Your. Link. Is. Broken. Which. Ironically. Is. What. Is. Wrong. With. Your. Argument.

A Question of Balance
 

I think you've got me all wrong, Sebby. I don't believe that taxes are a tool for social engineering. Progressive taxation is a means of wealth distribution, but I disagree that it's socialism. I think that progressive taxation provides a means for maintaining infrastructure and a basic safety net. I don't advocate equality of outcomes. Hell, even if I believed in it as a positive good, I would recognize the fact that it isn't an achievable goal.

My only reason for addressing wealth disparity was to decry the fact that the current administration, among its other spendthrift habits, is going full-guns attempting to reverse progressive taxation, and that that is part of what is creating the widening gap in our soiciety.

If there are any states that do that, then the Christian mullahs truly have won.

But that doesn't rule out that this is effectively what is going on in individual school districts, which I would be willing to bet is true - but I have no evidence yet to confirm this.

but we could articulate a test to determine if it is true, right?

Before dragging this one out of the closet again, please show us a picture of God, and proof that the subject is the one true God.

They're not mutually exclusive if God sent the lightning bolt.


And if it can't be done it proves...what?

Newton had a lot of holes in his theories that he couldn't find an answer to. Other scientists filled the holes later. Have I missed an announcement or something? "OK scientists, times up! It's 2005! Put down your pencils! All gaps in your unfinished work are to be filled by God!"

Why does "no current answer for gap" have to equal "whole theory is wrong"?

this ends up being PBPOTD

My apologies. Here's the text from Amazon.com --

• Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis (Hardcover)
  by Lynn Margulis (Editor), René Fester (Editor)
  
  
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  Only 1 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
  
  18 used & new available from $15.00

or this, if you're cheap ---

• Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (Paperback)
  by Lynn Margulis
  
  
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  Availability: Available from these sellers.
  
  
  
  7 used & new available from $17.85

Translation, Please
 

Que?

Translation, Please
 

Flying Spaghetti Monsters. Definite omniscient entity of the New Millenium.

Isn't there a rule against one's own sock awarding a POTD to said one?

Translation, Please
 

Definitely. I have been touched by His Noodley Appendage and embraced the one true religion - Pastafarianism.

Ramen.

I'm not on your kid's school board, so I really don't know.

Can you get God to smite the teacher dead?

Translation, Please
 

D= Decade

This book is what you're talking about?

Have you read it? I couldn't get through the whole thing, but the part I did get through isn't doing what you think. She (and she is no Eva S in the looks dept.) is proposing a way that a change in an individual can become a fixed characteristic of a population.

She does not mention ANY way that a single cell can develop an organ system. Also, she certainly does not explain how to test the non-existant theory. Soup says we have to be able to prove stuff.

Translation, Please
 

Thank you.

Hank? Please postulate a theory disproving the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Translation, Please
 

Exactly. My. Point.

doesn't the gorilla look like TK?

Translation, Please
 

Really? If your Point. Is. Simply. That. Evolution. Has. Holes. That. Can't. Be. Or. Aren't. Yet. Explained. then you, Panda and balt may be less apart than you seem to think.

If your point, however, is also that they need to talk -- in a science class, not a philosophy or religion class -- about those gaps being filled by the Christian God, perhaps even to the exclusion of Budha, the Muslim God, and the FSM, well then you'd need to answer Wonk's, balts, and Panda's questions.

Nuh uh!

A Question of Balance
 

"I don't believe that taxes are a tool for social engineering. Progressive taxation is a means of wealth distribution, but I disagree that it's socialism."

You've been conversing with me too long. I believe there's a contradiction there.

But as to your second point, I agree. You're right. I can't challenge that. All I can offer is the caveat that it is but one of many parts adding up to wealth disparity, and nowhere near the largest of of those parts.

Translation, Please
 

This is crap. The discussion actually wanders into an area where I have some experience and ideas, and I get no love for it. Balt makes one damn post and he gets cited??

You suck, Gattigap. I'm taking my primordial ooze and going home.

Translation, Please
 

No. My point has always been that the people who rise to the bait of calling people who believe in creationism idiots, themselves typically are just buying into evolution based upon FAITH, and no more.

What is different between laying out in school 1 the primordial ooze theory, which is untestable and really just hindsight reconstruction to explain something non-creationists want explained and 2 maybe God started stuff and it evolved from there and he came back occasionally to prod (i.e. Organ systems start).

They are both non-testable and both solely faith based. Why should one be taught but not the other?

Over a billion years, a whole lot can happen. Universes are created a destroyed. You're analyzing in your mind, using your short, human, compartmentalized notion of time (and what can happen over short intervals) a theory involving minor mutations taking place over incredibly long periods of time. You're evaluating the swings of blue chips using criteria one would apply to tech penny stocks.

The "incredible systems" you cite are not that incredible at all when you conssider the expanse of time nature has had to work on them. If I had 500 years to live, I assure you, I could beat Tiger Woods silly at Augusta by the time I was 435.

Translation, Please
 

you're being modest about sharing your knowledge?

Translation, Please
 

Sorry, soup. If it makes you feel better, you have my proxy. I can't follow all the big words, and even though I suspect that Hank has to google the stuff he uses, I rely on you guys to call him on it.

These simpletons say that single-celled animals evolved into everytihng. I ask, focused example now, how does a single celled animal that splits to reproduce become Sebastian Dangerfield who has a penis that ejects fertilizing sperm, usually into Kleenex, but on occasion into a mate, and someday resulting in offspring.

What possible mutation could cause that change? And how would we test? Becuase these ideolouges are saying you can't mention creationism in schools because it solely relies on the untestable.

Translation, Please
 

No shit. Why is he dragging my ass into this?

Translation, Please
 

1. No. I believe in God. And I believe Creationists are idiots. Simple rational thought leads to me to both clonclussions. That Creationists are idiots is inescapable. Algebraically, "X" = "willful ignorance of the obvious" in the equation "X x Mind = Belief in Creationism."

2. People who believe in Evolution do not take it as faith. But its pretty fucking obvious from the fossil record, and if you've been to a zoo lately, that some animals evolved from others. I look at an ape and, again, its fucking inescapable that we all came from a shared foundation. If that doesn't work for you, compare our dna to that of apes.

3. You confuse the anger and frustration of evolution supporters with some sort of "secular faith." You're dead wrong. We're just frustrated that anyone can look at the obvious support for evolution, as imperfect as it is, and choose to believe in something as stupid as Creationism. And whats more frustrating is to realize those people know they're wrong, know they sound idiotic, but refusse to capitulate because they believe their ignorance is "faith."

My God encourages me to think and learn, not stick my fucking head in the sand and make a goddamned ass of myself. You are free to make a fool of yourself believing whatever you like. But don't try to teach it to my kids.

I was referring to her more widely known theories regarding endosymbiosis, which led to her theory of symbiogenesis. I provided endosymbiosis as an example of how a specialized structure might have arisen inside a single-celled organism, and as a backdoor introduction to her theories of symbiogenesis as a mechanism for the development of an organ system.

Regardless of whether you buy the latter, it is silly to say that evolution requires that a single cell can develop an organ system. Evolutionary mechanisms are the subject of great debate and theories like those of Gould and Margulis continue to move the field forward - regardless of how attractive or ugly their authors might be.

Over a billion years, you will have trillions of trillions of mutations. In 20000 men may lay eggs and women have gills. Who the fuck can tell?

Gould probably looks pretty unattractive at the moment.

Translation, Please
 

You're equating a flaws in a theory that, to my understanding, is the foundation of modern biology (the vast majority of which IS testable) to tenets of theology which is almost entirely untestable.

Which class they should be taught in is one difference. Your argument seems to lead us to a conclusion where there must be moments of silence during the teaching of evolutionary theory in biology, because if it's not a testable portion of the theory, then we have to either say nothing, or include EVERYTHING about all possible explanations.

This solution strikes me as an impractical one, but that may be because I am less familiar with what you clearly consider to be crippling shortcomings of evolutionary theory. But if a solution is to take those fragments of "unproven" theory and toss it in a philosophy/religion class where we can discuss them together with Jesus, Buddha and Flying Spaghetti Monsters, then I'm cool with that, even if we create those new classes while cutting Art, Music and Sports from the school budgets.

Your apparent inclination to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

1 mutation that could do it, or a step towards it. that's all I ask.

Evolution is pretty certain- we've actually found a frozen mastodon, it's hard to not get it became elephants. But the gaps aren't just tiny gaps that are nitpicking- they're huge- big enough for Penske's first wife to run through big. Why does Seb say I'm crazy for merely saying you guys shouldn't be so sure, when YOU CAN"T EVEN GIVE ME A THEORY- fuck testable, I'll throw that out- just give me one possible mutation that could lead to organ systems.

Translation, Please
 

I don't know the "primordial ooze theory". Can you provide a cite?

You can teach "maybe God started stuff and it evolved from there and he came back occasionally to prod (i.e. Organ systems start)" all you want - in religion class. Again, it does not belong in science class.

You are going to come back with, Well, how does evolution belong in science class then? Depending on your definition of "primordial ooze theory", I am guessing I would say either you are mischaracterizing evolution or you are wrong - it is testable, but I await the cite.

Yes, but he would be comforted by the fact that he is driving evolution of lower life forms like never before!

Translation, Please
 

You mean "taught in a science class", right?

On the surface my answer is, because while I know there is no way to prove god's existence, I do not know there is no way to test theories about the jump from single-cell to multicell.

But at a deeper level, I don't think the God-stuff should be taught in a classroom because it just isn't scientifically useful. The "God just makes it happen" theory is intellectually lazy and is no use to the scientist at the lab bench.

Setting aside (here comes a theory) for a second the endosymbiotic hypothesis, and the fact that single-celled organisms do bind each other, and that such binding could result in division of labor, resulting specialization, and so on until multi-cellular organisms form and that perhaps analysis (here comes the test) of DNA sequences from well-preserved ancient eukaryotic organisms compared to DNA sequences from cells of specific tissues could yield information to help solve your problem...setting that aside...I don't think you can assume based on the discussions of this board whether your question is testable or not. It's a lawyer board.

Simple. First you have a mutation (or series of mutations) which create single celled organisms that instead of drifting apart stay stuck together. In the particular environment in which these cells reside, that provides an advantage in collecting resources.

A second mutation enters, which allows that later generations from that organism will differentiate depending on where they are within the structure. Improbable? Yes, but in the context of a reproductive cycle of less than a day, streched over 2-3 billion years, it becomes somewhat more likely. True organ generation is simply a refinement at this point.

Serious, Hank, this is 9th grade biology. Ever seen a coral? A sponge? A flatworm?

You would test by creating a hypothesis and then observing the world to see if that hypothesis is empirically confirmed or denied. The fact that a test is not double blind does not make it scientifically invalid (nor does that fact make faith a scientifically valid test). But this is neither here nor there; there exists plenty of controlled studies demonstrating evolution.

Contrast this to the sheer offensiveness of creationism: if your body was designed intellegently, the designer wasn't very bright. Our knees are stupid. Ankles? you've got to be kidding me. Bipedal locomotion? Seriously? Five fingers seems pretty arbitrary, especially in whales. Bilateral symetry is pretty dumb for many ecological niches.

Tadpoles
 

I have recently really enjoyed watching our aquarium, where tiny little frog eggs turned into tadpoles and some of the tadpoles grew up into frogs. We now have a couple of frogs in a separate tank. There are still some tadpoles starting to grow legs.

It is an amazing thing to watch. To think, the eggs came from just a couple of little cells and ended up as frogs. I have no idea how they got from one point to the other, but it is a true miracle.

It also was sad. Not all the tadpoles made it.

Translation, Please
 

Some of us had former (professional) lives. We evolved into lawyers, driven by the selective pressure of higher paychecks.