201. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #127052 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 8:18 pm

-Shmeezers

Evolution isn't doubted by pretty much anyone who understands it, and isn't supposing there isn't a god. It is an explanation that doesn't require a god, but doesn't specifcally assume that there isn't one.

Intuition is wrong so often that it's next to pointless, and "reasonable" is clearly subjective in the manner in which you are applying it.

I think you misunderstand the nature of posterior probabilities if you think I didn't have a point.

If you want to say that a designer does not exist, then you have to provide a better explanation. This has never been provided. THUS, if evolution were to be honest with itself, it would say, "Maybe a designer exists. I don't know. I will not rule out this possibility unless I can assuredly say one does not exist." You cannot simply throw away the need to answer this question. It is fundamental to evolution’s worldview.

You don't understand; evolution makes no claim as to the existence of a god, or of the non-existence of any gods. It has nothing to do with gods, it has to do with an actual process.

There are atheists who believe in evolution, and there are theists who believe in evolution.

As to atheists, most don't claim that there isn't a god, they say that they don't believe in one; that there isn't evidence for any god's existence. Certainly, evolution can bolster this position in a way, as it doesn't require a god to explain the variety of life on earth, but it's by no means necessary, but evolution makes no claim, it merely points out that a god isn't necessary for the explanations.

I don't rule out the possibility of a god, but I certainly don't see any evidence for one.

The burden is on evolution to prove an alternative explanation, because it assumes something that flies in the face of reason

No, and you'll never get anyone to believe that. The unfalsifiable claim of the existence of a god is the claim that needs to have proof. Evolution can be observed, and could be falsified; the existence of god can't. If we had to accept any proposal unless we could disprove it you would have to believe in every god, in leprachauns, faeries, magic, psychic powers and so on, all without evidence, simply because you can't prove that they don't exist. That's an illogical position and not one that you can argue with a straight face.

The burden of proof is squarely on those who assert the existence of a god.

202. New meat-eating dinos identified

Comment #126905 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 1:04 pm

righton -

Look at timelines, dinosaurs were around for over a hundred million years (~160 million); Neanderthal existed less than a million years ago, only a few hundred thousand years. Even going back to Australopithecus it only extends to about 4 million years ago, so Dinosaurs existed for 40 times that length of time, and were composed of hundreds of genera and thousands of species.

Not surprising then? With 500 genera and thousands of species over 40 times the period of time, they've got a lot more chances of being fossilised.

203. New meat-eating dinos identified

Comment #126893 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 12:47 pm

You know, it explains a lot, this fundie idea that every animal ate plants designed for it.

Clearly carrots and parsnips were designed for easy consumption by snakes, they'd be easy to swallow whole! Not quite sure what the venom was for, but meh...

204. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #126878 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 11:56 am

I've never liked looking at probabilities in hindsight.

Looking at the hand of cards one is dealt, one could say "Wow, what are the chances of getting this exact hand of cards! It's incredible!". Of course, that's true of every hand of cards one is dealt. And you had to be dealt a hand of cards, so the probability is an illusion.

The same type of thing holds with any of these arguments about constants or how well the earth is situated; only in a universe suited to life could the question be asked, so it is irrelevant to look at values in which life couldn't ask the question. This is simply the Anthropic principle. While there may be an underlying reason for the values (and science might discover some rules) it's also possible that it just is. Whether this is the only universe, or whether there are many, the only way anyone can ask the question of whether the constants are finely tuned is if the constants are right to support asking the question, which somewhat deflates the sense of improbability.

205. New meat-eating dinos identified

Comment #126854 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 11:00 am

Oh, that's so depressing. You are absolutely right, elfinabout, they've done a giant disservice to science with their choice of words.

206. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #126851 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 10:56 am

;)

---- more seriously,

Sad that in the modern world we have these throwbacks to the middle ages. It's not just in the middle east either, when my wife was growing up in Toronto one of her neighbours killed another neighbour for using voodoo on him. The superstitions are everywhere. Granted, it wasn't in the legal system...

207. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126847 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 10:51 am

I'd have gone with adrenaline, but that's too common a handle in the gaming world, and phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase was too long ;)

208. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #126845 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 10:47 am

You think that's bad, she turned me into a newt!

209. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126839 by Epinephrine on February 14, 2008 at 10:42 am

Perhaps Annabanana meant "should" in the sense of "would be expected to"; as in "given the flight schedule, she should be in Ottawa by now".

That seems a legitimate way to use the word in that sentence; it would be expected that given our evolutionary history as social animals, we would (should) not be intentionally harming one another.

210. Earliest bats did not 'see' with sound

Comment #126589 by Epinephrine on February 13, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Yup, the d'oh! sounds like a click now, because they say it so much faster. The beauty of evolution :D

211. Bill Maher on Larry King Live

Comment #126527 by Epinephrine on February 13, 2008 at 12:51 pm

Heh, recent article showed that obesity and smoking cost governments less money, not more - they cause early death, saving money in the long run.

212. Earliest bats did not 'see' with sound

Comment #126515 by Epinephrine on February 13, 2008 at 11:48 am

Given that fruit bats (megachiroptera) as a rule don't have echolocation either, I'm not that surprised. The exceptions are stunning - the fact that some microchiroptera are most closely related to megachiroptera, rather than other microchirpotera suggests that echolocation evolved more than once, as does the exception of a type of megachiropter that uses echolocation in caves.

Tree of life:bats
Bat genetic analysis
Egyptian fruit bat

The other possibility is that an ancestor of both mega and micro bats had echolocation, and various classes of megabats lost it (but not the Egyptian fruit bat, nor the rhinolophoids), or that it was lost and subsequently re-emerged. Given that echolocation evolved independently in various animals (cetaceans, some shrews, bats) it's not impossible that it could have arisen separately in the microbats.

213. Cal scientist reflects on Darwin's genius

Comment #126131 by Epinephrine on February 12, 2008 at 1:36 pm

I somewhat agree with you (Gustaf) that celebrating the discovery/idea is more important than the birth of a person, but ideas are much harder to date. After all, he had the idea long before publishing it.

214. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #123439 by Epinephrine on February 7, 2008 at 7:07 am

babrock,

Your poor eyesight may have been a disadvantage at one time (and likely still is though to a lesser extent, you might be more likely to be involved in an accident, read directions wrong, take the wrong meds) but even that lack of selection is evolution. Why do cave fish go blind? Because that particular feature is a waste of resources, and mutations to their eyesight aren't problematic. It's not necessarily that they are selected for, it's just that the mutants aren't selected against; since mutation will randomly break something more often than improve it, lack of selection pressure on their eyesight has resulted in the mutations gradually accumulating to the point that none have any vision. That's evolution, even though we didn't need to select against those that can see.

From another perspective, there are actual selection pressures - sexual selection for example may still play a role. Some traits which may have once been advantageous (aggression?) likely cause more problems than benefits in modern society; guys who end up in bar fights and knife each other in alleys may die before passing on their genes. In prehistoric times it might have been worth the risk to fight over dominance of an area, claiming women for example, but it's not worth the risks in today's day and age.

Another factor, mentioned above, is changes in reproductive behaviours. Although it is a cultural thing, we are breeding much later than we once did. Some couples having kids in their late 30s are more successful, they have better odds of passing on their genes for late-life fertility, which could select for it, and if this is paired with other changes (possibly life-span changes, metabolic changes...) those could be observed.

Suffice it to say that there are many ways we could still be evolving.

215. Ad 'likely to offend gay people'

Comment #123436 by Epinephrine on February 7, 2008 at 6:53 am

Actually, I think you would find that even babies would have been repulsed by REAL dog-poo. Disgust at certain things, particularly smells, is a instinctive response, just as fear can be an instinctive response. It is probably true that MOST of what we are disgusted by or afraid of is learnt, but not all.

After the artistic babies I've met (drawing with feces, for example) I'm somewhat doubting it. Granted, that was their *own* poop, but it's still nasty stuff and full of bacteria.

They certainly learn fast what they don't like the taste of (relax, I mean food) and exhibit strong reactions to those they dislike, but it's definitely learned, in that they are initially willing to try everything. Of course, I haven't tried feeding my kids dog poop at a young age, so who knows.

216. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122950 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 9:38 am

I answered you already. I have read the whole of the bible, in two versions, as part of coursework, and I own at least 4 versions of the bible at home, including as I said, a greek interlinear, so that I can verify translation. When I study something I don't do it half-assed.

217. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122943 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 9:33 am

And as I figured, no one willing to read the whole Bible word for word, cover to cover

Hmm? I have. OT and NT (King James and NRSV, though I've also got NRV and a few other versions around). And I have an interlinear greek NT that I use when I want to get serious; translations, transliterations.

Studied both in university, hermeneutics and all that jazz. Just because I'm atheist doesn't mean I'm not interested in what's in a book. So you planning on reading some decent evolution texts?

218. Atheists to celebrate at Darwin Day in Coconut Creek

Comment #122879 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 8:49 am

I don't think anyone is saying Darwin Day is a bad idea, it's whether it is harmful for it to be linked to atheism. Obviously a day of science education is a good thing, the debate is more on whether it harms the case for Darwin and evolution to have atheist groups promoting it.

Nobody is saying that you are trying to make it godless, but when atheist groups support it the public perception can link the two causes, and that could be bad. It's a reasonable topic - if instead of having the atheist groups show support, individuals concerned with science education showed support it would be another thing. Nobody is taking the paper as "gospel truth", we are discussing how perception and media influences the event.

I am for atheists celebrating atheism.

I am for everyone interested in promoting science to celebrate science (on Darwin Day, for example).

The question is, should atheism and atheist groups be seen as supporting Darwin Day? I think there is some unease there - evolution can be championed just fine without bringing up atheism.

219. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122873 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 8:38 am

Historically, in almost every culture, there is the belief in the supernatural, that supercedes historically, your belief, and it will trace back however many periods of transitions you desire to believe actually exist.

Ah, argumentum ad populum. Truly, your ignorant use of fallacious arguments knows no bounds.

Clearly, you also die if you hit the ground when dreaming. After all, lots of people believe it.

My evidence. . . It's foundation and starting point is The BIBLE.

Why? What makes it right? Why not the Koran? Mahabharata? The epic of Gilgamesh? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

220. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122861 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 8:25 am

Flew is wrong. You can't prove non-existence, hence why the burden of proof lies on the one claiming existence.

If Flew were right (which he isn't) you'd have to disprove Zeus, Baal, Quetzalcoatl, Odin, Indra, Raven, The Invisible Pink Unicorn (blessed be her holy hooves) and The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and a veritable host of other gods and creation myths. Go ahead, prove that the world wasn't created out of the slain body of Ymir.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If the burden of proof is on the other foot, you have to disprove every origin myth but your own. Don't worry though, you don't have to do that, because the burden of proof is right where we left it - you only have to prove the existence of your god.

221. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122848 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 8:12 am

That's a nice non-sequitur...

222. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122844 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 8:08 am

Einstein wasn't religious... not in any sense that you mean.

223. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #122842 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 8:03 am

irate atheist -

I wouldn't ask them to not bring religious symbols, and I doubt any of my friends would be upset at someone wearing another religious symbol (say one friend wore a necklace with a crucifix to a jewish wedding?). Just as I would be upset if they told my children that they were doomed to hell, I'd be upset if they tried to foist their views on me or mine.

My religious friends (of many creeds) happily attended my wedding and celebrated it with me, even though it isn't a wedding in their god's eyes, and my wife and I are (in some religion's narrow views) entering into a godless marriage and a life of sin. They chose to attend, and to respect me, and likewise I would respect them. Maybe that's part of it - they extend me respect for my beliefs, and I reciprocate?

To be fair though, my friends are pretty cool :)

224. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #122839 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 7:54 am

SRWB -

Would you attend the wedding then? If your friend is getting married, and asks you, do you say,

a) "I'd like to come, so long as you don't mind my not covering my head."
b) "I can't come, as I don't wish to partake in a religious observance."
c) "I will come, and will be respectful of your religion while attending a religious service that I am choosing to attend."

I really am curious - I guess I figure I could opt not to attend, but once I attend I should be polite about it. If the religious observance included things I don't agree with I would likely have to not attend (for example, I might have trouble attending a briss (brit milah)) as it is both an indoctrination and an unecessary surgery.

225. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #122832 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 7:32 am

Hmm, not sure on the water. I think it's reasonable in a way - it was an act of caring and no doubt made her feel much better.

I have the same issue with people asking me to pray for their loved ones - I often say that they will be in my thoughts (what a cop-out), and once jokingly said, "as long as you don't tell them." (Since the STEP study showed that people who knew they were prayed for did worse than those who were prayed for but weren't informed of it).

Where does one draw the line? I too may have sent water; I brought back religious items from France for friends; I knew it would mean a great deal to them. They know that I am atheist, and in a way it might have meant more that their atheist friend accepted their religion. And I *do* accept it in a way; I don't accept actions that harm others, and I dissapprove of indoctrinating the next generation with religion, but I support my friend's right to believe in religion and to derive comfort from that belief - so long as they don't use their religion in harmful ways.

I have no issue with someone believing that abortion is wrong because of their religious beliefs for example, as long as they use it as a way to guide their own actions and they don't attempt to impose their beliefs on others by trying to change abortion laws (for example).

I'm new to being outspoken about atheism... while I agree with Dawkins that religion shouldn't automatically get respected and that it should be subject to the same challenges as any other set of beliefs, I nonetheless do respect the people - I'll wear a yarmulke at a wedding - it harms nobody to show that I can be respectful in that way, though I'll happily challenge religion on issues that matter.

So good for you Richard, I think that sometimes respect for people is forgotten in the context of global issues, and I think it was a kind and thoughtful action.

226. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #122822 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 6:59 am

I figured it was probably hingeing on the word "precisely", but even then, what is "precision". We're going to get all semantic now, I fear.

I'll agree that we can't "exactly" solve everything. Can we do so precisely? Define the level of precision; when we are right to a part in a million, is that precise? Or are we using the more scientific term "precision", which in effect means reproducible? In the scientific sense, the maths are precise, but perhaps not with perfect accuracy. If they vary little they are precise, if they are close to the true value they are accurate; I'd say much of mathematics is both very precise and very accurate, but of course there are exceptions.

Anyway, I agree that when we model we often need to approximate things, and we often work with models that are much simpler than the systems we are modelling, in part due to the difficulty of modelling too complex a system, in part to ensure that we don't overfit and end up with non-general results.

Still, the solutions can be very precise without being exact; modelling an ion channel to the point that we know how a neurotransmitter binds to it is pretty precise, even if we wave our hands a bit in the process - if we can predict the affinity of ligands we're doing something well. I think essentially we agree on the principles and are stumbling over the language, since we both accept that mathematics typically doesn't present exactly how the world behaves, yet still allows some amazingly good predictions.

227. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #122791 by Epinephrine on February 6, 2008 at 5:03 am

Steve, why would you say it isn't successful? You sound as if you doubt mathematics, then you point out (mathematical) modelling.

Mathematics isn't only precise solutions and general equations.

We've addressed physics from cosmological levels to sub-atomic levels, and can precisely put satellites into orbit. We can predict bond dissociation energies, bond strengths, vibrations, and we're working on protein folding. We use game theory to explain animal and people's behaviours, and evolutionary game theory in ecology. Epidemiology has brought the scientific method and evidence based decision making to the forefront of health science.

While it's not as elegant as having an equation to calculate a sampling distribution, bootstrapping and other computational techniques give us powerful tools - I'm curious as to how you view this as not being that successful. Sure, we can't provide a solution to the general three body problem, but we can predict pretty well through simulations.

228. Science Debate 2008

Comment #122722 by Epinephrine on February 5, 2008 at 9:52 pm

As cute as it'd be to make them squirm over topics like evolution (and maybe putting a question in is a good idea), I don't think it's about trying to get them denying religion, and I think it'd be a mistake to use it as that type of setting.

I'd ask what they think about renewable resources, whether they see biofuels as viable, or if they feel that we need to avoid using food crops to feed vehicles. What they think of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy, and how much they feel should be invested in finding new energy sources for the US.

What about nanotechnologies, protecting the public from the unknown effects of nanomaterials? Currently there are hundreds of nanotech materials being used, and few of them have any real toxicological data.

How about looking at water quality? Fire retardants? What do they think about pesticide regulations that control the maximum amounts of a given pesticide, but fail to examine the additive effects of multiple toxins? Sure, a given toxin may be at a safe level, but combine it with another, also at a safe level, and you have problems. Water treatment is a huge issue.

What about the whales and submarine detection testing (sonar)?

So many issues; obviously I have an environment/public health leaning, but I'm sure that others are interested in science education, the future of research and industry in the US and so on.

229. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122469 by Epinephrine on February 5, 2008 at 9:53 am

Wow epeeist, that's a long list of flood FAQ...

230. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122436 by Epinephrine on February 5, 2008 at 9:04 am

hes2@usa -

We have fish that crawl out of lakes and oceans. Tiktaalik is an example, and even today there are lungfish and mudskippers.

I'm not troubled at all by evolution, as we've got proof that it happens, and can show the lineages, as well as the genetic relationships.

Why don't you read the bit I wrote about how the brain can be fooled, and think about your claim that any child can see the grand design? After all, any child can also see bumps in the optical illusion, and watch them magically change into divets. We can be fooled by our perceptions, and we can be fooled about what causes an action. We can be fooled into thinking a rubber hand is our hand, and after amputation into thinking we still have a limb. Is it that big a stretch to think that we can be fooled into thinking that things seem created? After all, we see what elaborate tricks our brain can play on us.

231. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122425 by Epinephrine on February 5, 2008 at 8:50 am

Tyler Durden-

I'm still confused about the flood. It rained enough to flood the world, to the point that everything drowned pretty much, which would require submerging mountains. If the water was freshwater, it would have killed everything in the oceans. If it's saltwater, it would have killed everything on land and in lakes, and ruined the soil.

Presumably it was fresh water. In which case, how did the oceans re-salinate? When the water vanished, why wasn't a layer of salt coating everything? Since all salt-water fish (and corals, and baceria, and crustaceans) would have died, did Noah have 2 of each of those in little aquaria(ums)? All separate, to ensure that the barracudas didn't eat the anchovies? Where did he keep the whales? How does one explain how animals got to the ark, or how they got back? Sure, you can postulate that the kangaroos and even snails migrated (check out Kangaroos@conservapedia for a bit on kangaroos), but what about lake-bound fish? They couldn't cross oceans to get there, they'd have died. And ocean creatures, how on earth did Noah load 2 of each kind of shark out of the sea and into his special wooden aquaria? That'd be a big job.

232. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #122408 by Epinephrine on February 5, 2008 at 8:37 am

hes2@usa -

I don't think anyone cares about credentials. I don't have a doctorate, but nobody has ever questioned my ability to put together an argument. The value of a piece of reasoning has nothing to do with who proposes it, and everything to do with the content.

Nothing you have presented has any substance.

You claim that it's not true that "the overwhelming majority of scientists believe or accept Darwinian evolution.", and as proof present a list of 100 or so folks who disagree. So? That doesn't support your statement. It just shows that there are 100 people who signed, 100 is a very smal number of people. There are over 100 professors of science at just one of the two universities in my home town. If you want to disprove that an overwhelming majority believe or accept Darwinian evolution you have to show that a substantial portion of the total number of scientists out there don't agree, and 100 simply isn't a significant fraction of the total.

I don't know why anyone would ask you if you've published anything, it doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with whether you make any sense. Even if you were a Nobel prize winner, it wouldn't mean that you can't be completely wrong about something - the value of an argument is not derived from the speaker's credentials, though obviously a track record of good argumentation encourages one to examine the claims seriously.

Shall I answer a question or two for you?

"Try to think of any explosion that has produced order"

Sure. It's easy to model this. That's how a mass spectrometer works essentially, blowing something apart and watching the bits "land" in ordered manners. Remember that there are forces acting on the explosion and the particles of the explosion; those forces can produce an ordering effect, clumping matter up, and in combination with the explosion can result in specific types of matter ending up in specific places. It's not exactly random chance that put the gas giants where they are. Take a handful of sand on a day with some wind and let it trickle out of your hand - you'll notice that you end up with a sorting of grain sizes, largest below your hand, smallest farther away - it's easy to demonstrate how we can order things.

"A child can see that there is "grand design" in creation"

No, a child can be fooled into thinking that there is a grand design, or you can brainwash them into it. I wrote a little post about why we might believe in gods on another forum a while back, and I'll sample it here.

One theory as to why humans are prone to belief in god(s) is our theory of mind. We have the ability (unusual among animals) to not only model the world, but to model the processes of other minds. We don't simply react to what we see, but we can predict (model the minds of) other people.

For example, we can engage in deception - we know that presenting a false signal (like throwing a stone into a bush) will cause the other person (or animal) to react to this noise, causing a distraction. This is a modeling of mind, the ability to think about thinking. We actually take it to much greater levels than that though; we can iteratively model such things - knowing that you know that I know something, and so on. This powerful ability to model the environment gives us a huge edge over others, and probably got refined in humans due to our social and competitive natures - as we lived in bigger bands with other intelligent beings, the possibility to gain advantage by understanding how others think grew, and our ability to model the mind took off.

How does the mind attribute things? Well, temporal coincidence is a good start. If two things happen at the same time, they are likely connected. You hear a sound (a bang) and see a flash of light, and your brain puts those two together, their coincidence in time links them. This kind of pattern is helpful, but we can be fooled.

Moreover, our brains are so good at modelling intelligence, and modelling intelligences is such a good survival tool, that we model intelligences that aren't even there. We treat machines and computers as minds often, and it's easy to see how events that occur in nature could be interpreted as being the acts of another intelligence, particularly if they operate in predictable ways - tides, the moon, the sun, cyclical behaviours. Or if they are rare (lightning strikes, famines, etc.).

One theory then is that this ability to model intelligence leads us to build intelligences into nature and phenomena we don't understand. Our brains "like" to understand and model things, it's what gives us an edge surviving (at least, it did in the evolutionary era) - so when things happen that we don't understand, we try to model them, and if the behaviour isn't immediately obvious we can attribute it to a mind operating behind the scenes. After all, if something appears to happen in a purposeful way, 99% of the time it's because it is happening in a purposeful way. Our brains learned that lesson from interacting with animals and other people (who are also animals, I just made the distinction because not everyone thinks that way).

Often the way we think, perceive and so on can be deciphered by looking at evolution. Take an optical illusion like these bumps:



The top row probably looks like bumps, the second row like depressions.

Turn your head upside-down, or the monitor, or use photo editing software to flip the image. They should reverse, since the top row and the second row are just the same image rotated 180 degrees.

Why does your brain insist that one row is bumps, and the other row is depressions? Evolution, most likely. The brain has patterns it uses to figure things out - the likely rule it is applying here is "assume that the light source comes from above". This would be true in essentially the entirety of our evolution, and so is a good rule to follow, except recently with the invention of artificial lights. So we can fool our brain in that way.

In the same way that optical illusions use the evolved tools that help us decipher our world to fool us, our theory of mind circuitry (which so effectively lets us negotiate society, make friends, avoid tigers and all that) can be fooled into thinking there is intelligence where there isn't.

Why do things seem created? Because evolution suits them to their environment. Why do we interpret it as seeming created? Because we have a theory of mind, and we recognise that these things aren't suited to their environment due to chance. Indeed they aren't, they have been sculpted to fit their environment by natural selection, which is NOT about chance. It isn't chance that allows a camouflaged animal to survive better than a non camouflaged animal, even if it is chance that resulted in some of his/her siblings having lighter coats and some having darker coats. Chance and selective pressure most certainly results in evolution.

233. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121994 by Epinephrine on February 4, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Again to Sally Luxmoore -

Hmm, I thought ZW was more common in fish (though I did recall that some fish like the clownfish swap sexes) but apparently fish biology is much more complex than I had thought (to be fair, I am most familiar with people and rats). I apologise for my earlier comment that fish are ZW, they are all over the map, including ZW.

Looks like guppies are XY; bettas (fighting fish) are somewhat XY, but removal of their ovaries turn some male, some stay female. Breeding the males made from spaying XX females with other XX females allows production of males, though only a small portion of them (so it's not purely genetic). Clownfish start out male, but if the dominant female disappears one male will become female (and grow) to take her place. Seems like there's a whole world of fish sex out there.

Interestingly, the platypus sems to have both the xy and zw systems to some extent. I think I remember reading this back in 2004, but it completly slipped my mind.

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/news041025-1.html

Hope you and your daughter enjoy your readings :)
I'm working through The Ancestor's Tale at the moment as well, I'm still on apes though.

234. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121969 by Epinephrine on February 4, 2008 at 12:33 pm

Sally Luxmoore -

It's a good question - and one I hadn't looked for very hard before now. I found a 2006 article though.

Eric J. Vallender and Bruce T. Lahn
Multiple independent origins of sex chromosomes in amniotes
PNAS 2006 103: 18031-18032.

It would seem that the oldest system (among the amniotes) is not genetic at all, and is the temperature-dependent method associated with crocodilians, some turtles, and some lizards. According to the article, mammals likely split first (~315 million years ago) with the XY sex determination, then the snakes and lizards developed ZW sex determination, and split off from the crocodilians, birds and turtles around 260 million years ago. The birds subsequently independently evolved the same ZW system that the snakes and lizards use.

I'll have to look for when fish devloped their system, but it's worth noting that X0-XX sex determination also exists (in C. elegans, for example), and that insects have their own systems too. Sex determination also happens in plants, and would have evolved independently there.

235. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121939 by Epinephrine on February 4, 2008 at 11:38 am

Hmm, but what about a genetic willingness to dye one's hair?
;)

236. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121930 by Epinephrine on February 4, 2008 at 11:29 am

Well, typically, restricting the genepool with inbreeding will cause a flattening of the bell curve (using the term loosely here), as rare traits have a better chance of expressing themselves, or of being eliminated.

As for sexual selection, I find it interesting that in humans it is the female that tends to invest in "beauty" and advertising visually, while in birds and fish it is the male, and I wonder if that's simply which sex is heterozygous for the sex chromosomes (as birds and fishes have heterozygous females, but mammals have heterozygous males).

I am sure that there are some of these features that are sexually selected for, but unless they are located on the sex chromosomes (or somehow influence the odds of producing males/females) I can't see them failing to affect both sexes - if the genes for blond hair are selected for in females, they're just as likely to produce blond haired males.

237. Atheists to celebrate at Darwin Day in Coconut Creek

Comment #121885 by Epinephrine on February 4, 2008 at 9:47 am

Wow, I had typed up a reply with some of the same Luther quotes, but the site ate it.

Ok - I accept that pairing evolution and atheism may cause problems in some respects, but how to prevent it?

We need people to stand up for evolution and the teaching of science. Honouring Darwin for his contributions toward modern science (and more) isn't a bad thing. It's not atheistic, but those likely to celebrate it are atheist.

Who stands up to argue against ID? Largely atheists. Sure, there will be religious folks too, but that won't be remembered.

I doubt that we can in any way separate the two - it doesn't help that as we train in science we train in reason. That's not of course to say that science is the only way to train in rational thought, but it certainly is one way. It's not a surprise that most scientists are atheist, agnostic or deist. Since tackling a subject like evolution vs. ID will bring both science and religion into the picture, it'll be hard for the public not to see science as linked with atheism. How should we proceed?

238. Atheists to celebrate at Darwin Day in Coconut Creek

Comment #121813 by Epinephrine on February 4, 2008 at 7:44 am

Glad to see the posts turn around. It's exactly the kind of thing I'd celebrate, not because I'm an atheist, but because of how much Darwin has contributed to the world (not just biology - everything has been influenced by the meme of evolution). Then again, I celebrate pi day, so who am I to talk?

239. Some non-Christians feel left out of election

Comment #121449 by Epinephrine on February 3, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Unfortunately, atheists don't unite about anything much. The evangelicals, on the other hand, do.

About the only issue you can expect atheists to agree on is that atheists shouldn't be discriminated against, but on other issues they range from conservative to liberal.

240. Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'

Comment #121427 by Epinephrine on February 3, 2008 at 11:40 am

To be fair, I have no issue with them training for non-clinical roles - if they won't take those precautions, they can man telehealth lines, serve as advisors in regulatory/policy positions and so on, but it should be clear that they can't do clinical duties without obeying the rules. There are many roles for doctors outside of seeing patients, including epidemiology, research, policy, compliance/enforcement in regulatory agencies, telephone health (poison control, pharmacological, general health), medical engineering...

241. Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'

Comment #121418 by Epinephrine on February 3, 2008 at 11:30 am

Completely absurd. If you cn't do the job by the rules, don't do the job. This is as dumb as making less strict physical restrictions for female firefighters; if they can't lift me, they have no business being on the force.

The requirements in both cases involve being able to save lives - while it's unfortunate, setting the bar lower for female firefighters could cost lives, just as spreading infections could in this case.

242. Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights

Comment #119053 by Epinephrine on January 31, 2008 at 9:32 am

- monoape

Again, I'm surprised more regulars didn't jump all over this pathetic straw man....

I assume the proper response is to ignore him and press the "Troll" or "Offensive" button?

243. The Repeater

Comment #119004 by Epinephrine on January 31, 2008 at 9:02 am

- Kraut

Excellent article, but you know what the ID crowd will say: Twentythousand years and none of them have tried to develop leglike appendages to start crawling out of the water.....

Lol, more likely they'll explain that obviously they were each created separately, in each of those lakes, since the planet is only 6,000 y.o. anyway. God likes variety, but he only had 6 days, thus the use of the same basic bodyplan for them! One wonders why they're still each in separate lakes though, you'd think maybe the flood would have jumbled it up a bit.

Come to think of it, since the flood was after creation, how are there any freshwater creatures at all? They'd have all been killed by exposure to salt water, unless Noah had the foresight to build in a lot of little (and separate) aquaria, we gotta keep all those little fishies in their own waters, so they don't get mixed up. Then you have to desalinate all the lakes they are destined to, and walk them all back. Would have been a real bitch of a job, keeping each varaint of stickleback labelled by lake number.

244. The Repeater

Comment #118897 by Epinephrine on January 31, 2008 at 6:19 am

I can't say I know much about Gould, apart from having read Kim Sterelny's book Dawkins vs. Gould.

I did enjoy his book The Mismeasure of Man, a reply to the Bell Curve.

245. The Repeater

Comment #118188 by Epinephrine on January 30, 2008 at 1:05 pm

I think the point isn't that similar solutions are found, but that it's in fact similar genetics (ancestrally shared) arriving at the solution. I've always marveled at convergent evolution, such as the long fingered triok and the aye aye, but while I thought it was interesting that in both cases the lack of woodpeckers led a mammal to adapt to the role (and in each case through the lengthening of a finger, though a different finger for each), I hadn't considered that it's likely a shared gene that is the cause of the variance, that not only did the result end up the same, but that an analogous genetic change was at work.

246. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117712 by Epinephrine on January 29, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Goldy -

Bagpipes – that's where the real music lies. All bagpipes

Since we're off topic anyway, I like the Italian bagpipes, the Zampogna. The double chanter is really interesting.

247. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117700 by Epinephrine on January 29, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Hehe, clearly I took too long putting an image up, you beat me to the line :P

248. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117695 by Epinephrine on January 29, 2008 at 11:54 am

"Furthermore, the benefits of science are hugely exaggerated... "

I think Day should test this. He should boycott science, and all things science has brought about (vaccines, antibiotics, improvements in surgery, most foods, electricity...)

Reminds me of the poster from the Foundation for Biomedical Research...

Of course, it was only 20.8 years on the poster in my lab. Dang progress...

249. The New Theology

Comment #116111 by Epinephrine on January 25, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Brother John -

I'm an atheist, and I don't dismiss mysticism as a valid area of study. I respect *any* legitimate scientific, intellectually honest attempt to discover more about the world.

One example would be the cryptozoologist interviewed in Scientific American in December (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bigfoot-anatomy)

I think it's good that there is someone actually investigating it seriously, bringing some scientific rigour to it. I would object to devoting a huge number of people, or large sums of money to it, but as one person in the article points out, having one physical anthropologist examining the possibility of bigfoot isn't unreasonable. It would be poor science not to examine it at all.

I think the issue with paranormal, mystical and other such studies is that they are often done by "believers", who are anything but rigourous and intellectually honest. Studying intercessory prayer from a truly scientific perspective is interesting, but the results of the STEP (a large, major study of intercessory prayer) and others doesn't suggest that there is any benefit.

Also, I don't agree with your claim that it is wrong that a negative statement doesn't need proof. This is part of logic - the fact that you can claim things which are not falsifiable, and thus the burden of proof then rests on the one making a non-falsifiable claim. It is impossible to disprove the existence of a god that exists outside of space and time - but that isn't a burden any atheist needs to pick up, anymore than you have to prove that Zeus, fairies, leprechauns, the flying spaghetti monster or Santa Claus don't exist. Nobody expects you to prove the non-existence of these things, and only proof of their existence would be sufficient.

250. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115454 by Epinephrine on January 24, 2008 at 8:04 am

- Steve Zara

Of course not. But the problem is to define "race". There is so little genetic variation in humans, it seems not to make any sense.

The other problem of course is to define intelligence ;)

There is a tendency not to discuss intelligence, as it is poorly defined. As epeeist points out, relativity and composing a symphony are two different intelligences. Bach could compose 5 part fugues in his head, something that is probably beyond the majority of highly intelligent physicists, for example.

As to the general question of whether isolated populations of humans would have different mental abilities, I think it's fair to say that such a thing is most certainly possible. After all, intelligences are very likely to be genetic at some level, since they are evolved. They can therefore be selected for, and with sufficient time and different selection pressures they would naturally result in differences between groups. This is a bit of a taboo subject however, as it's often used to justify racism, and those embarking on this type of research typically have an agenda and wish to label some as superior, based (typically) on a single measure of "intelligence".

Since we can't come up with a measurement scale that is unbiased, and we can't even agree what intelligence is, whether there are multiple intelligences and what they are, or how to measure them, or how to disentangle the measures from cultural and sociological effects, it's not exactly an area that an be discussed to any great depth. The theoretical musings are fine, and I doubt anyone who believes that humans evolved would contest that it is possible that people vary in intelligence(s) due to genetics, and that this *could* have differing distributions worldwide. Just don't expect anyone to produce any meaningful evidence of differences.