>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

>> ^shinyblurry:
lennox babbling

Religion and science are not in conflict because of how Galileo was treated ot because Huxley debated a bishop, they are in conflict, and will forever be in conflict because of the way they work:
Science is the systematic way of removing faith from the equation, and to systematically question and test every assumption to prevent us from fooling ourselves.
Religion is precisely the opposite: Its a systematic way of perserving faith in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Its a systematic way of avoiding the hard questions and keep fooling oneself.
Which is why its defenders often attack those who question and destroy previous assumptions about the world (Darwin or Galileo). The two examples Lennox gives are symptoms of the conflict, not the conflict itself.
As Jerry Coyne puts it in "Why evolution is true": "Not all religious people are creationists, but all creationists are religious" So when we ask ourselves why more than 40% of the US deny the factual existance of the fundamental process that created and drives all living things on earth, the answer isnt just ignorance or stupidity. It is organized ignorance, stupidity and dogma, or religion as some call it.


Very eloquent, i'd only recommend getting rid of the "hard questions, foolish" bit because it sounds insulting. Otherwise it's a really well constructed explanation that even a theologist would find hard to deny.

Do you realize how dogmatic your position actually is? I mean, do you actually find your analysis here intellectually satisfying?

Are you willing to challenge your beliefs? I recommend two books for you:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0890510628/ref=tmm_pap_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1595553223/ref=sr_1_1_up_1_main_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342692277&sr=1-1&condition=used

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

>> ^shinyblurry:
lennox babbling

Religion and science are not in conflict because of how Galileo was treated ot because Huxley debated a bishop, they are in conflict, and will forever be in conflict because of the way they work:
Science is the systematic way of removing faith from the equation, and to systematically question and test every assumption to prevent us from fooling ourselves.
Religion is precisely the opposite: Its a systematic way of perserving faith in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Its a systematic way of avoiding the hard questions and keep fooling oneself.
Which is why its defenders often attack those who question and destroy previous assumptions about the world (Darwin or Galileo). The two examples Lennox gives are symptoms of the conflict, not the conflict itself.
As Jerry Coyne puts it in "Why evolution is true": "Not all religious people are creationists, but all creationists are religious" So when we ask ourselves why more than 40% of the US deny the factual existance of the fundamental process that created and drives all living things on earth, the answer isnt just ignorance or stupidity. It is organized ignorance, stupidity and dogma, or religion as some call it.

>> ^shinyblurry:
lennox babbling


Religion and science are not in conflict because of how Galileo was treated ot because Huxley debated a bishop, they are in conflict, and will forever be in conflict because of the way they work:

Science is the systematic way of removing faith from the equation, and to systematically question and test every assumption to prevent us from fooling ourselves.
Religion is precisely the opposite: Its a systematic way of perserving faith in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Its a systematic way of avoiding the hard questions and keep fooling oneself.

Which is why its defenders often attack those who question and destroy previous assumptions about the world (Darwin or Galileo). The two examples Lennox gives are symptoms of the conflict, not the conflict itself.

As Jerry Coyne puts it in "Why evolution is true": "Not all religious people are creationists, but all creationists are religious" So when we ask ourselves why more than 40% of the US deny the factual existance of the fundamental process that created and drives all living things on earth, the answer isnt just ignorance or stupidity. It is organized ignorance, stupidity and dogma, or religion as some call it.

Bull fucking major shit, dude... what could the kid have been doing, except reacting to growing up in a situation where armed men are waiting to kick you? Maybe he was causing a little trouble, maybe some graffiti... so lets turn him into a suicide bomber and then take his parents land and claim to know nothing about the origin of the threat? Nothing about this scene is acceptable. Do you accept this behavior from a US soldier against any child?? Then why the military that we almost exclusively fund?

This is a systematic problem, and the Israeli's immediate "they'd do it to us" excuse that makes nearly everyone non-arab turn a blind eye, is quite reminiscent of the governmental situation which ultimately led to the creation of "their" state. You can't spell Nazi or Zionism without a "Z". Different means to the same end: Racial purity of the chosen people.

How fucking twisted and no one can say anything about the emperor being naked without being anti-Semitic, which is itself a misappropriated term which does not mean Jewish or Israeli but refers to language origins. Arabs are Semitic, too.

Pretty obvious letting people just make up rules based on no logic leaves no room for diplomacy. None. Why bother when you can shoot and kick your way to the promised land? The whole middle east should be a DMZ, no one there is doing anything with weapons defensively.

The US is going through the same as every other succesful human society ever has:

1 Creation by strong commited men instilling solid rule of law
2 Corruption through centralized control of a larger and larger population combined with exponential inheritance until the great-great grandchildren of the most aggressive rule by default over a drastically enlarged population
3 Systematic failure concealed and compensated for by militarization and seizing foreign assets by force (war)
4 Dissent due to (perceived) immoral behaviour and ever-reducing opportunity for those outside the 'elite'
(i.e inheritees driving million dollar sports cars at 17 while working seniors go hungry)
5 Move toward police state system to maintain control and security leading to resentment and polarization of politics
6 Technological advantage in warfare eroded over time by ambitious imperial contenders
7 Ability to respond to change compromised by corrupted power system and entitlement of ruling families

and finally either
8a neutralisation into nostalgia
or
8b collapse into chaos

Marcus Aurelius said:
"Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too."

If there ever was a society that could beat the system it probably is the US. But it better get its shit together pretty soon.

I'd respect him if he said "I don't want their support" this clip tells me that he is a neo-nazi and he doesn't want to admit it.

How many neo-nazi or white supremacist groups can their be in the US and are they available for systematic murder? Say Friday?

FEAR.

It is amazing to me how undeniable in every-way if you systematically take apart his masterpiece of nothing and throw it into tiered columns and subject matters via science and psychology, setup a little like a tree you will always find that the source component of everything you've just heard is FEAR. It is the literal trunk of the tree with the neurons and chemical impulses that make us being the roots. Everything above the trunk in the canopy is DRIVEN by that fear meaning that if it happens to be a large amount of information then you MAY NEED TO discredit it.

Everything this man has ever said may be a result of fear, we don't know for sure, but in this situation EVERYTHING was. But, if you look at his other shows or speeches I bet he has a lot of anger driven (anger is fear, BTW) pieces, but they probably all come from one source and that is FEAR.

This is why so many religion speakers and believers fail. They don't understand themselves. They don't do enough self-introspection except to get past the front door. If you kept looking you TOO would also realize the same things scientists say, these things all stem from one primary system in our body: the fight or flight basically. For many of us WE ARE fighting, but oh so many are just running--trampling and killing anything in their path in irrational escape to nowhere, nowhere.

Anymore if they can't plainly explain how something works or how they gain profits, which they will have you believe are their "secrets", just assume they are gaming you or someone else and it's all a house of cards waiting to fall.

Earning money doing nothing productive is crazy that should not be supported, yet the government actively helps pass laws to make these things legitimate......hell it looks like something the mafia would do. Except sometimes the mafia takes as little as 1/20th out of it.....these guys are taking 20% and basically crippling everything systematically and infiltrating the government while they hide all their "donations".

Blah.

I don't have time to waste on your ignorance any more, but just a few quick rebuttals should be sufficient to discredit your credibility.

First off, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by this abstract:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

Quote: "Morphologists achieved much during that time, and none of their well supported phylogenies is overthrown by molecular data. So far, molecular sequences have contributed most significantly in areas where morphological data are inconclusive, deficient, nonexistent or poorly analyzed."

If anything it supports my point, but there are better sources out there. Which is why I chose to limit my literature sources to those that were at least after the year 2000. Why, you ask? Because the first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995, about two years after that article. We've learned a lot since then, though, according to that abstract, even then they understood that molecular systematics were capable of elucidating many areas of the fossil record we didn't understand. Just read to the end of it.

I knew you would jump on the whole part where I conceded that it is not absolute agreement. Look, I took 30 seconds to write a sarcastic response on an internet forum. So what that I didn't bother to delve into the nuances of consensus trees and whatnot. Argue with the damn articles, not me.

You also just ignore it when I say that the fact that junk DNA has a function has nothing to do with it's evolutionary relevance and continue to claim otherwise without giving a reason. It is the relative mutation rates, not the functionality - maybe you didn't catch that the first time around.

Yada yada yada, I've got better things to do. Anyone who reads this little exchange can see your evident dishonesty and unwarranted extrapolation and that's all that matters. Because if someone is willing to plug their ears and yell loudly whenever something contradicts absolutely held beliefs like you are clearly willing to do, then there will be no convincing. This exchange is for those who are on the fence, and you're little display of anti-intellectualism speaks for itself even without all the scientific proof.

And trust me, I was a Christian. I was deriding salvation by grace as an arbitrary thing, doesn't mean I don't understand what you guys think.

"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

>> ^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.

@renatojj

Church has high interested in religious candidates being elected. Most of the debates going on in politics are based on religious philosophy. Few off the top of my head are abortion, creationism, and women's rights. They've been going against the grain of the Constitution trying to get creationism which is a arguably religion based subject taught in schools. Which in turn possibly gets them more followers, which in turn gets them more tithing and more people in their "group" giving them more power. In fact I would argue they are specifically trying to erode the line between church and state with these arguments, injecting religion based reasons into many of the arguments.

Big media networks push for things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 where the reason for the bill is not actually what ends up happening. It was supposed to deregulate and open up the market for competition and instead it allowed them to reconsolidate by buying up competitors. And they largely don't fight with censorship on curse words because generally it drives off their audience, and those networks that don't have to censor curse words charge for the privilege of hearing them and seeing some nudity to boot. And they also support SOPA-like bills which are essential a blanket tool to censor the web....they also support monitoring and traffic shaping on the networks they control...which is another potential avenue for censorship.

You'll have to be more specific on what you're getting at......all these groups are eroding divisions we built through regulation and have been doing so steadily since the 80s at every opportunity across industries.

I've already shown that given the chance, they buy up competition to remain a monopoly. Look at ISPs, look at all the oil companies we USED to have. Look at the media conglomerates that own the majority of your radio stations ( I think there's two major radio networks, but they have like a million different stations under the same banners so it LOOKS like choice). How the record labels and movie industries are all tied together and often even tied into the same parent company that owns your ISP. Cell phone industry, ATT trying to buy T Mobile which would have brought it down to 3 major providers and they did it in the name of "better service" but still haven't announced plans to build out their infrastructure since the deal went through...why? Because it wasn't about better service, it was about buying up a competitor that offered plans at prices people preferred.

When people are unhappy with their ISPs they've tried to form local government run coop non-profit ISPs, and they get sued by the huge companies who refuse to service their area. It's happened multiple times. With regulation, they would have to provide internet to those places in a timely manner instead of preventing people from doing their own thing.

Did GoDaddy pay dearly for supporting SOPA? I heard they lost 30k subscribers at some point, but did they really? You'll have to show me on that. GoDaddy did lots of terrible things before it, yet they were still a huge provider and still are. They cybersquat on domain names people search for and allow you to buy them at "auction" from them when you try to look up if it's taken or not..they snatch it up to sell to you. They also give away people's domain names with no repercussions and a myriad of other things. Sounds like it needs a regulatory body with some teeth on it to make them act right or shut them down.

Unions are actually a really good way to fight monopolies and under the table deals, but they've been systematically villified. And unions aren't monopolies if they aren't mandatory, and most places are not fully unionized anymore. Often times they will have sections with union employees to do government work and non-union to do non-government work. Non-union guys make half the rate of union guys usually, and have less protections in place to keep themselves from getting shafted. But I don't really see how a union is a monopoly when there are lots of unions and lots of individuals in a union who make decisions for themselves and not as a collective like a company would. IE a company has a "head" that directs it and unions are a collective of individuals. Companies are people after all, unions are not (they are made up of people).

There are laws governing behavior usually based roughly on societal standards. Like pot being illegal is kind of against most of the societies beliefs, yet it remains illegal is an example of where it doesn't quite track. But overall we have laws that say you can't write a check that you know won't cash. Drunk driving, trespassing, vandalism, theft.....yelling fire in a crowded building.......setting off the fire alarm for fun.....etc. Giving people the finger isn't against the law....well probably not in most places so that might fall under social pressure. But we see that social pressure fails miserably at stopping bad behavior, so we have laws to enforce behavior...like not stealing and not murdering. This is society and people holding other people to standards, without the law to judge and convict them by the only thing you have left is personal interpretation and meeting out punishment by each individual or vigilante justice.

If you don't regulate business there is nothing stopping them, because nothing about our market is free. You can't have a free market without perfect information. You can't know every possible thing going on, so you will never have perfect information even if it was possible. So you will have swindlers and knock offs, pyramid schemes, etc. And without laws and regulations on these things, you will never be able to punish the company for what they did in a court of law.

Even if they were 100% above the board honest, they'd still be sourcing their materials from overseas and getting inferior materials to what you are paying for. It happens to the military all the time right now. They buy a bunch of nuts and bolts and some of them are chinese knockoffs that fail well after the installation is done and the machine is in operation. They can't catch them because china is basically lawless when it comes to producing goods for knock off purposes. It could just as easily be a US source doing it if we de-regulated everything and made no way for people to sue them into oblivion...because the damage would be done as soon as you buy a knock off and it fries the rest of your stuff.

The definition of "free market" right now means they want to be able to buy stuff cheap as shit from overseas and charge you US built prices for it. And when it comes to financial industry "free market" means they want to have speculation upon speculation to where the financial industry has 10-100x more money leveraged than what actually exists. It's a house of cards if they can just inflate it without any kind of acceptable risks being enforced.

>> ^Auger8:

Ya I totally agree here I'm from Texas and sports get all the attention whatever money is left over goes to standardized testing which is a crock in and of itself. And people wonder why un-employment is so high in America.
It's because public schools teach absolutely nothing of value to kids whatsoever!
>> ^Boise_Lib:
>> ^Porksandwich:

Like I've always felt in the US that the sports programs and all the cost associated with them plus the competition they spawn within the student body and against other schools is not beneficial. Basically you end up with a small group of players who get the school to bend over backwards to make things possible for them and everyone else loses out on it, in fact they often have to pay for tickets to even see the events their parents tax dollars make possible.

I agree.
We've made our school system (including college) a farm team for the NBA, NFL.



But I'd argue, it's the system that those in power want and corporations want. Because it allows them the excuse to ship high school level jobs out to other countries. You see it all the time "We can't find any qualified candidates!" and then they need H1B visa restrictions lifted so they can bring people in or the job goes to another country after they milk the taxpayers for "tax breaks" on a building promising some jobs and conveniently forget to deliver on the jobs.

It's a systematic breakdown of all counters and checks to their ability to solely profit since no one can compete against them if they make consumers as dumb as possible in general, ship the jobs overseas, and bring all the products back at reduced prices until they kill any possible competition ....then jack the prices up. And now there's been a huge lull in jobs in manufacturing, etc...so the schools aren't preparing people for those jobs or training schools have went under and the general population education level has dropped to prevent it from easily being fixed.

And.......since they control lots of money (and therefore power), they can now keep it that way because they are "too big" to be told no. And now they are trying to privatize stuff to get even more cash out of people, and then they completely control the whole process and you will be just as educated as they'll let you be.