Summations Only

Or should we have a lesson on what plagairism is first?

Lets have this lesson. If you teach it it should be interesting to say the least.

Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

What Trixie said.

I took "lief/" to be a typo where he meant to say "life?"

subbie writes: What Trixie said. I took "lief/" to be a typo where he meant to say "life?"

Our model man Dwise said it, not Trixie. You know, our poster of the month nominee?

This is the first paragraph of this post. You might notice that those were two separate paragraphs in my previous post. The conventional formatting here is to separate paragraphs by a line space. This is the end of the first paragraph of this post.

This is the second paragraph of this post. In the first paragraph of my previous post, I was indicating my reply to you was the same as Trixie's. In case that is not clear enough for you, here is what she said:

Trixie writes: Buzsaw writes: I said that they both came before evolution, did I not? No, you did not. You said that the primordial soup and abogenesis were prerequisites for evolution. Message 142 I would say that the primordial soup was a prerequisite to the ToE. No premodial soup; no evolution. You then referred us back to that message in Message 192 to emphasise your point. Merriam-Webster writes: pre·req·ui·site noun \(ˌprç-ˈre-kwə-zət\ Definition of PREREQUISITE : something that is necessary to an end or to the carrying out of a function — prerequisite adjective http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prerequisite So, prerequisite does not mean "came before". Life itself is a prerequisite for evolution since it's life that evolution acts on. However how that life came about is irrelevant to the acion of evolution. As someone else pointed out, it could have arrived on an asteroid (panspermia), it could have been created by an omnipotentbeing or it could have arisen by abiogenesis. It matters not a jot which is responsible. Evolution is a process which doesn't care two hoots about the origin of the life it is acting on.

This is the end of the second paragraph of this post.

This is the third paragraph of this post. In the second paragraph of my previous post, I was giving you my understanding of what Dwise meant by "lief/". Since those two points were in separate paragraphs, I assumed that any minimally literate person would understand that I was expressing two separate ideas. Hopefully I am making the point clearly enough in this post for even you to understand it. This is the end of the third paragraph of this post.

Trixie writes: Buzsaw writes: I said that they both came before evolution, did I not? No, you did not. You said that the primordial soup and abogenesis were prerequisites for evolution.

That makes three of you wrong and Buz right. Both were indeed prerequisites (came before) of evolution.

pre=before requisite derived from required, i.e. both pre required, i.e. came before, i.e. preceded, i.e. no soup, no abiogenesis, ( LIFE) no evolution for those who ascribe to primordial soup. My understanding is that the majority of scientists do.

Trixie writes: So, prerequisite does not mean "came before". Life itself is a prerequisite for evolution since it's life that evolution acts on.

Are you telling the www that abiogenisis is not the genesis of life?

Well, I'll give it a go (but in all probability just wasting bandwidth, at least as far as there being any chance that this will make Buz understand).

pre=before requisite derived from required, i.e. both pre required, i.e. came before, i.e. preceded, i.e. no soup, no abiogenesis, ( LIFE) no evolution for those who ascribe to primordial soup. My understanding is that the majority of scientists do.

The current consensus among scientists is that yes, in fact life did arise from non-life by a natural process of chemical reactions that eventually resulted in self-replicating molecules. However, the exact sequence of this process is currently unknown and, given the length of time that has passed and the unlikelihood of any of that process leaving behind evidence that we can find today, we will probably never know exactly how it happened.

However, the process by which life arose is completely irrelevant to the ToE. The ToE describes how life evolved on this planet after it began. If we were to find conclusive evidence that life was seeded on this planet by an alien civilization, that would not change the ToE in any meaningful respect. If we were to find evidence that life traveled here from another planet by some sort of panspermia event, that would not change the ToE in any meaningful respect.

The existence of life on this planet is a prerequisite to evolution. How that life began is irrelevant to the ToE.

Might as well add the possibility of some sort of god thing spraying the planet with single celled organisms or simple replicating molecules - just so as not to unecessarily outrage the righteous.

Seems to me that if we're going to include that as a possibility, we'd need to add the possibility that

the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world much as it exists today, but for reasons unknown made it appear that the universe is billions of years old (instead of thousands) and that life evolved into its current state (rather than created in its current form). Every time a researcher carries out an experiment that appears to confirm one of these “scientific theories” supporting an old earth and evolution we can be sure that the FSM is there, modifying the data with his Noodly Appendage.

RAmen.

But that, of course, would have considerable implications for the ToE, as would, I submit, any other explanation involving unevidenced supernatural intervention.

Plus, I kinda get a kick out of outraging the "righteous." If there's anyone who needs to have their cage shaken on a regular basis, it's them.

subbie writes: This is the first paragraph of this post...

Didn't Dave Barry do the same thing in the early 1980's. Plagiarist! Chuck should give you a good talking to!

--Percy

Buzzsaw, do you understand that prerequire and precede are different words?
Here are their respective definitions:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prerequisite
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/precede

Moreover, evolution does require life beforehand but it doesn't require for life to come about in any particuliar way, as long as it's here.

Buzsaw writes: Are you telling the www that abiogenisis is not the genesis of life?

NO!

FFS Buz how many different ways can you find to misunderstand what people write? Abiogenesis is one of several possibilities for the "genesis of life" or as most people call it, the origin of life on this planet

Didn't Dave Barry do the same thing in the early 1980's. Plagiarist! Chuck should give you a good talking to!

Whine to Admin about it. I understand he can be a pissy little prig about that sort of thing.

Buz, since you persist and insist that "primordial soup" is a pre-requisite for evolution, could you please explain to us exactly why that is? In sufficient detail and with sufficient clarity for us to understand why you think that, please.

They weren't trying to build any kind of cohesive self-consistent world-view, like science does. [...] Therein may lie the problem. Since we normals all think that way, we expect fundamentalists to have or want to have a consistent world-view. They don't want to; they just want to oppose what they see as the opponent.

Yes, I think you're right.

When normal people talk about normal things, they have a mental model of the world and they're reporting on it. This models is intended to (though it may not) have a structure corresponding to the real world. But they have such a model, and when they talk about what they think is the case, they are describing this model to others.

But fundies are not doing that. They are encouraged to live in a mental world consisting of words supported by proof texts, not consisting of models supported by their resemblance to reality. Now the result of this is strange. What he has is not a model, but a program: "If someone says W to you, then say X; but if someone says Y, then reply with Z". But there does not have to be an internal model of which both X and Z both have to be true.

So, for example, a fundie approaches me in the street. He tells me:

* That the Bible is all true (that would be the Bible where God is always turning up and showing off, talking out of burning bushes, talking to Moses and to Adam face to face, making those "accurate prophecies" Buzsaw's so fond of, becoming man and walking on water ... all very impressive stuff.)

* But when asked why, if God wants me to believe, he couldn't just demonstrate his existence to me, he replies with thing Z: if God demonstrated his existence, this would rob us of our free will, since then we couldn't choose to disbelieve. (So, do we have a deist here or what.)

* That he used to be an atheist (to imply that my own ideas would change on mature reflection).

* That it is absolutely impossible for anyone to be an atheist, and no-one ever is (to imply that my views were insincere).

* That the reason that no-one is an atheist is that according to his proof-text from St. Paul, God has supplied everyone with such convincing evidence for his existence that it is impossible to doubt it. (So much for my free will).

All this in a space of a few minutes.

Now, he's simply not reporting on his ideas of the relationship of God to man in general, or of God to me --- or even of God to himself, for if everything he said was true then he was once an atheist and always a theist.

Another example: a JW tries to convince me that creationism is scientific because "most scientists are creationists".

Having the internet handy, I whip out proof of what the scientific community really thinks.

He then tells me that scientists are all biased because 80% of them are atheists.

Now, clearly what he has in his head is not in structure like a pie chart or a Venn diagram; it's not a model of reality on which he's reporting. It is, as I say, a program: "If the guy claims this, then this is the right answer, but if he says that, then the right answer is the other" where right has nothing to do with corresponding to the mental picture of the world that he doesn't have.

Bob Altermeyer reports a similar phenomenon in authoritarians:

As I said earlier, authoritarians’ ideas are poorly integrated with one another. It’s as if each idea is stored in a file that can be called up and used when the authoritarian wishes, even though another of his ideas--stored in a different file-- basically contradicts it. We all have some inconsistencies in our thinking, but authoritarians can stupify you with the inconsistency of their ideas. Thus they may saythey are proud to live in a country that guarantees freedom of speech, but another file holds, “My country, love it or leave it.” The ideas were copied from trusted sources,often as sayings, but the authoritarian has never “merged files” to see how well they all fit together.

It’s easy to find authoritarians endorsing inconsistent ideas. Just present slogans and appeals to homey values, and then present slogans and bromides that invoke opposite values. The yea-saying authoritarian follower is likely to agree with all of them. Thus I asked both students and their parents to respond to, “When it comes to love, men and women with opposite points of view are attracted to each other.” Soon afterwards, in the same booklet, I pitched “Birds of a feather flock together when it comes to love.” High RWAs typically agreed with both statements, even though they responded to the two items within a minute of each other.

Note that this last observation isn't particularly about their core beliefs, they just have a tendency to endorse (I nearly wrote believe, but that would be an overstatement) cliches which, being cliches in effect serve as their own proof-texts. But again, what they lack is a mental model, some simple thing equivalent to a pie chart of couples they've met, or a more complicated thing like a theory of romantic attraction, that is in their heads and is the subject that they're talking about.

Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

dwise1 writes: Buz, since you persist and insist that "primordial soup" is a pre-requisite for evolution, could you please explain to us exactly why that is? In sufficient detail and with sufficient clarity for us to understand why you think that, please.

Here's the Free Online Dictionary definition of primordial and primordial soup. Go figure.

quote:

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pri·mor·di·al (pr-môrd-l)
adj.
1. Being or happening first in sequence of time; original.
2. Primary or fundamental: play a primordial role.
3. Biology Belonging to or characteristic of the earliest stage of development of an organism or a part: primordial cells.

primordial soup (pr-môrd-l)
A liquid rich in organic compounds and providing favorable conditions for the emergence and growth of life forms. Oceans of primordial soup are thought to have covered the Earth during the Precambrian Eon billions of years ago. The organic compounds in the primordial soup, such as amino acids, may have been produced by reactions in the Earth's early atmosphere, which was probably rich in methane and ammonia. The complex self-replicating organic molecules that were the precursors to life on Earth may have developed in this primordial soup.

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