(September 17, 2015 at 5:09 am)robvalue Wrote: People who don't understand it generally fall flat at the bolded part. We're talking hundreds of thousands of generations, at least, before you see any obvious big changes. I understand it is hard for the human mind to think in such long time spans when we are ourselves only here for a century or less. Also, people who say "evolution says dogs give birth to cats" don't have the slightest clue at all what evolution is. It would me like me saying Jesus was a roller coaster in Essex. Yes, what you think is evolution is false; but that's because it's not evolution. It's your misinformed ideas about evolution.
This.
What's most frustrating to me, when faced with opponents who make so many mistakes about what evolution actually is and make so many bad arguments in attempting to defeat it, is when they get even the most rudimentary elements of population genetics wrong. We not only know that evolution in a genetically-reproducing population happens, we know how it happens, to an incredible degree of detail, to the point that we can actually track forward and backward in time of previous generations based on what we read in the present population's genome markers, and can even track specific groups and their migrations as a result of this.
They are concerned with origins, and thus like to argue about abiogenesis, and that's okay. It's the least-known area of the whole concept of how life came to be the way it is, and it's thus the most comfortable arena in which to argue, as well. I get that.
But when we can point to the exact places in our genome that prove we are cousins of the chimpanzees, as well as the exact degree of kinship, based on the rate of known change within those marker-regions, and the marker-tracing works just as well for differences between human population-groups as well as it does between us and related species, it should be the end of the argument about "Macro" evolution. Boom. There it is, right there. Mitochondrial mtDNA lineages, transposed DNA elements, endogenous retrovirus "scar" loci, End of Discussion™.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
