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”.
If there were no slave traders would there be any slave owners?
Would you rather the Old covenant did not try and constrain the behavior of the rebellious nation it was addressed to and instead let them treat the slaves they obtained in disobedience however they wished?
As far as condemning the practice of slavery you do realize that the whole point of Christ’s mission was to free slaves? Do you remember he was willing to die to complete that assignment?
are you really this uninformed?
peace
Really? Are you not even paying attention?
I tell you what, you tell me what 1st Tim 1:9 (not 10) has to do with Leviticus 21 and slavery and perhaps we can talk
peace
It doesn’t say “slave traders” it says “menstealers”. Your bible describes acceptable means of acquiring slaves.
I would rather the commandments in your old book included the simple statement “Thou shalt not own slaves.” Instead it condones the practice.
That’s not supported by the text. It’s your interpretation. Even with that interpretation, you won’t come out and say “The bible is wrong to condone slavery by describing how to acquire and treat slaves.” Instead you talk about how it’s not so bad because it’s “temporary and local.”
Steven Weinberg was right: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
Indeed I am. It’s clear you have no biblical passages condemning slavery.
I’ll tell you what, present the passages you claim condemn slavery and there might be something to discuss other than the lack of morality demonstrated in your holy book.
I don’t care what you would rather have. I’m more concerned with the people who would have been enslaved if the commandments had done what you wanted them to do
The fact is if the Old covenant commandments had condemned slavery the result would have been more slavery not less (Romans 7:7-8)
As a libertarian you should know that the answer to immorality is not more laws
peace
what? Are you not even paying attention?
peace
what text? do you mean this one?
quote:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
(Luk 4:18-19)
end quote:
peace
Slavery is objectively morally evil. That’s your claim?
Because if that’s not your claim I could not be mocking you for making that claim.
Perhaps I am mocking your hypocrisy.
Patrick:
fifth:
That just might be the stupidest rationalization for Yahweh’s actions that you’ve ever offered at TSZ, fifth. Which is saying something.
Here’s the passage:
By that inane logic, God knowingly caused more of everything that he forbade in the Old Testament.
God wants us to murder more, so he forbids it. He wants us to steal, commit adultery, and dishonor our parents more, so he forbids it. He wants us to worship other Gods, so he forbids it.
I nominate fifth for Worst Apologist Ever.
I’m a Calvinist I believe God knowingly causes everything whatsoever.
God causing everything that happens is not the same thing as God equally desiring everything that happens. It’s this sort of silly Sunday school level thinking that makes these conversations so useless.
When a father causes his child to be disciplined it does not mean that he is a Masochist. When a judge brings justice to criminals it does not mean his primary desire is the suffering they will experience.
peace
So are you saying he deliberately causes what he does not want? Or that he does not desire the results of what he does? If he’s responsible for everything and knowingly causes everything, why does he disappoint himself so often?
geeze
quote:
Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
(Rom 5:20)
and
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
(Rom 7:13)
end quote:
are you really this uninformed as to what the Bible says?
peace
I direct your attention to my paper on ratites, the one you have supposedly read. Most of that is about a particular node, the one that contains all paleognaths other than ostriches.
No, but it isn’t relevant; no, but it isn’t relevant; and measured result, respectively.
I don’t think you know what “rigor” means.
You understand that ID is compatible with common descent, right? It’s creationism that isn’t compatible, and as IDiots keep reminding us, they aren’t the same thing.
Still waiting for you to tell me some of that evidence against common descent you keep talking about.
No I’m saying that he understands delayed gratification. That is when a person submits to unpleasant things when they result in better long term outcomes.
God in an of himself is never disappointed. Only a being in time can be disappointed and satisfied. That is yet another reason the Incarnation is so important
peace
That’s certainly what the evidence indicates.
Would it harm you to get your facts straight? You realize this claim is false, right?
I’m with you, John. Your facts are straight AFAIK.
Perhaps Mung can enlighten us.
I’m not aware that ID has any facts. Perhaps mung can enlighten us.
A separate thread on the Bible and slavery might be better … meantime, the involvement of An Hintelligence in the generation of nodes or the change along branches is certainly possible, so Common Descent is compatible with that form of ID.
According to the data, this involvement occurs in parallel with mutation and HGT and is indistinguishable from them.
Other forms of ‘ID’ where whole organisms spring fully formed from the Hintelligence’s Brow, probably not so much. But then that really is creationism. Common descent from those … uh … Kinds can still be subject to phylogenetic analysis, though. To the laboratory!
That doesn’t make any sense. Why would “new protein sequences” “form isolated populations” ? Do you somehow believe that “new protein sequences” are required for speciation and if so, what the hell gave you that idea?
It’s at least as valuable as the opinions of men interpreting scripture. And I’ll stand with those who oppose slavery and don’t try to excuse it or give it another name just because the bible condones it, any day of the week. If that is a “morally worthless” position to take because it doesn’t have scriptural warrant, then your opinion of moral worth is of no interest or consequence to me.
So you are saying that people who submit to a lifetime of slavery will be rewarded in the afterlife?
Then why did you ask “Would you rather the Old covenant did not try and constrain the behavior of the rebellious nation it was addressed to and instead let them treat the slaves they obtained in disobedience however they wished?”
I’m telling you what I consider a more moral stance than careful instructions that condone slaver by describing how to acquire and treat slaves. You, on the other hand, seem quite fine with that.
I see that keiths has already addressed this particular pathetic bit of apologetics. I agree with him.
The bottom line is still that your statement that “Yep the uncleanliness stuff is more vital in the long term spiritual sense of things. Slavery is temporary and local.” attempts to excuse actual evil committed against real people. The fact that you can’t simply say “Slavery should never be condoned and the bible is wrong when it does so” shows how much religion can corrupt a person’s common decency.
Indeed I am. I note that you repeatedly ask this question but never provide biblical passages that condemn slavery.
“Captives” not “slaves”. Since the earlier books actually refer to slaves, it appears that Matthew 5:17 is more relevant: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”
All those instructions about how to acquire and treat slaves are just fine with Jesus. And with you, evidently.
I think you are an insult to balloons.
No, no, you are an insult to evaporation. And salt.
you do know that Luke was written in Greek and not English?
This sort of muddled thinking is why Bible Study with you is fruitless.
You are assuming that when you see the English word “slave” the Bible is talking about race based chattel slavery like occurred in north America. Then you assume that when you see the word “Captive” it’s about something different.
It would take so long to correct your naive linguistic misconceptions that we would never get around to actually discussing what the text means.
Exactly and Jesus makes it perfectly clear that the earlier revelation in no way condoned slavery.
quote:
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
(Mat 22:37-40)
end quote:
God/Jesus in this passage gives the only authoritative touchstone interpretation of the Old Testament. He tells you what it means he can do so because he is the author..
Slavery is inconsistent with loving your neighbor as yourself so the Law never condoned slavery ever.
I will repeat myself since you have such a hard time following arguments when it comes to this stuff
Slavery is inconsistent with loving your neighbor as yourself so the Law never condoned slavery ever.
If you think otherwise you are reading the text wrong. It’s that simple
peace
PS now please take your obsession elsewhere so we can get back to the topic of this thread
No what in the world would ever give you that Idea? It’s wrong on so many levels I have have a hard time knowing where to start so this will have to do.
my comment was about God’s actions not those of humans
You do know there is a difference between God and human beings?
peace
are you even paying attention?
Amen!!!
It seems that some folks are unable to throttle their schoolyard vendetta against the almighty for even a minute and must bring it into every discussion. It certainly distracts from what could be interesting topics and brings down the value of this site as a whole
It’s especially difficult when these folks serve as moderators so can do what they want here with impunity
I guess thems the breaks
peace
Here’s an interesting report in Science Daily (hat-tip to TheWholeTruth at AtBC for the link) on speciation being caused by a microbe.
Rumraket,
I do not think new protein sequences are required for speciation but speciation is a necessary but not sufficient condition of universal common descent. You also need new protein sequences and timing related sequences.
colewd,
No it isn’t. You can have universal common descent without any recombining gene pools at all, separated or otherwise. On a planet with no sex, not even eukaryotes, one could still have UCD. One could also, for that matter, have life forms with independent origins. Descent does not have to be universal.
John Harshman,
I understand this but you know that the ID guys believe that common descent has very little explanatory power. I think it would be better to have a focused thread on the evidence for/against.
colewd,
It explains why data can be arranged into multiple congruent nested hierarchies. That’s not nothing.
Allan Miller,
Ok, I agree.
I merely said that to point out that evidence for ID (if there were any) would not be evidence against common descent. I have repeatedly asked you to cite some of that evidence. It seems to me that we have several threads in which you could appropriately do so: this one, “Kinds”, “Phylogenetics”, “Phylogeny”. I don’t think you have any such evidence, but I invite you to show me wrong.
Not sure what you mean by “explanatory power”. It explains a great deal, which I have mentioned already: treelike structure in data, patterns in the fossil record, patterns in biogeography, developmental processes, etc. One might go so far as to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
I’m not sure what you’re agreeing to here. In principle, common descent is not required. Here on earth, it’s what happened.
Feel free to start such a thread.
He means, not in some hypothetical world other than our own. It happens that in the world we have, all evidence points toward that descent being universal and, incidentally, featuring lots of speciation.
John Harshman,
There is lots of speciation. Even though we don’t know what the word means.
What an ID’iot you are John.
It’s hard to see how speciation – or anagenesis, for that matter – could not occur, given eukaryotic sex and mutation. It hardly seems to require extraordinary proof that separated gene pools would be expected to diverge, without relative constraint, past the point of reproductive incompatibility. Sex keeps a united population in lock-step, both by gene flow and by the physical vector of partner search (implemented at individual and/or at gamete level, according to species).
phoodoo,
Speciation is much easier to define than species, curiously.
Do you know what explanatory power means? Do you think it’s unclear what I mean if I say that all my cousins descend from my grandparents? Common descent implies a tree of life, it implies divergence, speciation, etc… etc… unlike ID tons of things follow from CD that can be investigated to help explain biodiversity. It’s almost offensive to hear from an ID proponent that CD has very little explanatory power. What a joke. “Design” doesn’t even begin to explain how anything came to be: “design” doesn’t imply existence and IDers refuse to address who when or how. In the mean time there’s an humongous body of knowledge built around common descent to help explain life and it’s history, and more is done every day.
Definitely when sex is involved. I wonder if phoodoo has read and been persuaded by Stephen Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt, that Lizzie criticized a while back?. I quite enjoyed reading her critique again just now, in the light of John Harshman’s (and your) enlightening comments on cladistics and phylogenetics.
Hey, species/speciation is also a thing for creos that accept common descent within kinds, or baramins, or whatever you wanna call them. Stop being an asshole and define/delimit species yourself if you can, or shut up
John Harshman,
I have discussed this with you and others in past threads. To jog your memory I discussed 6 problems with chimps and man sharing a common ancestor.
-15k positive adaptive mutations
-significant splicing differences
-significant gene expression timing differences
-the evolution of language and complex thought
-the evolution of de novo genes
-the difference in the length of the titan muscle protein
In addition the origin of the eukaryotic cell
the origin of the:
-spliceosome
-nuclear pore complex
-chromosome structure
-endoplasmic reticulum
-golgi apparatus
-mitochondria
These describe two crucial evolutionary events which are mission critical to explain for UCD to be valid.
John Harshman,
It does not explain the evolution of de novo DNA sequences which are mission critical for evolution.
Until the common ancestor nodes are precisely defined, without assuming its own conclusion, it is a house of cards. I know you agree with this because that is part of what your paper was attempting to do.
Maybe you feel brave enough to point out where the circularity is. Phoodoo and Sal have failed miserably.
Also you demand “ancestor nodes be precisely defined”. What is that supposed to mean? You want to know when an ancient ape gave birth to a chimp or a homo sapiens?
What is indeed a house of cards, Bill, is ID. Wipe out religious fundamentalism and indoctrination and ID is gone forever because there’s zero evidence to it back up and no theory to scientifically vertebrate it
The known mechanisms that you stupidly claim don’t exist explain those