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Espritch
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
 Posted - 11/06/2002 : 22:28:11
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I recently watched a show on PSB called "Secrets of the Dead." The episode I watched dealt with the bubonic plague and with a gene found almost exclusively among people of European descent that provides immunity to this disease. People with one copy of the gene were resistant to the plague: they caught it but had enough resistance to survive. Those with two copies (one from each parent) were completely immune to the plague. Apparently they lack a receptor on white blood cells that the plague used to attack these cells. Interestingly, this same receptor is used by the AIDS virus and people with this gene from both parents are immune to AIDS as well.
I found this show interesting as an example of how evolution works in humans. The gene became widespread in a population as a direct consequence of providing a selective advantage (immunity to the plague). 500 years later it is providing to some people, quite by chance, immunity to a completely unrelated pathogen.
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Tim
SFN Regular
USA
775 Posts |
Posted - 11/07/2002 : 04:10:42 [Permalink]
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| I caught a show on Discovery Science or Civilation or something a couple weeks back that mentioned the plague immunity, but the HIV thing is new to me. I'd love to read more about it if someone knows where. |
"We got an issue in America. Too many good docs are gettin' out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their -- their love with women all across this country." Dubya in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 9/6/2004
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Avenel
Skeptic Friend
USA
60 Posts |
Posted - 11/07/2002 : 08:44:32 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Tim
I caught a show on Discovery Science or Civilation or something a couple weeks back that mentioned the plague immunity, but the HIV thing is new to me. I'd love to read more about it if someone knows where.
See <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_plague/index.html>. |
"How many angels can swim on the head of a beer?" - Roger Ramjet |
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Terryt88
Skeptic Friend
USA
120 Posts |
Posted - 11/07/2002 : 12:49:11 [Permalink]
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The link is a really interesting read.
Be careful, when you click the link it adds that '>.' to the end of the URL and will result in a "Oops, page not found...". To read the link, just remove the '>.' from your address bar.
I felt cheated at first.  |
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got something for you
New Member
3 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2002 : 10:56:49 [Permalink]
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Evolution? Quite the contrary. Evolution has long been explained as the addition of genetic material (i.e. apes to humans), not the decrease thereof. All species variations are a result of decreasing information and only impact "minor" morphological traits of a species. i.e. dog breeds If one were to allow all the various pure breeds to start inter breeding, given enough time, you would end up with a non-descript, run of the mill mut. In other words, still a dog.
"It's highly unusual," says Dr. Stephen J. O'Brien of the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. "Most genes, if you knock them out, cause serious diseases like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia or diabetes. But CCR5-delta32 is rather innocuous to its carriers."
Even with this account, and even though there are beneficial results, you DO NOT end up with a new species of humans, only those with the ability to withstand certain evironmental hardships, as a result of LOST genetic information. Wait until someone is able to finally demonstrate the addition of genetic material (statistically impossible for your frog to prince scenario) before you start sounding the atheistic charge.
When will you guys finally accept the truth? Evolution (Macro-Evolution) - is bankrupt. It never happened and never will. It is intellectual suicide to think otherwise.
(side note - micro evolution is actually species variation, morphological variations of the same kind of organisim. Gen 1:21-25) |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2002 : 12:14:12 [Permalink]
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Okay I'm taking odds here.
Five will get you ten that "got something for you" is a one shot creationist. Another one of these morally bankrupt Xians who attack science because they believe in magic and then run.
I bet we won't see him again.
Any takers?
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2002 : 16:18:34 [Permalink]
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Not taking your bet, Slater, but one question for something, at the expense of my sanity:
What is the biological mechanism that prevents microevolution (that would be the kind even reality-challenged dogmatists such as yourself can't deny) from becoming macroevolution?
Oh, and I just gotta know, since not a single one of your ilk has ever answered, what in the name of Jebus H. Krishna is a kind?
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I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.
-Agent Smith |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2002 : 16:51:54 [Permalink]
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Oh come on PhD. Something just said that if you stop the artificial forces that are causing dog breeds to diverge into separate species they won't diverge into separate species. Which means that he knows how evolution works in practice because he clearly states how to stop it.
He also said that it was impossible to gain genetic material. That means that he hasn't grown from beyond a single cell-which must make it difficult to type. Or perhaps he is saying he is a clone with but a single parent. Best not to ask clones and semi-zygotes what a "kind" is.
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2002 : 18:56:49 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Slater
That means that he hasn't grown from beyond a single cell-which must make it difficult to type.
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I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.
-Agent Smith |
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got something for you
New Member
3 Posts |
Posted - 11/15/2002 : 23:34:39 [Permalink]
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May I make a suggestion as to better your understanding of what truly constitutes an increase in genetic information? Please read a beginner's intro to Genetics.
The earlier reference to our having originated as single cell organism is very misleading. While we can agree that a human adult is the product of cell division many times over and that the original fertilized cell contained all of the genetic material needed for the resultant and mature individual, we are diametrically opposed as to from whence that original genetic material originated. I am not sure what you are claiming introduced that new information required for converting one organism into another but I dogmatically assert that the genetic differences has always been and was made so by a creator. Perhaps that is why the mad scientists are so busy creating monkeys that glow in the dark, further corrupting creation.
There is still no scientific evidence to support your implication that we are products of an elaborate process of evolutionary stages that began with primordial ooze, continuing to bacteria, amoeba or whatever single celled organism they're using with that theory and ending with humans as a hypothetical end product.
The genetic material present in a singled cell organism just does not contain enough "information" for it to eventually and by some form of intervention that you have yet to explain become a more complex organism. You insulted your audience by likening cell division, the propagation of already existent genetic material, to the sudden and yet to be discovered positive introduction of genetic material, resulting in an entirely new organism. To do so was untruthful, misleading and rather inappropriate.
Besides, if this so called science were just that, these processes would be demons ratable or at least visible today. We still do not have any verifiable transitional forms. There are even published reports of blatant attempts by the scientific community to mislead the general populace into thinking otherwise. These proposed processes take more faith to believe than the prospect that a transcendent being started it all and maintains it to this very day. (Here's another one for you - What started the Big Bang? The very process necessitates the existence of something/one self existent and completely removed from the event in order for it to have even been started. I of course don't hold to that theory but we can at least reason it out on that level.)
Are you unaware of the propaganda spoon fed to individuals starting with the grade school years which causes them to take the THEORY of EVOLUTON as Gospel? It certainly does help to cloud their minds from thinking rationally about what is plainly seen in the various scientific disciplines, huh? OR are you willingly ignorant of these truths knowing that you will some day need to give account for your life so you flippantly thumb your nose at the Holy and immutable Divine?
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To respond to your question about just what would constitute a "Kind". I am not sure what a Kind would be. Scientists have managed to classify similar organisms down to such detailed differences that it may cause us to be blinded by what might be otherwise obvious (if we were already subjected to those classifications). Perhaps a kind is constituted by those organisms with the capability to interbreed, which would be an obvious indicator of genetic compatibility.
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2002 : 00:21:35 [Permalink]
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Well done. That's got to be the most concise post I've ever seen that manages to incorporate all the major long-refuted creationist pseudo-arguments and includes a healthy degree of unfalsifiable pseudo-science, unworkable pseudo-logic and unthinkable pseudo-philosophy. I suppose you want answers?
Go here or even here. Knock yourself out.
Anyway, jolly good argument, blah blah, you've stumped us all, yada yada. Clearly, all new stuff we've never seen before. Please allow us to slink back into our dark sin-caves, where we can conspire with Satan to falsify some more trilobite fossils. |
I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.
-Agent Smith |
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Tim
SFN Regular
USA
775 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2002 : 02:59:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
There is still no scientific evidence to support your implication that we are products of an elaborate process of evolutionary stages that began with primordial ooze
I'm a little confused--As usual. Is 'got-something' another one of those people that doesn't understand the difference between evolution and abiogenesis?
quote:
We still do not have any verifiable transitional forms.
"Verifiable" must be the key word here. Is this that old argument that since we weren't there to witness something, (other than that which finds its' origin in scripture), then it never really happened, despite the abundance of evidence from several different disciplines of science?
I wonder 'got-something', what do you make of archaeopteryx, ambulocetus, and australopithecus? How about the sorting of ferns to gymnosperms to angiosperms in the geological column?
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"We got an issue in America. Too many good docs are gettin' out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their -- their love with women all across this country." Dubya in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 9/6/2004
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2002 : 04:20:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
Besides, if this so called science were just that, these processes would be demons ratable or at least visible today. We still do not have any verifiable transitional forms.
The fossil record sez otherwise, bro.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~reffland/anthropology/origins/comingonto.html
http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_05.htm
When you come right down to it, all fossils are transitional. Evolution never sleeps. Even ourselves are gradually evolving into something different. Neat thought, huh?
f
PS, if someone could shorten that link and make the page easier to read, I'd appreciate it. I don't know how to do it.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2002 : 10:10:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
We still do not have any verifiable transitional forms. There are even published reports of blatant attempts by the scientific community to mislead the general populace into thinking otherwise.
OK, you made this claim, now I want examples.
The Intelligent Design crowd needs for there to be no transitionals. They have achieved this by simply ignoring what makes these fossils transitional.
Because archaeopteryx has been classified as a bird, case closed. Never mind it's reptilian features. That's how it's done. They seem to be waiting for a classification called transitional. That isn't going to happen.
We have whales with legs, dinosaurs with feathers, fish with feet. The list goes on and on. The fossil evidence for fish to reptile is a joy to behold. (Maybe a reptile is a "kind" of a fish?)
But as long as some of those animals are classified as fish, and others as amphibians or reptiles, they will be ignored by the ID crowd. They really do want a missing link classification. Apparently, they cast a blind, irreducibly complex eye to the evidence.
And they accuse scientists of intellectual dishonesty? Really!
If they allow for transitionals, Intelligent Design will go the way of the Dodo. So they must cling to their dogma in the face of the conflicting evidence that Got Something chooses to call "blatant attempts to mislead."
Again, I feel compelled to point out that if there was evidence that actually overturned evolution, the default position would not be a supernatural one.
What would be refreshing, and unlikely, would be if these guys would send up a hypothesis that could actually be tested. Must be nice to just sit back and attack an overwhelmingly excepted theory without the burden offering a hypothesis that is actually falsfiable.
Intelligent Design is their name and pseudo-science is their game....
Again, Got Something, back up your claim that "We still do not have any verifiable transitional forms. There are even published reports of blatant attempts by the scientific community to mislead the general populace into thinking otherwise."
Put up or shut up.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2002 : 11:02:45 [Permalink]
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Hmm.
Our friend Kil seems to have gotton a little over-enthusiastic. EVERYBODY HEARD YA THE FIRST, FREAKIN' TIME!!!!
But, I must agree with Kil. Words without evidence are no more than words, scarcly worth the whisper of wind through the larnyx that sounded them.
Do please, put forth your evidence.
f |
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2002 : 12:26:05 [Permalink]
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I am not sure what you are claiming introduced that new information required for converting one organism into another but I dogmatically assert that the genetic differences has always been and was made so by a creator.
You can be as dogmatic as you please, but the biggest problems of your theory of a "Creator" saying a magic word and animals appearing like in some night club magicians act are that--
1) There is no such thing as magic.
2) There isn't any Creator.
is still no scientific evidence to support your implication that we are products of an elaborate process of evolutionary stages that began with primordial ooze, continuing to bacteria, amoeba or whatever single celled organism they're using with that theory and ending with humans as a hypothetical end product.
You have that backwards. It is your theory of Magical Origins of the Species that has no support.
Evolution was a well supported fact known long before Darwin's time. In fact his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had written a book on the subject. Evolution is based entirely on evidence.
The Theory of the Magical Origin of Species is based entirely on fraud.
The genetic material present in a singled cell organism just does not contain enough "information" for it to eventually and by some form of intervention that you have yet to explain become a more complex organism.
The "information" that would have caused the original single celled animals to mutate was available in radiation (solar, cosmic and terrestrial) and in their interactions with the chemicals they came in contact with in their environment
Please explain just how a pile of magic dirt becomes an adult man just by blowing on it?
You insulted your audience by likening cell division, the propagation of already existent genetic material, to the sudden and yet to be discovered positive introduction of genetic material, resulting in an entirely new organism.
You don't know where "the sudden and yet to be discovered positive introduction of genetic material, resulting in an entirely new organism " comes from? It comes from fucking.
There are even published reports of blatant attempts by the scientific community to mislead the general populace into thinking otherwise. These proposed processes take more faith to believe than the prospect that a transcendent being started it all and maintains it to this very day.
If you want to play science then you are going to have to follow the rules of science. If you claim there is a "transcendent being" that is the originator and maintainer of the biological process then you are going to have to actually produce it.
You can't just make empty claims that are so obviously BS. Trot your transcendent being out here, or stop talking nonsense.
Here's another one for you - What started the Big Bang?
Nothing.
Does God look more like his mother, or does he favor his dad?
I of course don't hold to that theory but we can at least reason it out on that level.
Are you unaware of the propaganda spoon fed to individuals starting with the grade school years which causes them to take the THEORY of EVOLUTON as Gospel?
They take it as FACT, which it is. Proven fact.
They don't take it as "Gospel", because the Gospels are obvious fiction.
OR are you willingly ignorant of these truths knowing that you will some day need to give account for your life so you flippantly thumb your nose at the Holy and immutable Divine?
My thumb was not the digit I was being so flippant with. Rather one more centrally located.
Because there is no Holy, there is no immutable Divine. There is only you. You spouting bronze age fairy tales, because you are afraid of the modern world. You who want to drag our children back into the dark ages. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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I am not sure what a Kind would be.
Then let me inform you. "Kind" is a meaningless term used in the OT because it's authors were clueless.
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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