DavidV

‘In evolutionary theory, a gene could be defined as any hereditary information for which there is a favorable or unfavorable selection bias equal to several or many times its rate of endogenous change.’ - Williams (1966, p. 25) In other words, a gene is a DNA fragment which replicates at least several times before it is changed by chromosomal recombination (meosis). By contract, a chromosone is not a gene because it (normally) changes during every instance of meosis. A single nucleotid...

"Natural selection can cause changes in frequency only at nucleotide loci that are heterozygous in the population. If there are large intervening chunks of nucleotide sequences that never differ among individuals, these cannot be subject to natural selection, for there is nothing to choose between them. Natural selection must focus its attention on heterozygous nucleotides. Natural selection must focus its attention on heterozygous nucleotides. It is changes at the single nucleotide level tha...

"... what is beneficial to one entity in the hierarchy of life is harmful to another, and creationism gives us no grounds for supposing that one entity’s welfare will be preferred to another’s. In passing, the fundamentalist student might pause to wonder at a God who goes ·to great trouble to provide predators with beautiful adaptations to catch prey, while with the other hand giving prey beautiful adaptations to thwart them. Perhaps He enjoys the spectator sport. " - from The Extended Pheno...

It is far easier to express oneself than to communicate. You can express yourself to a rock just as well as to a human being. But to communicate, you must understand how your words will be processed by another mind. You must estimate their level of knowledge, their potential for misunderstanding, their emotional response to your ideas, their capacity for new ideas, and their willingness to listen. As social animals, we evolved to optimize our communication by relying on non verbal feedba...

"Evolution is the external and visible manifestation of the differential survival of alternative replicators. Genes are replicators; organisms and groups of organisms are best not regarded as replicators; they are vehicles in which replicators travel about. Replicator selection is the process by which some replicators survive at the expense of other replicators. Vehicle selection is the process by which some vehicles are more successful than other vehicles in ensuring the survival of their re...

It is a religious point among many libertarians that deep down, most Americans want a free society. All evidence however indicates otherwise. Americans love the welfare-warfare state just like every other modern society - the difference in degree is not important. Does this mean that we should just "give up" and become fatalistic? Certainly not. It does mean that we ought to think realistically about what goals are achievable and worth investing our time and money into. I can't tell you...

The earth does not orbit the sun in a circle. Due to gravitational interaction with other planets, it's actually an ellipse, with the sun offset from the center. The shape of the ellipse, the time of year when the earth is closest to the sun, and the inclination of the earth all vary over time. When the three coincide to cause cooler summers, we get ice ages that cover most of the northern hemisphere with glaciers and cause the sea level to drop over 150 meters. Isn't that way cooler th...

Every day, the organisms that form a coral lay down a thin layer of limestone in the coral equivalent of tree rings. Seasonal variations in coral growth allow us to measure the number of days in past years. Modern corals create 365 lines per year, but ancient coral fossils have more, over 410 for 400 million year old coral. This means a day in the past used to be much shorter with massive tides dozens of meters high. Over time, these tides converted earth's rotational momentum into the moon's...

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evo...

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." — H.L. Mencken

Why does no vertebrate have more than four limbs? Because 400 million years ago, lobe-finned fish with pectoral and pelvic fins began their journey onto land. While an additional pair of limbs would probably benefit many species (if the non-vertebrate world is any indication), the necessary genetic variation has never been available. The gap between two sets and three sets of limbs is just too wide for evolution to bridge, even over 400 million years. This is one of numerous examples of...

Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong; They are weak, but He is strong. Jesus loves me when I'm good, When I do the things I should, Jesus loves me when I'm bad, Though it makes Him very sad. Jesus loves me! He will stay Close beside me all the way; Thou hast bled and died for me, I will henceforth live for Thee.

Religion doesn't work according to facts. In science, our conclusions are always derived from observation and subject to revision when new evidences comes in. In religion, we decide what the truth is first, and then ignore any evidence to the contrary. People who are used to a religious way of thinking often find dealing with reality very frustrating and confusing, as for some reason, it stubbornly refuses to conform to their preconceived notions about it.

"What is it to be spiritual? To recognize the finer harmonies of conduct -- to live to the ideal -- to separate the incidental, the evanescent, from the perpetual -- to be enchanted with the perfect melody of truth -- open to the influences of the artistic, the beautiful, the heroic -- to shed kindness as the sun sheds light -- to recognize the good in others, and to include the world in the idea of self -- that is to be spiritual. There is nothing spiritual in the worship of the unknown and...

Why are Creationists so desperate to maintain their delusional worldview that they feel the need to openly lie and make up evidence to justify their religious beliefs? Why are they so utterly terrified to accept that the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years old and not 6000? We have LITERALLY THOUSANDS of independent data points which all point to the correct age of the earth and the universe. Why do they insist on being so delusional? What is the threat posed by reality?

"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. " — Richard Dawkins

"In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe......We live in a special time, the only time, wher...

"The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, a...

Stellar nucleosynthesis is entropic because the proton-proton reaction radiates 0.7% of the original mass as 26.73 MeV energy. Additional reactions produce heavier elements until finally supernova nucleosynthesis produces everything up to uranium in the last few seconds of a star's life. We can therefore calculate the entropy cost of the elements to create planets and life forms. Many stars had to die to create enough elements for life. Did life therefore evolve as soon as sufficient heavy e...

"Man is a Religious Animal. Man is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems question...

"If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well...

Infinities do not actually exist. Each specific set of entities is discrete. But the causal chain itself is not an existent. It is the set of all entities that have ever existed. That is a theoretical construct (like infinity or a singularity in mathematics) rather than a discrete set of entities that we can point to. If I walk from one side of the room to the other, my body exists in an infinite number of locations along that path during the time it takes me to do so. But it only exist...

There is no such thing as "chance" or "randomness" in nature. Chance is just what we say when we don't know why. There is only causality.

♫ "Generals gathered in their masses Just like witches at black masses Evil minds that plot destruction Sorcerers of death's construction In the fields the bodies burning As the war machine keeps turning Death and hatred to mankind Poisoning their brainwashed minds Oh lord yeah! Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor Time will tell on their power minds Making war just for fun Treating people just like pawn...

"Socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees. ...And just as the gardener needs axes, pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just so does the socialist writer need the force that he can find only in law to shape human beings. For this purpose he devises tariff laws, tax laws, relief laws, and school laws.... One socialist leader has been known seriously to demand that the Constituent Assembly give him a small district with all its inhab...