chadn737

It wasn't a matter of "picking the messiah". The concept of the messiah is a Jewish one. However, if you look at most of the individuals during this same period who were hailed as potential messiahs, their agendas were often political and had a very specific agenda of driving out Roman occupation of Israel. For instance, Simon of Peraea led a rebellion. Most Jews at the time believed that the messiah would establish an Earthly kingdom...basically free the Jews and reestablish Israel. Jesus was nothing like this and in this He was distinct from the other claimants of being the messiah. Furthermore, when Christianity ceased being almost exclusively Jewish and spread to the Gentiles in a big way, it was able to spread to everyone in the Empire and beyond and so reach a level of popularity that other believes could not. When Constantine initiated the council of Nicea, he brought together the leadership of the Christian Churches...all the Bishops and others who had been part of a Christian leadership for a couple of centuries already. These were not some random group of men that decided to pick Jesus over others. These were true Christians, true followers of Christ, many who had suffered persecution prior to the legalization of Christianity under Constantine. For instance, the patriarch of Antioch traced its lineage back to the founding of the Antioch Church by Peter in the first century. One of the best known of these patriarchs was St Ignatius (the third patriarch) who was killed in 107 AD after being fed to wild animals for being a Christian. It was from such lineages of Church leadership that the Council of Nicea was formed. Everyone of these people believed in Jesus and followed Him as the messiah. There was no point when they "chose Jesus" over some other claimant. The purpose of the Council was to hammer out details within Christianity, debates that had arisen in the centuries since. So I really do not understand your argument. You seem to think that the Council of Nicea decided on Christ in some post hoc fashion. In reality, the Council of Nicea was made up of dedicated Christians that had been part of the Christian faith going back to time of the Apostles themselves. One of the most prominent individuals at the Council was Alexander of Alexandria, who in his youth as a priest, survived the Diocletianic Persecution, which was the bloodiest of all the Christian persecutions. These men were all dedicated followers of Christ and had suffered for as much. When Constantine called this council, it was to settle doctrinal disputes within the Christian Church, not "pick" a messiah. Furthermore, the Council of Nicea didn't "select" the books of the Bible. There is no record of them actually doing this. Rather, for some time, there had been discussion amongst the Churches about what would form the canon. These books were not selected at random, but based on a rather thorough crtieria. Many books not found in the canonized Bible are still regarded as sacred texts by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches to this day. Irenaeus basically laid out the argument for what would become the canon back in the 2nd Century (~150-200AD), well over a hundred years before the Council of Nicea. While there is some controversy over authorship, there is very good evidence for much of the New Testament, particularly the letters and other books, such as those of James.

You can make paper from straw, especially flax or wheat. These are grasses. I honestly don't see the real objection to using wood. The vast majority of wood used for paper production (over 90%) comes from tree plantations or stands that are replanted after every harvest. Specifically, most use trees such as eucalyptus that far outyield hemp in per acre/per year production. Furthermore, the actual manufacturing process is less efficient with hemp. Especially with tree plantations, if not growing trees, these would likely be under cultivation for something else, which is potentially more damaging. In contrast, the use of straw from species like wheat and flax are supposedly more efficient in production, but removal of wheat straw has disadvantages, namely erosion and water loss.

I agree with your opinion of preserving the ecosystem rather than the species to an extent. There really is no pristine wilderness left and as a whole, the function of ecosystems are what is vital to us as humans. I think those wanting to restore pleistocene habitats are crazy. But...there is value in preserving species or their germplasm. The genetic diversity that is lost could be a valuable resource. I typically think more in terms of plant diversity than animal diversity, but there is potential value in it all. Hence the rationale behind preserving landraces and wild relatives of any number of crop species. I also see value in bringing back species even if they do not have a natural habitat to return too, such as the mammoth. If one were to bring back mammoths, I honestly would think they would live out in captivity. Unless people have a profound moral problem with captive animals...I do not...I don't see the issue.

If you go off the Gospels, then it is clear that Jesus's message was religious, not political. Even if you accept the non-canonical texts, the message is still clearly religious and not political. Jesus seemed to go out of His way to avoid political messages, rejecting attempts by the populous to make Him into a political figure against the Romans. Jesus was not an obscure figure by the time of the Council of Nicea. That occurred in 325 AD. By then Christianity had been around for ~3 centuries and had spread to all corners of the Roman Empire. The Christians were well known enough to be made the scapegoats of Nero's fire in 64 AD. Conspiracy theories surrounding His death are nothing new, but also lack any support. There is little evidence that at the time Jesus had many Roman sympathizers. There were a few, including the centurion mentioned in the Gospels, but at the time, Jesus primarily reached out to other Jews. So "Jewish" was Christianity initially, that many of the apostles opposed the baptism and inclusion of Gentiles. This really did not change until under the direction of Peter and Paul, well after the death of Jesus.

You all have been watching way too much Jurassic Park. Why would we need or want to bring back entire herds of mammoths or repopulate them in the wild? Now for certain species that have recently gone extinct (last couple of hundred years) I see the logic behind that. Say bringing back the Tasmanian tiger or the dodo. Going through with this process would enable us to develop the technology, which could prove essential is preserving many endangered species. We already keep many animals in zoos, including elephants. I see no reason why if a mammoth was raised with captive elephants, that this would not prove a viable alternative. Visions of mammoths reigning terror on humans are far-fetched. This is not some isolated island where vast numbers of dinosaurs are fighting ~10 unarmed people. Besides, we killed them off before when all we had was fire and spears. The morals of bringing back a Neanderthal are in a completely different league though, because its safe to assume that the Neanderthal has higher cognitive abilities that would put them on par with many modern humans, which introduces a truly unique moral dilemma. But with species like the mammoth, I do not see the problem.

I've encountered this a lot over the years, particularly when I was living in Missouri where Monsanto is based. A lot of the animosity actually is not rooted in real fear of GMOs. Rather it is rooted in good old fashioned anti-corporatism, which has deep roots in the environmentalist movements. These fears are further flamed by large corporate giants (Whole Foods, Chipotle, etc) which actually profit immensely off of these fears. If you look at a lot of the protests, the arguments, etc...much of it is based on how evil supposedly Monsanto is. All the horror stories of Monsanto suing farmers. My family have been farming for three generations and I have seen the introduction of GMOs onto farms and the evolution of the seed industry, it has really been nothing like what you hear about from the anti-GMO people. These horror stories are pretty much lies and in the very few cases where Monsanto has taken a farmer to court, it was justified. As a farmer, you have the option to grow non-GMO seed....its really easy to obtain. If you choose to grow GMOs, because of all the advantages they offer, you sign a contract. Farmers are not all pure wholesome people. They are small business men. Some will cheat the system if they can. They will knowingly violate a contract to make a few extra bucks. For instance, one farmer bought seed from an elevator and then grew it up, deliberately spraying it with Roundup to select for the Roundup-resistant varieties. It was an outright attempt to bypass the patent, yet people like these are made out to be martyrs for deliberately stealing. All the stories about Monsanto suing over pollen contamination...bullshit. All the stories about "terminator genes" also bullshit. By the way, the creator of the terminator gene technology, he works for the USDA and is an academic (I've met him, can't say I like him). The technology has never been used in any commercial seed sold to farmers. The fact that farmers buy their seed every year has been going on long before Monsanto was in on the game. Hybrid corn has to be developed fresh every year because in the second generation you loose the benefits of heterosis. Its too expensive and hard for most farmers to develop their own hybrid corn, so they buy it from companies. This has been going on since the 50s, long before GMOs were even around. I can rant a lot about this, but the point I am trying to make is that much of the anti-GMO sentiment is fueled by anti-corporatism and not actual health concerns. Ironically and hypocritically, companies like Monsanto are seen as evil corporate giants, even though in terms of sales and profit, they are much smaller than the Organic food industry which makes several billions more off of selling organic food than Monsanto makes off of selling GMO seed. There is a reason why companies like Whole Foods push for labeling. Its not because they are actually concerned about health or openness....its because they will increase profits. Now besides the anti-corporatism, there are all the health and environmental arguments, which there is so much evidence against that its ridiculous how some of these claims persist. Its really like the anti-vaccine arguments. For instance, recently there was a report that "plant DNA" was found circulating in human blood. This was immediately taken up by all the anti-GMO crowd and focused on the presence of GMO DNA in peoples blood. What was never pointed out was that if this is true, then plant DNA from organic food and all human plant food is circulating in your blood. Our ancestors 10,000 years ago would have had plant DNA circulating around, long before "GMOs". The simple fact is that many people are idiots and gullible, but then there is another segment who have political agendas and will spread lies to or misrepresent facts to further those ends. The problem is further plagued by bad studies (see pretty much all the work done by Seralini) that incorrectly propose links to GMOs and disease. Consider the Roundup Ready gene, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase. This gene is involved in the Shikimate pathway. Glyphosate (Roundup), inhibnits this enzyme. The Shikimate pathway is found in plants and bacteria, but not in mammals and definitely not in humans. All plants contain a copy of this enzyme, its just that those enzymes are susceptible to glyphosate, whereas there is a bacterial species with a few alleles in its copy that makes it resistant. In making Roundup-ready crops, all Monsanto did was insert a different copy of an enzyme that plants already have. Everybody that eats organic food is eating 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase. It really is irrational the fear that is associated with GMOs.

Meh, thats your fault.

Why be against? What are the cons?

I don't think that the tiff files are necessary in the context of sequencing. There honestly is not much more gained anymore from reanalyzing the tiff files. At best you gain a few more reads, maybe increase the quality a bit more, but with current sequencing costs, its just not worth it. With microarrays, the standard is to deposit the intensity traces in .cel files. I grant you that it is a difficult process, but I think it is one that is ultimately necessary. In the context of high-throughput data (sequencing for example) There are relatively standardized protocols for this. The short read archive for all next-gen sequencing data is one example. The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), allows researchers to put everything from microarray data, to RNA-seq, to text spread sheets filled with rows of data, to qPCR. It is a difficult problem, but I also see little excuse for not making research data available as possible, particularly when it is funded publicly. Researchers have an ethical obligation to be a detailed as possible in their methods and honestly I do not find data dumps to be all that more difficult. In some contexts, there is clear value in wanting to reevaluate the research. Some really high profile and high impact research has been published and found to be false positives...even when there is not deliberate fraud. The first thing that comes to mind was several years ago when one group claimed that RNA-editing was widespread in the human genome. Quite a radical claim and one later shown by reanalysis of the original sequencing reads, to be a methodological fluke. This becomes all the more critical in the context of drug/toxicity testing. Seralini et al. a couple of years ago published a horrifically done study claiming that Roundup ready crops caused cancer. While the study was easily refutable on statistical and experimental design grounds, I remember reading it and the images used to support it. How much easier would it be for individual researchers to evaluate the claims if they had access to data sources such as images from other individual mice in the study, etc? I am always a bit wary of microscopy images in studies because they are always the "best" examples the researcher can find. Especially when the images are of split-YFP or something of the like. I understand, you spend hours at a confocal, you can't publish all hundred or so images and you want to make your case. But at the same time, the internet is already flooded with billions of images. Surely we can come up with a repository for microscopy images? Reanalysis of raw data has to be done carefully, but as long as it is done with care, the data extracted can be extremely useful, not to mention saving time and money. Meta-analyzes of GWAS studies have produced so many Nature Genetics papers at this point that I don't think we can deny in any fashion the value of reanalyzing raw data.

Conditional analysis can be done using several different publicly available software packages. For instance, plink has the capability to do conditional analysis as does GCTA. You look at the p-value of the associated snp after conditioning for the lead snp and see if its still has a significant association. If it does, then it has some independent effect on the trait. Conditional analysis tests snps that are in linkage disequilibrium with a snp that is associated with a trait to see if that the other snps are independently associated with the trait or simply associated as a result of being linked. Coming up with an example in this context would be slightly difficult, especially if they are not familiar with the concept.

I think that kind of depends on the definition of "raw". While sequencing data in its "raw" format is the flourescent images, typically people think of the raw data as being the sequence read itself. At least in the context of next generation sequencing, these raw reads are typically deposited in public databases and there is huge value in being able to reanalyze them. In the past I have made great use of raw microarray data, which I reanalyzed to supplement RNA-seq data. Currently I reuse and reanalyze a great deal of bisulphite sequencing data in addition to new data. Its not merely a matter of trying to reproduce the original results, in all the cases I have used raw data it was actually to discover something new, not to verify someone else's results. Interestingly, this is a very relevant discussion as PLOS has just announced a new policy that has kicked off a shit storm on twitter and the blogs requiring authors to make available all raw data.

I never said it was so because "I say so". I actually listed off many reasons why this approach is bad and does not work, so I have presented a logical argument that can be evaluated on its own right and "not because I say so. If you are going to accuse me of a fallacy, make sure its relevant first. Secondly, just because you can post a reference, doesn't make your argument less fallacious. You are still resorting to an appeal to tradition.

"Time honoring" = "Appeal to Tradition". Just because there is a long tradition of something does not make it reasonable, good, or right.

Punctuated equilibrium (lets not forget the contributions of Eldridge) has been widely misunderstood, both in science and out. Punctuated equilibrium is very different than saltationism. The former is essentially a form of gradualism and is Darwinian, but proceeding in discrete bursts from time to time followed by periods of statism. Saltationism, on the other hand, is the idea that essentially speciation occurs in a single step...it is equivalent in many ways to Goldschmidt's "Hopeful Monsters". While Saltationism is likely wrong in the majority of cases of speciation, there are a few exceptions where it seems to have been verified. Consider the case of allopolyploidy in plants, where two different species will hybridize, forming a new species in a single generation. While this is quite a bit more common in plants than most people think, it seems very unlikely in animals. Punctuated equilibrium itself is not at odds with gradualism, but is rather a certain interpretation of gradualism. Dawkins did make a distinction however in one of his later books. He pointed out that though punctuated equilibrium is a type of gradualism, it is a very specific type. Its not merely the fact that rates of evolution are variable. You can imagine a gradualist view where life is constantly evolving, even as the rate at which they evolve varies continuously along a scale. Punctuated equilibrium, however, asserts that there are extended periods of no apparent evolution, a sort of stationary phases that exists in between periods of evolution.

The reason why it is questionable whether or not Hitler was a Catholic, let alone a Christian, is because there is written record, along with eye-witness testimony of his aims, words, and actions behind closed doors. Hitler was a politician and there is nothing new about a politician lying about his beliefs for political ends. Does anybody actually believe that Obama truly was against gay marriage when he said "I am not in favor of gay marriage" (2008 MTV interview)? Of course not, he used that for political ends. That is politics. Hitler certainly was not an "atheist", but based on the records of his goals behind the scenes, it is clear he was very clearly against the Catholic and even Protestant Churches. Most of his right hand men, including those most directly involved with the holocaust were anti-Christian...even if they were not atheist. Himmler seemed to be some sort of weird neo-pagan. But Osama bin laden not a Muslim? I think there is clearly debate that his views of Islam were twisted and out of line with scripture, but I don't think that necessarily makes him non-Muslim, as there is no indication that he was anti-Muslim....on the contrary, everything he did was in the name of Islam. I think its entirely two different issues, whether or not somebody truly believes something and whether or not their beliefs are an accurate interpretation of something. In one sense, your assertion that he "is not Muslim" reminds me of those Creationists that have called me an atheist for rejecting Creationism. I truly believe in God....I truly believe in Christ, I just disagree with Creationism. Am I not a Christian because I have a different view on one part? Osama may very well have an incorrect interpretation of Islam and his actions therefore would not correctly represent the teachings of Mohammed. Does that make him "non-Muslim"...there can be no doubt he truly believed. In contrast, there is more than enough evidence to question Hitler's believe in Christianity. Secondly, Islam does not largely follow the same scriptures as Christianity. That is just plain wrong. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Koran and the Hadiths. They reject nearly all the Old Testament and the New Testament. Those scriptures play almost no role in Islam. They recognize Christ as a "prophet", but then say that the entire New Testament is corrupted and so they reject it. You should probably study this subject more before making such inaccurate statements. In the case of Hitler its not a simple case of the No True Scotsman fallacy. If we were talking about Torquemada (basically initiated the Spanish Inquisition), then yes, I think we could not sit here and say that Torquemada was not a Christian. Torquemada truly believed in Christianity...at least as far as we know...even though he committed heinous acts that do not align with Christ's teachings. But with Hitler, we have evidence of his non-public views of Christianity. Always keep in mind that Hitler was first and foremost a politician and if you believe that politicians always speak the truth in public, then you have bigger problems. However, we have records of Hitler's aims, words, and actions behind closed doors. We have the words of those closest to him. These records of his non-public views overtly suggest that Hitler was no Christian and actually saw the Christian Church, both Catholic and non as a threat to his power and something to be subverted and eventually persecuted. When you have evidence like that, its no longer a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Its a legitimate claim that Hitler was not a Christian. You can't ignore that fact. You have no reason to believe that I am not a Christian, but if you later found a journal written by me or a close confident which said that I really thought it was bogus and should be eliminated, then you would have evidence suggesting was not a Christian. We have an abundance of such evidence with Hitler, including formerly secret Nazi documents that planned a long term elimination of the Christian faith after the war. The fact that they did not do this earlier was simply because of the power of Christianity and the fact that they were in the middle of a war.

If you think about it from a molecular perspective, several hundred million years is a hell of a long time. Chemical reactions often occur at extremely rapid rates. Just think about how many reactions are going on in your body right now. Once those first molecules started hitting on the sequence that leads to life, it could have happened very rapidly.

Based on what?

That is exactly what I have been trying to state, but said so much better.

Science is incredibly competitive. You are competing for limited jobs and limited funding. High profile and high impact research rarely goes unscrutinized. In genetics/genomics, I have seen high-profile papers ripped apart within hours/days of publication. Currently there is a paper on a new method of generating pluripotent stem cells that is being challenged due to the difficulty of replication. Low-profile research can fly under the radar, but its low impact. There exists incentive for scientists to do something novel, but if an idea is well-established, the evidence will have to be much higher to overturn it. Global warming is well established for a reason, an accumulation of evidence. Getting funding for more radical research, at least from the federal government...that can be tough. If program directors and review panels are doing their job, then they will try to fund the best proposals. They tend to fund established and productive labs because it will typically give them more bang for their buck. This has the negative effect of excluding younger PIs who may have new and exciting ideas, but lack the track record of productivity and success that gives them that edge. Its the same reason why as an investor you may choose to buy stock in a Fortune 500 company rather than that new startup. You are playing it safe and going with what will most likely produce results. Another major problem is the public availability of raw data. This is gradually becoming standard practice. Most journals, at least the higher level ones, require genomics projects to deposit raw data into a public database for everyone to access and reanalyze. For climate data, much of it would likely be available as much of it is probably generated by federal agencies. I don't know what policies are standard for private data sets in this field because I do not work in climatology.

I honestly think it a waste of time to calculate the probability of life because we really have no idea of the conditions or processes by which it first arose. There are some excellent hypotheses, but even they are in their infancy. The odds could be very high if there is a sort of physical law of self-organization (that is poorly worded, but it would take to long to explain what I mean otherwise). In which case, the necessary molecules would be expected to form and organize quite often. If there is no such "law", then the probability would be very low. I prefer to take the position that we openly state that "we don't know" in cases of high ambiguity because it is the intellectually honest route.

Is Islam a religion of peace? I guess that depends on what you mean by "peace". One can point to any religion and find atrocities, but one can point to any ideology, and find atrocities committed in the name of that belief, even if it was not done in spirit. We typically think of Buddhism as a peaceful religion, but there too atrocities have been committed in its name (see modern day Myanmar), but obviously not in its spirit. If one reads the teachings of Christ, it would be impossible to think that violence committed in its name is following its doctrine. The same with Buddhism. This is not a No True Scotsman Fallacy, because the beliefs of that religion are clearly stated in the words of its founder. We can look to the teachings of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc and see whether or not an action truly follows the teachings of that faith. Imagine if an animal rights activist went out and slaughtered an entire zoo in the name of animal rights. Would anyone logically conclude that just because that individual committed such an action, that this is representative of the beliefs of animal rights activists? Of course not, we must compare the action to the teaching. Beliefs are twisted all the time and this is true of any belief, not just religious ones. The atrocities committed in the name of Political ideology drown those of religion in its blood. People say thing like "Christianity was used to justify slavery"....to some extent, but Christianity was also the driving force behind the abolition of slavery. If you look at nearly every single abolitionist of the times, they were almost all radical Christians. The abolitionists were the Bible Thumpers of their day. So lets get back to the original question of Islam. Is the violence expressed today representative of the teachings of Mohammed? I honestly have not studied the Koran and Hadiths enough to say. I spent many months in Turkey, interacting with the Turks and found many of them to express very peaceful interpretations. In contrast, I spent a year in Afghanistan where I saw the full brutality of Islamic extremism. I'm not even talking about suicide bombers. I'm talking about the oppression of women and a culture that killed and maimed little girls for becoming educated. Is that true Islam or is the true Islam like what I saw in Turkey, where women freely pursued education? I don't know, but I do find many of the arguments that confuse evil in the name of X to be a true representation of X to be grossly misinformed. Its not so simple as quote mining speeches of Hitler. Hitler was a brilliant, but evil orator and politician. Whatever was politically expedient, he used to his own ends. A very different picture of the opinion and attitude towards Christianity in the Nazi state can be seen in their actions (overt and covert) and the records of meetings, personal writings of Nazi leaders, etc. The Nazi's tried to subvert Christian teachings to establish what they called "positive Chrisitanity" which was expunged of basically everything that made it Christian and was instead based more Nazi teachings. There was also active persecution of the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church was "international" with no allegiance to any nation. As for the rest of what you say, I wholeheartedly agree, see above.

The holocaust was done in the name of Nazism and the purity of the Aryan race, not Christianity. Hitler and the leaders of the SS were certainly not Christian. The Nazi's had clear plans to "purge" Christianity of nearly everything that made it Christian. They were occultic and obsessed with a sort of Germanic Neo-paganism. This is on the level of argument that atheism was responsible for the deaths incurred by Communism.

Go right ahead. Just be aware that you are only reinforcing their stereotypes and opinions. Maybe its because I come from that background. I disagree with them creationists strongly, but I understand how the average Christian feels and acts, so I know how ineffective ridicule and disdain are. I appreciate all the more the individuals I had as professors who did not resort to ridicule, but used instead patience and logic. It is because of their efforts that I accept evolution fully. It is thanks to people who ridiculed me that I actually dug in my heels for a couple of years and refused to accept it entirely. I understand fully the frustration of dealing with obstinate creationists, but regardless of where I am in life, I have seen that patience and calm reason always win out. One thing you quickly realize is that the discussion is not only happening between you and them. You have onlookers. On public forums like these, there may be thousands or more who read and never engage in a conversation. In classrooms and other public settings, there may be dozens listening that never speak out. In public debates, there are millions watching. You may not convince the person you are talking to, but you may convince the silent onlooker. However, if you resort to ridicule, that leaves a negative impression and can that sway opinion in the opposite direction. In many public forums I have had Christians, many creationists, thank me for taking the time to explain concepts and doing so calmly. Meanwhile my opponent goes off the rails and begin calling me everything from liar to an atheist. I never convinced or swayed those individuals, but I did have an influence on those that read, but never engaged. That is a positive development, because if nothing else, there are a dozen more Christians out there who even if they don't believe in evolution personally, they at least no longer see it as a thread or something incompatible. In my opinion, the important thing here is not my feelings, but the impact I have and how I influence people. I see the promotion of science and the acceptance of concepts like evolution as an important task to the education of the public. So regardless of my frustration, my feelings, etc...I am going to use the methods of communication that I know has the greatest positive impact. To those who take issue with this, you honestly are reinforcing stereotypes and making the situation worse.

I'm certain you can find exceptions where it has helped, but one can always find exceptions. As a general rule though, its bad to base ones decisions on cherry picked examples. We are talking about the communication of science no? We aren't talking about only trying to convince a young Ben that he is wrong, we are talking about how do we convince a large segment of society that they are wrong. When an individual like Richard Dawkins or Lawrence Krauss speak, they aren't talking only to a "Ben", they are talking to thousands or millions of people. For every "Ben" they convince, they turn away thousands more and give ammo to people like Ken Ham to use. So is it worth convincing one "Ben" at the expense of isolating thousands and doing far more damage to your cause? I don't know how often many of you regularly engage with Christians, have serious relationships with them in Church and outside. Its very easy in the workplace to maintain neutral relationships where nobody discusses such things. Since I am part of a Christian community, I find that things are very different. Is not an option for me to isolate my friends or family or pastors through ridicule. Quite frankly, their view of evolution is something that rarely arises. However, I can't think of any individual who would be helped intellectually or personally by me ridiculing them. When I was in the military, the environment was very different and you get a feel for when ridicule is an appropriate means of motivation. For the vast majority of Christians, this is not appropriate. In such discussions, I have to spend a lot of time convincing them that evolution does not equal atheism and that scientists are not the enemy. These perceptions...they aren't shaped by people like Ken Ham, many of them have never even heard of Ken Ham. Typically, they are shaped by sound bites from people like Richard Dawkins which are spread across the web as proof that scientists are the enemy. Ridicule = ammunition Ridicule = isolation Ridicule has only made the situation so much worse that I can't even emphasize it enough.

The OP was rather specific about living in the original habitat that man evolved in. He even said he wants to go back to it and live there, harmonious with nature. Where's the data? Give me some references that show the data saying that the average "old age" throughout human history has been 70. How do you even come up with such an average, as it seems entirely an arbitrary cutoff? Calculating average lifespan is very straightforward. Calculating average life span after the age of puberty is very strait forward. How do you then calculate the average life span for dying from old age in ancient man? That presumes to know a cause of death when for the majority of remains, you wont know the cause of death. So I'm very skeptical of your claims and I am challenging you to show me the actual data. Show it to me and I'll admit you are right, but until then I remain skeptical. I am not discounting the grandmother hypothesis, I think it is likely right. What I am discounting is the idea that such a narrow age range is something that has been under strong selective pressure. It is you, after all, that has stated quite clearly that man has evolved to live into his 70s. I would argue that man has evolved to live longer yes, but that there is no strong selective pressure for how long he lives. The force Natural Selection declines rapidly past reproductive age. This was stated originally by Haldane and Medawar and formalized by Hamilton. Past reproductive age, one enters the "Selective Shadow" where deleterious alleles are hidden from the effect of Natural Selection. Diseases like alzheimers would be prime examples. Furthermore, genetic studies of human longevity suggest that it is a weakly heritable trait, and so it would be less responsive to natural selection acting on it. Finally, as work by Caspari has suggested, human longevity did not become common until recently, in the last 30,000 years and it appears to have been most likely the result of modernization and cultural changes.