lucaspa

No, it's pretty much in line with estimates done previously. It's high compared to other species. It is 120 times higher than the mutation rate in Drosophila. Over 100,000 times the mutation rate in E. coli! You just answered your own question: IF the mutations are adaptive. Mutations alone are not sufficient, you need selection. There have been several experiments done to test the neutral theory of speciation, which basically says that new species happen because of mutations and then natural selection acts to make the new species different from the old. They have all found that mutation alone is not sufficient for speciation. Speciation results from natural selection. Since natural selection works on variations, it can produce new species from the variations generated by recombination without any mutations being involved. All the studies I have seen indicate that "insulation" -- whether geographic or lifestyle -- happens FIRST and not as a result of mutations. Examples of allopatric speciation involve simply members of a species. They do not have, a priori, "new adaptive mutations". Rather, they are able to earn a living in the new area, but the adaptation comes AFTER they are there. And it is due to natural selection, not genetic drift. Yes, a few new traits can become fixed thru genetic drift, but I know of no case where speciation occurred this way. If you've got one from the literature, please share it. Futuyma in his textbook Evolutionary Biology discusses founder events -- where 2 of a species become isolated -- but even here the resulting changes are due to natural selection, not drift. As far as I know, even polyploidy does not result in a new species within a generation. The discussion of polyploidy always involves hybridzation and the papers I have seen requires several generations for the new genome to stabilize -- this stabilization resulting from crosses with the 2 original parent species and with others like itself. 1. Speciation in action Science 72:700-701, 1996 A great laboratory study of the evolution of a hybrid plant species. Scientists did it in the lab, but the genetic data says it happened the same way in nature. 2. Hybrid speciation in peonies http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/061288698v1#B1 3. http://www.holysmoke.org/new-species.htm new species of groundsel by hybridization 4. Butters, F. K. 1941. Hybrid Woodsias in Minnesota. Amer. Fern. J. 31:15-21. http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/speciation/speciation.html "Alternative Models of Species Formation -- Hybridization and Polyploidy In plants, new, reproductively isolated species may arise instantaneously, due to multiplication of the entire complement of chromosomes by a process known as polyploidy. This may occur as a result of hybridization, combining the chromosome sets from two parent species in a hybrid individual. If such hybrids turn out to be well adapted to environmental conditions, hybridization is a mechanism that produces new species. Even if hybrids are unable to undergo sexual reproduction because their chromosomes do not sort out properly in meiosis, they may reproduce vegetatively. The total chromosome number also may double by combining the chromosome sets of a single species. Of the 260,000 known species of plants, as many as half may have originated in this way. Many commercially important plants are examples of polyploidy (e.g. bread wheat, cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, bananas, potatoes). Polyploidy is an example of sympatric speciation defined as species arising within the same, overlapping geographic range. " Gould has a paper on species by hybridization in land snails -- which means polyploidy. I often post the picture as an example of a series of transitional individuals between species. It is at the bottom of the post. That sequence did not happen within a single generation. If this is a sexually reproducing species (particulary animal), no, this won't work. If you are talking unicellular and asexual reproduction, then the distinction gets fuzzier of what exactly is a species at that point. 1. Because your examples of single generation speciation don't work. 2. Because many species go extinct! Therefore individuals are not a bridge to a new species. Even if speciation is occurring, the individual spoken about could very well be one whose alleles are NOT used in the new species.

This has gone further in dogs. The biological species definition is: "Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups." Mayr. "Interfertile" is not necessary and is, in fact, the last stage in reproductive isolation. Below see a list of reproductive isolating mechanisms: "Classification of Isolating Mechanisms 1. Premating or prezygotic mechanisms: Mechanisms that prevent interspecific matings. (a) Potential mates are prevented from meeting (seasonal and habitat isolation) (b) Behavioral incompatibilities prevent mating (ethological isolation) © Copulation attempted but no transfer of sperm takes place (mechanical isolation) 2. Postmating or postzygotic mechanisms: Mechanisms that reduce full success of interspecific crosses (a) Sperm transfer takes place but egg not fertilized (gametic incompatibility) (b) Egg fertilized but zygote dies (zygotic mortality) © Zygote develops into an F1 hybrid of reduced viability (hybrid viability) (d) F1 hybrid is fully viable but partially or completely sterile, or produces deficient F2 (hybrid sterility)" Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is pg 171 In terms of chihuahas and Great Danes, 1(b) and © operate, as well as 2(b). Male great danes have genital incompatibility with female chihuahas and perhaps male chihuahas with female great danes (the male chihuaha penis would not be long enough to deposit sperm where they could make it to the female great dane uterus). We also have the problem that, even if a male great dane does fertilize a female chihuaha, the female dies (as do the zygotes) because the fetuses are too large for her uterus. You say "All modern dogs of any type are fundamentally interfertile". As far as I know, the relevant hybrid experiments have not been done. While we have "mutts", these are somewhat limited hybrids (dogs of approximately the same size) and it is not clear to me that hybrids of each and every breed is going to satisfy 2© and 2(d). If you have data that all breeds are still capable of interbreeding with every other breed and producing fully viable and fertile F1 and F2 hybrids, please let us know.

And WHY did Darwin do this? To show the transition of one species to another! This is the tug of war between disruptive selection and gene flow. No, species are the ONLY "real living" biological entities. It's just that we can't come up with a precise definition for them because evolution is true. Because populations gradually transform from one species to another over the course of many generations, it is impossible to make a precise definition of species. Whatever definition one makes, there are going to be populations in transition that don't fit the definition. The error is to think that this evolutionary reality means that species are not real.

Because evolution happens to populations, the exact point where you have a new species is impossible to define. Take a transition and at generation 1 we have species A. At generation 10,000 it's obvious we have species B. But where in that transition you get a new species is impossible to pin down. Because of the gradual nature of evolution and reproductive isolation, you cannot say "at generation 5,000 we have species A and at generation 5,001 we have species B" "This primitive configuration of pongid and hominid traits has led the discoverers and describers of these early Australopithecines to assign them to a new species. If the first Australopithecines to be discovered is properly Australopithecus africanus, the early ones, they suggest, should be Australopithecus afarensis. Not al scholars agree. I have to confess that, although I have had the opportunity to handle both the Ethiopian and the South African material with which it is being compared, and although I agree with virtually all of what its describers say in regard to its tendency to be more primitive in a series of traits, I am not convinced that the differences are pronounced enough to warrant separate specific recognition. ... "Our disagreement is merely a matter of the assignment of names. This is based on the judgement of the individual scholars and is a trivial matter, but it does point up an issue of fundamental significance. In an evolutionary continuum, change occurs more or less gradually through time. At the early and late ends of such change, everyone agrees that different names are justified, but when one form slowly transforms into another without break, the point where the change of name is to be applied is a completely arbitrary matter imposed by the namers for their convenience only - it is not something compelled by the data." C. Loring Bruce, "Humans in time and space." In Scientists Confront Creationism, edited by LR Godfrey, 1983, pp. 254-255.

That's VERY high. Other studies have gotten similar numbers but it is AT LEAST 100x higher than for other multicelled animals. Speciation requires reproductive isolation. In fact, for sexually reproducing organisms, speciation equals reproductive isolation. Mutations alone do not provide this. Uh, this is a common myth of evolution on internet boards, but it isn't true. Evolution doesn't work this way.

Yes. At the least dogs are now a ring species. However, one paper says that, genetically, dogs are now 4 species: 3. C Vila` , P Savolainen, JE. Maldonado, IR. Amorim, JE. Rice, RL. Honeycutt, KA. Crandall, JLundeberg, RK. Wayne, Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog Science 276: 1687-1689, 13 JUNE 1997. http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/wayne1.htm

That was an idea that was put forward in the late 1980s and 1990s. Paul Davies toyed with the idea of a "quantum god" in several of his books. This was built around the thought experiment often called "Schroedinger's Cat". Put a cat in a box and hook a cyanide system to some radioactive substance such that, the next time a nuclei decayed, it would release the cyanide and kill the cat. Now, without looking, could you know if the cat was dead or alive? According to quantum mechanics, it was both at the same time, however much that offends common sense. This condition of superposition of two possibilities is called "coherence" and the collapse "decoherence". The idea was that the wave function did not collapse until someone opened the box and looked. That all came to an end recently when it became possible to make a version of "Schroedinger's Cat" using microwave photons in an indeterminant state and then use an unconscious atomic "mouse" to see if the cat was "alive" or "dead". The mouse could be run by the photons and, if the wave function had collapsed, that would be detected (see next post). It turned out that just running the mouse by the microwave photon cat did NOT collapse the wave function by itself. Instead, the wave function collapsed on its own without an observer. Here are some of the papers so you can read about it yourself: 5. G Taubes, Atomic mouse probes the lifetime of a quantum cat. Science, 274 (6 Dec): 1615, 1996. 6. P Yam, Bringing Schrodinger's cat to life. Scientific American, June, 1997, pp. 124-129. Summary of recent experiments of superposition (coherence) and dechoherence. 7. GP Collins, Schrodinger's SQUID. Scientific American 283: 23-24, October 2000. Electric current flows both ways around a superconducting loop at the same time. The idea of God serving as the ultimate observer to ensure reality is now out the window. It was a nice idea while it lasted ... 5. G Taubes, Atomic mouse probes the lifetime of a quantum cat. Science, 274 (6 Dec): 1615, 1996. "How do you tell whether a cat is alive or dead without looking directly at it? Simple, answers Serge Haroche, a physicist at the École Normale Superieure (ENS) in Paris: You let a mouse run past its nose and see what happens to the mouse. Haroche is not, however, thinking of an ordinary cat. The cat in this case is Schrödinger's cat: a version of the elusive beast pictured by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in a thought experiment. Schrödinger imagined a cat shut in a box with a radioactive atom that has a 50-50 chance of decaying in an hour. If the atom decays, it kills the cat. If it doesn't, the cat lives. This setup is supposed to transfer the quantum indeterminacy of the atom to the cat, leaving it neither dead nor alive but in a superposition of both states: dead and alive. To detect this strange state, says Haroche, you make a small hole in the box and send in the mouse: "You should have one probability for the mouse to escape if the cat is alive and another one--presumably larger--if the cat is dead. With the cat in a quantum superposition, both dead and alive, these probabilities would combine in a strange way, incompatible with classical logic, in an effect called quantum interference." He adds, however, that such an experiment will never work with such macroscopic systems as cats or mice. A ubiquitous process known as decoherence will instantly destroy the quantum superposition, making the cat either dead or alive and washing out the quantum interference between the two outcomes. But by constructing minute versions of Schrödinger's cat and mouse, Haroche, Jean-Michel Raimond, Michel Brune, and their ENS colleagues have actually measured this decoherence process, as they report in the 9 December Physical Review Letters. They created a Schrödinger's cat consisting of a few microwave photons in an indeterminate quantum state and sent in a mouse--an atom prepared so that it can react to the dead-and-alive state of the cat. Investigators have caught glimpses of Schrödinger's cat before (Science, 24 May, p. 1101), but the mouse allows the ENS group to monitor its condition: to see how long the quantum superposition survives before collapsing into one state or the other. "The experiment is one of the first very controlled measurements of decoherence," says physicist Chris Monroe of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who has also been involved in creating laboratory versions of Schrödinger's cat. "Everyone thinks that you can't have live and dead superpositions in the macroscopic world. The theory shows how these things just shouldn't last long, and this is really one of the first measurements that vindicates that point of view." Laboratory versions of Schrödinger's cat look nothing like the original, but they do resemble it in existing in two distinct states at once. In the ENS experiment, for instance, the cat is a dead-and-alive superposition of two phases of an electromagnetic field resonating in a centimeter-sized cavity. (The phase of the field can be thought of as the timing of its crests and valleys.) What generates the superposition of phases is a passing Rydberg atom, an atom excited to such high levels that it swells to 2500 times the size of a normal atom. One such huge atom can easily create macroscopic changes in the electromagnetic field, explains Haroche. Before reaching the cavity, the Rydberg atom encounters microwaves that excite it into a superposition of two different energy states. When the atom enters the cavity, each energy state induces its own phase shift in the electromagnetic field, resulting in the superposition of two field states, each with a different phase. In essence, the atom transfers its own indeterminacy to the electromagnetic field. Having set up the Schrödinger's cat-type field, the physicists then probe its collapse, which is triggered by the quantum state's environment. Now they use a second Rydberg atom--the Schrödinger's mouse. "The first atom prepares this strange state," says Haroche, "and the second atom goes across the cavity and interacts with this strange state, again by shifting its phase, and then it goes out and you detect it" and compare its state with the final state of the first atom. By repeating the experiment many times, the physicists can measure the probability that the second atom emerges in a given state relative to the first atom. This "conditional probability" has a measurable quantum interference term if the electromagnetic field is in a quantum superposition when the second atom passes through. The strategy allows for two crucial measurements of decoherence. First, the ENS physicists can determine how long the field takes to decay into one phase or the other, by changing the time delay between the two atoms. "If you have a longer delay between the two atoms," says Haroche, "the coherence decays, and the second atom does not detect it anymore." They can also measure how the lifetime of the catlike field superposition changes with its size. Injecting more microwave photons into the cavity or increasing the phase difference between the two states both make the cat more macroscopic, and the researchers found, as theory predicted, that both changes sped up the decoherence. "The decay becomes faster and faster," says Haroche. This size effect, he continues, may be the explanation for why even Schrödinger's mouse would never be able to detect a full-grown Schrödinger's cat. "If you had a real Schrödinger's cat in a box," says Haroche, "you would never see the superposition, because the decoherence time is so short for big systems."

If you are hit with a mass moving at relativistic speeds, it's not "purely a manifestation of measurement" You get the impact of the increased mass.

Much better. The first notes a correlation with a specific type of cancer -- colon cancer. That's fine. The second looks very good for you in the first paragraphs, but when you get to the "meat" of the article, it isn't as definitive as you would hope: "In 1997, the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) published a review of the major studies on food, nutrition, and cancer prevention. For cancers of the breast, prostate, kidney, and pancreas, it was determined that red meat (beef, pork, or lamb) consumption possibly increased cancer risk. For colorectal cancer, a review of the literature determined that red meat probably increased cancer risk and that processed meat, saturated/animal fat, and heavily cooked meat possibly increased risk.5" Notice this isn't all cancers by any means, but just a few. And, even here, we get the term "possibly" instead of the definite "does". Then there is the other side of the coin: that fats in a vegetable diet INCREASE the risks of some cancers! http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/1998/153-03/15303-07.pdf "polyunsaturated fats in vegetable oils seem to enhance risk [of breast cancer]" "Because the Swedish women derived most of their monounsaturates from dairy products and meat, Wolk says, “we can now say monounsaturates are protective—whatever their source.” Such animal products, though rich in saturates, can be major sources of monounsaturates." 4. Carroll K K. Dietary fats and cancer. Am J Clin Nutr 1991; 53: 1064S. 5. France T, Brown P. Test-tube cancers raise doubts over fats. New Scientist , 7 December 1991, p 12. Even the first site you posted, where vegetarian diet reduced colon cancer, may be in question. Fruits and vegetables are high in linoleic acid. And that seems to make colon cancer worse! LOL! http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/44/4/1472 I can't help thinking of that old joke: eat healthy, exercise regularly, die anyway. Look, if you want to be vegan, then be vegan. It's your choice and there are benefits (and risks) in it. But PLEASE stop misusing science in a crusade to get everyone to be vegan or to justify your choice..

Remember "descent with modification" What we have is not necessarily the same as the evolutionary ancestors and, since other species have continued to be modified since the common ancestor, our modifications may not correspond with theirs. Let me give you an example. Both flies and mammals have the TGF-beta superfamily of genes. In flies it is a member of the family is Ubx and in mice it is BMP. In flies, transfection of Ubx into fly cells causes the formation of wings. But when Ubx is transfected into mice, it causes bone formation. Similar genes with very similar gene products, but very different result. Other humans share your evolution: they are members of your species. But other species have had different evolutionary histories and their "emotions" may have evolved very differently. According to our human standards! But not necessarily according to pig standards. Again we see the projection. We value certain living conditions, partly due to our evolution. But pigs have had a separate evolution since the common ancestor. You don't know that their concept of "good life" is any longer the same as ours.

LOL! Well, I suppose that is one way for the comedian to try to save his ego when the joke flops! "It was just how the probability function of the audience happened to collapse; it wasn't that my joke was bad!"

I agree. And because humans are sexually mature at age 13-14! We tend to postpone sexual activity and having babies now for a number of cultural reasons. However, none of those were operative for H. erectus or H. sapiens before civilization. Let me put it this way: establishing a nation where it's OK for pedophiles to raise kids to have sex with is both rape and slavery. Two moral no-no's. Pedophiles are saying their desire to have sex trumps the rights of children. I don't buy it.

The evidence I've seen, both in human studies and in other animals, says that sexual orientation is genetic. Change any one of a few genes and you change the orientation. Depends on what you mean by "convert". If you mean verbal persuasion, freedom of speech means that we can't forbid "conversion" to any point of view! It's OK for me to try to "convert" you to being a Democrat instead of a Republican. There are limits, of course, to the amount of persistence I am allowed to use. The problem with the theory that ALL homosexuals are solely by "choice" is that you can then condemn the situation in a way you can't if it is genetic. For instance, you can't "convert" someone from being black to white, can you? Nor can you "convert" them from having blue eyes to brown eyes. That sexual orientation is genetic means that you can't make homosexuality a crime (or even a sin). You can make certain types of sexual behavior a crime -- such as rape, pedophilia, necrophilia, etc -- but that applies to both heterosexual and homosexual behavior. Now, if Pangloss is correct and pedophilia is genetic, we have a problem. We have decided that sexual intercourse between consenting adults is morally acceptable. Some people try to put limits on that (i.e. marriage) but we all agree that there are SOME conditions where sexual intercourse between adults is morally sanctioned. Homosexual sex between 2 adults doesn't violate that. But pedophilia does violate that, because a child cannot provide adequate consent. And we agree that sex without consent is morally wrong. Whether it is rape, sex with comatose people, sex with mentally deficients, etc, it all involves a person not capable of giving consent. So, if pedophilia is genetic and a pedophile can't help being sexually attracted to children, actually having sex with children violates a moral principle. We have a moral dilemma at that point. I side with protecting the children and think all the arguments that children are "sexual" are invalid, concocted for the benefit of the pedophile.

New York is a very liberal state with a liberal governor, yet they are the ones considering it! Remember, the island is cordoned off such that escape is not possible. There's no point putting them in a geographical area if they can just swim off and escape. That may not work. And what do you do while you are doing the research and testing?

And why do we care if Gore is a hypocrite? In order to discredit the movie. Look at the last line of the argument: direct link to the movie. If the point is only that Gore is a hypocrite, then we have a wry commentary on human nature. Certainly one that does not need all the space and deception devoted to it. The thrust of the argument is that Bush is the better environmentalist. Why should we care if this is so? Because we are supposed to listen to the environmentalist on environmental issues, right? And therefore we don't listen to Gore but to Bush. The point is that anti-AGG proponents use the arguments against the AGG research! Not that people against anti-AGG (accept AGG) use these arguments. And both anti-evolutionists and anti-GW use layman arguments because the actual research refutes their position. You missed the point. The research data already refutes the anti-AGG position, just as the data refute the position of anti-evolutionists. The point is that the anti-AGG people use these tactics because their position is refuted by the data. I haven't done that. What Bascule is puzzled about is WHY both anti-AGG and anti-evolutionists tend to use variations on the same types of arguments. I gave you the reason: because the scientific data falsifies their position. Therefore they must resort to fallacious arguments.

Why would we want to do that? Flooding by hydro lakes does destroy habitat, for instance! Why? You were asking for examples of extinctions being caused by habitat loss. If you lose habitat thru a natural loss, the species that went extinct are just as extinct as they are if the habitat loss is caused by humans. We are looking at whether habitat loss causes extinctions. If it happens when natural forces destroy habitats, then it will happen when humans do it. What you are trying to do is exclude data that falsifies Lombock's (and your) position. Can't do that.

So you admit that Lomborg is using a very limited definition of "habitat loss". Thank you. Introduction of alien species also results in habitat loss by replacing the habitat that was there with another one that is dominated by the alien species. In terms of deforestation, the introduction of kudzu in the southern USA is resulting in deforestation as the kudzu chokes out the trees. Birds and insects dependent on those trees for food, shelter, etc. are going extinct thru "habitat loss". Pollution is the same thing, isn't it? If you have an oil spill, then the oil is messing up the water and destroying the habitat that birds and other marine life depend on. Instead of a habitat of clean water, you have a habitat of oil. They have had "habitat loss" and the result is loss of the population in that area. Shoot, now that I think about it, even over-hunting or over-fishing is a habitat loss for the other species in that ecosystem. Those species are a necessary part of their habitat. In doing the research to answer you, I ran into at least a dozen papers documenting the catastrophic results of losing the top predators in an ecosystem: the very species that humans tend to over-hunt and exterminate. For the rest of the species in that ecosystem, they have had "habitat loss" when those species are removed. It appears that Lombock is trying to make the very narrow point that deforestation in some areas did not result in widespread extinction. However, I'm willing to bet that he got extinction of the local population! It's just that there was enough remaining habitat -- forests elsewhere -- that the species didn't go extinct because there were remaining populations. If Lombock would have stuck to the narrow point, he might have been valid. But in extending this to generalities, he has had to ignore data and manipulate the definition of "habitat" to the point that it is no longer recognizable. It appears a classic case of overinterpreting the data and making conclusions much wider than the data can support.

The cause is not well known, but the effect is. Because the Cosmological Constant can only BE positive. Also, data indicate that the CC has been around since the beginning of the universe. It is actually increasing in magnitude. Remember, inflation was just for a fraction of a second; it was a period when expansion was geometric and faster than light. Inflation did end, but the expansion kept going on momentum. It was thought that it was possible for gravity to counter this momentum but there are 2 problems: 1. There isn't enough matter, either visible or dark, to counter the expansion even before the acceleration was discovered. 2. The expansion is accelerating, not slowing down! This makes it impossible for gravity to counter it. Already the expansion is so fast that gravity can't stop it. We make conclusions based on the data we have today, not on data we hope or wish we will find in the future. IF and when new data turns up, then we change our minds. But to insist on forcing what we would like the universe to be onto the universe is the opposite of doing science. However, right now the data falsifies a Big Crunch. Some absolutely new process would have to begin in order for the universe to contract again. All the processes we see operating right now falsify a Big Crunch.

And again you are putting the interests of Greenpeace above the interest of the whales! We don't need images of Greenpeace ships squaring off against Japanese whaling vessels to raise awareness. The images just bolster the macho image of some Greenpeace members. 1. Greenpeace is into other projects. Money raised from those could be used to fund an education and political campaign. 2. OR, Greenpeace could simply start the education and political campaign, announce it is doing that and stopping the overt confrontation, and raise money in the USA and other countries to fund the education and political campaign! DUH!

We've told you several times! Go back in the thread and read. Where are these figures? And please, dont use a Greenpeace website. Find a more neutral one. I told you about the article in Science documenting and INCREASE in Japanese whaling AFTER Greenpeace intervention. That makes no sense. Before the Japanese were actually eating whale meat. So there was an economic reason to whale. However, since then, as SkepticLance has pointed out, the market for whale meat has all but disappeared. Very few people are eating it anymore. But by the time this happened, Greenpeace had backed the Japanese into a corner and was trying to force them to quit whaling. Now we have the pride issue keeping whaling going.

So it's part of a test for sapience. Species that can't pass the mirror test are eliminated as being sapient. But by itself it is not sufficient to establish sapience. I can accept that. Bascule's position, which I agree with, is that it is unethical to use a sapient species as a food animal (unless there are very special and desperate circumstances). According to Glider, some cetaceans have. I hope he posts a reference. I have seen papers indicating cognitive abilities in several birds, including parrots and ravens. Do you have a citation for this? I'd like to put it in my FAQ file for the times creationists try to tell us how "unique" humans are.

[quote name=richardgb;346213No' date=' will needs to be explained empirically, a priory. The will of a higher entity manifests through each of us individually.[/quote] How do you know this statement is true? How do you know, by scientific data, that there is a "higher entity" and that its will manifests through each of us individually? Going further, how does having the will of a higher entity manifesting thru us give us free will? Wouldn't it be the opposite. Also, how do you explain will of the higher entity empirically? Sorry, but I don't think you understand the problem. Ultimately, the problem of free will is rooted in determinism and physics. If everything is a result of a previous cause and is determined by that previous cause, then how can there be "free will"? No choice would be "free" because it would have been determined by previous events/causes. In the 19th century when determinism ruled physics, there was truly a problem of free will. However, in the 20th and 21st century, when quantum mechanics has destroyed pure determinism and we now know some events do not have previous causes, then the future is open and free will is possible.

Yes, we are talking about 2 different things: coherence and entanglement. In coherence we have 2 quantum "realities" at the same time. In entanglement, you entangle 2 quantum particles. For an electron, you entangle the pair so that one is spin up and the other spin down. But you don't know which is which. You separate them, still without measuring them. Then you measure one of them. INSTANTLY the other one assumes the other value. That is, if you measure one as spin up, the other instantly becomes spin down. No matter the distance between them. Since in Relativity information can only go at lightspeed, this violates Relativity. From Aspect's Commentary on Aspelmeyer's data: "In contrast to wave–particle duality, which is a one-particle quantum feature, entanglement involves at least two particles. In entangled states such as those discovered by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR)3, quantum mechanics predicts strong correlations between measurements on two systems that have previously interacted but which are separated at the time of the measurement (Box 1). To interpret these correlations, Einstein said, one must accept the concept of local realism. This principle states that results of measurements on a system localized in space-time are fully determined by properties carried along by that system (its physical reality) and cannot be instantaneously influenced by a distant event (locality)." "It is then natural to raise the question of whether one should drop locality — which equates to the impossibility of any influence travelling faster than light — or rather drop the notion of physical reality." I don't see this dichotomy. Instead, let's drop the idea of the impossibility of any influence travelling faster than light! No need to drop the notion of physical reality. We've already dropped the "fully determined" that Einstein used without dropping physical reality. Now, Leggett has proposed ONE possible set of equations to have non-localit and realism. Aspelmeyer tested Leggett's equations and found they didn't work. BUT, as the Commentary says: "Following Leggett, they conclude by questioning realism rather than locality — at variance with the often-heard statement that "quantum mechanics is non-local". Interesting as this conclusion is, it remains a matter of personal preference, not of logical deduction. The violation of Bell's inequalities implied that realism and locality are not simultaneously tenable. Violation of Leggett's inequalities implies only that realism and a certain type of non-locality are incompatible: there are other types of non-local models that are not addressed by either Leggett's inequalities or the experiment." It appears that the New Scientist article overstated the situation, stating the "personal preference" as the ONLY possible conclusion. I can see how you drew your conclusion; the fault is with the New Scientist article.

I don't think that is it. Relativity is also difficult to understand, but people don't have much problem with it. Instead, I would say the correlation is: the more something contradicts people's self-interest, the less they want to "beleive" it. For many people, evolution threatens a basic belief. Geoguy made the basic threat creationists hear: "I think creatonism and the god dude is a pile of Doo Doo" The consequences of GW is that we are going to have to change our lifestyle to prevent it. Many people view that change as negative and a loss of their lifestyle. Therefore their economic self-interest is threatened. I hope you appreciate the irony of your statements. You complain about tying two separate ideas together (creationism and opposition to GW) so that one (opposition to GW) could be dismissed right after you tied 2 separate things together -- creationism and the existence of God -- so that one (God) could be dismissed! Thank you for that bit of unintentional humor. 1. No, it isn't true anymore. Humans are putting out a lot of greenhouse gasses. 2. Volcanic eruptions put out a lot of dust and mostly COOL the planet. The "year without a summer" in 1816 happened after the eruption of Tambora. 3. How would we NOT know about a volcanic eruption? We have the entire planet wired for seismic disturbances, and a volcanic eruption is a seismic disturbance. Can we? We can measure just how much forest each year is burned by volcanic eruptions. How much is that? You should be able to find out. Then compare that to known CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. Not even close. Pre4edgc, you have unwittingly demonstrated the similarity between tactics used by GW-deniers and creationists: the "facts" that you trot out are horribly, horribly wrong and any superficial search would show you that. But you never make the search. Instead, you trust someone who tells you just what you want to hear and keep with it, no matter how wrong it may be. As it turns out, GW is making wildfires WORSE. Read this article. Notice how much of the burned land was caused by volcanic eruptions. Remember, we are talking the Western USA here, and how many volcanoes have erupted there? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060710084004.htm The dinos were wiped out in less than 10 years! Remember, the earth got hit with a massive meteor at the K-T boundary that wiped out the remaining dinos.

That's part of the reason their denials are so frightening/weird. I would say that "don't know the details" is something different: they often don't know what the theories actually state. So we've got 3 things that are frightening/wierd (I find very little humor in the situation): 1. Opponents don't know what the theories really are. 2. They refuse to look at data supporting the theories (and falsifying their theory). 3. They don't allow the issue to be settled by science, but attempt to force their view on everyone else by political means.