Every scientist in the world: the earth is 5 billion years old.

Who do you think is right?

The observable change within a species known as Natural Selection is called Evolution and used as proof for the other 90% of the theory….

Sorry, but Natural Selection is only one small part of Evolutionary theory.

It is not proof of Evolution.

At the same time, a few biologists began making similar discoveries elsewhere in the world. One of them was John A. Endler, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studied Trinidadian guppies. In 1986 Endler published a little book called Natural Selection in the Wild, in which he collected and reviewed all of the studies of evolution in action that had been published to that date. Dozens of new field projects were in progress. Biologists finally began to realize that Darwin had been too modest. Evolution by natural selection can happen rapidly enough to watch.

Now the field is exploding. More than 250 people around the world are observing and documenting evolution, not only in finches and guppies, but also in aphids, flies, grayling, monkeyflowers, salmon, and sticklebacks. Some workers are even documenting pairs of species—symbiotic insects and plants—that have recently found each other, and observing the pairs as they drift off into their own world

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/master.html?http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/1105/1105_feature3.html

To your healthSuch evolutionary breakthroughs are not just ivory-tower exercises; they hold huge promise for improving human well-being. Take the chimpanzee genome. Humans are highly susceptible to AIDS, coronary heart disease, chronic viral hepatitis, and malignant malarial infections; chimps aren’t. Studying the differences between our species will help pin down the genetic aspects of many such diseases. As for the HapMap, its aims are explicitly biomedical: to speed the search for genes involved in complex diseases such as diabetes. Researchers have already used it to home in on a gene for agerelated macular degeneration.

And in 2005, researchers stepped up to help defend against one of the world’s most urgent biomedical threats: avian influenza. In October, molecular biologists used tissue from a body that had been frozen in the Alaskan permafrost for almost a century to sequence the three unknown genes from the 1918 flu virus–the cause of the epidemic that killed 20 million to 50 million people. Most deadly flu strains emerge when an animal virus combines with an existing human virus. After studying the genetic data, however, virologists concluded that the 1918 virus started out as a pure avian strain. A handful of mutations had enabled it to easily infect human hosts. The possible evolution of such an infectious ability in the bird flu now winging its way around the world is why officials worry about a pandemic today.

EVOLUTION IN ACTION

From Science Mag

“Probing how species split2005 was also a standout year for researchers studying the emergence of new species, or speciation. A new species can form when populations of an existing species begin to adapt in different ways and eventually stop interbreeding. It’s easy to see how that can happen when populations wind up on opposite sides of oceans or mountain ranges, for example. But sometimes a single, contiguous population splits into two. Evolutionary theory predicts that this splitting begins when some individuals in a population stop mating with others, but empirical evidence has been scanty. This year field biologists recorded compelling examples of that process, some of which featured surprisingly rapid evolution in organisms’ shape and behavior.

For example, birds called European blackcaps sharing breeding grounds in southern Germany and Austria are going their own ways–literally and figuratively. Sightings over the decades have shown that ever more of these warblers migrate to northerly grounds in the winter rather than heading south. Isotopic data revealed that northerly migrants reach the common breeding ground earlier and mate with one another before southerly migrants arrive. This difference in timing may one day drive the two populations to become two species

Two races of European corn borers sharing the same field may also be splitting up. The caterpillars have come to prefer different plants as they grow–one sticks to corn, and the other eats hops and mugwort–and they emit different pheromones, ensuring that they attract only their own kind.

Biologists have also predicted that these kinds of behavioral traits may keep incipient species separate even when geographically isolated populations somehow wind up back in the same place. Again, examples have been few. But this year, researchers found that simple differences in male wing color, plus rapid changes in the numbers of chromosomes, were enough to maintain separate identities in reunited species of butterflies, and that Hawaiian crickets needed only unique songs to stay separate. In each case, the number of species observed today suggests that these traits have also led to rapid speciation, at a rate previously seen only in African cichlids.

Other researchers have looked within animals’ genomes to analyze adaptation at the genetic level. In various places in the Northern Hemisphere, for example, marine stickleback fish were scattered among landlocked lakes as the last Ice Age ended. Today, their descendants have evolved into dozens of different species, but each has independently lost the armor plates needed for protection from marine predators. Researchers expected that the gene responsible would vary from lake to lake. Instead, they found that each group of stranded sticklebacks had lost its armor by the same mechanism: a rare DNA defect affecting a signaling molecule involved in the development of dermal bones and teeth. That single preexisting variant–rare in the open ocean–allowed the fish to adapt rapidly to a new environment.

You have proven this past week exactly how irrelevent you really are on this blog.

Boy you’re so smart. Why don’t you put your brains together and get Wichita schools to employ the percentages of highly qualified math and science teachers that other districts have? You don’t have to compete with JoCo, but at least get USD 259 to the level of Kansas City Kansas, Hutchinson and Colby.

It doesn’t amazes me to witness a place that performs below average–half of communities must fill this niche, but it does amaze me to find one that is proud of this “accomplishment”.

For example read Winston Brooks’ WE commentaries over the past 5 years. Read the USD 259 website.

Where has he said to the public, “One of our most serious problems is our district’s being among the lowest performing districts in Kansas in highly qualified teacher employment, especially in math and science, which is a critical deficiency because Wichita’s cornerstone industry, aviation, is math and science intensive?”

Has UTW publicly reported, “We have too many teachers who are not highly qualified, and we’re giving them two years to become highly qualified, or they must be let go?” Highly qualified basically breaks down to bachelor’s degree, and demonstrated expertise in one’s classroom field.

In truth “highly qualified” is typical pub ed inflation, like today’s classroom “A-’s” that used to be “B’s” 40 years ago. It’s an attempt to avoid the reality of “qualified” vs. “unqualified”. But if you are not “highly qualified”, the reality is you’re unqualified, lacking subject knowledge in what you teach.

We know what the problem is, Apophis, ksag, Capn, don’t we? There are plenty of people who have bachelor’s degrees and subject expertise out there. But they want to be fairly compensated for this, either through more money than the unqualified teachers find acceptable, or else operational conditions that allow them to teach well what they know, that the unqualified teachers do not require.

You can’t be a science teacher without working experience doing science. Take a woodshop or autoshop teacher who hasn’t been a carpenter or auto mechanic. That’s an oxymoron. If you had working experience doing science, then you’d be firing off letters to WE protesting $300 science class materials budgets for making it impossible for you to convey the spirit of science to your students.

Every scientist will tell you there is a spirit underlying what they do. It’s a motivating force that they don’t understand, but that connects with them.

I’m not a scientists because I have advanced degrees that you don’t have , I’m a scientist because that peculiar spirit resonated within me a very long time ago, and I pursued opportunities that fed my desire to deepen my understanding.

How dumb do you think I am? I know I could promote natural selection, use my knowledge that you don’t possess, and you’d slavishly let me be your guru. You would say to “the other side,” in WEBLOG “Dr. S says this, and he’s brilliant and has scientific credentials you dimwits don’t have.”

It would be a walk in the park to do this. Why don’t I? Because it would require intellectual dishonesty. Evolutionary science is not a scientifically rigorous field.

Thomas Hunt Morgan is lionized for laying a genetics-based connection to evolution. But his research, which demonstrated intra-species mutation, never laid a foundation for mutation causing biogenesis from simple chemicals, bacteria becoming complex organisms, nor apes mutating into humans.

Paleontologic explorations cannot prove any of the aforegoing. The only convincing proof is laboratory-accelerated recreations, which nobody has come close to doing. It’s not enough to say, “We have found very close genetic homologies between species A and species B.” What you have to do is transform species A into species B through experiment, and then show natural mechanisms for this to have occurred over a greater period of time.

For biogenesis, you have to do it in the lab. A lot of people have tried, including Sir Francis Crick. All of them have failed thus far.

One of the things IDers propose is that school science courses DO NOT TEACH ID, but DISCLOSE TO STUDENTS THE PROBLEMS IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY.

That’s real science. Are 13-15 year olds “too young and inexperienced” to tackle these in their brains? Maybe, but as Apophis would admit, if he took the time to think about it, when you’re just passing on experts’ opinions, that’s not cultivating SCIENTIFIC THINKING.

If you don’t get this, it’s because nobody ever invited you to explore the deeper levels of science, the BASIS OF THE THEORIES of science, which are PHILOSOPHICAL.

He’s a lobbyist for a big tobacco company.

A little girl in the front row says, “My mommy says that smoking causes cancer.”

The lobbyist walks over and says intimidatingly, “is your mother a doctor?”

Well . . . that’s MPS.

Some one should put that in a college textbook as an example of refutation and rebuttal.

Well done!

The BS hypocrisy you noted was exactly what I was alluding to in my “assinine” [sic] comment.

If no one is allowed to claim knowledge in MPS’s world unless he/she has direct observational experience in the scientific field, how does one teach sex ed?

Although I’m not an expert in the field of sex ed, I’m pretty sure that pairing kids up and encouraging them to “explore” on lab tables is not good pedagogy.

You were exactly right to point out that MPS shifts the ground of his argument from “here’s the evidence against evolution” to “you can’t know because you didn’t do the empirical research” whenever it suits him.

He facily ignores (or rather, refuse to acknowledge) how the same limitation he imposes on others has to apply to him as well.

Blessings all!!

Now the brouhaha from the NOVA thread has been exported here, and I feel somewhat responsible for what I believe is an accurate description of a meltdown by MPS.

That being said, here I go about to throw fuel on the fire, because sir, I’m not letting you escape from the consequences of your behavior and what you say. Basically, I have two charges I am going to level at the doctor.

One, hypocrisy.

One of MPS’s arguments is that he is a scientist, and that those who he is arguing with are not “real” scientists. Other than the obvious fact that MPS does not really know much at all about us other than what we post on a blog, he violates his own rules.

“”The Darwinian “Descent of Man” proposal (with help from Huxley and others) theory of man evolving from apes has zero evidentiary support. The East African Rift fossil findings don’t do this in the slightest.”

I see no evidence in MPS’s background that he is an expert in paleoanthropology, osteology or cranial or post cranial reconstruction. I doubt he can recite the procedures for doing such analysis. But, that doesn’t prevent him from making a definitive statement about the “East African Rift fossils”.

However, in response to some publish, peer reviewed research I pointed out to him, this was his response:

“Okay smart guys, if you are performing interspecies chromosomal homology determinations, what procedures would you use to separate nuclear from cytoplasmic constituents, and nuclear proteins, histones, mRNA, rRNA and tRNA from DNA?”

MPS has no difficulty making definitive pronouncements about scientific fields in which, from what he has presented us with before, in depth (and actually, I differ from some of his other opponents in that I have sound SOME of his anectdotes actually interesting, and there are actually good illustrations of the scientific method in them), he has no training in.

MPS has no problem with discussing subjects that he is not professionally trained in, but then demands that his opponents have a professional level of training before they even discuss a subject.

Hypocrisy.

My second charge is more serious.

Two, MPS is a bullsh*tter. I don’t mean some guy who sits around and spins tall tales, I mean it in the sense meant by philospher Harry Frankfurt.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780691122946&itm=1

Here is what this was in response to:

MPS said: “”On DNA homologies between chimpanzees and humans, get real. If you asked creationists 40 years ago,

Do you think genetic correspondences between apes and humans will be found to be closer than between anthropoids and mice?

they would have answered yes, on the principle that anatomic correspondences are closer, and these have a genetic basis. So the homologies are evidentiarilly neutral with respect to evolution vs. creationist theory.”

That is, MPS’s argument was that because chimpanzees and humans have similar anatomies, and anatomies have a genetic basis, it would be predicted that they would be similar regardless of whether evolution or creation was the hypothesis.

Therefore, MPS made a definitive statement. He said that DNA similarities between humans and chimps are explained by similar anatomies. However, what that means is that there would be no reason for DNA sequences which do not result in shared anatomy to be similar. That is the logical inference from what MPS said.

So, here was my reply:

“The problem is, the similarities between human and ape genetic material goes beyond functional similarities, to similarities that are best described as historical. The example Ken Miller refers to in the NOVA documentary is a prime example.

“Here is a link that desribes the difference.

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html

“There is no functional (i.e., they were just made the same way) reason why the human 2nd chromosome should show evidence of fusion in comparison with other (that’s right, I said other) apes. However, evidence of such a fusion would be expected if humans shared a common ancestry with the other apes.

“By the same token, there is no functional (they were created the same way) reason why inherited evidence of retrovirus infection would appear in identical positions on the DNA of different species, but such a thing would be expected if the infection occured in a common ancestor to both species. Such homologies in retrovirus sequences exist.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/18/10254

“‘Three of the loci, HERV-KC4, HERV-KHML6.17, and RTVL-Ia, were detectable in the genomes of OWMs and hominoids, but not New World monkeys, and therefore integrated into the germ line of a common ancestor of the Old World lineages. HERV-K18, RTVL-Ha, and RTVL-Hb were found exclusively in humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos, and thus are consistent with a gorilla/chimpanzee/human clade. None of the loci was detected in New World monkeys.’”

Note, MPS made a specific claim about the nature of human and chimpanzee genetic similarities. I provided direct links that contradicted that claim. That in fact, indicated that DNA similarities between humans and non-human apes extended well beyond those that result in anatomical similarities.

MPS’s response? Well, here it is again:

“Okay smart guys, if you are performing interspecies chromosomal homology determinations, what procedures would you use to separate nuclear from cytoplasmic constituents, and nuclear proteins, histones, mRNA, rRNA and tRNA from DNA?”

Followed by a longer rant about methodology.

Note the complete avoidance of the point. MPS made a specific claim concerning the reason for DNA similarities between humans and chimpanzees. I provided direct evidence that his claim was wrong. His response was to totally ignore his earlier claim and to attack the messenger with

“Well, YOU don’t know how to do it YOU don’t know how to do it YOU don’t know how to do it!”

This is, quite literally, Harry Frankfurt style bullsh*t. The concern is not to tell the truth, or for that matter to lie, or to be concerned with the validity of one’s arguments. It is say anything that comes to mind, anything to win a point, anything to win. Whether it is true is unimportant. Whether it is a lie is unimportant. Most especially, whether it is consistent with what you just said in the previous post is unimportant. Make a claim, and when confronted with information that contradicts that claim, attack the messenger as being unqualified to relay the message. After all, why be responsible for what you said when you can stay on offense.

MPS, if you have questions about the research, doctor, I suggest you take them up with Johnson and Coffin.

But MPS went further, and this I really find reprehensible.

“There has always had to be a story for why a few people are very rich and powerful, a minority are affluent, and most are poor or very poor. It was for centuries “God’s Grace Upon His Elect”, and the “Divine Right of Kings”. But the American Revolution and the French Revolution panned this. In response, there had to be something else. Ahh, Natural Selection. In the Descent of Man, Darwin explains that Africans are just less evolved than White People.

Take home lesson: today’s evolution propagandists are bleached blonds. If you look closely, you’ll see their real-color dark roots are showing.”

In case you missed it, MPS just accused myself, Apophis, Capn America, Jed, and anyone else who argues with him as being Victorian racists. That also applies to any scientist who works under the assumption that evolution, especially human evolution, is true.

And oh yes, in case you missed it, does everyone understand that MPS is now a professional historian as well?

You are in no position, sir, to be lecturing Capnamerica about maturity.

Bullsh*t.

It is not the liberal side of folks that blame the troops.

Policy comes from on high. The troops just carry it out. Troops answerable only to their employer like Blackwater answer only to their employer. US troops answer to george bush.

You won’t catch me blaming any of the actions of the troops on anyone but their commander.

I know that it would be very hard for a family, especially a poor family, to come up with 4.50 per project though. That’s quite a bit throughout the year. Considering that our supposed FAPE isn’t even free as it is.

Give the liberals a week or two and they will be calling American troops terrorists.

Sacriledge!

Mark Cuban is anti-American. Boycott his NBA team.

Glad to hear that brother O’Reilly is on board.

WAR IS PEACE. TRUST US.

We must be fair. I have not seen “Redacted” have you?

Outlander and BillO say we should not see “Redacted”.

I plan to see it IF I can. THEN I will say whether or not it seems truthful.

Boycott TRUTH!