If Darwin was correct

[Xin Yu]

Boris,

Thanks. I think I like that website and will look at it. Meanwhile I'll shut up on this topic (follow me: ha ha ha )

That does not mean I'll be persuaded. Scientific research results published and won the Nobel Price were later proved to be wrong; The world's top intellegence agency claimed that Saddam had WMD and later proved to be wrong. So don't expect me to believe something posted on the web

[Provost Harrison]

Jesus, this place is full of f*ckwits

[Combat Ingrid]

[Provost Harrison]

I mean, some people have tried to reason and to educate, but some people on this thread, no names mentioned, are so utterly dense that it just frustrates me to the core...before people start coming in and talking about what they think is true and false, at least know what the f*ck you are talking about!

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Thanks. I think I like that website and will look at it. Meanwhile I'll shut up on this topic (follow me: ha ha ha )

It is an invaluable website, I'd strongly encourage reading it thoroughly. You'll note that, unlike Creationist websites, TalkOrigins links to rival sites so you can get all the perspectives.

Would that I could find such willfull ignorance about this amusing. It isn't, however, given the attempts of Creationists to undermine education.

That does not mean I'll be persuaded. Scientific research results published and won the Nobel Price were later proved to be wrong;

I'll need specifics on that claim. Cite?

The world's top intellegence agency claimed that Saddam had WMD and later proved to be wrong.

Yes, but this has nothing to do with scientific research.

So don't expect me to believe something posted on the web

You'll note that TO always cites sources in its articles that are peer-reviewed scientific papers or from reputable experts in the field. They don't just make claims, they support what they say with evidence.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Scientific research results published and won the Nobel Price were later proved to be wrong;

I know of no instances where a Nobel Prize laureate was found wrong for the research for which he or she received the Prize. Of course, that does not preclude some of them having strange ideas in other areas.

Published papers are another matter all together. The recent case of the Bell Labs guy who fudged his data is a good example, however nobody claimed the peer review process is infallable. We are not talking about religions here.

[Xin Yu]

Nobel prize winner proved to be wrong...

I proved one Nobel economic prize winner wrong by myself . My paper was not published but it was part of my PhD dissertation. Result: I got my PhD degree.

Basically I proved that the nobel prize winner's logic was like this: 'since, given any odd number, there is an even number greater than it, the largest number must be an even number'. He also assumed two things: a) an investor has unlimited borrowing power and b) the same investor wants to optimize return/risk ratio. However the two assumptions are not realistic: if one person has unlimited borrowing power, why on earth does he need to care about risk? He just go to Las Vegas to play black jack, and keeps double down on every bet -- with his unlimited borrowing power he will sure beat the house.


Now follow me: ha ha ha

[Boris Godunov]

Okay, I you said earlier it was a nobel prize for science. Economics is certainly not science, so the comparison is hardly appropriate.

Ha ha.

[Xin Yu]

I said 'scientific research', meaning using scientific method to do research, not 'research in scientific area'. Do you think the two are the same?

Unfortunately, no example so far for science area. I only know that the Quark Model in physics is becoming more and more controversial. Nobody dare to claim that it is wrong at this moment. Probably in the future.

[trev]

God has never sanctioned vilence as a means for spreading his gospel and crushing opposition. If you wish to oppose my statement, use genuine examples only please.

Once again despite my pleas that genuine examples be used, only those that do not fit my statement are used as 'counterexamples'. The gospel is the good news that is preached about Jesus life, death and resurrection, and the availability of forgiveness offered by God, this relates to times since the death of Jesus Christ only, not the examples people are giving from the Old Testament. God has never sanctioned the use of force to spread Christianity or to defend it.

[Boris Godunov]

I sincerely doubt the economics model proposed was formulated using the scientific method.

[Xin Yu]

Well, it has a name of '**** model' and was using linear regression. My major was statistics so that's why my PhD dissertation could discuss it.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Ask Carl Sagan. Wait he dead. He used that to explain how long man has been on Planet Earth.
If the life of Planet Earth was 365 days, man would have only lived the last 4 hours out of 365 days.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Second, the evolution theory does not consider the side effect of a gene change -- deficits (i.e., mental retardness, lack of ability to bear children, etc.). Do you expect a clear cut change from one type of gene to another? That may not happen in real world. Deficits will appear. And what happens when a child is born with deficits? It will be abandoned or killed and never get a chance to retain its new gene.

The reality is you don't understand how evolution works. Obviously there are cases where mutations make an animal sterile, but these are fairly rare. Mutations frequently are not advantagious, and are therefore generally not passed on. What happens is there are rare mutations which are simply outright advantagious and provide and evolutionary advantage and get passed on, or a change to the animal's natural enviroment makes a mutation or trait that would previously be a disadvantage is suddenly an advantage.

An example of this phenomenon occuring is with the red-bellied black snake of Australia.

The toxic cane toad has placed evolutionary pressure on snakes to adapt their body shape, Australian researchers say.

Evolutionary biologist Ben Phillips and PhD supervisor Professor Richard Shine of the University of Sydney say some snakes have grown longer, an adaptation that makes them better able to survive their toxic meal.

The changes in body length, which have arisen in the past 70 or so years since the cane toad was introduced to Australia, were reported today online ahead of print publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"I'm particularly interested in evolutionary biology and from that perspective, cane toads represent a really strong selective force," Phillips told ABC Science Online.

Cane toads (Bufo marinus) were first introduced to Australia in 1935 to eat sugar cane beetles.

But Phillips said little was known about how the toads affected native animals that tried to eat them.

A large gland on the toad's shoulder is packed with potent cardiac toxins and most species of Australian snake die after trying to eat the toad, he said.

In previous research, Phillips sampled snakes from around Australia and found the cane toad toxin did not affect all snakes the same way.

He found that larger snakes were less affected by toad toxin. In particular, the snakes with the larger ratio of body-length to head-size were less affected.

The bigger a snake, the smaller its head is compared to its overall body length. And since the size of a snake's head limits the size of its prey, this means a larger snake is less likely to eat a large enough toad to poison it, said Phillips.

Phillips thought snakes might actually have evolved their body shape in response to exposure to cane toads.

To test his theory he looked at how four species of snake in Queensland changed over time, before and after cane toads were introduced into their area.

He studied 600 preserved specimens dating back to the beginning of the last century from the Queensland Museum.

He predicted that two of the four species, Pseudechis porphyriacus (red-bellied black snake) and Dendrelaphis punctulatus (green tree snake), were highly sensitive to toad toxin.

He thought the other two, Hemiaspis signata (swamp snake) and Tropidonophis mairii (keelback snake), would not be.

Over the 70 odd years since cane toads invaded, Phillips found the sensitive snakes got longer by around 3-5%, while the other two snakes didn't change length.

Phillips said the fact that morphology, such as arm, leg and toe length, is generally inherited, and the finding that only the sensitive snakes got longer, supported his theory.

"It probably means the impact of toads has been slightly reduced through time as a consequence of snakes evolving in response to them."

He said researchers did not often see such rapid evolution.

"I think part of that reason is that there's an idea amongst biologists that evolution takes a long time and so people tend not to look for it in short time-scales," he said.

But he suspected rapid evolutionary changes were more common than scientists thought.

"It may be a force that's ameliorating conservation concern impacts like invasive species."

Phillips said cane toads were still marching across the north of Australia and will have reached the Western Australia border by the end of 2005.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_1250708.htm

Prior to the appearence of the toxic cane toad on Australia, the snake having a smaller head in relation to its body size was a harmful trait. This means after all the it can't swallow the same size prey that other snakes it size would eat. However when it prevented it from being able to swallow a toxic cane toad that would have killed it, this trait becomes a lifesaver and gets passed on to the next generation while the big mouthed Red-bellied Black Snakes died far more frequently.

Over the longterm, its likely that Red-bellied Black Snakes less sensative to the cane toad poison will evolve since those harmed the least by the poison have a better chance of surviving a reproducing. At this point you will have multiple major differences in the Snake's traits from its ancestors. If you have another population of Red-bellied Black Snakes geographically issolated on another island without toxic cane toads on the island, assuming both group's survival, they will eventually become so genetically different as to become seperate species. The rate the two groups become different will be magnified if additional enviromental factors are different or become different on the two islands.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Xin Yu

That does not mean I'll be persuaded. Scientific research results published and won the Nobel Price were later proved to be wrong; The world's top intellegence agency claimed that Saddam had WMD and later proved to be wrong. So don't expect me to believe something posted on the web

The difference of course is that Linus Pauling, Crick and Watson and Alexander Fleming's 'believers' and 'followers' do not then go about slaying anyone who doesn't 'believe' in the 'true' account of D.N.A. or the efficacy of penicillin. Also these scientific discoveries and theories aren't pulled out of the equivalent of a scientific top hat.

And of course, unlike the Immaculate Conception, transubstantiation, biblical creation and metempsychosis, scientific theories may be tested to destruction.


See, Darwin worked with physical evidence unlike the monks who tried to work out how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, or whether the body of Mary was free from original sin, et cetera, et cetera.

Similarly, geologists don't go to the Bible, like Archbishop Ussher, and add up the dates and years therein to find the age of the earth.