>> ^Yogi:

Soooo should I just get outa Nursing school?


No way, stay in- Medical fields a-booming....Best return on the investment in the realm of "higher" learnning.

Military
Police
EMT/Medical
Prison System
Rich People (%1%)

Professions that will make up over %50 of all "employment" opportunities in our evolving paradigm...

Satan doesn't care what you believe, as long as it isn't that Jesus Christ is the Lord.

>> ^messenger:
One of my favourite insights into the concepts of truth and Satan, one of the first that got me seriously thinking about the authenticity of the Bible, I heard from a rabbi on the radio. He said something like, "It may be that God wants us to discover his nature through investigating nature, and Satan created the Torah to throw us off track, or maybe God himself created the Torah as a test to see if we were smart enough to tell the difference. From a religious standpoint, it is a valid position to question the origin of scripture.">> ^probie:
S
hiny won't stop, you know. His "god" has commanded him to "spread his word" and convert as many people as possible. Even though this same god created these people tabula rasa, and instilled in them "free will" to make whatever choice they want, "He" still wants them to be followers. And all of this, while supposedly having the omnipotent power to do change anyone's paradigms, at any time. Psychotic.
What I laugh at the most is that science shows us how reality works, empirically, through observation and testing. It shows us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the truth about our universe and how it works. Sure we may not have all the answers yet, but I'll take the unknown over a blanket answer of "because" any day of the week. By disregarding science (and subsequently evolution), shiny and his ilk are attempting to subvert people from seeing and understanding the truth. Which is exactly what "Satan" wants.
Oh, the irony.

>> ^probie:

>> ^messenger:
Please stop. You know this argument and the whole "mousetrap" thing has been laid to rest already, right? Why do you keep bringing it up? It only demonstrates that you don't understand the concepts you're talking about. If your end goal is to convert people, that's fine with me, but you're losing credibility by citing bunk science.>> ^shinyblurry:
[embed]


Shiny won't stop, you know. His "god" has commanded him to "spread his word" and convert as many people as possible. Even though this same god created these people tabula rasa, and instilled in them "free will" to make whatever choice they want, "He" still wants them to be followers. And all of this, while supposedly having the omnipotent power to do change anyone's paradigms, at any time. Psychotic.
What I laugh at the most is that science shows us how reality works, empirically, through observation and testing. It shows us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the truth about our universe and how it works. Sure we may not have all the answers yet, but I'll take the unknown over a blanket answer of "because" any day of the week. By disregarding science (and subsequently evolution), shiny and his ilk are attempting to subvert people from seeing and understanding the truth. Which is exactly what "Satan" wants.
Oh, the irony.

One of my favourite insights into the concepts of truth and Satan, one of the first that got me seriously thinking about the authenticity of the Bible, I heard from a rabbi on the radio. He said something like, "It may be that God wants us to discover his nature through investigating nature, and Satan created the Torah to throw us off track, or maybe God himself created the Torah as a test to see if we were smart enough to tell the difference. From a religious standpoint, it is a valid position to question the origin of scripture.">> ^probie:
Shiny won't stop, you know. His "god" has commanded him to "spread his word" and convert as many people as possible. Even though this same god created these people tabula rasa, and instilled in them "free will" to make whatever choice they want, "He" still wants them to be followers. And all of this, while supposedly having the omnipotent power to do change anyone's paradigms, at any time. Psychotic.
What I laugh at the most is that science shows us how reality works, empirically, through observation and testing. It shows us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the truth about our universe and how it works. Sure we may not have all the answers yet, but I'll take the unknown over a blanket answer of "because" any day of the week. By disregarding science (and subsequently evolution), shiny and his ilk are attempting to subvert people from seeing and understanding the truth. Which is exactly what "Satan" wants.
Oh, the irony.

>> ^messenger:

Please stop. You know this argument and the whole "mousetrap" thing has been laid to rest already, right? Why do you keep bringing it up? It only demonstrates that you don't understand the concepts you're talking about. If your end goal is to convert people, that's fine with me, but you're losing credibility by citing bunk science.>> ^shinyblurry:
[embed]



Shiny won't stop, you know. His "god" has commanded him to "spread his word" and convert as many people as possible. Even though this same god created these people tabula rasa, and instilled in them "free will" to make whatever choice they want, "He" still wants them to be followers. And all of this, while supposedly having the omnipotent power to change anyone's paradigms, at any time. Psychotic.

What I laugh at the most is that science shows us how reality works, empirically, through observation and testing. It shows us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the truth about our universe and how it works. Sure we may not have all the answers yet, but I'll take the unknown over a blanket answer of "because" any day of the week. By disregarding science (and subsequently evolution), shiny and his ilk are attempting to subvert people from seeing and understanding the truth. Which is exactly what "Satan" wants.

Oh, the irony.

It doesn't follow, though. The evidence that proves micro-evolution does not prove universal common descent. The evidence for micro-evolution would be evidence for macro-evolution if it could also prove UCD. It is one thing to say species change, or even that they can change into other species. It is quite a different thing to say that all species evolved from a common ancestor. That goes far beyond what you can prove scientifically.

This also is not about drawing an imaginary line about how much change can occur; it has to do with the amount of information in the genome. For bacteria to man evolution, a significant amount of information has to be added to the genome. The information in the bacteria genome, no matter how you shuffle it around, will never produce anything more significantly complex than itself. So then the question is, how does this information get added to the genome? Many people at this point will say "mutations!", but the problem with that is, we have never seen a mutation give rise to an increase in functional complexity. If they do, they are so compartively rare as to completely invalidate evolution as a theory. There simply wouldn't be enough time to account for the millions of changes required.


As the main mechanism for adding information into the genome, you would think that there would be clear evidence to support its actually happening..but you would be wrong:



So these are a few reasons why I do not buy into the evolutionary paradigm. The way it is presented to the public is as a proven fact, but when you start analysing the data and not just listening to the conclusions, you find a giant mess with no clear answers. You also find a chorus of true believers who just know its true and interpret all of the data through the conclusion. They see everything through those glasses and thus that is the way everything looks to them.
In reply to this comment by GenjiKilpatrick:
How do you reconcile accepting the science that substantiates micro-evolution.. but disregarding the SAME SCIENCE that substantiates macro-evolution.

It's sorta like if I said: "I accept the evidence for the divinity of Jesus. But I refuse to accept that Yahweh exists"

If it follows that: Divinty of Jesus = Divinity of Yahweh.

Then it must follow that: Evidence of Micro-evolution = Evidence of Macro-evolution.

How do you reconcile this without talking in circles?

Nope. Sorry. Being pussywhipped is not the same as violent sexual assault. And men making fun of men for being pussywhipped is REALLY not the same thing.

By the way, @Shepppard, you do know that we aren't talking about the same thing, don't you?

I completely understand your impatience with "humor police." I actually have a terrific dead baby joke. I'd love to share it with you.

The problem is that violence against women is so endemic to patriarchal society, it is so essentially accepted, that unless you have a pretty good level of empathy, unfortunately you can't understand what it is like to hear these "jokes."

I am trying to lead the discussion into a different area -- that of empathy.

You can laugh at some things as long as you are distanced from them.

I was trying to close the distance.

Besides, it really is true. If men were as afraid of women physically as women are afraid of men, AND WOMEN KNEW IT, the playing field would be more level.

The real truth is -- women have to empower themselves. Policing humor isn't empowerment. Playing tit for tat isn't empowerment either -- you make a rape joke? Ha ha, we can make a cut off your penis in your sleep joke. Not really funny, any way you slice it.

Ha.

I have thought for years that women need to emulate some aspects of male culture. Develop a thicker skin. Tease more. I have also thought that men need to emulate some aspects of female culture - develop some empathy and not be so fearful of their feelings.

Of course, I am talking bell curve here. Plenty of tough women, plenty of empathetic men.

Besides, all this sensitivity towards rape jokes will go away when women stop feeling physically threatened, and the majority of men no longer put up with the implied violence that women live with and call it out.

That's all this is going on here. Attempting to shift the paradigm and heal things. It's possible, says my inner optimist.

>> ^shveddy:
@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.
@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).
If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.


Hmm, your statement is littered with all sorts of inaccurate information.

Okay, first of all, this idea of "junk dna" is dying a slow death:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/

Contrary to your assertion, so-called junk dna is functional. And the idea of viral DNA insertions is completely ruled out when this "random" DNA turns out not to be so random after all, and serving very specific purposes. The idea, created in ignorance, exists mainly as a fudge factor for the evolutionary paradigm. The problem for evolutionists is that natural selection cannot produce enough mutations to account for the millions it needs in the 300,000 generations it took for humans to evolve. It's a lot easier to come up those numbers when 95 percent of the genome is "junk".

Second, molecular and morphological phylogenies are often wildly divergent. This is from an Article in nature magazine subtitled:

"Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled, asks Trisha Gura"

"When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’, they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history. . . .

Battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life. Perhaps the most intense are in vertebrate systematics, where molecular biologists are challenging a tradition that relies on studies of fossil skeletons and the bones and soft tissue of living species. . . .

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date"

They are so divergent that two camps have emerged in systematics, each claiming their phylogenies are more accurate. So your claim that Cytochrome C matches "scores" of different phylogenies is patently false, since hardly any of them agree. If want to say that isn't true, please provide the evidence. Note that "scores" means at least 40.

Third, creation theory predicts a hierarchical pattern, so finding one isn't going to falsify creationism or prove common descent. Especially in the case of the phylogeny of Cytochrome C, which has no intermediates or transitionals to be found. You do also realize that a common design can be explained by a common designer? It could simply be the case that Cytochrome C was tailored for different groups according to individual specifications, which then diverged futher by mutations. If your response is that Cytochrome C functions the same way in all life, my response is that the differences could be for coding other proteins.

Before I go any further, I would ask you to support your claims. Show me the specific data you're talking about so I can rebut it.

>> ^jmzero:
The 50s were an aberration, not the norm for all time before the horrible 60s. This is a ridiculous untruth propagated by people who grew up in the 50s and who, in the US, are bitter about losing a cultural war. Much of the reason the 50s were so explicitly religious was because of government intervention - explicit religion was seen as a counter to communism. Other than that, it was a generational effect, you can see the cycle through history. In terms of overall morality, I'll take now - a time without slavery, less crime, and much more protection for the bullied in general - over pretty much any point in history.

This isn't entirely true. Yes, the late 40s and 50s were aberrations in the 20th century, mostly because of world war 2. America considered WW2 to be a moral war, perhaps the greatest example of the paradigm of good versus evil in our history, and biblical morality was at an all time high. However, Christian theism has always been the dominant worldview of American intellectuals until secular humanism started to dominate around the 1930s. If not for the war the culture may have changed earlier, but in general it has been a Christian nation with Christian values.

>> ^jmzero:
I mean, there were certainly positives to the 1950s if you were a middle-to-upper-class white male but it really sucked for most other people.

I think the society was quite a bit better, and safer for most. Crime was much less than it is now, cost of living was lower, standard of living was rising, etc. Yes, there was racism and the like, but it's not like we've gotten rid of that either.

>> ^jmzero:
As to now, the biggest immoral behavior I see the US doing right now is slaughtering people overseas. I'm waiting for the time when warmongering candidates can't get support in Tennessee because of all the Christians. Oh wait, it's not warmongering they hate, it's "differing slightly on religious views".

I agree, many Christian voters are voting on superficial issues and not on whether the candidate is meeting biblical standards.

>> ^jmzero:
And who is fighting hardest against universal healthcare, foodstamps, and progressive taxation? Most people (of any kind) are good and want to help the underprivileged; mostly they just differ on how to administer that aid.

Conservatives are, and not all Christians are conservatives. Jesus taught both conservative and liberal principles, but both sides want to claim Him for themselves. I think most people want to help the poor, but most people aren't doing anything about it unfortunately.

>> ^jmzero:
According to this - http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/23/most-charitable-states-cx_lh_1125home_ls.html - the #1 state is Utah. Hmmm... I wonder why? Maybe it's because they're browbeaten by their church into donating? Too bad they're not Christians, eh Shiny, or you could take credit for them. On the whole, I think it's ridiculous to count donations to a Church as wholly charitable for this purpose. A donation to a church is partially going to support charitable stuff, but largely is going to support building a church, heating it, maintaining it, advertising it, supplying it, and paying people who work there (the same as a donation to Applebee's).

Well, supporting the church also supports all of these local programs and ministries, such as food banks and homeless shelters, so I think it all pans out. As far as mormons go, they aren't Christian for the same reason muslims aren't Christian; they both teach another God apart from the God of the bible.

>> ^jmzero:
Speaking for myself, I made it about 10 seconds in before it annoyed me too much to keep watching. Annoying voice, cliche, stupid non-jokes.

I made it all the way through somehow. It hurt me deep inside.

It's universal: in every culture, the woman makes more noise than the man does. It's a direct contradiction to the standard narrative that women trade sexual fidelity for the material support and protection from a particular man. Just think: If sex is universally shameful, and women are less libidinous, then why are they so likely to loudly announce their sexual pleasure?

It doesn't fit into what we "know," according to the central "myth" of the nature of human sexuality being one of monogamous pair-bonding. However, it does fit into the paradigm put forth in the book, Sex at Dawn, which looks at primate sexual behaviors and found that where the females make the most noise is where the females are the most promiscuous: because this attracts other males.

It recently occured to me that economics, and by implication - our current socio-economic paradigm, is a pyramid scheme. We all think that if we keep sending our $10 to the other people (by constant consumption), that we will all eventually become rich and successful. The system is broken. As Gilding says, you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system. The now-illegal pyramid schemes showed us that....

Thanks man!
In reply to this comment by marinara:
*promote

>> ^bmacs27:

That a correlation is valid does not make it interesting.
I'm also a bit confused by your claim. Places with extremely high density, e.g. NY, CA, and MA, have lower ADHD figures than places like AK.
>> ^grinter:
>> ^residue:
I think you're drawing conclusions with too little evidence. Cases of ADHD would also increase with density because there are simply more people. You would need to compare percentages by normalizing cases to the population before you could make any real conclusions. (But I agree with your conclusion in that it makes sense)
>> ^grinter:
Anyone find it interesting that the prevalence of ADHD correlates with population density? (and yes the map showed per capita values.. I looked it up)
It's like if you live with too many people around you and not enough free space, you find it hard to focus.


No conclusion, just speculation.
But, my defensive side needs to point out that:
1) the correlation is valid, regardless of what is driving it.
2) as I pointed out, the ADHD prevalence figure he showed already controls for population size.


Ok, fine.. I'll take a quick and sloppy look at the data:


The relationship doesn't hold for the super dense states, but if you look at states with under 200 people/m^2, then population density does strongly predict ADHD rate (linear regression: r^2 = 0.271, d.f. = 34, p = 0.001)
I'm not saying that I think density per se is really driving this relationship.. but still think it is worth considering.

That a correlation is valid does not make it interesting.

I'm also a bit confused by your claim. Places with extremely high density, e.g. NY, CA, and MA, have lower ADHD figures than places like AK.

>> ^grinter:

>> ^residue:
I think you're drawing conclusions with too little evidence. Cases of ADHD would also increase with density because there are simply more people. You would need to compare percentages by normalizing cases to the population before you could make any real conclusions. (But I agree with your conclusion in that it makes sense)
>> ^grinter:
Anyone find it interesting that the prevalence of ADHD correlates with population density? (and yes the map showed per capita values.. I looked it up)
It's like if you live with too many people around you and not enough free space, you find it hard to focus.


No conclusion, just speculation.
But, my defensive side needs to point out that:
1) the correlation is valid, regardless of what is driving it.
2) as I pointed out, the ADHD prevalence figure he showed already controls for population size.

I agree with her though that the problem is diagnostics. I'm just more hopeful about other treatment paradigms in the presence of greater specificity of diagnosis. I might be wrong, I just think that too much is made out of our biochemical breakdowns of the nervous system. It's like caring what doping was put in the transistors in your computer. Yes, you'll find that particular doping agent all over the damn thing, but if the computer is broken, you might want to talk to a programmer not a chemist. It's the software, the particular pattern of ones and zeros (or in the brain analog, the wiring and action potentials) that are usually faulty. Not widespread deficiencies in the functioning of doping compounds.