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posted by janrinok on Monday February 11 2019, @03:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the monkey-business dept.

Darwin Day is a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday, the theory of evolution and science in general. This year marks his 210th birthday and 160 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. Those looking to celebrate or learn more about Darwin and evolution will find a wealth of events going on, or if you'd rather not leave the house, try a Darwin Day card with designs generated by simulated evolution.

Recently, an important finding in man's evolution was announced; the so-called Missing Link was confirmed. Australopithecus Sediba fossils were found in 2010 but it took a decade of research and debate for scientists to confirm that this was indeed the missing link that connects man's evolution in an unbroken chain back to primate ancestors.

Not everyone is down with Darwin. The Pew Research Center reports, "In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans. In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all." In Indiana, senator Dennis Kruse introduced a bill that would, among other things, "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science."


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @06:00PM (3 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 11 2019, @06:00PM (#799648)

    Your claim seems very fuzzy; somehow a genetic mutation resulting in cancer of the breast "proves" that genetic mutation resulting in cancer of the throat. If you're not a racist, how could you possibly know what racists think? You seem rather certain that because only euros have the gene to digest milk as adults, that racists think there are no black people in Africa or something. If you're gonna straw dog, straw dog something reasonable, at least, rather than fanciful. That's like denouncing Jews because of the contents of the protocols of the elders of zion level of logical fallacy. Sometimes leftists use scenes from TV and movies as "proof" of political stuff, which is a similar logical fallacy.

    The second is also not terribly useful. Yes a spoon is just a fork with very short tines, and a fork is just a spoon with long tines, and there are interbred sporks, but it seems nonsense to claim that argument somehow proves the concept of fork or spoon do not exist either in theoretical form or practical example, and I have no idea where kitchen knives fit in this analogy. Spoons do not exist therefore I can't buy them at the store; but I can. Another example is from engineering, there exist different sized screws and its possible to manufacture anything that can be reasonably specified, therefore that somehow proves that as a "race" of screws the 6-32 pan head machine screw does not exist and the buckets of them at home depot only exist in the fevered mind of screw-ists who are scientifically wrong. Or a worse example, you've now proven that metric and imperial screws now no longer exist, so if you have a screw that don't fit the hole, just hammer it into place and it'll work just as well as putting the correct screw in the correct hole. We can build boats that fly and boats that sink under the surface of the water and resurface some time and distance later, thus proving the non-existence of boats both theoretically and practically.

    The third claim is flat out untrue. Sickle cell anemia is equally distributed across races? Lactose tolerance? IQ? Criminality or proclivity to violence regardless of socioeconomic level? LOL, come on. An alternative interpretation is mind body dualism and the soul and intellect have nothing to do with gray matter or genetics; which is kinda seen as nonsense in modern biology. Its an obsolete view from pre 1800s era medical science. See also vitalism theory and early organic chemistry.

    The forth claim misses the point entirely. A great SN automobile analogy is if your only argument against drunk driving is that car manufacturers don't exist in some abstract sense if you ignore reality hard enough and apply enough logical fallacies, then maybe drunk driving is not so bad or you have a logical argument problem, but certainly lecturing people about how believing that car manufacturers exist makes them bad people or they're simply wrong with no proof, or will cause another Holocaust, or believing in the existence of car manufacturers will result in drunk driving deaths, is kinda ridiculous. No... I don't think caving into reality by admitting Ford and Toyota exist, necessarily and inevitably leads to putting Jews in gas chambers again. I think we're pretty safe, or at least next time it happens it won't be because car mfgrs exist.

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  • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday February 11 2019, @07:33PM (2 children)

    by cubancigar11 (330) on Monday February 11 2019, @07:33PM (#799705) Homepage Journal

    He is not arguing, he is summarizing a huge amount of scientific literature on the matter of race. If you want to have a debate, really, it is unfair to expect everyone else to put an increasing amount of effort into educating you while you don't make any efforts otherwise. So here is my solution:

    Q1. What defines a race according to you?
    Q2. How many races there are? You can give vague numbers like "more than 100", but give us a number.
    Q3. If you gave a finite answer to Q2, list those races. If you gave a vague number, list 5 races and 5 groups of people you don't consider a race.

    After you have answered the above 3 questions we will know how much effort is needed, and I am sure there will be some people who have that much time and energy.

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday February 11 2019, @08:26PM (1 child)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 11 2019, @08:26PM (#799730) Journal

      It doesn't really matter.

      For alt-right types like VLM, it's all motte and bailey.

      "You can generate estimated regional origin based on full genome sequencing"(which is mostly true, but with serious caveats they will never, ever acknowledge) is what they want you to agree is possible, and as soon as you do, it's equated to completely unsubstantiated(and, in fact, genuinely contraindicated by their own favorite research on the subject if you read past the abstracts*) claims about IQ being derived from skin color. They push a narrative of some small measures of genetic diversity being real in order to wedge in completely false narratives for the pliable.

      And they will never ever ever ever ever ever admit to being wrong. Because their worldview is built on excusing their very personal failures as individuals by suggesting some vague group they belong to is better than some other vague group. It's also why they fixate on "western civilization" despite the broad swath of that philosophical tradition owed entirely to other cultures(and the term itself being vague to near the point of uselessness).

      VLM is a waste of a human being, and the things he says about race and culture have more to do with that than anything based on serious analysis of anything.

      *No really, their GWAS of all polymorphisms in a population sample of 100,000 could only attribute 20% of variation in intelligence to genes (including interactive) effects in healthy individuals, but the abstracts by these fucks still say surely it's all in genes, twin studies said so.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:23AM (#799914)

        VLM does not exist, since I cannot buy him from a bin at Home Despot.