NEWS FLASH! Datline: NyetTufta Russia
. The badly beaten, nude body of a well known local orange cat was found in the stairwell of a prominent Crows dwelling.
The Crow, a professor of anthropology and a advocate for the humanities, said he was awakened by a loud noise and cawled the police. The Crow said he doesn't know the oarange cat or why it was at his house. The crow claims a large black cat ran away from the scene when the crow turned on his lights.
Local police are on the lookout for a large black cat.
A survailance tape was taken by police from the neighbors house and will be viewed for clues this evening....More at 11:00.
>> ^ant:
And then what happened?

>> ^Unaccommodated:
Being against polygamy is not bigoted. Humans pair off, its what we do. But Polyandry (one female - multiple males) doesn't work except in a few places like Nepal and Bhutan, where there is little arable land. But the men are ALWAYS brothers, there is no other way it would work (also its a dying practice). Polygyny (One Male - Multiple females) doesn't work either, because then you get an excess of poor, young, bored undersexed men, who become serious problems. Infact, the Warren Jeffs FLDS cult would evict 'misbehaving' young men because there weren't enough ladies to go around. These kids were given no chance. As far as homosexual groupings of more then two? No one is asking for that, many are quite content pairing off with one other person. There is also no historical or ethnographic evidence for it either. And as far as marrying anything nonhuman, that is wrong simply because the other thing is not sentient (in the way we are) and doesn't know what its agreeing to. I think you may be one of those dangerous people only took ONE Anthropology class, and has otherwise missed the boat.


Diogenes just linked to an article about people who are asking for exactly these things, and making them work. Polyamorous and polygamous relationships are neither very rare nor dysfunctional.

Marriage involving nonhumans seems to be very simply resolved. We discount the consent of the nonsentient partners. If I want to marry my pencil or goldfish I really don't see how it could be any of your business.

@gorillaman
Being against polygamy is not bigoted. Humans pair off, its what we do. But Polyandry (one female - multiple males) doesn't work except in a few places like Nepal and Bhutan, where there is little arable land. But the men are ALWAYS brothers, there is no other way it would work (also its a dying practice). Polygyny (One Male - Multiple females) doesn't work either, because then you get an excess of poor, young, bored undersexed men, who become serious problems. Infact, the Warren Jeffs FLDS cult would evict 'misbehaving' young men because there weren't enough ladies to go around. These kids were given no chance. As far as homosexual groupings of more then two? No one is asking for that, many are quite content pairing off with one other person. There is also no historical or ethnographic evidence for it either. And as far as marrying anything nonhuman, that is wrong simply because the other thing is not sentient (in the way we are) and doesn't know what its agreeing to. I think you may be one of those dangerous people only took ONE Anthropology class, and has otherwise missed the boat.

The squatting in a house in Minneapolis was the house of one of my Anthropology professors.

Was your Anthropology class a graduate level class? Did you have to take five of them? If you want to compare the intro class you took to taking five classes, many of them graduate level, be my guest.

BTW, wtf does Anthropology have to do with astronomy? Are you seriously suggesting psychology has no relation to teaching? You do understand that in order to help teach, you should know how the human mind works, right? It's not the ESPN Decathlon jump where you're sprinting, and suddenly have to fish. You're argument is like saying a scientist doesn't know math well because they're a scientist. Uhh, math and science are heavily related.

Nobody said teachers are dedicated expert psychologists. But to pretend that a teacher doesn't need any or even just a cursory "Intro to Psych" level knowledge to teach is silly. I've taught, I have the degree, I've proven to you just how much psychology is involved in getting degree alone, nevermind what's involved in the actual job; you pretend the only thing in the coursework was an Intro to Psych class, and pretend you're an expert in what is involved in teaching because you went to school as a student. I guess I'm an expert in architecture because I've lived in buildings all my life. I also know all about what it must be like to be a professional cook, since I've eaten food all my life.

But I get it though, you're just trying to troll, not have an honest discussion.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^heropsycho:
He did claim the job is easy. I'm sorry, but that's what it implied.
He's not saying teacher's are all Einstein's. He's saying the swath of skill a teacher must possess is very wide, and it's not a cursory level of knowledge and skill. And his description is absolutely correct. He never said teachers are full time experts in every single one of those fields.
Before you say something idiotic like teachers don't need or are not required to have in depth knowledge of psychology, you could do a few common sense things like, oh I don't know, check college requirements for education degrees.
I must have imagined all those undergrad & graduate level psychology and education classes that were REQUIREMENTS to getting an education degree, which I had to have to get a teaching license! You know, classes that couldn't have a thing to do with psychology. Let's whip out that transcript and take a look:
101 Introduction to Psychology
300 Foundations of Education (heavy doses of educational psychology)
301 Human Development and Learning
607 (That's a graduate level class) Advanced Educational PSYCHOLOGY
605 Theory and Practice of Education/Special Needs Students
There were also Practicum classes with heavy doses of psychology.
Does your job require you to take five semesters of psychology in college to get licensed to do your job?
And that's my point with both of you. You have absolutely no clue whatsoever about the teaching profession, and yet you insist over and over and over you somehow do because you attended school. You clearly don't have a clue, so how about you go learn about these specific areas before you speak to them instead of trying to prove an ignorant point of view.


Ah, got it. So I guess the Anthropology course I took at my Liberal Arts school makes me a scientist. I'm also now qualified to operate the Hubble Telescope because I took a general studies course called 'Stars & Galaxies'.

>> ^heropsycho:

He did claim the job is easy. I'm sorry, but that's what it implied.
He's not saying teacher's are all Einstein's. He's saying the swath of skill a teacher must possess is very wide, and it's not a cursory level of knowledge and skill. And his description is absolutely correct. He never said teachers are full time experts in every single one of those fields.
Before you say something idiotic like teachers don't need or are not required to have in depth knowledge of psychology, you could do a few common sense things like, oh I don't know, check college requirements for education degrees.
I must have imagined all those undergrad & graduate level psychology and education classes that were REQUIREMENTS to getting an education degree, which I had to have to get a teaching license! You know, classes that couldn't have a thing to do with psychology. Let's whip out that transcript and take a look:
101 Introduction to Psychology
300 Foundations of Education (heavy doses of educational psychology)
301 Human Development and Learning
607 (That's a graduate level class) Advanced Educational PSYCHOLOGY
605 Theory and Practice of Education/Special Needs Students
There were also Practicum classes with heavy doses of psychology.
Does your job require you to take five semesters of psychology in college to get licensed to do your job?
And that's my point with both of you. You have absolutely no clue whatsoever about the teaching profession, and yet you insist over and over and over you somehow do because you attended school. You clearly don't have a clue, so how about you go learn about these specific areas before you speak to them instead of trying to prove an ignorant point of view.



Ah, got it. So I guess the Anthropology course I took at my Liberal Arts school makes me a scientist. I'm also now qualified to operate the Hubble Telescope because I took a general studies course called 'Stars & Galaxies'.

@Pprt

Just like Islam or Judaism isn't race. Neither is being a ginger.

Not to mention - Adult White Males have been the most privileged, self-entitled, killin' & manipulating "lesser" cultures type homo sapiens on the planet for a few centuries now, at least.

So what the hell are you talking about "civilizations going extinct"?

I pretty sure that dude used a frickin' computer to mock up this crazy ass diatribe, took an electric tram to the scene and used his iphone to call his nutbag friends before he went thru with it.

You should take an anthropology course before you go poppin' off at the mouth like that.

@hpqp

First off, thank you for taking the time to track down all of those links. And thank you for at least looking at the link I posted (though I hesitate to you say you actually "read" it as I explain below).

The title of the book is "Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence." The author states explicitly on page 4 the main premise of the book: "Islam is not violence, nor are Muslims intrinsically prone to violence." He then fills the rest of the book with economic, anthropological, and historical evidence to support his case.

And yet you are claiming the book doesn't go against anything you or Harris are saying... okay.

Next, you have mined all those quotes completely out of context and twisted their meaning to fit your agenda while completely ignoring the bulk of the work. To give just one example:

"Muslims, we often forget, do not always act as Muslims or members of a religious community; rather, they respond to economic, social and political needs that may direct conduct more than ideological signposts do."

This statement was directly addressing violence in the Islamic world--that Islam does not completely prevent people from being human and acting in violent ways when under extreme economic, social, and political pressures. Yet the Western media--and Harris in particular--would have us believe that these pressures are irrelevant... that there is something inherent within Islam that causes this violence. The rest of Lawrence's book shows this is not the case, and provides ample evidence to support the opinion. Yet, I've not seen Harris nor you provide ANY evidence for Harris's position.

Throughout our conversation, I have been asking you in good faith to make your case to me and for my part I was willing to change my mind if you were to provide some evidence that your position is correct.

You have not.

In your last post, you did finally start to list some statistics (with no sources given, I notice), but they don't really provide evidence of anything other than it is really shitty to live in a 3rd world country. I see no smoking gun there to show me Islam itself is the cause of these problems or that these problems are somehow unique to Islam. There are many other possible and indeed probable explanations (which clearly neither Harris nor you--having made up your minds already--seem willing to explore) for why, for instance, Pakistan is so fucked up other than "Islam made it that way." But even assuming for the sake of argument there weren't any other explanations, science demands evidence--as do I--because of a little problem known as "correlation versus causation." The fact that Pakistan is fucked up and is an Islamic nation does not suddenly make Islam the culprit.

You clearly feel very passionate about this. And I understand why. You genuinely believe Islam (but somehow not Muslims) is a threat to everybody (believer and non-believer alike). Did I finally state your argument correctly that time? What I still don't understand in spite of all you've written is how you came to that conclusion. From what you've written in these posts, all I can see is a lot of "correlation vs causation" fallacies mixed in with scary anecdotes followed by a bit of emphasizing the negative aspects of Islam (for example, verses calling for violence in the Koran) while ignoring the positive (verses extolling the benefits of reason, compassion, and love--including towards non-believers). Like I said before, I don't see the smoking gun and I don't understand why you do apparently see it.

Are there problems with certain interpretations of Islam? Yeah, absolutely. Radical fundamentalist Islam most certainly causes its followers to not just condone violence, but believe that violence is the only way to achieve the political aims for which radical Islam was created to achieve. But Harris isn't arguing against radical fundamentalist Islam, is he? He's arguing against the totality. He's arguing there is something inherently wrong with Islam. Okay, great. Make the argument. But for the love of science, please provide some proof. Reading selected passages from the Koran is not proof of how real Muslims in the real world interpret those passages and apply them to their daily lives (if they even do so at all). The actions of a unbelievably few individuals who choose to embrace radical fundamentalist Islam are not proof. The misadventures of nation-states which happen to be Islam are not proof. Proof will only be found through science--his argument is clearly empirically testable so I am still dumbfounded as to why he repeats the same talking points without actually taking the time to find the proof that would make his case convincing.

Your refutations were (in order)

"This guy believes in evolution"

"We can never prove anything about the fossil record"

"this quote is old"

"this guy is crazy"

"this quote is old"

"this guy is a probable creationist"

Yeah, amazing refutations..which you got from a website, while calling me out on doing the same thing. Evolutionists, biologists, palentologists etc DO dispute the theory of evolution..you were right though..the ones I provided were kind of weak. You'll have an infinitely harder time refuting these:

"With the failure of these many efforts [to explain the origin of life] science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate.

After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort could not be proved to take place today, had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past."

Loren C. Eiseley,
Ph.D. Anthropology. "The Immense Journey". Random House, NY, p. 199

"We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain:

I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know it is bad, but because there isn't any other.

Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact, which is a first approximation."

Professor Jerome Lejeune,
Internationally recognised geneticist at a lecture given in Paris

"Considering its historic significance and the social and moral transformation it caused in western thought, one might have hoped that Darwinian theory ... a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth."

Michael Denton,
Molecular Biologist. "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". Adler and Adler, p. 358

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation-both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof."

L.Harrison Matthews,
British biologist

"[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature."


L. Harrison Matthews,
Introduction to 'Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life', p. xxii (1977 edition).


"I reject evolution because I deem it obsolete, because the knowledge, hard won since 1830, of anatomy, histology, cytology, and embryology, cannot be made to accord with its basic idea. The foundationless, fantastic edifice of the evolution doctrine would long ago have met with its long deserved fate were it not that the love of fairy tales is so deep-rooted in the hearts of man."

Dr Albert Fleischmann. Recorded in Scott M. Huse, "The Collapse of Evolution", Baker Book House: Grand Rapids (USA), 1983 p:120

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."


William B. Provine,
Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University, 'Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life', Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.


"The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers ? [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance."


Hubert Yockey,
"Information Theory and Molecular Biology", Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 257


"As I said, we shall all be embarrassed, in the fullness of time, by the naivete of our present evolutionary arguments. But some will be vastly more embarrassed than others."


Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Principal Research Associate of the Center for Cognitive Science at MIT, "Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds," John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1994, p195)


"In 10 million years, a human-like species could substitute no more than 25,000 expressed neutral mutations and this is merely 0.0007% of the genome ?nowhere near enough to account for human evolution. This is the trade secret of evolutionary geneticists."

Walter James ReMine,
The Biotic Message : Evolution versus Message Theory


"Today, a hundred and twenty-eight years after it was first promulgated, the Darwinian theory of evolution stands under attack as never before. ... The fact is that in recent times there has been increasing dissent on the issue within academic and professional ranks, and that a growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp. It is interesting, moreover, that for the most part these 'experts' have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances regretfully, as one could say. We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience'; but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists."


Wolfgang Smith,
Mathematician and Physicist. Prof. of Mathematics, Oregon State University. Former math instructor at MIT. Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of the Teachings of de Chardin. Tan Books & Publishers, pp. 1-2


"If there were a basic principle of matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its existence should easily be demonstrable in the laboratory. One could, for instance, take a swimming bath to represent the primordial soup. Fill it with any chemicals of a non-biological nature you please. Pump any gases over it, or through it, you please, and shine any kind of radiation on it that takes your fancy. Let the experiment proceed for a year and see how many of those 2,000 enzymes [proteins produced by living cells] have appeared in the bath. I will give the answer, and so save the time and trouble and expense of actually doing the experiment. You would find nothing at all, except possibly for a tarry sludge composed of amino acids and other simple organic chemicals.
How can I be so confident of this statement? Well, if it were otherwise, the experiment would long since have been done and would be well-known and famous throughout the world. The cost of it would be trivial compared to the cost of landing a man on the Moon.......In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth."


Sir Fred Hoyle,
British physicist and astronomer, The Intelligent Universe, Michael Joseph, London, pp. 20-21, 23.


"...(I)t should be apparent that the errors, overstatements and omissions that we have noted in these biology texts, all tend to enhance the plausibility of hypotheses that are presented. More importantly, the inclusion of outdated material and erroneous discussions is not trivial. The items noted mislead students and impede their acquisition of critical thinking skills. If we fail to teach students to examine data critically, looking for points both favoring and opposing hypotheses, we are selling our youth short and mortgaging the future of scientific inquiry itself."


Mills, Lancaster, Bradley,
'Origin of Life Evolution in Biology Textbooks - A Critique', The American Biology Teacher, Volume 55, No. 2, February, 1993, p. 83


"The salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange. And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred."


Wolfgang Smith,
Ph.D Mathematics , MS Physics Teilardism and the New Religion. Tan Books and Publishers, Inc.


"... as Darwinists and neo-Darwinists have become ever more adept at finding possible selective advantages for any trait one cares to mention, explanation in terms of the all-powerful force of natural selection has come more and more to resemble explanation in terms of the conscious design of the omnipotent Creator."


Mae-Wan Ho & Peter T. Saunders,
Biologist at The Open University, UK and Mathematician at University of London respectively


"In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be 'wrong'. A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?"


Tom S. Kemp,
'A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record', New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, pp. 66-67


"We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."


Niles Eldredge,
Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History, "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p144)


... by the fossil record and we are now about 120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much.
The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."


David M. Raup,
Curator of Geology. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology". Field Museum of Natural History. Vol. 50, No. 1, p. 25


"Thus all Darwin's premises are defective: there is no unlimited population growth in natural populations, no competition between individuals, and no new species producible by selecting for varietal differences. And if Darwin's premises are faulty, then his conclusion does not follow. This, of itself, does not mean that natural selection is false. It simply means that we cannot use Darwin's argument brilliant though it was, to establish natural selection as a means of explaining the origin of species."


Robert Augros & George Stanciu,
"The New Biology: Discovering the Wisdom in Nature", New Science Library, Shambhala: Boston, MA, 1987, p.160).







>> ^MaxWilder:
What the hell are you talking about? I refuted every one of your quotes point by point! I provided links to further information. The whole point was that your "evidence" of paleontologists speaking out against evolution was utter bullshit!
The only one where I discredited the source was from some no-name Swedish biologist that nobody takes seriously. Every other source was either out of context (meaning you are not understanding the words properly), or out of date (meaning that science has progressed a little since the '70s).
You have got your head so far up your ass that you are not even coherent now.
But you know what might change my mind? If you cut&paste some more out of context, out of date quotes. You got hendreds of 'em! </sarcasm>
>> ^shinyblurry:
So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source.

So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source. I've got hundreds of these..it's not exactly a secret among palentologists that the evolutionary theory has more holes than swiss cheese. Another issue is just the dating itself..take these quotes out of context:

Curt Teichert of the Geological Society of America, "No coherent picture of the history of the earth could be built on the basis of radioactive datings".

Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead, the uncertainty grows as more and more data is accumulated ... " (Waterhouse).

richard mauger phd associate professor of geology east carolina university In general, dates in the “correct ball park” are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are the discrepancies fully explained

... it is usual to obtain a spectrum of discordant dates and to select the concentration of highest values as the correct age." (Armstrong and Besancon)

professor brew: If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it iscompletely out of date we just drop it. Few archaeologists who have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having sometimes applied this method.

In the light of what is known about the radiocarbon method and the way it is used, it is truly astonishing that many authors will cite agreeable determinations as 'proof' for their beliefs. The radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. "This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.” Written by Robert E. Lee in his article "Radiocarbon: Ages in Error" in Anthropological Journal Of Canada, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1981 p:9

Radiometric dating of fossil skull 1470 show that the various methods do not give accurate measurements of ages. The first tests gave an age of 221 million years. The second, 2.4 million years. Subsequent tests gave ages which ranged from 290,000 to 19.5 million years. Palaeomagnetic determinations gave an age of 3 million years. All these readings give a 762 fold error in the age calculations. Given that only errors less than 10% (0.1 fold) are acceptable in scientific calculations, these readings show that radiometric assessment should never ever be used. John Reader, "Missing Links", BCA/Collins: London, 1981 p:206-209

A. Hayatsu (Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), "K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia",-Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,-"In conventional interpretation of K-Ar (potassium/argon dating method) age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily-attributed to excess or loss of argon." In other words the potassium/argon (K/Ar) method doesn't support the uranium/lead (U/Pb) method.

"The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years old, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such `confirmation' may be shortlived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man." (“Secular Catastrophism”, Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p. 21)

“The procession of life was never witnessed, it is inferred. The vertical sequence of fossils is thought to represent a process because the enclosing rocks are interpreted as a process. The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.” (O’Rourke, J.E., “Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276, 1976, p. 53) (emphasis mine)

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland, asked him: "How do you date fossils?" His reply: "By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found." Sunderland then asked him if this were not circular reasoning, and *Fisher replied, "Of course, how else are you going to do it?" (Bible Science Newsletter, December 1986, p. 6.)

It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology."—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 48.

"Material bodies are finite, and no rock unit is global in extent, yet stratigraphy aims at a global classification. The particulars have to be stretched into universals somehow. Here ordinary materialism leaves off building up a system of units recognized by physical properties, to follow dialectical materialism, which starts with time units and regards the material bodies as their incomplete representatives. This is where the suspicion of circular reasoning crept in, because it seemed to the layman that the time units were abstracted from the geological column, which has been put together from rock units."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1979, p. 49.

"The prime difficulty with the use of presumed ancestral-descendant sequences to express phylogeny is that biostratigraphic data are often used in conjunction with morphology in the initial evaluation of relationships, which leads to obvious circularity."—*B. Schaeffer, *M.K. Hecht and *N. Eldredge, "Phylogeny and Paleontology," in *Dobzhansky, *Hecht and *Steere (Ed.), Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 6 (1972), p. 39

"The paleontologist's wheel of authority turned full circle when he put this process into reverse and used his fossils to determine tops and bottoms for himself. In the course of time he came to rule upon stratigraphic order, and gaps within it, on a worldwide basis."—*F.K. North, "the Geological Time Scale," in Royal Society of Canada Special Publication, 8:5 (1964). [The order of fossils is determined by the rock strata they are in, and the strata they are in are decided by their tops and bottoms—which are deduced by the fossils in them.]"The geologic ages are identified and dated by the fossils contained in the sedimentary rocks. The fossil record also provides the chief evidence for the theory of evolution, which in turn is the basic philosophy upon which the sequence of geologic ages has been erected. The evolution-fossil-geologic age system is thus a closed circle which comprises one interlocking package. Each goes with the other."—Henry M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (1972), pp. 76-77

"It cannot be denied that, from a strictly philosophical standpoint, geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organism as has been determined by a study of theory remains buried in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain."—*R.H. Rastall, article "Geology," Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 10 (14th ed.; 1956), p. 168.

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 53.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Let us begin with this definition of "quote mining" from Wikipedia: The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Thank you, shinyblurry, for your cut&paste, thought-free, research-absent, quote mining wall of nonsense. The only part you got right is that you should google each and every one of these quotes to find out the context, something you actually didn't do.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the late Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory prior to his recent death, confessed "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology..."

This Steven J. Gould quote is discussed in talk.origin's Quote Mine Project. Gould was a proponent of Punctuated Equilibria, which proposes a "jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change" in evolution. The quotes that are taken out of context are arguing that the fossil record does not indicate a gradual change over time as Darwin suggested. The specifc quote above is discussed in section #3.2 of Part 3. Far from an argument against evolution, Gould was arguing for a specific refinement of the theory.
More to the point, your own quote says "extreme rarity", contradicting your primary claim that transitional fossils do not exist.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal... ...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book... ...there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.

Dr. Patterson is discussed on a page dedicated to this quote in the Quote Mine Project. This page touches on the nature of scientific skepticism. As Dr. Patterson goes on to say, "... Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else." This is the nature of pure science. We can say that a piece of evidence "indicates" or "suggests" something, but there is nothing that may be held up as "proof" unless it is testable. As a man of principle, Dr. Patterson would not indicate one species evolving into another simply because there is no way to be absolutely sure that one fossil is the direct descendant of another. We can describe the similarities and differences, showing how one might have traits of an earlier fossil and different traits similar to a later fossil, but that is not absolute proof.
Incidentally, this is probably where the main thrust of the creationist argument eventually lands. At this level of specificity, there is no known way of proving one fossil's relation to another. DNA does not survive the fossilization process, so we can only make generalizations about how fossils are related through physical appearance. This will be where the creationist claims "faith" is required. Of course, you might also say that if I had a picture of a potted plant on a shelf, and another picture of the potted plant broken on the floor, it would require "faith" to claim that the plant fell off the shelf, because I did not have video proof. The creationist argument would be that the plant broken on the ground was created that way by God.
>> ^shinyblurry:
David B. Kitts. PhD (Zoology) ... Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them...

This quote is from 1974. Think maybe some of those gaps might have gotten smaller since then? Doesn't really matter, because the scientist in question goes on to explicitly state that this does not disprove evolution. He then discusses hypotheses which might explain his perceived gaps, such as Punctuated Equilibrium. A brief mention of this quote is found in the Quote Mine Project at Quote #54.
>> ^shinyblurry:
N. Heribert Nilsson, a famous botanist, evolutionist and professor at Lund University in Sweden, continues:
My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed… The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.

First of all, Nilsson is only famous to creationists. To scientists, he's a bit of a wack-job. But that neither proves nor disproves his findings, it only goes to show that creationsists will frequently embellish a scientist's reputation if it will increase the size of the straw man argument. His writings would naturally include his opinions on the weaknesses of what was evolutionary theory at the time (1953!) in order to make his own hypothesis more appealing. He came up with Emication, which is panned as fantasy by the scientific critics. Perfect fodder for the creationists.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the popular press is catching on. This is from an article in Newsweek magazine:
The missing link between man and apes, whose absence has comforted religious fundamentalists since the days of Darwin, is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures … The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated.
The popular press. Newsweek Magazine. 1980!!! What year are you living in, shiny???
>> ^shinyblurry:
Wake up people..your belief in evolution is purely metaphysical and requires faith. I suppose if you don't think about it too hard it makes sense. It's the same thing with abiogenesis..pure metaphysics.
Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species.
The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us?… The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record. 2

Well, now you're just quoting some anonymous creationist. Any evidence whatsoever that the gaps between major groups are growing wider? No? Can't find anything to cut and paste in reply to that question?
>> ^shinyblurry:
You've been had..be intellectually honest enough to admit it and seek out the truth. Science does not support evolution.

I wonder, shiny, if in your "intellectually honest search for the truth" if you ever left the creationist circle jerk? Your quotes are nothing but out of context and out of date.

Holy cow, THIS IS ANTHROPOLOGY 101 IN ACTION!!! Things we've read in our history books of how ethnic groups came and went. HOLLY COOWWWWW!

It's generally poor taste to laboriously dispense details about one's sexual escapades.

Revering those who eagerly and enthusiastically chase after sexual thrills lends to the belief that this type of behaviour is desirable. An anthropological detachment from the novelty of this kind of talk is lost on most people.

While there's nothing intrinsically wrong about discussing sex, one easily finds many civilizations where overt sexualism has been detrimental. Sex talk fine, idolizing and trivializing sex is dangerous.

This probably comes off as being a stuck-up old fart's opinion (I'm actually in my early twenties), but consider how the environment we have today has gives children the urge for intercourse even before they are physically ready for sex. We've allowed ten year old girls and boys to be perfectly comfortable in a world where hypersexualisation is normalcy.>> ^SveNitoR:

>> ^Pprt:
Making sex talk like this a banality is a horrible trend...

Why?

Not just societies. Individuals, too. A death in the family can bring healing to those left behind. Alcoholics and other addicts sometimes finally get help after they hit bottom.

The human condition.


>> ^legacy0100:

Anthropology professor Dr. Mark Nathan Cohen once told his students that major reforms or utilization of innovation will not take place in a regular every day society. Such innovative or drastic ideas will take place only after 5 major key events have occurred beforehand, which are: famine/economic failure, natural disaster, outbreak of disease, religious conflict and political upheaval.
Basically it means that it takes a disaster for society to drastically change its course ; a time of Crisis.

Anthropology professor Dr. Mark Nathan Cohen once told his students that major reforms or utilization of innovation will not take place in a regular every day society. Such innovative or drastic ideas will take place only after either of these 5 major key events have occurred beforehand, which are: famine/economic failure, natural disaster, outbreak of disease, religious conflict and political upheaval.

Basically it means that it takes a disaster for society to drastically change its course ; a time of Crisis.

You made me think back to where I heard that name when I was studying anthropology. While looking around I came across this documentary. Cheers!
http://videosift.com/video/God-Is-American

In reply to this comment by shuac:
In looking at the title, I thought this was about the cargo cults. I guess not.