Loki Loc: Georgia

Today in 1859, Charles Darwin's work "On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection" was first published. This tome represents the idea that species evolve because they possess favorable genetic survival traits which allow them to propagate more freely and frequently.
None of this explains the continued presence of Liberals. Their origin and raison d'etre remains shrouded in mystery.

pappadeux Loc: Phoenix AZ

Very simple ! liberals, progressives and the New AmeriKa types are "inhuman" . This is they are blathering the same old song, same old s--t. They dance to the same old "never-ending waltz" on a day to day basis until someone piss's on their never-ending parade.

EmilyStrode

Forty-nine percent of Republicans don't believe in evolution and Thirteen percent are unsure, a new Public Policy Polling survey found. It would seem that if Republicans do not believe humans evolved "because they possess favorable genetic survival traits which allow them to propagate more freely and frequently" then their very existence, not that of Liberals, goes unexplained, "their origin...remains shrouded in mystery" by their own admission.

Loki Loc: Georgia

I wonder which Republicans they claim to have surveyed? I know a lot of Republicans, and not a Luddite among 'em.

EmilyStrode

The poll was professionally done: they consulted Al Franken. He knows Republicans. One hundred of them, to be exact, and he says that 49 do not believe in evolution, 13 are unsure, and the rest never heard of it. Hard to impeach.

EmilyStrode

I will have a real answer for you when I get home.

EmilyStrode

Okay, I have yet to find recent polls on the subject but all the ones (such as Pew Research and Gallup) from 2005 to 2015 give basically the same percentage: 49% disbelievers. Here is one article on the Luddites:
The three Republican presidential candidates who indicated last month that they do not believe in evolution may have been taking a safe stance on the issue when it comes to appealing to GOP voters.

A Gallup poll released Monday said that while the country is about evenly split over whether the theory of evolution is true, Republicans disbelieve it by more than 2-to-1.

Republicans saying they don't believe in evolution outnumbered those who do by 68 percent to 30 percent in the survey. Democrats believe in evolution by 57 percent to 40 percent, as do independents by a 61 percent to 37 percent margin.

The poll also said that those who go to church often are far likelier to reject evolution than those who do not. Republicans are likelier than Democrats or independents to attend church services, according to Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.

At the GOP's first presidential debate last month, the 10 candidates were asked which of them did not believe in evolution. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo raised their hands.

The Gallup survey, conducted May 21 to 24, involved telephone interviews with 1,007 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

EmilyStrode

December 30, 2013, 5:03 PM
Fewer Republicans today than in 2009 believe in evolution, according to new analysis from the Pew Research Center.

A poll out Monday shows that less than half – 43 percent – of those who identify with the Republican Party say they believe humans have evolved over time, plunging from 54 percent four years ago. Forty-eight percent say they believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time,” up from 39 percent in 2009.

At 67 percent and 65 percent, respectively, the numbers of Democrats and independents who believe in evolution have remained more or less the same since 2009. They’re also in step with the population nationally: Six-in-10 Americans say they believe humans have evolved.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-belief-in-evolution-plummets-poll-reveals/

EmilyStrode

eb Bush: Asked in 2005 whether he accepted evolution, Bush affirmed that he did -- but that it shouldn't be taught in schools. "Yeah, but I don’t think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you," Bush said. "And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.” Later that year, he argued that students should be presented with "varying viewpoints."

They Aren't Scientists

-Chris Christie: Does Christie affirm evolutionary science? "That's none of your business," he replied with characteristic brusqueness in 2011. “Evolution is required teaching,” he added. “If there’s a certain school district that also wants to teach creationism, that’s not something we should decide in Trenton.”
-Ted Cruz: While his kooky father would like you to know that evolution is a Communist lie, the Texas senator himself "won't discuss evolution directly," the New Yorker reported.
-Bobby Jindal: The Brown University biology major, Rhodes scholar, and scorner of "the stupid party" feigns ignorance on the subject, emphasizing last year that he's not an "evolutionary biologist" and contending that local schools should decide what they teach.
-John Kasich: During his 2010 run for Ohio governor, Kasich seemed to place evolution and creationism on a par with one another, saying only that both evolution and "creation science" should be taught in classrooms.
-Rand Paul: During his 2010 Senate campaign, Paul courted young earth creationists and said he would "pass" on the question of how old the earth is.
-Marco Rubio: Asked the earth's age in 2012, Rubio replied, "I'm not a scientist, man." He added, "At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all." After his remarks on the earth's age were widely derided, Rubio acknowledged that it's 4.5 billion years old, but maintained that that wasn't inconsistent with creationism.
-Scott Walker: He's going to punt on this one.

The Hell No Caucus

-Ben Carson: He may be an acclaimed neurosurgeon, but Carson casts his lot with the creationists. “Evolution and creationism both require faith. It’s just a matter of where you choose to place that faith," he declared in 2012, proceeding to imply that evolutionists lacked an ethical framework.
-Mike Huckabee: During a 2007 GOP presidential debate, the Southern Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor indicated that he doesn't accept evolution. "But you know, if anybody wants to believe they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it," he said.
-Rick Perry: Calling evolution just a "theory that's out there," Perry proclaimed in 2011 that "God is how we got here." Creationism and evolution should both be presented in public schools, he added.
-Rick Santorum: Denouncing the idea that evolution is "above reproach," Santorum said in 2008, "I obviously don’t feel that way. I think there are a lot of problems with the theory of evolution, and do believe that it is used to promote to a worldview that is anti-theist, that is atheist."
https://www.salon.com/2015/02/11/evolution_and_the_gops_2016_candidates_a_complet_guide/

Loki Loc: Georgia

So what you have garnered from your plethora of left leaning sources is that 49% of Republicans basically don't believe in evolution without some sort of Supreme Being involved. There is no doubt that evolution occurred. There is also no doubt that the odds of it happening by chance are about the same as a tornado passing through a junkyard and completely by chance building a 747 down to the last screw in the pilot's coffee pot. That's just one-celled organisms. Evolution teaches that one-celled pre-Cambrian organisms, in a Geological eyeblink, somehow more exploded than evolved into the vast myriad of complex Cambrian life forms. There is a lot of evidence of the Cambrian period's life. There is no transitional evidence of how it came to be. Then there were the remarkable recoveries during the Ordovician and especially the Permian die offs. How amphibians became reptiles is far more complicated than how ape-like creatures became homo sapiens. (Those that actually made the transition, that is.)
There is less of a disbelief in evolutionary theory than the recognition that it IS a theory. Not in the fact that it happened, but in the HOW it happened. Much of what is taught as evolutionary "fact" is nothing more than speculation wrapped in a mantle of "authority."
We have millions of fossils of assorted life forms, both flora and fauna, but pretty much nothing in the way of transitional fossils that show how form "A" became form "B". There is just about as much proof of a God waving a magic wand as there is of a gradual evolution. I think many evolutionists are more interested in the promotion of Atheism rather than actual science. Especially the foundation of all science, which is mathematics. That foundation's probability theory states that evolution by complete chance is so unlikely it is beyond impossible, yet we are asked to believe that it happened not once, but countless quadrillions of times.
There are those who speculate the primal mass from which the Big Bang occurred was somehow left over from some sort of previous universe, and find this unfounded and unproven speculation believable, yet scoff at the idea of a Supreme Being as a fairy tale.
Children are taught from an "artists' conception" that a certain dinosaur had a certain physical appearance. This is taught as fact when the fact it that no one KNOWS what it actually looked like. It is guesswork based on extrapolation from some of the more complete skeletons that actually have been unearthed, and actually did exist.
The actual nuts and bolts mechanics of how evolution actually occurred enjoy representation as fact when a lot of it is guesswork. We know it happened, but in so many cases, not HOW. My own problem lies in the presentation of speculation as fact.
Your post leaves the impression that Republican politicians are superstitious imbeciles; yet the actions of the scientific community in joining in lockstep to present guesswork and wishful thinking as fact seems to leave you unfazed.
This is the same scientific community who joined with the religion they now despise to castigate Copernicus, Galileo, Demosthenes, and William Harvey as being heretic. Looks like the pendulum has swung back the other way.
No offense, but your one-sided drive-by deserved a response.
Peace, Love and Blue Tofu.

Highlander66 Loc: Illinois

This is brilliant. And accurate. Thank you for giving this to us.

Loki Loc: Georgia

Thank you. Just my opinion.

EmilyStrode

You said that there are no Luddites in the Republican Party. I gave you quotes from a number in your party that appears to contradict your claim. That was not from any plethora of "left-leaning" sites but their own voice on record words. If the figure 49% bothers you, doesn't just one verifiable voice prove that there are Luddites in the Republican Party?

Loki, we do not know each other and I am not sure we ever exchanged ideas on this forum. Pardon me, but your post seems presumptive, that I know little or nothing or maybe nothing correct about the topic. Though I do not believe I have engaged with you personally, I have read other posts by you and came to respect your intellect and honesty. And I know that I am not dealing with a hater or blind partisan cog. Please suspend judgment on me for now.

I will address each point you made. It may interest you to know that that quote about the "junkyard" I myself used back in the 90s, not convinced an evolution without God was possible. I still believe that, maybe even more now.

EmilyStrode

Transitional Fossils: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html


There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.

Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.

The following are fossil transitions between species and genera:

Human ancestry. There are many fossils of human ancestors, and the differences between species are so gradual that it is not always clear where to draw the lines between them.

The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior (Stanley 1974).

A gradual transitional fossil sequence connects the foraminifera Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (Pearson et al. 1997). O. universa, the later fossil, features a spherical test surrounding a "Globigerinoides-like" shell, showing that a feature was added, not lost. The evidence is seen in all major tropical ocean basins. Several intermediate morphospecies connect the two species, as may be seen in the figure included in Lindsay (1997).

The fossil record shows transitions between species of Phacops (a trilobite; Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil; Eldredge 1972; 1974; Strapple 1978).

Planktonic forminifera (Malmgren et al. 1984). This is an example of punctuated gradualism. A ten-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.

Fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia are very common (they are mined as diatomaceous earth), and they show a continuous record of almost two million years which includes a record of a speciation event (Miller 1999, 44-45).

Lake Turkana mollusc species (Lewin 1981).

Cenozoic marine ostracodes (Cronin 1985).

The Eocene primate genus Cantius (Gingerich 1976, 1980, 1983).

Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change (Pojeta and Springer 2001; Ward and Blackwelder 1975).

Gryphaea (coiled oysters) become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic (Hallam 1968).

The following are fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:

Human ancestry. Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking (Richmond and Strait 2000).

Dinosaur-bird transitions.

Haasiophis terrasanctus is a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs. Although other limbless snakes might be more ancestral, this fossil shows a relationship of snakes with limbed ancestors (Tchernov et al. 2000). Pachyrhachis is another snake with legs that is related to Haasiophis (Caldwell and Lee 1997).

The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but unlike snakes, they do not have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards (Caldwell and Lee 1997; Lee et al. 1999; Tchernov et al. 2000).

Transitions between mesonychids and whales.

Transitions between fish and tetrapods.

Transitions from condylarths (a kind of land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees. In particular, Pezosiren portelli is clearly a sirenian, but its hind limbs and pelvis are unreduced (Domning 2001a, 2001b).

Runcaria, a Middle Devonian plant, was a precursor to seed plants. It had all the qualities of seeds except a solid seed coat and a system to guide pollen to the seed (Gerrienne et al. 2004).

A bee, Melittosphex burmensis, from Early Cretaceous amber, has primitive characteristics expected from a transition between crabronid wasps and extant bees (Poinar and Danforth 2006).

The following are fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:

The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features that connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement that is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusk's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusk's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive mollusks, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia (Conway Morris 1998, 185-195).

Cambrian and Precambrain fossils Anomalocaris and Opabinia are transitional between arthropods and lobopods.

An ancestral echinoderm has been found that is intermediate between modern echinoderms and other deuterostomes (Shu et al. 2004).

Links:
Hunt, Kathleen. 1994-1997. Transitional vertebrate fossils FAQ. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Miller, Keith B. n.d. Taxonomy, transitional forms, and the fossil record. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.html

Patterson, Bob. 2002. Transitional fossil species and modes of speciation. http://www.origins.tv/darwin/transitionals.htm

Thompson, Tim. 1999. On creation science and transitional fossils. http://www.tim-thompson.com/trans-fossils.html

References:


Caldwell, M. W. and M. S. Y. Lee, 1997. A snake with legs from the marine Cretaceous of the Middle East. Nature 386: 705-709.
Conway Morris, Simon, 1998. The Crucible of Creation, Oxford University Press.
Cronin, T. M., 1985. Speciation and stasis in marine ostracoda: climatic modulation of evolution. Science 227: 60-63.
Domning, Daryl P., 2001a. The earliest known fully quadupedal sirenian. Nature 413: 625-627.
Domning, Daryl P., 2001b. New "intermediate form" ties seacows firmly to land. Reports of the National Center for Science Education 21(5-6): 38-42.
Eldredge, Niles, 1972. Systematics and evolution of Phacops rana (Green, 1832) and Phacops iowensis Delo, 1935 (Trilobita) from the Middle Devonian of North America. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 147(2): 45-114.
Eldredge, Niles, 1974. Stability, diversity, and speciation in Paleozoic epeiric seas. Journal of Paleontology 48(3): 540-548.
Gerrienne, P. et al. 2004. Runcaria, a Middle Devonian seed plant precursor. Science 306: 856-858.
Gingerich, P. D., 1976. Paleontology and phylogeny: Patterns of evolution of the species level in early Tertiary mammals. American Journal of Science 276(1): 1-28.
Gingerich, P. D., 1980. Evolutionary patterns in early Cenozoic mammals. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 8: 407-424.
Gingerich, P. D., 1983. Evidence for evolution from the vertebrate fossil record. Journal of Geological Education 31: 140-144.
Hallam, A., 1968. Morphology, palaeoecology and evolution of the genus Gryphaea in the British Lias. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 254: 91-128.
Lee, Michael S. Y., Gorden L. Bell Jr. and Michael W. Caldwell, 1999. The origin of snake feeding. Nature 400: 655-659.
Lewin, R., 1981. No gap here in the fossil record. Science 214: 645-646.
Lindsay, Don, 1997. A smooth fossil transition: Orbulina, a foram. http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/orbulina.html
Malmgren, B. A., W. A. Berggren and G. P. Lohmann, 1984. Species formation through punctuated gradualism in planktonic foraminifera. Science 225: 317-319.
Miller, Kenneth R., 1999. Finding Darwin's God. New York: HarperCollins.
Pearson, P. N., N. J. Shackleton and M. A. Hall. 1997. Stable isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (planktonic foraminifera). Journal of the Geological Society, London 154: 295-302.
Poinar, G. O. Jr. and B. N. Danforth. 2006. A fossil bee from Early Cretaceous Burmese amber. Science 314: 614.
Richmond B. G. and D. S. Strait, 2000. Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor. Nature 404: 382-385. See also Collard, M. and L. C. Aiello, 2000. From forelimbs to two legs. Nature 404: 339-340.
Shu, D.-G. et al., 2004. Ancestral echinoderms from the Chengjiang deposits of China. Nature 430: 422-428.
Stanley, Steven M., 1974. Relative growth of the titanothere horn: A new approach to an old problem. Evolution 28: 447-457.
Strapple, R. R., 1978. Tracing three trilobites. Earth Science 31(4): 149-152.
Tchernov, E. et al., 2000. A fossil snake with limbs. Science 287: 2010-2012. See also Greene, H. W. and D. Cundall, 2000. Limbless tetrapods and snakes with legs. Science 287: 1939-1941.
Ward, L. W. and B. W. Blackwelder, 1975. Chesapecten, A new genus of Pectinidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from the Miocene and Pliocene of eastern North America. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 861.

Further Reading:
Cohn, Martin J. and Cheryll Tickle. 1999. Developmental basis of limblessness and axial patterning in snakes. Nature 399: 474-479. (technical)

Cuffey, Clifford A. 2001. The fossil record: Evolution or "scientific creation". http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_00.htm or http://www.nogs.org/cuffeyart.html

Elsberry, Wesley R. 1995. Transitional fossil challenge. http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/elsberry/evobio/evc/argresp/tranform.html

Godfrey, L. R. 1983. Creationism and gaps in the fossil record. In: Godfrey, L. R. (ed.), Scientists Confront Creationism, New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 193-218.

Morton, Glenn R. 2000. Phylum level evolution. http://home.entouch.net/dmd/cambevol.htm

Pojeta, John Jr. and Dale A. Springer. 2001. Evolution and the Fossil Record, Alexandria, VA: American Geological Institute, http://www.agiweb.org/news/spot_06apr01_evolutionbk.htm , http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution.pdf , pg. 2.

Strahler, Arthur N. 1987. Science and Earth History, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, pp. 398-400.

Zimmer, Carl. 2000. In search of vertebrate origins: Beyond brain and bone. Science 287: 1576-1579.

EmilyStrode

Copy and paste from https://www.livescience.com/10229-earth-owe-life-comets.html
"There are those who speculate the primal mass from which the Big Bang occurred was somehow left over from some sort of previous universe, and find this unfounded and unproven speculation believable, yet scoff at the idea of a Supreme Being as a fairy tale."

It is widely believed Earth was molten when it formed some 4.6 billion years ago and remained that way for its first 50 million to 100 million years. This heat would suggest the young planet also was dry.

How Earth May Owe Its Life to Comets
An artist's impression of a planet being sterilized by a continuous bombardment of comets and meteors.
Credit: David Hardy.

Comets have inspired both awe and alarm since antiquity, "hairy stars" resembling fiery swords that to many were omens of doom. Nowadays, scientists have found evidence that comets not only may have taken life away through cataclysmic impacts, they may have helped provide life by supplying Earth with vital molecules such as water — possibilities they hope to learn more about from the encounter with Comet Hartley 2 tomorrow (Nov. 4).

Comets as life-givers

It is widely believed Earth was molten when it formed some 4.6 billion years ago and remained that way for its first 50 million to 100 million years. This heat would suggest the young planet also was dry.

"As such, for a long time, people thought water was delivered sometime after the Earth formed and cooled down a bit," said astronomer David Jewitt at the University of California, Los Angeles. "So people looked around at what kinds of things loaded with water might hit Earth, and comets were the obvious answer." The giant chunks of ice called comets are, along with rocky asteroids, the leftovers from the formation of the solar system.

In addition, astronomers discovered that comet surfaces were apparently coated with organic compounds, suggesting comets also may have supplied other key ingredients for life. [How Did Life Arise on Earth?]

"However, this view began to change about 15 years ago," Jewitt explained.

Scientists began observing the levels of standard hydrogen atoms and of atoms of deuterium, which, like hydrogen, has one proton in its nucleus, but also has one neutron.

"The deuterium-to-hydrogen ratios have been observed in four comets now, and these are higher than that seen in Earth's oceans by a factor of two or three," Jewitt said. "The argument was that if the oceans were created by comets, these ratios should be the same, and they weren't."

Water, water everywhere

Some researchers began looking for other plausible sources of Earth's water and other life-giving molecules. Simulations of orbits of objects in the solar system suggested the asteroid belt would be a better source than the more-remote Kuiper belt, from where most short-period comets come — comets that need no more than 200 years to complete an orbit of the sun, which would place them close enough for a chance collision with Earth. [Video - Hunting Asteroids and Comets]

The asteroid belt is simply closer, just beyond the orbit of Mars, while the Kuiper belt is beyond the orbit of Neptune, some 30 to 40 times the distance that Earth is from the sun. Moreover, organic materials such as amino acids have been detected in the outer parts of the asteroid belt.

Analyses of deuterium-to-hydrogen ratios in the asteroid belt also showed a wide range of values, with some matching those found in Earth's oceans. In addition, comets were discovered in the asteroid belt in 2006.

"Now, these arguments are much more complicated than one might initially think," Jewitt cautioned. "First, is it really obvious that the water in the oceans should have retained the same deuterium-to-hydrogen ratios over time?" A number of geological processes might have altered these ratios, such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Also, while short-period comets come from the Kuiper belt, long-period comets (ones that take more than 200 years to complete an orbit) come from the even more distant Oort cloud, and the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratios of those have not been measured yet. "Maybe those are more similar to the ones that formed the oceans," Jewitt said.

Another possibility is that Earth was not so dry when it formed. "It's hard for most people to see how hot rock can trap much water, but the argument there is that, overall, Earth is not all that wet," Jewitt said. "The mass of the oceans is only a few hundredths of 1 percent of Earth's total mass, which is pretty dry.

"My guess is that Earth's oceans were formed as a contribution of all three — comets, the asteroid belt, and the primordial material that went up to make the Earth," Jewitt said. "It's just a question of finding out which was the biggest source."