[QUOTE=ewmayer;124467]

<snip>

I find that a rather refreshing alternative to both religious dogmatism on the one hand, and to the cultural relativism which is oh so fashionable among the liberal élite on the other. The danger would seem to be if one chooses a strictly materialistic interpretation of "happiness".[/QUOTE]


Happiness lies in being able to work long and hard on things that interest
us.

Listen to Deepak Chopra! For he is very wise....
 

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;127324]Happiness lies in being able to work long and hard on things that interest us.[/QUOTE]

Indeed:

[i][Edit: Example of "evolving code" snipped][/i]

Speaking of happiness and personal fulfilment: PBS is having its annual beg-a-thon, which means they replace their regular slate of tedium [mostly [i]"Andre Rieu shows off his latest poofy hairdo! Oh, and plays a little fiddle, too"[/i] and [i]"Celtic-Woman-for-the-Umpteenth-Time"[/i] reruns] with ... lots of begging-interrupted [i]Andre Rieu[/i] and [i]Celtic Woman[/i] reruns, plus some ... wait for it ... [i]"Deepak Chopra inspires materialistic money-centered yuppies to - give him money"[/i]. In case you're not familiar with Mr. Chopra, he's a kind of self-styled new-agey pseudomystical "wise guru" who "ministers" mostly to rich bicoastal Americans who have too much money and time. Between all the faux-mystical blather [[i]"You know, the Buddha was the forst person to achieve a state of true mystical bliss - yes! This is described in my latest book and accompanying meditation video, available via my website or at amazon.com..."[/i]] and showing-off of his fancy cherry-red Elton-John-style rhinestone-studded new-age-wise-guru glasses and matching red patent leather shoes [[i]"the better to achieve enlightenment with ... and they're great for bowling, as well!. Do you know, I achieved the pickup of the mystical 8-10 split last week..."[/i]], the whole [i]spiel[/i] basically could be condensed into a 30-second seminar consisting of shouting:

1. "You're a bunch of whiny, self-centered materialists!"
2. "If you want want your life to have meaning ... go do something meaningful!"

into each audience member's ear, then giving them a good smacking-upside-the-head and a firm boot out the door. But that wouldn't get many return customers now, would it?

Evolved resistance to deadly toxic newts
 

.[quote="[url]http://www.physorg.com/news124439882.html[/url]"]... some of the most resistant snakes differed only in 1 unit of their genetic code and that this tiny change had altered the structure of a snake protein enough that the toxin could no longer bind to it. This is a fantastic example of how a single random mutation can generate a major change in an animal.[/quote]

The Wild Side Blog: Stop the Mutants!
 

Latest article in the NY Times "The Wild Side" blog by Olivia Judson:
[url=http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/stop-the-mutation/index.html]Stop the Mutants![/url]: [i]If mutations ended, would evolution?[/i]

[quote=ewmayer;128792]Latest article in the NY Times "The Wild Side" blog by Olivia Judson:
[URL="http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/stop-the-mutation/index.html"]Stop the Mutants![/URL]: [I]If mutations ended, would evolution?[/I][/quote]Folks, don't miss the comments (99, as of when I write this) following the article! There are some very informative ones, not many dumb ones, and even some of the creationist objections are thought-provoking.

Olivia Judson on Beneficial Mutations
 

[url=http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/evolving-the-wow-factor/index.html[/url]
[quote]Adaptation is the “wow!” factor of nature: when we see something spectacular or exquisite, we are typically looking at an adaptation. And what underpins adaptation is the appearance and spread of beneficial mutations: the process is not possible without them. Yet despite their central role in adaptive evolution, beneficial mutations have — until recently — received surprisingly little attention.[/quote]

Olivia Judson's Blog: Musings On Extinction
 

Excerpt from the full article:

[url=http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/musings-inspired-by-a-quagga/index.html]Musings On Extinction[/url]
[quote]Extinction is so much a part of today’s cultural background — this species endangered, that habitat lost, save the whale, save the rhino, save the rainforest — that it’s strange to think that as little as 200 years ago, most people didn’t think extinction was possible. The very idea was an affront to the Creator: it suggested imperfection and incompleteness in the original design of the world. So even once it became accepted that fossils had been formed from living beings — which itself took some time — most people supposed that the corresponding organisms were still alive, somewhere, awaiting discovery.

But in the last years of the 18th century and the first decade of the 19th, the great French anatomist Georges Cuvier made a study of the fossil bones of enormous animals — giant ground sloths, and extinct elephants like mammoths and mastodons. Some of the giant ground sloths reached 6 meters (almost 20 feet) long. The bones and teeth of mammoths and mastodons showed that they were clearly distinct from living elephants.

Cuvier argued that such creatures could not correspond to anything currently alive: if animals that big were still blundering around, they’d be known about. It was only then, in the years after he presented and published his work, that the reality of extinction in the history of life became recognized and accepted.

Two hundred years later, we are, perhaps, causing a series of extinctions on a scale that hasn’t been seen since an asteroid smashed into the planet 65 million years ago, and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Well, so what if we are? From the Earth’s point of view, it doesn’t matter. Just as the emergence of new species is part of evolution, so is extinction. Most of the species that have ever lived are now extinct. Indeed, most species don’t last more than 10 million years or so anyway. The planet has already seen five mass extinctions — episodes of extinction where the rate of species vanishing is much, much higher than usual. During a typical mass extinction, more than 65 percent of species may disappear. The one that polished off the dinosaurs was by no means the most spectacular: 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, 90 percent of species — including saber-toothed reptiles — were wiped out. (The causes are not completely clear, though the initial trigger may have been a series of gigantic volcanic eruptions. Nor do we understand why certain species survive a mass extinction, and others don’t.)

Moreover, each mass extinction has been followed by a pulse of fresh evolutionary change: large numbers of new forms appear. The reason is that before the mass extinction, most niches are occupied — a situation that typically prevents radical changes. Afterwards, many niches are empty and available for re-occupation — which promotes rapid change. (This is why new islands and lakes are always sites of rapid evolution and invention: the few animals and plants that arrive rapidly evolve to fill the various empty niches. Think of the Hawaiian islands, the Galapagos, New Zealand or Madagascar, each of which has — or had, until we got there — a variety of unique animals and plants.)

Taking the long view, then, the extinctions we are causing may open the way to a burst of evolutionary invention, the creation of new forms even more remarkable than those around today.

Only trouble is, we probably won’t be around to see it: after the dinosaurs vanished, it took 10 million years for diversity to recover. Ten million years! For us, that might as well be eternity. After the Permian extinction, the recovery took 100 million years. Eternity times ten.

And in the short-term, we may be in for a rough ride. How rough is a matter of angry debate. Some are blasé. Others forecast a catastrophe, arguing that extinctions will begin to accelerate, like an avalanche, and that the planet will soon become uninhabitable for us and our entourage.[/quote]

There is something missing from that reflection about diversity flourishing after a mass extinction. Humans don't allow new niches to be occupied. Agriculture limits the number of species present in nature. "Modern" agriculture with its use of almost sterile hybrids and especially the trend towards genetically modified organisms and cloning even tends to limit the number of genomes present. I will not disgress about the pro and cons of GMOs, that could be the subject of another thread.

Jacob

"Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy"

Here's what we can expect to see a lot of for the next few years until the courts knock it down!

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/us/04evolution.html?em&ex=1212811200&en=0329d8a564726729&ei=5087%0A"]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/us/04evolution.html?em&ex=1212811200&en=0329d8a564726729&ei=5087%0A[/URL]

[quote]Starting this summer, the [Texas] state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.[/quote]Here's my quickie refutation of the creationist argument:

The reason it's not "fair" or appropriate to mandate that the weaknesses of evolution be taught alongside the strengths, in low-level courses, is that students at that low level cannot appreciate the proper position of the weaknesses without first acquiring a certain level of understanding of evolution. Evolution has many aspects that are not able to be communicated at beginner levels. It's easy to present supposed weaknesses in a simplistic manner designed to appeal to those with only slight knowledge of evolution while also requiring great effort to properly refute. (Hence creationist fondness for public debates in which both sides get equal time. A creationist misargument that can be presented in 30 seconds might easily require 30 minutes for refutation.)

Example from the anti-evolution website [URL="http://strengthsandweaknesses.org/"][COLOR=#666699]strengthsandweaknesses.org[/COLOR][/URL]:

[quote=http://strengthsandweaknesses.org/]Note that even Charles Darwin said,

"A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on [B]both sides[/B] of each question." [from [I]The Origin of Species, emphasis added[/I]][/quote]Yes, but Darwin was referring to discussion by scientifically-knowledgable people who were thoroughly informed about both sides, not to high school students just learning about evolution!

I note that the creationists don't call for a presentation of weaknesses alongside strengths of mainstream thought in public school science classes other than biology. Isn't that because they'd be told that students have to achieve a certain level of understanding of those fields before they can properly appreciate a description of "weaknesses" in those fields?

- - -

Note the characteristic appearance of two common factors I see all the time in creationist writings/speakings:

1. Taking evolutionist statements out of context, or otherwise presenting statements about evolution in a misleading juxtaposition with counterarguments that are not germane.

2. Overemphasis on Darwin as an authority figure whose writings are presented as though they represented state-of-the-science (consistent with the "strict father" conservative worldview described by George Lakoff in his book [I]Moral Politics[/I] and explained at [URL]http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/projects/strategic/nationasfamily/sfworldview[/URL]).

Now, the particular quote above is not really such an overemphasis, but such Darwin quotes and use of the word [I]Darwinism[/I] to refer to evolution, far more often than justified, in creationist speech and writings.

(Just two nights ago I watched an episode of one of the periodic creationist presentations on local TV station WVCY. Yep -- same stuff: overemphasis on Darwin as an authority figure whose every writing from 150 years ago is treated as though it fairly represented current state-of-the-science, inappropriate juxtaposition and oversimplification of quotations from evolutionary texts beside creationist straw-man counterarguments, and so on.)

- - -

It is a bit off-topic for this thread for me to expound about methods of presentation, but I [I]am[/I] talking about methods of presentation of the scientific (or supposedly scientific) arguments.

refutation ...
 

[quote=cheesehead;135243]"Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy"

Here's my quickie refutation of the creationist argument:

The reason it's not "fair" or appropriate to mandate that the weaknesses of evolution be taught alongside the strengths, in low-level courses, is that students at that low level cannot appreciate the proper position of the weaknesses without first acquiring a certain level of understanding of evolution. Evolution has many aspects that are not able to be communicated at beginner levels. It's easy to present supposed weaknesses in a simplistic manner designed to appeal to those with only slight knowledge of evolution while also requiring great effort to properly refute. (Hence creationist fondness for public debates in which both sides get equal time. A creationist misargument that can be presented in 30 seconds might easily require 30 minutes for refutation.)
[/quote]

So they can't understand the tenets of evolution then it shouldn't be taught at all. First get them indoctrinated in evolution then ... when they are so confused about what they observe that is contradictory tell them there is no contradiction just lack of knowledge.

[quote]
Example from the anti-evolution website [URL="http://strengthsandweaknesses.org/"][COLOR=#666699]strengthsandweaknesses.org[/COLOR][/URL]:

Yes, but Darwin was referring to discussion by scientifically-knowledgable people who were thoroughly informed about both sides, not to high school students just learning about evolution! [/quote]

If you are convinced that evolution is the sum of all öf things are you going to fairly present an opposing view? As I remember I was in the 7th grade when Evolution was first presented to me. And I could see the fallacy then without anybody telling me. I already understood selective breeding, having our own cow and other animals around to observe. Most kids raised in the cities don't have the advantages I had. Some don't even have a "clou" where milk comes from other than the supermarket.

[quote]
I note that the creationists don't call for a presentation of weaknesses alongside strengths of mainstream thought in public school science classes other than biology. Isn't that because they'd be told that students have to achieve a certain level of understanding of those fields before they can properly appreciate a description of "weaknesses" in those fields?
[/quote]

Actually they do you just aren't looking hard enough. Now you're using circular reasoning.


About all you can get out of evolution that really means anything significant is we are what we eat. I mean that in a rather broad sense in that all the necessary building blocks of life have to be present in the food chain of everything on the planet. Consider if the amino acids that make up our bodies were much different than the rest of the plants and animals on this "puny insignificant rock" and our digestive system wasn't capable of breaking them down we would starve to death ... end of story.

nelson

[QUOTE=Nelson;135413]Actually they do you just aren't looking hard enough.[/QUOTE]

I don't believe this. Can you support this claim with a link for demands to teach the weaknesses in Chemistry?

William