link interesting read, no matter what side you are on
darwinism was the pit tho
but not totally wrong
if one cares to read
further

"He's not a Christian. He's a... you know, I don't know the word for it... what do you call someone who worships Krishna? Are they simply a Krishna? "

Interesting. The one follower of Krishna that I ever knew said that she believed that evolution was a fact equal to the fact that Earth is not the center of the universe. She did believe that some supreme being got the whole thing going, but she saw Darwin as a great teacher who uncovered some mysteries much as Galileo did with his telescope.

He's not a Christian. He's a... you know, I don't know the word for it... what do you call someone who worships Krishna? Are they simply a Krishna?

---------------

the word you're looking for is heretic. it's all in the first sentence.

"naw, nobody here that
smart"

*laughing*

Yeah, you're really barking up the wrong tree, here, NC. :)

news.iskcon.com/node/2319/...tion_theory

Speaking of strawmen.

"Seems like everyone gets religiously angry when someone points out the holes in their theory.

Lots of strawmen as well.

Whether you are scientist or not please just give a theory about the bird. The author himself approached many scientist asking them to present their own theories but no scientist would stand up to the challenge."

And if no one in this particular tribe can give you a satisfactory answer? What, exactly, would that mean?

Humm: "This partly explaings the anti vaccine movement."

Partly, yes.

I avoid vaccines - as does my husband - for not much reason beyond the compromising of your immune system. Getting a flu vaccine gives you the flu, it's just supposed to be much less severe than if you were to actually catch it from someone. The difference is, if you catch it from someone (which you probably won't in most cases, so long as you're smart about it), then you actually exercise your immune system by letting it do the work to make you healthy - like it's meant to do in the first place; if you get vaccinated, you're denying your immune system the opportunity to do what it's made to do, and doing that too much will allow it to atrophy. The more you get sick, the better you are at avoiding illness in the future. You know, the classic "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" shit.

Of course, it's much harder for my husband to avoid vaccines because they're required in the military. On the upside, if he has to get the Anthrax vaccine, he can donate blood or plasma for some serious fucking cash.

pp: Some of the so called natural healers go so far as to claim that germs do not really cause disease.

germs do not cause the disease. it is so simple but i have not the time to enlighten the stupid right now

hummingcurd, you get dumber by the day

pp: They believe we bring illness on ourselves through bad thoughts and that the answer is some form of faith healing or folk medicine.

and where the fuck did you come up with a statement like that?
the best natural healers believe in diet, sunshine, pure water, exercise
that is the foundation
do you really have a ged? best prove it

Dragon, unless the Mallee fowl performs its incubation instinct with exact precision there would be no continuation of the species. No survival of the species.
How does it's incubation system develop when it is only functional and viable when it is mature?

Care to answer my question, NC?

Okay, first the argument made here is a logical fallacy "argument from ignorance" we don't understand it so it can be. I assume the behavior that you are specifically ask about is the nest building of the east australlian Mallee fowl. I would argue that the complex nesting behavior is a prefect example of evolution at work. With evolution one would expect that the most complex adaptations suround those activities that have the greatest impact on survival. Nesting is a complex activity in many birds, and reptiles. One thing to consider in this case is that the needs of eggs have also evolved along with the behavior. Its quite possible that at one time the eggs were more resiliant, but were able to evolve thinner membranes etc. as the parents ability to tend the eggs increased. Consider human babies that are far more dependant then other mammals. Did they start out that way or did their dependancy increase as our ability to care for them increased? Also I would point out that adaptations can seem complex but be rather simple, For instance an alien observer might find the ability of a woman to heat her babies bottle to correct temperature 98.6, + or - 1 degree as amazing, however it is very simple the woman test the milk against her own skin which is the same as the temperature needed. The East Australians Malle fowl ability to judge temperature is probably equally as simple. Also I would point out that if behavior were preprogrammed and not evolved then we wouldn't see the huge number of failures. For every successfully nest tending East australian Mallee fowl there are many that are not successful. That lack the skills, Anyone who has raised birds can tell you that breeding birds engage in all kinds of neurotic behavior much of which is counter productive. I hope this answers your question. Personally I believe in God, but I can see by observing nature and evolution that way he designs and creates is more a of a brute force method. If evolution didn't exist, and everything was preprogrammed then everything would be in harmony and no creature would struggle and fail.

This is true, as I indicated above. But progress is being made gradually towards an understanding.

What makes us even begin to think we could possibly model consciousness? Under specific circumstances, random states can fall into, not only orderly states but self-referencing, self-organizing and even at times self-reorganizing states. In those latter states we see a primal form of memory inherent within them. On the quantum physical level, there is no uniform time that we can see. Particles are not bound by a single direction of temporal progression. Apply the first point to the second, and the self-reorganization, even anticipation towards evolutionary patterns such as "these features.. advantageous only in their present, finished form" becomes apparent. The trouble has been one of finding just precisely where the micro-macro interaction might lie within a physical, organic entity. There's the gap you're asking about.

"The theory of gradual development fails
to explain many existing features in organisms.

There is no "Theory of gradual development" in evolution and as far as I can tell it doesn't exist in any science. The closest analog to what I think you are trying to point out is "speciation" which does account for both gradual changes and ones that happen over a shorter period like the enlarging of our brains.

"because these features are advantageous
only in their present, finished form;
the intermediate stages in a hypothetical
development chain would have been useless or often harmful."

Except that many of the behaviors sited are not really all that advantageous They only work in the isolated enviorments where these species exist. For instance the mallee fowl probably started out with fairly normal nesting behavior for a bird. It's present day nesting behavior, while certainly intersting, is more likely to bring extinction then advantage. The birds use a reptilian nesting behavior. Unlike most reptiles they do not lay large clutches to account for modern mammals predatory success. Now that it's habitat has been invaded by modern mammals, it may face extinction. Perhaps this is more a sign of "natures mental retardation" then IQ.

<The theory of gradual development fails
to explain many existing features in organisms
because these features are advantageous
only in their present, finished form;
the intermediate stages in a hypothetical
development chain would have been useless or often harmful."
>

The problem here is that change can be simple and drastic, for example the difference between a reptilian scale and a feather is a mutation in a three primary genes. :
www.biology-online.org/articl...er.html
"Among others, three genes in particular-noggin, bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), and the whimsically named sonic hedgehog (Shh)-were found to result in new feathers that were rife with abnormal organization in their rachides and barbs. When Chuong's team increased the expression of noggin, for instance, they found that the rachis began to split into several small, thin rachides, and the barbs increased in number. When they increased the expression of BMP4, with which noggin interacts antagonistically, they found that the feather's rachis became gigantic and its barbs merged and were reduced in numbers. In this way, they were able to essentially manipulate the number and size of the feather's barbs and rachides.
Finally, when they suppressed Shh, they found a residual webby membrane between the normally separated barbs. "The cells there were supposed to go through apoptosis, or cell death," says Chuong, "in order to create the space between the barbs. But when we took away the sonic hedgehog signal, cell death no longer occurred. It is a similar process to that which occurs in the web of duck feet."

What can these new findings on the morphogenesis of feathers tell us about their evolution? "These results suggest that the barbs form first and later fuse to form a rachis, much like downy feathers are formed before flight feathers when a chicken grows up. Under the general rule of ontogeny repeating phylogeny, downy feather made only of barbs probably appeared before the evolution of feathers with rachides and capable of flight," Chuong says."

<"If a higher function creature can evolve from primordial slime ( a dubious proposition I admit) then it's no big deal to get to sophisticated behavior patterns in the lower function creatures." .

The problem here is that there is no higher function or lower function, while mammals have evolved so has single celled creatures algaes, molds, slime molds etc. One can expect sophisticated adaptation in both.

One more to feed Cliffie's fears:

www.chick.com/reading/tra.../0042_01.asp

Stupid planet.