Kantian Naturalist: You simply have not provided any account of truth, reason, and logic. Until you do, there is no reason for me to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has anything at all to do with God.
Some initial first thoughts.
What would it mean to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic? Don’t all of us take all three of these for granted?
Can science settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about the question?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about science?
Who were the first scientists to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Who were the first philosophers to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Is the argument that because someone has not provided an account of truth, reason, and logic there is therefore no reason to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has nothing at all to do with God a non-sequitur?
What is true. What is logical. What is reasonable. Are these not all inter-twined? Which of these can we dispense with while retaining the others?
John Harshman,
From your 2008 paper you made some conclusions based differences of DNA sequences especially indel insertion and deletions. There appear to be AA difference between the birds if I am grouping the condon’s correctly. You made the argument that ratites were polyphyletic based on the ostriches sharing sequences with neognathae and tinamous (flighted bird) sharing sequences with ratites.
Based on multiple ancestors, can we make a common ancestor claim without including all birds given the hybrid sequences in ostriches and the flight capability of tinamous? I also don’t know how problematic the variation in AA sequences are at this point.
Nope, you don’t understand the paper. We did mention a couple of indels, but that wasn’t the main data, which was the DNA sequences. I don’t know what “condons” you’re trying to group, but most of our data came from introns, so you are probably not looking at anything coding for amino acids. However, there are definitely amino acid differences among paleognaths, as there will be between just about any two species. No idea what “hybrid sequences” you’re talking about or what the flight capability of tinamous or differences in amino acid sequences have to do with any problems, or what you mean by “based on multiple ancestors, can we make a common ancestor claim without including all birds”. Your unfamiliarity with biology and difficulty in expressing your ideas make it hard to understand what you’re trying to say.
You can’t do what you claimed you could do. Check.
colewd,
But you know they are unevolvable.
Not knowing stuff about biology is well within the paygrade.
Incredulity doesn’t require knowledge, nor does demanding all of the answers from others.
How to sidestep the inconvenience of learning.
Glen Davidson
Intelligent Falling (How God Designs Pinheads Specifically For Angelic Dancing)
The moon’s surface is not that uniform (to be a hard, smooth cheese like Parmigiano Reggiano that is). More likely it’s made of Emmentaler, although Wallace insists it tastes like Wenslelydale, which I can’t explain at all…
Well, you know, given our present knowledge and technology, there is no known scientific method of identifying the FSM’s preference for cheese, and it’s not our task to match gravitationist pathetic level of detail in telling cheese stories
🙂
John Harshman,
I was looking at the short DNA sequence comparison on (fig S3). Are these protein coding exons? By hybrid I meant the shared insertion that the ostrich has with the neognathae. I will be out of pocket today.
I’m still not clear what you’re trying to say. Figure S3 is a tree constructed from protein-coding exons; the figure contains no DNA sequences. I think you may mean Figure S4, which has some sequences in it, but those sequences are from an intron. The shared state (not an insertion; the insertion is in the rest of the ratites and tinamous) between ostrich and neognaths is presumably the primitive state for birds, not a derived character, as explained in the figure and caption. I’m not sure even “out of pocket” means what you think it does.
John:
His usage is becoming more common, though I haven’t heard it here in California.
I encountered it in that form in England a few years back. Damn British invasion.
As long as he doesn’t knock anyone up while he’s away.
My late Arkansan mother-in-law used as colewd did.
petrushka,
Or loudly ask to borrow a rubber from the student sitting next to him.
walto,
The OED cites a 1908 O. Henry story as the first known usage in print of “out of pocket” in colewd’s sense. O. Henry was from North Carolina, so it may very well be a Southernism.
They must have been very confused by references to “out of pocket costs” and such.
John,
An example of that confusion, but in the opposite direction:
Patrick,
Wha? I live there, and I have never, ever heard it used that way ’til today. I thought he meant he’d spent some money accessing John’s paper from behind a paywall! [eta … and implicitly regretted the expenditure!]
I was working in London at the time and I thought it was one more example of being separated by a common language. Now that meaning is more common than the financial one in my experience on the US east coast.
No paywall. Free. Here.
Out of pocket is the fewer of two evils.
Please provide a rigorous definition of evil and produce objective empirical evidence that evils exists.
Did I mention that I have a friend who can’t afford to buy his own insects, so I rent them to him cheap? That’s how I became the lessor of two weevils.