The Roman Catholic Church and Evolution

Might that not be because "macroevolution" is not a term employed by many biologists, but rather, almost exclusivly by creationists attempting to draw erroneous distinctions between different amounts of evolutionary change?

It's not a term I've encountered in any college-level biology class or any biology textbook. These are the same processes over different amounts of time. Two different words that mean the same thing would be, by definition, the essence of "confusing the issue."If you really want a meaningful distinction, then the terms you were looking for were "adaptation" and "speciation." Those are different processes, and have nothing to do with quantities of time.

I don't follow your chain of reasoning. How does the presence of stablizing feedback "automatically" suggest intelligence? It seems to me that equilibrium would be highly selected for. That's a pretty bold claim. Might you care to substantiate that in a new thread? I think that it would be more accurate to say that scientists have more stringent standards for evidence - standards that I suspect you were unable to meet, hence your negative impression.I see a lot of weird claims, but nothing to back them up. I'm not really surprised you get the reactions you do from people of science.

No, I'm just a guy who doesn't take weird claims at face value without some evidence. No. I just want you to support your claims with evidence. That's what we do around here - support claims with evidence. So in other words, you're exactly like my wife. (My own experience, as well as several of my human anatomy books, refute that the "normal" vagina is parallel to the spine.)Absolutely nothing that you have described is unusual or outside the range of "normal" sexual function for women. What you have described seems far more indicative of a relative lack of sexual maturity - after all you reduce the entire scope of varied intergender relations to a single example of male sexual aggression, which is not true of every heterosexual encounter - than any indication you're the vanguard of the next step in human evolution.You seem to think that your sexual proclivites are somehow remarkable, though it's pretty obvious that you either lack the experience/research to substantiate that view or you've engaged in a pretty spectacular feat of selective memory. Sorry - based on what you've described so far, I have to conlude that in fact you're totally normal.

Do you have a different definition of "parallel" than I do? Because your pictures show exactly what my anatomy texts show - the vagina in normal females is angled out towards the front. I'm sorry, exactly what aquaintence do you have with my wife's vagina? Sure, just like your claims have no bearing on reality, either. Particularly in regards to the vaginas of individuals you have never met. Funny, I'm the one taking your claims about your anatomy at face value. You're the one making authoritive claims about the sexual anatomy of people you've never met in order to substantiate your ludicrous conclusions. An objective observer would realize that it's the latter, not the former, that is the most obvious evidence of one not wanting to listen.Oh, btw, where you ever going to explain the leap of logic that connects the presence of stabilizing feedback in nature with the conclusion of intelligent design? Or have you retreated from that claim?

Ah, naturally. Since I refuse to follow along with your flimsy logic or accept your authorititive statements about people that it's impossible for you to have met, the only conclusion is that I'm a sexist. Hrm, what else can be deduced from my stubborn unwillingness to accept lunacy? I must be a Nazi, too! Based on what evidence? Your exhaustive survey of female sexual apparatus?It's obvious to me that I'm dealing with the worst sort of mind - one that has no compunction at all about fabricating whatever statements are required to preserve their oh-so-precious worldview.Well, that's fine. If you're going to set yourself impervious to reason, why bother talking with you?

No, because the penis is not perpendicular to the man's spine. It points up - therefore the vagina must angle away from the woman's spine to accept it. What I love so much about your posts is the calm, studied way you elevate the discourse beyond petty insults. Oh, wait.

Yeah, god forbid you should be asked to follow the guidelines of the forum you joined and support your claims with evidence. You seem to have a rather inflated opinion of your own self-importance. What possible concern could it be of mine how your sexual anatomy is put together? It's simply the erroneous conclusions you draw through flimsy logic that I oppose.Anyway I never particularly cared that much. What I most cared about -because I'm an evolutionist atheist on an evolution debate forum - is why you think the presence of stabilizing feedback automatically implies intelligent design. But for some reason you keep ignoring my requests to elucidate your thoughts on that.Well, I suspect you're not long for this forum, since you don't like to follow the rules and can't, apparently, be expected to engage in civil discourse. So let me make my goodbyes now. Catch ya on the flip side!

This one? Maybe I'm simply not clear on the posture you're trying to describe, but what you're talking about is described in the sex manual I have (Anne Hooper's Pocket Sex Guide.) So as far as I know, it is shown in sex manuals (at least one), so I'm not sure why you haven't seen it.Ok, can we move on now?

Here we go again.Naturally the only reason that someone could disagree with your obvious superlative brilliance is because they simply aren't listening.Why do I ever bother? See ya.

And I guess all I'm saying is that, from what you've said, your situation is within the range of normal female sexual apparatus, because all females have forward-pointing vaginas to some degree. I'm not saying all women are exactly like you - that's become clear as your descriptions have become clearer - simply that you're not that different. Not enough to make claims that you're the founding member of a new race of human being, certainly. Again that's a sexual posture that I've observed a number of women assume, and none of them thought their equipment was out of the ordinary.Your claims just don't make sense in the light of my experiences with women, or their claims about themselves. But, you know, whatever. Clearly we're having some kind of communication problem on this, so whatever. It's called "feedback." For instance in a biological system it's the tendancy of a given hormone to retard its own synthesis after a certain point. Other systems have congruent effects - populations reach "K" because when they exceed K individuals start to stave to death.It's the interdependancies of the systems that give rise to this behavior. Organisms reach equilibrium with their environment because the environment is the limiting factor on population. Moreover, situations that don't have the interdependencies to reach equilibrium don't tend to stick around, so there's a selection factor, too.It's do or die, and by definition, we only get to observe those that regularly "do."

If you've got one leg up and one leg down, your legs are, by definition, spread. I don't know if it's in the manual (I don't have it on me right now), but I've done it that way. Because when it doesn't, individuals die.It's like asking why you can never pour more water into a glass than it will hold. How does the water know when the glass is full? You're looking at it the wrong way - when the glass is full, additional water simply spills out and is lost.Populations reach K - equilibrium at carrying capacity - because when populations try to exceed K, some individuals are no longer able to get the resources they need to live, so they die. That brings the population back to K (actually a little under K, so that there's a rebound effect - populations tend to occilate around the K value.)

You're almost certainly not a new species.Species is a biological term defined as "a reproductive community". You would only be in a new species if two things were true:1) You're unable to breed with other humans.2) You can only breed with a group of individuals who themselves cannot breed with humans.In other words in order to not be a member of the human species you have to have a group of non-human conspecifics that you can breed with, and only with. Is that true? If you can't breed with anyone at all, then I'm sorry - you're not a new species, you're just infertile.

We're careening wildly off-topic so this will be my last post on the subject. If you care to discuss species further we can do so in a new thread. I'm going to stick with the definition of species used by biologists, thank you. Here it is summarized by Mayr:

quote:

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"... a reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature."

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Now, unless you're a member of a reproductive community of non-humans that occupies a specific ecological niche, you're not a different species. Sorry, but you don't get to be a species all by yourself. And you know what those experts look for to tell? Whether or not the birds consititute a reproductive community. Look, your behavior in this thread is a matter of public record. You responded to a simple request to substantiate your claims with petty, childish insults and charges of sexism. Don't try to cover that up by telling me I'm the rude one, ok? And what should I have done to be less "loud"? Used a smaller font size? Asking you to substantiate your claims was the investigation. After all how else am I supposed to research claims you make about yourself?Look, as for the rest of what you've written, I'm not even going to touch it. It's obvious that you're the survior of some kind of trauma. How about getting some help for that instead of jumping down the throats of anybody that doesn't immediately agree with you? You know, like some therapy?You need to be talking to someone who can help you with your intimacy issues and need to blame other people for your problems, not with folks on the internet, ok?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-20-2004]

Oh, to hell with it. Close the thread already, admins![This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-20-2004]