On the thread entitled “Species Kinds”, commenter phoodoo asks:
What’s the definition of a species?
A simple question but hard to answer. Talking of populations of interbreeding individuals immediately creates problems when looking at asexual organisms, especially the prokaryotes: bacteria and archaea. How to delineate a species temporally is also problematic. Allan Miller links to an excellent basic resource on defining a species and the Wikipedia entry does not shy away from the difficulties.
In case phoodoo thought his question was being ignored, I thought I’d open this thread to allow discussion without derailing the thread on “kinds”.
Well, now we know exactly where you are in your development.
ETA: The location of the city of Houston has been decided by the consensus of slow fourth-graders, plus keiths.
J-Mac,
Let’s see, how can I put this diplomatically?
Um, J-Mac, I think you’re misidentifying the source of your confusion.
Yes. You’ve never heard the name “Yahweh”??
None. Are you confused by the hypothetical example I gave involving your hypothetical daughter?
J-Mac:
God allowed Satan to do it, and God knew that Satan would do it. Therefore God is responsible.
Does that sound like a loving God to you?
Would you allow someone to torture your child with boils if you could prevent it?
News Flash!
The mighty state of Texas decided to leave the determination of the location of the city of Houston up to a representative population of “slow fourth graders.” An elderly gentleman was quietly removed. Unconfirmed reports indicate he was heard to loudly proclaim that his name was “keiths” and that he deserved to be treated equally with the slow fourth graders.
Parents evinced concern, but “keiths” managed to convince them that he was a harmless, doddering, senile, fool. His act was “totally convincing,” said one parent. Harris County deputies said “he’s not our problem. He’s one of those ‘southeast Texas’ secessionists.”
Further investigation revealed that “southeast Texas secessionism” is restricted to just a very small minority of counties in South East Texas. One secessionist, who declined to have her name mentioned on air, adamantly insisted that they were “not like those other minorities.” Besides, she proclaimed, “slow fourth graders have clearly recognized our right to be southeast Texans.”
When asked what she thought of Houston, and hurricane Harvey, she responded, “I don’t know nuthin’ about that. I never made it to the fifth grade.”
Leave him alone! Can’t you see he is thriving on your emotions? It’s sad…
Good night! You and poodoo made me lough to tears lol
J-Mac, to Mung:
Sure, I’m laughing at Mung, but I guarantee I’m not the only one. If Mung wants to embarrass himself, entertaining the rest of us in the process, let him do it.
And why would that be? You are proposing the genetic swamping of polar bears with grizzly bears that differ in morphology, behaviour and ecology. Yet different karyotypes, which require cytogenetic research to visualise, are supposedly diagnostic of species, even though many species are known to be polymorphic for chromosome numbers.
I think the reason why you place greater weight on karyotype is because you guessed (correctly) that breeding among individuals with different karyotypes gives fertility and viability problems in the resulting offspring, i.e. it contributes to reproductive isolation. But that brings us right back to that nasty biological species concept, doesn’t it?
You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too.
For the purposes of the Texas Workforce Commission using certain criteria
Like the word species.
No. But mostly it seems like you enjoy pissing off keiths.
I’m not proposing anything. I’m saying that the introduction of DNA from grizzly bears is not a problem if you don’t define species as groupings that are genetically isolated that is all.
Yes no one is claiming that it does not take difficult research to understand the boundaries of species.
Often we discover that what we thought was one species was in fact two or more
All I’m saying is that it is harmful and incorrect to use “reproductively isolated groups” as the definition of species instead of “a class of individual sharing common attributes and designated by a common name”.
I think you are incorrect ;-). It has nothing to do with reproductive isolation. Different attributes are different attributes no matter how difficult it is to discern them. Often two species look similar at first glance.
on the other hand
The whole point of the article and discussion is that each of the species of Panthera can and have interbred yet each of them have different attributes and share a common name.
not at all. I’m sticking with my chosen definition when new facts are discovered and finding it to be perfectly sufficient to handle them. That is the hallmark of a good definition
I think it’s you all that are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
You want us to think of genetically isolated groups as species but are unwilling to stick with that definition when the facts show that species traditionally thought to be genetically isolated are not.
peace
newton,
Are you kidding? Watching a grown man deny that Houston is in southeast Texas is hilarious.
Please continue, Mung.
Slow fourth-grade land speculators.
Is that what he is doing?
How did the class of individuals sharing common attributes come to be?
keiths:
newton:
Yes. You haven’t figured that out yet?
There are lots of possibilities.
For example certain soybeans share the attribute of glyphosate tolerance because Monsanto introduced a gene to do that.
and apparently the Jaguar’s large head and jaws comes from the introduction of genes introduced from Lions.
edit:
I thought you were asking about how the attributes came to be.
if you are asking about the classes. I would say they always existed.
We did not develop or abstract ideal circles we discovered them.
peace
1200 posts and still not word on what a species is.
Some theory.
Did you not read the opening post?
Yea, it said its tough to define.
I guess that’s the best we can expect.
Attributes came to be but the classes of those attributes always existed?
Would you feel better if it was simple?
I suspect phoodoo would prefer if it were impossible! 🙂
Since ideal circles do not physically exist, how did we discover they exist ?
Wait till he hears about planets, oh my.
I guess anything is possible if you don’t say what it is.
ID for instance
Of course it is a problem. Infusing grizzly DNA and turning polar bears into not-polar bears doesn’t conserve anything.
I do not follow you. So what are the “different attributes” that define a species, if it is not morphology and behaviour and not reproductive isolation either? How do we recognise the units of conservation?
Conservation biologists usually seek to preserve variation both within and among species, regardless of whether reproductive isolation is perfect. I am unable to tell what use your “instantiations of ideal form” are if we interbreed them to the point that we can no longer tell them apart. Or are you saying this cannot happen?
It seems obvious that it is not about the location of Houston in relation to the State of Texas
The attributes came to be in the group of individuals.
It’s like the difference between the circle I cut out with a pair of scissors and the preexisting ideal one in my mind it instantiates.
peace
Do you really think that only physical things can be discovered to exist?
Since love does not physically exist, how did you “discover” your mother’s love existed?
Short answer, revelation of course.
be careful materialism can be blinkering. 😉
peace
keiths:
newton:
keiths:
newton:
It’s about Mung idiotically denying that Houston is in southeast Texas.
All you have to do is read the comments, newton. Here’s the exchange that started it all:
keiths:
Mung:
Mung’s error is obvious: he’s making the following implicit (and very dumb) assumption:
Of course Houston is in southeast Texas, and anyone with access to a map, including Mung, can see that. But for Mung to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge that I was right and Mung was wrong, a fate worse than death.
So instead we have the spectacle of a grown man, with access to the Internet, denying that Houston is in southeast Texas.
It’s hilarious.
Christians, I’m still interested in hearing your answer to this question: Why doesn’t God give advance warning of natural disasters such as the Harvey flooding, so that people can prepare and/or evacuate?
If you loved someone and saw disaster about to befall them, wouldn’t you warn them? Why doesn’t God?
“For decades the evolutionary biology has made efforts to understand the meaning of “species” and explain the training process. Currently, there are over twenty different species concepts. The use of different concepts leads to improper and misleading comparisons. On the other hand, catastrophic biologists for decades used the term “type” or “group” for what they consider categories of organisms not genetically related. Thus, each of the various categories of species, subspecies and varieties seen today were designed to diversify a basic common ancestor type. Morphological patterns around the taxon gender was identified with ancestral fossils buried in a catastrophic recent basic; this model tells us a story of a period of: 1) rapid speciation, 2) stay with high number of species in a stable environment (fossil replay without environmental evolutionary pressures), 3) disaster followed by massive burial of population alive evidenced by the repetition of the same fossil species (which detracts punctuality), 4) presence of several different species together in the fossil record, lots of vertebrate fossils (which features disaster of great magnitude and high rates of sedimentation), and 5) drastic change in the environment causing the radiation of species in recent layers of sample form and the millions of species on the current biodiversity.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319179908_Speciation_in_real_time_and_historical-archaeological_and_its_absence_in_geological_time
Awww, ain’t he cute? J-Mac discovered a Noah’s Flood “paper” by a YEC self-published in a vanity online journal.
LOL @ “catastrophic biologists”. 😀
ETA; If you want a real laugh follow the link and download the “paper”. Pay particular attention to the sections defending baraminology and Stanford’s “genetic entropy” brain fart.
are you kidding me?
2001
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php
March 12th 2017
http://grist.org/climate-energy/houston-is-a-sitting-duck-for-the-next-big-hurricane-why-isnt-texas-ready/
quote:
It’s already been eight years since Ike and Houston gets hit by a major storm every 15 years on average.
“We’re sitting ducks. We’ve done nothing.” said Phil Bedient, an engineering professor at Rice University and codirector of the Storm Surge Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center. “We’ve done nothing to shore up the coastline, to add resiliency … to do anything.”
To this day, some public officials seem content to play the odds and hope for the best.
end quote:
June 1st 2017
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2017-hurricane-season-forecast-atlantic-colorado-state-the-weather-company-may
quote:
NOAA issued its forecast at the end of May and called for:
Eleven to 17 named storms –
Five to nine of which would become hurricanes.
Two to four of which would become major hurricanes.
end quote:
August 17th 2017
http://weatherplus.blog.mypalmbeachpost.com/2017/08/17/tropical-depression-9-forms-could-be-tropical-storm-harvey-later-today-not-threat-to-florida/
August 23th 2017
http://www.redcross.org/news/article/local/texas/gulf-coast/Red-Cross-Encourages-Preparedness-For-Tropical-Storm-Harvey
August 24th 2017
http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/index.ssf/2017/08/tropical_storm_harvey_gaining_strength_hurricane_warning_issued_for_texas_gulf_c.html
then even more detailed forecast as the storm approached along with accurate rainfall forecast
August 25th 2017
https://qz.com/1062302/hurricane-harvey-what-to-know-about-the-storm-hitting-texas/
Folks on the cost could have built an ark or walked to New York if they wanted to before the flooding arrived.
I could go on an on with the unheeded warnings starting with this one from circa AD 30
quote:
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
end quote: Luke 13-1-9
or this one from the very beginning
quote:
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
end quote: Genesis 2:17
peace
Keiths,
Why not start your own separate thread for complaining how God can’t exist because he is so mean?
I’ll bet you could talk the moderators into featuring it.
Surely it’s the most interesting thing we could be talking about on this forum 😉
peace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
peace
fifth,
Your frustration is evident. It must be extremely embarrassing to be in your position, unable to defend the idea of a loving God — an idea at the very heart of Christianity.
Do you know why Houston was not evacuated ahead of the Harvey flooding? Because officials didn’t know, until it was too late, exactly how much rainfall there would be, and where. Human forecasts simply aren’t accurate enough.
Does that sound like information that an omniscient deity could step in and provide? You bet. And not just immediately before the catastrophe, while there was still time to evacuate. An omniscient God would have known about the exact timing of the eventual flooding long before people even built their homes and businesses there.
But screw them, right? They’re just people. If a bunch of them drown, and many more of them lose everything they own, why should God care?
Unless you’re a gullible Christian who blindly believes the dogma you’re fed, without thinking. Then you will continue to believe that God loves us even when you see him doing horrible things to us, things that you yourself could never imagine doing to someone you loved.
Christianity is an intellectual embarrassment, a religion for suckers.
I agree with that statement
We are talking about ideal circles
Her physical actions, so is that discovering ideal mother love exists?
Right.
I am not claiming only material things exist, I wanted to know how you discovered ideal circles exist independently of human thought
Then government officials were stupid as usual. That is just an excuse. It takes minutes to load up a car and drive away.
A quick Google reveals that the National Hurricane Center warned of “life-threatening and devastating flooding” across the Texas coast About 30 hours before the first rain drop fell.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/29/meteorologists-gave-early-warning-harveys-killer-floods.html
In Texas there are more than enough cars to get everyone to safety in time. It takes 3 hours and 20 minutes to drive from Huston to Dallas where the hurricane had almost no effect.
We had hundreds of years warning that it is unwise to build in flood prone areas.
We had decades of warning that a hurricane would be devastating to Huston.
We had months of warnings that this was going to be an active hurricane season
We had a week of warning that a storm was brewing in the Atlantic
We had days of warning that landfall was likely on the Texas coast and heavy rain was likely
We had hours of warning with accurate forecasts.
But somehow it was God’s fault that everyone was not prepared or safely evacuated
I agree that better forecasting is always good, But better forecasting would be impossible in a world where God was always monkeying with the climate knobs like you have just suggested he do.
You are trying to hijack a thread about species to once again blame a God you deny exists for your problems. It’s definitely tiring,
No Christian I know trusts in God because they think he will make hurricanes go away or give advance warning of disasters.
Get a life. Or start a new thread of your own
peace
I don’t think so.
Do you think that her physical actions prove that she loves you?
Who said anything about discovering ideal circles exist independent of human thought?
Thought is what minds do and idea circles exist in minds.
peace
fifth,
You get kind of grouchy when your faith is exposed as stupid and false. 🙂
As for this:
The question isn’t whether Christians trust God, or why. The question is whether God is powerful and loving. The obvious answer is that if a powerful God exists at all, he is not loving. The evidence makes that obvious. He treats people like shit.
To believe in Christianity is to believe in a powerful, loving God; and to believe in a powerful, loving God, against the evidence, is just plain stupid.
Christianity is obviously false.
Christianity is for the gullible, who can’t or won’t think for themselves. It’s a religion for suckers like you, fifth.
Even if something like platonism were an adequate account of the ontology of abstract objects (which it isn’t, but never mind), thus far you’ve presented no arguments for why biological species are anything like (platonic) abstract objects. You’ve told us that you think this, but you haven’t presented any arguments for convincing us.
keiths:
fifth:
Your reasoning is idiotic and simplistic, fifth. The officials took a much more thoughtful approach. Please educate yourself:
Why Didn’t Officials Order The Evacuation Of Houston?
And of course, God could have solved the problem simply by giving an accurate forecast and enough advance warning for an orderly evacuation.
He didn’t. He never does.
He knew that people would die if he didn’t. He knew that people would lose their cars, their homes, their possessions if he didn’t. Yet he couldn’t be bothered.
You call that love?
keiths,
“Why can’t the world be made of whip cream…”
Keith whining, Every Day
Because the vat of whip cream you want your brain to be encased in is already full. There is only so much room for infinite brains.
As predicted:
And of course, phoodoo is desperately trying to change the subject away from the actual issue, which is whether God is loving, to a different one, which is whether we’re entitled to complain when God shits on us.
Here’s a simple question for you to avoid, phoodoo: Do loving parents routinely drown their children?
I’d just like to point out that there are no such entities as ideal circles in the plural. There can only be one singular ideal circle.
They made a decision with the available revealed facts.
Unless a a million other cars are going to Dallas too, google Hurricane Rita
Funny how ports are near water.
Where do suggest moving it to?
How does one prepare for 51 inches of rain?
Sure, but two days from the time it became a tropical storm in the Gulf till landfall.
Two,
No it is not unless you do not believe in free will or assume everyone realized that an historical level of rainfall was going to hit Houston or that everyone had the economic ability to evacuate.
But if you believe God directly causes all things then the fact that a hurricane flooded much of the upper gulf coast is because God choose it. God is directly responsible.
Like He does when it comes to biology?
No Fifth , he is pointing out consistency is not always the hallmark of religious belief.
Too bad not responding is not an option
peace