And yet, somehow, you manage not to be skeptical of a proposition that contains a talking snake and a magic zombie...

CharlieM wrote:

Rumraket:
Not to mention the fact that the continents were much closer together 94-63 million years ago when the speciations are postulated to have taken place.

My quote gives the following estimate of the earliest time the voyage(s) could have occurred as being "about 63 million years ago", and they estimate the duration of the journey as taking months. These animals would have had to make this proposed, perilous journey and then establish a breeding population at the end of it! I think there is justification for being a bit skeptical of this proposition.

Regards,
CharlieM

Citation required
.

Hi GenesForLife, here is my original link with the relevant snip:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100330210938.htm

The phylogeny constructed by the Hedges and Vidal team shows a series of diversifications within the blindsnakes, outside of Madagascar, that occurred between 63 and 59 million years ago.

The ref ScienceDaily links to is - Vidal et al. Blindsnake evolutionary tree reveals long history on Gondwana. Biology Letters, 2010; DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0220

It should also be pointed out that, for organisms such as blind snakes, some species of which are known to be parthenogenic, establishing a breeding population is not as problematic as you make it appear. More importantly, the data in that study suggest that, regardless of your extremely selective skepticism, these events did happen.

In any event, this amounts to no more than the ubiquitous argumentum ad elbow-joint-of-the-lesser-spotted-weasel-frog.

CharlieM wrote:

Rumraket:
Not to mention the fact that the continents were much closer together 94-63 million years ago when the speciations are postulated to have taken place.

My quote gives the following estimate of the earliest time the voyage(s) could have occurred as being "about 63 million years ago", and they estimate the duration of the journey as taking months. These animals would have had to make this proposed, perilous journey and then establish a breeding population at the end of it! I think there is justification for being a bit skeptical of this proposition.

Regards,
CharlieM

We're talking about snakes right? They regularly go without food for months, sometimes up to a year.

Indeed, and the study even suggests that they probably rafted on vegetation that carried insects along with it, providing a more than adequate food supply.

Hackenslash:
And yet, somehow, you manage not to be skeptical of a proposition that contains a talking snake and a magic zombie...

I would be skeptical of an actual talking snake, but I'm not skeptical of the wisdom handed down to us from ancient cultures who had an entirely different knowledge from our own, a different view of reality. The serpent represents worldly knowledge. We obtain this knowledge from the serpent, at a cost. We need this knowledge to gain self consciousness, but it can ensnare us in a limited view of reality. The serpent knowledge is something we must transcend, just like childhood it is a stage we must go through. We must overcome the serpent.

Regards,
CharlieM

Ah, so nothing substantive then, just more bollocks presented as wisdom. Quelle surprise.

Paul G:
We're talking about snakes right? They regularly go without food for months, sometimes up to a year.

We could also talk about creatures such as New World monkeys.

Regards,
CharlieM.

hackenslash:
Ah, so nothing substantive then, just more bollocks presented as wisdom. Quelle surprise.

You're very quick to judge ancient cultures. Cultures that gave us the pyramids, stonehenge, the vedas, to name but a few examples of ancient wisdom.

CharlieM

What has this actually descended to? What point are we making here regarding the OP?

Paul G:
What has this actually descended to? What point are we making here regarding the OP?

Good question? I'm just going with the flow, but I still think its an interesting discussion.

Regards,
CharlieM

CharlieM wrote:

hackenslash:
Ah, so nothing substantive then, just more bollocks presented as wisdom. Quelle surprise.

You're very quick to judge ancient cultures. Cultures that gave us the pyramids, stonehenge, the vedas, to name but a few examples of ancient wisdom.

CharlieM

Yes I'm sure that both the pyramids, the vedas and stonehenge were massively of benefit to ancient cultures... how did we ever get by without them? Oh wait...

CharlieM wrote:

Paul G:
We're talking about snakes right? They regularly go without food for months, sometimes up to a year.

We could also talk about creatures such as New World monkeys.

Regards,
CharlieM.

By all means enlighten us.

CharlieM wrote:You're very quick to judge ancient cultures. Cultures that gave us the pyramids, stonehenge, the vedas, to name but a few examples of ancient wisdom.

CharlieM

ACtually, quiite the contrary. Firstly, I am making no judgement of the cultures, only of the utter fucking horseshit that you are presenting here as widsom. Secondly, I am not quick to do so, it took a very long time to reach the conclusion that it's all bollocks. That it seems to you that I reached my assessment quickly is only a reflection of the decrepitude of your pathetic 'arguments' and the regularity with which such arguments are presented here by the terminally credulous.

Incidentally, the culture that gave us Stonehenge, something I know a little about, and almost certainly more than you do, does not support your rectal masala here. It isn't often that anybody erects arguments in my particular are interest in historic terms, and I'd really love to see you attempt it. Please.

Rumraket:
By all means enlighten us.

I was hoping more to be enlightened rather than to enlighten. For instance if I quote any figures that are incorrect, I'm sure someone will put me right.

Regards,
CharlieM

The thing is, it seems to me, that the science is not done in the classrooms.

So science classes should teach whatever the scientific consensus is at the moment, in all the scientific fields. Of course there will be areas where scientists disagree, but it's then up to them to do the work, publish the papers, get peer reviewed and so on. And if it goes through, then that new view should be taught in classrooms.

So science already works the way these people say they want it to work, it just doesn't work in their favor, because 'their side' doesn't actually do the work, or don't do it the right way, they usually just quote (mine) the scientists who do the work, and cite those few they can quote in favor of - not design or creationism - but something that goes against the consensus, and thereby making it out to be a 'schism' and 'theory in crisis' or some such.

Some of what was taught in science classes fifty years ago is now superseded by new knowledge based on new evidence; that's because science works, not because it fails. Science isn't omniscient, so it has to work like that, finding things out over time.

But if you have a hypothesis or an idea that goes against the consensus, you don't bring it into the classrooms, because that's not where the science is done. You have to establish, through the rigorous scientific process, that your hypothesis is good, and better than what is currently taught. Then you can take it to the classrooms.

To me this is obvious, but I dunno?

hackenslash:
ACtually, quiite the contrary. Firstly, I am making no judgement of the cultures, ... Secondly, I am not quick to do so, it took a very long time to reach the conclusion that it's all bollocks.

So you make no judgment but you've taken a long time to decide that its all bollocks! You're contradicting yourself, so which is it?

Regards,
CharlieM

CharlieM wrote:

hackenslash:
ACtually, quiite the contrary. Firstly, I am making no judgement of the cultures, ... Secondly, I am not quick to do so, it took a very long time to reach the conclusion that it's all bollocks.

So you make no judgment but you've taken a long time to decide that its all bollocks! You're contradicting yourself, so which is it?

Regards,
CharlieM

Nice quote-mine there, Charlie. That is frowned upon here.

And there is no contradiction - emphasis mine:

hackenslash wrote:
ACtually, quiite the contrary. Firstly, I am making no judgement of the cultures, only of the utter fucking horseshit that you are presenting here as widsom. Secondly, I am not quick to do so, it took a very long time to reach the conclusion that it's all bollocks.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is only going to be "superceded" by a modified version with a better understanding of evo-devo, perhaps with some Punctuated equilibrium and related stuff in there. The question is still not whether evolution happened or not, or even if it is based on the genetic information system as the basic unit of inheritance. These things are established facts and nothing has been presented that even remotely casts doubt on any of this.

Will it be always Darwinian in the sense that change is always gradual and miniscule over long periods of time? Probably not, I think we have seen enough evidence of that already.

Will it always proceed in huge steps, with long intervals of no/minor change? Probably not.

It seems to me there is no one true picture of evolution. There is the potential for both versions to be correct under the right circumstances. Change can be either slow and gradual, or jumpy with low periods, and the underlying mechanism is going to be a correlation(if that's the right word) between the potential of the genes to change(immediate fitness neighborhood, either in terms of regulation or structural mutation in proteins) into something sufficiently successful, in the context of the given environment, for large scale change to quickly spread through populations.

There is always going to be refinement in our unstanding of how populations change over time, including of course the genetic basis for the individuals in this population, to what extent things like drift and natural/sexual selection shape these genes, and how said changes in said genes(and the expression thereof) affect the organism in it's environment.

It seems to me these are the discussions going on in the field of (developmental) evolutionary biology. This isn't controversial, and it definately doesn't need to be explicitly presented to highschoolers so they can "decide for themselves". The scientific community will come up with a description of the process in time, and this description may even end up being something in between several different interpretations, probably not too far removed from the modern synthesis with some evo-devo and other stuff thrown in.

One thing's for sure : It's not going to be Intelligent Design. That train left the station ages ago.

The arguments presented by the ID community, all of them, are bullshit. Every single one. They have been refuted, both by empirical observation and experiment and by logic. I still haven't seen a single ID-argument that wasn't build on either faulty premises(fallacy of intended targets, like the flagellum), intentionally specious mathematical fabrications(probability calculations of various sorts, again including the flagellum, they sure love failing with respect to the flagellum), unsubstantiated bare assertions(claims about requirements for certain amounts of CSI in proteins) or just pure arguments from ignorance. Someone like Dembski is particularly fond of making shit up that sounds smart and baffles the credulous, but always somehow turn out to be underhanded rethorical fabrications of no actual use and always fundamentally flawed, both in terms of their portrayal of evolutionary mechanisms and in terms of their wildy vague, unrigorous and just plain false definitions.