Massive New Cambrian-Era Fossil Bed Found 108
jfbilodeau sends word of a massive new trove of fossils located in Canada, which scientists say will rival the acclaimed Burgess Shale fossil bed. The rock formation inside which both fossil sites were found is roughly 505 million years old (abstract). The fossils provide insight into the Cambrian explosion, a time that brought the rapid appearance and diversification of many animal forms. "In just two weeks, the research team collected more than 3,000 fossils representing 55 species. Fifteen of these species are new to science." Paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron said, "The rate at which we are finding animals — many of which are new — is astonishing, and there is a high possibility that we'll eventually find more species here than at the original Yoho National Park site, and potentially more than from anywhere else in the world." The fossils at the new site are about 100,000 years younger and are better preserved than those at the renowned Burgess shale site.
Its all about sex emerging 600 million years ago (Score:2, Offtopic)
Does North Carolina know this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or because it is not in the US it doesn't exist?
Unknown species (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a paleontologist and was surprised that 15 of the 55 species found were previously unknown. I really thought we knew more. Is it possible that a significant find could radically change the way we think of the past?
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I also am not a paleontologist. It's true.
Re:Unknown species (Score:5, Insightful)
The fossil record is mainly a few specific locations, each location being a small time window of that location.
Without visiting the Gallapagos islands all those distinct species would never have been observed.
The fossil record is like looking through a tiny peephole at the crowd of life.
There can also be a lot of confusion between juviniles and adults of species. Are they distinct species or not? Sometimes the body size and skeletal formation can be quite different between the young and the old.
Re:Unknown species (Score:5, Insightful)
Radically? I'd say not from a layman's point of view. The biggest that happened in my lifetime is probably finding organ details of dinosaurs that indicate they weren't cold-blooded like modern lizards.
It shouldn't be a surprise that so many species have gone unknown, especially as far back as the Cambrian period. The odds of a creature being fossilized are very low after all.
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Radically? I'd say not from a layman's point of view. The biggest that happened in my lifetime is probably finding organ details of dinosaurs that indicate they weren't cold-blooded like modern lizards.
It shouldn't be a surprise that so many species have gone unknown, especially as far back as the Cambrian period. The odds of a creature being fossilized are very low after all.
I'm not sure that being endothermic was such a shock to me.
Putting feathers on T-Rex, however...
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Depends on the layman. Still, there could be species that are radically different from any currently extant. E.g., I believe that all current species that have blood rather than ichor use either copper or iron as an oxygen transporter...but there could be something else. Also, all known species use 4 DNA codons (AGTC) or RNA codons (substituting Uracil for one of those...I'd need to look up which). It could be that there were earlier species that had more (or fewer) than four. That would be pretty much
Re:Unknown species (Score:5, Insightful)
I really thought we knew more.
We don't. We're aware of a tiny fraction what was around then... and usually only animals that had skeletons. Think of sharks... the only reason we know how long they've been around if because we find their teeth. There could have been entire species of invertebrates that ruled the earth and we'd have little chance of ever finding out.
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There could have been entire species of invertebrates that ruled the earth and we'd have little chance of ever finding out.
The New Slashdot:
A) Cue the Cthulhu jokes
B) Crickets chirping...
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We've found a lot of fossils, from thousands of sites like this one around the world.
Take nets the size of an average fossil site, scatter 10,000 of them at random sites around the planet today, look at what you just caught. Now, take one more net and throw it at a new location - did you just catch anything new or different? Now, throw in the dimension of time - this site is geographically close to other well studied fossil sites, but displaced 100,000 years in time.
Satellite communications and jet travel
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I am not a paleontologist and was surprised that 15 of the 55 species found were previously unknown. I really thought we knew more. Is it possible that a significant find could radically change the way we think of the past?
Well, if we find rabbit bones stuck between the teeth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex we'll have to give creationism a second though.
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I'm not surprised we're finding new species back then as we're still finding new species now [yale.edu].
Also consider between Yoho and Kootnay we may not be getting precisely the same habitat. Just go for a walk outside and the ecosystem can vary wildly within a small geographic area. And with a 100,000 year gap (not sure how accurate that number is) that's enough time for a few new species to evolve, go extinct, or even migrate into or out of that ecosystem depending on climate conditions. Just 10,000-12,000 years ag
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One of the most misunderstood term. CE (Score:5, Informative)
All that happened was the emergence of bones/shells. This was the first thing that could fossilize. Everything earlier had just soft tissues and they did not fossilize well. So there was an "explosion" of fossilization, not necessarily speciation.
Re:One of the most misunderstood term. CE (Score:5, Informative)
TFA goes into exactly that aspect. Apparently they found species at this site that are also present in a 10 million years older site in China, so unless these critters had access to time travel they could not exactly have been evolving at an explosive rate.
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Where did you get that idea that tool usage is recent? People and Chimpanzees both use tools, so the conservative assumption would be that tool use pre-dates the split between the species. And it's not like it requires immense brain power. Crows use tools. Some of Darwin's Finches use tools. And many others. (Too many to list.)
The problem is, most of the tools are wood or straw, so they don't tend to be preserved. The ones I listed are all modern species, and the reason for that is that if we didn't
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I have a very good idea of the durations in question. Once I read an interview with an accountant who balanced Uncle Sam's accounts by day and her own household accounts in her non-work hours. Her quote: "It's pretty much the same thing, you just shift some zeroes."
A new car is $0.000,000,030 trillion dollars, which puts the recent Wall St. bail-out into good perspective.
You almost seem to be complaining that t
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Yeah... against a backdrop of 505 million years, 0.1 million years is 0.002% difference in the time scale. That's potentially significant for a handful of species, sure, but it's less time than modern humans have existed... which makes it a nearly-trivial eye-blink in evolutionary history. Not completely trivial, though, especially if the environment at the time was driving fairly rapid adaptation.
The tally so far (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:It's the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
Colour me surprised.
Thank goodness neither position has anything to do with the real world.
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I always though the Fundamentalist position was that fossils were put there by God, so as to test the faith of hapless followers.
Colour me surprised.
Thank goodness neither position has anything to do with the real world.
Oh, the hubris of the fundies who think that.
If God does exist, He damn well could have created man in His image via evolution.
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He wouldn't have done it via image. He'd have kicked 'em, and used [puppet | chef | salt ] to customize the configs.
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No, you got trolled.
Most Christians believe in evolution. Even the fundamentalist ones. But only the loud and idiotic get on TV so now we have a christian stereotype. I believe in God and I don't presume to tell him how he went about creating the universe. In my opinion science is the method by which we understand God.
As far as the literal interpretation of the Bible goes... I've never really thought any religion, especially Christianity, intended for entire professions to be wrapped up in deciphering their
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I completely agree that most Christians believe in evolution and the use of science to understand the existing universe, regardless of the source of the Universe.
I don't know personally anyone who believe in the literal truth of the various holy books lying around.
As someone placed in the Christian faith not by my choice, it bugs me when folks use "
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Well you're never going to cure another man of his bigotry against you and your beliefs by reciprocating that bigotry. In my time I've debated a lot of fundamentalists of several different religions. In almost every case I got to the end of the debate feeling pity for the person because I'd eventually realize their fundamentalism was just a manifestation of a much deeper set of problems.
One gentleman was standing on a street corner, with his son, telling every woman that walked by in a skirt that she was...
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One gentleman was standing on a street corner, with his son, telling every woman that walked by in a skirt that she was... well, a lady of the night... anyways, I felt bad for his kid that was forced to hold up a not-very-nice sign while his father was clearly losing his mind in front of a crowd so I engaged the man. He actually claimed that he hadn't sinned in 10 years. Which means he clearly didn't understand that bible AT ALL. So it all came down to: "Sir, could God make a square circle?" which is of course the old Omnipotence paradox. He got angry and started yelling that I was just using a straw-man argument. I explained that I wasn't, and that this question did indeed have a correct answer. So I asked his kid holding the sign what he thought. He said "I don't know" and I told him "Neither do I! Welcome to the club!" While God may be omnipotent, he does not expect you to be. You can not know everything about about anything and he just expects you to do the best that you can.
Omnipotent: having all power (that exists)
Omniscient: having all knowledge. While the question about the square circle is about omnipotence, not knowing that answer shows that you are not omniscient.
The question I've often heard is: Can God create a rock so large that He couldn't lift it?
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I can't defend the appalling behavior of your street-corner preacher, for "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" and "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
But C. S. Lewis had a good answer to your question about the square circle (or the more often heard question of "could God make a rock so large that he could not move it.")
"His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may at
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As someone placed in the Christian faith not by my choice, it bugs me when folks use "Christian" as a descriptor to mean "I do what I want, how I want, in the name of Christianity". Folks like that have no issue treating certain other folks badly, all in the name of some misguided (my opinion) understanding of certain phrases.
Personally, I find it interesting that men like Lincoln ran around saying that they hoped that they were doing what god wanted, while working hard to be good, while men like reagan and W ran around saying that they knew that god backed them in what they did and that it was all good, in spite of the lies, deceit, and thousands/millions (respectively) that were murdered in all of their invasions.
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while men like reagan and W ran around saying that they knew that god backed them in what they did and that it was all good,
I don't know that Reagan and Dubya held that position. Can you point me to quotes where they said such a thing? Make sure they're real, traceable quotes, not links from a fever swamp of some variety.
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I don't know personally anyone who believe in the literal truth of the various holy books lying around.
I could introduce you to a large number of people in my town, then, if you're feeling left out.
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Re:It's the devil (Score:5, Informative)
Most Christians believe in evolution. Even the fundamentalist ones.
Those statements are questionable without some significant disclaimers. Are you taking about worldwide or just the US? What qualifies as 'Christian' 'fundmentalist' or 'believing in evolution'?
Consider the latest highly publicized Pew Research poll [reuters.com] on the subject. One-third of Americans believe "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time". Note that's not disagreeing with the theory of natural selection or postulating 'God's hand', this is utter denial that species evolved over extremely long periods of time. For those that identify as white evangelical Protestants (a good surrogate for 'fundamentalist', I'd say) , that number is 64 percent. Also, FWIW, only 43 percent of Republicans agree that "humans and other living things have evolved over time".
So at least in the US, it would appear that most 'fundamentalists' (and Republicans) *do* reject the evolution of species outright. And while I can't say that third of *all* Americans that would represent a majority of Christians, it is safe to assume that those people would overwhelmingly skew Christian, and therefore if most Christians *do* believe in evolution, it's a slim (and apparantly shrinking) majority, at least in the US.
Clearly, deniers of evolution are not just a fringe minority with a loud voice, these beliefs are frighteningly mainstream.
Re:It's the devil (Score:5, Informative)
How one asks the poll questions is important.
Read the link from the previous post. Respondents had two choices: "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time" or "humans and other living things have evolved over time". That's about as binary a choice as is possible on the subject, and the former choice pretty well defines 'creationist', that is, that one rejects all evidence of the evolution of species.
These results are pretty much in line with all other polls I've seen over the last 25 years. Do you have any contrary evidence to show that these numbers are massively overstated? Otherwise your clutching at straws to dismiss such data as just something to validate a deeply held hope that there are many "dumb people" out there (I, for one, find no hope at all in the idea) strikes me as a mere rationalization to deny that it could actually be true.
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That's about as binary a choice as is possible on the subject
Which makes it unsuitable for interrogating about beliefs that aren't similarly binary such as the example you gave.
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Sorry, but if one agrees with
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While it doesn't make any distinction between anywhere on the spectrum
Yep. That's my point.
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Yep. That's my point.
But so what? The question is still entirely unambiguous by its construct, essentially, "do you believe humans and other species are unchanged from the beginning of time, or not?" There's no credible gray area there; if you answer in the affirmative, you deny or ignore all evidence of the evolution of species.
So while you can't draw any nuances from the views of those who chose the evolution option, it does quite clearly identify those who reject evolution entirely, right down to the fossil record. And t
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But so what?
It's an easy way to get higher poll numbers for an extreme position when there is no intermediate position to echo actual peoples' viewpoints. Kind of how voting often works, especially in the US.
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It's an easy way to get higher poll numbers for an extreme position when there is no intermediate position to echo actual peoples' viewpoints.
OK, then, please enunciate a nuanced position on evolution that would cause someone to choose the extreme position of "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time" over "humans and other living things have evolved over time". There's certainly none I can think of.
Not to mention, compared to other polls I've seen that *do* offer more nuanced options, this poll actually shows a *lower* number for the number who reject evolution (other polls show 45% or more
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OK, then, please enunciate a nuanced position on evolution that would cause someone to choose the extreme position of "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time" over "humans and other living things have evolved over time".
Pretty much any position. IMHO a lot of people just randomly pick poll choices when their viewpoint isn't accurately represented or when they don't understand the poll question in the first place.
If there really were that many people with those beliefs, then they'd have better luck getting their agenda into classrooms. And they'd be a lot more overt about it too.
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Since you kept on this far...
Pretty much any position. IMHO a lot of people just randomly pick poll choices when their viewpoint isn't accurately represented or when they don't understand the poll question in the first place.
That's a weak cop-out. You know full well that anyone who accepts the general scientific consensus of the timeline of natural history would not choose the creationist option in either of the polls I cited, no matter what role that person leaves for an omnipotent hand in the process. Oh, you may have few jokers or idiots who don't understand the options, but that kind of noise is in every poll. You may as well say that no poll result (or in this case, 30 years worth of consisten
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That's a weak cop-out.
Doesn't matter. It's good enough.
You know full well that anyone who accepts the general scientific consensus of the timeline of natural history would not choose the creationist option in either of the polls I cited, no matter what role that person leaves for an omnipotent hand in the process.
I don't know any such thing. You don't either.
Believe me, I'd love nothing better than find some credible evidence that full bore denial of evolution was just some fringe belief of a tiny obnoxious minority, and all the polls consistently showing them as widespread are just an NSA-sponsored psyop designed to drive rational people into despair.
Elections in the regions in question are a good indication that there are considerably less such people than claimed by the polls. Seriously, why do you think almost 50% of the population adheres to creationist views and yet never wonder why creationist ideology has a really hard time getting into school curricula anywhere in the US?
My take is that believers in creationism at best make up 10% of the US population. If it really
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My take is that believers in creationism at best make up 10% of the US population.
Yet over this entire exchange, you have yet to produce one shred of solid evidence for this, and dismiss out of hand all of the evidence indicating otherwise. Kind of like the creationists, actually.
You are pretty much reduced to (a) claiming that accurate polling is impossible on the matter (rendering the question unanswerable, how else can you measure the prevalence of beliefs?), and (b) claiming an unfounded number based upon your mere supposition of how those number would manifest politically, even
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Yet over this entire exchange, you have yet to produce one shred of solid evidence for this, and dismiss out of hand all of the evidence indicating otherwise. Kind of like the creationists, actually.
Recall I mentioned elections? That's hard evidence. Let me elaborate. There are several indications from elections for school boards and similar positions that creationists are not very common:
1. ) The development of Intelligent Design propaganda. If 40-45% of the US population is hard core creationist, then why the need for creationism-lite?
2. ) Non-uniform distribution of creationists. Keep in mind that if there really were that many creationists in the US, they would not be uniformly distributed. T
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Well, just because you believe in creationism, doesn't mean you also wish the state force creationism onto others.
But you do wish the state to force evolution onto others, which you don't believe in? I don't buy that reasoning at all.
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I see a lot of speculation and assumption here, but still no hard evidence that the polls are overstating creationist belief by 300%-500% (and not just Gallup, I never seen any poll that supports your <10% figure).
I don't buy the argument that if X% of people believe Y, then you`d *certainly* see it manifest politically as Z. As one example off the top of my head, polls have shown a majority of Americans favoring full recreational legalization of marijuana for a good 8-10 years now. And though the la
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As one example off the top of my head, polls have shown a majority of Americans favoring full recreational legalization of marijuana for a good 8-10 years now. And though the laws are slowly changing to reflect that, I`d say that success in the political arena is quite limited compared to what people say they believe, much like you are stating about creationism.
I disagree. "Medical marijuana" has been legalized in three states and marijuana for recreational purposes has been legalized in three states. All but one of these were approved by ballot initiative which requires at least a majority of votes in order to pass. And they're likely to stay on the books. Some of these laws have been kicking around for more than 15 years.
A perusal of the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on this is instructive. To summarize, there is no state level mandate to support even the weaker "intelli
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Twenty states and the District of Columbia allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes, and two of those states, Colorado and Washington, have also legalized the recreational use of the drug. Those numbers may grow this year, as several other states are considering measures to legalize marijuana use.
I understand Rhode Island also allows recreational use of the drug via a piece of legislation.
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Well, actually there's something like 18 states with med laws (though most of them are functionally useless)...but polling on allowing medical marijuana alone goes as high as 80% or more...and only 2 states have 'legalized' for recreational purposes...in neither case is the political success even close to reflecting public opinion. So again, I'd say that shows that just because a belief is widely held *doesn't* mean it will translate proportionally into policy. And I'd also posit that the *only* reason fo
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So again, I'd say that shows that just because a belief is widely held *doesn't* mean it will translate proportionally into policy.
Except that the movement for marijuana legalization is translating into policy.
Creationists, on the other hand, have had to influence elected school boards and legislatures (I am unaware of anywhere where these issues were decided by referendum), which makes it much harder for even a powerful minority to buck the system.
Not at all. You can go beyond influencing the school board or legislature. You stack the deck by getting enough of your people elected. If they really had anything close to a majority, it wouldn't be that hard and certainly would be cheaper than running a statewide referendum. Please keep in mind that they can't even maintain a weak compromise position at the state level.
but don't expect me to tell you that you're making a rational argument
Clearly, you think mu argument isn't rational for some reas
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But elections are polls too. And polls that a lot of people actually happen to care about and participate in. And as I see it, when a Gallup poll ends up contradicting an election poll, I go with the latter.
But nobody votes for "I believe in YEC" in the election booth, unless by public referendum and I know of no such referendum anywhere. Generally, a voter picks a candidate to represent him/her based a prioritization of ALL issues important to the voter. So you are comparing apples and watermelons here, and making the implicit assumption that the vast majority of people who say they accept creationism have mandating creationist education as their #1 political priority. That is the glaring flaw in your argum
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But nobody votes for "I believe in YEC" in the election booth, unless by public referendum and I know of no such referendum anywhere.
Both times that the Kansas Board of Education was overturned by election after an Intelligent Design move, it was clearly people who didn't believe in ID who perserved. And for Youth Earthers, what educational priority is going to be higher, especially when ID or creationist proponents could make it easy by providing a group of candidates to vote for?
And strange....when these same organizations conduct actual election polling that does compare apples-to-apples to actual election results, the standard margin of error is around 3%.
There are two things to note here. First, election polling is a relatively cut and dry matter. There's only a few choices (even when the subject is ignorant of
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Re the 2004 election, all I'll say is that the discrepancies are nowhere near what you are suggesting for the creationist polls.
As for the difference between the accuracy of election polls vs opinion polls, I can even buy that up to a point. After all as I noted, Pew gets 33% and Gallup gets 45% for what are both crystal-clear creationist options, that's a huge gap by election poll standards. But only up to a point. Pew gets 33%, Gallup 45%, but you want me to believe <10% without being able to prod
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> I believe in God
Why?
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Actually, the numbers are inconclusive.
No less an expert on Christianity than Fox News recently told us that 1/3 of Americans don't believe in evolution.
http://www.foxnews.com/science... [foxnews.com]
And 77% of Americans self-identify as Christian, with approximately 60% of them being classified as "evangelicals, fundamentalists and pentecostals".
If we start with the assumption that the only Americans who don't believe in evolution are part of that 60% o
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foxnews id a horrid source. They have a long and well documented history of lying and leaving out important details. Far more then any other news agency. There is a reason that can't call them selves a news agency in Canada. IT's so bad that it just shouldn't be trusted no matter what side they appear to represent.
It's more complex the what FoxNews is saying in there effort to get creationism thought of a a legitimate science. Since that have no evidence, they resort to public opinion, as if that is good d
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Oh, I agree completely.
But they did report the same number as the Pew site you studied. I was being sarcastic about Fox.
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to me, the AGW crowd is the same as the people who believe that the rapture is coming, just their rapture is sea rising.
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OK, you didn't read what I wrote.
I'm not saying that all climate-change deniers don't believe in evolution, I'm saying that all evolution deniers don't believe in climate change.
I think there is certainly room for someone who accepts science to question AGW. But not believing in evolution comes with a cultural, tribal set of beliefs that would include the notion that there is some conspiracy among scientists to fabricate man-made climate change in order to advance an
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the meek shall inherit the worst (Score:2)
Where are all the loud Christians— the ones who aren't insane—when it comes time to shout down the anti-scientific bias being introduced into school systems in certain American states?
I'll take what you're saying far more seriously when I see the sober-minded Christians busy shouting down their own who cross the line. I sure as hell shout down scient
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Well, if you buy the whole bullshit story, then it's the same thing, since god created satan and nothing happens in the universe without god's knowledge and consent.
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I always though the Fundamentalist position was that fossils were put there by God, so as to test the faith of hapless followers.
Colour me surprised.
Thank goodness neither position has anything to do with the real world.
You haven't read the Book of Job? Satan was allowed to put them there by God to test the faithful.
It's a joint effort.
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were put there by God, so as to test the faith of hapless followers.
As were Hookers 'n Blow. So who are we to question God's divine plan? Personally, I welcome such a test. To prove my worthiness in His eyes, of course.
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I respect hookers that respect my money. This already is a selection criteria that is sharp like a razor and if I were smart I would have also used why choosing my ex-wife by I digress. The hookers are as much of god's plan as the rest. I can imagine however that those not enforcing use of condoms should be condemned to hell, at least as long as all health issues associate with such reckless approach are not resolved.
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Okay, okay, settle down. They both did it to outfox the other.
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I always though the Fundamentalist position was that fossils were put there by God, so as to test the faith of hapless followers.
If that's true, then creationists are being blasphemous when they suggest that their beliefs are supported by physical evidence, since an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn't leave any. (Although they're obviously not above it if that's what it takes to get it taught in public schools.)
Re:This makes no sense (Score:5, Funny)
That's because evolution is not found in books, but on stone tablets.
Just because THEY haven't evolved.... (Score:1)
:-)
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Wait -- are you talking about the fossil thingie or Beta...?
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Interesting moderation... (Score:2)