Oh this is an easy one to be politically correct with--let me try!

Of course global warming is happening.  It doesn't matter if the science can prove it or not.  What matters is that we humans are a parasitical infection on this earth consuming its living beings and poisoning the planet with our technological waste.  Our refusal to stop eating meat and making synthetic food and goods condemns us as murderers and polluters and the best outcome is that those of us who will not see the light need to be purged in a global catastrophe that reduces our numbers and leaves behind only those of us who are willing to live humbly, eat greens, dress naturally and let predators and disease have their natural course with us--uninterfered with by our evil technological cleverness.  Only then will we live in harmony with mother earth and restore the balance of nature.

Global warming studies and science do not need truth--they are tools to achieve this pure and righteous goal. It is not wrong or immoral to present facts whether they are facts are not that lead us this way because certainly we are right and the rest of you are too stupid and evil to understand if you don't agree with us.

Did I get it right?  I hope so because I want to be on the mothership when the Vegans from Vega return.  Live long and prosper, blessed be, peace brothers and sisters. I believe!

"All will join the Unity"

I was being tongue in cheek there (though I have actually heard people say these things in RL) but what prompted it was three interviews I heard with different scientests after "Climategate" occured who went on the defense of the scientests who falsified data and downplayed it as not significant.

Global warming science aside--since when do scientests falsify data and publish with peer approval?  Just a few weeks ago the IPC submitted a report to the EU global warming commitee with a known erroneous "fact" in it and when asked why they knowingly published and included it the response was that it agreed with other points that were established and they thought it would be more effective to help sway politicial opinions. My response as a lover of science is, "Wow."  "

"We're lying to you for your own good (even though we don't yet have all the facts)--therefore, it isn't lying."  Lenin and Marx would be proud.

Nah, I could give a crap about any of that stuff.  But his assessment of the underpinnings of evolution, the 3 gaps in evolution he described which cannot be closed, his mention of the genetic bottleneck, the Planck quote, his musings about how long humans have actually been here, etc.  All this I found worthwhile.  And the other stuff (elongated skulls, etc) - hell, even if totally preposterous, and nothing but science fiction at the end of the day, was interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, but he presents these like they're huge challenges to evolutionary biology that have gone unnoticed, or worse, have been suppressed. They're not. Most biologists are willing to accept that there are gaps between evolutionary theory and what's experimentally producible given existing constraints; and anthropologists routinely cite the 'genetic bottleneck' as evidence for the 'out of Africa' theory.  

I do like the Planck quote, though. Scientists could use a little humanistic or social scientific perspective.

Oh, and while I'm at it, you'd be hard pressed to find a deep ecologist who actually believes:

 let alone a member of one of the major, centrist political parties.

I thought we're at a stage now where the term "denier" and "skeptic" in regards to global warming have been blended into the one term "infidels"...

I for one am a rationalist. I know that there are those who try to do good by stating that we need to cut CO2 emissions, but I also know that the vast majority of "experts" on the matter are just in for personal gain and politics.

At least I take everything that is published with a major grain of salt...

If at any time politicians start cutting emissions where it is due and making sense, like shutting down all coal fueled power plants and stop the chopping off of more rain forest to make way for fields to grow plants for "bio diesel", I MIGHT conclude that they're actually taking the matter seriously...

Lol--I am speechless.  You make a good point.  I am going to digest myself and with my last breath throw myself on a compost pile as I hug a tree...then perhaps I will earn some redemption.

I think we can agree that political uses of scientific data should be heavily scrutinized, whether the organization using the data is the IPCC or the NIPCC. But it's a two-way street -- policymakers often can't, don't, or are unwilling to come to terms with scientific results. I'm not suggesting that the IPCC had praiseworthy intentions in the case you mention. Although, again, without knowing exactly what the data was and how it was incorrect, it's difficult to pass judgment.

Well, you could plausibly believe that as despicable as your existence is, it's nevertheless necessary to promote the wider euthanasia movement.

I know there are a lot of rationales and a lot of varying context for things scientific--not always as intuitive or black and white as things seem.  My point is that scientests are humans too.  People of like strengths and weaknesses, biases and foolishness as well as wisdom.  Many of these scientific issues are also social issues and it is important for science not to confuse the two as the same; i.e., science does not direct social issues and social issues should not direct science.  Science is science and good scientests should realize that.  I don't need a math teacher deciding ethics for me and using his master's degree in mathematics as his authority to do it.

In my opinion it is the job of scientests to educate and inform the populance and governments--not to manipulate their reponses through partially true explanations.

I take no position one way or the other, just submitting this as an interesting read:

http://english.pravda.ru/print/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0

Actually, I didn't cite anything.  I put forth something as an interesting read, and as I said, I take no position on it one way or the other.

Good evening (from my point of view).

[Edit: Removed typos, cleared some stuff up. Also, I point out problems on both siedes of the fence. Please bear with me, I am a little tired]

If I may participate ? Feeling a bit bored at the moment, and I guess sharing some thoughts of mine might be ok.

Not that important, but I detest  the idea that the views of someone making a fallacious argument can automatically be rejected. You might agree, I guess.

One of the beautiful ideas in science is that different theories are employed to tackle non-related issues. The ID variety of creationism  (and I hasten to add that I am not refering to you with this) tries to explain speciation by amploying a creator, which by their own definition must be more complex than his creation and therefore also by their definition has to have been created by someone even more complex and so on. There are several problems in posting this as science, as your knowledge of the scientific method has certainly told you. I'd suggest accepting that the question comes directly out of the hotbed of ID/evolution debates and might not have been inappropriate as an argument here.

That is the 'beautiful' part I was refering to - evolution does not explain this, and doesn't need to. please look up 'abiogenesis'. To use an anology - if you drop a stone it will fall. That the question how the stone came to be in your hand is not explained by the theory of gravity doesn't invalidate this theory in the context of explaining the actual fall. The theory of evolution by natural selection does not explain the origin of life, but the basis for the development of live and the split into a multitude of species sharing characteristics across a broad spectrum.

Your use of this construct sounds much like a fallacious argument I heard a few times before, but I might be wrong. But just in case: That there is no human being that has every answer to every subject does not mean that everyone is missing the same answers or that every viewpoint is automatically equally informed. It also does not follow that arguments you do not like can just be ignored (which it seems you want to do here).

The reaseon we know that a car was built by a complex being is that we can watch them do it and talk to the creators. That is a fact. Scientists like facts. Please introduce me to the guy that made plant cells.

To add - that there are complex things made from complex beings does not mean that complexity cannot arise from simple origins. The hypothesis that complexity can only arise from complexity can be falsified. Take a mandelbrot set (arising from fairly simple math), a solar system (again, while the math can be far more complex the pretty simple formulae in Newtons time are pretty sufficient to explain the complexity of a solar system) or a snowflake, or self-organizing phospholipids (they do that when thrown together, very cool indeed, building a cell wall withtout interference out of simple molecules...) and so on and so on.

Good that you concede the point to him - he is obviously right. Yes, one basis of evolution is random mutation. But the "natural selection" part is really important. A (very simple) analogy - you throw twenty six-sided dies. Every time a die shows a six you leave it on the table, and throw the others again. Now would you agree that after a few thousand throws the outcome is pretty clear and only partly based on a random event ? One thing to point out - I am NOT making the point that evolution needs a designer. Selection can of course occur by non-complex influences. Simple things that kill you or make you ill, for example. Please also note that the example ignores inheritance to simplify things.

Not an argument. By the way - animals do not adapt, to point out a common mistake made by your opponent. They are adapted.

Your actual argument being ? Flat out denial is not sufficient. Species adapt to their surroundings, evolution.

Ah, the famous misquote of the Cambrian Explosion. Please read the actual science, not the tabloid version. Start with talk.origins.org, follow to the papers.

Good advice. But I have to admit that I am not sure that it is sufficient. It is usually not enough to read the books, you have to understand them. Please see some of my comments above.

That good old CD discussed problems with his theory only demonstrates an integrity I sometimes miss in other texts (not refering to this board!). Funny thing is that it is of no consequence what he said at that time - science moved on a bit and found answers for many problems, sometimes even mistakes in his texts. Imagine that - science actually corrects for the human factor ! Who would have thought... (please insert here my 'beauty' statement). Oh - 'CD said so' is an appeal to authority, by the way.

Apparently you accuse the whole scientific field involved in the study of evolution of cherry picking. I guess you are not aware of it, but to a scientist this is a very grave insult. Also, where is your point ? Just shouting 'cherry-picking' isn't one.

And the admittance that a dataset is complex and problematic to analyse is not cherry-picking. If you want to have an idea why, just download a genome set (also complex data sets) (start small, something procaryotic should do) and have fun.

Haven't heard one from you - you don't even seem to try. So far I haven't heard a good one from anyone. Which is a pity - somebody falsifying evolution in my lifetime ? What an exciting idea! I guess if it does there would be one demonstrating a reversal of translation first - that might be the way to go (Read a nice study last year connected to this which tried to argue in favour of Lamarck, but sadly didn't have the data to support this.). But I am not holding my breath.

Toppling old theories is the dream of any scientist worth his salt ! By the way - scientists like to give prizes to guys (and gals) that do that. Proving already suspected things is very boring and mundane. Proving old theories wrong, or offering more parsimonious explanations for for the same dataset ? Exciting !

I REALLY suggest you try to understand the theory of evolution before you try to argue against it. Wow. You claim you read Gould. Please start again. Failure to understand doesn't mean you are right.

Cheers,

G

Hey,

just a few short comments - I should do some work.

One could say that, sure. But admitting that one didn't read and/or understand my post isn't a valid point. The difference (and something many people fail to see) between evolution and ID is that evo doesn't say anything about origin of life, only of species. Origin of life is abiogenesis; even if thaty theory would be invalidated, it would not invalidate the theory of evolution. Also, the whole "something doesn't come out of now nothing"-argument is pretty much invalid - why not ?

To add - the main problem with ID is that a) the existence of the intelligent designer presents an infalsifiable and therefore scientifically useless hypothesis, which is based on an easily falsifiable claim ("irreducible complexity"). See above. Creationism as such is pretty fine in my eyes - what do I care what people belive. It only becomes bad when creationists pretend that it is science, or come to my world and try to teach me my job without actually having any grounds to stand on. Also, it seems that you claim that I did not understand ID - since the amount of non-propaganda pieces published in that area is pretty small I can confidently claim that I indeed know the basic "arguments" pretty well. And the basic "ideas" of ID are so easily refuted, it is a dead-in-the-water 'hypothesis' (for lack of a better word).

Again, do not cloude the discussion by jumping from theory to theory, idea to idea. I could debunk homeopathy, but it would not be pertinent to this discussion. The theory of evolution does not deal with the big bang, or abiogenesis. It also does not deal with stone sculpture. If you are not clear on that most basic idea, why on earth do you think you are able to contribute anything worthwhile in such a discussion ?

So an untestable claim for the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being is "as good" as an explanation that explains the same fact with testable mechanisms ?

Are you sure that you want to claim that both make the same sense and then call one preposterously stupid ? Might be that some believers here will take offense at that. (Oh, and again - we are talking evolution, not big bang or abiogenesis).

Cheers,

G