Doubting Didymus

Please, vander. You are notorious here already for complaining bitterly whenever anyone is rude to you. It is most hypocritical to then belittle others in this patently juvenile fashion.

l-bow

DD,

Van should take a look at Figure 3 in that paper.

<a href="http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/Ecology/phylogenetic_classification_and_.htm#F3" target="_blank">http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/Ecology/phylogenetic_classification_and_.htm#F3</a>

There's no merging of branches in _Animalia_.

Doubting Didymus

I find it hard to imagine any merging at all in multicellular organisms (judging by that diagram, the authors of that article might agree), but I could be wrong.

Does anyone know of any multicellular organisms where lateral gene transfer might be possible? I assume it would have to be an event in the gametes.

monkenstick

the closest thing to any sort of lateral gene transfer that I can think of in eukaryotes are retroviral insertions - viral DNA inserting itself into eukaryotic DNA.

here's an article on it, one i'm sure vanderzyden will enjoy

<a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/18/10254" target="_blank">http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/18/10254</a>

lpetrich

Correct about multicelled ones, especially big multicelled ones; however, there is abundant evidence of lateral gene transfer in single-celled ones -- endosymbiosis involves LGT on a massive scale.

Kevin Dorner

Damn, but that is well-put!

You're dead-on correct, of course... he won't the acknowledge errors, inconsistencies, difficulties, and he will view everything as inadequate and pointless, but we knew this from the start. We've seen the same behaviour before from randman and so forth.

The people who will acknowledge the errors, inconsistencies and difficulties are the people who read these discussions, and contribute to them. Mentally armed against creationist junkthink, they will never fall for it thereafter.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

Xixax

Well, the lurkers are getting quite a bit out of the discussion, even if Van is in another world ( consistently failing to address evidence and instead constantly appealing to philosophical and religious objections ).

Baloo

A friendly lesson in significant digit usage.

First, what did scigirl's reference say?
and
If I have claim I weigh 2.43x10^2 +/- 2 lbs (that is, 243 +/- 2 lbs), I am inherently stating that I am sure about the nx10^2 decimal (n=2), I am sure about the n*10^1 decimal (n=4), but I am not sure about the nx10^0 (n=2, 3, or 4), nor am I sure about any digit thereafter (all of which could be between 0..9). In other words, I would be claiming to have determined 2 decimal places of my weight. I am also inherently claiming that the 2x10^2 is significant, the 4x10^1 is significant, AND the 3x10^0 is significant. A digit is significant IF it limits the possible values that could be substituted in its place (in my example, the 3 limits the third decimal place to 2, 3, or 4 -&gt; my inherent claim is that I am confident my acutal weight will not have a '5' or '9' in this position).

If I had given my weight as 243 lbs +/- 20 lbs, I would have 1 determined digit and 2 significant digits. Here, the first decimal is still determined (I am confident it will be '2'). The second is not determined, but significant, and the third is neither determined nor significant.

In scigirl's post, the scientists are claiming that there are 3 determined decimals of G. A person with a solid grasp of significant digits (again, highschool level material) would have read this to mean G = A.BCD x 10^n +/- 0.00E x 10^n, where A,B, and C are determined and A,B,C, and D are significant.

This is exactly the scenario as relayed by Vanderzyden, leaving one to wonder... what's missing from this equation?

Actually, the "size" of the graviational constant is a meaningless concept. To demonstrate: 0.00000000000023 m is a "small" length, and would indeed be difficult to measure to a high degree of precision. However, 0.00000000000023 lyr is just over 2 kilometers, and easily measured to a high degree of precision (note that the numeric value is identical between the former and latter measurements). My point is, the precision with which a measurement can be made is utterly independent of stand-alone numeric value of a measurement. To take the value for G and express it as a numeric value between 1 and 10 is a trivial issue of converting units (meters to km, etc.). Case in point: the Planck constant, in standard metric units, is on the order of 10^-34, but has been determined to 8 decimal places. This makes the numeric value of G seem absurdly enormous, and utterly destroys the argument that the small value of G is causally related to its fairly large imprecision (relative to other physical constants).

Of course, I once asked Vanderzyden if he was dishonest, so he probably won't waste his time educating himself with this material.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Baloo ]</p>

K

I finally have the non-natural proof of evolution that Vanderzyden has been asking for. It doesn't require a methodological naturalist position and it is completely irrefutable.

Last night I had a vision. The Lord God said to me:

"Go forth and spread the word to my flock. I call them my flock because they are the children of the beasts of the earth. The beasts of the earth and the birds of the air are the children of the fish of the sea. With my own hand have I guided the growth of man from the abyss in order to realize My perfect creation."

I fell to my knees weeping and cried, "oh Lord, why do you tell this to me, an unbeliever?"

He responded, "When My people hear an unbeliever speaking My words, they will know it is I."

Nat

I am really baffled that all of you are giving Van this much of your time. He has no intention of actually examining evidence for anything and has shown himself to be willing to use all manner of dishonest debate tactics when the evidence points against him (example: making outrageous assertions like his remark that many academic institutions are moving away from evolutionary biology or his comment that theoretical physics does not rely on methodological naturalism and then failing to support them when he is called on them).

He is simply a very prolific troll. His arrogance is astounding, and even when he is shown to be demonstrably and incontrovertiably wrong (example: his laughable confusion of signicant digits in the whole gravity discussion) he only amenically admits fault (he actually had the gall to say that he knew he was wrong the moment he posted it but couldn't get back to a machine to edit it and then he goes and stupidly defends his position - it just boggles the mind). He faults everyone for being rude to him and then he turns around and makes ad hom after ad hom at the people that for some strange reason are actually engaging him in courteous manner (example: his recent and continued attacks on scigirl).

Personally, I have only read these threads out of morbid curiosity to see how far he will tretch to evade answering the questions posted to him. He is simply laughable.

Cheers all!