expertise makes you look like a megalomaniac. Furthermore, you fuckwit, the Queen has nothing to do with Canadian internal affairs because she’s a figure head. She doesn’t even influence UK politics. Writing a letter of protest to her will have the same effect as writing a letter to your fair God Mother – dumb ass.
Karol is unworthy even of troll status, such as that may be. In chat rooms, he would be regarded as what we fondly refer to as an insta-click. I suspect a mental problem here, but that is no reason not to get rid of him. He should be banned immediately, and without ceremony. Of course, if he comes up with a correct age for the earth, I might give him another shot.
Seamus Ruah, according to Christian scientists; planet Earth formed 4.54 billion years and seven days ago but they could be off by a week or so.
Will that do for now??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
so to be clear here, you accept this as the age of the Earth then, 4.54 billion years?
zorpheous you can go for a kill now
KK, nope, death by inches. If we had to suffer this retards trolling then I reserve the right to pull out his finger nails one by one,…
Anyhoo, where’s my Friday Cephelopod PZ? I needs some squidly goodness.
So you posted articles on chemically-driven molecular ratchets instead?
Do you not understand the difference or were you hoping we wouldn’t?
Zorpheous, remember to do it slowly. Riping his nails out too quick would deprive him or the full experience of martyrdom, and we wouldn’t want that, eh? :-D
This blog must be located in some kind of parallel universe where all the secuar pseudoscientists gather up to cry over the fact that the World ignors their “profound knowledge”.
I will let you go now boys and girls, things got boring for me;same clowns using same insults over and over again, no new ideas, minds like concrete; all mixed up and permanently set.
Cheers,
And then, after not actually addressing the questions, in 382 he does what every other creotard does: declares victory and saunters off.
Seriously, do you fuckers all go to the same Sunday school? Is that where they teach you this shit? Dude, if you’re in the real universe, I don’t want any part of it.
Karol, the only child like mind in concrete was yours. Your deluded mind.
Karol Karolak P. Eng #382 wrote:
Since the people on this blog have been defending the mainstream scientific consensus in physics, chemistry, and biology, the world is not ignoring our “profound knowledge.”
On the contrary. Since you are the lone maverick engineer with some sort of half-baked idea on how life manages to violate the second law of thermodynamics because it uses a Brownian ratchet mechanism (or whatever it is you’re asserting), then it is you and your own “profound knowledge” which the world is ignoring.
It’s called “projection.”
Didn’t you just use that same insult further up the thread?
Sweet fucking Jebus, what a complete flake and retard. Oh well, he was smart enough to know where I was going, either he was going to admit that the Earth is 6000 years old or the Bible is wrong, either way he loses. So like any good troll who has had his tale nailed to floor, he cuts and run.
Pathetic.
Sorry guys, we Canadians do have intellectual rejects up here too, and they are allowed to bred and vote.
Let he who is without intellectual rejects cast the first stone. We Yanks can’t cast any stones. What der hey (in Yooper speak).
Karol’s method of argument.
“You see? You’re stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!”
“Didn’t you just use that same insult further up the thread?”
Things are more profound if you repeat them over and over, I guess.
He also likes to use “aggressive”, “arrogant” and “ignorant” in lists to describe us “leftists” repeatedly.
Posted by: zorpheous | March 20, 2009 3:54 PM
Sweet fucking Jebus, what a complete flake and retard. Oh well, he was smart enough to know where I was going, either he was going to admit that the Earth is 6000 years old or the Bible is wrong, either way he loses. So like any good troll who has had his tale nailed to floor, he cuts and run.
Pathetic.
Sorry guys, we Canadians do have intellectual rejects up here too, and they are allowed to bred and vote.
=============================================
zorpheous, I have heard of a man just like you who took every written word contained not only in the Chistian Bible but also every word contained in homo magazines literally.
He never slept with another man because Chistian Bible prohibited it but he would let every homosexual that wanted it sodomise him at will becase he read in homo magazine that repeated acts of sodomy had nothing to do with developing AIDS condition. Homos convinced him that it was a misterious HIV virus that caused AIDS, so he died of a “slow septic shock” with his faith in written word intact.
Cheers,
I see our whacko is totally whacked. Guess what religitard, you had nothing, your proved nothing except your delusions.
Well that wasn’t completely unrelated.
Way to win at debates.
windy #302:
I think you might have misunderstood my point. Maybe I didn’t put it very well. If you take the creotard argument that the Earth is one giant thermodynamic process, the 2nd Law would indicate that the energy on Earth would gradually disperse to a uniform level throughout the planet. And this would be true – if the only things on Earth were entirely unconscious energies (and, of course, the Earth really was a closed system). In reality, life creates local areas of high energy within this thermodynamic process (that being the stored chemical energy within the bodies of the creatures on Earth). Of course, this is not actually a violation of any of the Laws of Thermodynamics, as the creatures do work to create these local areas of high energy (ie feeding), in much the same way as a refrigerator does work to eject heat energy from the interior of the refrigerator. However, the simplistic view that the Earth is one giant thermodynamic process indicates this can’t happen, and therefore both life, and refrigerators, are impossible. It is the active work of the life on Earth that causes this gradual dispersal of energies not to happen, and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can’t account for the actions of living creatures when applied in such a broad way – as the entire Earth, and everything on it, being involved in a single thermodynamic process, instead of a multitude of different ones.
Wow. And I thought I was having fun over on that other thread.
“Don’t even get him started on his views about feminists (ie a feminist is a female person who has a functional brain in karol’s book)”
um . . . . *singing* one of these things is not like the other. ;)
to Karol@391
I heard this story about a bigoted asshole just like you who hated life and couldn’t wait for it to end but he just couldn’t kill himself because he thought it was a sin. Unfortunately he constantly inflicted his insane stories on people who thought he was a complete git. One day he died and started decomposing, just like everyone else. A shame that he didn’t realize while he was alive that life is a wonderful and precious thing that shouldn’t be squandered by being a fucking waste of space.
Ok Karol, now that you admit the Genesis version of how life was created of the Bible is wrong, what other section of the Bible are wrong,… Oh I know, lets talk about Noah’s Ark and Flood Faerie Tale.
Oh by the way Karol, is God bound by the LoT, or can he just wiggle his dick and suspend the laws of Universe willey-nilley?
Oh, and I have a really good question for, does this soul thingy obey the SLoT? I mean it sound an a lot like a perpetual motoin machine to me? Also does Hell obey the SLoT? Also is Hell Endothermic or Exothermic?
Come on Karol, I have a million questions for you to answer,…
Oh and Karol you still didn’t clarify your answer, so we will amuse you believe the Earth is only 6000 years old. Why make this assumption? Because Karol, you that fucking stupid.
Why do they all go sexual, specifically gay-sexual, when they explode? Is it a purely christian thing or are all religions the same? And why is god so fucking gay anyway?
Smidgy:
Yes, but that has nothing to do with “conscious energies”.
Life on Earth depends on that gradual dispersal of energies. You seem to be assuming that without life the surface of the Earth would be inert, but the water cycle and atmospheric cycles and plate tectonics and a lot of other stuff don’t depend on life. Life is not the only process that can create a local decrease in entropy, plain old water freezing does it too (for example).
No, that’s just when it’s applied in the wrong way.
They can treat willey-nilley with Viagra.
Hey there,
I am in general disgusted by the level of discussion on this blog. The swearing alone is disgusting.
On to the topic: I guess that anyone who was a Jew or Muslim couldn’t be the science minister either based upon their faith – but almost anyone who doesn’t have faith (such as those on this blog) could qualify…
See a good article on the subject at the link provided.
Good, that is what is desired.
CC (#303)
That’s exactly what Patti’s done in his comments here. Spot-on call!
Writes Geoff:
On to the topic: I guess that anyone who was a Jew or Muslim couldn’t be the science minister either based upon their faith – but almost anyone who doesn’t have faith (such as those on this blog) could qualify…
No. The issue is one of blatant ignorance. In this case, Goodyear has shown us that he is exceptionally ignorant on several occasions. This latest one just reinforces the understanding that the HarperCon$ are a bunch of fundagelicals who have no interest in science, and are more interested in shuttting down anything they don’t understand or conflicts with their mystical beliefs.
It was Goodyear who turned it into an issue of his religion by reacting to the question as he did.
Ignorance is ignorance…and for someone who is supposed to be the government’s representative to the science community and vice versa, Goodyear’s shown us exactly what he isn’t.
… and yes, someone from another faith community who demonstrates a similar level of ignorance doesn’t qualify as a good candidate either.
Geoff whined:
Then why don’t you fuck off – you shit-swilling fucktard assclown? Why would we want a whiny pissant like you wasting our time? Fuck you and fuck Jesus, too. Right in your stupid asses.
Geoff,
In the article you linked to it was asked this question:
He is Minister of State for Science and Technology! His understanding of science has everything to do with his post. Gathering from his response he does NOT have an understanding of basic science.
Also, comparing this to “15th century religious tribunal” is quite Orwellian.
…because nothing says moderate sophistication like calling a Canadian minister of the crown “an incompetent moron” based on a 30 second sound bite cribbed from a piece of “gotcha” journalism.
Yes, but I’m even worse in a crowd!
And now – fuck off you Christian cock-sucker.
Thank you.
The reason he’s not qualified to be the science minister isn’t because of his faith; it’s because he thinks the theory of evolution is a matter of religious faith. It isn’t. It’s a rigorously tested pillar of modern biology. To claim otherwise shows how ignorant he is of basic scientific concepts. It’s that ignorance that makes him unqualified.
Poor fluffy. Does your asshole hurt too? Or only when you get sand in it?
Hey there,
I am in general disgusted by the level of discussion on this blog. The swearing alone is disgusting.
On to the topic: I guess that anyone who was a Jew or Muslim couldn’t be the science minister either based upon their faith – but almost anyone who doesn’t have faith (such as those on this blog) could qualify…
See a good article on the subject at the link provided.
Sorry for my potty mouth mom! Oh wait, you’re not here, so why don’t you just fuck yourself if you don’t like the way the adults play? I can’t believe we get rid of one shit-for-brains, and now we have another that hasn’t bothered to read the comments, save for doing a search for dirty words.
I work with a lot of kids whose biggest accomplishments in life is learning to write their names, and figuring out which end of a rifle to point towards the target. Yet, they seem a whole lot smarter than you and Karol.
Hmmmm. From which one is led to conclude that accusations of crude obscenity are not effective as a prophylactic.
Geoff @ 402
The article was not very good and displayed the usual twisted logic of comparison in the same group, that is religious, but ignores the fact that neither Muslim nor Jew have the anti-science wrong headedness of a creationist. To represent and do you job well, one must believe, have knowledge of, want to promote, etc, etc.
People doing a job should fit the abilities, knowledge of the person doing it, and the belief profile required. If the Pope died and by some quirk a bunch of eminent Jewish and Muslim scholars were candidates, plus a first year Catholic seminary student was the only other candidate, who would get the job to howls of protest. So is the Conservative party so thin on candidates that cannot promote science, without this kind of nonsense ? It was a softball question, that Kookyear made difficult.
On the cussing. I agree some is gratuitous, some is brilliant, some is hilarious, but in no case, did anyone ask you to come here and then be gratuitously offended .
I love Firefox, Greasemonkey and Killfile. :-)
Nonsense. Jews, Muslims, Christians, etc. who have a good understanding of science would be perfectly qualified. Creationism (which is what this looks like a case of) indicates either that one is intellectually dishonest, has a poor understanding of science, or is simply stupid. In any of these cases, the person in question has no business as science minister.
This is also wrong. They’d have to know something about science to be qualified, and not being religious is not a sufficient condition for that (though irreligion and knowledge of science are obviously correlated).
Good for you.
Hello my leftist friends.
I see our krank has
leftran away to be replaced by a concern troll.He’s not very interesting though is he?
Geoff, when you say “The swearing alone is disgusting”, do you mean that is all that is disgusting? If not, can you please tell us what else is disgusting.
Perhaps it is the scorn heaped on those who bring up tired and oft refuted arguments.
Perhaps it is the well reasoned arguments presented, instead of having blind faith in something we have no evidence for.
Oh, and I do hope my opinion that you are tedious troll was not too offensive for your delicate ears.
Some comments:
1
Swearing and name calling does not advance your arguments. Yeah, I know you are frustrated. But venting only helps you.
2
Politics is politics. No politician is going to alienate any minority group that has a vote if at all possible – especially in an era of political correctness. (Even if that group claimed that the earth is the center of universe and the moon is solely composed of green cheese.) Therefore no Canadian politician will attack Gary Goodyear.
3
The vast majority of people do not understand science; most only vaguely know about something called “the theory of evolution” and nothing about entropy. And they do not care.
4
Living entities are solely composed of atoms and the behaviour of those atoms are exactly the same whether they are in living entities or a non-living environment. The atoms cannot tell the difference, as far as any experiment yet devised, can measure. (And if there was a difference it would be miraculous.) So thermodynamics MUST describe what occurs in living entities. Therefore chemical reactions and diffusion processes in living entities do not, in any way, circumvent the second law.
5
Karol Karolak can very simply verify his hypothesis that life is not limited by the laws of thermodynamics:
Karol, just take a bucket of water and immerse your head in it so you cannot breath for twelve hours – then immediately take your body temperature. If your body temperature is at around 36.6 deg C instead of dropping to room temperature, then you have proved that your hypothesis that life is not limited by the laws of thermodynamics has merit.
I’m really late to this party but I just had to say one thing!
“What exact mechanism of molecular interactions is used by living organisms in order to overcome Second Law of Thermodynamics and create what we Christians call a Miracle of Life??”
PHOTOSYNTHESIS (in most cases)
You ignorant jackass.
He’s the Conservative MP for my area! I certainly didn’t vote for him, though. I voted *LIBERAL* in the last election. And I will be voting the same way in the next one.
The ignorance of the man is probably a relatively minor point – his shady business dealings are probably more controversial here. He also has an affinity for over-sized novelty cheques, that is really Conservative party propaganda, bought with taxpayer money.