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Huntsman on evolution, warming: 'Call me crazy'

Ask the liberal if he believes that evolution has been working on human intelligence and varies by race. Then, all of a sudden, evolution is evil and an appeal to mysticism is launched in that it is stated that evolution isn't operable in humans from the neck up. That's the equivalent of being a little bit pregnant.

Intelligence and race are both vague social concepts without specific scientific definitions. Evolution did create slight genetic differences between humans in geographic regions during the period when humanity lived a fairly isolated lifestyle. You, like the eugenicists, prove you have no clue about genetics when you confuse them with race. Genetically Obama probably has an equal number of African and European ancestors. However, is will always be considered black simply by the color of his skin.
 
Maybe, maybe not. Evolution is a theory that has yet to be proved or disproved.

I'm perfectly comfortable with the fact that God may have created humans through the process of evolution. I don't claim to know the mind of God, because it's impossible for me to know. God is infinite, I am not. Is that what he did? I don't know. I really don't. Might be evolution, and it might not be.

I personally believe in both Intelligent Design, i.e. God, and in evolution. There can be no denial that species do change in response to conditions, to a degree. We've seen it and to deny those changes is seriously stupid. But evolution cannot explain the development of extremely complex and specialized body parts that serve no purpose until they actually reach their final configuration.
 
I personally believe in both Intelligent Design, i.e. God, and in evolution. There can be no denial that species do change in response to conditions, to a degree. We've seen it and to deny those changes is seriously stupid. But evolution cannot explain the development of extremely complex and specialized body parts that serve no purpose until they actually reach their final configuration.

Do you have any examples of those specialized body parts?
 
Do you have any examples of those specialized body parts?

Good old tits.... Mammary glands if you want to get technical. We are told that they evolved from sweat glands. First of all, we have to believe that an animal without a sweat gland developed a specialized gland and duct simply for cooling purposes. Plus, not all animals did it, i.e horses and humans have sweat glands, cats and dogs do not. Yet we all have mammary glands?
 
I applaud Perry for putting evolution in it's place. It's an unproven theory and nothing more.
 
Good old tits.... Mammary glands if you want to get technical. We are told that they evolved from sweat glands. First of all, we have to believe that an animal without a sweat gland developed a specialized gland and duct simply for cooling purposes. Plus, not all animals did it, i.e horses and humans have sweat glands, cats and dogs do not. Yet we all have mammary glands?

AFAIK the suggestion that mammary glands evolved from sweat glands is pure guesswork. Nor is it especially logical, as breast milk is necessary to nurture an infant. Hard to figure how a species would evolve if all the the babies died of malnutrition.

"It is believed that the mammary gland is a transformed sweat gland, more closely related to Apocrine sweat glands.[27] There are many theories of how they evolved, but since they do not fossilize well, supporting such theories is difficult. Many of the current theories are based on comparisons between lines of living mammals- monotremes, marsupials and eutherians. One theory proposes that mammary glands evolved from glands that were used to keep the eggs of early mammals moist[28][29] and free from infection[30][31] (monotremes still lay eggs). Other theories propose that early secretions were used directly by hatched young,[32] or that the secretions were used by young to help them orient to their mothers.[33]

Lactation developed long before the evolution of the mammary gland and mammals, see evolution of lactation."

Wikipedia is your friend.
 
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The thing about evolution is that it is a theory. We have no proof in the fossil record that amoebas lead to humans. In fact, nearly every animal just appeared...when you look at the fossil record. So, either fossils were not possible for a period of time, or creationism wins a point.

p.s....this does not mean that micro evolution is not scientific fact...just macro evolution.
 
Good old tits.... Mammary glands if you want to get technical. We are told that they evolved from sweat glands. First of all, we have to believe that an animal without a sweat gland developed a specialized gland and duct simply for cooling purposes. Plus, not all animals did it, i.e horses and humans have sweat glands, cats and dogs do not. Yet we all have mammary glands?

We are not told they evolve from sweat glands. That is simply one possible way they could have evolved. No one knows for sure since mammary glands do not fossilize. We do not that there are some transitional methods of feeding young however, such as a discus fish(which are way cool looking) feed their young from mucous secretions.
 
I applaud Perry for putting evolution in it's place. It's an unproven theory and nothing more.

If you mean unproven in the same way that the theory of gravity is unproven, and the general and specific theories of relativity are unproven, then yes. However, all 3 are accurate models for the universe.
 
Intelligence and race are both vague social concepts without specific scientific definitions.

Intelligence is pretty well defined by the psychometric community, at least to the point where they can measure and predict. It's not deterministic, but it's the best single psychological variable out there in terms of predictive validity.

Race is a concept with fuzzy boundaries. The fuzziness of the boundaries doesn't invalidate the concept. Computer programs can now sort people into racial groups simply by analyzing their DNA.

Evolution did create slight genetic differences between humans in geographic regions during the period when humanity lived a fairly isolated lifestyle.

Not the past tense, please use the present tense. You wouldn't want people to believe that you're exempting humans from evolution now, would you?

You, like the eugenicists, prove you have no clue about genetics when you confuse them with race.

1.) I'm not a progressive, so don't lump me with eugenicists. That baggage belongs to liberals.
2.) Thanks for informing me that I have no clue about genetics. I'll take your advice and give it some thought. Ok, finished thinking.
 
I always find it awkward that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is complete support of evolution and yet evolution seems unproven to the largely religious classes. However, when you ask them to prove the existence of their mythical fairy in the sky, they can't even provide a simple example of its work through anything but a non-sequitur. Maybe some tools left behind by the creator, er "designer"? Maybe a giant monkey wrench? Some planet sized blueprints? Anything?
 
Oh sure, they put on an act like they believe in evolution. They know jack squat about evolution. The just like to pretend that they're pro-science and more enlightened than those crude and simple religious folk. Claiming to believe in evolution is a cultural signaler, kind of like driving a Prius - liberals believe is tells others something important about them. It enhances their reputation. It's just a tool used in the game of reputational conspicuous consumption. Cheap to buy in because all you have to do is mouth the platitudes and you never have to apply your belief in real life, politics, or public policy - it's simply pulled out of the reputation grab-bag when it's time to do battle against the religious mouth-breathers and then it's used to elevate the liberal as the enlightened one and browbeat the religious as though they were superstitious cavemen sitting in a cave afraid of the real world.

Ask the liberal if he believes that evolution has been working on human intelligence and varies by race. Then, all of a sudden, evolution is evil and an appeal to mysticism is launched in that it is stated that evolution isn't operable in humans from the neck up. That's the equivalent of being a little bit pregnant.

The liberals and the religious are both creationists, the simply differ in which mystical source they appeal to.

Evolution doesn't work by race. It works by species. A black sheep and a white sheep both have the same levels of intelligence. How they arrive at their pigmentation is a completely different matter. Your argument is a gigantic failure.
 
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Read more: Huntsman on evolution, warming: 'Call me crazy' - Darren Samuelsohn - POLITICO.com


I have already contributed to his campaign once, and this makes me want to send the guy another check. However, since reason and sanity are not virtues Republican Primary Voters want in a candidate this year, I don't think this will help him out any.

Kind of smug of him. "I believe in science... unlike some people." People whose votes he obviously doesn't care for. I wonder if he's actually been setting the stage for an Independent run? It's not like the GOP is going to nominate him. Frankly, I hope it happens - he could potentially take a lot of votes away from Obama. Huntsman/Crist 2012? Hmm.

Anyways, as a believer in the former and not the latter, I'm kind of annoyed that he lumped evolution and GW together, like they're the same issue. And the whole "trust scientists" thing is a major cop-out. The structure of the universe is not determined by some sort of opinion poll of Earth's scientists. I came to my opinion by reading about the actual science involved, not by trusting my omniscient elites.
 
Evolution doesn't work by race. It works by species. A black sheep and a white sheep both have the same levels of intelligence. How they arrive at their pigmentation is a completely different matter. Your argument is a gigantic failure.

If you're setting out to school someone, here's a hint, know what the **** you're talking about. Evolutionary effects are seen at all levels of life, from the gene, to the individual, to the localized population group, up to species. Do you imagine that a mutation spontaneously arises in every animal belonging to a species?

I know that you don't like having your face shoved into the creationism muck-pit, but your attempts to refute my position are an utter failure which work to validate my argument that liberals who profess to believe in evolution know jack squat about it. They're claiming fealty because it's "scientific" and scientists declare that evolution works. Scientists are smart, liberals like to think of themselves as smart, so they believe what scientists tell them. They just don't understand it for ****. That though doesn't stop them from beating the religious creationists over the head with their "superior" position, a position about which they know nothing other than it is the right and smart position.
 
Intelligence is pretty well defined by the psychometric community, at least to the point where they can measure and predict.

No, not really. There is no universally accepted definition of intelligence, and therefore no accepted test for it.
 
Kind of smug of him. "I believe in science... unlike some people." People whose votes he obviously doesn't care for. I wonder if he's actually been setting the stage for an Independent run? It's not like the GOP is going to nominate him. Frankly, I hope it happens - he could potentially take a lot of votes away from Obama. Huntsman/Crist 2012? Hmm.

Anyways, as a believer in the former and not the latter, I'm kind of annoyed that he lumped evolution and GW together, like they're the same issue. And the whole "trust scientists" thing is a major cop-out. The structure of the universe is not determined by some sort of opinion poll of Earth's scientists. I came to my opinion by reading about the actual science involved, not by trusting my omniscient elites.

Ummmm Dav. You kinda in a way prove his point. You don't believe in the science of global warming, so you are one of those "some people".
 
Ummmm Dav. You kinda in a way prove his point. You don't believe in the science of global warming, so you are one of those "some people".

Oh I believe in the science of GW... just not the right science, according to some. The implication of Huntsman's statement was basically that he was pro-science, and anyone who disagreed with him was anti-science in some way.
 
Oh I believe in the science of GW... just not the right science, according to some. The implication of Huntsman's statement was basically that he was pro-science, and anyone who disagreed with him was anti-science in some way.

I would argue this point, but there is a reason I avoid GW threads like the plague. It's like ME threads. So let's just say that I see his point.
 
Oh I believe in the science of GW... just not the right science, according to some. The implication of Huntsman's statement was basically that he was pro-science, and anyone who disagreed with him was anti-science in some way.

By "right science" you presumably mean the science that's accepted by 97% of climatologists? You've determined, based upon your advanced science degrees, that you know better?
 
Ummmm Dav. You kinda in a way prove his point. You don't believe in the science of global warming, so you are one of those "some people".

OK,. to shift gears here. The problem with climate science is that, for the most part, it's not really science, it's computer modeling. What passes for publishable science in the climate science community is often met with rolls of the eyes from other disciplines. I could put up hundreds of papers which were published which amounted to little more than computer projections based on assumptions. That's garbage.

Now the good parts of climate science are the parts which isolate and understand isolated aspects of climate, of chemistry, of physics. This science stands on it's own. It's reliable and valid. The problem right now is the development of a global climate model. There are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of moving parts in such models. Secondly, the prevalent practice in the climate science community is to validate computer models against other computer models. Oh boy. I have a friend who does computer modeling for the nation's nuclear warhead stockpile. He could never get away with validating his models against other models. The reason that our nuclear test ban is still in effect is because the computer modelers have developed their models to such a sophistication and they've validated the models against ACTUAL NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS and the models accurately predict the results that developed from the explosions. Climate models are producing results all over the map. That's not science.
 
Intelligence is pretty well defined by the psychometric community, at least to the point where they can measure and predict. It's not deterministic, but it's the best single psychological variable out there in terms of predictive validity.

Psychometrics are at the squishy end of the soft sciences. In real biology land, there is no overall standard for measuring intelligence in humans.

Race is a concept with fuzzy boundaries. The fuzziness of the boundaries doesn't invalidate the concept. Computer programs can now sort people into racial groups simply by analyzing their DNA.

Simple enough to program the computer to look for skin color genes. That hardly makes race an objective genetic definition.

Not the past tense, please use the present tense. You wouldn't want people to believe that you're exempting humans from evolution now, would you?

The evolution of physical characteristics localized to a geographic region took place long ago. The incredible mobility of modern societies prevents the same of kind regional selection in humans.
 
By "right science" you presumably mean the science that's accepted by 97% of climatologists? You've determined, based upon your advanced science degrees, that you know better?

97% is a hugely inflated number, unless you only count those who get published, which immensely favors those who have bought into academia's current dogma over those who dare to go against it. Anyways, no matter which position I take, there's guaranteed to be some people with advanced science degrees who disagree, so that's kind of a non-argument.

Is it so hard to accept that there might possibly be forces pushing most scientists to the wrong conclusion other than actual science? Peer pressure/groupthink, or the fact that academia in general is hugely politically left-leaning, which brings in all sorts of sampling biases, comes to mind. Anyways, to answer your question, yes, I would rather do the actual research and come to my own conclusion than just take a poll of scientists and uninformedly decide whatever they tell me must be right.
 
OK,. to shift gears here. The problem with climate science is that, for the most part, it's not really science, it's computer modeling. What passes for publishable science in the climate science community is often met with rolls of the eyes from other disciplines. I could put up hundreds of papers which were published which amounted to little more than computer projections based on assumptions. That's garbage.

Now the good parts of climate science are the parts which isolate and understand isolated aspects of climate, of chemistry, of physics. This science stands on it's own. It's reliable and valid. The problem right now is the development of a global climate model. There are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of moving parts in such models. Secondly, the prevalent practice in the climate science community is to validate computer models against other computer models. Oh boy. I have a friend who does computer modeling for the nation's nuclear warhead stockpile. He could never get away with validating his models against other models. The reason that our nuclear test ban is still in effect is because the computer modelers have developed their models to such a sophistication and they've validated the models against ACTUAL NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS and the models accurately predict the results that developed from the explosions. Climate models are producing results all over the map. That's not science.

Do you just make this stuff out of your head? Climate models are always run backwards and forwards to correlate them with historical, known climate patterns. They aren't *just* run against other computer models, although they certainly do compare them. The objective is to continually improve the modeling.
 
OK,. to shift gears here. The problem with climate science is that, for the most part, it's not really science, it's computer modeling. What passes for publishable science in the climate science community is often met with rolls of the eyes from other disciplines. I could put up hundreds of papers which were published which amounted to little more than computer projections based on assumptions. That's garbage.

Now the good parts of climate science are the parts which isolate and understand isolated aspects of climate, of chemistry, of physics. This science stands on it's own. It's reliable and valid. The problem right now is the development of a global climate model. There are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of moving parts in such models. Secondly, the prevalent practice in the climate science community is to validate computer models against other computer models. Oh boy. I have a friend who does computer modeling for the nation's nuclear warhead stockpile. He could never get away with validating his models against other models. The reason that our nuclear test ban is still in effect is because the computer modelers have developed their models to such a sophistication and they've validated the models against ACTUAL NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS and the models accurately predict the results that developed from the explosions. Climate models are producing results all over the map. That's not science.

A scientific theory is one that accurately predicts experimental results. If the model accurately predicts what happens, and what has happened, then it is a good theory.
 
97% is a hugely inflated number, unless you only count those who get published, which immensely favors those who have bought into academia's current dogma over those who dare to go against it. Anyways, no matter which position I take, there's guaranteed to be some people with advanced science degrees who disagree, so that's kind of a non-argument.

Is it so hard to accept that there might possibly be forces pushing most scientists to the wrong conclusion other than actual science? Peer pressure/groupthink, or the fact that academia in general is hugely politically left-leaning, which brings in all sorts of sampling biases, comes to mind. Anyways, to answer your question, yes, I would rather do the actual research and come to my own conclusion than just take a poll of scientists and uninformedly decide whatever they tell me must be right.

Expert credibility in climate change

97 - 98 % is accurate.
 
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