I’m sure you were all looking forward to it. He left an answer to my criticisms of his failed predictions
of evolution. He does not disappoint. It’s stupid.
We cannot defeat this density of inanity, but I will count it as a victory if he learns about these strange things called “paragraphs”.
Maybe these are not “predictions” per se, but more like expectations or “promissory notes.” Karl Popper coined the term “promissory materialism,” which means science likes to issue “promissory notes” in the form of ridged scientific dogmas….these dogmas are to act as the foundation and framework for the theory. So in a sense they are indeed predictions, but these “predictions” form the basic structure of what the theory is.
So you’re flip-flopping already? OK. But you also fail to grasp the nature of my criticisms. We make predictions to test, so obviously sometimes they fail. But also, many of your failures
are an ahistorical botch. You get the original hypothesis wrong, and you get the current explanation wrong.
So for example, the theory would “predict” that there should be biological leftovers such as junk dna or vestigial organs…..and sure enough junk dna and the appendix would fit right into those predictions….
First of all, junk DNA was a bit of a surprise. In the early 20th century (and right up into the last half — Ernst Mayr did not expect junk DNA), selection was viewed as a kind of inevitable force that would pare away deleterious or non-essential elements. But even early on, the population geneticists you disparaged made it clear with mathematics that there were limits on the potency of selection, and as we learned more about the actual size of the genome, it became increasingly clear that it could not all be the product of selection. Neutral and nearly-neutral theory explained how much of the genome should not be selectively advantageous, and genome sequencing confirmed it. So the history was:
-
In the absence of hard information about the physical nature of genes, and with only Darwin’s theory of selection to guide them, it was assumed that what would be called the genome would be functional.
-
As population geneticists explored the mathematics of evolution and selection, a consensus emerged that much of the genome could not be functional or advantageous.
-
Molecular biologists sequenced the genome and confirmed that there was a heck of a lot of junk in there. Unfortunately, because science is really, really big, some molecular biologists skipped the understanding of #2, and are confusing the issue by straining to impose functionality on nonsense.
As for vestigial organs, did you even bother to look at the link I provided? Charles Darwin himself explained what the term meant, it doesn’t mean what you think it means, and the concept is still valid.
same with the notion of the impossibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics….that was a prediction, a basic rule or framework that was established many decades ago when the theory was formed, because adaptive traits were said to be spread by selection and vertical descent, not horizontally due to adaptive internal factors…otherwise phylogenetic trees would have giant question marks all over them……..
Horizontal gene transfer is not Lamarckism, or the inheritance of acquired characters. You don’t seem to understand the terminology you throw around at all.
And again, you don’t understand the history, either. Darwin’s biggest blunder was proposing a theory of heredity that involved the inheritance of acquired characters and a violation of what would be called Weismann’s barrier. He actually endorsed something similar to Lamarckism! What changed was multiple converging lines of evidence. Weismann was a cytologist, studying the structure and function of cells, and he determined that the germ line was a specifically sequestered set of cells with a unique pattern of multiplication that was necessary for their function, and was not shared with somatic cells. There is no observed violation of Weismann’s barrier in us, except in the case of biotechnological manipulation (induced stem cells could be regarded as a violation.)
Dawkins offered to eat his hat if biology had to return to Lamarckism….”a promissory note” that in my opinion needs to be fulfilled.
Except that biology has not returned to Lamarckism. It has no mechanism, and it has no evidence to support it.
So maybe the things I listed in my video are not predictions in the typical sense, but they do certainly serve as expectations, which is essentially the same thing. They’re also all easily defendable. Neo-Lamarckism, Weissman’s barrier, the inheritance of acquired characteristics are all confirmed by epigenetic changes and horizontal gene transfer, both of which involve acquiring traits and then passing them on to future generations.
But once again, your problem is that you don’t understand what epigenetics is. Epigenetics is not Lamarckism, neo-Lamarckism, or the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Again, did you even bother to read the link to a summary of epigenetics I gave you?
“To the surprise of scientists, many environmentally induced changes turn out to be heritable. When exposed to predators, Daphnia water fleas grow defensive spines (right). The effect can last for several generations.” http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/101%20Watters%202006.htm The molecular clock is argued and debated as to how to set it….how can the molecular clock be right if people are fighting about how fast it ticks? And how can the molecular clock be right if evo devo is right, which assumes small changes in regulation can alter a myriad of tratis, sometimes without a change in protein coding genes at all? And yes, the appendix was claimed for decades to have no function…as was junk dna….ENCODE shot that down…along with other assorted evidences that the “junk” has function: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070509205719.htm …the idea that genomes are static during the lifetime of the individual is just ridiculous. Have you read Shapiro’s book? Surely I don’t need to defend the notion that genomes aren’t dynamically adaptive.
Wait. Hold it right there. I see once again in your wall of text the beginning bugle of a Gish Gallop. Focus! Pick one thing! You’re not only trying to throw the entire contents of the pantry of creationist misconceptions at me, you don’t even understand the basics, and worst of all, you’re not even trying to understand what scientists actually say about these concepts. Pick ONE thing. Explain what you understand about it. Resist the temptation to fill in the massive gaps in your knowledge with a flood of buzzwords (that you also don’t understand) from some other topic.
Honestly, it does not make you look erudite. It makes you look like a shallow buffoon.
Also, look up “paragraphs”. I think it was in your third grade curriculum.
By the way, James Shapiro is a fringe crank. If you think he’s at all representative of modern biology, or that his criticisms of evolution are at all useful, you are mistaken.
Scientific dogmas – ridged for your pleasure!
A point for Hall:
When PZ asks you to use paragraphs and to stick to a single subject, he’s not just being an ass. It’s actually very good advice, both in general, but especially if you’re trying to convince an audience about a controversial point.
The thing is, I’m starting from the position that you’re full of it. That means I’m not particularly interested in spending a lot of time and energy to check if I might be wrong about that. Even though I might be wrong, there are so many people talking crap on the internet that I can’t really afford to go into deep detail with every single one. I only have so much time to spare, so I have to make a quick decision whether your text is worth the bother.
That means that you have to get to your point quickly and you have to make it accessible. If I spend two minutes reading your text and still haven’t gotten to the point, then I’m not going to read any further. I’m just going to assume that my default conclusion was correct and move on. If your text is difficult to read (because of formatting, spelling or whatever), I’m less inclined to make the effort.
So, take this very comment as an example. First, I give you a quick hint about the point I’m going to make (that’s the first paragraph) and give you a good reason why you should be interested (you might convince more people if you take my advice).
Next, I expand on my point with more details, and I break each smaller point into paragraphs that are easy to digest and understand (I hope). This way, you’re motivated to read and you don’t have to work very hard at it. I’ve done the work for you.
If you really think that you’ve got a valuable point, make it clear by taking yourself seriously. If you can’t be bothered to correctly format your post, why should I be bothered to read it? If I can see that you’ve made an effort to present your idea, I’m more likely to make the effort to engage with it. And presumably, that’s what you want.
Richard @ 1:
:Snort:
In case you drop by, Tommy, the word you wanted is rigid. Ridged means something else altogether. If you’re bad at spelling, learn how to use a spellchecker, and when you’re corrected, you might want to take advantage of a handy dictionary so you improve your language skills as you go. (The internet is chock full of dictionaries!)
re 3:
unfortunately a spellchecker won’t help; as “rigid” and “ridged”, are both spelled correctly. Maybe a mythical “semantics checker” would be more useful for correcting such a mistake. /snark
Thank you, Caine. I hadn’t puzzled out what he was trying to say. I was thinking these ridges must act as a ratchet, so that these “promissory notes” are irreversible. Once you have postulated something like phlogiston, (or non-Lamarkian inheritance) there’s no going back, and if you find some other concept works better, you can’t just come up with oxidation (or jumping genes). Those one-way ridges mean that the only honorable course of action is to renounce all of science (or at least, in these examples, chemistry and/or biology).
Yeah, Rigid. Incapable of change. It must be counted as one of the wonders of science that its ability to change in the face of new evidence is at one and the same time its great strength and fatal flaw. And the same can be said for its absolute and unchanging certainty.
I’ve got work to do and don’t have time for this now but how do you figure that epigenetic inheritance, including the fact that water fleas generate defensive spines and then pass them down for several generations is not the inheritance of acquired characteristics? How is hgt not? No laterally-derived trait has ever been inherited by the next generation? Even your pal dr Moran admits to this in Regards to hgt. Be back later to respond fully.
“No, it’s not epigenetics, it’s lateral gene transfer (LGT) that’s going to unseat Darwinian evolution and bring back Lamarck.” Dr Larry Moran
So PZ how could you get such a basic thing wrong? How can anyone take you seriously? And the only cranks in science are those who think random mutations built animal population one dumb luck molecular accident at a time. Of which you have zero evidence for.
Re: tommyhall @ #6…
In other words, you are abandoning any attempt to make your point(s) and still haven’t done any research.
Hee hee. Tommy tries to argue that lateral gene transfer = epigenetics = “Lamarkckism” by citing a quote that says epigenetics and LGT are two different things. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
@7 tommyhall
When read in context it is clear that the quote you attribute to Dr. Moran was his summary of the opinion of the author whose paper he was describing, not his own opinion. His opinion is made very clear at the end of his blog post where he writes
Inheritance of acquired characteristics. http://m.pnas.org/content/112/7/2133.abstract
Shorter version:
Summary of the current tactics (observed-by@comment):
● Moving goalposts (poopyhead@OP, called “flip-flopping”).
● Unconventional definitions (poopyhead@OP).
● Citing cranks (poopyhead@OP).
● Gish gallop (poopyhead@OP).
● Quote misrepresentation (shrunk@9).
● Quoting out-of-context (chris61@10).
Classic.
shrunk you need to read a little bit better…I said no such thing. btw….HGT + others = lamarckian https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6150-4-42
Chris the Dr Moran’s comment in question is about the researcher’s words and opinions…not his own. You can’t take away what Dr. Moran said about HGT bringing biology back to lamarck.
And yet you can keep coming back here to comment. I get the feeling you may have more time than you let on.
Nor can you apply it to anything other than bacteria. You lose, as always…
slithey tove , 4,
There is a program, whose name I forget, which will correct spelling, double words words, and some semantics. Perhaps one of the readers will recall the name for us.
#7: You might want to read Moran’s opinion on LGT further. Actually, you might just try reading the article you quoted for comprehension: he’s paraphrasing Mark Buchanan, not claiming that Lamarckism is coming back.
If you read his second article, he says:
I’m afraid that the person who got was… you.
Do you also think that mutation and recombination are Lamarckian?
How is horizontal gene transfer at all Lamarkian? Genes are transferred horizontally at random, and those genes that are beneficial, or in other words selected for, get to go on to further generations. HGT is simply another way to introduce variability into the genome, but that variability is still subject to selection. In this sense HGT is pretty similar to basic mutations.
Tommyhall, we’ve seen your kind so many times we pretend to have a Bingo card for all the things you guys keep doing. My favorite is that you keep showing that you have very poor reading comprehension, but you keep putting your faith in your understanding of what you read.
Look ye here: PZ is a scientist – he grows little fishies and insects in a lab, and he examines them closely. He doesn’t just read about what others have done, he does the work.
You, tommyhall, need to grow something and look at it. You can’t just keep reading and saying. Show us some work, and tell us how to replicate it. Then we will look. Because as long as you are just talking, and talking such obvious rot – such repetitious rot – you have nothing.
PZ, I don’t need to read his opinion further. He says it all right here: “No, it’s not epigenetics, it’s lateral gene transfer (LGT) that’s going to unseat Darwinian evolution and bring back Lamarck.”
But what exactly would you need to see to be convinced of the inheritance of acquired characteristics? Can you give me any sort of real life, hypothetical scenario? Hgt and epigenetic traits are its acquired and (potentially) passed on. Whatever these are, however you want to label themselves, theyre certainly not your cumulative selection nonsense, which is why they were ignored and denied for decades by your leftist comrades. The capacity to change adaptively resides within each individual due to an inherent ability to conform and adjust to the environment. Organisms are not just stupid, passive, accidentally-mutating globs of jelly waiting around to get selected so the population will evolve. What a laugh. Talk about crackpot science.
I’m on my phone. Darn auto fill sorry for the confusing text
I don’t think it’s the phone.
tommyhall
I think you’re trolling.
Is this Tommy Hall in any way an incarnation of Peter Borger? He sounds just as stupid.
I see evidence that Tommy doesn’t want to understand evolution or genetics. It’s rather sad IMO. He did accidentally get one thing correct.
They do have question marks. The newish science of actually being able to sequence DNA, and look at the genome has revolutionized those trees with a very high degree of accuracy. We still have many question marks ( especially down at the base) because there is no technology that can sequence DNA from fossils whose DNA degraded millions of years ago.
In the absence of genes, fossils are grouped according to structural morphology. There are many things that once existed, and we have fossils to prove it, but we have no idea quite where on the tree they may fit.
Incertae sedis is a basic concept in taxonomy.
Quote-mining and red-baiting too!
tommyhall, I’d ask for your opinions about women’s rights and gays’ place in society, but your answers would probably get you banned – and so far you provide too many giggles for me to wish that upon you.
So instead: Do you think the geologists have it all wrong about the age of the earth like (you think) biologists do?
Well everyone, I see that we can just ignore anything Tommy says, after all, he’s stated that he doesn’t need to read. Look, he says it all right there in post #22:
Clearly the man has no need read anything, by his own words! Not sure how he’s figuring out what’s in these posts. Maybe he’s got someone to read things for him? How much does he pay that person? Or is it one of those screen reader things that converts text to speech? That would explain his problem with terminology, since those things tend to break on complex words.
Jack16, You want error correcting software?
There is a program that can take any literary work as an input, correct all its errors, and output the text authoritatively as what the the writer really meant to say, effectively ignoring the original meaning of the work. It is a form of vapor-ware, and runs on fundamentalist neural networks. Tommy Hall appears to be running retrograde Version OVID.ILL
Whats his beef with plasmids?
Wrong. Bacteria are not multicellar organisms, which is where your argument should be. You are still wrong.
Still no evidence for your imaginary creator, like the pooferies needed to bring new species into existence.
Tsk, spend less time criticizing evolution, and more time presenting real evidence to back up your inane and unsupported fuckwittery.
TH really needs to read Eugene Koonin’s The logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution.
I sincerely doubt he could understand it, but he might get a sense of different rules for single-celled organisms versus multi-cellular organisms. If TH won’t understand that, he is being deliberately obtuse.
Lateral gene transfer is a well documented phenomenon. mRNA mutations/ transcription errors, and structural templating caused by infectious organisms both cause a heritable mutation without changing your DNA. It may become fixed, or it may revert. RNA does all sorts of interesting tricks.
Evolution and natural selection happen to all dynamic systems, from DNA, to language, to solar systems. The discovery of genes absolutely disproved Lamarckianism. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance via RNA or biochemical markers is simply not going to disprove genes, or discredit Darwin and evolution in any way.
PZ Myers: “Horizontal gene transfer is not Lamarckism, or the inheritance of acquired characters. You don’t seem to understand the terminology you throw around at all.”
Sure:
https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6150-4-42
“Perhaps, the most straightforward and familiar case in point is evolution of antibiotic resistance. When a sensitive prokaryote enters an environment where an antibiotic is present, the only chance for the newcomer to survive is to acquire a resistance gene(s) by HGT, typically, via a plasmid [59]. This common (and, of course, extremely practically important) phenomenon seems to be a clear case of Lamarckian inheritance. Indeed, a trait, in this case, the activity of the transferred gene that mediates antibiotic resistance, is acquired under a direct influence of the environment and is clearly advantageous, even essential in this particular niche.
More generally, any instance of HGT when the acquired gene provides an advantage to the recipient, in terms of reproduction in the given environment (that is specifically conducive to the transfer of the gene in question), seems to meet the Lamarckian criteria.”
“Leftists ignored Lamarck” is a new one. Usually the charge goes the other way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Again, bacteria, not humans. What an ignorant loser you are to think that the same mechanisms work on bacteria as on humans. HGT is essentially non-existent in humans.
You will always lose unless you understand what the limitations of the evidence you cite is.
Still no evidence to support your imaginary creator. That should be your first priority, if you understood how to do science, not trying to trash evolution, which you haven’t done….
PZ Myers: “Except that biology has not returned to Lamarckism. It has no mechanism, and it has no evidence to support it.”
adaptive, nonrandom, plastically-responsive to the environment…heritable……no need for selection; a one-step mechanism…..how non-darwinian can you get?
“To the surprise of scientists, many environmentally induced changes turn out to be heritable. When exposed to predators, Daphnia water fleas grow defensive spines (right). The effect can last for several generations.” http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/101%20Watters%202006.htm
fear passed down epigenetically….http://reset.me/story/science-proving-memories-passed-ancestors/
“Our results allow us to appreciate how the experiences of a parent, before even conceiving offspring, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations,” Dr. Brian Dias of the Emory University department of psychiatry said to the Daily Telegraph…… The scientists still aren’t sure how the fear imprint makes it into the sperm — whether the smell itself passes through the blood, or the brain processes the odor and sends its own signal.
If you don’t call the acquiring and passing down of specific fears and environmental information Lamarckian, then what is it? Learning? Intelligence? And again, what difference does it make what you call it? it’s nothing the darwinists ever predicted or can explain.
rietpluim…..oh, if only I was half as brilliant as Dr. Borger.
tommyhall
How does lamarkian inheritence square with creationism?
Half of zero is still zero.
Lateral gene transfer is not the same as horizontal gene transfer, through the goalpost shifting is duly noted.
Poor prokaryote! It’s life bears a striking resemblance to the plot-line of Game of Thrones. I’m so happy that I have white blood cell minions to oppose the evil forces of bacteria, free radicals, and phages.
Seriously, anyone who writes the words genes acquired via a plasmid (HGT) and goes on to claim it as an example of Lamarkianism is simply not worth a click.
It is not the inheritance of an acquired characteristic because the characteristic is not *acquired* during the lifetime of the parent organism. The GENEs that produce the defensive spines were ALREADY THERE in the parent, along with the sequences that control their expression. The whole package (genes plus regulatory sequences) constitute the heritable trait that is passed on from parent to offspring. Thus the heritable characteristic in question is not “having the spines”, it is “having the ability to grow the spines in response to a variety of stimuli.” In the parent that stimulus is the environmental threat from predators. In the descendants, that stimulus is the epigenetic modification in the parental gamete. In both cases it is the SAME TRAIT, unaltered, passed from parent to offspring.
HGT is not an “acquired characteristic” in the Lamarckian sense of “acquired”. The theory as described by Lamarck (and he was not actually the originator of it) is of traits “acquired” in an ADAPTIVE sense. An organism experience an environmental challenge, undergoes an adaption in response to it (ie the giraffe’s neck lengthens slightly in response to a lifetime straining upwards to browse on high branches), and then is inherited by the offspring.
HGT however is a RANDOM event. It is, in fact, a type of mutation, in the purely Darwinian sense. An ACCIDENTAL change in an organism’s DNA. It could have been any foreign gene that got itself transferred into the parental genome. And while some bacteria have genes that produce an increase in the *likelihood* of HGT events in response to stress, the actual HGT events are still random, and whether they end up helpful or not to the host organism is similarly completely random.
Furthermore, in HGT events involving multicellular organisms, the genes so transferred do not necessarily ever get expressed in the parent. It’s a Darwinian random event that splices in foreign DNA, which is only heritable if it is spliced (again by random chance) to a germline cell. Aside from a few reproduction specific traits, the genes in the germline cells do not produce phenotypic traits in the parent organism – it is the genes expressed in somatic cells that produce these traits. So there is no trait that the parent “acquires” at all. It is, again, a mutation that the offspring acquires due to a change in the DNA of germline cells (which is true for ALL types of mutations), which manifests only in the offspring.
Finally, Lamarckism is an EVOLUTIONARY theory. Even if it had turned out that Darwin’s theory was wrong and Lamarck’s theory was right, it would still be EVOLUTION. Just a different mechanism.
How does lamarkian inheritence square with creationism?
I’m a bit curious about the end game myself. “Observe, ladies and gentlemen, as I prove that evolution is false by demonstrating that evolution occurs by a different mechanism. Checkmate atheists!”
He is, however, very confident in his ignorance.
Tommyhall, the classic examples of Lamarckism not working are human foreskins, horse hooves and dogs ears. If getting one’s whickerbill removed – right there on the reproductive organ – is not passed on to one’s sons, nothing else could be. Horses, no matter how much we trim their hooves and shoe them, still get born with naked hooves. And dogs, mutilate them how we will, still are born with floppy ears and long tails.
But those same dogs, if bred through artificial selection, change the population over time, just like we expect from natural selection. That’s evolution – we see it and make it happen – but Lamarckism, clip what we will, fails to happen.
Now your bacteria, as you describe happening, isn’t Lamarckism, despite what you and your friends say. A single-celled bacterium has nowhere to to store genetic material but in its one set of genes. Me getting my dick snicked has no effect at all on my genetic code. Also, PZ has said on this blog that there are triggers to growth, so the genes are not always going to express the same way. Your little spiny friends could be responding to different cues – especially since the effect fades over time.
But writing for you is pointless. Is it not?
Lamarckism proves nothing about your imaginary creator, or shows it’s pooferies where new species are poofed into existence in a trice. All it shows is that you have no concept of the science, or what you are really saying. Quit trying to disproves evolution, and provide conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity and his pooferies….
@43 Amphiox
Awesome response!
When these prokaryotes encounter an environment where an antibiotic is present, they turn on genes that enable the uptake of plasmids, either by scavenging from the environment, or by exchanging with another living prokaryote. Whether the plasmids subsequently acquired *actually contain any antibiotic resistance genes that would be helpful for resisting that specific antibiotic* is completely through random chance. If the prokaryote does not, by random chance, acquire the necessary resistance genes before the antibiotic’s effect produces lethal consequences for it, it’s toast.
This is a completely Darwinian mechanism. RANDOM acquisition of traits through RANDOM changes in the organisms DNA (adding a plasmid is a RANDOM addition of DNA, and thus technically a type of MUTATION), followed by selection that eliminates the individuals who do not possess the traits needed to survive.
The “specific fears” are not “acquired”. They were already present in the parent, as part of normal environmental plasticity, and had been previously present in the parent’s parent. The offspring does not inherit anything new that the parent “acquired” in its lifetime. The only thing that is different is that the “specific fear”, which the parent (and grandparent, and however many generations back the trait goes) always had, is already activated in the offspring at birth, whereas in the parent it was activated later in life.
No new “environmental information” is passed down. A preexisting response evolved to PRIOR environmental stimulus is merely activated in the offspring earlier in life than in the parent. There are no epigenetic responses to environmental factors that a lineage as never faced before. At some point in the past, the lineage evolved a response to an environmental stimulus, which the epigenetic mechanism activates in the offspring when the same environmental stimulus is encountered again.
The mechanism of epigenetic inheritance, a modification of gene expression switches in the germline cells, is 100% compatible with darwinian evolutionary theory.
When the phenomenon was first observed, evolutionary biologists, using darwinian evolutionary theory, made hypotheses (ie predictions) about what the mechanism for the epigenetic effect was. One of those hypotheses proved to be correct. These biologists did not use Lamarckian theory to correct predict the mechanism of epigenetic modification. They used Modern Synthesis evolutionary theory (which is Darwinism plus genetics).
@Tommy Hall
“rietpluim…..oh, if only I was half as brilliant as Dr. Borger.”
Peter Borger is listed as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Sydney. He specializes in respiratory illness, not evolution.
Exactly what about him do you find “brilliant”?
Humans have evidence of horizontal gene transfer in our genome, from the first metazoans. We are two different symbiotic dipoblastic animals, and one part fungus, fused together into one tripoblastic animal hybrid with 2 types of genes. Science is not quite sure how this strange state of affairs occurred, but our genome, chemistry, and fossils all agree that this happened before the Cambrian period.
We are far more complex than bacteria. Those buggers don’t even both with nuclei, they just keep their DNA in a ring.
*wiki
At this point it would be important to point out that Lamarckism IS NOT just “inheritance of acquired characteristics”.
This claim is frequently made by people who don’t understand, or don’t bother to learn, what Lamarckism actually is.
Lamarckism is the “inheritance of characteristics acquired through the USE AND/OR DISUSE of organs during life”. People forget about the use and disuse of organs part, but this is actually central to Lamarckian theory, because it is the closest thing in the theory to an actual mechanism. The giraffe uses is neck a lot in life, causing it to grow slightly longer during its life, and the longer neck is inherited by the offspring. The human doesn’t need to digest tough plant material. The cecal sac responsible for enhancing this digestion in the ancestral ape shrinks over the lifetime of the human due to this disuse. Her child inherits the smaller cecal sac, and over generations it shrinks into the vestigial appendix.
Since the Lamarckians knew nothing of genes or gene regulation, and had no idea what the actual mechanism of inheritance was, nothing that in any way involves DNA and modifications to DNA is Lamarckian.
Darwin also didn’t know that the actual mechanism of inheritance was of course, and his original theory as described in Origin of Species is lacking that. MODERN evolutionary theory is more than just what Darwin proposed. It is the Modern Synthesis that combines original “Darwinism” with genetics, plus several additional more recent additions. Since Lamarckism was disproved and abandoned before the advent of genetics as a science, there is no equivalent “Lamarckian Synthesis” that incorporates genetics with Lamarckism.
Amphiox: “When these prokaryotes encounter an environment where an antibiotic is present, they turn on genes that enable the uptake of plasmids, either by scavenging from the environment, or by exchanging with another living prokaryote.”
what would make you think this process is random? You don’t think HGT or the uptake of plasmids is under control or regulation of the cell? You think the exchange of genes or the turning on of genes is a matter of chance? chance, of course means, by definition, beyond control…..And if that were the case, genomes would be so overrun with useless variants and unnecessary gene states that nothing could ever survive. Instead, the genome is an insanely complicated apparatus that is highly regulated — and if you have a source that says HGT occurs willy nilly I’d love to see it.
And in regard to specific fears getting passed down, or not, I might be inclined to agree with you if you acknowledged that the developing offspring was learning something about the parent’s environment…I mean if the offspring “knows” what the parent “knows” then there’s nothing really passed on, I suppose……..but if this is the case maybe you could become and IDist by taking the quotation marks off of the word, “knows.” Seems to me you’re either going to have to admit in some sort of lamarkian inheritance, OR admit that organisms mice are little learning machines, teleological systems that are responsive, dynamic and have the capacity to learn about the world, even before they enter the world. that’s actually my belief. So pick your poison, I guess. Merely saying that it all “just happens” in regards to fears being somehow acquired by offspring is pure empty pseudo-science. There must be an explanation.
Manhattan…..I’ve just read his various posts in the past….wish he was still active on evolution boards…I’ve learned a lot from him (though he is way out of my league)…I just like the way he thinks…the way he comes across……he’s a good writer and communicator as well…..he also sees through the darwinian nonsense.
Your imaginary creator doesn’t exist, and random chance is the only other explanation. Unless YOU have an alternative theory *snicker*
Which is why single-celled organisms purge their excess DNA, but multi-cellular organisms don’t. You don’t know your science.
No citation, dismissed without evidence. Doesn’t happen….
Nerd: “Lamarckism proves nothing about your imaginary creator, or shows it’s pooferies where new species are poofed into existence in a trice.”
And exactly what evidence do you have that random mutation/natural selection built anything in the way of bodies or body parts? Got a mutation that adds part of an organ, or part of anything? You’ve got all of biology to account for via mutation. Can you present anything? The human body, for example has 75,000 miles of blood vessels……got some mutations for any of that? Or part of the eye….or kidney..or knee cap? anything?
Nerd : http://www.nature.com/news/fearful-memories-haunt-mouse-descendants-1.14272
“Certain fears can be inherited through the generations, a provocative study of mice reports1. The authors suggest that a similar phenomenon could influence anxiety and addiction in humans. But some researchers are sceptical of the findings because a biological mechanism that explains the phenomenon has not been identified.”
tommyhall, suggestion for particiption:
demarking quations with the blockquote flag produces the following:
<blockquote> quoted text </blockquote>
will look like this:
and makes your responses a little more readable.
Thank you
Pretend?
Science holds that all animals are responsive and dynamic due to the fact that they are living organisms. No need to admit it, its bio 101. Rocks and minerals and atmospheres are also responsive and dynamic, but since they do not learn or have genes they are not alive. It does not lend credence to Lamarckianism, no matter how many times you claim that lie.
Evolution and genomics. Where the fuck is your MIA evidence for your imaginary deity delusional fool?
No evidence, no deity. QED.
And you have presented nothing, so you have nothing….
You have to show your pooferies where your organs “poof” into existence. You have nothing.
Whereas science has genomics, showing the relationships between all creatures, great and small. Science wins, you lose, a zillion to nothing….
Tethys: “Science holds that all animals are responsive and dynamic due to the fact that they are living organisms.”
Really…..where can I read about this “dynamic” and “responsive” characteristic in a Dawkins book…or a Coyne book…or a Miller book….or a Gould book….or any other of your heros’ books? I’d love to learn more about what this mechanism is.
It’s called natural selection, and that changes with the evironment/biosphere/ecology.
Still no evidence for your creator….
“You have to show your pooferies where your organs “poof” into existence.”
got anything leading to a dog from a non-dog? to an elephant from a non-elephant? to a giraffe from a non-giraffe? The fossil record is a record of sudden emergence. Gould and Eldredge should’ve taught you that:
“”No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seemed to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields … a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere!” Niles Eldredge
In 1999, writing in Nature, Oxford zoologist Mark Pagel:
“Palaeobiologists flocked to these scientific visions of a world in a constant state of flux and admixture. But instead of finding the slow, smooth and progressive changes Lyell and Darwin had expected, they saw in the fossil records rapid bursts of change, new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then remaining unchanged for millions of years-patterns hauntingly reminiscent of creation.11
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1232
So again…I’m waiting on those mutations that build new anatomical structures.
No, Nerd…..here’s what Tethys said : “Science holds that all animals are responsive and dynamic due to the fact that they are living organisms.”
notice the 5th word. “Animals” is not = natural selection.
In any standard dictionary? You don’t need to bother your poor little head with those hard scientific concepts of evolution or biology or genes at all.
Wait, so now Lamarckism is now false because it cannot give rise to new anatomical structures?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates
Again, did you read my link on epigenetics?
There’s no point in discussing anything if you refuse to learn anything.
Isn’t this like “Irrelevant even if it was true?”
Even if evolution was 100% falsified, it wouldn’t do anything to confirm the existence of a god. It’d just mean that our current research program was mistaken.
Did disproving the caloric theory of heat prove god?
Tommy Hall, the evidence for evolution is found in places like this, libraries around the world at institutions of higher learning. You would be shocked to hear the amount of papers that back evolution, both directly and indirectly, and it includes every biology/chemistry/physics paper that does not disprove evolution and shows an old Earth. Definitely ten to the several digits.
Whereas the papers supporting your imaginary deity???? Very close to zero…
PZ quoting Moran
Are these terms now interchangeable? My understanding is that HGT refers to functional genes being transferred between two different species, while LGT refers to changes in gene expression or function that occur due to various factors that do not directly involve DNA, and can be passed on to offspring.
One has to wonder why all these evolution deniers conspicuously end up being laypeople arguing PRATTs formulated by other laypeople. You’d think sky daddy would see fit to place at least one in the position to publish the holy disproof of evolution they’ve been given.
Spellchecker also won’t help Tommy Hall because it cannot render unintelligible nonsense into something intelligible. It is painfully clear that Tommy is merely quote mining people whose positions he does not even bother to try to understand. And some of his “sources” are also rather severely lacking any credibility in genetics. What a surprise!
I was just picking fleas off my elderly Dachshund, and noticing how much he resembles a plucked chicken. The thighs are almost identical, and I can match each joint. The dog has the same basic body plan as a bird. If the two aren’t somehow related, their creator must be an idiot.
“got anything leading to a dog from a non-dog?”
TH, try googling “observed speciation”.
Some dogs are still capable of interbreeding with grey wolves, others are not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canid_hybrid
I’m going to get flamed by the experts on this blog, but simply said (ie good enough for ignorants on evolution like you and me) the dog is a transitional species.
The uptake of plasmids is in response to environmental stress. I said this explicitly in my original post already.
What is RANDOM is the genes obtained from the plasmids. The cell has no control of what plasmids it gets, or what genes those plasmids contain. All it can do is take up whatever plasmids happen to be available and IF by random chance, it gets one with a gene that will help it survive, it will survive. If it does not, it will not. Pure natural selection. Thus the process of HGT is a type of RANDOM mutation. The genetic change it produces is RANDOM.
I also explicitly said this in my original post.
Read for comprehension next time.
Only partially true. The fossil record contains BOTH sudden emergence AND gradual change.
And the more complete the fossil record, the more gradual the changes seen.
In deep ocean cores, which are the most complete of all known fossil records (they capture almost every individual generation in places where the deep ocean has been undisturbed for extended periods of time) dinoflagellate fossils show an almost perfect gradual progression of change with almost no sudden emergences at all, for example.
Yes, they evolved to have these capabilities, because such capabilities improved their chances of survival.
But evolutionary theory describes changes in populations, not individuals.
This is gibberish. The genes that produce blood vessels can produce any length of blood vessels through reiteration of function, so long as there are sufficient resources in the environment to make the physical structure of the vessels.
The actual length of blood vessels is optimized by natural selection.
The gene (one of them, anyways) is called VGEF.
I guess that depends on whether you consider Hesperocyon to be a “dog” or not. Its appearance would have been closer to a civet, but it shares specific anatomical features with canids.
Of course, you’d look at any Hesperocyon offspring and say “that’s just another Hesperocyon”. And working backwards, you’d look at any recent dog ancestor and says it’s just another dog. But somewhere in the middle will be a tipping point where it could be classified as either; or more sensibly, show that there is a continuum.
But that still won’t be enough, because we’ve seen it before. Paleoanthropology has built a pretty good picture of the hominid evolutionary landscape. Look at this collection of hominid skulls. From an evolutionary point of view, there’s a clear relationship between all of them.
Creationists, however, look at the left side and say “those are monkeys!” and the right and say “those are (maybe deformed) humans!”. When it comes to the middle, they might flip one way or the other, but it’s always “human” or “definitely not human”. The thing is, you probably wouldn’t get a consensus among creationists as to which way to flip a given specimen…
We’ve also got the evolutionary path from T.rex to roasting chicken pretty decently mapped out. I doubt that’ll help either.
umm, in case the obvious has not already been stated on this, this is not “inheritance of acquired characteristics”, this is LITERALLY the inheritance of a hitchhiker’s genes.
that’s not what lamarckism was about… at all.
aside from the fact that yes, we in fact do have rather remarkably complete sequences marking the evolution within the fossil record of a great many species (famously horses and whales, but there are literally THOUSANDS now), this was NEVER the point of punctuated equilibrium. you have horribly misunderstood both Gould and Eldridge.
shocker.
“tommyhall
21 March 2016 at 6:59 pm…. I’d love to learn more about what this mechanism is.”
You’d love to learn more, yet you refuse to learn more . . . . . :)
he doesn’t.
Tommyhall @ 64…
what to say except for … you really like quotemining.
why don’t you put down the REST of what Eldridge said in that chapter, eh?
oh… that’s right, it would put the lie to the quote you mined out of context.
It’s no wonder PZ banned you before, and probably will again.
you’re a dishonest git, who is really only interested in trying to drive readership to your youtube channel.
but… let’s see how that’s working out for you.
hmmm…. dislikes outnumber likes by 2 to 1, and the total numbers are less than I have seen for most kitten videos.
time to try a new line of work maybe?
yeah….
if you actually search their books (probably even Gould’s, if you are reading something like Panda’s Thumb) for the phrase “plasticity” you will very likely find many references.
but then, YOU HAVE NEVER READ THEIR BOOKS.
for example, here is Dawkins himself even, noting he addresses phenotypic plasticity in “The Selfish Gene”:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/dawkins-responds-to-dobbs/
that’s on Coyne’s site, btw… one of the other evo biologists you lie about never addressing this issue… which, btw, is an issue that was actually originally addressed well over 100 YEARS ago.
you are a liar, plain and simple. emphasis on the simple.
PZ: Myers:
I would love for you to explain how this isn’t the inheritance of acquired characteristics. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/7/2133.abstract
“To our knowledge, these results demonstrate for the first time that a somatic tissue of an animal can have transgenerational effects on a gene through the transport of double-stranded RNA to the germline.”
And please tell me, if this somehow doesn’t qualify, what you would need to see to EVER be convinced of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
hey, tommy… there was an article written by PZ way back in 2007 titled “What Evolution Predicts”.
did you ever see that one?
frankly, instead of responding to you, he could have simply copypasted that.
so, when he asked you if you had even read the link he sent you to on epigenetics… your answer then is, no.
because frankly, THAT LINK EXPLAINS THE ANSWER TO YOUR FUCKING QUESTION.
gees, no wonder he booted your ass from here before.
Busted. You have no intention of having an honest discussion on any of these issues.
Ichthyic, no I actually have lots and lots of evolutionists’ books. I have not once ever seen an evolutionist (outside of Mae Wan Ho, James Shapiro, Robert Reid, Giuseppe Sermonti, etc) ever suggest that individual organisms and their genomes were responsive in adaptive ways to the environment. Sure, plasticity is discussed occasionally by evolutionists ( because it must be, as it actually exists and is a powerful mechanism of adaptive change), but Neo Darwinists never admit in public that individual organisms are dynamically-changeable in adaptive ways and can be cued by the environment to restructure their molecular makeup on the fly. James Shapiro calls this “Genetic engineering,” Mae Wan Ho calls it “Fluid Genome,” etc…this concept is the ultimate heresy to the crackpot religion of Neo Darwinism.
here’s another thing…
say we do indeed find an real example of lamarckian heritability. the example you cite IS NOT ONE, but say we do.
how does that negate the literally millions upon millions upon millions of examples of standard heritability we already know exist?
it doesn’t.
it’s like you finding a car that runs on ethanol, and then trying to say that cars that run on gasoline thus never existed or were “wrong”.
it’s inane, can’t you see that? or is this whole thing just a troll, a very very unsuccessful one, given the results you seem to have received on your youtube video?
yeah, like I said… I can see why PZ booted you before. My guess is he will do so again, and again, you will claim false victory.
Ichthyic
Who was tommyhall InTheBeforeTime?
What Have I Missed?
Sudden? Fossils from my state range in age from 2.1 billion year old stromatolites to Ice Age megafauna that’s only 10 to 15 thousand years old. There have been many books written that use the term Cambrian explosion, but the explosion part is a misleading error. There was nothing sudden about life, but there is a distinct lack of fossils in Precambrian strata. AFAIK it is a preservational bias due to age and chemistry.
but that does not mean you read them…. nice try though.
like I said… it’s obvious you never read anything by Gould or Eldridge, because all you do is copy paste quotemines out of context.
in context, the meaning of those quotes is much more the exact opposite of what you tried to say with them.
In fact, both Eldridge and Gould were staunch supporters of evolutionary theory… but then, you would know that, IF YOU HAD EVER READ THEIR BOOKS.
you’re just a liar.
and boring, to boot, since you haven’t even come up with anything original.
beats me, but if you look at the comments in his youtube video (unless he deletes them before you get there) he admits to being booted from here before:
I feel like the standard for annoying screeds has gone way down ever since Markuze got in trouble. Needs moar random caps and depeche mode links.
and again, my guess is the reason PZ banned this guy “years ago”, was for pulling the exact same BS he is now…
doesn’t bother reading supporting materials.
shows zero actual interest in factual rebuttal.
constantly quotemines people for effect.
is an overall dishonest git.
hell, I’d not only boot him off my site, I would have immediately recognized he wasn’t ever going to be honest from the get-go and not invited him to begin with.
PZ is a softie.
;)
Ichthyic #97
I see.
Could be anyone of a vast anti-horde…
I’m gonna ask.
…and if you ask me how I know he claimed false victory the last time he got booted from here…
don’t they always?
Ichthyic
well not really….Granted I do actually thank PZ for bringing attention to my youtube page, but obviously I’m not in this for getting lots of views…most of my vids hover around 100 (or less) views. This by far is my most viewed video. I admit I’m small potatoes….but then again I have the truth on my side so, whatever. You guys can think what you want. I’m sure I’ll get blocked for doing nothing, but it’s all good. I do appreciate the exposure. Be sure and subscribe to my page (wink)…or check me out over on google plus….that’s where I hang out most.
Where did that dsRNA originally come from?
It was transcribed from a DNA gene in the parental genome.
Where did the parental genome get that gene?
It was inherited from the parent’s own parent.
What did the dsRNA do in the parent of the parent?
The same thing it does in the parent, and will do in the offspring. ie regulate the expression of another gene(s) that was, and is, present in grandparent, parent, and offspring.
Therefore, the characteristic was not “acquired” by the parent, and this is not an example of “inheritance of an acquired characteristic”.
let us know if you manage to track down his old nom de plume.
just for fun, if not profit.
Having a book, reading a book, and understanding a book are three different things.
Dishonestly quote-mining a book to make an argument that is the exact opposite of what the book is trying to say is yet a fourth thing.
wow. Is it oxymoronic to tell a lie with a phrase like that?
you lied about Eldridge.
you lied about Gould.
you lied about Dawkins
you lied about Coyne
you lied about PZ
…but you have the truth on your side.
tell me… do you support Drumpf for POTUS?
because at a less than 5% truth rating for any given random sample of a hundred things Donald says* in any given month… I can understand why you personally would like the man.
*http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/
Ichthyic
It’s late in Pharyngula Daylite Tyme.
We could know by morning PhDT.
Jebus.
Start here on PubMed. Search for “plasticity” and “evolution”.
Or, if you’d rather, search Amazon for books on evolution and plasticity. There are 156 results there.
you know, I can’t count the number of times I have been involved, or overheard a discussion of larmarckism… and why we don’t actually see it in nature.
but I think perhaps, the best answer I saw in a paper by a modeler named Hayes:
and if we ever do find a real example of it? that would be a perfect case of “the exception proves the rule”.
you’ll let us have informed opinions?
why gee, thanks very much!
fuckwit
Amphiox:
lol! And? What does it matter where all of it came from? I didn’t ask you to look back in time. I asked you about the event itself…….and btw, you have no idea where any non-duplicated gene or protein or anything in biology, for that matter, came from. It’s all a giant mystery…a giant question mark. Random mutations do exactly jack squat. Even your antibiotic resistance, herbicide resistance, pesticide resistance are accomplished by HGT….I can’t think of a single adaptive trait in multicellular organisms that can be considered a slam dunk case of “evolution,” aka random mutation plus natural selection. Can you? Most of the major morphological changes we see in nature are accomplished by either plasticity (which can be heritable) or epigenetics, adaptive developmental mechanisms, etc……..the silly notion that animal change over time via selected copying errors is absolutely laughable…..the fossil record certainly doesn’t show this gradual change, yet millions of kooks still believe it! The evolution crowd is nothing more than a support group for losers.
I have no idea who he is. I’ve got no recollection of banning him.
Obviously, his current email isn’t on the blacklist, which means either he’s making stuff up or he was banned under a different pseudonym.
Suppose you were a mighty medieval warrior, scion of a long line of likewise mighty medieval warriors. You possess a mighty family heirloom sword, wielded by your father before you and your grandfather before him.
In your youth, times are peaceful. You have no need for a heirloom sword. So you stash the sword away in a vault in your armoury.
But, in your later years, times are not so nice. Civil war breaks out, treachery is afoot. So you take out your heirloom sword, and wear it at your side at all times.
On your deathbed, you bequeath the heirloom sword to your descendent, and along with it you give her a note, which reads “treachery is afoot, wear the sword at your side at all times.”
Your daughter does so, and goes about her life with the sword at her side.
The note is the epigenetic alteration of the genome. The sword is not an “acquired characteristic”. Your lineage has always had it. The only thing that has changed is where it is being worn, ie its expression. Even this is not a new thing. Many prior members of your lineage, in rougher times, have worn that sword at their side before.
Holy fuck are you incapable of understanding a sentence in context.
what? so you think this was a de novo event that just popped into being overnight?
no wonder you quotemine… apparently, it’s just how your brain works.
stop projecting… that’s YOU that has no clue as to how any individual protein came from.
you do realize there are literally thousands of papers tracing protein evolution right? you do realize that proteins are essentially related to phenotypes, right?
what am I saying… of course you don’t, even though you have all those biology and evolution textbooks in your collection.
BECAUSE YOU NEVER READ THEM.
Tommy Hall @111:
My post was specifically an answer to your specific question as to why said phenomenon is NOT an example of inheritance of an acquired characteristic.
The rest of your screed is meaningless gibberish.
PZ Myers
yeah, I’m going with that one.
and more lies from mr “TRoof is on my side”
more lies, already corrected, not once, but several times.
are you incapable, or just unwilling, to see you are lying?
no…he’s not near conservative enough….I’m more far right…way right…..I wouldn’t mind going back to the Old Testament way of life…..that’s real law…..eye for an eye brother…. It would get rid of alot of the crime, STDs, freaks, lowlifes, lazy people, etc.
occam’s razor…
but I still think it’s the one thing he was honest about.
call it a gut instinct.
you evilutionsists can’t explain that!!!11!!
oh, wait.
instinctual behaviors were some of the first things explained by studying evolution.
damnit.
Amphiox #113
*applause*
I want someone to make a video.
Antarctic icefish antifreeze genes arising from a reactivation mutation of a pseudogene of a digestive enzyme.
The spread of the lactose tolerance gene in humans, due to a point mutation in the regulatory sequence that extended expression into adulthood.
The development of a new cecal valve in the lizards of Pod Mrcaru, within the last 50 years.
The spread of immunity to both bubonic plague and AIDS in humans, due to a mutation in a specific receptor on immune cells.
I could go on and on.
The only reason you can’t “think” of any adaptive traits is because you willfully refuse to.
I hear Saudi Arabia and Iran still need great minds like yours.
Mind if I quote you?
ok…well I guess my time is up here…….I’ll let y’all get back to normal…come visit me on my youtube site sometime. thanks again PZ for bringing me some exposure. have fun
Saw that coming.
Man, why waste your time on boring evilution crap when you could have gone straight to the right wing loon crap?
Oh please! can you just claim victory? I so love it when you morons do that.
I have a collection.
umm… anyone here think old tommy was something we haven’t seen before?
anyone?
Bueller?
tommyhall #119
ffs
you’re not even trying any more
translation:
“I got nowhere, but now I will go back to my youtube channel, and claim I got banned because I was telling the truth!”
yeah yeah.
delusional authoritarian fuckwits… how do they work?
Hey, Tommy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68TdgErXkE
I …. never …. did …. click …. to ….tommyhall’s … video.
Did I miss anything?
nope.
Trolls have the function of sparking bad arguments that actually prove to be very educational for people like me who finished school way back before DNA sequencing.
I tried to determine if there is a consensus as to just when animals first evolved. I have not yet answered that question, but the paper on Sea Anemone genomes by Putnam N.H. sounds very interesting.
That seems like a lot of genes, but it also shows just how few phyla have had their genomes sequenced.
totally different youtube channel most likely.
this is how he diversifies.
I did click the link in #131.
Golly, that was creepy.
Especially the comments.
sadly, I think maybe the funding is starting to dry up for pure sequencing studies. they had to crowdsource the funding to sequence the joshua tree for example.
positive, in the fact they were even able to get enough public interest for a sequencing project, but it does suggest that federal and uni dollars for important basic research like this is getting scarcer and scarcer.
Hasn’t the biology and paleontology side of science always been underfunded in comparison to the physics and weaponry side of science? We went to the moon the last time the USA seriously funded science and research. I hope to live long enough to see us fund the necessary research to figure out how to save our planet from us, and the fine details of exactly how and when animals evolved.
heliobates
Why would I trust you?
You mangle a simple <blockquote>.
.
Hey, tommyhall has fled.
We must now pick on one another!
(it’s in the Rules)
.
TrustMe
@ T Hall
“…he also sees through the darwinian nonsense”
IOW he agrees with your received opinions and you indulge in confirmation bias.
Now that you’re bleeding from every orifice it’s definitely time to limp back to your flock and claim victory,
little creationist pigeon.
no need, experience is my guide. not like old tommy was unique.
:)
yeah, I think it was all the maniacal and inappropriate laughter that added that real… awkward… touch.
I just wanted to go back to this.
I mean… people actually gave him specific examples, not just here but in the original thread. there are hundreds of examples discussed with references in the books he says are in his collection (but he never admitted reading).
this is why debating creationists is simply futile.
their brains simply tune out information that contradicts their preconceptions.
they then project that behavior on to those they argue with. likely without even consciously realizing that is what they are doing.
unless there is at least SOME conscious recognition of the fact that questions asked have actually been answered… what’s the point?
that laughter, Tommy?
that’s the laughter of everyone else, pointing and laughing at someone who literally is wandering around willfully blind and deaf, and trying to describe what he “sees” to everyone around him.
it’s funny. really.
also tragic.
You can use it as a litmus test for creationists that are actually worth talking with.
if you give them an answer, and they very quickly (if not in the very next response even) appear as if you never did?
there is no point in continuing debate, unless the idea is just to poke them for laughs.
when someone debates trump, say, and he lies about everything… what is the point of any discussion or debate? people should just walk out of the room, or not invite him into your house to begin with.
call this a corollary to PZs post on how to be prepared for a debate. Call it: Know when NOT to debate.
Re: banning in the past — my (fallible) kook style detector is suggesting that Tommy Hall used to post to scienceblogs Pharyngula as “Stan” (and various permutations of that), and was plonked with that ‘nym.
Some examples here:
• http://web.archive.org/web/20100421004156/http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/amphioxus_and_the_evolution_of.php
• http://web.archive.org/web/20100131075445/http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/evolving_proteins_in_snakes.php
• http://web.archive.org/web/20110101175805/http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/epigenetics.php
(search on “by: stan” to find all of his insipid comments)
(another ‘nym I think he may have used was “supersport”, and maybe also “guzman”)
Now I am sure you are Peter Borger. The only person calling Borger brilliant is Borger himself. The rest of your posts demonstrate the same ignorance and arrogance.
Waste of time to argue with you.
#64:
Yes. Prohesperocyon, to name one among numerous.
Yes. Moeritherium, to name one among numerous.
Yes. Prodremotherium, to name one among numerous.
In fact, the Okapi, a short-necked relative of the giraffe, is still alive today.
Boy, that was easy! Can I get a laugh track too, now?
As someone with a degree in paleobiology, I am really exasperated to keep on hearing this conflation of Gould & Eldredge’s observations with the question of transitional fossils. The theory of Punctuated Equilibria pertains microevolution in uninterrupted geological strata within species or, at most, genera. It has nothing to do with the documentation of transitional forms between major groupings or taxa, which -I might add- are plenty, as I already showed above.
tommyhall, #119
Surely an eye for an eye would increase STDs.
Facepalm. Did it again.
I didn’t read a single word of any of this. Did Tommy win?
williamgeorge@151: how could he lose?
He’s supersport?
The guy who thought butterflies had wombs?
The guy who thinks the speed of light is different from the speed of vision?
Naah. He’s not that stupid.
It never ceases to amaze me how creationists are always happy to have their stupidity exposed.
I hope Tommy doesn’t have any mixed polyester-cotton shirts in his wardrobe. That’s a stoning offense in the OT….
“Going back to”? Really. So are you going to claim you’re bloody Methuselah now?
Owlmirror #145
It sure reads like the same person.
That was along time ago, I wonder where he’s been?
One more thing about epigenetics:
The mechanism, on its own, cannot produce changes on evolutionary time-scales. Unless there are additional mutations that make the gene expression alterations that epigenetics produces in individuals constitutional (which is a Darwinian mechanism), the pattern of expression will eventually revert back a generation or several later. It is a phenomenon that impacts individuals but not populations.
Epigenetics is really just a special case of normal phenotypic plasticity. Even if you accept that it is something new and unanticipated by Evolutionary Theory, it does not constitute any form of challenge to Evolutionary Theory.
I think this tells us all we need to know about the type of human being Tommy is.
Does anyone have a link to the original ‘butterfly womb’ comment?
My google-fu is failing.
He’s right though. Switching to a iron age society would reduce the number of humans pretty drastically. That would reduce the number of crimes, STDs, freaks, and etc. The rate would go up, but if only care about the absolute number, you win.
Everyone else loses, so maybe it’s a bad idea.
Anyway, there is a caliphate that Tommy could join, which runs along rules that come from basically the OT, with minor edits. Saudi might work too, though they’re a bit more corrupt and less fanatical about it. Iran is right out — there’s a very liberal society under the lid there, and they have democratic elections.
Chigau @ 160:
I think that happened on the old IIDB, which is no longer. Well, it morphed into something, but I don’t remember what, and I doubt the old, old stuff is still extant. Although, there might be something at Rants ‘n’ Raves, or Talk Rats (Talk Rational). Supersport infested all of those. I was around for the pregnant butterflies, I even did up some artwork for that one – I’m pretty sure that was R ‘n’ R.
Owlmirror #145
Ah, Stan the Tinman. IIRC, loads of attitude, no understanding of evidence, or that he must prove his case, not just try to refute evolution.
A lot of creobots have this binary concept that if they disprove evolution, creationism must be right. That’s not how science works. They must prove their case, and they must show evidence for their (imaginary) creator, and that it explains, without handwaving, smoke, and mirrors, the evidence better than evolution. They can do this without trashing evolution. But they won’t even try. Shows that they really know they have nothing but their hatred for evolution, as that means they aren’t special snowflakes.
Well, it looks like Rants ‘n’ Raves is gone, so…
Oh, and Supersport/Guzman was at CARM for bloody years.
@102 tommyhall
There seem to be two types of people in an argument, those with the truth on their side and those with the facts.
I liked how he was arguing for Lamarckian influences, and refusing to let anything influence him.
I also liked the quote he gave in support of something he said was obvious and always happening, and that quote said “first time”. So he ginned up a conspiracy theory, even though he hadn’t noticed the “first time” bit.
I also like that I never used the term “tommyrot”.
I think tommyhall was trying to show us even the slightest flaw in Darwin, confident that our worship would collapse at the first crack in our idol.
@mnb0(#76):
Not dogs but more mind blowing for a guy like Tommy; Ring Species.
if they disprove evolution, creationism must be right
And they also jump straight to “if creationism, then my god.”
After all, even if Darwin was wrong and even if there was sound evidence that one or more gods created everything, the creationists never seem to argue why it’s not Atum, the creator. Or the Aesir. Or Abzu and Tiamat. Or the Amazing Spider-Man. It sure would suck to be a creationist and discover that you believed the universe was created by a god you don’t believe in. What a strange coincidence that never happens!
@169 They really should start adding the Seinfeldian “yada yada” to their arguments to flesh them out.
Everything that begins has a cause, the universe began, yada yada, my god!
That’s pretty much all they do really… yada over the leaps of illogic, yada past the facts, etc.
As someone mentioned upthread, you read enough of these guys, and you can almost see their minds working. There are the jumps of illogic, the cognitive dissonance, the blind faith, and the twisting, the writhing, and the righteous indignation.
We’d need a close look at his beard too, in case he’s impiously rounded the corners.
Shit, is this all we get, tommyhall? Your staying power is pathetic. A really good crank could have kept this going for at least 400 posts before scuttling away and claiming victory. I’m so disappointed. I still have nearly 3/4 of my popcorn left. Thanks a lot, asshole.