Patterico's Pontifications

9/21/2010

Bill O’Reilly: Hey, Maher, I Can Blackmail O’Donnell Too

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:27 am



Bill O’Reilly:

“I’m trying to be fair to Christine O’Donnell. She’s been on the program a couple of times, and we have some kind of crazy stuff that she said. We’re not going to play it yet. I don’t think it’s relevant– yet. We still like Ms. O’Donnell to come on the Factor. I’m not in the business of injuring her. I’d like to see if she’s the better candidate.”

At least Maher had the decency to be forthright about his extortion.

The way to deal with blackmail threats is to expose what the blackmailer knows. This releases his power over you.

I think O’Reilly is talking about this. I’m told it’s a minor gaffe anyway. So, we might as well get it behind us now.*

The money quote is around 4:00. This video provides you with the full context that you can use to explain that the quote is no big deal, if you’re so inclined.

You’re welcome.**

UPDATE: Let me focus the discussion. I think it’s a fair assumption that O’Donnell was thinking of studies in which scientists injected rodent embryos with human embyronic stem cells to create mice that had “about 0.1 percent of human cells in each of their heads.” O’Donnell garbled that into the quote you see here.

Delaware voters will decide whether that means anything to them. It will mean nothing to ardent O’Donnell supporters, I predict. (Is there any revelation that would?) But as a thought experiment, imagine if you read that Joe Biden had said what O’Donnell says in this clip: “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully-functioning human brains.” Would you be inclined to mock that statement if Biden had said it? Be honest!

If the answer is yes, then it will be used by her opponent, and she is going to get asked about it.

We know that campaigns must address their weaknesses early and honestly. If O’Donnell hasn’t thought about what she’s going to say, then she should start thinking about it now.

365 Responses to “Bill O’Reilly: Hey, Maher, I Can Blackmail O’Donnell Too”

  1. P.S. This is not my video.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  2. P.P.S. George W. Bush almost lost the election when his DUI was revealed right before the election. I’d like to think, if you had been his advisor, that you would have advised him to come clean and be honest about it early on, rather than hide it and get blindsided when there was no time to explain.

    You would have advised him to do that. Right?

    This video is coming out, like it or not. The transcript has been out there already, and now O’Reilly is threatening to release videos just like this. It is going to be discussed, period.

    It’s better to deal with it now. While there is still time.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  3. And we can kiss that seat goodbye – forever – wonder if this also damages Miller – it shouldnt but who knows

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  4. It’s a proven fact that scientists have created humans with mouse brains.

    Liberals are proof of that.

    Don’t see the big deal about mice with human brains.

    Dave Surls (ff0ac3)

  5. The Clintons were the masters of this. “We’ve already addressed that issue, so please refer to those answers. It’s time to move on to discuss _____ (jobs, today).”

    That works. A 50-something president can sodomize a 19 year old intern in the oval office, and that still works pretty well. Not answering to the voters is worse than almost any answer. The voters feel like such a leader is out of their control.

    wonder if this also damages Miller – it shouldnt but who knows

    That’s a good question. I think Miller has such a non-fruitloop background that he will be OK, but there’s no way this O’donnell stuff isn’t hurting the brand a bit. Also, take some comfort in the fact that few see O’Donnell as a bona fide typical Republican candidate.

    I don’t see this, or the religious comments, as so bad, but if it were about what I think, Delaware would not be a problem.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  6. I love it when the actual expert says “… That’s an exaggeration.”

    And O’Donnell didn’t gaffe. She meant a mouse with a bigass sentient brain.

    I notice her comments didn’t seem to be in response to anything Bill or Dr Morony (sp) said. She just repeated talking points a few times. She responds to a slippery slope objection by yammering on with no adjustment. It wasn’t nearly as rude or obvious as the filibuster yammering she gave in the recent ‘weasel’ radio interview, but in both cases this is the aspect that bugs me the most.

    The only question remaining is if she believes the talking points she’s relying on.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  7. Deal with it by trivializing it.
    It’s irrelevant, now; yeah,
    she’s a character, alright, but she’s
    our character, and there are no
    dead bodies . . .
    Knock on wood . . .

    alcuin (41198f)

  8. Actually it IS true that cells from human brains have been injected into mice brains. So she just garbled what she read 5 years ago.

    jakee308 (e1996a)

  9. On one hand we have a woman who had some witch friends in high school. On the other we have a Marxist, oh wait, communist who dabbled in Marxism, er uh, communism and still does. Who do you think holds the potential to do the most DAMAGE in congress? Who do you think will vote for the full on liberal socialist agenda every time? It is no contest for me, go with the witch!

    Emil (d6e337)

  10. Emil,

    So we debase the Tea Party as a serious movement forever by continuosly backing someone that may have miles of frootloop VIDEO available for the enemies of conservatives to totally debase in some minds (remember they are only trying to gey 2 or 3% to switch) all Tea Party Candidates?

    Coons was elected by a large portion of Delaware -and this Tea Party thinking that Coon’s is going to be easy to defeat by simply espousing fragments of the constitution is dangerously optomistic and woefully naive thinking.

    I have a strong feeling its going to hurt Miller, and possibly Rubio as well. Rubio is showing strength but has been vulnerable to Crist before and could be again.

    Odonnell may not just implode the chances in Delaware but take Alaska and Florida down with her as well.

    Say – Tom Foley times about 5

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  11. Actually it IS true that cells from human brains have been injected into mice brains. So she just garbled what she read 5 years ago.

    Comment by jakee308

    She did garble it to the point where it’s some voters may conclude she’s not competent to be a US Senator. One thing saving her is that these folks did think Slow Joe was competent.

    A lot of folks have mentioned that she’s somehow confusing injection of human cells into a mouse, morally similar to a pig heart transplant or a insulin prescription with ‘breeding animals and humans’ to create ‘mice with fully functional human brains’.

    But I forgive it because … ah hell, because I’m shilling a little bit as a partisan. If a democrat had said this, I would insist he wasn’t competent to be a US Senator.

    On the other we have a Marxist, oh wait, communist who dabbled in Marxism, er uh, communism and still does.

    Is this accurate? I’ve learned that the bearded marxist claims were not compelling. Has he espoused actual marxism? I know he’s in favor of social democracy type crap (socialism to some extent), and find him totally unacceptable, but there is a difference between Obamacare and marxism. What is the evidence that Coons’s views are much more radical than democrats generally?

    If you’re just saying democrats basically are socialists, I accept the idea, but am curious if there’s more.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  12. No one cares about this ridiculous clip. Delaware cares about its economy not about the game of “gotcha” both parties are engaging in. Obama and Biden have public gaffes beyond belief and NO ONE CARES!!

    listingstarboard (f506ae)

  13. She was probably thinking of these mice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPFSNu_QNs Safe for work.

    nk (db4a41)

  14. A President was elected with that mindset, with a long track record of manipulating elections and non profit resources, (150 million through the CAC), yet you insisted he was a ‘good man’ based on no evidence, including a brutal campaign, where they tried to shred the character, the integrity, of someone who tried to call it to the voter’s attention; so I don’t give him the benefit of the doubt,

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  15. Are you there, God? It’s me, Algernon.

    aunursa (dd38d2)

  16. Flowers for Algernon? Loved both the book and the movie.

    nk (db4a41)

  17. Can I, as a geneticist with a PhD in the field, gently point out that any one of my freshmen knows more biology than almost everyone in Congress? I can get almost ANY current politician to stay outstandingly dumb stuff in that area with just a couple of questions. Which is why the stem cell debate made my head hurt.

    So if we are going to create a “saying dumb stuff make you unfit to serve in politics” standard, I say go for it. And apply it to ALL politicians. Including our current POTUS, who speaks Austrian.

    Eric Blair (f89659)

  18. Ian,

    Are you referring to the guy who also said this in that post:

    What’s more, I think he will damage this country with bad policies. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Inevitably, he is going to take actions that I think are disastrous, and somebody will come back and say: “Hey, Patterico! I thought you said Barack Obama was a good man!” Yes, but I never said he wasn’t going to do horrible things. It’s quite clear he will

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  19. There is plenty of ignorance that Obama has shown over the years, and then there are other things, like what I mentioned about earlier, that show bad
    character; O’Reilly maybe on order from on high, bobbled the ball, when he had a chance to look out for the folks, and he has continued to downplay the
    malign nature of this administration. This by the way, was part of the sick shell game, played with
    ESCR, that commandeered public funds, and has yet
    to show any appreciable result

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  20. II am surprised we have not seen Youtube’s or her Freshman Year keg fest. Folks are in a tizzzzy over this gal.

    Funny yet, no one gets excited over the multiple insane things Biden or Obama say.

    When was the last time the Media covered a Democratic Candidates’ gaffee for over a week in order to minimize the candidate?

    I just can’t remember.

    Heavensent (e230a5)

  21. It’s interesting, although not surprising, that the medical doctor understood she was using hyperbole, but O’Reilly didn’t.

    I’m betting that if you asked her “do you really think that there are mice with human brains”, she would tell you that is stupid.

    Of course, anybody who goes on O’Reilly is expected to be bombastic, so as to make him look like he’s not “spinning” — I’ve often wondered if it is in the contract or something.

    Last week I believe a nationally-known, certainly very smart lawyer/talk show host actually claimed that Patterico had been changed into a donkey.

    I’m betting though he was just using hyperbole, and didn’t actually think that Patterico was now just a chunk of someone’s butt sitting on the floor in the corner.

    On a more serious note, they did grow an ear on a mouse. And I agree with the commenter who noted that politicians in general have no clue about science. But I’ll take it further — MOST PEOPLE don’t have a clue, and what they know is whatever they read on the front page of the newspaper, or saw in an episode of CSI.

    Charles (43cc69)

  22. Genetic work that involves the human genome concerns a lot of people. However, she does not do a good job of articulating that concern.

    Given that Delaware has shown its very low standards of intelligence for the Senate, e.g., Joe Biden, I can’t see how this disqualifies O’Donnell from the job. Can you imagine Joe Biden trying to explain that issue?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  23. EPWJ – Care to make a wager on whether or not she effects Rubio and Miller?

    JD (8ded14)

  24. Dustin – It is not at all obvious that she meant “a mouse with a bigass sentient brain”. That is the most uncharitable reading possible.

    JD (8ded14)

  25. SPQR, I completely agree that all politicians should have the kind of scientific literacy that I try to teach in a first year biology class (my chemistry and physics colleagues feel the same, I’m sure).

    I cringe whenever I hear politicians talk about science, and I cringe even more when I hear about a “Republican war on science” from Democrats who think a proton is about yay big (holding my thumb and forefinger apart).

    So my point is that we give some politicians a pass, and others we put under a microscope. And I am fine with putting ALL politicians under a microscope.

    Honestly, a freshman level base of knowledge would be great.

    And as you say, we have to consider “three letter word—JOBS” Biden as a role model, don’t we.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  26. JD, you know how that will end. More humor that irritates good posters like elissa.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  27. i will have to watch the clip to evaluate, so i won’t be able to, tonight, but you know it could be o’reilly kind of babbling the way he does some times. of course this might be the correct interpretation, but i have seen him kind of ramble that way.

    And my guess is all o’reilly has is what maher has.

    O’reilly’s usual MO is to say she needs to go on a tough forum. but generally he would be happy with a person going on meet the press, under the last guy or a few other people. And if you didn’t sit down for a sufficiently tough interview, he would call you out for it. which has some validity, but has a creepy blackmailish feel, too.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  28. I think their next project, was to inject into shark’s brains, what could possibly go wrong?

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  29. Ask Samuel L. Jackson what could happen, ian.

    Off topic: moving video of Christopher Hitchens. He says things I agree with, and things I do not. But I grieve for his wife and children.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/20/video-hitchens-on-everybody-pray-for-hitchens-day/

    The video clip leaves out how Hitchens feels about his legacy. “To be a good father to my children.”

    Can I say how much I hate that disease? Pray or think good thoughts as your own ethos dictates. The world will be smaller, and less vivid (or perhaps less irritating in an interesting way) without this man around.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  30. Sharks with lasers on their heads !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    JD (8ded14)

  31. Btw, since i seem to have stopped getting caught in the anti-spam dungeon, let me try two off topic links, but not to my own blog.

    First, and article on the proponents of prop 8’s brief filed last night. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202472266977&Prop__Proponents_Attack_Walkers_Ruling_in_th_Circuit_Brief

    Second, a link to the brief itself. http://legalpad.typepad.com/files/prop-8-brief.pdf

    I barely started to read it, but i have to admit its pretty persuasive. i have often joked that the art of persuasion is to embarrass the judge into ruling in your favor.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  32. UPDATE: Let me focus the discussion. I think it’s a fair assumption that O’Donnell was thinking of studies in which scientists injected rodent embryos with human embyronic stem cells to create mice that had “about 0.1 percent of human cells in each of their heads.” O’Donnell garbled that into the quote you see here.

    Delaware voters will decide whether that means anything to them. It will mean nothing to ardent O’Donnell supporters, I predict. (Is there any revelation that would?) But as a thought experiment, imagine if you read that Joe Biden had said what O’Donnell says in this clip: “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully-functioning human brains.” Would you be inclined to mock that statement if Biden had said it? Be honest!

    If the answer is yes, then it will be used by her opponent, and she is going to get asked about it.

    We know that campaigns must address their weaknesses early and honestly. If O’Donnell hasn’t thought about what she’s going to say, then she should start thinking about it now.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  33. This is simple beyond words. Say, I made a gaffe while talking about a complex scientific topic many years ago. The idea that this should be some kind of disqualifying statement in a state that elected Joe Biden for almost 40 years is laughable beyond words.

    JD (8ded14)

  34. Charles,

    That is the most interesting bit of spin I have heard yet: that of course she knew this was not the case but was engaged in “hyperbole” just like calling someone a “jackass.” To believe she meant it is just like thinking the person termed a “jackass” had literally been called a donkey!

    You get points for creativity. You’ll have to work on the part where objective people are going to buy it as anything other than laughable and outrageous spin. But creative? You betcha!

    I do not advise O’Donnell to go this route as it would be dishonest and anyone not already in the tank for O’Donnell would see through it.

    You do realize that a majority of O’Donnell voters are not currently in the tank for her, correct? You can’t use arguments on them that would work only on a Kool-aid drinker.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  35. JD’s argument wins over Charles’s because it is honest.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  36. I am not the least bit in the tank for her, and resent the implication that pointing out that this is a gaffe is evidence of being in the tank for her.

    I would go one step further in my suggestion above. If I were her, I would go on to say that the economy, Dem spending like the Spanish Armada on crack, the job sucking liberal economic policies, cap and destroy, and Obamacare are destroying the foundation of our economic structure, and that will be the focus of my campaign, not a gaffe I made almost a decade ago. My opponent and his supporters would prefer to talk about mice, masturbation, and witches as opposed to the issues that will effect the citizens of this State.

    JD (8ded14)

  37. I think that has been the gist of her campaign, sheesh, do you dwell on every opening statement and summation, you made a decade ago.

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  38. Would I make fun of Biden for saying this?

    Actually probably not. Biden is admittedly fun, but alot of the time he makes gaffes that are kind of human (like asking a paraplegic to stand up before realizing his mistake), or classic Kinsley gaffes where he says stuff that is true but really inconvenient (like saying Obama will be tested). The only gaffes I can think of beyond that are some comments about Indian Americans working in convenience stores, which is racist, but not stupid (racism is not a matter of stupidity; it’s a moral failure in my book).

    Biden’s basic problem is he doesn’t really vett what he is about to say before he says it. I have never actually thought the man was terribly stupid, just prone to that kind of error and unwise. Which is okay for a senator, but deadly for anyone in a diplomatic position (which is what I consider the veep to be these days).

    But misunderstanding an article? I mean honestly when I read the article the first, that is what I thought it was saying, but a voice inside me said, “no, that can’t be right.” Now these days every time I think “that can’t be right” I discover it is, but still I read a little more and figured out it was saying less than it suggested. So personally its hard to beat up on her for making the same mistake i briefly made.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  39. I am not the least bit in the tank for her, and resent the implication that pointing out that this is a gaffe is evidence of being in the tank for her.

    I have no idea where you got that implication. I was addressing Charles.

    I am not saying or implying you are in the tank for her. My comment talking about being in the tank starts with the world “Charles.”

    I think Charles’s argument is evidence of being the tank for her.

    I think your argument is honest, which is why it beats Charles’s argument.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  40. It will mean nothing to ardent O’Donnell supporters, I predict. (Is there any revelation that would?)

    To answer your (likely rhetorical) question, no, no revelation would. That became palpably obvious during the primary. O’Donnell was more conservative, so her flaws didn’t matter. And bringing the flaws to light was considered treachery to the party (as if the Democrats would not bring these flaws to light).

    In the mean time, a seat that was considered solid Republican is now solid Democrat, and the Republican nominee is looking sillier with each revelation.

    I’m registered to the Libertarian Party, and I’ve seen what purity of message can do. Every election cycle, our nominees get kookier and kookier. In between, the party has debates over which position is purer. And the party gets a smaller and smaller percentage of votes.

    Purity is fine, but winning elections is a sine qua non.

    Some chump (e84e27)

  41. But misunderstanding an article? I mean honestly when I read the article the first, that is what I thought it was saying, but a voice inside me said, “no, that can’t be right.”

    See, that’s the filter I am looking for. Let’s say you overlook the part of the article that says: “a trace amount that doesn’t remotely come close to ‘humanizing’ the rodents. . . . ‘This illustrates that injecting human stem cells into mouse brains doesn’t restructure the brain,’ Gage said.”

    Say you overlooked that part, and got the impression that the article truly said the mice had fully functioning human brains.

    You would think — especially if you were researching the issue for a nationwide TV appearance — that there would be a part of you that said “WTF? Really?” and would read it again.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  42. Seriously, she should wave a magic wand and say: “Abracadabra! Now we can focus on the campaign.”

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  43. It sure would be nice if she could focus her campaign on actual issues, issues that matter, as opposed to masturbating, witches, and mice. It does not appear she will be allowed to.

    JD (8ded14)

  44. Again, Patterico, if you walk down this road, you have to do it with all the candidates. Most politicians are parakeets, and seemingly proud of it.

    It’s like speaking Austrian, for example. But there are many, many examples, on both sides of the aisle.

    And I would like it if we did expect more of our politicians. Ever since I watched Katie Couric get all “I know more than you do” with a certain controversial candidate, I have been concerned with the innate one-sidedness of this strategy.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  45. No, he’s not fun, he’s been appreciably wrong since the beginning, from plagiarism, not once but twice,he was wrong on the Pipeline, on the premise behind FISA, he was right on the drug czar, I’ll give him that. Had he had the chance, Iraq would be a fractured charnel house right now, He travels abroad, and he stigmatizes Israel, while paying lip service to any actual threat from Iran.

    All the while, we see here now, with the tiny trickle of increased GOP enrollments, that the party had no real intention of challenging him,

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  46. Back in the early 70’s a liberal pin head in Congress demanded that the pH of our rivers be reduced to 0. Not a word of criticism was heard in the media.

    (And Patterico never blogged about it at the time either, I might add.)

    quasimodo (4af144)

  47. Mice with fully functioning human brains?

    Christine? Hello? Anybody in there?

    Surely she misspoke.

    Otherwise I want to know about her plans to investigate the government project to create AIDs to kill black people.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  48. Would you be inclined to mock that statement if Biden had said it? Be honest!

    Why yes! And that would be the end of it … not another word would be heard from the media and everyone who is castigating O’Donnell for it would quickly move on, too. Right? Be Honest.

    quasimodo (4af144)

  49. And as with most things, Couric’s ignorance, was really on display, or that of her researcher, for not gathering the most preliminary research

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  50. From polling on September 18:

    “Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell begins a brief general election campaign season 15 points behind Democrat Chris Coons, according to a new Fox News poll.”

    Damn you Patterico, can’t you see this is all your fault! Heh.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  51. ==irritates good posters like elissa==

    Oh please! I adore JD’s humor and he knows it.

    But you know what does irritate me? It’s talking about mouse brains, decade old gaffes, and past their prime TV hosts in general, instead of filling pages and pages of blog threads with howls about this kind of stuff that actually means something. This is why our country is going right down the crapper. And the Dem “leadership” must be thrilled to pieces that they’ve got everybody talking about O’Donnell’s goofy TV appearances instead of of us focusing laser-like on their entire ethically challenged party’s inbred mendacity, hypocrisy, stupidity and outright criminality.

    http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/2731160,CST-NWS-jackson21.article

    elissa (1f6f8a)

  52. its too late.
    shouldn’t you be cutting your losses now, Honest Man?
    if you had stood your original ground you would have gained influence to use the next time.
    the problem isn’t so much that shes behind 54 to 39…its that there are only 5% undecided….she cant make that up with the opposition research that is going to come out.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  53. But you see, Elissa, we must take them at their word, let every slur, lie, innuendo, from undeniably
    corrupt organizations like Think Progress, CREW, flood the airwaves. Castle was willing to sell out his nation’s future, on cap n trade, as with HR 40,
    the oil development restriction, as with DISCLOSE, that’s why Mueller was willing to vote for him

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  54. What would you expect from someone who has so little scientific literacy and in intelligence that she believes evolution is a farce? As American kids fall further behind the rest of the industrialized world in education, do we really want someone like this in a leadership role in government?

    pam (9df40f)

  55. Also, Bill O’Reilly won’t play the O’Donnell tape because he hates when conservatives are made to look stupid by actually documenting what they’ve said. That’s why conservatives hate Media Matters, it actually quotes them. Oh NO!!

    pam (9df40f)

  56. I cringe whenever I hear politicians talk about science, and I cringe even more when I hear about a “Republican war on science” from Democrats who think a proton is about yay big (holding my thumb and forefinger apart).

    Or, for that matter, a supposedly science-savvy Democrat who campaigns to save the world from global warming, yet who thinks the Earth’s interior temperature is “several million degrees.”

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90)

  57. ==What would you expect from someone who has so little scientific literacy…==

    Pam, meet Algore. Al, may I introduce you to Pam.

    elissa (1f6f8a)

  58. The Republican War on Science is well documented. Being a science denier is almost a requirement. Only 6% of scientists are Republican and the majority of Republicans reject evolution. I don’t know how much more clear it can be.

    pam (9df40f)

  59. Folks, I would like to introduce you to William the racist hilljack skinflute strummer Yelverton, Professor of Plagiarism. William the demonic veggia paella eating midget sprinter has problems with plagiarism, honesty, and apparently an underlying gender issue, as he is now posing as “pam”. Point and laugh. Mock and scorn. Maybe we will get lucky and he wiL demand to be called Doctor. Hilarity ensues.

    JD (8b5ad0)

  60. The TeaBaggers who took that woman to the Republican nomination should be ashamed – but since their intellectual development is just as arrested as hers, they won’t mind. To moderates and rational conservatives, this should serve as a rally cry: we are to take OUR party back if we want it to win and Obama not be re-elected and pursue his liberal agenda.
    In the meantime, O’Donnell must step down and if she doesn’t, then Castle must run as an independent; it’s our only chance to defeat Coons.

    Triumph (0692b1)

  61. It looks like the trolls appear at 8 sharp. The polls about evolution and other science fantasies show a serious ignorance of science in the entire population. A lot of that is poor education that takes more interest in self esteem than algebra. For example, look at the number of people who have been convinced of global warming and who refuse to be convinced by all the evidence it is a scam.

    By the way, the polls also show that political party has little to do with the fallacies. There is a slightly higher percentage of Republicans who deny evolution for religious reasons (more Republicans are religious) and a higher percentage of Democrats who still are convinced of global warming (which seems to be the religion of many).

    Mike K (568408)

  62. Maybe she meant mice with fully functioning brain CELLS. No, she didn’t actually say the word “cells,” but people spew out a lot of things during heated debates and sometimes drop words.

    Would it be disqualifying if she actually thought there was a mouse somewhere that could think and talk like a person? Possibly, but I doubt she actually ever believed that. Did Obama actually believe there were 57 states? Did Biden think FDR spoke on TV as President in 1929? We certainly pretend we think they did when we’re arguing as partisans during campaign season, but after it’s over we admit no, probably not.

    This mice thing will have no effect on the outcome. It’s still the economy, stupid. O’Donnell will run a few good ads, do well enough in the debates and possibly be swept into office with everyone else. The notion that she’s going to bring down the entire party is misguided. Nobody outside of cable TV junkies has heard of her (believe me — most of America doesn’t live in blog comment sections), and certainly nobody in Alaska is going to vote against Joe Miller because of Christine O’Donnell.

    Northeast Elizabeth (06df19)

  63. pam – Please give us your scientific credentials so that we can evaluate the validity of your comments.

    You have already cherry picked the stats in the Gallup poll which you linked showing that only 53% of Americans believe in evolution, while 66% believe in some form of creationism. A higher percentage doubt evolution than doubt creationism. It is really the progressives who have a war on science as was once more demonstrated this summer with the Obama Administration distorting the reports of experts on the Gulf oil spill to get the policy result they wanted. They are doing the same thing through the EPA to make an end run around Congress on air quality. The war on science meme is total garbage.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  64. Triumph the Insult Moby returns. Amnesty sure is great.

    JD (ebf402)

  65. I don’t think pam has the intellectual chops to understand what she posts. She blindly repeats talking points she has read elsewhere. Her link to a Gallup poll which disproves her point is an indication of her stupidity.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  66. “To moderates and rational conservatives, this should serve as a rally cry”

    Triumph – Thank you. How much have you contributed to Republican causes this year? Your advice is always as welcome as raging hemorrhoids.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  67. Patterico

    I think you have a valid point about she maybe should have been more hesitant to report it. But I am not sure how well the metaphor works with the discovery of aliens. I mean I think most people agree that aliens are unlikely to meet us anytime soon. But that has to do with issue of what is possible. We might believe that there is probably intelligent life somewhere in the universe, but it is generally agreed that they are unlikely to make contact with us, soon.

    By comparison, growing human brains on mice… I suspect it is technically possible today, but the ethical concerns are holding us back. And rightly so, i might add.

    So you are equating an estimation of physical possibility with an estimation of human morality. And if your view of human nature is dimmer than yours and mine what is reasonable then?

    Look when she said it, even the scientist opposed to her merely called it an exaggeration. He didn’t burst into laughter. So even to a guy who knows, and was opposed to her views, it was not a laughable reading of things.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  68. I think you are missing the obvious; she mispoke. The facts support the claim that mice were bred with human brain cells, and their brains were fully functioning with those human cells working along with the existing mouse brain, a hybrid if you will. I would not discount that she was not as poised, or as free from nervous anxiety, as BOR was constantly interrupting and making it difficult to make any point at all.

    Seems to me thats the fairest view of it- not a kool-aid defense nor an unrealistic hit job.

    NY Voter (04f3a6)

  69. the polls also show that political party has little to do with the fallacies. There is a slightly higher percentage of Republicans who deny evolution for religious reasons

    The above statement is false. If, by “slightly”, you mean amost double, then, OK. Only 30% of Republicans believe in evolution compared to 57% of Democrats and 61% of Independents.

    I’d say this is a strong indication of scientific illiteracy of Republican voters and often candidates as well.

    pam (9df40f)

  70. Qustion: In the war on science education, which political party is often associated with pushing creationism in schools and rewriting textbooks?

    pam (9df40f)

  71. “I’d say this is a strong indication of scientific illiteracy of Republican voters and often candidates as well.”

    pam – Have you proved the theory of evolution? Go!

    I think you are a mouse with a half-developed human brain.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  72. daleyrocks, Oh… it’s just a theory right?

    pam (9df40f)

  73. pam, guess what. The Democrats have been on the own “war on science”. And using the term scientific illiteracy for the race for a seat the Slow Joe Biden used to hold is pretty hilarious. Or we could just rely on Nancy Pelosi telling us that natural gas is not a fossil fuel.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  74. @Daleyrocks:

    THIS Republican Party is not MY Republican Party. I’d rather have clusters of zillion raging hemorroids than contribute a cent to the likes of O’Donnell, Palin and other Tea-Bag-approved morons. Hell, it’s the party of Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower! Pains me to see it surrendering to neo-birchers.

    Triumph (0692b1)

  75. Triumph, you have long been recognized as a Moby.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  76. I loved you on Conan,

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  77. Teabirchers

    pam (9df40f)

  78. “Teabirchers” is just more dishonest namecalling by people who can’t address the actual issues that the TEA Party is formed upon – insane levels of spending and taxation by Democrats.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  79. They definitely are proof of Devolution.

    pam (9df40f)

  80. pam, you are full of false accusation and ad hominem.

    Fortunately, the voters have had enough of the Democrats’ failed policies and will see through you.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  81. there is scientific evidence of an emergent IQ gap between liberals and conservatives.
    cognitive psych—backfiring effect is only observed in conservatives.
    evo bio– the savannah principle
    perhaps this is the result of 50 years of IQ baiting and anti-intellectualism.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  82. Oh, c’mon, nishi. Hasn’t your game playing and nastiness been revealed enough? You just post to cause anger and trouble. And that is somehow consonant with your supposed Sufi faith?

    You should be ashamed of yourself.

    Here is a genuine Sufi quote that applies to you, and in several ways:

    “…A donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey. ..”

    So please try to live up to the faith your dishonor with your games.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  83. also, 94% of scientists are NOT conservatives.
    In contrast, most scientists (56%) perceive the scientific community as politically liberal; just 2% think scientists are politically conservative. About four-in-ten scientists (42%) concur with the majority public view that scientists, as a group, are neither in particular.

    The scientists’ belief that the scientific community is politically liberal is largely accurate. Slightly more than half of scientists (52%) describe their own political views as liberal, including 14% who describe themselves as very liberal. Among the general public, 20% describe themselves as liberal, with just 5% calling themselves very liberal.

    Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP. Among the public, there are far fewer self-described Democrats (35%) and far more Republicans (23%). Overall, 52% of the public identifies as Democratic or leans Democratic, while 35% identifies as Republican or leans Republican.

    Majorities of scientists working in academia (60%), for non-profits (55%) and in government (52%) call themselves Democrats, as do nearly half of those working in private industry (47%).

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  84. i am asking Patterico if he regrets supporting COD. It appears that it is statistically impossible for her to win, given the poll results i linked.
    The opposition has only begun to dig into COD’s campaign finance records, which a great part of Pattericos objection to her.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  85. Elissa’s point is excellent, but I would love to hear “pam” explain the details of evolution. Because I could find a number of things she would write that would make her look, well, dumb.

    This is what I am talking about. It’s not being uninformed on a topic; that is true for most people, given the topic. What is bothersome is the assumption that the snarker knows more about the topic than the snarkee. When I see very little evidence of that being the case.

    I have said, from the beginning, that I could care less about politicians being braying ignoramuses on science, since very few of them know a darned thing about science. We should stick with voting records. Promises to constituents.

    But that would leave our Democratic colleagues at a disadvantage, so….

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  86. “I’d say this is a strong indication of scientific illiteracy of Republican voters and often candidates as well.”

    pam – I’d say it is a strong indication that you don’t know what the hell you are talking about because all you can do is mindlessly repeat talking points and don’t actually understand them.

    Please explain why evolution is more than a theory. Go.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  87. Daley, get ready for a Wikipedia wall ‘o text. Remember to check for plagiarism.

    The enemy of science is certitude. Always.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  88. “there is scientific evidence of an emergent IQ gap between liberals and conservatives.”

    nishi – Yes, but not the way you think. You and your two digit buddy pam are doing a good job of demonstrating it again on this thread.

    lulz

    daleyrocks (940075)

  89. and this is my point– the right doesnt need another bighair dimbo with mall bangs– you have ALL THERE ARE of the votes of people that are going to vote for bighair dimbos with mall bangs.
    you need candidates that are electable, that appeal to other demographics than the bighair dimbos with mall bangs demographic.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  90. Ah… we have some knuckle draggng creationist republicans here!! Are they also, by some chance, believers in the jesus gawd? I guess you never took biology? Or maybe at a jesus school?

    From the Campbell Biology Textbook:

    “Nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves.”

    “Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence… There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination.
    — American Biology Teacher, vol. 35

    pam (9df40f)

  91. Campbell, pam? Really?

    Okay, you are here. You are posting. Ready for a quiz? I mean, since you are so smart and everything?

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  92. Back to my original question…

    In the war on science education, which political party is often associated with pushing creationism in schools and rewriting textbooks?

    pam (9df40f)

  93. wheeler’s cat uses a biased survey ( see how they selected “scientists” to interview ) and discovers that academia is full of liberals.

    Astonishment reigns.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  94. And nishi? Pretty angry there. That is part of your Sufi faith, too?

    You carry the books, but you have not read them, let alone lived them. Have you?

    Angry little hypocrite.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  95. Not so fast, pam.

    Ready for your quiz? Again, you are the smart, smug one.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  96. Patterico….you guyz were my homies. I was linked by Instapundit, Derbyshire, Goldstein. I was buddies with AllahP, Reihan, Manzi. I was a GNXP co-blogger.
    Now all you do is spin and cheerlead for your base.
    What happened?
    Was it when O got elected?
    I gave up on the right when McCain put Palin on the ticket.
    that was it.
    Game over.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  97. Are you from the DIscovery Institute on pushing Jesus and creationism into the classroom whose attempt was soundly defeated in Dover, PA when all of the so-called “scientists” called on to testify for the creationists BAILED?

    pam (9df40f)

  98. pam?

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  99. Again, pam, are you ready for your quiz? Remember, you are the one trying to sound superior. Don’t change the subject.

    Or run away.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  100. Or change your nickname and come back to post more partisan bile. Either way, it’s fine.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  101. read the links daleyrocks.
    backfire effect is only observed in conservatives.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  102. “Pam” is not a pam at all, but the renowned Professor of Plagiarism, William Yelverton. He/she/it has gender issues.

    Nishi/wheeler’s manic phases are ugly, every time.

    JD (ebf402)

  103. @Wheeler’s cat:

    there is scientific evidence of an emergent IQ gap between liberals and conservatives.
    cognitive psych—backfiring effect is only observed in conservatives.
    evo bio– the savannah principle
    perhaps this is the result of 50 years of IQ baiting and anti-intellectualism.

    Looks like you share with this blog’s populace a fondness for selective reading and quoting. Every time I think “Conservatives” are uniquely sucking there are Liberals coming to remind me how vastly they suck.

    Triumph (0692b1)

  104. Yeah, Democrats are great geniuses at such scientific principles as “Fire can’t melt steel”…

    SPQR (26be8b)

  105. Sufism can be beautiful, JD. It’s not my philosophy or faith, but there are beautiful poems and good advice on living a calm and happy life.

    But….

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  106. WTF?

    pam (9df40f)

  107. Hey, pam, I have asked several times: ready for your quiz on evolutionary thought?

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  108. Back to my original question…

    In the war on science education, which political party is often associated with pushing creationism in schools and rewriting textbooks?

    pam (9df40f)

  109. ==you need candidates that are electable, that appeal to other demographics==

    So, Ms Cat—Since you are helpfully offering advice today, help us out. Who are your model republicans? If you could vote for any Republican, irrespective of which state they are from or where you yourself reside, which righties would get your vote?

    elissa (1f6f8a)

  110. OK Eric, embarrass yourself with your creationist talking points

    pam (9df40f)

  111. wheeler’s cat @ 82: Great links. Fits with a lot about some of the comments here. I’d seen the Corrections paper before, following up on a larger work by a psych prof named Altemayer who John Dean drew on for one his books. The Altemayer book is considered seminal – and the whole thing is available free: http://tiny.cc/cc41t

    The Epiphenom site is new to me – a little jarring given I’ve taught a course for over a decade now that touches on this stuff, and I know some of the posters (one even ran a guest lecture here). I’m hoping my missing it speaks mostly to the proliferation of science-oriented blogs in recent years. There’s a fairly new compendium site that attempts to be all-inclusive, but still misses some good ones: http://scienceblogging.org/

    shooter (32dc25)

  112. Such a poseur, pam. I guess that, just maybe, you might be a little careful about calling other people ignorant or stupid, huh?

    I mean, apart from quoting from the textbook I use to teach freshmen every year. And the best part was that I was going to quiz you from it.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  113. Wheeler’s – care to place a wager on who wins in the Nov house and senate elections?

    Eric – yelverton has a high school education.

    JD (ebf402)

  114. Eric, do you teach at Bob Jones, or at Liberty?

    pam (9df40f)

  115. @ wheeler’s cat:

    read the links daleyrocks.
    backfire effect is only observed in conservatives.

    Only because the numbers regarding liberals’ misperceptions are not statistically significant – liberals surveyed doggedly refuse to admit Bush never banned stem-cell research.
    Now there is clearly a problem with Conservatives, but it’s only because they believe their own bullshit more ardently than Liberals who, on the other hand, believe in nothing – or not long enough to make a difference.

    Triumph (0692b1)

  116. Great, pam! It is now 10:11. If it takes you longer than one minute to answer, then you are revealed as the poseur you are.

    When a trait is termed monophyletic or polyphyletic, what does that mean in evolutionary terms?

    Go.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  117. Hmmm. 10:12 so far.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  118. It’s a freshman question, by the way.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  119. At least I thought I would get a cut and paste from the textbook.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  120. Since it is in the freaking glossary.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  121. pam,

    You are in Waaaaayyy over your head…

    quit now, please

    I wouldnt get into a deep conversaion on genetics with a PhD in front of well — everyone

    just a thought

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  122. No one has answered my questions yet. Why?

    pam (9df40f)

  123. Folks, I apologize for skooling pam. I just hate this “all people in group A are stupid” nonsense. She was carrying on about evolution. I just wanted to demonstrate that she didn’t even know if a particular trait evolved once (monophyletic) or multiple times (polyphyletic).

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  124. pam, 42% of Democrats think that Bush let 9/11 happen or actually caused it, and you get excited about Creationism?

    That shows how off the rocker you are, and how corrosive the bile from Democrats is to our society.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  125. Eric, its clear that pam has no real scientific education – she just is invested falsely in the meme that she’s smarter than others despite all evidence to the contrary.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  126. Well, at least I feel better about my freshmen. Time to get ready for office hours.

    Politics makes me bilious.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  127. pam

    Who put Scopes on trial?

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  128. Oh, I know, SPQR. It’s like my brother getting impatient with me when I mouth off about the law, I guess.

    But I don’t call people who disagree with me “stupid.”

    Maybe I’m not having a bright sunshiny day….

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  129. I don’t know why you guys keep calling he/she/it “pam” when its actual name is William Yelverton, Professor of Plagiarism @ MTSU. He is a freakin guitar teacher trying to lecture actual PhD’s in their area of expertise. Hysterical.

    Wheelers/nishi – cat got your vile tongue?

    Shooter has led an interesting life.

    JD (ebf402)

  130. #

    Dustin – It is not at all obvious that she meant “a mouse with a bigass sentient brain”. That is the most uncharitable reading possible.

    Comment by JD — 9/21/2010 @ 6:28 am

    Frankly, I just don’t see it that way. I honestly believe this uncharitable reading is what she meant. “fully functional human brain”, to me, implies something more than a brain with a few cells from another species. “fully functional human brain” is a comment designed to distinguish this case from some kind of minor amount of cells injected into a functional mouse brain. The breeding comment was also disturbing to me. She is not referring to gene therapy, but rather some abomination.

    On the other hand, maybe I’m just plain wrong. Several actually reasonable people think her comment is compatible with ‘injected a few cells’ research.

    However, I noted I don’t see these being errors as the truly bad thing about this video. I see the way she argues, which shows exaggerations, errors, and a complete detachment from the other parties’ points, as worse. The actual extreme nature of her error is something that would be ignored from Biden’s or Obama’s mouth. Genetic modification is more complicated than, say, knowing there are 50 US states or that Austrian isn’t a language.

    It sure would be nice if she could focus her campaign on actual issues, issues that matter, as opposed to masturbating, witches, and mice. It does not appear she will be allowed to.

    Comment by JD

    That would be nice, but the democrats lose that argument. Delaware cares about the actual issues, which is why Obama is underwater there. They must demonize the entire Tea Party, and the best way to do that is to “identify, isolate, freeze and escalate” a particular member.

    Is this fair? Of course not, but as you’ve noted better than I have, we need to be on the ball to vet reform candidates, with reality, not fairness, in mind.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  131. Why hasn’t anyone answered my questions?

    In the war on science education, which political party is often associated with pushing creationism in schools and rewriting textbooks?

    pam (9df40f)

  132. pam

    Who banned text books in the 6’s and 50’s?

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  133. Wow, its EPWJ for the win.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  134. In the war on science education, which political party is often associated with pushing creationism in schools and rewriting textbooks?

    pam (9df40f)

  135. pam, EPWJ already punted you on that line.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  136. Answer

    pam (9df40f)

  137. pam, I’ve been debunking Creationists since you were filling your diapers but having 42% of Democrats think G.W.Bush either caused 9/11 or let it happen is far more corrosive of our society than someone not believing in evolution.

    You really do need to grow up.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  138. nishi – That Nyhan piece you linked. Pay attention. Pure trash. Debunked when it came out.

    U r a losr.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  139. SPQR

    Broken clock syndrome – I was due one

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  140. Pam aka william yelverton – nobody answers your mendoucheous question because of the BS assumptions you include. There is no war on science, that is a leftist meme, not borne out by reality.

    Here is a question for you, let’s test your honesty. Pam is william yelverton. Yes or no?

    JD (f8be7b)

  141. or let it happen

    Questioning a leader’s competence is “far more corrosive of our society ” ?

    pam (9df40f)

  142. Who the fuck is JD and WTF is he talking about?

    pam (9df40f)

  143. Except for one thing, the COD versus Coons battle is pretty much at the flogging of dead horses stage. I understand where Patterico is coming from, and though I disagree with the goal, its entirely rational at several levels.

    What I’m most intrigued by right now is the possibility, which looks more than remote, that COD is going to default one too many times on invitations to ex post facto vetting by the Republican Senate election committee and force them to confront her with the inevitable criminal charges. Certainly, she could resile from the nomination (and given her own primary directive, probably be accommodated to do so); but beyond that, I would like to see a mechanism at work by which she gets removed in time for the Republicans to put in place the obviously competitive alternative in order to provide the electors of Delaware a true choice: between a candidate who appears to be quite a bit left of both Obama and most Senate Dems, and a candidate who has a history proving he’s somewhat the right of them but somewhat to the left of the Republican caucus.

    We’re closing in on the stage where we can reasonably expect a convergence between registered voters and likely voters (Studies have shown these convergences occur between as little as a week to as much as a month preceding election, most predominantly around 18 days plus or minus 3 days.) Republicans tend historically to organize their vote way earlier and more cohesively than Democrats (which is less of a party than a coalition of interests that may-or-may-not join it), partly explaining why there have been so many instances of late-surging Democrat poll support (Truman in 1948, Humphrey in 1968, Carter in 1980 all showed this phenomenon, and there are no examples from the Republican side since modern polling began, at least at the POTUS level). We may be seeing something of the same in the last two weeks, with the Dems closing the generic ballot gap, and maybe even causing it cross again like it has several times already this year.

    So it seems to me that the Republican party has something like a two-week window to resolve this COD fiasco and try to turn it into a positive. A contested ousting seems too risky, since it could turn a lot of the TP vote all over the place against the party. But a negotiated settlement seems like the best alternative; after all, it appears that was what she was after in the ISI lawsuit. And I would think her loyalty thereafter is really not all that expensive, compared to the costs of sticking with her candidacy.

    shooter (32dc25)

  144. Nasty little trolls aside, can we not agree that politics needs to stay out of the classroom? Political power does awful things, and both sides seem to forget that the precedents they allow for “their” side can be used by the other.

    Personally, I think that religion needs to stay out of the classroom (except for religious-themed schools). But that’s my opinion.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  145. Pam

    > I’d say this is a strong indication of scientific illiteracy of Republican voters and often candidates as well

    Creationism v. evolution is not inherently a matter of scientific literacy. For instance, I have no doubt that the scientific evidence leads inexorably to the belief that we evolved from lower creatures.

    But I also believe we were created by God. I admit to being unsure of how it occurred. It might be the case that God created the original atom from which the big bang occurred (as I understand current theories) with the specific knowledge that if he did it just so, that we would eventually evolve. Or maybe God created us exactly like it says in the bible and all of the evidence that we see is the result of divine fakery. So you say, “see this dinosaur bone? Carbon dating says it is over 65 million years old, as does the way it is buried in the dirt.” But a person can say, “God created that bone exactly that way to look like it was that old.” If you believe in an omnipotent God, it is tautologically true that anything is possible.

    So, a belief in an omnipotent God is literally unfalsifiable and a belief that this God created the earth is equally unfalsifiable. That is no amount of evidence could ever disprove it. Which means that literally you know know everything about the evidence and still believe in God. That is not scientific illiteracy. It is simply a belief in God that cannot be shaken by so-called evidence.

    Wheeler

    Yeah, liberals do this every couple years or so, trying to claim that conservatives are dumb or crazy or whatever. They are always biased studies and its boring.

    I mean take the first study. Yeah, liberals are never victims of misperceptions. For instance, which party has more truthers in it? Which party’s members are more likely to believe in the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK. Indeed, which party is more likely to believe in UFO’s? (psst, democrats)

    Which is not to say that there aren’t some nutty ideas believed by republicans, just that no one has cornered the market on the crazy.

    > i am asking Patterico if he regrets supporting COD.

    And what a perfect example of misperceptions. Patterico actually didn’t support her.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  146. JD, what is the Yelverton story?

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  147. shooter, my personal thesis is based on game theoretic rubberbanding and social network theory.
    Conservatives selfselect because intellectualism and “fancy” education is negative social capital, and “commonsense” and “faith” are ingame skillups.
    Think about COD saying “you are not the boss of me”.
    Have you seen the UT work on personality?

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  148. He’s a music teacher out of Murfreesboro Tennessee, with some of the interesting brainwave (in the Futurama sense) of quellist Nishi and the other
    trolls, orcs and downright nazgul menageries. Now posts like this seem to attract them like Bugs on Klendathu

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  149. Is this Yelverton who “likes” the “Americans United against tea party terrorism” group on Facebook?

    He should stick to the Lute Appreciation Society. And I’m not being snarky. I can’t play a musical instrument well. It’s a wonderful skill.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  150. Oh, please, nishi. Should we discuss your own self selection?

    Move on (so to speak). You are just posting this kind of stuff to offend and anger others.

    Offensive to Sufism, and you know it.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  151. Eric Blair @ 143: We finally agree on something.

    But with a qualification: I believe that teaching religion in a standardized school setting is more than important, and actually vital, but that its critical that it be taught entirely in the context of a course on belief mechanisms and systems and their histories; that is, as religious studies. I think that the general failure to provide such a course contributes to why it tends to leak into the sciences (particularly biology and zoology, but physics as well, including the origins and mechanisms of the universe and its contents), including those concerned with social organizations and the history and development of civilization – where I would put political studies.

    shooter (32dc25)

  152. Aaron, the paper SHOWS that backfire effect is only observed in conservatives in the study.

    Jay Rosen–The article is mainly about the so-called “backfire” effect, wherein contrary information not only doesn’t inform but actually strengthens the existing (and incorrect) belief, thus backfiring. Seems irrational, right? Here’s what the article says about this irrationality applying across the board:

    Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.
    For the most part, it didn’t. The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire. The effect was slightly different on self-identified liberals: When they read corrected stories about stem cells, the corrections didn’t backfire, but the readers did still ignore the inconvenient fact that the Bush administration’s restrictions weren’t total.

    In other words, the backfire effect did not occur “across the board.” It was observed among conservatives and not among liberals, at least in this portion of the study. However, blocking out facts that were inconvenient did occur among liberals, as well. This shows that liberals are not immune to these irrational tendencies, but it does not show that the irrationality discussed in the Globe article is evenly distributed across the political spectrum. I think that’s an important qualifier.

    I also think that there’s a danger of PC thinking taking over here. In being careful not to encourage fantasies among liberals of being immune from these tendencies, which is an entirely valid thing to do, some writers, I have noticed, are too quick to suggest that a kind of symmetry reigns over political behavior. I don’t think we should be doing that.

    there is an emergent between group difference.
    we are not the same.
    that is why COD’s exploitable science gaffs matter– you cant extend her appeal to out-groups.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  153. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9594/

    But if these Tea Partiers are easy to mock, their chances of winning governorships or US Senate seats are hard to dismiss. O’Donnell is currently considered a gift to Democrats, but she is running only about 11 points behind Chris Coons, her moderate Democratic opponent, despite harsh attacks on her by the state Republican party and a torrent of very bad publicity. In Kentucky, Medicare-reliant ophthalmologist Rand Paul is leading his opponent, moderate Democratic state attorney general Jack Conway; and in Nevada, First Commandment crazy Sharron Angle is running about even with Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Far-right Senate candidates in Utah and Alaska, who upset conservative Republican incumbents, seem likely to prevail (although the recent decision of Alaska’s defeated Senate incumbent to run a write-in campaign is an interesting complication).

    And, even if some of the more obviously nutty and ignorant Tea Party candidates lose, their supporters will continue to pull the Republican Party into a right-wing wonderland, where foes of big government enjoy entitlements and populists demand tax cuts for billionaires; where freedom fighters frolic in the shadows of the security state, standing firm against the tyranny of bike paths.

    Triumph (0692b1)

  154. pardon, SHE can’t extend her appeal to outgroups.
    and that means Buckley was right.
    and so was Patterico.
    🙂

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  155. Triumph she is 15 points behind, and there is only 5% undecided.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  156. Look at all the effort the idiots are going to in order to not talk about Obama, the economy, and jobs.

    JD (f8be7b)

  157. JD, i suggest you ax COD some questions about how she plans to solve the jobs problem and the economy.
    go for it.

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  158. Wheelers cat @ 146: Yes, I saw that, and I am familiar with the use of game theory in these contexts; I think Ive spent more course development time in this area in the last three years than in the rest of my life.

    Coming out of a full practice environment, and then easing out of a combined practice and teaching environment for a time, I think it may be understandable that my course plans were oriented more to practical rules, skills and anecdotes (where I include case law studies); but the farther I get from practice, the more game theory is taking over lectures, at least in the theoretical basics parts. I’ve got a course plan for a game theory-oriented study of the history of constitutions (It keeps changing, almost daily.), but I’m not at all sure it’ll find a room; maybe a book.

    shooter (32dc25)

  159. JD

    After seeing what’s hapening in West Virginia and California, they are going to need alor more idiots…

    Its coming down to this, people cant afford liberals

    EPWJ (17f94c)

  160. that would be a great book, shooter.
    im writing a paper on Evolutionary Theory of Games and Islam.
    Have you read Maynard-Smith?

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  161. So you say, “see this dinosaur bone? Carbon dating says it is over 65 million years old, as does the way it is buried in the dirt.”

    Carbon dating never says anything is millions of years old. Carbon dating is for things only thousands of years old.

    There is nothing about how dinousaur bones are buried which indicates they are millions of years old, other than by making some unproven assumptions which are based on evolutionary time lines – in other words circular reasoning. The way in which fossils are arranged (for example, the Cambrian Explosion) actually fits much better with a global flood than evolutionary assumptions.

    People should not opine about scientific literacy unless they have actually acquainted themselves with the opposing arguments, which is hardly ever the case.

    Gerald A (138c50)

  162. i suggest you ax COD some questions about how she plans to solve the jobs problem and the economy.
    go for it.

    Comment by wheeler’s cat

    You know what’s totally pathetic about you?

    She did in fact answer this question repeatedly. It’s the cornerstone of her campaign and why people keep supporting her even if just about any revelation comes out.

    You keep telling us conservatives are intellectually inferior, and yet you’re the one who doesn’t seem to understand what O’Donnell’s campaign is about.

    She has pledged to limit federal spending growth to per capita inflation rate, vote in favor of a balanced budget amendment, audit our gov agencies and support an earmark moratorium. She believes that building more refineries and drilling for oil would improve the economy, while cap and trade would greatly harm it with no environmental benefit. she wants to repeal the death tax, and supports a single rate tax reform. She agrees with this old idea:

    Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words–the length of the original Constitution

    In short, on the real issues, O’Donnell has answers. You never even looked into it! This is why demonization works.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  163. I saw today that O’Donnell has lost ground since the primary, according to Rasmussen she is down 15 in her race against Coons.

    The thing is she has just too many things holding her back.

    She has something on her side too, the red wave that is crossing the nation might well help her.

    However, she is more conservative than most people in Delaware and she has some shady stuff in her past and she has said some nutty things..if it was just the nutty things I doubt if it would hurt her. After all, Biden in the king of nutty things, but the combination of all that stuff might do her in.

    Terrye (84455a)

  164. Wheeler/nish – cat got your tongue. Let’s bet on the overall results of the House and Senate races. You won’t because your little jesus Barcky and his failed policies are being rejected nationwide, hence your inane drivel.

    Yelverton fled like a coward when called out.

    JD (45da85)

  165. wheelers cat @ 159: Yes, and as it happens I actually met him many years ago (many many; I was a kid), through a family member; but not in connection with the line of work for which he became most famous; he was already dead before I stumbled on that.

    I do like your book idea. I’ve been accumulating this big unruly bundle of conceits on the practical motivations behind Muhammed’s contrivance, and it could do with something that promises to either move it on into some direction or just shred it. Included in all that is the idea that there are parallels and contrasts between that historical hotbed of creative Christianity-based religiocity in upstate New York State, particularly in the crazy pot-au-feu genesis of Mormonism and then its transplantation and primary growth elsewhere (in a desert), and the various sources that fed Muhammed and his scribes, how Islam then traveled (in deserts) and got transformed into something I think quite a bit different than what was originally intended.

    shooter (32dc25)

  166. Dustin, that is just teaparty fairy dust.
    sounds good but mathematically impossible.
    conservatives are antiscience and anti-math apparently. its the political isomorph of mice with human brains. can’t be done.

    shooter, wow that is very cool….Maynard-Smith is one of my my minor gods.
    i would love to see some third culture intellectuals on the right. do you think it can happen?
    i cant think of a single one right now. 🙁

    wheeler's cat (4280a6)

  167. cormac @ 164: Great; so what you need now is for Chris Coons to needlessly trash the Blue Hens.

    Jacobson leaves out the Red Sox snafu, but also points to a false equivalence: the folks in Massachusetts actually like their Romneycare – so much so, a lot of them figured Obamacare would spoil it for them.

    And he totally misses the criminal problem.

    What’s left is: Don’t give up – shit happens.

    And yes, indeed it does.

    shooter (32dc25)

  168. Wheeler

    Jesus wheeler, the most amazing thing about your commentary is what it shows about your own intelligence and/or critical thinking skills..

    Let’s start with something very basic, that apparently you missed. Humans are hard to study scientifically.

    For instance, take the relatively straightforward issue of medicine testing. Imagine you wanted to test the effects of a drug on dogs. So you take a random sample of dogs. You force them into your cages to control their environment and then you run a test. You give some dogs the medicine. Other dogs get nothing. then you observe. Pretty straightforward, huh?

    But if you want to run the same test with humans, you run into problems immediately. For starters, you can’t get a random sample. To get a random sample, you would have to administer the test against their will and our ethical rules prevent that. So then you will typically have to get volunteers, possibly with a little bribery, and bribery or not, skewing your results. Then you can’t control their environment, because they are going to go about their daily lives typically. I mean I suppose you could pay a person enough to subject themselves to a controlled environment, but that is pretty rare and would further skew the results, because a lot less people would consent to that. Then as if all that isn’t enough of a problem you can’t just give some humans the medicine and others nothing. No, because even the knowledge that they have gotten medicine screws up the results, what we call the placebo effect. And that is on something straightforward like testing a medicine, a chemical, and its effect on the human body.

    So then we have this backfire study. So you have for instance, scientists, which you have admitted are overwhelmingly liberal, coming in to tell liberals and conservatives that their beliefs are wrong. Here’s a hint. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical when liberals tell them something. And yes, when liberals get really insistent on something, they tend to push back, too.

    So for instance they first have a quote from Bush saying he was concerned that Saddam would give WMDs to our enemies. One group was only told that. Another was told that and also told of a report that none had been found. They found that those conservatives who were told of that report were more likely to believe that there were WMDS.

    And right in your own cited pdf, the authors make their obvious logical mistake: “What are we to make of this finding? One possible interpretation, which draws on the persuasion literature, would point to source credibility as a possible explanation – conservatives are presumably likely to put more trust in President Bush and less trust in the media than other subjects in the sample (though we do not have data to support this conjecture). However, it is not clear that such an interpretation can explain the observed data in a straightforward way. Subjects in the no-correction and correction conditions both read the same statement from President Bush. Thus the backfire effect must be the result of the experimentally manipulated correction. If subjects simply distrusted the media, they should simply ignore the corrective information.”

    And that last line is where they made their mistake. If you feel the media is trying to push you in a certain direction, information in opposition to your beliefs might push you to be convinced that the opposite is true.

    Let’s not forget that this study was done after the election of 2004. That would be the same election where the NYT ran a bogus story about missing bomb materials and Dan Rather pushed false documents. A conservative coming off of that election might perceive the media to be dishonest, and thus anything they say, they figure the opposite is more likely to be true.

    That was the first study. The next study’s description tells us everything we need to know about the test:

    In Study 2, we used a 2 (correction) x 2 (media source) design to test corrections of three possible misperceptions: the beliefs that Iraq had WMD when the U.S. invaded, that tax cuts increase government revenue, and that President Bush banned on stem cell research.

    You catch that? It is according to them a “fact” that tax cuts do not increase revenues. Forget the Laffer curve and all that.

    And to determine this was a fact, what did they do? They consulted the majority of economists. Here’s a hint. That is now how you determine scientific truth. Scientific truth is not a popularity contest. If it was, then we would still think the sun goes around the earth. This is indeed an unscientific attitude to take. Which wouldn’t be the first time with the left given that they made exactly the same mistake with global warming.

    So, your so-called science is pretty quickly revealed to be political hackery, designed to confirm the smug assumptions of liberals. Which all is pretty hilarious when you think about it. I thought ordinarily liberals thought skepticism was a sign of intelligence. But you uncritically cite a laughably biased study that criticizes conservatives for being… skeptical, and take that skepticism as a sign of their stupidity, all without establishing the connection between that skepticism (which is a learned behavior) and genetic based intelligence

    Seriously, if you are going to call a whole swath of americans stupid, you better bring your A game. Because what you wrote demonstrated your own deficiency and gullibility. Certainly if liberals are on average smarter than conservatives then it is despite you dragging down their averages.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  169. wheeler’s cat @ 166: I suspect the study-learning-knowledge thing turns them all liberal.

    shooter (32dc25)

  170. Dustin, that is just teaparty fairy dust.
    sounds good but mathematically impossible.
    conservatives are antiscience and anti-math apparently.

    I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years and disagree.

    I also know, with no doubt whatsoever, that Obamanomics actually is mathmatically impossible.

    The Republicans held congress for 12 years with an average deficit of $104 billion. That’s in spite of promises similar to O’Donnells. Realistically, add some conservatives to some liberals to some moderates, and this is a realistic result. I can’t understate how much worse things are now that democrats have ruined our economy, since they took power in 2007. They took prosperity, demonized Bush instead of fulfilling their duty, and now we have a $1.5 trillion dollar deficit for 2010.

    And you’re telling me that the right is bad at math?

    but at any rate, Wheeler dared us to ask O’Donnell a question, despite the fact that she’s been on the record with her answers for quite some time. That’s the kind of incurious dullness that makes demonization propaganda so effective.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  171. Aaron Worthing – The LAFFER Curve?
    The Laffer curves proves wha…?
    The Laffer curve is a complete an utter rightwing wank tank boondoggle.

    You sir, are an idiot.

    shooter (32dc25)

  172. “You catch that? It is according to them a “fact” that tax cuts do not increase revenues. Forget the Laffer curve and all that.”

    This is a great idea. Think of all the social programs we can have with increased revenues from a tax cut. More wars, more medicare part D.

    imdw (b69285)

  173. I think about those constant studies meant to scientifically prove one political faction is better than the other (usually insecure crazy lefties do this… been that way since they were National Socialists).

    It’s true, sometimes I’m convinced in the ‘other direction’ by ‘corrective information’. I was more convinced Iran would get nuclear weapons because the 2007 NIE swore they weren’t trying. A lefty might say this makes me crazy, but the reality is that I became resigned to the unseriousness of our efforts to stop this.

    When many of the Hide The Decline conspirators exonerated themselves of any wrongdoing, I became convinced that their corruption was even worse. Because it was, although many lefties pretend this proves I’m insane.

    The left likes to take opinions, or even lies, and insist they are scientifically proven. Disagree with this entire project, and they pretend you’re a heretic, when really you just know the difference between Science! and science.

    The people who think O’Donnell doesn’t have an explicit message on jobs and the economy that is founded on concrete and realistic ideas are mistaken. I noticed Coons’s campaign is relying on this talking point, happy to let the media keep the topic on mice brains.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  174. WEll I came to know of things like the Mousavian letter, that were left out of the NIE, and other
    details of Project 110 and 111, which were not widely commented upon till Sanger’s book came out

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  175. The Laffer curve is a complete an utter rightwing wank tank boondoggle.

    You sir, are an idiot.

    Comment by shooter

    No, shooter, it’s a serious and proven aspect of taxation. It’s not radical at all. It’s been analyzed in peer review publications for decades, but the idea goes back hundreds of years. It’s not an opinion that if you tax something, you get less of it.

    Your hysterical reaction to something so basic shows you’re not serious about our nation’s problems… just serious about bashing the right. Why is that?

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  176. Dustin @ 171: Keeriminy, how stupid do you think everyone is?

    Bush pushed through two huge unnecessary tax cuts with no offsets; ran two massive foreign wars entirely off-budget; gave out a completely unfunded drug subsidy that needlessly undermined Medicare; oversaw — or more accurately overlooked — the movement toward the complete and utter collapse of the entire financial system; and you somehow think none of that should be reflected or repayment addressed in the budget or the debt. No, no, none of THAT had the slightest impact at all.

    On the other hand, if Bush had NOT given away free government handouts to the rich, and had NOT neglected one arguably necessary military action and screwed it up to run a totally fraudulent far bigger one, and had NOT undermined Medicare drug pricing, there would have been no necessity for the Obama Stimulus (and probably something on the order of two to three times the size of it).

    Do we miss him yet? Dustin sure does.

    shooter (32dc25)

  177. Who the fuck is JD and WTF is he talking about?

    Oh, I think you know the answer to that, Mr. Yelverton.

    Look: I have relaxed the rules for commenting here. I plan to ban almost nobody, and reserve the right to simply delete comments that are personal and nasty. I often do unless they make me laugh, as comments from your friend JD (yes, I know, JD, not really) often do. I no longer care to monitor use of multiple user names. I reserve the right to tell people when they do, as I am doing now.

    You don’t have to pretend to be “Pam” or not to know JD. I don’t care. If you say something inappropriate someone will tell me, people will (or should) ignore it, and it will get deleted.

    No need to pretend.

    Patterico (a9452d)

  178. Gerald

    Gerald

    My bad on the carbon dating thing. But that being said, let me say this. the scientific evidence doesn’t back up young earth creationism. I am sorry, its just the truth. I believe in God and I believe he created it, but whatever He did, he left things looking like he did nothing.

    And honestly I think that is His way. Look there was a great documentary I saw a while back called “The Exodus Decoded.” It is really worth watching because it has an interesting theory of how Exodus occurred. The director basically connects the exodus story to the supervolcano that destroyed the Minoan civilization. He goes through a lot of stuff, so that they end up at the Reed Sea (really a river), not the Red Sea, and then the volcano erupts. First the land is raised creating a land bridge on the river. The pillar of fire is theorized to be gas coming out of the ground and catching fire. And then the water coming in is a tidal wave set off by the volcano.

    Now at first blush, that sounds like God had nothing to do with that. But if you credit that sequence of events and combine it with the biblical account, by gosh, those Jews had to be the luckiest SOB’s in human history. I mean they went right to that place, a fire broke out to protect them and the river parted to let them through and just as they were getting through a wave killed their pursuers. And that my friends might have been the trick. Maybe God didn’t literally part the water, send a pillar of fire, and then send a tidal wave to smite their enemies. He just knew those geological events would happen and and made sure that those jews did things exactly right, so that the jews would escape and have one hell of a story to tell when they made it to isreal.

    In a way, then, its like that scene in minority report when Tom Cruise’s character has the psychic with him and is trying to get away. So the psychic keeps saying, “stand here.” And he would in that spot and at that moment the bad guys would be situated just right so that they couldn’t see him. And then he would be headed toward the door and the psychic says, “get an umbrella.” Then they go out and it is raining, and Cruise lifts the umbrella just as the bad guys were looking down at them, the umbrella making them indistinguishable in the crowd. The psychic was so good at predicting the future, he knew just how to avoid being caught.

    And that is how I suspect God might be. I suspect He is more likely to tell you where to be to see your enemies killed and you survive, than to personally smite your enemies.

    But that is just my personal beliefs. Feel free to disagree. And regardless I do highly recommend that documentary.

    But i digress…

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  179. Oh: curse words get you stuck in the filter. I find it a great way to evaluate comment that are likely so overheated as to run into the personal and nasty.

    Patterico (a9452d)

  180. Do we miss him yet? Dustin sure does.

    Comment by shooter

    What are you talking about?

    The House of Representatives has the power of the purse. Stop pretending Bush is God, OK? It’s just lame at this point to blame Bush for everything, anyway.

    I noted the democrat deficit compared to the republican one. Your reaction is that I “miss him”. The GOP House of Representatives isn’t the same thing as George Bush. Both were imperfect, and both were much better than what we have now. You provide hyperbole and insults, I provide an argument.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  181. Shooter

    First, I assume you will add a substantive response to our discussion of Jesus v. Marx’s death tolls in the previous thread. Or will you like Brave Sir Robin run away again?

    Second, it is not a fact that laffer is wrong. The truth is no one can say to a scientific certainty that Keynes or laffer or anyone else who pontificates on economics is right. Humans are entirely too complicated to determine the empirical facts in this subject. I mean you can’t even perform a meaningful experiment. What we can say is that there is a high correlation between prosperity and lower taxes and we can also say that money is better kept in the hands of private individuals because the government is generally incompetent and idiotic. The stimulus is a good example of that. The new Government Motors “Volt” is another. But while I believe that laffer is correct, I cannot say it is an empirical fact he is.

    Which means it is scientifically invalid to present whether it is right or wrong as a fact. And that makes a study based on that assumption flawed.

    So now you are the second liberal to beclown themselves over this stupid study that Wheeler cited.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  182. Aaron Worthing @ 179: Time to go read Stephen Hawkings new book: no need for God.

    So if there’s no need for God to make the universe … and if universes of stuff derive naturally from nothingness … and there’s no evidence supporting the existence of God … and if the very idea of people inventing gods and God is a product of human coping systems — then what’s the matter with people who maintain God not only exists but does things, and chooses sides?

    Delusional fantasies and some perceived need for propoganda, it appears.

    shooter (32dc25)

  183. If you’re upset about unserious answers on the economy or job creation, you should be a strong O’donnell supporter. Coon’s campaign boasts he balanced a county budget. But does Coons say balancing the federal budget is urgent, and the democrats drastically and massively unbalancing the budget (when they bother with one) is a huge mistake?

    No! He doesn’t. That’s O’Donnell’s position.

    He just meanders through various job costing and economy busting ideas without a serious sobriety on what the money democrats are spending right now.

    What’s Coons’s solution for jobs? Green jobs seem to all go to China. Stimulus costs many hundreds of thousands per job, likely costing many net jobs in the private sector. These ideas are failing spectacularly.

    But Shooter is bashing Bush’s comparatively inexpensive policies. Coons is lying that O’donnell hasn’t offered any solutions. It’s such a tragedy that the candidate with a clue on the economy happens to be such a poor candidate in most other ways.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  184. <

    i>”…im writing a paper on Evolutionary Theory of Games and Islam….”

    Oh, that is humorous. C’mon, nishi. Do I have to skool you, too?

    And then you try to drop JMS’s name. By the way, there is no hyphen in the late man’s name.

    Remember when you were using science fiction terms incorrectly? Then physics terms incorrectly? Now biology, as well?

    Please, lady. Go back to your faith that you insult by your actions here, and meditate.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  185. This really compares to Biden gaffes? No way. In Biden’s debate with Palin he said that Bush let Hezbolah back into Lebanon when Hezbollah has run the south of Lebanon continuously since the early 80s. This is boiler plate knowledge of the Middle East that ANY Senator should know, let alone a Senator with supposed expertise on foreign relations. That was a stunning, jaw dropping moment during a discussion of a subject that should have been in ANY SENATOR’S WHEELHOUSE!

    I think O’Donnell will win because none of this matters. Biden’s screw up didn’t matter – hell, I bet 95% of the audience nodded their collective heads when he said it, including most of the Republicans. What matters is that the economy is in the toilet and the folks in charge can only point fingers. And even liberal Delaware isn’t going to vote for more of the Profiles in Spinelessness crowd, can they?

    East Bay Jay (2fd7f7)

  186. Time to go read Stephen Hawkings new book: no need for God.

    It’s already been debunked. He sets up a very poor argument. a,b,c factors exist, which explains x,y,z without God.

    Except God was the explanation for a,b,c factors. He doesn’t provide any cause for a,b,c… just pretend the argument was over here to the right somewhere.

    But Hawking’s books are very good for Junior high readers. He should accept that every single explanation that provides more detail and origin information is just as unlikely to explain the ultimate cause as the last one was.

    I bet you didn’t really read his book, though, did you? Just more snark.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  187. Gee, so sorry I missed the cumulative circle jerk between nishi/pam/shooter/imdw, but their constant usage of swear words was hilarious when confronted with their ineptness.

    The world will be smaller, and less vivid (or perhaps less irritating in an interesting way) without this man around.

    I like Hitchens as well, Eric – but his recent VF column about what he thought about right after he received his diagnosis gave me pause. One of his main laments was that he may not live to see Henry Kissinger dead. I don’t care for Kissinger, but thinking that thought at the moment of your possible imminent demise? Hateful is too nice a word for it, and he defenestrated himself with that column.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  188. Here is an article on one point that got me banned from AoSHQ: http://tiny.cc/4mkyd

    which I suppose could just mean Nate Silver would get banned from there, too.

    See, I have this idea that a lot of independent voters like the IDEA of voting Republican (or at least saying so), especially one with a really cool title (and of course, Gen. Eric Republican sounds so much more authentic than Gen. Eric Democrat), it’s just that very often when they are faced with the prospect of voting for an actual existing one, the reaction is quite different.

    shooter (32dc25)

  189. “ran two massive foreign wars entirely off-budget”

    shooter – Where is the Democrat budget for next year?

    daleyrocks (940075)

  190. In Biden’s debate with Palin he said that Bush let Hezbolah back into Lebanon when Hezbollah has run the south of Lebanon continuously since the early 80s.

    Wow. Forgot about that. This is worse because it’s such a serious issue. People aren’t dying over whether or not mice have big brains or hybrid brains or no brains. If O’Donnell were to outlaw the practice of human brains in rodents, who cares? The current admin’s misunderstanding of Israel’s situation could actually cost millions of lives.

    I don’t share your optimism for Delaware. Biden was Senator during the Carter admin, and they reelected failed democrat ideas over and over again, anyway. Coons is succeeding at pretending there is no debate to be had between his economic views and O’donnell’s. I honesty think he’s going to get away with it.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  191. Dustin – that was just another fevered BDS rant. Ironic that what they rant about with Bush, they commend Teh One for doing exponentially worse. Their positions on spending, the deficit, and the debt highlight how patently unserious they are.

    JD (45da85)

  192. Dustin @ 191: Also, no percentage in trying to reason with Crazy Grifter Lady.

    shooter (32dc25)

  193. Headlines you may have missed, shooter:

    Brown Wins! Coakley Loses!

    Christie Wins! Corzine Loses!

    McDonnell Wins! Deeds Loses!

    Let me know if you need to know anything about the Tea Party (hint: has nothing to do with Tea or a Party).

    East Bay Jay (2fd7f7)

  194. That really is the oddball thing about it, JD. They bash Bush’s spending in order to defend democrats today? It’s so absurd.

    Things are serious right now, and while I think Delaware’s race is beyond the point where many minds will be changed, arguing about the economy will continue to cost support for democrats. It’s going to take a few election cycles, but either the democrats become much more conservative on spending or they will lose Delaware eventually.

    Because they just aren’t serious.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  195. “ran two massive foreign wars entirely off-budget”

    shooter – This is one of my favorite BS lefty memes. By off-budget, do you mean was the spending excluded from the deficit? No, because it wasn’t.

    By off-budget, do you mean was the war spending considered outside the normal budget process? I think this must be what you mean. Can you tell me the best way to budget a war? If you set finding in stone, do you end operations when those funds run out even if you have troops in the field? I know Democrats wanted to do this several times. Or do you provide funding mechanisms with flexibility? Barbara Boxer did not want to fund further Iraq War operations unless Condi Rice could tell her exactly how many U.S. casualties were predicted. Was that a condition you would have imposed, shooter? How would you have predicted that, shooter, given the number of casualties depends on the enemy’s reaction to our strategy?

    Troll on, moron.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  196. “ran two massive foreign wars entirely off-budget”

    shooter – Isn’t the military bill Congress is currently considering “off-budget” just the same way Bush’s was?

    Moron!

    daleyrocks (940075)

  197. Dustin @ 191: Also, no percentage in trying to reason with Crazy Grifter Lady.

    Comment by shooter

    When someone occasionally insults, it can be funny. Do it for 100 arguments in a row and people get the impression you compensating for a weak argument.

    This is a good example.

    It’s not Coons who is trying to reason with O’Donnell. It’s the other way around. O’Donnell says we need to balance the budget, impose a moratorium on earmarks, constrain spending increases to per capita inflation, reform the tax code in two specific ways, repeal certain job killing measures, and stop others.

    Coon’s answer is to say she has no views on this subject. And snicker as the media keeps changing to subject to her high school wicca poser buddies or whatever.

    O’Donnell is, without any question whatsoever, the only candidate trying to reason with the other side. You will now prove me right with another dismissive insult.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  198. Also, no percentage in trying to reason with Crazy Grifter Lady.

    shooter once again displays his intellectual cowardice by attempting yet another threadjack. So tired, so lame, so pathetic.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  199. Daleyrocks – that whole “off budget” canard from the leftists never fails to crack me up. They act like it was an unknown, and did not count towards the debt. They want that to imply that, without saying it. There is no other explanation for such a dishonest construct.

    JD (86779a)

  200. Shooter

    > So if there’s no need for God to make the universe … and if universes of stuff derive naturally from nothingness …

    Wow, who knew that scientists managed to prove that there was such a thing as spontaneous generation?

    I mean Hawkings has managed to prove it, to isolate it, to produce it in a lab, right? Or can cite others who have, right?

    Because if he hadn’t, then it is just silliness.

    Indeed, do you know what the other term for spontaneously generation was, back in the day before the famous experiments with the meat and the cheesecloth? It was called “spontaneous creation,” because it was considered to be a phenomenon that supported the existence and active involvement of God. They would look at the mud and how frogs would just pop out of it now and then from seemingly nothing, and they would say, “aha! God created the frogs just now!’ of course we know today, that maggots come out of meat when left out because flies land there and lay their eggs and that frogs come from eggs that turn into tadpoles etc. that live in the mud.

    But now we have come full circle, whereby the so-called scientists claim that there is spontaneous creation, but they are certain that it is not God generating it because… um, why exactly?

    And of course what you have done in citing it is the fallacy of argument from authority. He cannot prove his hypothesis, thus to believe him is to make a leap of faith. I mean he is so smart and all that, so I guess he has to be right.

    So for the third time in our discussions, you have accused me of going on faith when it turns out that I am going on logic and evidence, and you are going on faith. Interesting.

    And by the way, you are also wrong to assert that there is no evidence that God exists. That is empirically untrue. There is the bible, and there is the evidence of literally thousands of eyewitnesses. For instance, for every saint there must be proof, in the eyes of the church, of a miracle. These generally involve eyewitness statements. The best you can say is that you don’t credit that evidence, which is your prerogative. But it is factually incorrect to say that there is no evidence at all. That would be another case of your faith in the non-existance of God overwhelming logic.

    You also falsely leap from the claim that there is no evidence that God existed, to the claim that He does not exist. As noted before the belief in an omnipotent God is logically unfalsifiable, because for an omnipotent being, literally anything is possible.

    Which leaves us at the usual tired stalemate. You cannot disprove faith. It is a logical impossibility. But still you try and fail, irrationally. I just wonder what the real source of your irrational desire to try to disprove the unfalsifiable comes from.

    [btw waiting to see shooter go completely nuts in 3…2….1… nothing upsets an atheist faster than saying that there is some evidence of God. even though it is empirically true.]

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  201. Which leaves us at the usual tired stalemate. You cannot disprove faith. It is a logical impossibility. But still you try and fail, irrationally. I just wonder what the real source of your irrational desire to try to disprove the unfalsifiable comes from.

    Amusingly, Aaron, it comes from their own faith.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  202. Re. the anti-science discussion, can there be any greater combination of influence and wrongness today than Paul Krugman? His economic religion burned Japan and now he hopes to do the same to the US. He’s looking for even bigger defecits because there’s nothing to worry about with trillion dollar borrowing because interest rates are so low. But what happens when US borrowing costs average 3%? Or 5%? When our borrowings total $20 trillion, and that’s in Obama’s sites if he gets a 2nd term, and interest rates hit 5% in the future, a virtual certainty, our annual interest costs would be a cool trillion. At the end of the Clinton years a trillion was half the entire budget! That said, we’ve already breached the point where paying back our current debt is ever going to happen. The dollar is in a slow motion death spiral from which it will never recover.

    East Bay Jay (2fd7f7)

  203. daleyrocks @ 197: Not according to the OMB, the CBO and the reading and organization of the last 9 annual budget publications. All of that shows that the Obama administration treats money spent in accordance with the foreign military action supplementals that started under the Bush administration in accordance with federal government budget protocols in place since 1946. Even the expenditures for the Viet Nam adventure complied with those protocols. Continuing with the supplementals process is an atavism of the Bush years, not something the Obama administration looked to continue, but rather continued as some iteration of Senate comity; I gather the thinking is if they return to the pre-Bush approach, somebody might get the idea that the Senate is confirming that Bush and Cheney were up to something fishy.

    shooter (32dc25)

  204. Cant’ forget his partition plan for Iraq, or that he was the one that Obama relied on, to decide which questions to ask Petraeus,, talk about the blind leading the blind. So Coons has hiked property taxes, is an apparent pain to any one crazy enough to buy property in Delaware,but let’s focus on some obscure science experiment that Kennedy school grad O’Reilly couldn’t properly describe

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  205. “Not according to the OMB, the CBO and the reading and organization of the last 9 annual budget publications.”

    shooter – Let’s have a link, baby.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  206. Cant’ forget his partition plan for Iraq, or that he was the one that Obama relied o

    Great point, Ian. Biden’s lack of basic humanity was on full display there. Combined with Obama saying preventing genocide did not justify use of force, and we have something a hell of a lot scarier than sentient rats.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  207. Sophistry, shooter. The money is accounted for, and voted on. Period.

    Again, has there ever been anyone that has said less, with more words, than shooter? Hacks, perhaps.

    JD (86779a)

  208. “All of that shows that the Obama administration treats money spent in accordance with the foreign military action supplementals that started under the Bush administration in accordance with federal government budget protocols in place since 1946.”

    shooter – So criticize both or criticize neither. Which will it be?

    So where is that Fiscal 2011 Democrat Budget, buddy?

    daleyrocks (940075)

  209. shooter – Let’s have a link, baby.

    Link? I don’t need no steeking link!

    The moronic Troll convergence continues apace.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  210. Ten bucks says that shooter will link to a completely discredited “paper” by noted philanderer/hack Orzag. Just wait a few more minutes.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  211. Daley – it was eeeeeeevil and a sign of something fishy when Chimpy McHitler$urton did it. It is Chimpy McHitlerBurton’s fault when Barcky does it.

    JD (86779a)

  212. shooter – So criticize both or criticize neither.

    It’s like he didn’t even understand what he was saying. Shooter rephrased the basic daleyrocks point instead of refuting it.

    Is this really the argument for supporting Coons in the face of realistic solutions to our economy from O’donnell? Wow!

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  213. East Bay Jay – I don’t mean to pick nits, but when you use Krugman’s name, I am fond of using it in the following manner “Enron Board Member Paul Krugman.”

    daleyrocks (940075)

  214. Dmac – Ten bucks says shooter has nothing.

    daleyrocks (940075)

  215. the scientific evidence doesn’t back up young earth creationism. I am sorry, its just the truth. I believe in God and I believe he created it

    There are whole books that have been written about the evidence for the Biblical flood. The people writing them are for reals scientists, as HF would say. Peer reviewed papers have been done on evidence for a young earth. Try googling Russell Humphries who has published a number of papers in major scientific journals. The flat assertion that there’s no scientific evidence is along the lines of “all the scientists agree on human caused global warming”.

    The thing people have to understand is that a lot of what people “see” is interpreted based on certain presuppositions. The idea of the Grand Canyon being carved out over millions of years is totally unsubstantiated but rather assumed based on uniformitarian assumptions, i.e., the idea that things have always changed at a more or less constant rate as opposed to sudden large scale change. It was uniformitarianism that influenced Darwin. That idea is built into scientific explanations for things nowadays. Isaac Newton along with many of the top scientists of earlier eras would be astonished at that.

    whatever He did, he left things looking like he did nothing

    What exactly would you expect to see if it looked like he did “something”? For that statement to be valid you have to be able to answer that question, for starters, and then substantiate whatever your answer is to the question.

    Gerald A (138c50)

  216. Demonic midget Enron Board member Paul Krugman

    JD (86779a)

  217. Deranged demonic midget Enron Board member Paul Krugman

    JD – FTFY

    daleyrocks (940075)

  218. Much better – krugman and Reich on shetland ponies in clown costumes is the stuff of nightmares.

    JD (86779a)

  219. But they both have such nice beards. Makes them look so intelligent. Ever notice that Clinton only had shrimps when men were on his staff? Rahm, Stephanopolous, Dick Morris, Reich, etc. – little guys, one and all (except for Cohen and Gergen). I walked right by Clinton once while in Aspen, and the guy’s taller then me, no question. I’m barely 6’1″, he must be at least a full inch taller.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  220. == I don’t mean to pick nits, but when you use Krugman’s name, I am fond of using it in the following manner “Enron Board Member Paul Krugman.”==

    And I don’t mean to pick nits either, but when you use Krugman’s name, I am reminded that I am fond of employing it in the following manner: To use his columns to pick out the poop from the cat litter tray. (But only if the cat, who hates Krugman, is not there to see its litter box being defiled.)

    elissa (1f6f8a)

  221. Dustin

    In my experience there are two kinds of atheists. There are those who just don’t believe and there are those who claim they don’t believe, but actually do believe in God, and are really mad at him for one reason or another. The jerk atheists tend to be in the latter category, although I suspect the majority of atheists are in the former and generally nicer category. So faith is not really the right words, so much as irrational anger because they believe God has done them wrong.

    Aaron Worthing (b1db52)

  222. So faith is not really the right words

    When someone believes something they can’t prove, I call that a leap of faith. Some leaps are bigger than others, but those who insist God doesn’t exist can’t prove it any more than those who do the opposite.

    Doesn’t really bug me. But when you ask about the origin of an irrational desire to prove something that is unprovable, I say it’s faith. At least if they are sincere about their mission.

    I haven’t really considered the idea that they really believe in God and are just trying to express their anger at him. That’s a sad thought. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  223. God, the comments are becoming unreadable with all the trolls.

    Qustion: In the war on science education, which political party is often associated with pushing creationism in schools and rewriting textbooks?

    Comment by pam

    Which political party is associated with the destruction of our public education? Hint: they also oppose vouchers to get kids who want to learn out of hellish schools.

    Mike K (d6b02c)

  224. Reich is kind of crazy, but he is sincere, Krugman
    was the Enron consultant, taken in by a fake trading
    desk; a very easy mark.

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  225. Gerald

    > What exactly would you expect to see if it looked like he did “something”?

    Um, for starters, no dinosaur bones. I would expect all dating to correspond with a young earth. I would expect that we would not see intermediate forms between human and ape, whale and whatever you call that creature they evolved from, and so on. I would expect the human body not to retain evidence of a more primitive existence and other vestiges that point toward lost abilities. Things like our third eyelid. The ability to wiggle our ears. Wisdom teeth. The appendix.

    If God wanted to announce his existence, he would make humans look like they came from nothing, that they might as well be from the planet zenon. Instead the evidence in our very bodies provides evidence that we once swung from trees and threw poop. Or in the case of Congressman Weiner, still do.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  226. Mike, one of the few proponents of school vouchers who was in a position to do something about it was summarily booted out of her job in the DC schools. Arne Duncan (huge tool of Obama and Daley) played a big part in her eventual ouster, even though she was a loyal Dem. One of the mayoral contestants here is Rev. James Meeks, who’s come over to the voucher program side in a big way, after backing the school system and unions for years. I hope he runs, because he’s a minister (and elected Rep.) and actually walks the walk, and does things for his constituency all the time, and not for his own enrichment. His parishioners and voters are primarily the desperately poor, which scares the hell out of the unions.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  227. This is a national problem. Even the LA Times ran a series on the teacher problems in LAUSD. It was the best thing the Times had done in a long time. I think this is the first of the series but there must be 20 stories with the union pushback etc.

    Vouchers are a solution, especially for the worst schools. The biggest problems are the teachers. Their education is a farce. What John Derbyshire calls the “EdBiz” in his book is a racket. Teachers don’t study the subjects they teach, it is all theory, much of it faddish like “whole language” for reading.

    At one time I was thinking seriously of moving to Vashon Island WA for retirement. I owned 10 acres there for a decade or more. My daughter said one day “Dad, why don’t you teach high school biology for something to do ?” I probably couldn’t qualify without a year of ed courses. I’ve heard other horror stories from people who are science qualified and would like to try teaching the subject.

    There is a reason math is not taught. There are not enough competent teachers. Kids stop at prealgebra.

    Mike K (d6b02c)

  228. Teachers don’t study the subjects they teach, it is all theory, much of it faddish like “whole language” for reading.

    That’s just one part of the problem – in Chicago, the teachers have been told and conditioned to “teach to the test,” which is an officious way of saying only cover the subject matter to which they’ll be tested on later (via the national testing standards which determine which schools are failing). So the entire thing’s a farce to begin with, even though Daley made some progress after he took the schools over – but not much, since he was unwilling to take on the union.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  229. BTW, where did shooter go? Akin to Brave Sir Robin, he ran away.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  230. dmac

    Its a recurring pattern. He says something in the jerk atheist tradition. I beat him around like a bongo drum, usually showing that he is the irrational one. He runs away.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  231. Dmac – same way Yelverton the plagiarizing lying coward scurried away once he got called out.

    JD (da3b6e)

  232. Meanwhile, Obama is deliberating distorting history of the colonization and settling of the North American continent to get applause lines out of the Hispanic lobby.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  233. Did you miss me yet? I didn’t miss you all that much during the class, but I sure did all through the faculty future class planning meeting. Bigger class sizes, less staff; I expect others here are going through the something like the same.

    There are approximately a kajillion possible links on the different treatment of the war supplementals by the Bush and Obama administration, and there are different positions: if you like Heritage, they take one; this one makes what I see as the proper assessment, and takes on Heritage too: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3086

    (In fairness, here is the Heritage take, by the aptly-named Conn Caroll: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/)

    Here is an early take on the Bush administration approach: http://www.cfr.org/publication/7663/iraq.html

    Here is the Congressional Research Service take, at a point where Obama had promised to do things differently (both in the 2008 campaign and in speeches in early 2008), but had not yet been put to the task; the most value is in fixing the ground last year: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

    I recall reading an article in Wired that went after Obama for fudging on his commitments; not sure if this is the one, but here is what I was able to find in a rush saved: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/weighing-the-ir/

    Politifact, as we know, likes to weight promises against reality, and here is their take, which comes pretty close to my own: http://tiny.cc/sc4q9

    This is getting long, but I want to deal with the revival of an old attack on Paul Krugman, which he answered here: http://tiny.cc/somkc

    essentially that he was never on the Enron board, but simply on a technical advisory committee, which he got off before going first string at the New York Times; he disputes being an author at that time, which I think is pretty much open to dispute, but the rest is fair. I myself have served on boards versus committees, and the big difference is how the cojones can seize up when you find out what is going on and how you might end up a witness or worse; he never got anywhere near that fun stuff.

    You’re now free to resume your normal commentary.

    (The joint is still full of people milling in and out of offices, so I can only do my best to keep up.)

    shooter (32dc25)

  234. Well, Aaron, I still think fruit flies are a pretty good argument for spontaneous creation (though I remember the term as spontaneous generation). I mean, you can go months without seeing one, and let a peach get a little old and they appear out of nowhere.

    Mike K.- some states will allow someone with an advanced degree to teach while enrolled in a graduate education program. Actually, in PA perhaps it’s just if one has a college degree, not necessarily graduate. I imagine it depends on how desperate the area is. There has also been incredible growth in cyber education, you might find a teaching position without having to change your plans for residence. “Connections Academy” and “K-12” are two of the biggest nationwide.

    more later, got to catch up with my cyber-schooler on math!

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  235. It occurs to me that I also have taken filthy lucre from Enron, and BP, Koch, Dresser, Bell, Verizon, Bank of America, Price Waterhouse, Deloittes, and a slew of others; sued most of them at some point, too. It’s surprising how many big companies seek outside help and opinions on possibly criminal activities, and how often.

    shooter (32dc25)

  236. Aaron Worthing @ 231: Nice to be undefeated in your own mind. Atheism is not a belief system, like creationism; it’s just skepticism. You show me, I look, I question. So far you ID folks have come up with nada.

    shooter (32dc25)

  237. O’Reilly need real
    scrubbing with steel luffa and
    lancing of swelled head

    ColonelHaiku (1546ed)

  238. come home to find out
    shooter a lib blood sucker
    son of a biscuit!

    ColonelHaiku (1546ed)

  239. I’m headed over to the big teevee in the den to watch Hannitty grill some COD; but I expect sushi.

    shooter (32dc25)

  240. and he tweets!

    ColonelHaiku (1546ed)

  241. shooter, agnosticism is skepticism. Atheism is a belief system – especially when you couple it with as much hatred as say a Richard Dawkins displays.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  242. Very, very, late to this party, but….

    I think there’s a third category of atheist, those for whom it isn’t really about God at all, but instead had bad experiences with religious people or churches. Their antagonism is displayed against religions because they feel that they were done wrong in some way by people, not God.

    I my experience, when I hear their stories, I generally agree that they had in fact got the shitty end of whatever stick they were handed.

    It’s not the same thing as atheism, but there’s really no reason to argue about it with them.

    Pious Agnostic (b2c3ab)

  243. Shooter

    > Atheism is not a belief system, like creationism; it’s just skepticism.

    Its amazing. You assert yourself to be an atheist but you apparently don’t know what the term means.

    Skepticism is agnosticism. Atheism is not simply being skeptical but asserting that you know for a fact there is no God, when in fact you can never know, period.

    > So far you ID folks have come up with nada.

    Ah, more of your prejudice on display. I spend several comments specifically saying to Gerald in this thread that the scientific evidence supports the big bang and evolution, and you still claim I am an intelligent design person. Bigot.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  244. shooter – Still waiting on that link about war budgets.

    moron

    daleyrocks (940075)

  245. Maher and OReilly are going to show us how humans can have mice brains?
    Or was it vice versa?

    SteveG (cc5dc9)

  246. “masturbating witches and mice”

    — Twice as funny without the commas in-between. 😉

    Icy Texan (3c7e3d)

  247. Btw, for a much, much lighter story, check it out: Great moments in Pubic Education.

    And no, that isn’t a typo. http://allergic2bull.blogspot.com/2010/09/remember-folks-we-must-not-ever-let.html

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  248. Comment by wheeler’s cat — 9/21/2010 @ 8:07 am
    52. its too late.
    — That’s your own fault. We all told you to get help a looong time ago.

    shouldn’t you be cutting your losses now, Honest Man?
    — Shouldn’t you be cutting that stuff you snort with some baking soda? It’s giving you “mouse brain”!

    if you had stood your original ground you would have gained influence to use the next time.
    — If, back in the day, you had just said “crack is whack,” it wouldn’t be influencing your opinions now.

    the problem isn’t so much that shes behind 54 to 39…its that there are only 5% undecided….she cant make that up with the opposition research that is going to come out.
    — Yeah, because, if all 5% go for her there will only be 5 more points to make up; and that’s impossible, right?
    Idjit.

    Icy Texan (3c7e3d)

  249. I’m going to spend a little time now going around pointing out posts that are mostly ad hominem. Number 250 is an example. There’s pretty much one argument in there mixed in with a bunch of insults. How about just using the part that is an argument?

    Patterico (c218bd)

  250. Triumph, the suck-a$$ 3rd-rate imitation of RUSH, pooped: “In the meantime, O’Donnell must step down”
    — What is it that she’s supposed to “step down” from, sir or madam? Do you want her to get elected and then step down?

    Icy Texan (3c7e3d)

  251. Yes sir.

    Icy Texan (3c7e3d)

  252. As far as O’Donnell and the election, it doesn’t take a brilliant intellect or graduate education to know that if you keep spending money you don’t have you are bound to run into trouble, and that if the government rushes through 2,000 page legislation few have read there will be more new problems than old problems solved. If she and her campaign can hammer the obvious and keep the election about the issues she can win.

    If the public was a little educated and had critical thinking skills instead of letting the crowd think for them, it would be alright, but they don’t. Somehow Joe Biden maintained being a Senator in spite of all of the foolish things he’s said over the years. Somehow the public was convinced that he was expected to do such things but it was OK, that it didn’t reflect on his capability to be a Senator. Though it may be true, to say, “If you think I say crazy things, just remember who I’m going to be replacing!” is not going to be a winning statement for O’Donnell.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  253. shooter – Still waiting on that link about war budgets.

    moron

    Don’t know why the last word is necessary. Probably shooter has made some assertions that he can’t back up, and then ran away, as I have seen him do before. But this thing where we have to tack on a pejorative at the end of every comment is sort of a tic that I think makes the comments less pleasant unless they’re funny somehow.

    Most of your comments in the thread are funny, if often insulting. So I’m not trying to really chill speech. I just want everyone to think about the habit they have of adding something like “you idiot” to the end of a comment to give it that ZING! quality. Is it really necessary? If not, skip it.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  254. md in philly

    actually the terms are semi-interchangeable, spontaneous creation and generation. but it was a term used for the same phenomenon. it used to be that people believed God was creating stuff all around us all the time. now we believe there is no more creation.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  255. Yes, making mistakes when commenting on factual issues is certainly a campaign-killer.

    I mean, she’d really seal her political tomb if she publicly stated America had 57 states, right?

    Calvin Dodge (c24b9e)

  256. Or that the concern is a three-letter word: J.O.B.S.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  257. I mean, she’d really seal her political tomb if she publicly stated America had 57 states, right?

    If she did, you’d defend her.

    If Obama made the mouse comment you’d mock him.

    It’s all about which side you’re on.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  258. Regarding the larger discussion, I prefer discussing the step of faith (rather then the leap), and insisting on the recognition of how similar is the situation we all find ourselves in.

    Perhaps it doesn’t happen “in real life” as it does in fiction, but for those involved in criminal law, how often can the discovered facts be explained in only one way? Is it not more often deciding which interpretation of the given facts makes more sense, enough sense that one is confident making a decision on it? In The Brothers Karamozov there is astounding court scene where, after the prosecuting attorney has presented his case, the defense attorney, using the same bits of evidence, presents an altogether different interpretation necesitating the opposite conclusion. (If there are any who remember that reference and wishing I stopped using it, raise your hands).

    Intellectual problems often start with the presuppositions we assume to be true when they are not. The first presupposition made by shooter is that the belief that everything in existence can be described by observable phenomenon. In fact, that is not even what such people actually believe, for they really want to claim is that everything in existence can be tested, and if it can’t be tested, it can’t exist. And that is actually an additional presupposition. Those are all beliefs, they are one set of understanding existence. One can go from there and discuss the “relative reasonableness” of one set of assumptions vs. another, but don’t fall into the mistake that being a “radical naturalist” is not only the only rational choice, but one that is proven by the evidence.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  259. Patterico

    Oh come on. Getting the number of U.S. States wrong is a tad worse than not being sufficiently skeptical of the excesses of scientists.

    But that being said, I didn’t think that meant Obama was a moron. i probably mocked him, but it is more mockable. Its supposed to be common knowledge.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  260. now we believe there is no more creation.
    Comment by Aaron Worthing

    Which in one way is interesting. Some assume by necessity that in the midst of totally inhospitable conditions inorganic molecules defied all odds (literally) and became living things that continued to become more and complex. (In fact Crick once punted the question and claimed that life was brought to earth from somewhere “older” in the cosmos.) Now we have an environment clearly welcoming of life as we know it, but it is assumed that organic molecules given a huge head start can’t repeat.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  261. There is a “Pinky and the Brain” joke in here somewhere, but I can’t seem to find it. I might have left it in the garage.

    But, providing past presidential actions that distort the Laffer curve as examples of its invalidity is pretty close.

    Ag80 (5c7ef4)

  262. Actually not knowing what city he was, (Sunshine, Fl) or the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor (he’s from that neck of the woods, and went to the best high school there) or the omission of the Creatorfrom his latest recitation of the DEclaration, it all makes you wonder. One surmises
    whether the demands of community organization, surpass the needs for mere facts

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  263. Oh come on. Getting the number of U.S. States wrong is a tad worse than not being sufficiently skeptical of the excesses of scientists.

    Yes, Aaron. That is the concern here. She is insufficiently skeptical of the excesses of scientists. That is a completely nonmendacious and non-strawmaney way to put it, and I thank you for not frustrating me by making me waste my time telling you that you are misstating the argument.

    God, debate on the Internet is so productive and worthwhile!!!

    Patterico (a9452d)

  264. Probably shooter has made some assertions that he can’t back up, and then ran away, as I have seen him do before

    Probably is being charitable, to say the least.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  265. Ag80-

    When you find it, please let us know.

    Maybe that’s what’s wrong in the world. We grew up content with outwitting Elmer Fudd and Wile E. Coyote, and those coming into their own now grew up aspiring to succeed where Brain didn’t and take over the world.

    Well, the economy is bound to improve in a few years when all those young entrepreneurs who grew up on Phinneas and Ferb launch out.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  266. “It’s all about which side you’re on.”

    Patterico – I’m for the Mexicans. They were here before America was even an idea according to Obama. Another genius moment!

    daleyrocks (940075)

  267. I’m reminded of other assertions that had real life consequences, like Edward’s that if not for the Bush ban on ESCR,Christopher Reeve could walk again. Now that turned out to be a premise without
    any foundation, yet billions have been directed at this dead end.

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  268. Long before America was even an idea, this land of plenty was home to many peoples. The British and French, the Dutch and Spanish, to Mexicans, to countless Indian tribes. We all shared the same land.

    Huh? This is evidence of his superior intellect?

    We hold these truths to be self evident [pause, blinks] that all men are created equal [pause, blinks, blinks] endowed with certain inalienable rights [pause] life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    Either he chose to not read “by our Creator”, or they intentionally left that out. Either way, he could not bring himself to accurately state the words in a rather important document in the history of our country.

    But making a gaffe about a mouse injected with human brain cells. Dumb as a post.

    JD (8ded14)

  269. I’m for anyone who will not swoon to the wishes of the one and his compatriots.

    As we continue to say, as JD and ian point out above, he and his crew are either hopelessly amateurish at times, purposefully outright condescending to the US and it’s people, or both.

    Now whether it can be made that plain to a majority in DE or not, I don’t know.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  270. Here’s more real life, misgauging of what leadership really means;

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/asia/22policy.html

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  271. I think the majority of the populace is understanding what a bunch of self – loathing elitists this bunch actually entails. They really do hate their own country, and the President’s wife gave us all the early signal with her “I was ashamed of my country – until now” blathering. This, when she was making over $400,000/yearly for being a political flunky for a hospital, and the couple had already pocketed more millions from the sales of his two books. Yet she still complained about how much private school cost for their two children. I don’t think they’re clueless at all, they actually think the US public is that stupid, and that they can lecture and condescend at will, and never mind the blatant hypocricy that’s ever – present.

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  272. Patterico

    I was not deliberately mistating the issue. indeed i am not even sure what you are saying i am mistating.

    But i can see we are not going to agree on this, and that is fine. When do two people agree 100% on anything? i think these attacks on o’donnell are kind of off point. I am far more concerned about drowning our kids in debt and coons’ history of driving his county into the ground. I don’t find what she said nearly as self-evidently stupid as you do. And again, talking about witches, pinky and the brain, and masturbation seems like the kind of frivolity we would reserve for less serious times.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  273. > What exactly would you expect to see if it looked like he did “something”?

    Um, for starters, no dinosaur bones. I would expect all dating to correspond with a young earth. I would expect that we would not see intermediate forms between human and ape, whale and whatever you call that creature they evolved from, and so on. I would expect the human body not to retain evidence of a more primitive existence and other vestiges that point toward lost abilities. Things like our third eyelid. The ability to wiggle our ears. Wisdom teeth. The appendix.

    If God wanted to announce his existence, he would make humans look like they came from nothing, that they might as well be from the planet zenon. Instead the evidence in our very bodies provides evidence that we once swung from trees and threw poop. Or in the case of Congressman Weiner, still do.

    No dinosaur bones? God couldn’t create any dinosaurs? Or they couldn’t go extinct? Not sure what you’re talking about. Or do you mean it would have to have been a very long time ago?

    There are no intermediate forms between human and ape, whale and whatever.

    Any dating method has certain assumptions built into it. There is scientific evidence of a young earth. Either it’s young or it isn’t. You’re confusing our ability to come up with a consistent answer with what God did or didn’t do. Or maybe you’re saying God would make it so it would be impossible to interpret things as old. That’s actually a theological argument. I find when you get into these discussions about “science” some kind of theological argument starts to emerge in support of the “God didn’t do anything” side.

    There are no vestiges of a more primitive existence.

    Do any vestigial organs exists in humans?

    The list of vestigial organs in humans has shrunk from 180 in 1890 to 0 in 1999. Evidently to salvage this once-critical support for evolution, a new revisionistic definition of a vestigial structure is now sometimes used. This definition involves the idea that a vestigial organ is any part of an organism that has diminished in size during its evolution because the function it served decreased in importance or became totally unnecessary. This definition is problematic because it is vague and would allow almost every structure in humans to be labelled as vestigial.

    God has announced his existence. Repeatedly.

    In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
    Genesis 1:1

    By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
    Psalms 33:6

    “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
    Isaiah 40:25-26

    It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts.
    Isaiah 45:12

    For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
    Romans 1:20

    And we don’t appear to have come from anything else. Certainly not chimps:

    New Chromosome Research Undermines Human-Chimp Similarity Claims

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  274. _____________________________________________

    – What is it that she’s supposed to “step down” from, sir or madam? Do you want her to get elected and then step down?

    If she weren’t so self-centered and egotistical, she wouldn’t have run in the first place. Plus, her background indicates the kind of flakiness and dishonesty that I equate with leftist tendencies (eg, what’s evident in Bill & Hillary, Barack, Gore, Kerry, Biden, Sharpton, Michael Moore, etc, etc). Moreover, no one is even sure that O’Donnell truly is a conservative. After all, her former campaign manager suggested that O’Donnell was an ideological chameleon, willing to use either rightist or leftist sentiment to feather her nest.

    The case of O’Donnell does make me realize that a person has to be an ultra-liberal and ultra-partisan to happily and nonchalantly support scroungebags like Clinton/Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Biden/Sharpton/Obama, or an ultra-conservative and ultra-partisan to happily support whatever O’Donnell is all about—even though O’Donnell, oddly enough, may not even be truly of the right.

    Mark (3e3a7c)

  275. Gerald A,
    If you’re going to make scientific claims, you should link to scientific research, not religious sites like Answers In Genesis and ICR.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90)

  276. Pinky: Brain, do you think we learned an important lesson about relations and being popular and peer pressure?
    Brain: No, I don’t think we did.
    Pinky: Whew! That’s a relief.

    There you go.

    Norf.

    Ag80 (5c7ef4)

  277. I was at work all day. What in the world is this thread about? Can anyone sum it up in 20 words or less?

    Patterico (c218bd)

  278. 20 words or less – Yelverton genderbending asshattery. Nishi the genocidal eugenecist off its meds. Shooter typing much, saying little. 15 words.

    JD (8ded14)

  279. Somebody said something, then someone else said no, that’s stupid and someone else said no, it’s not. Then someone else said I’m smarter than you and here’s the links, then someone else said the links were stupid.

    Ag80 (5c7ef4)

  280. Not 20 words, but I hit enter too soon.

    Ag80 (5c7ef4)

  281. Gerald

    > No dinosaur bones? God couldn’t create any dinosaurs? Or they couldn’t go extinct?

    How about the fact we found a whole lot of bones for creatures the bible doesn’t even mention?

    > There are no intermediate forms between human and ape, whale and whatever.

    Yes, there are.

    > Or maybe you’re saying God would make it so it would be impossible to interpret things as old.

    No, he would make the most logical interpretation that the earth is young.

    > There are no vestiges of a more primitive existence.

    Yes, there are.

    > God has announced his existence. Repeatedly.

    Agreed. But not in the fossil or geological record.

    > And we don’t appear to have come from anything else. Certainly not chimps:

    The scientists don’t claim we come from chimps. They claim we have a common ancestor.

    Sorry, you can believe that God created us. I do. But you are bending the facts if you pretend the scientific evidence backs you up. You have to simply believe.

    Of course the awful truth is actually revealed in The Simpsons Game. The characters learn that they are just characters in a game, and they confront God with it. God explains it all in this exchange:

    GOD: Here’s the bad news. You’re video game characters. You were designed by computer geeks in cubicles to run around and be controlled by other computer geeks in their bedrooms.

    BART: We knew that, Birkenstocks.

    LISA: Yeah! Explain to us the meaning of life!

    GOD: Okay.. those computer geeks who control you, thing is, they’re part of a video game too. You see, The Planet Earth [holds up The Planet Earth game case] is my most immersive, detailed video game yet, and I play it twenty four hours a day. It’s great! You can get out of your car, have a family, I even put in a complete and wholly consistent fossil record for the nerds. So, The Simpsons Game, your game, is really nothing but a mini-game inside my Earth game, if you think about it.

    LISA: So not only are we not real, we’re characters in a mini-game inside another game? And the people playing us right now are the characters inside the game that you’re playing.

    GOD: Well, you’re not just inside ANY game. The Planet Earth got a score of 96 on Meta-meta-critic.

    So there you go, Gerald. It all makes sense.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  282. If you’re going to make scientific claims, you should link to scientific research, not religious sites like Answers In Genesis and ICR.

    If you’re not disputing the information contained in them, then the fact the web sites are “religious” is irrelevant. The authors of the articles have PhD’s. The second link just discusses a study in the scientific journal Nature. If they’re just making things (I would be astonished if they are) then someone should have little difficulty demonstrating that. But the fact those are Christian web sites is as I say totally irrelevant.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  283. Patterico

    As for what this thread is about.

    Well, mainly i have been arguing with shooter about his angry atheism, and more gently with Gerald about whether the scientific evidence supports young earth creationism (I say no, he says yes). Not sure what everyone else is arguing about.

    Mind you, i believe that God created us. i just don’t think he left any geological or fossil evidence behind because, well, he is God and he can do that sort of thing.

    That’s more than 20 words, but f— it.

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  284. How about the fact we found a whole lot of bones for creatures the bible doesn’t even mention?

    There’s creatures alive now that the bible doesn’t mention either. This is a non-sequiter. The bible doesn’t exhaustively list every species? Or are you making another theological argument

    No, he would make the most logical interpretation that the earth is young.

    You mean he would make people incapable of error? Or of making unfounded presuppositions when interpreting what they see? Another non-sequiter.

    As I say there are many creationist scientists who say a young earth IS the most logical interpretation. For you to ignore them or say their conclusions don’t count or something is circular reasoning.

    There are no vestiges of a more primitive existence.

    Yes, there are.

    Really? What are they and how do you know they are vestigial (without working evolutionary assumptions into the explanation)? Most of the things you mentioned as vestigial are covered in the article I linked to.

    Also tell me exactly how they know the man-ape transitionals or whatever-whale transitionals are that, without working evolutionary assumptions into the explanation.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  285. i have been arguing with…Gerald about whether the scientific evidence supports young earth creationism (I say no, he says yes).

    Here’s what I claim:

    1) There is a body of evidence and arguments including formal research, that has been assembled by scientists with excellent credentials that dispute evolutionary models.

    2) There is research coming out of non-creationist places that is proving problematic for longstanding evolution claims, like the wide divergence between chimp and human DNA. But evolution is assumed to be unassailable.

    3) Much of what is claimed to be scientific are nothing more than assumptions and guessing games, like vestigial organs.

    4) Most people who think all this is settled science have no awareness whatever of counter evidence and interpretations.

    Put that all together, and it is not anti-science to be a creationist.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  286. Gerald

    > There’s creatures alive now that the bible doesn’t mention either.

    Yes, which is also problematic for your side.

    > You mean he would make people incapable of error?

    Nope, that is not what I said.

    > Really? What are they

    Already answered.

    > Also tell me exactly how they know the man-ape transitionals or whatever-whale transitionals are that,

    I have seen the skulls, for instance, showing one transition to another. Yes there are a couple gaps, such as the famous missing link, but you can still see long chains of transitional forms. I suggest in the particular case of humans you read a traditional anthropology book.

    I looked at it with questioning eyes. It stands up to reasonable scrutiny. But not from someone who has an agenda to prove a thing.

    Really, seriously, I don’t get the insecurity of faith here. I don’t require God to show himself to believe. Why do you?

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  287. Gerald A.’s second link, from the Institute for Creation Research, flagrantly misrepresents a Nature study on the human and chimp Y chromosomes. ICR says the study undermines the putative similarity between the human and chimp genomes. However, the Y chromosome is only 5 percent of the entire human genome, about 60 million base pairs out of a total 3 billion base pairs. The study doesn’t concern the other 95 percent.

    Moreover, the overall similarity of human and chimp DNA, or that of other species, can be determined by hybridizing their DNA. The hybridized DNA melts at a temperature reflecting their degree of similarity. The more similar the DNA, the higher the melting point. This is because more matches between DNA strands requires more thermal energy to break.

    Here’s a summary of the Nature research, without the creationist contortions.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90)

  288. Patterico, I am guessing based on your comment above that you, too, are noticing a degradation in the comment threads here of late. Actually, “thread” is probably way too kind to describe the unraveled chaos and meandering. For busy people, wading through this specific overgrown comment section, for instance, feels like trying to find the rare flower while keeping track of your safari guide amidst the jungle undergrowth. Perhaps the give and take as exemplified here is what you were striving for, but somehow I doubt it. I suspect you were hoping for sharp repartee and intelligent, fairly focused discussion among folks who enjoy both expanding and sharing their knowledge base on a variety of issues–even though they may disagree with other posters on a POV or philosophical basis. And with lots of creativity and humor and community camaraderie thrown in, too.

    But instead of slices of insight and short snappy points of discussion, the thread seems to be filled with a lot of impersonal, lengthy “cut and paste” standard fare talking points interspersed with multiple linky links and intractable thinking. I personally think a lot of the thread-jacking is malicious and intentional as a way to marginalize your blog and cause commenters to defect out of frustration. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

    Anyway, here is a possible suggestion. I don’t know if you will see any merit in it and I understand that you may not welcome my observations: But, how about having the comment entry screen (as many are) programmed to accept a reasonable, but maximum amount of digits per entry to manage the extreme length of some comments. How about programming the comment entry screen to reject more than one link per individual comment? Does that feel too un-libertarianish? You seem to be doing a really good job of pointing out and limiting ad homonyms, but that is only one part of the problem IMO. Thanks.

    elissa (1f6f8a)

  289. Brother

    I admit i never thought this all could be reduced to boiling DNA.

    That’s not a criticism so much as going, “mmm, that is weird, but… um okay.”

    Aaron Worthing (f97997)

  290. Worthing, are you thick? You don’t “boil” the DNA, you hybridize it. Not that it’s uncommon among the uneducated classes – you ask for hybridized DNA, and it comes boiled. I hate when that happens.

    Adjoran (ec6a4b)

  291. Not going to say anymore than this, I think that to expect the Bible to give an exhaustive list of every animal is like expecting a book on the United States, as a general overview, to list every type of wildlife found here.

    To have a worthwhile discussion, each side must be willing to look at each argument without prejudice.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  292. Adjoran, while irritating to a scientist tired of misunderstanding, i think AW was probably making a bit of a humorous tongue-in-cheek kind of reference, and did not literally mean “boiling”. Could be wrong, but that’s my bet.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  293. What we have seen, and honestly I thought we had learned something in the last two years, but I guess not, is the tendency to stick a shiv in your own side, while the real rival gets away with lies and real damage to this country.

    You hold up Castle as if the fact that he did ultimately vote against the stimulus and did press
    for some measure of repeal, is a medal, no it’s a starting point, and frankly considering his other
    votes, and his increasing support of SEIU projects, I doubted his long term objections, Gaffney’s little attempt to play Gibson, didn’t work because it didn’t speak to the issues. Neither did something she said eleven
    years, and we see this latest brouhaha, with clueless O’Reilly as the arbiter, also fails the test. There seems to be a certain frisson that is derived from leaving our own on the field, as Whittaker Chambers observed fifty years ago

    ian cormac (6709ab)

  294. Comment by Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. — 9/21/2010 @ 9:22 pm

    That is not “a summary of the Nature research, without the creationist contortions”. It is a summary of the Nature research, with various unsubstantiated claims/speculation added in. Those unsubstantiated claims are made on the assumption of evolution. In other words, circular reasoning, which is really the foundation of evolution theory.

    If you filter out those unsubstantiated claims, it says the same thing as the ICR article. Actually it says less than the ICR article.

    You have to distinguish between rank speculation and statements based on the presupposition of evolution, which is most of evolution theory, and actual verified facts.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  295. > There’s creatures alive now that the bible doesn’t mention either.

    Yes, which is also problematic for your side.

    Nobody has ever claimed the bible exhaustively lists all species. You like straw men?

    Really? What are they

    Already answered.

    I asked for an explanation of how we know they’re vestigial, without inserting an evolutionary assumption into the explanation.

    I have seen the skulls, for instance, showing one transition to another. Yes there are a couple gaps, such as the famous missing link, but you can still see long chains of transitional forms. I suggest in the particular case of humans you read a traditional anthropology book.

    You’re lacking in specifics. I have no idea what you saw. You have a website that shows these long chains of transitional forms? Actually Australopithecus afarensis is claimed to be the missing link for the moment.

    Traditional anthropology books have artist drawings of what ape-man transitionals are supposed to look like. Everybody has seen those in the third grade.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  296. Gerald

    We are obviously never going to agree. But I believe that you have evaluated the evidence with a bias toward substantiating the biblical account, rather than just following the evidence wherever it leads.

    But all this debate over whether this is literally the truth or not in my opinion misses the whole point. whether God did it that way or not, I have no doubt that this is the story he told us. And the point of the story is more than just to tell us what happened, but to teach us things about life, and so on. For instance, when God creates Adam, he decides that Man should not be alone and so he creates woman. I take that as a pre-emptive slap at the celibate priesthood. At the very serious risk of being corny, I believe in my heart that no man is truly happy until they find the woman that completes them. But obviously that is not the only interpretation around (and I am not trying to start a biblical interpretation argument, I am just showing an example of how we can glean meaning from that story).

    If you believe that God told us that He created woman from the rib of Adam, then whether God actually did it that way or not is irrelevant. You might dispute my interpretation, but it seems fair to say God is telling us something with that story and that doesn’t stop being true if it turns out that God was not telling us the literal truth.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  297. What we have seen, and honestly I thought we had learned something in the last two years, but I guess not, is the tendency to stick a shiv in your own side, while the real rival gets away with lies and real damage to this country.

    Yes. You are so right, ian cormac. I never go after lies by Democrats.

    You hold up Castle as if the fact that he did ultimately vote against the stimulus and did press
    for some measure of repeal, is a medal

    Once again, you’ve got me! My unending praise for Mike Castle is the stuff of legend, just as the nonstrawmaney nature of your current argument cannot be denied.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  298. I dunno why people here abouts deride O’Donnell as a wacko and weasel ne’r-do-well.

    Fer crine out loud, yer readin Rico’s blog! Get a life.

    gary gulrud (790d43)

  299. Gerald

    > Nobody has ever claimed the bible exhaustively lists all species. You like straw men?

    Okay, lay it out for me, then, what is your spin on the dinosaur bones. When did dinosaurs exist, when did they go extinct? How did they go extinct? Explain to me which version of young earth creationist stories do you buy into.

    > I asked for an explanation of how we know they’re vestigial

    Because they are useless in humans, but useful in other creatures, especially ones who are closely related to humans.

    > You’re lacking in specifics.

    Well, I am a lawyer not a scientist, and it has been a long time since I memorized terms like “Australopithecus.”

    That doesn’t change the fact that I have seen the skulls, even if it is very hard for me to remember enough to be really, really specific in my descriptions.

    But hey, explain a few things for me. Like why is it that whales, dolphins, etc. are not able to breath underwater. Isn’t that a big vestigial weakness for the animals? What if they lose their orientation and end up under ice? I mean doesn’t that just scream to you that these creatures were once land dwellers, and gradually shifted to oceanic life? And the way our big toe is set off and different from the rest… look at an ape’s foot. On them the big toe is more like a thumb and indeed the entire foot was much more hand-like. And looking at your own foot doesn’t it just scream out that at one point that foot hand-like was just like those apes’?

    The reality is this. First, it is an absolute fact that evolution is happening right now. Evolution as a current process is not reasonably deniable. And evolution as an origin is no more than assuming that what is happening today, has been happening from the beginning. Second, if you look with unbiased eyes, the evidence of evolution just screams out at you. You look at a human munching on a banana and you can see the monkey who was his “uncle.” You see a cat run in front of a lion’s cage and you see that they are distant cousins, as was the sabertooth tiger whose bones you see in a museum. You see lungfish showing us how we might have crawled out of the ocean, you see amphibians demonstrating another transitional form, and on and on.

    And the thing is that God made it that way. We both agree that everything in the universe is God’s creation. But instead of ignoring the evidence that contradicts the Genesis account, I look at it and say this. The book of Genesis says one thing. The book of the Earth itself, the book of nature, tells us something else. But, and this is really important, God is the author of both. One way or the other, God created the Earth in such a fashion that it looks like as if he did nothing. And in doing so, he is sending a message to us. And by ignoring this plain evidence, you shut yourself away from what he is telling you.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  300. Because they are useless in humans, but useful in other creatures, especially ones who are closely related to humans.

    If you looked at the article I linked to you would see they are NOT USELESS. The idea they are useless was because decades ago they hadn’t discovered any use for them. That is now outdated.

    For example this is what Wikipedia says about the appendix which is essentially what the Answers in Genesis article, which I’m sure you didn’t read, said in abbreviated form:

    New studies propose that the appendix may harbor and protect bacteria that are beneficial in the function of the human colon.[6]

    Loren G. Martin, a professor of physiology at Oklahoma State University, argues that the appendix has a function in fetuses and adults.[7] Endocrine cells have been found in the appendix of 11-week-old fetuses that contribute to “biological control (homeostatic) mechanisms.” In adults, Martin argues that the appendix acts as a lymphatic organ. The appendix is experimentally verified as being rich in infection-fighting lymphoid cells, suggesting that it might play a role in the immune system. Zahid[8] suggests that it plays a role in both manufacturing hormones in fetal development as well as functioning to “train” the immune system, exposing the body to antigens so that it can produce antibodies. He notes that doctors in the last decade have stopped removing the appendix during other surgical procedures as a routine precaution, because it can be successfully transplanted into the urinary tract to rebuild a sphincter muscle and reconstruct a functional bladder.

    Apparent function of the human vermiform appendix in the recovery from diarrhea. Although more than 2 million children die each year in developing countries as a result of diarrhea, children living in those countries face an estimated 1.4 billion cases of diarrhea each year.[9]

    Although it was long accepted that the immune tissue, called gut associated lymphoid tissue, surrounding the appendix and elsewhere in the gut carries out a number of important functions, explanations were lacking for the distinctive shape of the appendix and its apparent lack of importance as judged by an absence of side-effects following appendectomy.[10] William Parker, Randy Bollinger, and colleagues at Duke University proposed that the appendix serves as a haven for useful bacteria when illness flushes those bacteria from the rest of the intestines.[6][11] This proposal is based on a new understanding of how the immune system supports the growth of beneficial intestinal bacteria,[12][13] in combination with many well-known features of the appendix, including its architecture and its association with copious amounts of immune tissue. Such a function is expected to be useful in a culture lacking modern sanitation and healthcare practice, where diarrhea may be prevalent.[11] Current epidemiological data[14] show that diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death in developing countries, indicating that as diarrhea flushes out the helpful bacteria the appendix helps recovery by providing a “safe house” for the bacteria.[11]

    The tonsils have been found to have useful functions. And so on. They have found uses for ALL the “vestigial” structures in the body.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  301. Gerald A.
    If you filter out those unsubstantiated claims, it says the same thing as the ICR article. Actually it says less than the ICR article.

    The Nature article only dealt with 5 percent of the genome, the Y chromosome. That is a fact, and it undermines the ICR article’s premise. In ICR-land, drawing conclusions about genomic similarity from 5 percent of the sample is acceptable, (if it supports creationism), but scientists prefer to work with all the evidence.

    You likewise ignored DNA hybridization, which measures the similarity of different genomes. That also refutes the ICR article’s claim.

    This is an excellent example of why the Institute for Creation Research isn’t taken seriously by scientists. It’s got lots of creationism, but no research.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (7defc4)

  302. Okay, lay it out for me, then, what is your spin on the dinosaur bones. When did dinosaurs exist, when did they go extinct?

    Creationists theorize that after the global flood a great cooling occurred due to the evaporation of all that water. That was the ice age. That would have killed them off. There’s I think dozens of non-creationist theories, many of which don’t make a whole lot of sense, like they died because they were stupid, after having been around a couple hundred million years.

    But hey, explain a few things for me…

    These are not really scientific arguments. They’re subjective.

    What we see in looking at nature is that there are incredibly complex specialized creatures with amazingly sophisticated mechanisms, without which they would probably die, that are the product of intelligence. That is in fact a powerful message to us from God and we should give Him the glory for his handiwork. So God very definitely reveals Himself in His creation, as the book of Romans says.

    it is an absolute fact that evolution is happening right now.

    Depends what exactly you mean by evolution. If you mean ape-man, lizard-mammal etc., we don’t see anything like that. We see limited changes which is just adaptation. That’s what natural selection is. Nothing truly new is created in natural selection. The concept of natural selection was originated by a creationist by the way. Mutations that create completely new capabilities have never been observed. If you mean anything beyond adaptation, saying it’s an absolute fact that it’s happening is not supportable.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  303. I personally think a lot of the thread-jacking is malicious and intentional as a way to marginalize your blog and cause commenters to defect out of frustration.

    FTW!

    Dmac (d61c0d)

  304. So…I know that SPQR has debated creationists in the past. And I sort of kind of have a higher degree in genetics. I hate jumping in here, but…

    I’m not arguing from authority. It’s just that I teach the subject, and read the literature pretty darned deeply. It pains me to read people not quite “getting” what the data actually state or imply.

    Evolution is a fact. I often teach about a very interesting experiment. There is a mutation in Drosophila, the common fruit fly, called bithorax. It leads to the duplication of a body segment (it’s called a “shift of posterior fate” mutation), resulting in two sets of wings in the fly. The normal version of that gene occurs in most all other animals, including you and me. Mice have a gene like bithorax, too. I know a scientist who took that mouse version of the normal bithorax gene, and put it into fruit flies with the mutant form of bithorax.

    The resulting fly had the normal set of wings. Its mutant gene was “repaired” by the mouse version.

    Even the order of these genes is preserved overall (a concept called synteny), though muffled by sequence changes and small rearrangements over evolutionary time.

    Anyway, evolution is a fact. That doesn’t mean I like the way that some evolutionists talk, particularly about people of faith. When I read someone who (sorry) says that there is vast divergence between humans and chimps at the DNA level, well, that is simply not true. Period. Based on the sequences of their genomes. When a person misrepresent facts to support their faith, that makes me sad.

    It is possible to believe in God or Allah, Christ and Mohammed, and also believe in evolution. I believe in God and Christ and evolution. I don’t insult fundamentalist Christians who say incorrect or rude things about my field (in which they have no expertise; how would they feel if I, never having studied the Bible, quoted from it at length, incorrectly, to support my personal views?); why do they feel the need to insult me?

    But I have read the Bible as closely as most deeply religious people I know. Though I haven’t read the Gospels in their original languages, it is true.

    The argument, on both sides, becomes one of prideful hubris. Philosophers and theologians alike both warn against that approach (as does the Bible itself in several places). For me, seeing the evidence of our relationship to all other living things is one that is inspiring, and filled with a religious awe (to me).

    I look through a microscope, or a telescope, and I feel awe, again. And the Creator who did all this (my view only, I assure my agnostic or atheist friends) is surely greater than I can possibly understand. Why would anyone limit what God could or could not do? Is that not pride beyond measure?

    Both sides need to quit bickering and insulting one another (and I am not talking about what has taken place here). Science and theology, by definition, are larger than puny humans.

    I don’t expect to convince Gerald A, other than to point out that if he doesn’t care for my speaking so dogmatically, perhaps he should look at his own dogmatic approach. The difference here is that I personally have compared DNA sequences between organisms.

    And straight up front, anyone who says that I am not Christian, and not religious, when I say that I believe in evolution is a bigot. I don’t do that sort of thing to them.

    I don’t see how evolution denigrates any faith. Sure Richard Dawkins says that, but he is a jerk.

    Some people don’t like this man’s book, but I sure did.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins_%28geneticist%29

    His book is worth your time, no matter what you believe or don’t. He throws no bombs, and insults no one. And his faith is genuine, his manner positive.

    I know scientists who dismiss everything Collins has done in the Human Genome Project because of his faith. And that, too, is bigotry.

    I apologize for the lecture. Back to work for me.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  305. Gerald

    I won’t focus on everything, because i don’t want this to go on and on (i have probably already worn out my welcome on this thread). But on my question about the dinosaurs, you say this.

    > Creationists theorize that after the global flood a great cooling occurred due to the evaporation of all that water. That was the ice age. That would have killed [the Dinosaurs] off.

    Okay, so basically you are saying they survived the flood. Okay, so Noah was commanded to get two of each animal. So that means two T-rex’s, two velociraptors, two apatasauruses, two triceratops, two stegosauruses, and so on, in addition to elephants, giraffes, and so on.

    Now first um, how the hell could anyone have done that? I mean you watched Jurassic park, right? Do you think you could catch and trap a velociraptor? How about a T-rex? I mean at the very least, shouldn’t the bible tell us how hard it was for Noah to catch these things?

    Further, the same bible tells us the exact dimensions of Noah’s ark. The NIV translation puts it at “450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.” That is of course a conversion from the original description: “300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high (about 140 meters long, 23 meters wide and 13.5 meters high).” So, um, how the hell do you think you could fit all those dinosaurs in there, assuming they didn’t eat you when you tried to capture them? I mean do you have any idea how many species we are talking about. It strains credibility to say they could fit all the creatures on earth today, let alone what existed in all of living history.

    Oh, and what do you feed the T-rex while you are in the flood and waiting for the mountains to poke up out of the water? I mean normally it would be, well, other dinosaurs. So does he keep other dinosaurs to be food for them, or is this like the story of the fishes and the loaves? But hey if you are going to go there, why don’t you just hypothesize God used a shrink ray to fit them in?

    Mind you, that is possible for an omnipotent God, but then you are not talking science but faith.

    I have never heard a credible explanation of how dinosaurs can fit in the young earth creation theory. The ONLY way to make it work is to say the dinosaurs never existed, and the bones were fakes put in by divine intervention. Which I fully acknowledge to be a possibility, but then you are outside the realm of science if you go there.

    Again, by your dogmatic insistence on biblical literalism, you close your eyes to the truth that God is trying to tell you by creating an earth that contradicts the bible.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  306. What bothers me most about creationists is that they claim to worship Him who taught with parable, allegory and metaphor, while they take Scripture literally.

    Do they really believe that we look the way we look because Angels mated with the daughters of men?

    nk (db4a41)

  307. Comment by nk — 9/22/2010 @ 8:55 am

    I agree.
    Maybe because I was raised a Presbyterian I just don’t get the insistence on the two positions.
    One could just as easily say that the big bang was the expulsion from the garden, since humans certainly couldn’t reverse that, as well as the idea that a day could equal a millenia in the six days narrative.

    VOR2 (c9795e)

  308. Comment by Dmac — 9/22/2010 @ 7:54 am

    I agree that much trolling and such that leads into marginal things is discouraging for those wanting to follow the main points. But I also think that after a thread has gone on a long time continued dialogue tends to be between those interested in the side track and everyone else can go on to the next thread. But that is just my opinion. I do get frustrated when, say, 40 of 100 posts are dealing with inane issues (unless, as our host says, it’s really funny).

    Comment by Eric Blair

    I didn’t mind the lecture and would enjoy more, but this is a difficult format for such a discussion, even if it was on a dedicated thread. What makes it a difficult format, I think, is the level of complexity the discussion takes when the topic is discussed with respect. For example, I think even many if not most “Young Earth Creationist” can agree that “evolution is happening” in the sense you describe. As I presume you know, some make a distinction between “micro” and “macro” evolution to clarify what they don’t believe happens, but others discount this dichotomy as a false one. This topic alone would generate quite a discussion.

    There are complexities in the theological aspects as well. Foundationally there are issues of language, such as the well known discussion on what is meant by the Hebrew translated as “day” in Genesis. There are issues as how one understands the meaning of passages as to whether they are intended to be figurative or “literal”, such as A.W.’s reference to “boiling” DNA above. Most problematic for some would be the New Testament passages where Jesus quotes OT passages as giving specific rationale for something he is teaching, and it sure seems He refers to some things as historic facts, not as meaningful allegory or metaphor.

    But as you say, usually there is more heat than light in such discussions, and again I too am not referring to our discussion here. My favorite anecdote concerns my own experience in a college biology course (300 level) where the professor (not full) queried rhetorically, “If God created the world, why did He put only finches on the Galapagos islands?” My two companions and myself, none of us particularly religious at the time, rolled our eyes at the presumed insightful logic and commented, “Because He thought it would be entertaining to hear such twisted logic years later”. In actuality, the Galapagos finches (as I understand it) are exactly the kind of thing that a creationist/ID type of person would expect to find- evolution from an isolated prototype living thing into living things which are similar, yet different enough to be considered separate species. Obviously that “proves” nothing, other than when people make arguments out of hubris and contempt they are likely to make themselves look foolish rather than their counterparts.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  309. Do they really believe that we look the way we look because Angels mated with the daughters of men?
    Comment by nk

    Well, it depends. I knew one woman who thought of her Greek husband as having the physical characteristics of such a being- heavenly as he was.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  310. There is Creation and there is creation. The Poetry of the world and poetry trying to explain the world. Who will live long enough to understand either?

    nk (db4a41)

  311. I think we all have heard the joke about “the body of a Greek God” that changes over time into….

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  312. … a goddamned Greek?

    nk (db4a41)

  313. We’ll never know where we came from. Both sides are dreamers.

    nk (db4a41)

  314. What bothers me most about creationists is that they claim to worship Him who taught with parable, allegory and metaphor, while they take Scripture literally. -nk

    Very good point. The Bible, to me, is not meant to explain the mechanisms of gravity, fusion, pulsars, plate tectonics. It’s got a different function. It wouldn’t make sense to try to explain these mechanisms to Stephen Hawking, let alone Moses’s people.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  315. The subject is too difficult and our intellects too limited.

    Thinking we know God (or Creation if you prefer), that is hubris.

    nk (db4a41)

  316. nk, you explained my humble theology more succinctly than I ever could. How dare I claim to know the mind of God?

    Not the Potter, nor the Potter’s Wheel….

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  317. The Nature article only dealt with 5 percent of the genome, the Y chromosome. That is a fact, and it undermines the ICR article’s premise. In ICR-land, drawing conclusions about genomic similarity from 5 percent of the sample is acceptable, (if it supports creationism), but scientists prefer to work with all the evidence.

    You likewise ignored DNA hybridization, which measures the similarity of different genomes. That also refutes the ICR article’s claim.

    This is an excellent example of why the Institute for Creation Research isn’t taken seriously by scientists. It’s got lots of creationism, but no research.

    Your story is changing. You originally claimed that ICR misrepresented the Nature article. They did no such thing. Now your story is “Who cares about the Y chromosome?”.

    From the statements of a number of non-creationist scientists, this is FAR different than what they were expecting. For example:

    R. Scott Hawley, a genetics researcher at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City who wasn’t involved in the research, told the Associated Press, “That result is astounding.”

    So I don’t buy into your “Who cares about the Y chromosome?” argument.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  318. Sigh.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  319. Gerald, please move on. You would be so offended if I spoke of theological matters with as little depth. Fair enough? We all agree to disagree.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  320. Gerald, it’s hard to see what you’re trying to say.

    That scientists make errors or are surprised by results doesn’t mean much of anything, except that we should take today’s understand of the world with a grain of salt.

    It certainly isn’t evidence that there was no planet Earth, and 6 24 hour periods later, there was, with people and the full diversity of life. Do you suggest there is evidence for this? Or just evidence that scientists have to revise their understanding from time to time? Pointing out errors in one theory isn’t evidence for another, especially a theory as radical as Literal Genesis.

    It’s plain that God did not care to inform us on how the Earth actually became the way it is. We also don’t know how God came to exist with his abilities. Some things are outside the scope of the Bible, explained to get to the relevant part.

    God relied on complex sciences if he made the galaxies and viruses and chromosomes, but the point of Genesis is simply to note our standing within that creation, relying on some extremely vague metaphors. Because of this, if you’re claiming something as unspecific as Genesis is accurate, you’ll never be able to produce strong evidence.

    I realize you’re actually arguing that there’s evidence Earth is young. No doubt, there’s evidence it’s only a week old, and evidence it has existed forever.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  321. A place to start:

    http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/DNA/

    But it does not take God out of heaven, friends. How could it?

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  322. Gerald A.
    Your story is changing. You originally claimed that ICR misrepresented the Nature article. They did no such thing. Now your story is “Who cares about the Y chromosome?”.

    I repeated two points in my original comment that you failed to respond to. Here is my original comment for your reference:

    Gerald A.’s second link, from the Institute for Creation Research, flagrantly misrepresents a Nature study on the human and chimp Y chromosomes. ICR says the study undermines the putative similarity between the human and chimp genomes. However, the Y chromosome is only 5 percent of the entire human genome, about 60 million base pairs out of a total 3 billion base pairs. The study doesn’t concern the other 95 percent.

    Moreover, the overall similarity of human and chimp DNA, or that of other species, can be determined by hybridizing their DNA. The hybridized DNA melts at a temperature reflecting their degree of similarity. The more similar the DNA, the higher the melting point. This is because more matches between DNA strands requires more thermal energy to break.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (a18ddc)

  323. Gerald, it’s hard to see what you’re trying to say.

    My main point is, there are two sides to the argument, scientifically speaking. But most people who believe in evolution reject that, and try to discard challenges to evolution with a wave of their hand as anti-science. That is in my view intellectually dishonest and a sign of weakness.

    Another point is that most people don’t distinguish between claims that flow from evolutionary assumptions but are totally unsubstantiated, and things that are actually verifiable.

    Your belief about Genesis cannot be sustained based on reading it in context. The interpretation of that as metaphor is based on people wanting to marry evolution with the bible, rather than the natural reading of it. The entire New Testament no longer makes any sense at that point. I have more respect for people who have no interest in the bible and think it’s like Grimm’s Fairy Tales than for people who try to twist everything in pretzel like fashion while claiming to believe it’s something or other of value.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  324. Gerald A,
    But most people who believe in evolution reject that, and try to discard challenges to evolution with a wave of their hand as anti-science. That is in my view intellectually dishonest and a sign of weakness.

    Says the man with the beam in his eye.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (a18ddc)

  325. Gerald, you’re saying that if I believe that Genesis is a metaphor for our place within creation, rather than literal, the New Testament doesn’t make sense, and I’m weak, dishonest and I don’t have your respect.

    Am I getting this wrong?

    I don’t need to twist anything. Many parts of Genesis are completely impossible if you take them literally, such as Adam naming every beast, but make great sense if you understand it wasn’t an attempt to explain to man anything more than our place within creation.

    At any rate, you make a great point that the way someone argues shows how strong their case is. You don’t have to be exhibit A of that argument.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  326. Gerald

    you failed to respond to my basic point. if the ark had all the dinosaurs, how the hell did they fit them in?

    VOR2

    Fellow presybaby here, and my view is stated up thread. I think God created us. It might have been via a big-bang, etc. or it might have been exactly like it says in the bible. To reason in a John Calvin sort of way, if God is omniscient then he could have created the big bang with the specific understanding of exactly how it would turn out down to the slightest atom and the fact I barked my shin on the coffee table the other day. I mean that is standard Presbyterian predestination logic.

    Its equally possible that God created the earth in 7 days just like Genesis says in the most literal way possible, but also made it look like as if he didn’t. So that argument rests more on God’s omnipotence than omniscience. in other words, when you are talking about an all-powerful God, literally anything is possible.

    Or maybe there is a third possibility i am not even considering.

    Hey, I wasn’t there. So for all i know the earth was created the day before i was born and everyone who says they were there before me only thinks they were really there before me. how would i know if it was not the case?

    So count me as being not terribly sure how we got here, and not overly worried about it anyway. obviously it seems to be a viable working assumption that creatures evolve, now, and whether it is also how we got here actually seems irrelevant to anything i do in life.

    As for the biblical story, I believe God told us this and whether or not it is true, he had a purpose in telling it to us.

    Like on a slightly related point, i truly believe that the real purpose of the story of exodus was to convince us all those centuries later to abolish slavery. i mean let’s assume for the sake of argument that exodus happened just like it says, or reasonably close to it. so if God wanted to free the jews, why didn’t he just teleport them out of egypt? It seems to me the most logical answer was that this episode was sort of “performance art” in the sense that he was making a big noisy display out of the whole thing. indeed, several times the story says that God “hardened” the pharoah’s heart, which means that even as Moses is saying let my people go, God is whispering to the pharoah, saying, “don’t let them go just yet. i have a few more plagues for you.” from that i conclude that God seemed to be creating a story that would be told through the ages.

    And you have to ask, why did he do that? and then you come to american history. you see slaves sneaking off to secret churches and being read to from exodus. you see abolitionists reading that section and taking from it a severe disapproval of slavery. literally, if it was not for the book of exodus, slavery would have at least lasted longer and maybe it never would have been abolished at all. So you have to think that way back then when God was plaguing Egypt, that at least one of the things he was thinking was, “when America is born it will be marked with the sin of slavery. But these events will be remembered as a rebuke to it, and will ultimately push the american people to destroy slavery once and for all.” i am sure it served other purposes. I mean if God is omniscient it would be arrogant to assume i could ever understand all the subtleties of his actions. But i think it is a pretty reasonable hypothesis to say that this was the point of exodus.

    God had a purpose in telling us the story of genesis. or that is what i believe anyway. and i don’t believe it is necessary for it to be true, for us to grasp divine meaning from it. in fact, if we could ever prove it was definitely false (which is probably impossible), those who still believed would have to ask, “if it is not a retelling of history, then why did God tell it to us?”

    But i digress… (alot, i admit)

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  327. Here I am, being honest:
    If Biden had said it my response would have been, “He needs to ask those scientists for that .1% back — he needs it”.

    Icy Texan (3c7e3d)

  328. Dustin

    > Many parts of Genesis are completely impossible

    well, to be perfectly logical, if you presume that God is omnipotent, then literally nothing is impossible.

    But that’s a nitpick. i will admit i have no idea what specifically happened in a blow-by-blow sense. i got my pet theories and that is it. But i know that the scientific evidence lines up with big bang and evolution. And i believe unshakeably that somehow God created us and God told us the genesis story and had a purpose in doing so. everything else seems more debatable.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  329. if you presume that God is omnipotent, then literally nothing is impossible.

    The idea of logic implied that the type of omnipotence you are referring to is also not possible.

    God can’t be A and not A at the same time. He can’t make something so heavy he can’t pick it up. I figure omnipotence is another limited explanation for something more than we can understand. Maybe maximum power logically possible, or simply most powerful in existence.

    Once we get into these weeds, we can just abandon even trying to reason through religion if we don’t grant logic constrains all concepts.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  330. dustin

    i think i have gotten into too many weeds for one week to go into a discussion of those kinds of objections. especially with sinuses giving me a splitting headache.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  331. Hmm, Dustin, I dunno.

    I cannot argue against Blake’s suggestion that the material, as opposed to pure spirit, is necessarily imperfect and corruptible. A built-in “error” in creation.

    nk (db4a41)

  332. Fair enough, Aaron! Can’t fault you for that.

    nk, that’s a sophisticated concept and it’s a great way of working through the world with a concept of a perfect God (not just referring to morality). It doesn’t work in my head, but that’s just a personal limitation.

    When we start to talk about how something more supreme than basic logical concepts, I just can’t process information anymore. It’s like there is no reality, no facts, etc. Arguing about the origin of the world, appealing to evidence, while allowing that kind of skepticism… what’s the point?

    And that’s completely compatible with your earlier point. We aren’t going to understand the poetry of the world while we’re in this world. There are more important things, and the bible seems more helpful to me there.

    That view is stimulating. It’s also incompatible with the kind of ‘look at this evidence, look at that evidence’ approach. Which explains why a lot of people don’t take that approach.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  333. shooter @235 – Absolutely none of those links you cobbled together addressed the assertions you made in your comments.

    If you disagree, please excerpt and point them out, especially the points about departing from budgeting processing in place since 1946, etc. and how Obama was doing it differently.

    EPIC FAIL

    daleyrocks (940075)

  334. I repeated two points in my original comment that you failed to respond to.

    However, the Y chromosome is only 5 percent of the entire human genome, about 60 million base pairs out of a total 3 billion base pairs. The study doesn’t concern the other 95 percent.

    Is that what’s supposed to prove ICR misreprented the Nature study?

    The fact that the study doesn’t concern the other 95 percent by itself proves what? What you seem to be saying is that the study doesn’t mean much for that reason, but you haven’t substantiated that in any way. Plus it somehow proves ICR misrepresented the study. Give me some link with a scientifically accepted analysis showing that the Y chromosome isn’t a good predictor of how related two species are.

    Again, the surprise of the scientists at the result seems to indicate otherwise.

    Moreover, the overall similarity of human and chimp DNA, or that of other species, can be determined by hybridizing their DNA. The hybridized DNA melts at a temperature reflecting their degree of similarity. The more similar the DNA, the higher the melting point.

    Assuming for the sake of argument that’s true, how exactly does that relate to the study results? Does it refute them? Render them meaningless? If so, according to who?

    I am skeptical about the alleged meaninglessness of the study result. So far nothing you’ve said speaks to that point. The title of the Nature article is: Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure gene content

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  335. Many parts of Genesis are completely impossible if you take them literally, such as Adam naming every beast, but make great sense if you understand it wasn’t an attempt to explain to man anything more than our place within creation.

    I don’t know the answer to him naming every beast.

    God sure had a funny way of just explaining our place in creation, giving a specific order for which day which things were created – Day 3: Plants, Day 4: the sun, moon and stars, Day 5: birds and aquatic life, Day 6: Land animals and man. I guess he was depending on us to see through such specificity as being merely metaphorical.

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  336. you failed to respond to my basic point. if the ark had all the dinosaurs, how the hell did they fit them in?

    http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=how+did+the+animals+fit+on+the+ark&aq=f&aqi=g3g-o1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=8d9c50a61d5b9175

    Gerald A (0843ed)

  337. The title of the Nature article is: Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure gene content

    So?

    nk (db4a41)

  338. Sigh. Gerald, in order to make the judgments you do, you really do need to know some basic biology at the freshman level. I don’t say that to be rude. I say it to be accurate. I mean, look at what you are writing, and I can tell that you have no real knowledge of the subject.

    For example, let’s start easy. Can you explain for me, without looking anything up, what nucleic acid hybridization means? Base pairing?

    The reason I ask is that, the more similar two DNA strands are, the more likely they are to base pair. The stronger the aggregate hydrogen bonds. The closer their identity.

    So what you are saying is that the DNA of chimps and humans is NOT very similar, right?

    Did you even look at the very visual and simple link I put above?

    Fact is, chimp and human genomic DNA (and by the way, what does “genomic DNA” mean, sir?) are very similar.

    What you are doing, sadly, is arguing religion. I am a scientist, and I don’t insult your religion, nor tell you that you are wrong in your theology. Why do you, who are not a scientist, insist on stating that you know things that, quite frankly, you do not know?

    It could be that you wish to argue.

    But I would remind you that the Pope accepts evolution. And I feel that the relatedness of all living things glorifies God’s creation, over spans of time that dwarf the ability of humans to perceive.

    And yet I am the one with the narrow view?

    If you wish to argue, please drop the subject. If you wish to learn, I can suggest genuine textbooks, and I have recommended a book by a genuine Christian geneticist. It wouldn’t hurt you to read it.

    But again, I suspect you want to argue.

    This makes me sad.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  339. Oh, and Gerald? If you are going to quote the Hughes paper, you should read it. And in particular, look at Figure Two, which I link to here:

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/fig_tab/nature08700_F2.html

    Indeed, the Y chromosomes (and Y chromosomes are very odd, since they do not form normal homologous pairs as do autosomes) between humans and chimps have a lot of differences.

    But look at Chromosome 21, as shown in Figure 2. The dot-plot shows how similar the DNA sequences are.

    And here is one of the concluding paragraphs from the paper, sir:

    “…In contrast, in the remainder of the genome, comparison of chimpanzee draft sequence with human reference sequence suggests that the gene content of the two species differs by <1% (ref. 15). Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310 million years of separation…."

    So, please don’t misrepresent genetics to serve your religion. Religion and science ask and answer different questions. When a person tries to use one to answer the other, the only result is strife.

    Which may be what you are trying to do. Still, I thought it was worthwhile to demonstrate how you were misusing primary data. My guess is that you never actually looked at the Nature paper, and instead relied on a website.

    They were selling you something, and it wasn’t clarity of evolutionary thought.

    Please consider reading the Francis Collins book. He is deeply religious, is a fine geneticist, and an engaging writer.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  340. This post is why I questioned the ability of this format to serve this issue. Those not interested need not read on.

    What Gerald was saying about the relationship between the understanding of Genesis and the understanding of the New Testament is one thing I alluded to back at #309.

    In the New Testament you have Jesus and other NT writers referring to the OT in ways that certainly look like a concrete and not metaphorical reference. If one takes the New Testament seriously and believes in the historical reality of Jesus and His claims, then one has some things that seem difficult to reconcile with “Genesis as metaphor/allegory”.

    I prefer to talk in terms of “taking the Bible seriously” rather than “literally”. It is clear that there are many passages in the Bible that are meant as poetic expression/metaphor/allegory rather than concrete description. As a friend of mine said years ago, “When the Psalms speak of God sheltering us under His wing it wss not meant to communicate that God is a giant bird”. Internal consistency of the Bible is a basic tool in understanding passages that are less clear than others. Obviously a problem is understanding what genre of literature a passage is intended to be.

    As far as hubris among both scientists and theologians, yes there is plenty and anyone who thinks they can grasp God fully or understand “what is” purely through scientific methods has some wisdom to learn. That said, however, the basic question of “Is there a God?” is followed by “If so, what does that have to do with me?” One may not know all, or even very much at all about God, but the Judeo-Christian tradition calls for one to love God with all of one’s mind. So though God may be beyond our mind, our mind has the responsibility to understand what it can. Why? Because it is supposed to make a difference in how we make decisions and live every day.

    My knowledge of molecular biology is based on what was known in the late 1970’s plus odds and ends picked up as important to clinical medicine, especially related to retrovirus infection and treatment and I’m not prepared to critically read detailed publications in Nature. But this is what I will question, as I referred to earlier and which Gerald makes reference to, are there parts of the scientific narrative that are based more on assumptions of how to look at the data rather than what the data says itself?

    I am raising this as a question. I understand hydrogen bonding and base pairs and I understand DNA hybridization (to a degree). What I don’t understand is the assumption that looking at “conservation” of genes and genetic homology is necessarily evidence of evolution, especially across diverse organisms. If one starts from the assumption that there is no alternative explanation, then one can illustrate how certain genes have been conserved through “evolutionary history” and how “closely related” two organisms are on the “evolutionary tree”.

    The scientific skeptic can say, “Was God limited to a certain number of basic biochemical pathways and had to use them over and over in worms, plants, echidnas, and humans?” The skeptic of science can ask, “So, you assume that life sprung out of what was non-living, and that somehow living material was able to organize with increasing levels of complexity by “natural forces”. If this was so readily done, why don’t we see greater diversity? Why don’t we see complex organisms with molecular biology and biochemistry very different from others? Out of the billions of possibilities why do so many diverse organisms share such extensive amounts of genetic material and biochemical pathways?

    I would be interested to know if anyone can cite an example of witnessed evolution on the kind of scale from one type of organism to another, or is it surmised from the observation of snapshots from the past? I’ll show you where evolution from one entity to another does not occur- the HIV virus. In each person infected with the virus there is a tremendous production of billions and billions of virions every day. These may mutate and develop different characteristics of drug susceptibility and a very few possibilities of what cell receptors they bind to, but despite the length of “evolutionary time equivalence” they represent, they stay HIV. And because they stay HIV, there is no concern that they will all of a sudden develop the ability to infect respiratory epithelium and become contagious in a manner that resembles chicken-pox, or infect GI epithelium and be contagious such as rotovirus.

    Perhaps my intuition about the math is wrong and someone with the skills beyond me can show me otherwise, but when one considers the time required for mammals to breed and the number that can be produced, I’d like to see the comparison between the number of offspring (a surrogate marker for “opportunity to evolve”) since the first mammal appeared until present, and the number of HIV virions produced worldwide since it was first described. My hunch is that we would find that HIV has had a greater chance to evolve to “non-HIV” than humans have had to evolve from primitive mammal precursors.

    But there are numerous assumptions made in that, the math is beyond me, and at most I have proven nothing, only raised an issue that can be seen as troubling if it “doesn’t fit”.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  341. Gerald A.
    The fact that the study doesn’t concern the other 95 percent by itself proves what?
    I already answered that, but I’ll say it again: You can’t make generalizations about the entire genome from 5 percent of the genome.

    What you seem to be saying is that the study doesn’t mean much for that reason, but you haven’t substantiated that in any way.
    I never said the study doesn’t mean much, it does, about the Y chromosome. ICR invalidly used the study to make a conclusion about the entire genome.

    Plus it somehow proves ICR misrepresented the study. Give me some link with a scientifically accepted analysis showing that the Y chromosome isn’t a good predictor of how related two species are.
    No, that’s not how science works. You’re the one making the claim about using the Y chromosome, you must substantiate it.

    Assuming for the sake of argument that’s true, how exactly does that relate to the study results? Does it refute them? Render them meaningless? If so, according to who?
    It doesn’t refute the study at all. What it refutes is ICR’s twisted interpretation of the study, its attempt to extrapolate a conclusion about 95 percent of the genome from 5 percent — something that was never attempted in the actual study.

    I am skeptical about the alleged meaninglessness of the study result. So far nothing you’ve said speaks to that point. The title of the Nature article is: Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure gene content

    The study is entirely valid, the product of original research. ICR’s interpretation is meaningless, because it cherry-picks 5 percent of the genome to make a false claim about 95 percent.

    Only in ICR-land can 5 percent be greater than 95 percent. That’s because ICR does not research. It only looks through the work of real scientists to see what it can twist to appear to support creationism.

    I’ve told you all you need to know to understand why the ICR interpretation is bogus. If you can’t understand that 95 percent is greater than 5 percent, there’s no helping you.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90)

  342. Aaron-

    As an exercise in potential ways to reconcile science and the Biblical narrative, let me suggest the following:
    When “Man gave names to all the animals” perhaps it was not done with full taxonomic fervor. I can classify pets as “dogs, cats, rodents, reptiles, fish, little birds, big birds, amphibians and a few other things added in. There, I’ve named all of the pets; not in the way you were expecting or demanding, but I’ve done it.
    Second of all, be it with Adam or with Noah, we’ve already agreed that natural selection of the kind that allows one form of dog to give rise to other breeds occurs, so perhaps Adam and/or Noah had two generic dogs, two generic cats, etc., “two by two each according to its own kind”.
    Why do you assume dinosaurs were taken onto the ark? Perhaps that is how the dinosaurs became extinct- the great cataclysm was not a meteor or massive volcanic eruption that cooled the earth but it was the Biblical flood.

    I’m not claiming that is factually what happened, but I am suggesting the level of criticism you are leveling is easily accounted for.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  343. MD in Philly,
    I am raising this as a question. I understand hydrogen bonding and base pairs and I understand DNA hybridization (to a degree). What I don’t understand is the assumption that looking at “conservation” of genes and genetic homology is necessarily evidence of evolution, especially across diverse organisms. If one starts from the assumption that there is no alternative explanation, then one can illustrate how certain genes have been conserved through “evolutionary history” and how “closely related” two organisms are on the “evolutionary tree”.

    It doesn’t quite work like that. If our understanding of evolution is correct, there is one true tree of common descent (excepting horizontal gene transfer, a complicating factor, especially in microbes).

    So if evolution is true, then we must find evidence of that one true tree of life. And that tree, once assembled, must fit with newly discovered evidence. For example, we would predict before its sequencing that the platypus genome would show greater differences between it and any placental mammal than between placental mammals. And that is what we find.

    Furthermore, we’d find that the genomes of primates would more closely resemble each other than they would that of canines or felids. We would predict that mammalian genomes would resemble each other more than any would resemble avian genomes. We might find minor surprises, but should find nothing that invalidates the tree of descent, If we found contradictions, — if, let’s say, primate and felid DNA more closely resembled that of a chicken than that of other mammals — then it would falsify our understanding of common descent.

    Evolutionists can confidently predict that the echidna genome, when it is sequenced, will more resemble that of the platypus, another monotreme, than that of placental mammals.

    By contrast, creationism offers no such testable predictions about patterns of genetic resemblance. That’s why it’s not a scientific rival to evolution.

    Perhaps creationism is true and there is a God who really did separately create all species. Science can’t prove that didn’t happen. But if that’s true, then God chose to create according to an evolutionary framework. As to why He would do so, that’s a puzzler for the creationists to answer.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90)

  344. MD, the questions you have have long been debated and of course there are no hard and fast answers (it wouldn’t be called “faith” if there were).

    There are some great textbooks on the topic of evolution if you are interested, and I can recommend some. What is difficult, of course, is to stay away from evolutionists who are bigoted toward people of faith, and also to stay away from religious people who misrepresent science. It’s not easy.

    I continue to recommend Francis Collins’ book.

    As for “seeing evolution” occur, it often becomes a strawman argument, though I am sure you do not mean it that way. It’s like saying that apes evolved into people. We have a common ancestor.

    I was particularly struck with your question about how DNA sequence divergence can be related to evolutionary connections.

    The link I posted above, which I will repost here is remarkable:

    http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/DNA/dnaQT.mov

    It gives a three dimensional view of the relatedness—on a whole genome level—between organisms. We are much more similar to apes than to elephants (again, the video is fascinating). Common descent is clear.

    As for “seeing” evolution occur, the problem is that evolution is not a static process, and we do not have a time machine.

    Or do we?

    Rich Lenski of Michigan State has been studying evolutionary changes in bacteria for a couple of decades. Because bacteria divide so quickly and can be frozen and recovered, he can save “snapshots” of what happened throughout the history of the strain.

    http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/

    And a nice essay from that source, if a bit dated:

    http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/lenski.html

    And Carl Zimmer (a truly skilled science writer whom I trust a great deal) wrote an essay about Rich Lenski’s recent work here:

    http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php

    An admission here: I have known Rich Lenski for many years. He is a good man, though I think he is not religious. He has been personally quite nice to me over the years, and I have never heard him say rude or intemperate things (as with that um, character, PZ Myers).

    The time scale of evolution is always the challenging part of these questions.

    Your HIV example is an interesting one, by the way. HIV is very closely related to SIV. The latter is clearly the progenitor of the former.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_AIDS

    So I could make the point that SIV did indeed “change” into a “different” organism we call HIV today. You have already alluded to HIV’s ability to antigenically drift to avoid certain drug therapies, and in fact to “superadapt” itself to a given individual. This is due in part to its reliance on nonproofreading when replicating its genome (RNA polymerases lack the 3′ to 5′ exonuclease/proofreading ability of most DNA polymerase). Thus, they are hypermutable, and are constantly changing. Some RNA viruses, by the way, produce large number of “defective” progeny for this reason…but there are a few that are “more fit” (able to fight off the host immune system, for example) and thus survive this terrible cost.

    By the way, Wikipedia has a nice longish article with details of evidence for common descent:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

    Anyway, I am too wordy and have a lot of quizzes to grade and other things to write. I would add this. Arguments about the infallibility of religious texts worry me, especially when the people claiming it (not you, I repeat) seem very ready to attack the honesty of people with whom they disagree. I am not a theologian. But I am well aware of any number of uncomfortable truths in Scripture. This is why I am not a literalist when it comes to the Gospel.

    Again, I recommend the Collins book. If we lived closer, MD, I would simply give you a copy. Not as a way to quiet you, but as something that I think would spark many interesting questions from you.

    I thank you for your civility, incidentally.

    Back to being “The Happy Reaper” who grades….

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  345. MD, one more thing….

    I saw your “ark” argument, suggesting that a small number of animals Noah had taken onto the ark became any number of similar appearing animals after their release from the ark…

    Which sounds like evolution’s concept of adaptive radiation!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_radiation

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  346. Brother Bradley,

    Thank you for the respectful response. I apparently haven’t made part of my argument very clear, for you do not address it.

    As you put it, the evolutionary assumption is that there is a common “tree of life”. My question is why is that so? If non-living chemicals can give rise to life, and very primitive living material give rise to increasingly complex organisms, why does there need to be only one “tree of life”?

    Some things are readily investigated by control of the conditions with one variable being investigated. One can readily design experiments where one can predict what should or should not happen. The more “angles” that can be covered the more evidence is given to support a theory.

    Then there is science which is not prone to investigation by man’s control, but by man’s observation. Yes, one can make predictions of what should or should not be found according to a theory, and as long as you don’t find things that conflict with the theory you can have increased confidence in the theory- but you have not been able to exclude alternative theories in the same way you can when manipulating the conditions to affect the outcome of an experiment.

    I think many scientists are blind to this reality, and some of the “scientific theories” are no more verifiable or falsifiable than “religious beliefs”.

    Could I not say, “You know, if non-living can give rise to living, and living can give rise to increasingly complex, why should it have happened only once, with one common ancestral tree? If complex life forms arising out of nothing happen, why does it have to be in such a constricted manner? The more you assume only one tree of life the more you make it to be something unusual, the more you invite some crack-pot to say it must have been God because it is so unique as to be against the odds.”

    If I say I believe in a creation that came in successive waves of complexity (as inferred by the Biblical narrative, either “concrete” or “metaphorical”) and embrace evolutionary mechanisms for limited evolution within strata of complexity, I predict I will see- cats related to cats, cats related to things not quite cats, but clearly not cows, etc. I will see different finches filling different ecological niches in a group of isolated islands. So my religious theory is as verifiable as the scientific one. Actually, my theory is better suited to scientific scrutiny because evidence of non-living spontaneously giving rise to life would be a strong argument (but not “proof”) against my theory, while the lack of evidence of non-life giving rise to life will never be admitted as evidence that the common narrative is wrong.

    A more sophisticated way of going about this is mathematical modeling (but we know where that can get us, don’t we?). That’s why I would like to see the exercise comparing HIV to mammals worked out by somebody who knew what they are doing.

    I think things are much more of a “the sword cuts both ways” scenario, where one sees “evidence” according to one’s presuppositions, rather than evidence shaping one’s assumptions. I could be wrong, but I haven’t been convinced otherwise yet.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  347. Eric- you are absolutely correct, and I am not surprised or challenged by this at all. No serious person trying to reconcile religious belief and science would make the claim the natural selection does not occur, that’s the mistake of those who falsely characterize what is being said. The point of difference is that some believe that natural selection/evolutionary processes can explain everything from the first collection of organic compounds inside a micelle to the most complex organisms such as humans, and those who see such natural processes as much more limited in scope. I think I discussed this in my previous post. I need to go to bed and will look back tomorrow for any further discussion.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  348. MD, there is quite a bit of interest in how life originated. I recommend a dated but excellent book by Freeman Dyson called “The Origins of Life.” He is a quite brilliant mathematician and physicist and presents a number of different scenarios in a clear and engaging style.

    As for the “who won” idea, well, a couple of billion years ago, there was a biosphere of sorts on this planet, though slow and limited. Then a particular type of bacterium—cyanobacteria—learned to couple two different photosystems. Its source of high energy electrons was taken from water, releasing what was then a deadly poison: oxygen. The was the genesis of oxygenic photosynthesis, which led to the extinction of almost every living thing on this planet.

    And eventually to us.

    Additionally, some scientists believe that we may indeed find a limited “Shadow Biosphere” on our world, with “life as we do not know it.”

    But our ancestors were the big winners.

    Your last post, however, begins to insist on a complete answer for a difficult question that has spanned several billion years. I would turn it on its head: if “creationism” exists, we need to have testable hypotheses…because the current model of evolution does provide testable hypotheses. And the work of Rich Lenski shows that these hypotheses are in fact valid. Seriously, it is worth reading Lenski’s work deeply.

    Irreducible complexity as an argument is one I have seen rise and fall. It does not convince. The classic example of the bacterial flagellum as being irreducibly complex has been refuted very effectively, for one thing (by TTSS apparatus).

    But I find that this kind of debate bogs down very quickly without the testable hypotheses model. “No intermediate forms” in the fossil record is untrue, and no matter what is presented, opponents look for finer graduations holding evolutionists to a standard of proof that theology does not demand.

    Explain everything? Well, with a well understood mechanism? Nor can theology (C.S. Lewis explored that, as have theologians for as long as people have sensed “The Problem of Pain”).

    No, the biosphere looks as if there is a common tree of descent, and not just by looking at small subunit rRNA-based molecular phylogenies, but by whole genome analysis (though there are some delicious variations in codon use among certain protists and prokaryotic extremophiles, and even the mitochondrion). And perhaps the Creator used the rules we are imperfectly uncovering over eons, or created such an appearance all at once for some kind of Manichaeistic reason (though folks were burned at the stake for thinking this sort of thing not long ago, geologically speaking).

    There are, again, some nice books on evolution I could recommend.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  349. Finally, MD, you write:

    “..A more sophisticated way of going about this is mathematical modeling (but we know where that can get us, don’t we?). That’s why I would like to see the exercise comparing HIV to mammals worked out by somebody who knew what they are doing…”

    Actually mathematical modeling for this sort of thing has been done many times. Check out Schuster and Eigen. Again, the Dyson book would be useful to you, I would bet.

    Also, if you explore Rich Lenski’s site you will find several mathematical models of evolutionary systems that he and his coworkers have championed, using far higher math than I ever mastered with a year of calculus.

    Again, HIV’s relationship to SIV is relevant, and there is a huge amount known about it. Though I would not use viruses using RNA polymerase as a general model, as they are quite error prone and are pared down to necessities.

    Best wishes to you.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  350. Whoops. One more thing:

    “…but you have not been able to exclude alternative theories in the same way you can when manipulating the conditions to affect the outcome of an experiment…”

    Um. Rich Lenski can indeed manipulate conditions to study evolutionary changes. His site is well worth your time. There is reason he has won so many awards.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  351. I haven’t spent time reading all the posts yet, I will though. But in case it was missed there is a much better link to the mouse with a human brain then the one started in this post.
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0125_050125_chimeras.html

    And this quote:
    “And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.”

    Seems she got it exactly right!

    Steve in DE (0cf97f)

  352. “And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.”

    Well, not really. That didn’t happen, and Maryann Mott, who actually covers pet issues, not science, was simply wrong.

    That experiment didn’t happen.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  353. Dustin

    > That experiment didn’t happen.

    Oh yes it did. And it produced two intelligent mice. One is a genius. The other is insane. To prove their mousy worth, they’ll overthrow the Earth.

    They’re dinky, they’re Pinky and The Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain…

    (There, i managed to make a “Pinky and The Brain” joke.)

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  354. My favorite, Aaron Worthing, is the episode where The Brain wants to become wildly popular, and becomes the country western singer Bill Bob Joe Brain. Who says: “I enjoy beef jerky and the comedy stylings of Gallagher.”

    Now, there was a cartoon I could enjoy with my children, just like my father and I would laugh at Warner Brothers’ cartoons for very different reasons.

    Eric Blair (9ed73e)

  355. Eric Blair,

    Did you even look at the very visual and simple link I put above?

    I looked at it. I could be wrong, but it seems that is based on research as of 2005, which was before this recent study. According to the ICR article, the methodology was different for this more recent study.

    “…In contrast, in the remainder of the genome, comparison of chimpanzee draft sequence with human reference sequence suggests that the gene content of the two species differs by <1% (ref. 15). Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310 million years of separation…."

    I'm in over my head here, but again it sounds like "the two species differs by <1%" part is referring to the 2005 analysis. I infer that from what the ICR article says:

    One of the main deficiencies with the original chimpanzee genome sequence published in 2005 was that it was a draft sequence and only represented a 3.6-fold random coverage of the 21 chimpanzee autosomes, and a 1.8-fold redundancy of the X and Y sex chromosomes. In a draft coverage, very small fragments of the genome are sequenced in millions of individual reactions using high-throughput robotics equipment. This produces individual sequence fragments of about 500 to 1,200 bases in length. Based on overlapping reads, these individual sequences are assembled into contiguous clusters of sequence called sequencing contigs. In the case of a chimpanzee, an organism with a genome size of about 3 billion bases, a 3.6-fold coverage means that approximately 10.8 billion bases of DNA were sequenced (3.6 x 3.0). The result is a data set consisting of thousands of random sequencing contigs, or islands of contiguous sequence that need to be oriented and placed in position on their respective chromosomes.

    In the 2005 chimpanzee genome project and resulting Nature journal publication, the sequence contigs were not assembled and oriented based on a map of the chimpanzee genome, but rather on a map of the human genome. Given the fact that the chimpanzee genome is at least 10 percent larger overall than the human genome, this method of assembly was not only biased toward an evolutionary presupposition of human-chimp similarity, but was also inherently flawed.

    Maybe this recent analysis confirms that the rest of the genome is still very similar. If you can confirm that with a link then I won’t argue the point – as I say I’m in over my head. The rest of the quote confirms the unexpectedly high divergence of the Y chromosomes.

    PS I’m not going to agree that since ICR is a Christian website, IT’S AUTOMATICALLY WRONG! Can specific conclusions they draw be disputed? Of course, but not on the grounds that it’s a Christian website. As far as I can determine these are reputable qualified scientists on ICR, Answers in Genesis etc. So the thing about “that’s religion!” is a non-starter and makes no sense at all. You can keep hammering that theme if you want, but it means nothing to me.

    Gerald A (138c50)

  356. Eric

    Pixar has a similar philosophy. one of them revealed a while back that the first draft of all of their movies has all kinds of sex, violence and bad language in it. But then the later drafts make it so that on the surface it is pg, but there are lots of jokes and even story elements that parents get and reflect that R rated content.

    i mean when you think about it, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl’s exchanges in The Incredibles, especially toward the beginning, are extremely dirty. Every adult in the theater is thinking, “holy crap, that chick must be crazy in the bedroom.” But in a way the kids don’t get it.

    There is a few good articles about really, really dirty stuff that is snuck by in kids shows on cracked.com. Not to mention the creepy kids toys. Like the inflatable wolverine character where in order to inflate it, you um…. well, do you remember that scene in Airplane! when the woman had to reinflate Otto the Autopilot? yeah it was pretty much just like that.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  357. MD

    btw, missed this.

    > Why do you assume dinosaurs were taken onto the ark?

    Just to clarify, i was fisking Gerald’s theory. Obviously you could say that the dinosaurs were left out. but that also contradicts the biblical account which has noah being commanded to all the land dwelling creatures.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  358. Thank you for the respectful discussion Eric. I’m not convinced that we still aren’t talking past each other, but I will need to look at what you’ve referenced before we discuss further. But I will respond in kind to one thing:

    Though I would not use viruses using RNA polymerase as a general model, as they are quite error prone and are pared down to necessities

    But that is part of my point if you look at it from a certain angle. HIV does not have a highly stable genome, if it did, simple adaptation would not be possible, let alone evolution. And yes, it is a very simple system, which is why it should not be “that difficult” for a mutation to arise over trillions of tries that binds to gut or pulmonary epithelium and becomes something much more highly contagious. But that is “hand-waving”, as we say, and I’ll need to look at what Lenski and Dyson and others have to say.

    But there is a problem when we who are partly educated try to evaluate the work of those more educated or smarter then ourselves, which I will describe. In college one day a very bright freshman came back from class to the dorm and announced with enthusiasm, “There is no God! The ‘Problem of Evil’ proves it! We read this article in Philos 181 that the TA gave us and he proves it.” I asked him if it was the article by “Whatshisname”, to which he gave a less enthusiastic, “Yes”. I then asked if he had read the rebuttal by “the other guy”, or the original author’s response to the rebuttal. No, the TA had not mentioned the existence of such publications, which I had read as part of a 500 level course in Philos of Religion. Maybe we can find attempts at rebuttal of some of Lenski’s points by someone who knows as much math as he does. I have you by one semester of differential equations and one semseter of being mystified by 500 level P. Chem with Schrodinger equations and what not, which is meaningless in the current discussion and long enough ago that you may remember more of it anyway.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  359. Aaron, I know you were attempting to fisk Gerald’s theory. I was trying to show you that you weren’t doing a very convincing job of it, in my opinion in large part by doing what you accuse Gerald of, imposing a concrete and detail specific understanding onto texts that do not necessarily warrant it. Yes, I suppose in one way you were trying to show what happens when Gerald’s techniques are used (as you understand them) but I think you are presenting a caricature of the idea, rather than letting your opponent make the strongest case and going from there, which is what I like to do. And no, I’m not going to debate at the moment when dinosaurs disappeared. We all have other things to do at the moment.

    At times the web site seems to be working fine, at other times there is an incredible lag between typing and appearing on the screen, with the computer essentially freezing during the interval. I get around this by typing in Word and then doing a cut and paste. Are other people having this happen as well?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  360. Eric

    I would add that the ratchet and clank games love to use that kind of humor all the time. for instance, in the third game the president asks the lead character to find a mysterious figure hiding in the jungles. to inform him, he shows him a clip of a show called “nature’s mysteries” which sounds alot like those UFO and loch ness monster type “documentaries.”

    So it is talking about a mysterious man living in the jungles and they interview a witnesss. the witness says something like “the guy came into my campsite one night. he was buuuuck naked, and carrying a banana. At least i THINK it was a banana. it might have been–”

    It then cuts him off right there. Kids don’t know what to think, but adults laugh knowing what he was probably about to say.

    if you have a playstation 2 or 3, they are great games. fun gameplay and alot of humor like that. really they are like playable pixar cartoons, especially the playstation 3 games.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  361. MD in Philly,
    Could I not say, “You know, if non-living can give rise to living, and living can give rise to increasingly complex, why should it have happened only once, with one common ancestral tree?

    Nothing in evolutionary theory forbids multiple origins of life. But the life we know today bears the stamp of a common origin, such as the universal genetic code. If there were any rivals, they became extinct too long ago to leave any trace.

    Then there is science which is not prone to investigation by man’s control, but by man’s observation. Yes, one can make predictions of what should or should not be found according to a theory, and as long as you don’t find things that conflict with the theory you can have increased confidence in the theory- but you have not been able to exclude alternative theories in the same way you can when manipulating the conditions to affect the outcome of an experiment.

    I think many scientists are blind to this reality, and some of the “scientific theories” are no more verifiable or falsifiable than “religious beliefs”.
    Science doesn’t deal with religious beliefs because they can’t be investigated scientifically. A claim that life and the universe were created several thousand years ago by an all-powerful God can’t be falsified. So science concerns itself with natural law, not the supernatural. And there is no natural explanation for the state of life that matches the facts besides descent with modification.

    If I say I believe in a creation that came in successive waves of complexity (as inferred by the Biblical narrative, either “concrete” or “metaphorical”) and embrace evolutionary mechanisms for limited evolution within strata of complexity, I predict I will see- cats related to cats, cats related to things not quite cats, but clearly not cows, etc. I will see different finches filling different ecological niches in a group of isolated islands.
    That’s not how the Bible was originally interpreted. Species were supposed to be fixed. The idea of allowing limited evolution to fit the biblical narrative is a post-Darwinian perspective, retroactively trying to fit evolution into a creationist view. Yes, you can see it that way, but such a view didn’t naturally arise from the Bible.

    You mention the finches. One of Darwin’s points in favor of evolution is that island animals tend to have their nearest relatives on the nearest continent. That’s easy to understand in terms of evolution, but is hard to explain with creationism. Was God trying to fool us into believing in evolution?

    So my religious theory is as verifiable as the scientific one. Actually, my theory is better suited to scientific scrutiny because evidence of non-living spontaneously giving rise to life would be a strong argument (but not “proof”) against my theory, while the lack of evidence of non-life giving rise to life will never be admitted as evidence that the common narrative is wrong.
    What you call a theory lacks explanatory power. Why should baleen whales grow teeth and resorb them? Why do some manatees grow nails on their back flippers? Why did marsupials like kangaroos live exclusively in Australia, and why are most of the placental mammals recently introduced?

    Evolution has detailed scientific explanations for these and other issues that you don’t find in the Bible.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90)

  362. Oh, Gerald. I’m glad you admit that you are over your head, but don’t you think you should take a step back from your statements, then?

    As for the 2005 computer model that shows relationships between genomic sequences, the point was simple, and independent of the date publishes (as I suspect you know very well): the “shape” of the trajectory of the sequences demonstrates how similar the human genome is to chimps and gibbons…and how dissimilar to elephants (but notice how the trajectories of the two elephant species “look” like one another).

    It’s a visual tool for showing similarities.

    The fact is, without rancor, your points were factually incorrect. You went to a creationist website, and didn’t even read the paper being described.

    The thing is, evolution does NOT take away from your faith, period. That isn’t my opinion. It’s the opinion of many religious leaders.

    Again, please read the book by Francis Collins.

    Proverbs 11:2 comes to mind.

    Have a good day, and please read not what opponents think about evolution to fuel your arguments and thinking…read about evolution itself. There are many great sources.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  363. MD, as for HIV, what we are essentially looking at our molecular interactions between “keys” and “locks.” HIV likes a particular set of epitopes on the surfaces of a subclass of T-cells, and certain other tissues.

    You ask why HIV does not mutate to a form that recognizes a different receptor or epitope. Well, it is ironic that you write that, since you are essentially looking for an “intermediate” form in order for that to happen.

    I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. But you know as a physician that HIV has indeed morphed into two quasispecies (as Eigen would term them): one “adapted” to transmission via sexual contact (common in Asia) and one “adapted” to transmission via needles (in the West). So…HIV is indeed evolving. We don’t yet know how the nucleotide changes result in the epidemiological differences.

    In any event, I hear from Creationists all the time that looking at what happens in bacteria does not apply to people. So the goalposts are often mobile in this kind of discussion.

    The thing that I find tiring in my discussions (not meaning you) with Creationists is how they demand very detailed explanations of a process that is both ongoing and several billion years old…yet any attempt to question theology is met with, um, less than direct responses.

    Again, this is because religion and science ask and answer very different questions.

    I loved your “Problem of Evil” example from college. Sadly, my colleagues often don’t teach the underpinnings of philosophy at all. Nothing new about that concern, and it has been explored over thousands of years by greater minds than my own; I’m ashamed of that TA.

    Time to teach labs. Best wishes.

    Eric Blair (c8876d)

  364. Again, thank you Eric and Bro. Bradley for the civil discourse, but we are still talking past each other, and at the moment I’m not sure how to say things in a different way that will clarify my position.

    I am aware of the receptor binding sites for HIV and the variations in the virus worldwide. That is why I proposed the “relatively simple” change in one protein to enable the virus to attach to a different protein on another cell type. The issue of “intermediates” harkens to the ID question. Yes, how many base pair mutations need to occur coding for different amino acids resulting in different protein structure need to occur to change to a receptor on a pulmonary epithelial cell as the virions stream through the alveoli. Of course, the “challenge for the virus” (very metaphorical language) is to accumulate the mutations that may have no or even a negative survival advantage before “it stumbles onto” the necessary new sequence. This is foundational in understanding medical therapy for HIV infection, for the virus can become resistant to some drugs with a single point mutation, which happens perhaps even within 24 hours for some drugs, while an accumulation of 3 or 4 specific mutations in combination are required for resistance to occur to other drugs, which may not be seen for years.

    An issue for further thought and discussion: How are the questions that science and religion ask different? Is that inherently so? Are there areas of overlap? Apparently they very much overlapped in the mind of Isaac Newton, whose religious belief in an intelligent Creator caused him to believe that the physical world would be ordered in an understandable way. Can human existence be thought of as being unified, or inherently dichotomous? Is there the world of science where some things matter and others don’t, and a world of religion where different things matter? Is there no way to reconcile the two? It is curious that as Western Society pushes thoughts of the “spiritual” and “transcendent” out the door, we import religious ideas from the East which are yet more mystical. I would suggest that in many medical centers today it would be more officially acceptable to practice an Eastern technique that assumes energy meridians around the human body than to offer to pray for a patient. Ironic.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)


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