God is real

[Jahrta]

psychodiva wrote

@ Jharta

I love it so!

I kicked myself after the fact for forgetting to include that at the end.

"I'll be eighty one in next June and still spoiling for a fight with TRASH like the low life that hangs out here. Wouldn't it be at lot easier on yourselves to just ban me from commenting? Have no pride? Apparently not.

[nkb]

What is up with your obsession with getting banned? Does that somehow validate you, in your mind?

And what does pride have to do with banning someone? Go back to the dollar store, and return that logic. You overpaid.

[Jahrta]

John A. Davison wrote

Jahrta, another cowardly alias I see.

The major question has always been the same. What WAS the mechanism for organic evolution, a phenomenon apparently no longer in progress beyond the elaboration of intraspecific varieties all of which are doomed to extinction in any event.

It is my conviction, based on the avilable evidence, that the present biota is the terminal one in a planned sequence.

Ok, I'll play along because we all love a good chew toy. First and foremost, enough with the "cowardly" bullshit. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should know that you never post anything on a blog under your own name. It has nothing to do with being a coward, but atheists have a very hard time today at work and school when they "come out" and a lot of us would just as soon let our coworkers think we're one of them for the sake of convenience. Other times, we are threatened with physical violence from theists who are so full of love for baby jeebus that want to kill us.

Now, on to the meat and potatoes of your argument. You believe (and pleas stop me if I'm in any way shape or form misrepresenting your hypothesis) that because YOU, John A. Davison, cannot personally observe any further instance of what you would deem to be the evolutionary process in action, that there will never be any further instance of said process? You believe the process has come to a screeching halt? Are you not aware that the process takes place slowly in most cases, over vast oceans of time? Sometimes it happens much faster, as is the case with micro-orgaisms like viruses that become resistant to drugs that used to contain them effectively. Aside from that, there's the obvious burning question: have you personally studied all variants of flora and fauna in your travels? Are you also not aware that evolution is a response to changes in environment, and nothing more? The new varieties of plants and animals that arise from the evolutionary process aren't always necessarily "better" than the ones that came before them - they are merely better suited to survive in the given environment at that point in time, and they remain like that until something comes along to change that environment. Most importantly, you need to keep in mind that it's nothing more than trial and error through mutation and happenstance, and there's no invisible hand driving the process along. There have been a lot of mutations that went nowhere at all, and those strains eventually die off. Many mutations evade notice because the subject can't find a mate. This seems to be the case with Carrot Top.

All joking aside, it is the height of arrogance to assume that evolution is done because we're at the biological end game in a planned sequence. Come on, John - be serious for a moment. You couldn't possibly have studied every single plant, animal and micro-organism to make such a claim, and even if it were possible, you'd literally have to alter all their environments and find a way to fast-forward through hundreds of thousands, or millions of years to bring about visible change. Marine Biologists are dredging up previously-undocumented species almost every other day from the darkest depths of the ocean trenches because we've perfected the technology for submersibles.There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio...

[Jahrta]

John A. Davison wrote

I don't believe in heaven but I sure am witnessing Hell right here at Raving Atheists!

I love it so!

You...you...love hell?

By the way, you may not care if you say batshit-crazy things on the internet under your real name, but you're also 81, and a lot closer to the end than most of us who still give a crap about maintaining appearances For example, I might not want people like my boss, coworkers or extended family members to know that I called Lily a homophobic ball of rancid cunt cheese

[Choobus]

John A. Davison wrote

Are you ready with an apology yet for your knee jerk treatment of a real scientist?

Who is this real scientist you speak of? Is he helping OJ search for the real killer?

[dogpet]

John A. Davison wrote

I don't believe in heaven

What about mackerels? Are you a one man schizm John?

[Steel]

Damn... and here I thought I was gonna get to debate with a real live theist. Hmm... must look harder. Oh, and John? To witness evolution in all of its frickin' amazingness, you'd have to live somewhere around a million or so years.

[dogpet]

Humans are a special case, John? We are the only species created finished? Give it up eh.

[Professor Chaos]

nkb wrote

What is up with your obsession with getting banned? Does that somehow validate you, in your mind?

And what does pride have to do with banning someone? Go back to the dollar store, and return that logic. You overpaid.

This from a guy who comes and does nothing but spew personal abuse while inviting us to his shitty blog that forbids "personal abuse."

Practice what you preach, motherfucker. I should ban the fucker for hypocrisy alone.

If he promises to give us carte blanche to post what we want (excluding spam) at his blog without banning any of us, I promise not to ban him from here...

[Choobus]

He desperately wants to get banned from here. He's like a child molester who works in an ice cream factory run by puppies; he just can't help himself and he wants to be stopped, but he can't stop on his own.

[Tenspace]

I find humor in the fact that every one of Dr. Davison's idols he names above were born before 1900. The "youngest" (Grasse) in 1895. Not one of them lived to see the decoded human genome; not one was active in their field when IBM released the first PC.

The gist of Davison's theory is this: That all the genetic information to make any organism is encoded in the genes of all organism. Or, using his very words:

the information for organic evolution has somehow been predetermined in the
evolving genome in a way comparable to the way in which the necessary information to produce a complete organism is contained within a single cell, the fertilized egg.

Dr. Davison completely disagrees with the fact that the environment can affect a significant influence on the genome:

I suggest that evolution has been largely an emergent process in which the
environment may have played, at best, a trivial role.

He also discounts convergence (similar traits evolving in dissimilar individuals, like eyes):

The so-called phenomenon of convergent evolution may not be
that at all, but simply the expression of the same preformed “blueprints” by unrelated organisms.
Example include marsupial “moles”, “wolves”, “anteaters”, “rabbits” (bandicoots), “squirrels”, including flying forms (phalangers), “woodchucks” (wombat), ”bears”, (koala), “mice” (Coenolestes) and most remarkable of all, saber-toothed cats.

In a nutshell, he is nearly alone in espousing neo-Lamarckism.


I could go on and on, but I have computers to fix.

As a long time observer of ex-associate professor Davison, I have to say that you have developed a very good strategy for dealing with the old hypocrite's spam. By not "muzzling" him you demonstrate the ludicrous vacuity of his outpourings. That this man actually once taught biology to university students is "inconceivable".

John A. Davison wrote

I have been refuted by not a single author.

Ah, so how many was it, exactly?

[Professor Chaos]

Alan Fox wrote

As a long time observer of ex-associate professor Davison, I have to say that you have developed a very good strategy for dealing with the old hypocrite's spam. By not "muzzling" him you demonstrate the ludicrous vacuity of his outpourings. That this man actually once taught biology to university students is "inconceivable".