Arete

There's a coupe of major issues with the poster's statement. 1) Biological evolution, as defined by biologists, is a change in allele frequencies in a population, over generations, through time. This is directly observable, particularly in populations with short generation times, Ergo, biological evolution is a rather indisputable fact. 2) As has already been mentioned, evolution is not a cognizant process. Mutations simply happen, and they are either deleterious, advantageous or (mostly) neutral to the survival of individuals. Accumulation of random mutations, in concert with selection over long periods of time leads to the emergence of complex traits. A real time example is the emergence of citrate metabolism in E. coli in Richard Lenski's long term E. coli experiment. 3) Because of how biologists define evolution, the best example of a "partially evolved" trait would be one that is not fixed in a population - i.e. it is present in some individuals in a population, but not others. It may become fixed in the future, but may also be lost through a combination of selection and stochastic processes. An example would be the mutation which allows lactose tolerance which is present in up to 90% in some human populations, and as little as 10% in others.

Congratulations!

I'm always curious why conservative Christians are so against gay marriage when Joseph had two dads MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.

This sounds like a logically devoid game of "Simon says". As in, if you say "Pigs can fly" we can reject it as proven incorrect by data, but if you say "God/the Bible says that pigs can fly" we are expected to unquestionably accept it in the face of contradictory observation. I for one find that a rather unsatisfactory position. It basically gives you a logical loophole to make any spurious claim you want to and demand it be valid.

Are you aware of the current pandemic of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) which is causing a current mass extinction of amphibians? 30-40% of amphibian species being endangered is about right, according to most estimates. http://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11466.full

Religious deities are supernatural. Therefore not natural. Therefore not measurable. Therefore not science. Please take the preaching elsewhere, as this is the wrong place for it.

Genuinely curious - 90% of Americans support background checks for gun purchases, yet the NRA does not. If the NRA does support some form of gun control, I'd be interested to know what it is.

One of the main issues in responding to this kind of terrorism, is that a core part of the radical Islamic narrative is that the West hates Islam, is at war with the Islamic world and ultimately wants to eradicate Islam from the face of the planet. This may seem ridiculous to you and me, who have never really borne any ill will towards Muslims in general, but it is important to note it didn't just appear out of nowhere. There's a long history of the West not exactly being great for the Islamic world - annexing their countries (e.g. Pakistan), fighting proxy wars in their countries (e.g. North African Front - WWII, Afghanistan in the 70's), redrawing their borders without consultation (e.g. Partitioning of the Ottoman empire), propping up violent dictators (e.g. Saddam Hussein, Ali Saleh), Invading their countries (e.g. Turkey, Iraq x2), etc. I'd like to note that understanding the history that leads to Islamic terrorism in no way condones it, it doesn't matter what motivates it, it's abhorrent. However, understanding what motivates it makes it obvious that any act of violence, or declaration of violence, particularly those that would cause civilian casualties, or even worse, deliberately targeting civilians perpetuates and strengthens the narrative - which is what ISIS and Al Qaeda use to recruit. For example, statements by Trump about muslims are currently being used in recruitment videos by ISIS. I mean think about it, say your brother was deployed to Iraq. ISIS find out your sister is getting married, so they drop a bomb on the Church and kill your extended family, or at least say they will. Does that make you want to enlist to fight them more, or less? Violence begets violence, at least in this case. We need to find a different solution.

Could you point me to the passage that contains the p values?

Ok, sure - given a literal interpretation of Genesis thoroughly contradicts observed, empirical data, it can be rejected as a valid scientific hypothesis. Done. Edit: To make it clear, this certainly not to say the science and religion are incompatible - far greater scientists than I have publicly reconciled their faith with science - e.g. Francis Collins and Francisco Ayala. However they do tend to not be literalists. Heard it here first folks, the head of the Catholic church is not a Christian. Not in science. You don't get to ignore observations in favor of your pet hypothesis, or the one that supports you ideology, or personal prejudices. Citation needed.

Ergo, you want science to make a special exemption to its standard of rigor and accept a literal interpretation of the old testament, We will have to agree to disagree - as would a large proportion, perhaps even a majority of Christians, including the pope. No secondary source is considered evidence in of itself - especially if it contradicts empirical data, Bible, Koran, Torah etc included.

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

It also seems to assume that "science" is a single method for investigating a hypothesis - where as there is almost always a multitude of scientifically valid ways of approaching a problem, and frequently vigorous debate among scientists as to the best way to approach it, and different answers dependent on the approach. It's not like science/scientists are a monolithic group uniformly demanding "this is the way it must be done!" - so long as the method meets the basic principles of scientific investigation (e.g. falsifiable hypothesis, a priori criteria for acceptance, controlled experimentation, etc) there's usually more ways to "skin a cat" than there are cats.

"Well the data were very convincing and the analyses all highly significant, so we were about to write it up for Nature, but then damn Watkins called 'intuition' because he didn't want to miss his Saturday golf game, and we had to reject the study in its entirety."

"He strode into the disease stricken village full of confidence. He stood tall and proclaimed "Rejoice people, I have brought things to change your lives for the better!" The villagers exclaimed with joy. What had the man brought? Medicines? Vaccines? Water filters? Food? The asked. "No" He stated "Much better than any of those! I have brought the King James Bible on an original Kindle for EVERYONE!"

I do teach at the college level. I'd tell you that you're welcome to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

You have already been shown that speciation has been directly observed. Ignoring this fact does not make it go away, nor does shifting the goalposts or obfuscating. http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Observed_speciation

Actually, a dose of praziquantel to treat schistomiasis costs about 20c US. Your presumptive comment insinuating I care only about technology that impacts me neglects the number of years I have and continue to spend researching methods to combat neglected tropical diseases. But you, know, give a man a kindle and you'll feed him for... well... and cure him of?

I agree. Cease all research on treatments for multidrug resistant bacteria, the artificial pancreas, nuclear fusion,carbon sequestration, affordable electric cars, etc.

When someone has equated a change in hairstyle with speciation, any possibility for sensible discourse on the topic of evolution is pretty much gone.

Your initial claim was that natural selection did not exist. Are you now changing that claim to Something along the lines of "Species (with slow generation times, as you've excluded microbes) only evolve into like species - e.g. a fly into another fly and not an elephant."? That would be a classic strawman of evolutionary theory - evolutionary theory never predicted that a single speciation event would result in a drastically different organisms. If a population of fruit flies woke up one day and discovered that they'd suddenly become elephants it would thoroughly contradict our current understanding of evolution. As such, criticising evolution for not observing something it never predicted isn't really a valid criticism.

I have previously cited observed speciation via natural selection.It does not exclude speciation via neutral evolutionary processes. Are you claiming something else? If so where's the evidence?

Unsure how this is relevant - it has also been demonstrated that neutral processes like genetic drift are also powerful evolutionary forces, particularly in small populations.

Learning is harder than making stuff up, (the Stearns paper is actually a relatively easy read, if you are scientifically literate)