lucaspa

LOL! We have the ultimate here in Conspiracy Theory. "The meme made me do it! I'm so intellectually impoverished that I can't throw off the meme!" Remember the scientists I chose. These are leaders in the field of evolutionary biology. Dobzhansky was one of the 3 founders of the Modern Synthesis. Ayala is the premier living evolutionary biologist. Kenneth Miller is the most able opponent of ID. It was his testimony before the Ohio Board of Education that prevented ID being taught in that state. Now, Ayala and Miller have argued against ID and creationism. So, they are critical enough of religious memes to discard some. You are saying that this critical ability is suddenly missing when it comes to examining the overall memes "God exists" and "God created"? Does Special Pleading sound familiar to you? Finally, of course, you are using a very controversial theory as tho it is fact. Memes and the behavior you are ascribing to them are far from universally supported. These guys are infected with the science meme whose one inviolable rule is: "The only rule of the scientific method is that we must discard any scientific statement if the evidence of our senses shows it to be wrong. " And you say they will discard that rule? Special pleading again. Why don't you classify atheism as a pathological meme? Isn't atheism a meme? How do you know it is not also acting with a detrimental effect on society and human behavior? Since there are scientists who are atheists, we have other scientists who are not infected with what you call a "pathological meme". They should have published peer-reviewed papers showing deity does not exist. Where are those papers? Find me a peer-reviewed paper that shows deity does not exist. If that were true there would be no agnostics or atheists at all. Besides, with the advent of secular societies, there is no punishment in this life. Now, while the threat of hellfire figures in SOME religions and some denominations of Christianity, it is absent in others. Judaism, for instance, has nothing like what you portray. Nor have I seen any threats of eternal damnation in Hinduism and the "threat" is minimal or non-existent in many Protestant denominations. So, you have advanced one hypothesis. Have you considered alternative hypotheses for the persistance of belief in the existence of deity? Let me put another, althernative hypothesis to you: theism survives like any other idea survives: because of evidence. the Soviet Gulag, the Pol Pot regime, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Unfortuantely, the pathological meme that is atheism seems to blind you to the fact that atheism is a faith. Nice pathological feature, don't you think?

It is in recorded history that humans began living in large cities. So the proof is available. Notice that humans still living in hunter-gatherer tribes speak "difficult languages", by which I mean complex languages. So I don't see your problem in the paragraph above where you don't think "cavemen" could have difficult languages. Primitive technology does not = a lack of intelligence. Nor does technology = intelligence. There are several articles and books discussing the rise of civiliations where stable agriculture became possible. The slash-and-burn style of agriculture does not lend itself to large civilizations because of the need to move frequently. In the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus Valleys it was possible to farm the same fields year after year. Because of the need to calculate when the annual floods would happen, astronomy became necessary in the Nile Valley. The excess food meant more people since peoples did not starve or die of diseases made worse by malnutrition. With the increased food came the need to keep track of the food and the labor. Also, some people were not needed in producing food. These people were free to explore mathematics and technology. Again, technology is NOT intelligence. Technology is cumulative. Also, the knowledge needed in a city is not the same knowledge needed for a hunter-gatherer society. Take most NYC natives out and dump them in the Kalahari desert and see who is "smarter", they or the :primitive" !Kung who live there. 3. WG Solheim II, An earlier agricultural revolution. Scientific American, April 1972 in Scientific American, The Origins of Technology. Now it is your turn: please document the stories of visitors who taught the early civilizations their technology. What were your sources for this statement?

Part of the problem of science education is getting people to realize that we don't know whether evolution was unguided or not. I know of at least 2 undetectable ways God could guide evolution. Since one was proposed by Dawkins and the other by Dennett (both atheists) I can't say that there is religious bias there. I fully agree. For those people who worship a literal Bible, nothing will convince them. You are telling them their god is wrong. They won't accept that.

1. ID doesn't exactly state what you say, altho it is often mistated this way. ID states that the universe and living organisms are manufactured artifacts. IDers know that these are manufactured artifacts because they are too complex to have been produced by any known physical process (including natural selection). 2. If the statements is made as you say, then the contradiction is present. That is, if you categorically state that no complex entity can arise by pure chance and that pure chance is your only choice to intelligence, then yes, there inherently is no known origin for God. However, that is irrelevant to the issue at hand. We aren't talking about the origin of God. We are talking about the origin of the universe and living organisms. Once we have answered that question, and IF the answer is that they were manufactured by an intelligent entity, THEN we ask how that entity arose. IN an identical situation, we know the universe began in the Big Bang. What caused the Big Bang? The known laws of physics break down at the BB. So, none of the processes we know can account for the BB. Does that mean BB is self-contradictory? NO! It simply means we have to answer "We don't know what caused the BB". IDers would simply say "We don't know what caused God."

This has been done before. John Haught has several books on the topic. In the 1800s several theologians looked at creation (as distinct from creationism) and evolution. James McCosh, The Religious Aspects of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, AL Moore, Science and Faith, 1889, Lex Mundi, 12th edition, 1891 Is God a Creationist? ed by Roland Frye, 1983 Remember, creation is separate from creationism. ID is a form of creationism. Creation is the theological idea that God created. Creationism is a specific mechanism of HOW God created. Evolution is also a mechanism by which God created. So the conflict, for theists, is not between whether God created or not, but by which method God created. I doubt you will make much headway here. In the case of these people, their faith is in a literal Bible, and science does conflict with Biblical literalism. You and a couple of hundred other people. What do you think is the Biblical support? This ought to be good. Have you tested your theories against the available data in an attempt to show that they are wrong?

Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein and is present as a background enzyme in the nucleus. The telomeres are elongated during that phase of the cell cycle where DNA is copied -- S phase. Most somatic cells (other than stem cells) have very little or no telomerase. http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Telomeres.html In terms of cell cycle and telomerase production in cancer, this is a good paper to start with: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/93/12/6091 It is a transcriptional control gene. Basically, it controls whether the gene for the protein part of telomerase is transcribed to mRNA. So, in cancer transription is turned on and large amounts of mRNA produced.

Dawkin's tried to promote the gene as the selection UNIT, but that is not true. The selection unit is always the individual, the package of genes. Single genes don't sacrifice themselves, individuals do. Yes, altruism can be explained because more packages of genes survive, and those packages will tend to contain the genes that program sacrifice. What you have above is the simplistic version of what happens. For cancer, checks on proliferation must be removed. That is, the cell moves through the cell cycle without ever being stopped. However, there are a number of genes involved in the cell cycle and the interaction of these genes have permutations that run into the millions. One common way for cancer is to have a mutation in p53. However, even if p53 is normal or is knocked out entirely, there are a least a dozen known ways to get around this. Also, abnormal cells undergo apoptosis. There are at least 2 dozen proteins involved in the process and double that number of proteins that can influence whether apoptosis occurs or is stopped. Again, the permutations run into the millions. So, targeting one gene product or even two or three is not going to solve the problem. There is (nearly) always going to be a cell that can get around what is blocked. Cancer also involves some other processes such as avoidance of the immune system and a way of inducing angiogenesis. One of the cures I saw in the 1980s involved filtration of the blood. It turns out that cancers produce soluble tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor that binds TNF in the blood. TNF is necessary to activate natural killer cells -- which kill cancer cells. So the researchers simply ultrafiltered the blood and removed all proteins below 30,000 MW. That got rid of the soluble TNF receptor. The results were dramatic. I saw a CAT scan of one patient where he had 10 nodules of lung cancer spread between both lungs. All gone. Five years later the nodules were back. Why? Because some few cells had another way to avoid being killed by natural killer cells. Cancers are rare because a cell must have several mutations in several areas: cell cycle control, apoptosis pathways, angiogenesis, immunogenicity, ability to get out of the blood stream (for metastases), etc. By the time a cell has accumulated enough random mutations to meet all of these requirements it has also accumulated a lot of mutations in other systems, thus allowing it to avoid a single treatment strategy or chemical. Now, one way oncologists are trying to avoid this is to use combinations of 2-3 different treatments at once. Where a cell may be invulnerable to one drug, it probably will not be invulnerable to 2 or 3. Yes, methotrexate will kill cancer cells in both you and I. Unlike penicillin if we are infected with a penicillin resistant strain. However, that is not important. We are not trying to kill a foreign invader. We are trying to kill each and ever cancer cell. And methotrexate will not kill each and every cancer cell. It is the cancer cells that are the threat, not bacteria. So yes, we can't pass on resistant cancer cells to a new individual. But who cares? It's our own cells that are going to kill us, so it is the resistance in individual cancer cells that concerns us. Yes, but not on to different individuals therefore solutions that we come up with should always be effective. not like current antibiotics. This was my point.

LOL! If so, it's not stated in the Bible. I'm always amazed at Fundamentalists who say the Bible is "inerrant" but then make the Bible errant in that there is so much that is not in it! Errancy by omission. In the Genesis 1 creation story, God tells people (men and women plural) to be "fruitful and multiply". After that, God pronounces creation "very good". Seems a strange thing to call creation "very good" if you made something "bad" in it as a test. But then, literalism leads you into all kinds of these inconsistencies.

There are over 5,000 different chemicals in cigarette smoke, very few of them have been completely identified. These are combustion products. Many of them, however, contain benzene rings, which makes them at least potentially carcinogenic.

Cigarrette smoke also contains a huge number of reactive oxygen species -- over 200 have been identified if memory serves. These can react with DNA causing mutations. What is the source of Po or Pb? I suspect Po or Pb is in the soil, so organic farming isn't going to change that. As to health care costs, remember that the cigarette smoker does not die immediately and suffers from chronic illness for years before death, including lung cancer (with the associated treatments), heart disease, and other respiratrory ailments. Here are some references where you can start investigating the monetary cost of smoking for the health care system and society. Look up the abstracts in PubMed. 1: Minkoff NB. Analysis of the current care model of the COPD patient: a health outcomes assessment and economic evaluation. J Manag Care Pharm. 2005 Jul;11(6 Suppl A):S3-7; quiz S20-2. PMID: 15998173 [PubMed - in process] 2: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Annual smoking-attributable mortality, years of potential life lost, and productivity losses--United States, 1997-2001. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2005 Jul 1;54(25):625-8. PMID: 15988406 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 3: Yang MC, Fann CY, Wen CP, Cheng TY. Smoking attributable medical expenditures, years of potential life lost, and the cost of premature death in Taiwan. Tob Control. 2005 Jun;14 Suppl 1:i62-70. PMID: 15923452 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 4: Max W, Rice DP, Sung HY, Zhang X, Miller L. The economic burden of smoking in California. Tob Control. 2004 Sep;13(3):264-7. PMID: 15333882 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 5: Pauwels RA, Rabe KF. Burden and clinical features of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Lancet. 2004 Aug 14-20;364(9434):613-20. Review. PMID: 15313363 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

In all three cases, the scientists involved took their ideas to their peers. NOT to amateurs on an amateur board. Einstein went thru the peer-review process. Darwin discussed his ideas with Lyell, Hooker, and Gray for 20 years before publishing. Galileo broached his ideas to fellow astronomers. The fora for that is scientific meetings, not here. Most exciting discoveries do have their roots in wild ideas first broached to colleagues at their institution or at meetings. One essential of introducing wild ideas is the willingness to admit the idea is wrong when confronted with existing data that refute it. This is where 99.9% of scientific hypotheses die. In the investigator's head as he tests it against data in the literature or with colleagues who know a piece of the literature the investigator does not. Unfortunately, that is not what happens in Internet forums. Instead, someone posits a brand new theory but will not listen to the data that refutes it and refuses to give the theory up. This results in a lot of wasted time by the other posters as they try to convince one person who simply will not be convinced. It is these types of discussions that tend to get squashed. In order to be a good scientist, you have to be willing to abandon an idea when the data shows it to be wrong.

As you noted in your second sentence, we do not live outside nature's way of balancing the population. We have been avoiding it because we have been expanding resources faster than we have been expanding population. However, as you noted with China, India, the US, and Indonesia, that process cannot continue indefinitely. There is finite room and arable land on the planet. Eventually, our population MUST outstrip our resources. And then our population will be balanced with food and space by nature. If it were otherwise, you would not be calling for some voluntary restriction on population. So yes, at some point we will "allow" people to die for lack of food, simply because we cannot do anything else. See? Again you confirm that humans are not outside the laws of nature. However, "virtually everyone" is not an accurate statement. Look at the widespread disobedience of Catholics over the matter of birth control. Using artificial birth control is a means of controlling the population. What's the birth rate in the US now compared to 100 years ago? 50 years ago? What's the birth rate in Europe? So yes, most people in the industrial world ARE doing something about population control -- as individuals. What you are saying is that not much is being done in the developing world. That's true. This is why I am saying that increased standard of living will do the job for you. Instead of trying to impose some unpopular and discriminatory political policy (backed by force), increased standard of living will cause individuals to decide to have fewer children and lower the birth rate. As your post noted, China isn't doing anything scientific. It is doing something political. But all the exceptions demonstrate that science is not involved. Don't blame "science" for a political policy based on an ethical decision. Science has enough problems without that. You forgot some choices: 1. Conqueor the required space. Not practical given China's limited military power. 2. Let the people starve or 3. Let them panic and try to emigrate, whereupon the neighboring countries will seal their borders and force the people to stay in China and starve. Actually, the first 2 are not China's problem, but a problem of her neighbors. I agree that the ethical choice for China is to limit her population.

Yes, but the culture is rooted in economics. As you noted, in farming communities children help with the farm. Children also provide social security. The more children, the greater the likelihood that one or two of them will be wealthy enough to take care of the parents in their old age. However, increase wealth and both these "cultural" factors go away. For farmers, increased wealth means mechanical aids to agriculture, meaning you don't need lots of kids to work the farm. And now, with your wealth, you are expected to provide each kid with his/her own room, better education, more toys, new clothes (as opposed to hand-me-downs), etc. Greater cost per kid. In terms of social security, if the parents have money, then they don't have to rely on the kids for security in their old age; they pay for it themselves. And the kids will be expected to pay their own. It won't happen overnight. It will take a couple of generations. Or maybe only 1. My great-grandparents on my father's side each had 12-13 kids. My grandparents only had 2. My parents only had 2. Quite a drop as the family moved into the middle class. All this will happen as a result of increased standard of living. Once the female has money of her own, she gains equality. She also gains power within the marriage to say "no kids because pregnancy will interfere with my salary, and we need that salary to maintain our lifestyle". Also, with increased wealth comes the desire to spend that wealth and have fun while you are young. So marriage is postponed. Also, since increased wealth is often tied to increased education, marriage tends to get postponed until after education is over or, at least, much further along. Now, the only political part I see in this would be ensuring opportunity for women to own property and work. My apologies for not being clear. I was giving a simplified view of the decline in population per generation, not per year. Obiously it is going to take many years for the previous generation to die, and so the population will not drop like this in a few years. But in the second generation -- the grandkids -- that generation will have 1/4 the people in that generation than the generation of the grandparents.

In order t have the lottery, you have to have a stable society, which means a society strong enough to suppress the fighting over women that you propose. So your ideas are internally contradictory. Also, the major flaw with eugenics is that WE know what is "fitter" in terms of natural selection. We don't. You think "stronger" or "smarter" is always a "good" thing. It's not. Sometimes little things like resistance to HIV is better than being strong or smart. If we impose what we think is a "good" character instead of leaving it up to natural selection, I guarantee we will end up with a weaker human species. Natural selection is SO much smarter than we are.

You didn't upset me and I am calm. You will never see me when I'm not calm in a science discussion. If you are claiming to do science, then the avenue is submission to a peer-reviewed journal. Trying to tell a biochemist that you have a correct new, revolutionary theory that violates QM isn't productive. If you have really tested your ideas, then run them past physicists by submitting a paper for publication. Look at what Swansout, myself, and the other scientists on the board do. We submit papers in our specialty. Those papers may be revolutionary (my first papers on adult stem cells were). When we discuss science outside our specialty, we refer to peer-reviewed papers in that specialty and do not presume to overthrow established, strongly supported theories. I would not, for instance, tell you or Swansout about a revolutionary idea on the relationship of cancer and adult stem cells until I had a peer-reviewed paper. I said available data. The data has already been collected by others, probably in the testing of other hypotheses. The only resource you need is access to a good library of journals in physics. That's hardly "limitless". 3> CQM is a term I invented and I claim authorship to the theory - correct. If I had called it some other term would it please you more? I don't care what you call it. I said as much. What I wanted was a definition of the term. I still haven't gotten that. If you look at your first post in the thread, you use the term as tho it is a standard term that everyone should know. Now we find out CQM is NOT a standard term. What's more, I had to ask twice before you admitted you invented the term. Such coyness is unacceptable. If you are going to use terms you invented, common courtesy demands that you tell us this and define the term so that we know what you are talking about. So far, there has been no coherent criticism of QM. When you make one, then I'll pay attention. You could not even remember the institution these people were at. Now, when I discuss a new idea, I remember exactly who I spoke to about it and where I presented it. Often, that talk is logged into my CV. All scietists I know do the same. You did embarrass them in anonymity by saying they did not respond and implying that the non-response was because they could not respond. So it's a little late in the day to claim you "do not want to embaress [sic] people". You already have. What you did was use some anonymous people and their "inability" to respond to your ideas as support for your ideas. I object to that tactic. The implication was that, if they could have responded, they would have. Let me offer a couple of different scenarios: 1. You haven't really broached your ideas to any physicist. Instead, you just want a biochemist to think you had as a way to gain credibility. 2. You did broach the idea. The physicist saw the flaws in it immediately. He either a) did not want to hurt your feelings and kept quiet, b) looked on you as just another crank (of dozens he has seen) and did not want to waste energy and time telling you how the idea was wrong. Because his experience tells him people who think they can overthrow QM aren't going to listen or give up their idea. It is b) that prompted me to urge you to submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal. If you are correct, it is THE ONLY way to demonstrate it. If you are wrong, then you will get a detailed analysis of why you are wrong. Now, are you willing to do what all scientists do, take the risk that you are wrong? You don't sound pompous. I said "self-indulgent". There's a difference. Which textbooks? Please list them. The units are there. In the context if not right next to the numbers. What are the units? This is the second time I've asked for units. If you are working with differential particles, you must know the units. Otherwise, you have no idea what you are doing. Define "differential particle" for me. Tell me where you got the defintion (especially tell me if you made it up). As I said, I've been doing searches thru physics sites online and "differential particle" refers to a number of things. The inexactness of the value is no support that we can alter the measurement. Ever heard of error bars? Ever heard of discrepancy between two different methods of measurement? If you are getting this only from textbooks, they are giving you a summary of the data. If you are really serious, before you make a statement like you did, you MUST go back to the original papers and see 1) how they measured and 2) what the error bars are. You contradict yourself. First, it won't take "months" composing it or formatting it. Good grief, I've got over 50 peer-reviewed publications and formatting is a pain but, with word-processors, it is easy. No time at all. Takes more time to read the requirements than to do them. Now, when you say you "must do this or do that", was that the reviewer's commments? I never said you would get published. I only said that you would get comments. The paper may indeed be rejected because it is flawed. Your comments make me think that scenario b) above is correct: you are not going to accept that your theory is wrong. Now, what is this "government intervention" thing? Is there anything to do with national security in your paper? Even if there is, it will still get published. Remember about a year ago scientists published a paper with methods in it that could be used by terrorists to make more potent bioweapons? That paper got published. QM itself is not in that category. I submit that you are already making excuses so that you don't have to admit your idea is wrong. Oh, WE are not futile and silly. However, trying to get a biochemist to validate a theory that is not accepted by the physics scientific community is silly and futile. If you want your theory accepted, you must convince PHYSICISTS. Particularly physicists whose specialty is QM. Talking to a biochemist on an internet board isn't going to do that. Only peer-reviewed papers in physics journals are going to do that. It is your behavior that is futile and silly. Simple denial of my point is not going to work. If you think the correspondence of the real number system to the physical universe is an assumption, then you are going to have to demonstrate that. Now, your "trivial" point was one of the few testable statements in your post. If the correspondence is wrong, then you should be able to demonstrate that. BTW, isn't electromagnetism a field theory? That particular field theory and real numbers seems to work together just fine. Let me say this again. Read carefully. A 100% provable theory is NEVER possible. NOT EVER. The only "100% provable" in science is when you falsify a theory. You can 100% prove a theory is false. This is self-indulgent language. Where is your DATA that QM is in trouble? I'm not a QM theorist. I'm a biochemist who's taken some courses involving QM and read some papers involving QM. I think most physicists simply ignore you, like they came to ignore Einstein. However, notice that self-indulgent language. Quite full of yourself that no QM theorist has stood up to you. And yet ... you are afraid to submit a peer-reviewed paper. I'm not upset now. I'm just vastly amused. Be rough. So far you haven't given me any data to hint that QM might be wrong. You did? When? Where is the data? And yet you won't submit a peer-reviewed paper. So much for your considertation of the "value of peer inspection". Since you won't submit to peer inspection, I can only conclude that you are emotionally attached to your work and do not want to remove that. Again, I am vastly amused. Well, maybe a little contemptuous and bored of your self-indulgence and self-contradictions. IF you had a real theory, OTOH, I would respect that. However, you are doing a song and dance to try to distract me from the obvious conclusion that you DON'T have a theory. You simply don't like indeterminancy. Tough luck for you.

A minister friend of mine told me that Fundamentalism is inherent in the idea of sola scriptura. After thinking about it, I tend to agree. Sola scripture, initially, was simply that you could find what you needed to know about God in scripture; you did not need the Catholic priests to interceded between you and God. Thus, sola scriptura was a foundation of Protestantism. However, it is a small step from sola scriptura to one of the Fundamentals: scripture is the actual Word of God. Rather than a series of books talking about God, the Bible then becomes a book written by God. (Something scripture does not claim for itself.) Now, if the Bible is written by God, then it logically follows that is accurate in everything. And thus the conflict between Fundamentalism and science. Notice we have the same conflict between Islam and science because the Quran is supposedly dicated by Allah, and parts of it are contradicted by science. Well, DUH. Since science isn't a system of ethics or morality, of course it isn't going to provide moral authority! I also submit that most people can't live with unanswered questions. The "I don't know (now)" that science must often use is something that most people can't live with. I've had several atheists, when I tell them that science is agnostic, refuse to accept that because "you can't sit on the fence". Yes, science not only can sit on fences, but must sit on fences, and sometimes must sit on those fences for a LOOOOONNNGGGG time. This wasn't where Fundamentalism started. Fundamentalism started as a reaction mostly to Higher Criticism. Higher Criticism challenged the "certainty" of scripture as authority. However, you might have a good sociological explanation for the rapid increase in recruitment to Fundamentalism. I think the merger of Fundamentalism with politics is more of a way to get authority to enforce their particular moral values on people who increasingly have a different set of morals. A multiethnic culture must, by necessity, be tolerant. However, tolerance means uncertainty. You can't say that your set of morals (say over pre-marital sex) is absolutely right. Fundamentalism gives people that "certainty". Well, republican democracy did not work for Rome when it became large and multiethnic. England itself remained pretty monoethnic even while it had the Empire. Now it is starting to be multiethnic, and they are putting more restrictions on behavior than we are. So yes, democracy may not work in multiethnic societies. However, the problem is that we are already a multiethnic country. The Fundamentalists want us to be essentially monoethnic. I don't see how we can do that.

I question your characterization of Lamarck: "Lamarck saw spontaneous generation as being ongoing, with the simple organisms thus created being transmuted over time (by his mechanism) becoming more complex and closer to some notional idea of perfection. He thus believed in a teleological (goal-oriented) process where organisms became more perfect as they evolved. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Lamarck Both spontaneous generation and goal-orientation were religious concepts. Most scientists of the day were motivated to study science in order to determine the "secondary causes" by which God worked. "But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this -- we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws" William Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise. Whewell was one of the top 5 scientists of his day, a member of the Royal Society and President of the Geological Society. He expressed an idea common during his day (and which has been dropped by the Fundamentalists). God works thru secondary, material causes. IOW, God doesn't push planets around in orbits, but rather has gravity do it, with God sustaining gravity. "A Law of Nature then is the rule and Law, according to which God resolved that certain Motions should always, that is, in all Cases be performed. Every Law does immediately depend upon the Will of God." Gravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, I, 2-3, 1726, quoted in CC Gillespie, Genesis and Geology, 1959. Today, we tend to think of material causes excluding God. That is god-of-the-gaps theology (natural = without God and God is only where natural doesn't explain) and was rejected by scientists in the 15th-19th century. Darwin was squarely in the camp of God using natural causes. First, the quote from Whewell comes from the Fontispiece of Origin of the Species. Second, Darwin was explicit later in Origin: "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual." pg. 449. [emphasis mine]

1. Darwin did not lose "a lot of faith" because of evolution. He lost his faith mainly on 2 personal issues. First, the tragic death of his favorite daughter. Darwin got caught up in a question that bothers many: how can God let bad things happen to good people -- Darwin's daughter in this case. Second, according to the Anglican Church at the time, both Darwin's father and grandfather were insured a place in hell because they did not believe in Christianity. Darwin could not understand how a loving God could condemn two such good men to hell. Now, in this case, Darwin was correct; the Anglican Church changed its views in the 20th century and dropped this particular belief. 2. Modern science arose in the 15th century. Science as we know it did not exist prior to this. Greek "science", Chinese "science", and Arabic "science all died stillborn. All lacked one or more of the assumptions about the universe necessary to do science. Those assumptions are that the universe is: rational, accessible, objective, contingent, and unified. I'll explain each of those if they are not clear. Just ask. 3. Several scholars have convincingly argued that modern science arose when and where (Western Europe) it did because the 5 assumptions about the universe necessary to do science are conclusions based on the characteristics of the Christian deity. S Jaki The Road to Science and the Ways to God, University of Chicago Press, 1978 C Coulson Reclaiming the soul of science. Christianity Today 39:64, 1995. That is, a. Because God is rational He created a rational universe. b. Because we are created in the image of God, we can understand the universe God created. (accessibility). c. God created an objective universe for us to live in. d. God, having choice, could have created the universe to be different than it is (contingency). e. Because there is only one God, the universe has a unity to it. So, this isn't about the necessity of having a belief in God in order to do science. Instead, it's about how a belief in God provided the necessary assumptions about the universe in order to do science. Now, you don't have to have God in order to have these 5 assumptions. You can make those assumptions blindly and let them stand on their own. However, making exactly those 5 assumptions from scratch is unlikely, as is shown by all the still births of science over the centuries. What Christianity provided was those 5 assumptions as a conclusion of another belief. Christianity provided a shortcut, as it were, to the assumptions necessary to do science. 4. Faith is not "in contradiction" to the spirit of science. Science is a limited form of knowing. Most of our lives are lived outside the boundaries of science. Faith is not an obscenity. Nor is faith the opposite of evidence. Faith usually has evidence. Again, science is limited in the type of evidence it permits. Science accepts only a subset of the totality of evidence. This makes science very reliable in its sphere, but also limited in what it can comment on. So, faith and science are not contradictory, but basically use different types of evidence.

This is a resource page for anyone who engages anti-evolutionists. It is a list I have compiled from the literature of observed speciation, both in the lab and in the wild. It is not by any means complete. There are hundreds more references out there: General 1. M Nei and J Zhang, Evolution: molecular origin of species. Science 282: 1428-1429, Nov. 20, 1998. Primary article is: CT Ting, SC Tsaur, ML We, and CE Wu, A rapidly evolving homeobox at the site of a hybrid sterility gene. Science 282: 1501-1504, Nov. 20, 1998. As the title implies, has found the genes that actually change during reproductive isolation. 2. M Turelli, The causes of Haldane's rule. Science 282: 889-891, Oct.30, 1998. Haldane's rule describes a phase every population goes thru during speciation: production of inviable and sterile hybrids. Haldane's rule states "When in the F1 [first generation] offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous [heterogemetic; XY, XO, or ZW] sex."Two leading explanations are fast-male and dominance. Both get supported. X-linked incompatibilities would affect heterozygous gender more because only one gene." 3. Barton, N. H., J. S. Jones and J. Mallet. 1988. No barriers to speciation. Nature. 336:13-14. 4. Baum, D. 1992. Phylogenetic species concepts. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 7:1-3. 5. Rice, W. R. 1985. Disruptive selection on habitat preference and the evolution of reproductive isolation: an exploratory experiment. Evolution. 39:645-646. 6. Ringo, J., D. Wood, R. Rockwell, and H. Dowse. 1989. An experiment testing two hypotheses of speciation. The American Naturalist. 126:642-661. 7. Schluter, D. and L. M. Nagel. 1995. Parallel speciation by natural selection. American Naturalist. 146:292-301. 8. Callaghan, C. A. 1987. Instances of observed speciation. The American Biology Teacher. 49:3436. 9. Cracraft, J. 1989. Speciation and its ontology: the empirical consequences of alternative species concepts for understanding patterns and processes of differentiation. In Otte, E. and J. A. Endler [eds.] Speciation and its consequences. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. pp. 28-59. Chromosome numbers in various species http://www.kean.edu/~breid/chrom2.htm Speciation in Insects 1. G Kilias, SN Alahiotis, and M Pelecanos. A multifactorial genetic investigation of speciation theory using drosophila melanogaster Evolution 34:730-737, 1980. Got new species of fruit flies in the lab after 5 years on different diets and temperatures. Also confirmation of natural selection in the process. Lots of references to other studies that saw speciation. 2. JM Thoday, Disruptive selection. Proc. Royal Soc. London B. 182: 109-143, 1972. Lots of references in this one to other speciation. 3. KF Koopman, Natural selection for reproductive isolation between Drosophila pseudobscura and Drosophila persimilis. Evolution 4: 135-148, 1950. Using artificial mixed poulations of D. pseudoobscura and D. persimilis, it has been possible to show,over a period of several generations, a very rapid increase in the amount of reproductive isolation between the species as a result of natural selection. 4. LE Hurd and RM Eisenberg, Divergent selection for geotactic response and evolution of reproductive isolation in sympatric and allopatric populations of houseflies. American Naturalist 109: 353-358, 1975. 5. Coyne, Jerry A. Orr, H. Allen. Patterns of speciation in Drosophila. Evolution. V43. P362(20) March, 1989. 6. Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky, 1957 An incipient species of Drosophila, Nature 23: 289- 292. 7. Ahearn, J. N. 1980. Evolution of behavioral reproductive isolation in a laboratory stock of Drosophila silvestris. Experientia. 36:63-64. 8. 10. Breeuwer, J. A. J. and J. H. Werren. 1990. Microorganisms associated with chromosome destruction and reproductive isolation between two insect species. Nature. 346:558-560. 9. Powell, J. R. 1978. The founder-flush speciation theory: an experimental approach. Evolution. 32:465-474. 10. Dodd, D. M. B. and J. R. Powell. 1985. Founder-flush speciation: an update of experimental results with Drosophila. Evolution 39:1388-1392. 37. Dobzhansky, T. 1951. Genetics and the origin of species (3rd edition). Columbia University Press, New York. 11. Dobzhansky, T. and O. Pavlovsky. 1971. Experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila. Nature. 230:289-292. 12. Dobzhansky, T. 1972. Species of Drosophila: new excitement in an old field. Science. 177:664-669. 13. Dodd, D. M. B. 1989. Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution 43:1308-1311. 14. de Oliveira, A. K. and A. R. Cordeiro. 1980. Adaptation of Drosophila willistoni experimental populations to extreme pH medium. II. Development of incipient reproductive isolation. Heredity. 44:123-130.15. 29. Rice, W. R. and G. W. Salt. 1988. Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence. The American Naturalist. 131:911-917. 30. Rice, W. R. and G. W. Salt. 1990. The evolution of reproductive isolation as a correlated character under sympatric conditions: experimental evidence. Evolution. 44:1140-1152. 31. del Solar, E. 1966. Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US). 56:484-487. 32. Weinberg, J. R., V. R. Starczak and P. Jora. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory. Evolution. 46:1214-1220. 33. V Morell, Earth's unbounded beetlemania explained. Science 281:501-503, July 24, 1998. Evolution explains the 330,000 odd beetlespecies. Exploitation of newly evolved flowering plants. 34. B Wuethrich, Speciation: Mexican pairs show geography's role. Science 285: 1190, Aug. 20, 1999. Discusses allopatric speciation. Debate with ecological speciation on which is most prevalent. Speciation in Plants 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. 5. Butters, F. K. and R. M. Tryon, jr. 1948. A fertile mutant of a Woodsia hybrid. American Journal of Botany. 35:138. 6. Toxic Tailings and Tolerant Grass by RE Cook in Natural History, 90(3): 28-38, 1981 discusses selection pressure of grasses growing on mine tailings that are rich in toxic heavy metals. "When wind borne pollen carrying nontolerant genes crosses the border [between prairie and tailings] and fertilizes the gametes of tolerant females, the resultant offspring show a range of tolerances. The movement of genes from the pasture to the mine would, therefore, tend to dilute the tolerance level of seedlings. Only fully tolerant individuals survive to reproduce, however. This selective mortality, which eliminates variants, counteracts the dilution and molds a toatally tolerant population. The pasture and mine populations evolve distinctive adaptations because selective factors are dominant over the homogenizing influence of foreign genes." 7. Clausen, J., D. D. Keck and W. M. Hiesey. 1945. Experimental studies on the nature of species. II. Plant evolution through amphiploidy and autoploidy, with examples from the Madiinae. Carnegie Institute Washington Publication, 564:1-174. 8. Cronquist, A. 1988. The evolution and classification of flowering plants (2nd edition). The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY. 9. P. H. Raven, R. F. Evert, S. E. Eichorn, Biology of Plants (Worth, New York,ed. 6, 1999). 10. M. Ownbey, Am. J. Bot. 37, 487 (1950). 11. M. Ownbey and G. D. McCollum, Am. J. Bot. 40, 788 (1953). 12. S. J. Novak, D. E. Soltis, P. S. Soltis, Am. J. Bot. 78, 1586 (1991). 13. P. S. Soltis, G. M. Plunkett, S. J. Novak, D. E. Soltis, Am. J. Bot. 82,1329 (1995). 14. Digby, L. 1912. The cytology of Primula kewensis and of other related Primula hybrids. Ann. Bot. 26:357-388. 15. Owenby, M. 1950. Natural hybridization and amphiploidy in the genus Tragopogon. Am. J. Bot. 37:487-499. 16. Pasterniani, E. 1969. Selection for reproductive isolation between two populations of maize, Zea mays L. Evolution. 23:534-547. Speciation in microorganisms 1. Canine parovirus, a lethal disease of dogs, evolved from feline parovirus in the 1970s. 2. Budd, A. F. and B. D. Mishler. 1990. Species and evolution in clonal organisms -- a summary and discussion. Systematic Botany 15:166-171. 3. Bullini, L. and G. Nascetti. 1990. Speciation by hybridization in phasmids and other insects. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 68:1747-1760. 4. Boraas, M. E. 1983. Predator induced evolution in chemostat culture. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102. 5. Brock, T. D. and M. T. Madigan. 1988. Biology of Microorganisms (5th edition). Prentice Hall, Englewood, NJ. 6. Castenholz, R. W. 1992. Species usage, concept, and evolution in the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Journal of Phycology 28:737-745. 7. Boraas, M. E. The speciation of algal clusters by flagellate predation. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102. 8. Castenholz, R. W. 1992. Speciation, usage, concept, and evolution in the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Journal of Phycology 28:737-745. 9. Shikano, S., L. S. Luckinbill and Y. Kurihara. 1990. Changes of traits in a bacterial population associated with protozoal predation. Microbial Ecology. 20:75-84. New Genus 1. Muntzig, A, Triticale Results and Problems, Parey, Berlin, 1979. Describes whole new *genus* of plants, Triticosecale, of several species, formed by artificial selection. These plants are important in agriculture. Invertebrate not insect 1. ME Heliberg, DP Balch, K Roy, Climate-driven range expansion and morphological evolution in a marine gastropod. Science 292: 1707-1710, June1, 2001. Documents mrorphological change due to disruptive selection over time. Northerna and southern populations of A spirata off California from Pleistocene to present. 2. Weinberg, J. R., V. R. Starczak and P. Jora. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event with a polychaete worm. . Evolution. 46:1214-1220. Vertebrate Speciation 1. N Barton Ecology: the rapid origin of reproductive isolation Science 290:462-463, Oct. 20, 2000. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5491/462 Natural selection of reproductive isolation observed in two cases. Full papers are: AP Hendry, JK Wenburg, P Bentzen, EC Volk, TP Quinn, Rapid evolution of reproductive isolation in the wild: evidence from introduced salmon. Science 290: 516-519, Oct. 20, 2000. and M Higgie, S Chenoweth, MWBlows, Natural selection and the reinforcement of mate recognition. Science290: 519-521, Oct. 20, 2000 2. G Vogel, African elephant species splits in two. Science 293: 1414, Aug. 24, 2001. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5534/1414 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. Dogs no longer one species but 4 according to the genetics. http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/wayne1.htm 4. Barrowclough, George F.. Speciation and Geographic Variation in Black-tailed Gnatcatchers. (book reviews) The Condor. V94. P555(2) May, 1992 5. Kluger, Jeffrey. Go fish. Rapid fish speciation in African lakes. Discover. V13. P18(1) March, 1992. Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. (These fish have complex mating rituals and different coloration.) See also Mayr, E., 1970. _Populations, Species, and Evolution_, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348 6. Genus _Rattus_ currently consists of 137 species [1,2] and is known to have originally developed in Indonesia and Malaysia during and prior to the Middle Ages[3]. [1] T. Yosida. Cytogenetics of the Black Rat. University Park Press, Baltimore, 1980. [2] D. Morris. The Mammals. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1965. [3] G. H. H. Tate. "Some Muridae of the Indo-Australian region," Bull. Amer. Museum Nat. Hist. 72: 501-728, 1963. 7. 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Spong is a pretty bright guy: What Spong doesn't mention is that there is a long history in Christianity of "two books". That is, there are two books about God: the BiBle and Creation. "the great book ... of created things. Look above you; look below you; read it, note it." St. Augustine, Sermon 126 in Corpus Christianorum "Man learns from two books: the universe for the human study of things created by God; and the Bible, for the study of God's superior will and truth. One belongs to reason, the other to faith. Between them there is no clash." Pope Pius Xii, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science, Dec. 3, 1939. Now, if God really did create, what did He create? Why, the physical world that science studies, of course! This means that, for a Christian, everything in the physical universe was put there by God, either directly or indirectly. God wrote the book of Creation. To deny what that book says, which is what creationists of all stripes, including IDers, do is to deny God. Again, Spong is wise, but I think he overlooks that there is now a new religion that calls itself Christianity, but isn't. It's Fundamentalism, after the Five Fundamentals published between 1900-1910. This religion does not worship God, but instead has made their literal, human interpretation of the Bible into a god for them to worship. Darwinian thinking does indeed threaten Fundamentalism; if fact, it destroys Fundamentalism because it shows that the literal interpretation that is their god is false. If Fundamentalism takes over real Christianity, then Spong's "petty, small-minded enterprise that must hide in ignorance and fear lest it be destroyed" will come to pass. Francis Bacon saw the danger of a literal interpretation 400 years ago: "This vanity some of the moderns have with extreme levity indulged so far as to attempt to found a system of natural philosophy [science] on the first chapters of Genesis, on the book of Job, and other parts of the sacred writings ... because from this unwholesome mixture of things human and divine there arises not only a fantastic philosophy [science] but also an heretical religion." Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1xiv But Darwinian thinking doesn't threaten Christianity: "If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437; quoted by Stephen Neill in Anglicanism, Penguin Books, 1960, pg. 240. "Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, The Religious Aspects of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, pg 68.

If you are doing that, Poul Anderson in the 1960s did several stories on a planet with intelligent beings on a world that was tide-locked so that there was a permanent day side and night side. It was part of his Polsoltechnic League stories. The world was Ikranaka but I don't remember the title of the stories.

Just reading the words of the OP, the background on the poster is hinted at but not explicitly stated. Yes, speculations are presented as tentative hypotheses about the questions that arise from the present work. For instance, my latest paper on the use of adult stem cells to treat crush injuries of the spinal cord documents that the adult stem cells improved functionality. There follows in the Discussion several speculations about the mechanism by which the stem cells worked, because the gross histology does not overwhelmingly support that the stem cells differentiated into neuronal cells to regenerate the cord. Thus, we speculate (tentatively hypothesize) that the stem cells could 1) produce factors to stimulate host nerve cells, 2) stimulate host cells to produce factors to stimulate host nerve cells, 3) provide a scaffold for the growth and reconnection of host nerve cells, or 4) subtly reconnect individual nerve tracts that do not show up on gross histological examination. Now, this is designed to prompt discussion of future experiments to test these individual possibilities and see if anyone has data that would refute or support one of them. Like you said, speculations are not "theory A is wrong (despite all the supporting evidence) and I say another theory (not published in the scientific literature) is right, and I will put this new theory out to non-scientists."

So "Complex QM" is a term that you have made up. Fair enough. Now define it for me, please. Simply, completely. 1. You haven't given any units. Are you talking energy, size, what? 2. A quick Google search gives me articles using the term "differential particle" in a number of ways, none of them having a value of 10^40 in any measurement system. Please give me a reference, preferably online. 3. Yes, the Planck length is much greater than 10^-1600. Not surprising when you can't even remember who you suggested this to. Have you written a paper and submitted it to a peer-reviewed physics journal? Do that and I guarantee that you will get a reply in the form of the reviewers' comments. Until you do that, talking about it to non-physicists on boards, especially in the cryptic and self-indulgent language you use, is pretty futile and silly. Nonsense, you should tell it as simply, but completely, as possible. Science is about public results. This is part of the self-indulgent language I referred to above. That's not an assumption. It is a supported hypothesis. That is, it has been tested. Why would you think it an assumption? Sorry, but that is not possible. You have the Problem of Induction and the inability of deduction to prove. I suggest you read David Hume and Pierre Duhem. They are the ones that did the original work in this area. Inductive logic cannot "prove" because you cannot really extrapolate from the subset of observations to the entire set of all objects. In deduction, there are always more tests to make and the hypothesis/theory is likely to fail. So, science can 100% falsify a theory. It is 100% certain that the earth is NOT flat. It is 100% certain that proteins are NOT the hereditary material. But science can never "prove" a theory. What happens is that the evidence is so strong in support that we accept that theory as provisionally true unless and until new data is found. "Supported" means that you have data to support the theory, data obtained in efforts to show the theory to be wrong, often data that is explained only by that theory. Actually, that is not your "priviledge". It is your psychology. As it was with Einstein. Refusal to (provisionally) accept the indeterminancy of QM (like Einstein did) says something about your psychology, but nothing about QM. Einstein made himself the laughingstock in physics in the 1930s by his refusal to accept QM (his Nobel was given for his paper laying the groundwork of QM, how's that for irony?) altho he was still revered by the general public. He was respected within physics for his work on Relativity, but ignored and ridiculed for his refusal to accept the data on QM. It appears that you also refuse to accept data. You can't do that and still be a scientist.