bascule

No, there's not, because there is considerable foresight on the part of the EPA, FDA, USDA, and the scientists working on these crops. I assure you every legitimate disaster scenario you can possibly think of they have already thought of, and are testing for to ensure that it's not a problem. Basically, you're calling the scientists involved in GMO research incompetent, and saying that you're better able to forsee problems with these crops than they are. That's extremely arrogant. Furthermore, you're part of a large crowd which has spread FUD about GMO crops, and because of that FUD several African countries have banned the use of GMO crops. Alarmist groups continue to pursue countries which have allowed the use of GMO crops, hounding them with FUD as they use these crops to feed their starving populations. This is cruel arrogance...

You can't say something could "NEVER" be there in nature and genes can suddenly appear giving an organism some "fantastical ability" (that's the whole idea of beneficial mutations which natural selection favors) I can't see that happening. That'd be like saying you created, say, a flying pig, and it interbreeds with a rat, and suddenly you're beseiged with flying rats. The whole idea of speciation is that you end up with groups with compatible DNA, and if you create, say, pesticide resistant corn, it can't spontaneously interbreed with Russian Knapweed to produce pesticide resistant knapweed. And on an unrelated note, pesticides are designed to kill insects, not plants... This is a potential problem with the introduction of any new plant into an ecosystem in which it hasn't existed before. Tamarisk and Russian Olive are two examples of plants which spread rapidly through an ecosystem, the Tamarisk being brought to North America from Egypt and the Russian Olive from Southeastern Europe/Western Asia. These plants didn't have a deleterious effect on the ecosystem. This hasn't ever been a consideration of farmers who introduce large fields of crops to environments in which they didn't exist before. And even so, what wildlife are you saying will be harmed in Africa? And all of this aside, they can engineer crops that don't go to seed, so any issues of viral spread will be completely mitigated. And even so, how does any of this morally weigh against the starvation of millions? African countries have been trying for decades to increase their crop yields using conventional methods, which much combat the problem of water scarcity, poor soils, and an inhospitable climate. Norman Borlaug won the nobel prize in 1970 for his efforts in food science, using selective breeding to try to combat just these problems, and it was estimated that his efforts saved the lives of a billion people. But it's not enough, the yields are still insufficient to feed the population and it's estimated that 50,000 African children starve to death every day. Using GMO you can produce high yield crops tailored for a dry and inhospitable climate and feed these people today. You act as if no one has tried to use conventional farming methods to try to solve this problem. They have, for decades! It's not enough. I've been using this avatar since 2003...

shinbits, this Darwinism Refuted site is really cracking me up: http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/20questions02.html Notice the pathetic attempt to use "logic" to prove their point, the enormous irony being that this is pretty much a textbook example of a False Dilemma.

Big Bang Theory is awesome, although some would really wonder why the band continues calling itself Styx without founding member Dennis DeYoung, and with only two original members.

To be fair, I really don't know how anyone can criticize Bush for being a racist. He's been the only president to ever have black Secretaries of State, and gave Condoleeza Rice the highest ranking position a black woman has ever had in American government. He's been the first Republican (in awhile, at least) to significantly erode a significant margin the black vote away from the Democrats. These are hardly the actions of a racist...

Coding insert mutations can insert new genes. Honestly, I don't understand this rationalle. Mutations have been causing genes to radically transform since the dawn of life, but if intelligence is behind the process then it's the recipe for a doomsday scenario? What disaster are you specifically afraid of and how are the testing processes inadequate to ensure that such a scenario does not befall us? And please don't answer "WE DON'T KNOW." I mean, give it a try, come up with a few disaster scenarios regarding GMO organisms then think to yourself how a rigorous testing process would be able to catch these in advance.

If science was wrong about one thing, then it's wrong about everything!

Uhh, I did, see the first link I posted: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton2.html No, because doing so would make ID scientific. You see, that's how science works, you make a hypothesis, then carry out an experiment designed to confirm or refute your hypothesis. With ID, you just assume there's a God, and that's that. Can you cough up one peer reviewed paper to corroborate your claim that there's "millions of things that prove" ID?

I think the most fundamental opposition you're going to find to using young infants in lieu of animal testing is that we currently do not possess the technology to bring a human child to term without a human mother, and what human mother would wish to bring a child to term only to donate it to medical testing instead of putting it up for adoption? A human baby is a valuable commodity, both economically and culturally, compared to a chimpanzee. Even if you found a mother willing to sell her baby to those who wished to use it for medical testing, what company would shell out sufficient money to buy it when they could use chimpanzees for a fraction of the price?

No, I was saying their ability to use and store cultural information is very limited and inflexible compared to humans, which it obviously is. Furthermore, I was saying their ability to understand complex abstract concepts is limited by the above as well. Fundamentally, it's the human ability to exchange and process complex/abstract memes which gives rise to consciousness as we know it, and in my mind that's something chimpanzees simply do not possess. The marshalling power of speech combined with the abstract processing power of the cerebral cortex is what gives rise to consciousness as we experience it, as we take information garnered for speech and process it further through autostimulation of our own speaking/speech processing centers. See Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, in which he details how memes obey the laws of natural selection.

So you're inviting us to respond to your strawman by concocting one of our own? How about we engage in logical discourse instead?

I love how the source he cites for this is drdino.com, discussed at length here, which claims, among other things: "Scientists have theorized that the T-Rex could probably breathe fire" "The most up to date scientific information shows that dinosaurs did not live millions of years ago, they lived with man. There are still some around today." And what do they actually have to say about gluons? Nothing, I guess...

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp Yes folks, that's right, the strong force doesn't hold the atomic nucleus together, Jesus does. Anyone who says otherwise is advocating "a desperate theory to explain away truth"

Simple, a category fallacy.

Okay, you've just made the transition from "pesky idiot" to "full blown f*cktard" 1. Darwin never wrote a book called "The Evolution of Species." Perhaps you're thinking of "The Origin of Species" 2. You're describing eugenics/social Darwinism, which was the creation of Francis Galton, not Charles Darwin. Where? Googling for this quote turns up nothing. Considering you got the title of the book you pretend to be quoting wrong, I'm guessing this is pure bullsh*t All of this is an ad hominem argument, and therefore your logic is fallacious. Even if Darwin were "racist and sexist," that doesn't make him wrong.

That is absolutely not the case. The abstract concepts a 5 year old human can comprehend vastly outweigh what it will ever be possible for a chimpanzee to comprehend in their lifetime. A 5 year old is tied into the memetic structure of humanity, and is thus exposed to a wealth of abstract information which you can never teach a chimpanzee. For example... A 5 year old can tell you that the sun is a star, just like all the other stars in the sky, that the earth orbits the sun in the period of a year, and that the rising and setting of the sun is due to the fact that we are living on a sphere which is rotating in space. The sheer amount of abstract knowledge of time, geometry, astronomy, etc. required to impart these concepts is vastly complex, but it isn't beyond the comprehension of a 5 year old. Would it ever be possible to teach this much abstract information to a chimpanzee in its lifetime? Could you even teach a chimpanzee that the world is round? Oh, did I mention that a 5 year old can speak in natural language? That's a pretty damn impressive feat... We have a massive cerebral cortex which contains innumerable microcenters for the processing of complex abstract thought. This is where memes live, and human memes are evolving at an exponential rate, whereas chimpanzee memes are at a virtual standstill. This is what sets us apart from chimps. True enough, this is due more to a cultural sense as to the sanctity of human life than a pure intelligence metric. Look at all the fuss raised over Terri Schiavo... it seems like people really have a time grasping that consciousness is the most important quality of a human.

Yes, a strawman is a logical fallacy. If you really wish for people to take you seriously, you should refrain from using them.

Most 5 year olds' comprehension of the universe is leaps and bounds beyond the smartest chimpanzee... Why are we inferior? Nothing is beyond a sentient being's ability to comprehend so long as it's explained clearly enough, so the inferiority would be memetic/cultural, and there's enough plasticity in our species that we can be brought to the same level as whatever superbeings you want to compare us to. Not so with chimps... they lack a well developed cerebral cortex and the ability to think in complex abstract terms.

The Bible also says that birds predate land animals...

Then why is he further compounding exploitation of this tragedy to make a point about political bias in the media? The bottom line is that his argument is fundamentally based on a category fallacy... there are idiotic pundits on either side who will make stupid comments about just about anything.

Oh man, this reminds me so much of Jack Chick I just have to post this: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp Yes folks, this is what you call a "strawman argument"

It's completely unrealistic science fiction, heh...