Wow... So many great points here.
And lots missed by others.

@ChaosEngine I like you too. But the next posts after yours explains my point better. @Eukelek got the point correctly.
(The fact you don't eat it, or your local farm doesn't grow GM is telling and hypocritical)

There is a massive difference between selection using natural processes and GENETIC ENGINEERING.
One will only produce offspring that are genetically compatible.
The other is a crap shoot producing mixes of different taxonomy.
For fucks sake when could A FARMER BREED A MOUSE WITH A JELLYFISH, or mix SPIDER GENES WITH GOATS.
That shit is fucked up and only the tip of the iceberg.

You really want MONSANTO creating NEW SPECIES OF PLANT THAT ARE STRONGER THAN THEIR NATURAL COUNTERPARTS AND LACED WITH TOXINS AND PESTICIDES ????
It was Monsanto that developed AGENT ORANGE, and PCB's which THEY ALSO DENIED WAS HARMFUL EVEN THOUGH IT IS MASSIVELY CANCER CAUSING. They buried every study showing it was carcinogenic.


@nock . Yes I'm sure the medical profession has even crazier biology going on. But I would only use that shit IF I WAS GOING TO DIE.
NOBODY NEEDS GMO.
Now the medi-corps are using super viruses as vectors for 'custom' dna treatments.
Considering that the U.S. CDC was just admonished for improper practices contains viruses. How long before there is an incident that is completely synthetic (man-made) and completely irreversible.

@RedSky Sure Africa should grow whatever it needs to survive. But don't expect an export market for gmo.

That's not anthropology. It's Biological classification and Taxonomy.

At present this concept of design is just castle-in-the-sky nonsense. Empty piffle. A complete non-starter.

This is why the "mere mention" of "design" will get you "banned" from peer-review, because you could just as well have made a "mere mention" of Bigfoot and the loch ness monster in your zoology report, it's a big tell to your peers that you are a nut who fails to understand the nature of evidence and science, and a big sign that you are in for some fuzzy logic and dumb assumptions instead of solid science.

Design is a better hypothesis for the information we find in DNA, and the fine tuning we see in the physical laws. The reason design is a non-starter is because the idea this Universe was created by anyone is anathema to the scientific community:

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin, Harvard
New York Review of Books 1/9/97

No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.

Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182

After essentially nullifying and disproving everything we have learned about biology the last 200 years, you still have all the work ahead of you, I'm afraid. You now have to build a completely new framework and model for every single observation ever made in biology that makes sense of it all and explains why things are the way they are. Shouting that a thing is "complex" is not cutting it, I'm afraid. You need a new theory of DNA, Immunology, Bacterial resistance, adaptation, vestigal organs, animal distobution, mutation, selection, variation, genetics, speciation, taxonomy... well, as Dobzhansky put it: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" That quote is more relevant than ever.

Your error here is conflating micro and macro evolution. Creation scientists believe in micro evolution and speciation. That is part of the creationist model of how the world was repopulated with animals after the flood. Macro evolution, the idea that all life descended from a universal common ancestor, is not proven by immunology, bacterial resistance, adaptation, animal distribution, mutation, seclection, variation, speciation, taxonomy etc. The only way you could prove it is in the fossil record and the evidence isn't there. They've tried to prove it with genetics but it contradicts the fossil record (the way they understand it). So Creationists have no trouble explaining those things..and common genetics points to a common designer.

You dont have to trust scientists, most of the EVIDENCE is RIGHT FUCKING THERE, in front of you, in your pocket, in your hand, around your home, in every school, in every home, in every post office or courtroom, in the streets. ACTUAL REAL EVIDENCE, right there, PROVING, every second, that the universe is billions of years old.

Every scientist since Newton could be a lying sack of shit, all working on the same conspiracy, and it would mean fuck all, because the evidence speaks for itself.

The earth is definately NOT ten thousand years young.

Have you ever heard of the horizon problem? The big bang model suffers from a light travel time problem of its own, but they solve it by postulating cosmic inflation, which is nothing more than a fudge factor to solve the problem. First, it would have to expand at trillions of times the speed of light, violating the law that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. There is also no theory compatible with physics that could explain the mechanism for how the Universe would start expanding, and then cease expanding a second later. It's poppycock. See what secular scientists have to say about the current state of the Big Bang Theory:

http://www.cosmologystatement.org/

As far as how light could reach us in a short amount of time, there are many theories. One theory is that the speed of light has not always been constant, and was faster at the beginning of creation. This is backed up by a number of measurements taken since the 1800s showing the speed of light decreasing. You can see the tables here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v4/n1/velocity-of-light

And here's the real question. Name one current product based off of any hypothesis/theory that was posited and proven by 'Creation Science'. Too hard? What about any process, maybe based on the geology or biology research.

Read the above link.

That link does not provide evidence of any usefulness of "creation science" it simply mentions that some real scientists are also creationists. I think what Hatsix was asking for was if there has been any progress made because creation was assumed or discovered via actual science. Lets say a creationist that solves a particular problem in biology because he or she used creationism or "creation science" instead of, or in addition to, just, well... science.

At present, the very best we have seen of "creation science" are rather pathetic attemps at poking holes in evolution by people like Michael Behe who keeps yapping on about how something is "too complex" to have evolved. Even if these people had been completely successful of bringing down Darwin once and for all (they arent even close), that wouldnt be ANY help whatsoever to actually justify calling it "creation" science (or intelligent design).

After essentially nullifying and disproving everything we have learned about biology the last 200 years, you still have all the work ahead of you, I'm afraid. You now have to build a completely new framework and model for every single observation ever made in biology that makes sense of it all and explains why things are the way they are. Shouting that a thing is "complex" is not cutting it, I'm afraid. You need a new theory of DNA, Immunology, Bacterial resistance, adaptation, vestigal organs, animal distobution, mutation, selection, variation, genetics, speciation, taxonomy... well, as Dobzhansky put it: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" That quote is more relevant than ever.

"Ok, you need to understand two different concepts........the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality.....supposedly bring down evolution."

Minor disagreements? I'm having a hard time believing that you've seriously investigated this subject if you are now claiming (scaled back from your prior claim of perfect agreement between "scores" of them) that molecular and morphological phylogonies typically have a high level of agreement. They don't. Agreement is the exception, not the rule. Even worse, molecular phylogonies don't agree with eachother either:

As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology. . . .

Partly because of morphology’s long history, congruence between morphological phylogenies is the exception rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all generated within the last couple of decades, the situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence between molecular phylogenies are documented above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1% of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published (e.g. 132, 152, 170), structure or resolution tends to evaporate

Congruence Between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

"If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference"

“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.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution""

Your charge of quote mining is false. Quote mining is the logical fallacy of quoting something out of context, distorting its intended meaning. The quote I provided was very much in context, and showed support for the assertion that molecular and morphological phylogenies do not have "perfect" agreement, and now I have further supported that assertion (and disproven your scaled back claim of very statistically significant agreement) that their agreement is actually very superficial. It is far more significant how little agreement there actually is.

The very reason there is a contention about which is the "best" method is precisely because there is so little agreement. In any case, molecular homology appears to be winning the battle, perhaps because the evolutionists are getting tired of never finding any evolution in the fossil record.

Which brings us to the many issues with molecular homologies, specifically, their lack of falsifiability:

"We believe that it is possible to draw up a list of basic rules that underlie existing molecular evolutionary models:

All theories are monophyletic, meaning that they all start with the Urgene and the Urzelle which have given rise to all proteins and all species, respectively.

Complexity evolves mainly through duplications and mutations in structural and control genes.

Genes can mutate or remain stable, migrate laterally from species to species, spread through a population by mechanisms whose operation is not fully understood, evolve coordinately, splice, stay silent, and exist as pseudogenes.

Ad hoc arguments can be invented (such as insect vectors or viruses) that can transport a gene into places where no monophyletic logic could otherwise explain its presence.

This liberal spread of rules, each of which can be observed in use by scientists, does not just sound facetious but also, in our opinion, robs monophyletic evolution of its vulnerability to disproof, and thereby its entitlement to the status of a scientific theory.

The absolute, explicit and implicit, adherence to all the monophyletic principle and consequently the decision to interpret all observations in the light of this principle is the major cause of incongruities as well as for the invention of all the genetic sidestepping rules cited above."

A Polyphyletic View of Evolution

Schwabe and Warr

This is why Schwabe, a biochemist, wrote:

Molecular evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist I should be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many, in fact, that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message

It's a shell game where virtually any kind of data can be accomodated, and at no point is the theory questioned. Ad hoc explanations can be invented for any kind of discrepency.

""There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.""

A mountain of weak, circumstantial evidence (much of which contradicts itself) does not prove macro evolution. "We're working on it" does not somehow validate that evidence. We know the holocaust happened; there is no proof for macro evolution.

""As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.""

There are numerous sources showing that junk dna is not junk:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/28/1103894108.full.pdf+html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025112059.htm

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/transposons-or-jumping-genes-not-junk-dna-1211

Based on your earlier argument, "we're working on it", you should realize that what some scientists consider to be junk dna stems entirely from ignorance. The idea that it got in there by "viral dna insertions" and the like is simply another ad hoc explanation among many.

""And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on""

I have already demonstrated that the consensus is very weak. What you need to provide is data backing up your claims regarding cytochrome c. I am awaiting the "scores" of phylogonies that will match that data.

@shinyblurry - No, yours is and here's why:

Ok, you need to understand two different concepts. The first, is the notion that science is constantly refining itself. It is never 100% correct, and there is near constant debate about what is the best method of determining something to be factual. In this case, we're talking about whether molecular systematics or morphological characteristics are the most accurate means of determining phylogeny. The second is the notion of statistical significance. Now I'll admit that in saying that they "coincide perfectly," I failed to adhere to a more accurate and rigorous description of what is actually happening, so I'll rectify that now. The correlation between the different trees constructed by different fields within biology have an extremely statistically significant amount of correlation. This means that while we can expect disagreement and there will be debate about the best method to refine the results, the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality where science is never 100% correct and there is a constant debate over the relative effectiveness of varying methods of phylogenetic determination, there will be a huge excess of material for you to quote mine in an effort to distort the significance of the minor disagreements that are common in science to a scale that can supposedly bring down evolution.

If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference:

“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.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution.

There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.

As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.

And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

@shinyblurry - No, yours is and here's why:


Ok, you need to understand two different concepts. The first, is the notion that science is constantly refining itself. It is never 100% correct, and there is near constant debate about what is the best method of determining something to be factual. In this case, we're talking about whether molecular systematics or morphological characteristics are the most accurate means of determining phylogeny. The second is the notion of statistical significance. Now I'll admit that in saying that they "coincide perfectly," I failed to adhere to a more accurate and rigorous description of what is actually happening, so I'll rectify that now. The correlation between the different trees constructed by different fields within biology have an extremely statistically significant amount of correlation. This means that while we can expect disagreement and there will be debate about the best method to refine the results, the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality where science is never 100% correct and there is a constant debate over the relative effectiveness of varying methods of phylogenetic determination, there will be a huge excess of material for you to quote mine in an effort to distort the significance of the minor disagreements that are common in science to a scale that can supposedly bring down evolution.

If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference:

“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.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution.

There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.

As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.

And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

This is brilliant! I want to know more about it.

I've searched a bit, but come up with nothing about any caterpillars being able to hear. Anybody know the name or taxonomy?

>> ^dag:

Regardless of its taxonomy - it's a nice cover and sounds really great on headphones, thanks!


I call your taxonomy and raise you a phylogeny. Oh, and yes, sounds awesome, thanks OP

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Regardless of its taxonomy - it's a nice cover and sounds really great on headphones, thanks!

Anytime you change/tweak/adjust the taxonomy of an existing group of things it should be done with much planning and consideration. That being said, the Sift has evolved since plans for what is now the current channel structure was introduced. I suspect that the few absent owners is a symptom of the problem that Dag speaks of when he mentioned a restructure.

>> ^jonny:

I don't think you need any big restructuring to change ownership of a couple of channels. I agree that the system should be reworked, but a few absent channel owners isn't the reason to do it.
If you are considering a big restructure, I think you need to look back to what you had in the early days with collectives. Each 'channel' should be a narrowly defined category of videos. Ultimately, every channel name (in any system) is just a predefined tag. With very broadly defined channels, there's not much more to them than that tag, but with collectives, there's more to it. I have no idea what kind of work it would take, but I'd like to see a system with a set of predefined tags, like comedy, music, news, cute, pain, joy, etc., and then let users create channels that are really specific like electronica, economics, healthcare, atheism (I can't believe no one has created that channel yet!).
>> ^dag:
If we do this- I think it would be part of a grand restructure of the way channels work. Like you guys - I'm not entirely happy with the structure. It's something that still needs discussion.

Actually, he is just pointing out that the affirmative position that God doesn't or/and can't exist takes as much of a leap as saying he does exist. In spite of evidence, a positive or negative position isn't rational. Which is why I have always said that the agnostic atheist position (of which I am, so totally no bias) is the most logical. I haven't been presented with a certain case either way, so I am resolved in saying I don't know, and I don't know that I can or can't know. Don't confuse the last part of his statement that non-belief = non-existence. Claims of non-existence are indeed faith biased (if they have no evidence), but a non-belief is a different animal.


I would like to point out, though, his second rung is completely flawed. There is no compelling reason to believe those odds about life being 1 in a trillion. You would need to know several things, like what is the density of life in our universe, under what conditions could that life exist under...but most importantly, and the knife in its face, why life couldn't exist under different circumstances. To answer that last question you would have to know every condition life could happen under...and we don't even know how ours happened really. So that figure is complete horeshit, bad science, bad philosophy, bad reasoning.

There is a second reason it is bad reasoning and that is assumes that life is something intended. There is this great economic theory which I have been using in other places now from called "Spontaneous order". It is exactly what is sounds like. That via a system of random rules and interactions, order seems to derive. So you have this tangle of rule sets in the universe, but it was a mathematical certainty that over time, solar systems would most likely form, that there would be rocks, suns, and planets. It is flawed reason to think life is any different than rocks. Rocks are just as "special" as life, and just as meaningless as the vast emptiness of space. He is begging the question that life is any different from any other of the orders and forces that innately exist in this world. This is a logical fallacy that exist in all intellectual design arguments. Begging the question fallacies are hard to spot when you have an moral position to the topic. The reason is, begging the question fallacies validate. Meaning that if the premises is true, the conclusion is as well...but assuming the premises is true is faith and not logic.

I have realized that in my own intellectual constructions, I haven't used completely sound logical arguments either. As homework, I have self assigned myself the homework of studding and rooting out all the fallacies that exist in my philosophy as it stands. I found a useful tool for this as well, others would be appreciated. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html

Upvoted this video because it is mostly good with some silly bits that I don't agree with either...but that is far better than par for course on many things of this nature...namely many of the Hitchen's videos on here...his philosophy is so flawed, and damn mean.

>> ^asynchronice:

Could be wrong here, but it seems the seem is to try and flip the burden of proof arguement from:
"There is no good evidence for the existence of god, therefore it is rational to believe there is no god."
to
"There is no good argument for fully disproving the existence of God, therefore there must be a God."
I see what he did there.

So he is wrong because somebody else arbitrarily changed some arbitrary scale/nomenclature?

That shit drives me nuts. I once answered a question online about the care and feeding of rabbits, and mentioned their constantly growing teeth, seeing as they are rodents. The problem is that they are not rodents ANYMORE, since after they were classified as rodents an order was invented just for rabbits.

The thing is, changing the NAME of something does not change its attributes. I accept that taxonomy and measurements need to be standardized, but when you do you need to accept that both the old and new classifications are valid, or you need to build a whole new system as to avoid confusion.

When we discover that something is different than we thought, then the old understanding is accepted as false, but when we make arbitrary changes it's more reasonable to say they are both right, but that one is more current.

*long and good. I was blinded by the science at 05:53...

...Phenotypical taxonomy is character based, an in-depth analysis of every morphological developmental genetic or physiological trait, systematic classification surpasses this by comparing these collectives to determine derived synopomophies, indicating a nested phylogeny, and THAT determines the clade. Because phylogenetic hierarchy is the only consistent criteria for classifying diverse lifeforms stemming from an evolutionary lineage, and that is evidently where we came from...

Stick that in your turbo encabulator.

Ahh, saw this on failblog a while back. Thought it seemed too good to be true. Had a good laugh at it then though. There's something really funny about a taxonomy fail.