Helping a Friend about the Nature of Science

Hello Tram law, and welcome to EvC! He is anti-authoritarian yet accepts the authority of the bible/god? Step one would be explaining that to him then. Well, yes. Although they did not happen by "evolution" as a purely natural thing, since humans did the selecting, and not nature (hence, this is mutation and artificial selection, as opposed to natural selection, that happens in nature). I'm not sure what, and unless you give an example we can't help you with a response. Which is stupid. Showing that one thing is wrong does not mean another, completely unrelated (or even a related) thing is wrong. For example, 2+2=5 is worng, yet 2+2=4 is right. And these are related, since it's both math. But if he really feels this way, tell him we should release all murderers, since if he doesn;t trust science to come up with reliable info, then they were convicted without evidence, since none of it can be trusted, according to him. Well, if he simply refuses, I doubt there is anything you can say that will change his mind, other then just repeating your points time and time again. Science is the only reliable method to finding out what is "right". Also, tell him that he should not be afraid to be wrong, for every time he finds out he is wrong he will have learned something that is true. Well, like I said, it's evidence that mutations and selection can lead to a result. In this case the selective pressure was for a nice and edible banana or a certain type of dog. In nature, the selective pressure can be for a certain colour, or a certain other trait.

That's weird, because it means we can do exactly that. For instance, because we have mapped the entire genome of humans and chimps, we can see that a human chromosome (chromosome 2) is a fusion of two chimp chromosomes, which is evidence that we share a common ancestor with them. Hmm yes, that kinda sucks. Also, it is of course not illegal for children to pray in schools, school mandated prayer is what is against the constitution. She certainly should. Except that it doesn't poke a hole in anything, since it is not forcing atheism on anyone, if everyone else wants to pray, they can, just like she can opt out of prayer. Well yes, that's what this usually boils down to.

Well, they'd be wrong (of course). You see, the gene responsible for the dachshund's short legs is a dominant gene, meaning that if any of it's ancestors would've had it, they would've had short legs. Since we know wolves have long legs, and are the ancestors of Dachshunds (as they are of all dogs), this is an example of a new allele being introduced.

Yes, really. Percy was the one who brought that up in the The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection thread. He mentioned it in Message 134: Then in the same thread, Taq in Message 139 writes: So it seems my usage of the word "gene" is not entirely correct (not to say completely wrong), I should use allele from now on. That's where I got it from (Should've credited it from the start, really).