WIP

If I understand your point, you and a few other apologists for the Christian Right, are trying to equivocate torture with corporal punishment (which isn't allowed today either BTW) Ever since these waterboarding stories first started to appear, the line from the right has been that it is a "difficult question" to answer whether waterboarding is torture and violates military conduct rules. These are the same people who get on the soapbox and proclaim absolute morality regarding issues like stem cell research, abortion and gay marriage -- but on this issue, the right wing noise machines have become moral relativists. Instead of following clear, moral principles like Christian right spokespeople claim to do, they are saying "well, maybe it wasn't exactly torture, and the ones who watch too many 24 episodes, tell us there are situations where the ends justify the means, and the rules go out the window -- well, from what I've seen so far, I'm betting that Dick Cheney's claims that he extracted essential information through waterboarding will vanish like a mirage, just like previous claims. Even if claims of valuable evidence were real, supporting torture would still be an example of Christians being moral relativists and not adhering to higher principles handed down from a higher power. It appears that Christian claims of having higher standards than unreligious or unchurched are groundless. Remember, this claim of higher moral principles was used to condemn a Brazilian woman for taking her 11 year old daughter to the hospital to have a life-saving abortion performed. It would appear to those outside of the Church's doors, that Christian absolute moral principles are those that suit their particular needs and desires at the time, and can be cast off like a dirty shirt, if they get in the way of some immediate purpose!

Which boils down to you hijacking your own thread, if you were the one who invoked the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I'm bringing it up because the Jewish state at least allows freedom of religion for its religious minorities, whereas some Arab states like Saudi Arabia, do not allow the practice of any religion other than their own, and regularly prosecute people for possessing bibles and other texts and icons of non-Islamic religions. The nations that border Israel harass their own religious minorities, and make no bones about trying to eventually drive them out of existence. In the context of religion, Israel is surrounded by enemies who will not allow Jews or a Jewish state to exist, even if it consisted of pre-1967 borders. I haven't heard a lot of talk of permanent two-state solutions coming from the Arab side since Anwar Sadat was shot. Up till now, Israel has been a modern secular state surrounded by Muslim zealots who want to eradicate their presence. And this never-ending hostility is showing signs of having effects on Israeli democracy and adherence to democratic principles, as the more liberal, secular Jews leave and are replaced by more and more Orthodox zealots, some of which are part of a temple movement that wants to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque so they can build the Third Temple there. So, prospects for future peace don't look good. The rabbis who want to build a "Greater Israel" have growing influence among the ranks of the Israeli Army, and may have had an effect on the way Israelis conduct themselves in warfare: An Army of Extremists How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers. By Christopher Hitchens Monday, March 23, 2009, at 4:32 PM ET Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case. http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/ Countercurrents.org Nazareth: Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics. In a process one military historian has termed the rapid “theologisation” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian territories. Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is starting to be felt, say observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population. “We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield,” said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army. http://www.countercurrents.org/cook040209.htm

Every method of understanding is going to contain a few a priori assumptions. The philosophy of science has to assume that humans are capable of understanding the world, otherwise there's no point to bother trying to learn anything. The assumptions that scientific discovery began with are subject to testing and revision if better explanations become available. It is the only method of discovery that contains a built in self-correction mechanism, unlike religion.

So, why would you bother starting a thread about that survey showing Christians approve torture, and turn it into another anti-Israel thread? And you receive special treatment in Saudi Arabia if you're a Muslim. There are lots of Christian countries in the world, and Israel is surrounded by millions of Muslims, many of which live in Islamic theocracies, but for some reason it's a crime to have one small piece of the MiddleEast set aside as a state for Jews!

And there wouldn't be a problem if Christians, Muslims and a few other religions kept religion as a private matter, rather than trying to force everyone else to conform to their "religious values." Oh sure it doesn't bother you and your church friends! You wouldn't have mentioned the Out Campaign if it didn't bother you. If the religious can run around waving their crosses and babbling about Jesus, then why are you all bent out of shape that Richard Dawkins started a campaign to encourage atheists to identify themselves publicly? My only complaint is that Richard Dawkins believes everyone can be a rationalist; I share his views that organized religion promotes conflicts and promotes belief without evidence. No matter how organized or dressed up in sophisticated language,religion is still a vestigial holdover from our primitive past, when we did not understand the world around us and felt the need to mythologize the world to provide meaning. Religion is essential for some people, but not for me! As for money, are you serious? Do you have any idea how much money even 2nd rate Christian apologists make writing books and doing the church lecture circuit? Richard Dawkins is at the top of his field of biology, and if anything, I'm sure he has spent more to promote atheism, than make money from it. He appears at gatherings of atheist and humanist groups, who often only raise enough money to cover his travel expenses. The real money is made at the mega-churches, so if he was in it for the money, he would become one of those Christian scientists, like Francis Collins and Ken Miller.

I have stated numerous times that there are degrees of certainty, but none of which reach the level of 100% absolute proof; and you call anything less than that uncertainty. The best available evidence shows that we make maps of our external reality and in the other direction, of our inner nature and sense of self. Judgements made on both the external and internal world can be faulty, but you are not willing to accept something less than absolute conviction. The problem is you have nothing to base your certainty on except for self-assuredness that you are right. More metaphysical drivel. The universe seems real based on my life experience, so i'll continue to presume that it is real. On the other hand, the modern understanding of subatomic physics shows us that there is no such a thing as a solid object, and instead, tiny particles that have combined wave/particle properties are whirling around at high velocity in empty space. Their speed, and the forces they carry, such as electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force, are pictured as solid objects by the components in our brains that take in information and process it in a way that will enable us to function better. So, solid objects are an illusion, and demonstrate that perception is not reality. Do you have an alternative "fad" to prove that souls and spirits exist? Likely not, but even if the experience could be induced, it would not change the fact that the disorder is caused by a problem with interpreting sensory information in a specific area of the brain. These people are not otherwise mentally delusional, and can act rationally in other areas. It's similar to Capgras Syndrome, where people who have a breakdown in their ability to recognize faces, start declaring that friends and family members are imposters. They are usually able to function normally except for this problem with pattern recognition. We have no option to step outside of our physical limitations and have a separate perspective as an independent observer of the physical world. And I have been trying to make that point that there is no means to trust or even to test "revealed knowledge." All information about the world and about our selves is subject to our own physical limitations to determine truth and reality.

That's because he complained about his own experience with discrimination -- claiming that he wasn't able to get in to a good law firm after graduating from Yale, but later gave a blanket condemnation of affirmative action programs (like the one that helped him get his Yale degree). Is his conservative philosophy genuine? Or is he just in denial of the help he received -- preferring to view himself as a self-made man, and even claiming that affirmative action was a hindrance.

Which is why the scientific method of discovery by building knowledge from the ground up, is better than the religious revelation method of claiming to have the answers already, and then having to backtrack, re-interpret, or as in the case of creationists -- just flat out refuse to acknowledge contrary evidence. Your "evidence" only proves that Darwin engaged in the study of nature as a scientist should - with an open mind. If Darwin was writing today, 150 years after Origin of the Species, and was aware of the DNA molecule as the agent of replication, genomic analysis of related species of animals, endogenous retroviruses that are often shared by related species, broken DNA sequences that remain in the genome etc. -- where do you think he would stand today? For creationism or evolution by natural selection! This lame creationist propaganda that keeps harping on Darwin, ignores the fact that the discovery of genetics revolutionized evolutionary theory, so that the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory sees most of the change (if not all) going on at the level of genetic replicators within the organism, and not at the species level itself. This was something Darwin had no awareness of, which has been mentioned many times before to no affect -- and many of the mysteries of Darwin's time have been cleared up by the modern understanding of genetics. Since I'm on a role here, I want to introduce my favourite conclusive proof of evolution that creationism can't answer (I hope Segnosaur hasn't already covered this): Endogenous Retrovirsues While listening to a podcast series on evolution by Dr. Zachary Moore a couple of years ago, called Evolution 101; Dr. Zach did a six part series on genomic analysis, particularily Junk DNA. Creationists and I.D.'rs try to dismiss DNA similarities of related species with lame excuses like "maybe God decided to use a similar blueprint for chimpanzees and humans" or some other half-assed explanation. So, among the junk DNA (non-coding genes) that make up 96% of the human genome, the one that caught my attention were endogenous retroviruses or ERV's. ERV's come from viral infections that manage to pass to a newly fertilized egg cell during the fertilization stage, inserting their own DNA code into the genome of the host organism. If the host survives and grows to adulthood, its descendents will carry that foreign viral DNA in their genomes, although the viral sequences are likely non-coding as soon as they pass from one generation to the next. Dead viral DNA sequences make up 7% of the total human genome, so a lot of our genetic makeup is actually from foreign contaminants. Why would God use viruses to build the human DNA blueprint? If humans and chimpanzees did not evolve from a common ancestor as creationists claim, we should not expect to find common ERV's between our species. Instead, as this chart reprinted in Talkorigins shows, there are at least 11 ERV's, many of which are shared by all primates, that are in both the human, gorilla and chimpanzee genomes. So why would God choose to code the same viral DNA sequences into two different organisms?

Yes, the right wing was willing to use race when they wanted to put an unqualified token black on the court, and then played the race card by accusing everyone who questioned his abilities of racial discrimination. And they did it again, when George Bush wanted to appoint a loyal hack lawyer as Attorney General. In the last election cycle, the Republicans played the opposite side of the race card and tried to use Obama's race as a rallying point for their base of rural and suburban white voters.

Considering all of the other lies, like missing WMD's and other terrorist plots that have either vanished or been shown as less than meets the eye, I would like to see some evidence before I believe this L.A. plot was something that was actually real....and I'm not just going to take the word of one of Bush's speechwriters as verification. And that doesn't deal with the problem of the "ends justifying the means." Waterboarding was first declared to be torture by a U.S. court, almost 100 years ago, and the U.S. has even executed adversaries, such as Japanese officers for waterboarding American POW's after WWII. Well, if it's wrong for others to torture American soldiers, then the U.S. should have never violated its own ethical standards for political expediency, as it did during the Bush Administration. And Bush & Co. likely wouldn't have needed to go down this road if they were paying attention to the intelligence reports warning of possible attacks on U.S. soil before 9/11. Instead, they were caught with their pants down and panicked, and started flailing around as they were panicked by every crazy story they extracted from Abu Zubaidah under torture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Zubaydah#...aydah.27s_Intel And part 2 of the torture story is how many new enemies were created by Abu Ghraib and the use of torture.

Oh really! Then what the hell do you call HELL! Most Christians interpret the verses of everlasting fire as meaning that those who reject salvation are burned for eternity....but basic christian teaching doesn't support torture, you say. 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Where did you pull that number from? Because these numbers taken from an American Meteorological Society report gives a range for the effect of each greenhouse gas, along with an explanation of why exact numbers are not possible: * water vapor, which contributes 36–72% * carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26% * methane, which contributes 4–9% * ozone, which contributes 3–7% It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes an exact percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for the gas alone; the lower ends, for the gas counting overlaps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas So, what does this prove aside from natural events can influence climate! And I should add that many paleoclimate researchers now believe that the warming of the Medieval Optimum has been greatly exaggerated because historical accounts outside of Europe show that the warming was a local phenomena in Northern Europe. That aside, it has no bearing on the question of whether we are able to interfere with natural cycles today. And even if CO2 can keep going up without adding to the greenhouse effect, that doesn't speak to the damage done be rising CO2 levels on the world's oceans, since seawater absorbes half of the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. The deniers are trying to narrow the debate to climate modeling and attacks on celebrity environmentalists. They do not want to address issues that are just as important as temperature data, such as the environmental damage of rising ocean CO2 levels, which makes the oceans more acidic and reduces the amount of oxygen absorbed by seawater.

I mentioned this article on another thread; it's not just American Christians, and it's not just about a particular brand of dogma -- the fact is that basic Christian doctrine teaches obedience to authority as a high virtue, and any demagogue fascist can figure out a way to use this impulse to adhere to authority figures, for their own benefit. Hitler was defending Christian values in his speeches, and that's why during his rise to power, playwright Sinclair Lewis made this comment in reference to the growing number of demagogues in his own country who were looking to channel Hitler's strategy for an American audience: "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Right now, I would say we are at a crossroads. If the Obama Administration turns into a weak, ineffectual government like the Weimar Republic, an economic decline will fuel the rise of Christian fascism; and you only have to check out the resentment expressed in right wing media to see how these "real Americans" view what's wrong with their country and how they intend to fix it.....and like the survey says, the devout Christians will be the least concerned of any demographic group about the use of torture against unamerican type people by a patriotic "real" Christian leader.

I think he should stay closer to biology and the other sciences that he is well versed in and leave philosophy to the philosophers, or at least develop his own ideas better so that he is not so dependent on friends like Daniel Dennett, and can have a more independent perspective. The other thing I find disappointing about Dawkins is that when he did get around to writing a book about atheism and religion (The God Delusion), it went down a well-worn path of deconstructing old theological proofs of God, like St. Anselm's ontological argument. His arguments against God are focused on the Abrahamic variety, and does not address pantheistic beliefs and other supernatural beliefs that have crept in to Western culture over the last hundred years. I don't accept his premise that he shares with Sam Harris, that everybody can be converted into rationalists and that's why he hopes for an end to religious education that offended the church people so much. Most people don't seem to like the real world very much, and exchange one form of magical beliefs for another -- hopefully for a less controlling and potentially dangerous set of magical thinking. But I don't share their optimism for a new golden age of rationalism. A hundred years ago, the Freethinker Movement thought that the enlightenment would eventually lead to the abandonment of religion and they were heralding a new golden age of rationalism.....and then WWI broke out.....the rest is history! These things go in cycles, and rationalists should hope that the next wave of hysteria doesn't take us two steps backward for every step forward we make.

So, now you are literally begging the question! No, you have no basis to declare that the universe or everything outside of yourself in the objective world is an illusion. Objective reality can exist whether or not we are observing it, and our experiences in dealing with the world give us some confidence in the regularity and dependability of our surroundings. For example, if you throw a ball up in the air, you instinctively expect it to come back down, and you will start tracking the angle and velocity of its ascent to try to guess where it will land. If basic forces such as gravity were unreliable, then you would have justification in being an idealist, or in this case an anti-realist, since you seem to be denying an objectively real world. Surprisingly enough, you are finally getting to method of determining the degree of accuracy and reliability of your beliefs and experiences! Yes, we are real and we can learn about the physical processes going on within us. What we don't have any evidence for is the time-honoured notion of extended mind that is separate from our physical bodies and consists of some substance that we cannot define or examine. It used to be believed that air and wind were equivalent to spirit; but when accumulated knowledge revealed that air was indeed a physical substance, even though it is invisible, and wind is just the movement of air, spirit moved on to the supernatural realm where is was declared beyond the capacity for physical examination. Since we are finding more and more properties of mind having physical connections to brain function, it appears to be a concoction that will eventually serve no purpose, much like the eather - which was proposed when it was assumed that electromagnetic waves had to be caused by the rippling of some sort of substance and a vacuum could not allow transmission of energy. Modern physics discovered that the waves were a property of matter particles and there was no need for an eather to exist. In like manner, as mysteries of the mind are uncovered, there will be no room left for other-worldly spirits to operate our physical bodies. And all of this condescending crap is based on the faulty assumption that you have perfect understanding of your mind, and that it is exactly as it appears to you: being the source of your actions and decision-making, a unitary whole and undivided, and continuous, even going on after your physical existence is no more. Needless to say these are all baseless assumptions. Nobody accepts that mentally ill and delusional people understand their mental states. There are some interesting and extremely bizarre disorders that call these basic assumptions into question; one that I find fascinating, is the rare disorder called Cotard's Syndrome - where the patient believes they are dead, and doctors can't convince them that their breathing, feelings of hunger, heartbeat etc. are signs that they are physically alive. Neurologists believe that some misinterpretation of body-mapping information from the senses leads to this feeling of being dead, and there are no logical ways to convince the patient otherwise. Can we even assume that we have one mind? Studies of split-brain patients would tell us we have at least two; the inner conflicts we feel when our emotions override our better judgement appear as a real struggle between the pre-frontal lobes of the cortex - where our higher cognitve thinking is done, and the lower brain-stem areas like the amygdala, which produces most of the neurochemicals associated with our emotions. Because of all of the components acting to create a sense of mind, many neuroscientists and philosophers of mind, are coming to the conclusion that mind is not continuous, and our sense that it is, is taken from connecting together short-term memory. The intention and volition experiments consistently demonstrate that clear patterns of brain activity are going on before we are aware of making conscious decisions - is free will a contra-causal action of a non-physical mind acting on the brain, or is it as it appears to be, the other way around - our feelings of free will decision-making occur as soon as the physical components of the brain have plotted out a course of action to take. All of this leads to the conclusion that we have to be as skeptical about the inner mind as we are about the outer world, and not take our assumptions provided by having a sense of unitary self as being the real picture of our inner reality. The concept of death or non-existence that you continually obsess about, may be another product of outside physical motivation - since like every animal, one of our strongest instincts is survival. The physical components that make us up want to exist forever, or at least they strongly avoid dying, and that drive for survival is at the core of all of our concerns about death and non-existence. Our physical bodies have created a sense of separate mind actually existing, and they impute this mind with a survival instinct to maintain the body for as long as possible. It's like they say, "everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one's in a hurry to get there."

Do you have evidence to back up your claim that human environmental impact is not great enough to affect the earth's natural cycles? The population keeps growing every year; so does the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases we add to the atmosphere; half of that extra CO2 is absorbed by the world's oceans, making the oceans more acidic -- and all this occurs on a planet that cannot grow larger to accomodate growing populations that want to use more of the earth's resources. I have posted a number of articles over the last year or so that show declining populations in mammals, reptiles, amphibians and even insects; and the rapid fall-off in numbers looks like we are already in a mass extinction cycle to many paleontologists. Now, just the fact that we are a linear progression, going in one direction, and our round earth is a finite resource, common sense tells me that at some point something's got to give! This is where all of the charts and claims of global warming deniers falls flat. At some point, there has to be a limit to how many people can live and exploit the earth's resources, and there has to be a limit to how high atmospheric CO2 levels can go, but the deniers don't address either issue, and instead tell us, so far, so good, and don't trust computer models - as if I'm going to spend my time learning computer modelling and information theory. But, when it comes to scientific and technical issues that are too complex for everyone to have an expert opinion, I want to hear what the experts in climate and earth sciences have to say. And so far, all of the surveys around the world over the last 20 years show that the majority of scientists who work in these fields of research, are overwhelmingly of the opinion that there is a human impact on climate, it is growing, and it's not going to be good for our longterm prospects if we can't do something to lessen our impact: Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 96.2% of climatologists who are active in climate research believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and 97.4% believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 80% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement. A summary from the survey states that: "It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."[79] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_op...s_of_scientists NOw, where the tobacco connection comes in to the picture is that the many of the same public relations firms who designed the strategies of setting up a few dissenting doctors as experts with opposing opinions, were able to slow down the efforts to ban smoking in public places. Today, the PR firms working for oil, gas and coal companies have a small group of their own experts (many who do not actually have credentials in environmental sciences) to quell any actions to reduce carbon emissions and advocate a do-nothing strategy. And that is the connection to the tobacco strategy. Cigarette companies did not want to change the way they did business 30 years ago, just as the energy companies do not want any changes now.

And even Dawkins himself recognizes that atheism does not provide organizing principles, except for those that directly threaten free thought and freedom of speech. Dawkins himself coined the term "herding cats," as an explanation for the difficulties of organizing atheists, even though we are larger in total number than most religions! We don't share common beliefs, so Dawkins views on religious education and raising children are his, and his alone. We don't have a pope or some preacher that demands adherence to doctrine like the god believers do. In England, where Dawkins lives, the government is trying to pass blasphemy laws that will make it an offense to criticize religion; all this at a time when an aggressive new religion (Islam) that tries to stomp out competing religious systems and take control of government, law, business and culture (theocratic fascism in other words) is growing and trying to carve out their own little territories in immigrant neighbourhoods. The spineless leaders of the Church of England and the Catholic Church, are all in favour of blasphemy laws, and that's part of the reason why atheism-advocates like Dawkins and comedians Eddie Izzard and Richard Condell, are the few people speaking out.

But what about evolutionary science? How do you explain away all of the science based on evolutionary principles? If creationism and intelligent design have the real theories of genetics, their principles should be the basis of new research.Scientists, such as the molecular biology professor I quoted from, felt the need to briefly outline some of the ways that research in evolutionary biology is being used to advance medicine. The irony is that so many of the same people who don't believe in evolution, are themselves dependent on medical treatments and genetic research that is based on evolutionary principles. No surprise that a professor way down in Texas, the buckle of the bible belt, feels the need to speak out, when his state's governor is cutting research funding and trying to stop the teaching of evolution in Texas schools! Another baseless empty charge since the scientific method is the only way to develop new understanding that has self-correcting mechanisms, like a peer review process that makes it possible to revise or even scrap existing theories if better explanatory models become available. Your rants taken from creationist sites dredging up Piltdown Man and other hoaxes, miss the point that the Piltdown hoax was uncovered by scientists, not creationists, and not the religious authorities in the Church of England! On the other hand, creationists offer no self-correction and their hoaxes, like the Paluxy Footprints that were added to streambeds that contained three-toed dinosaur fossils that resembled footprints, had to be unmasked by paleontologists, not the Creation Research Institute or other faux creation science groups. I heard that once before! I think it came from Commander Zaius in the original Planet of the Apes movie. Then prove he's a fraud! Go ahead! It should be easy since your creationist sites can quote-mine lots of Dawkins critics in the field of biology who have alternative theories of evolution, such as Punctuated Equilibrium, Symbiogenesis or Multi-level evolution. The people proposing these alternative mechanisms for evolutionary change claim that Dawkins is one of the chief gate-keepers keeping their ideas from being taken seriously. Maybe, maybe not -- but, in the end, if they have the goods, they should be able to make their cases heard. If not, then maybe their models are wrong or have too many things that they cannot explain. But they will provide a rich source for quote-mining nasty comments about Richard Dawkins.

Since you don't believe there are any practical applications to evolutionary biology, I expect you to stick to prayer if this swine flu in Mexico becomes a pandemic. If Tamiflu is in short supply, the creationists should not be in line for flu shots, since they don't believe that viruses can use the principles of mutation and natural selection to beat the immune systems of their hosts. Now, if you can fill these pages with cut and paste from creationist sites, I'll take my turn to present a lengthy article on how are lives are effected by biologists developing new research using evolutionary principles: Examples of evolutionary biology Its study is important to new medical technologies. Most people are unaware of uses of evolutionary biology. Public non-appreciation of evolutionary biology may depend as much on its perceived irrelevance as anything else. Yet, evolution, especially microevolution, has been fundamental to some social improvements this century, and it promises to be profoundly important to biomedical technology in the next generation. For example: Some agricultural methods depend on evolution. * Evolution underlies many improvements in agriculture (e.g., the artificial selection of crop strains and livestock breeds). * A less well-known fact is that evolutionary principles were used to produce many of our best vaccines and that evolution also causes problems with the use of some of those vaccines. * Some of the most promising areas for the future use of evolutionary biology lie in drug development and the biotechnology industry; patents worth vast amounts of money are based on ways of creating evolution (or avoiding evolution) in test tubes. Evolution mechanisms made possible the polio vaccine. Polio vaccine is an old example but it is a good one. * The vaccine now used to immunize against the disease poliomyelitis is a live poliovirus that we eat. * This live virus does not give us the disease (except to about 1-2 in a million people vaccinated) because it is genetically weakened so that our body can defeat it. * This process of weakening is called attenuation, and it is an evolutionary process. The attenuated vaccine strains came from wild, virulent strains of poliovirus, but they were evolved by Albert Sabin to become attenuated. Essentially, he grew the viruses outside of humans, and as the viruses became adapted to those non-human conditions, they lost their ability to cause disease in people. This method of attenuation has been used to create many live vaccines. Evolution was the good guy here because it helped us make the vaccine. But the role of evolution and evolutionary biology does not end here — evolution becomes the bad guy too. Evolution can also destroy the effects of vaccine. * When a person eats the attenuated virus, it infects his/her gut cells and starts doing what viruses do — making copies of itself. * These viral progeny infect other cells in your gut, those in turn make other viral progeny, and so on, until you have a population of poliovirus growing inside your gut. * Some of these viruses carry mutations, and some of those mutations (one or two in particular) restore most of the virulence to the virus. * In your gut, these restored viruses may have a selective advantage over the weakened viruses, and in the course of a week or so after eating the vaccine, you begin shedding virus with restored virulence. In short, an evolutionary process inside your gut undoes Albert Sabin’s attenuation of the virus. The harm in misunderstanding evolution The evolution of drug resistance in bacteria is one of the simplest examples of evolution that we have. It is extremely relevant to medicine. And since it is a case of microevolution, it is an example that should be widely embraced. Yet many people profoundly misunderstand drug resistance. Even news reports from the BBC have gotten it wrong. Bacteria evolve quickly to resist antibiotics. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an evolutionary phenomenon: * heavy use of antibiotics selects bacteria that are genetically resistant to the drug * with continued use of antibiotics, those resistant forms of the bacteria multiply and spread to other hosts * eventually, resistant bacteria replace the population of once-sensitive bacteria. In the minds of some people, however, the problem with misuse of antibiotics is that it can lead to a physiological tolerance in the person taking the drugs, so that antibiotics are no longer effective in that person. That is, they think that drugs become ineffective because of the person, not the bacterium. This erroneous, non-evolutionary view has serious ramifications, because it can lead to an unwarranted complacency about antibiotic misuse. Because drug resistance is evolutionary, your neighbor’s misuse of antibiotics can injure or kill you. The unregulated use of antibiotics in, say, Europe can bring strains for which we have no defense to the U.S. and our hospitals. It is not simply a matter of the proper use of antibiotics in each of us individually; it is a matter of everyone’s proper use of antibiotics. It is tempting to speculate that the common, though not universal, public failure to understand the evolutionary basis of drug resistance reflects a widespread ignorance of evolutionary principles, even principles professed to be uncontroversial. The fact that this misunderstanding is not confined to the western side of the Atlantic suggests that political opposition to the teaching of evolution is not the only cause. Evolution helps us track pathogens and improve medications. Modern applications of evolutionary biology There are numerous ways to apply evolutionary biology to our needs today, among them: 1. prolonging the life of drug/chemical resistant compounds 2. constructing evolutionary trees 3. pathogen tracking 4. industrial production of biochemicals and other agents 1. Drug resistance and chemical resistance in microbes, plants, and animals. In the latter half of this century, industry has been exceptionally good at providing compounds to kill viruses, bacteria, insects that eat crops and weeds that grow in crop fields. We even have an abundance of chemotherapy drugs to kill rogue cancer cells. Yet virtually without exception, our attempts to kill these organisms cause them to evolve resistance against the chemicals used to kill them. For example: AIDS is an example of a virus that evolves to thwart its destruction. Isolates of the AIDS virus with up to 15 different drug-resistance mutations are known, and the latest drugs are becoming ineffective. Some strains of bacteria are resistant to all available antibiotics. For multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, surgery is the only cure because antibiotics don’t work and only 50% of those infected survive. Chemotherapy for cancer often fails because drug-resistant cells evolve during treatment. Pesticide resistance and herbicide resistance is so common now that the financial incentive to make new pesticides and herbicides is break-even or worse. Evolutionary biology suggests how best to prolong the useful life of drugs/chemicals. The amounts of chemicals used, what combinations of chemicals to use, and when to apply them are all questions that can be assessed from the perspective of preventing or slowing the evolution of resistance. In some cases now, the companies marketing the compounds have a financial interest in maintaining the longevity of their product, and they are funding studies by evolutionary biologists to develop wise use protocols. In other cases, however, economic and emotional forces dictate policies that speed up the evolution of resistance (e.g., patients demand and physicians write prescriptions for antibiotics for viral infections; antibiotics are used in animal feed). Evolutionary trees help scientists track pathogens that cause disease. 2. Evolutionary trees Perhaps the core of evolutionary theory is that all life forms are connected to each other through common ancestry. Molecular biology has reinforced this view to a far greater level than was deemed possible even 50 years ago. On a short time scale, of course, we observe that this is true — everything alive comes from something else that is both alive and similar. One of the big developments in evolutionary biology over the last 2 decades is a methodology to estimate the underlying patterns of ancestry among living things. These reconstructions of evolutionary history are known as phylogenies, or phylogenetic trees, because they are branched somewhat like trees when drawn from bottom to top. We can use molecular data to estimate the common ancestries of life as far back as we like — for example, between bacteria and our mitochondria (the energy-producing organelles in our cells). But we can also use these methods to estimate much more recent ancestries. And these methods have found many worthy uses in tracking infectious diseases. 3. Molecular epidemiology — pathogen tracking To an epidemiologist studying infectious diseases, it is very useful to know how or where a person became infected with the disease. This information is perhaps the most basic fact we can use in preventing the further spread of a disease. For over a decade now, epidemiologists have been using DNA sequences of viruses to make phylogenetic trees and thereby track the sources of infections. Some of these examples are spectacular. Law: A case of intentional HIV injection? In a highly publicized case in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1998, a woman claimed that her ex-lover (a physician) deliberately injected her with HIV-tainted blood (HIV is the virus that causes AIDS). There were no records of her injection and no witnesses. So how could her story be tested? Evolutionary trees provide the best scientific evidence in a case like this. A woman’s claim to how she was infected with AIDS was supported by evolution. * HIV picks up mutations very fast — even within a single individual. * If one person gives the virus to another, there are few differences between the virus in the donor and the virus in the recipient. * As the virus goes from person to person, it keeps changing and gets more and more different over time. * Thus, the HIV sequences in two individuals who got the virus from two different people will be very different. * Thus, if the woman’s story were true, her virus should be very similar to the virus in the person whose blood was drawn but should be very different from viruses taken from other people in Lafayette. * That was exactly what the evolutionary trees showed; her virus appeared to have come from the patient’s virus but was unlike the virus taken from other people in town. * Since there was no way to explain how she would have gotten that patient’s virus on her own, the evolutionary analysis supported her story. (Incidentally, this case was the first use of phylogenetics in U.S. criminal court.) Other cases Evolutionary trees have been used in many other cases of infectious disease transmission: * the transmission of the AIDS virus by a dentist to his patients * deer mice as the source of hantavirus infections in the Four-Corners area * the source of rabies viruses in human cases, leading to the discovery of a case in which rabies virus took at least 7 years to kill a person * whether recent cases of polio in North America were relict strains from the New World, were vaccine strains, or were introduced from Asia 4. Industrial production of biochemicals and other agents “Directed evolution”, i.e. artificially-induced evolution, has become part of the jargon in biotechnology: Biotechnology allows us to give direction to evolution. * Artificially evolved enzymes and other proteins are soon to become part of household and medical technologies. * We will have protein-based drugs that, unlike the proteins inside our bodies, degrade slowly so that we don’t need to take so much of them. * Enzymes are being evolved to work in detergents (which they don’t normally do). * And as the stuff of futuristic novels, molecules are being developed to bind anthrax spores, ricin molecules, and other potential bioterrorism agents. All of these developments take advantage of one or more forms of test-tube evolution. Armed with a knowledge of how natural selection works and combined with the right kinds of laboratory technology, people can create molecules to perform seemingly any kind of function. In some of the more spectacular cases, these test tube evolution methods have created enzymes from purely random pools of DNA (or RNA) sequences. Even 10 years ago, it was thought that a DNA enzyme was impossible, yet armed with only an understanding of how to apply test tube evolution, a DNA enzyme can now be created in days. Conclusion: The public needs education about evolution to understand what is going on in biotechnology. In conclusion The pace of evolutionary biology and its ramifications has outstripped public awareness as well as expanded beyond the knowledge base of most classical evolutionary biologists. Even the textbooks have not kept up. It is thus difficult but important to recognize that evolutionary biology has implications to a new century of medicine, agriculture, biotechnology, and even law. Students educated with this knowledge will have an edge in the competitive job markets of the future, but at least in some areas of medicine, a basic public understanding of evolutionary principles may be essential in successfully waging the ongoing war with infectious diseases. http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/bull.html?print

How much of the presumption that "everything must have a cause" comes from our perspective on the world we deal with, where cause and effect relationships are simple and straightforward. We don't see things being created, but what are virtual particles, if not things that come from nothing, popping out of the fabric of space-time, annihilating each other, returning back to where they came from. Do first cause arguments have any relevance with the way the universe really works when there are no cause and effect relationships in the interactions of subatomic particles? Every change of state comes with a list of probabilities, and whether it is the collapse of a wave function or all possible paths have been followed in alternate dimension, as in the Many Worlds interpretation, there still is no room for applying cause and effect rules, and if that can't be done, where do we find first causes?

And so far, all I hear you doing is expressing your dislike for the concept of not being able to determine absolute certainty, even to others! I'm still waiting for your example of how you have determined absolute certainty.

As soon as talk shifts to intelligent design, we've reached a scientific dead-end where supernatural forces that can't be studied become the explanation for natural phenomena. No scientist is likely to just throw up his hands, say godditit and abandon the subject as an area of research. Darwin had no knowledge of any natural means to explain life's origins, and Richard Dawkins would be just as aware of that fact as anyone who read Origin of the Species. Darwin was not trying to develop a theory that explains the origins of life, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Darwin would insert God into that gap! Dawkins advocates leaving that gap open to the relatively new field of Abiogenesis, that is developing ideas for naturalistic mechanisms that would lead from organic chemistry to RNA-based and then DNA-based life. I never heard of Anthony Flew before the hubub about his conversion to deism, but in that interview by Gary Habermas, he doesn't seem to have kept up to date with research designing artificial lifeforms which may provide clues, or abiogenesis hypotheses like: RNA World, Metabolism first model, Clay Theory Model, Panspermia or the Deep hot-biosphere model. http://www.bio-medicine.org/Biology-Defini...Origin_of_life/ This old philosopher seems as unaware of these areas of research as he also appears to be about cosmological theories trying to explain the apparent fine tuning of the universe by natural theories. So, Anthony Flew has given up and wants to leave some explanations to an impersonal creative force -- it's not likely that many biologists or cosmologists will follow that line of thinking and stop trying to push scientific research into the questions of origins.

If Al Gore and David Suzuki are charlatans, what the hell does that make oil and energy company executives who are funding false flag environmental research groups to inform people to ignore rising CO2 levels and rising ocean acidification and melting glaciers? They are following the same strategy that tobacco companies used to slow the efforts to ban 2nd hand smoke, but this time the consequences for their lies are much greater than tobacco company scams of 30 years ago. The pollution of 40 years ago was too obvious for even the most short-sighted people to ignore. Smog filled the major cities, industrial cities with steel mills and other smelting operations were free to burn low grade high sulphur coal that usually made the air smell like rotten eggs during the warm weather; the rivers and even Lake Erie were beginning to stink from all of the untreated sewage, so all that happened during the last four decades, was that the most obvious sources of pollution were removed. All this proves is that a lot of people have no concern for the environment unless they are choking to death! This is not a good argument for the wisdom of the common man -- he will go on focusing solely on the mortgage and other bills until the next great extinction cycle wipes out the human race. But, there are some of us who have had this nagging feeling that the weather just doesn't seem to be the same as it was 40 years ago -- weather patterns seem to change on an almost daily basis, radical temperature shifts mean high winds damaging roofs and taking down tree branches and power lines are regular events, and rain comes in torrential floods that flood basements and close roads -- maybe it's just natural climatic change after a prolonged period of what climatologists labelled unusually stable and steady weather patterns, or maybe it does have something to do with the growing consumption of natural resources that a growing population is having on the planet's climate cycles. The article referred to here contains no surprises about human behaviour. Most people can only think short term, and even most people with children and grandchildren don't seem to give a lot of thought to what sort of world is being left for future generations!

You are arguing for the right to teach that homosexuality is 100% choice of aberrant sexual behaviour, and if you're defending their right to do so, I'm going to continue to identify them as your side, since you choose to come to their defense. I'm on the side of those who say that sexual orientation has many physical factors in its makeup, and that people who consider themselves to be gay, should be free to choose same-sex partners without facing abuse, and will be happier if they are able to live life in the way that feels natural for them. So, I'm not gay, but I'm taking their side in this argument, so feel free to call them "my side." Hold on there a minute! If psychotherapy had such a great track record in the first place, antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs would have never been invented; and many gay men and women are happy, creative and productive members of society, so if such a thing as drugs to change sexual orientation are invented, why would you assume that it would be a good idea to give homosexuals drugs to turn them straight? I am not open minded about creationism, and likewise, I am not open-minded about teaching that gay or bisexual behaviour is caused 100% by psychological factors. I feel no need to be open-minded to ideas that are not supported by evidence, and are instead contrary to the evidence available!

I'd like to ignore this drivel, but I have to interject that orthodox christianity puts high emphasis on conformity and obedience to authority, and that's why political leaders love to have the high priest along to offer his blessings to the troops as they march off to war to fight the holy battle for the good of the nation. A clear example of Christians unquestioning obedience to authority, is their blind acceptance of torture as a tool to extract information and confessions (or in the case of the Bush Administration - false confessions) Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds So, if Christian dogma makes people more moral than us heathens, why did that Pew survey find that churchgoers were more accepting of torture? Simple: obedience to authority, and surprisingly - MORAL RELATIVISM! That's right, instead of teaching timeless values, the teaching is "the ends justify the means," and since these were bad people, it was okay to do things to them that would otherwise be declared as "unchristian." This must be the Christian version of the "Islam means peace" argument! It couldn't possibly be the fault of the angry deity that demands worship. And the one who destroys all life on earth when he gets mad at the sins of the human race, or orders them to commit genocide to take the land of Canaan...that couldn't possibly be the cause, even though any Christian leader with the intention of committing genocide could easily look up chapter and verse to find scriptural justification for his intentions.