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#372414
Bob Dole
Quote mining makes you an asshole.
12/30/2007 4:29:18 AM
#372423
Osiris
Now post the rest of that quote where he discusses how the eye evolved from simple light sensitive cells to modern eyes.
12/30/2007 4:44:09 AM
#372431
cool cats
1.Fundies hate Darwin, yet fundies quote mine Darwin for the sake of maintaining a lie.
The quote in context:
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people = the voice of God "], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
2. From what deep dark cravass of your colon did you pull this?
3. Natural selection =/= chance. Look up chaos theory too, it explains quite well how order can arise in the natural world and the universe. And without the need of a creator!
12/30/2007 5:07:17 AM
#372438
Joshi
So wait, if the earth moves closer to the sun by .1 inches we'd freeze? Or am I misinterpreting "depart fom its orbit"?
12/30/2007 5:13:20 AM
#372460
Brian X
Joshi:
It's an appeal to the Pangloss Principle -- everything is the way it is because it has to be. Creationism almost requires that the universe be in exactly perfect balance because if it isn't, it invalidates the idea of a perfect creator. If there was any significant amount of slop (as we know for a fact that there is), creationists would have to explain why a perfect being would create a manifestly imperfect world.
12/30/2007 5:40:06 AM
#372464
James
1. I think you'll find that quote continues "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (and continues for several paragraphs)". To paraphrase Bob Dole (only with harsher language), quoting out of context makes you a deceptive cunt.
2. Yes. When can you get it through your thick skull that we were made for the Earth and not the other way around?
3. No, we don't. The evolution of eyes and hands are well documented and the order of the universe is the result of the laws of physics. I'm a bit fuzzy on abiogenesis, but just because we don't have an explanation for everything doesn't mean the explanations we have are wrong.
12/30/2007 5:53:04 AM
#372466
James
Damn it, cool cats beat me to it.
12/30/2007 5:55:22 AM
#372467
Euclid
Lord, here we go again...
1. quote mining (see cool cats for whole quote)
2. puddle analogy goes here
3. natural selection =/= chance
Seriously, we should number these fallacies so we can refute them in "computer error" style: "fallacy #38 has occurred".
12/30/2007 6:00:16 AM
#372470
dpareja
The first sentence, meanwhile, seems to be an attempt to appeal to a misinterpreted version of Ockham's razor without saying so directly.
12/30/2007 6:09:14 AM
#372477
Lewisfisher
Quoting out of context + Kent Hovind "proofs" + strawman argument/ personal incredulity = A very bad case for creationism
Thank God I'm not a member of the LDS church.
12/30/2007 6:19:44 AM
#372487
Mog
I don't understand what Callister is trying to say with the second bit, about Earth "departing" from its orbit. Can someone explain/translate it for me?
12/30/2007 6:31:02 AM
#372496
Detrs
Spoken like a quote-miner who has never studied photography.
12/30/2007 6:47:27 AM
#372525
solomongrundy
If the earth was an eight of an inch closer to the sun we'd all be incinerated? That's mind-bogglingly stupid even by fundie standards.
Elder Douglas L. Callister, living proof that there's no fool like an old fool.
12/30/2007 7:57:11 AM
#372529
werewolf
What if your intelligent designer was like BS Johnson? Wouldn't he make a more appropriate example?
12/30/2007 8:47:35 AM
#372579
Science for ultra-dummies who want to look religious and not being shamed. By LDS church.
12/30/2007 10:06:33 AM
#372584
Kronos
1. It didnt start out perfect. Look at less-developed creatures. Some can only sense changes in light. Some can only sense movement. Some can't register color. It was a gradual proces.
2.Do you know why we can exist in this environment? Because we evolved in it. If the earth had 'departed from its orbit' by 1/10 inch every 18 miles, guess what? Life would have evolved for THAT climate.
3. Process by which the organisms most capable of surviving survived the best is not chance.
12/30/2007 10:12:27 AM
#372610
anevilmeme
Quote mining for Jeeezus!
12/30/2007 11:57:34 AM
#372626
Brain_In_A_Jar
With its 107 million cells, connected to the brain by over 1 million neurons, the eye is more perfect than any camera ever invented.
Most cameras don't have blind spots and the wiring installed so that it blocks the photosensitive surface.
12/30/2007 12:25:32 PM
#372640
szena
@Lewisfisher - the one Mormon I talk to the most is not a creaitonist. He says belief in creationism is not required.
12/30/2007 12:57:50 PM
#372646
Nutz
I suppose at the time cameras nearly as sophisticated as a human eye seemed impossible, but now it's quite clear that we caan engineer cameras more perfect than eyes. Shit, I have to suppliment my eyes with lenses developed by technology to make them work properly. Why'd this perfect creator of yours allow me to have vision that deteriorates? My camera certainly doesn't seem to have that problem, among other things.
Also, if we were closer or further from teh sun by such ridiculously small amounts we wouldn't fucking notice! Seriously, that's like saying birds should burst into flames when they fly rather high because they're closer to the sun.
12/30/2007 1:34:25 PM
#372664
szena
This earth departs from its orbit of the sun by only one-ninth of an inch every 18 miles. If, instead, it changed by one-tenth of an inch every 18 miles, we would all freeze to death. If it changed by one-eighth of an inch, we would all be incinerated.
You can get closer to the sun than that just by climbing a mountain. Oddly enough, you need cold weather gear for that.
12/30/2007 2:48:04 PM
#372686
Euclid
There seems (reasonably enough) to be some confusion regarding "point" #2. I'm not exactly sure what his "departs from its orbit" means, but whatever... here are some numbers:
Earth's eccentricity = 0.0167 which gives an "orbital variation" = (aphelion - perihelion)/mean distance = about 3%
1/9th inch / 18 miles = about 0.00001%
So I call bullshit on this one (seeing as we quite happily cope with a 3% variation every year).
(And, regardless, it's still all bs because [insert puddle analogy here])
12/30/2007 3:34:04 PM
#372688
Dirac
"Did this all happen by accident? "
yes
Next question ...
12/30/2007 3:36:15 PM
#372704
John
the eye is more perfect than any camera ever invented.
Is that why we have pretty much abandoned the eye in favor of CCDs (digital camera circuit chips) for astronomical observation? The eye isn't perfect at all. For many people, it's focused wrong and they need glasses. For humans, it's wired "backwards", with the light receptors pointing toward the back of our heads and the nerves coming out of the front. It's wired correctly for the squid - did God need practice on humans to get it right with the squid? For humans, we have good color vision, but our night vision stinks. For dogs, it's the other way around. But dogs have color vision genes - they're just broken by mutations. Why would God give dogs color vision genes that don't work? That's like making a color TV, leaving the color circuitry disconnected and selling it as a black-and-white.
And anyway, chimps have hands and eyes, too, so why couldn't chimps and humans have a common ancestor?
12/30/2007 4:00:25 PM
#372706
NotMe
"This earth departs from its orbit of the sun by only one-ninth of an inch every 18 miles."
Bullshit
"If, instead, it changed by one-tenth of an inch every 18 miles, we would all freeze to death."
1/10 is a smaller deviation than 1/9. We'd be closer to the sun, not farther away.
"If it changed by one-eighth of an inch, we would all be incinerated."
1/8 is a larger deviation than 1/9. We'd be farther away.
All of the above bullshit. Even where I pointed out flaws in his math (only to a lesser degree). Deviation works both ways. A deviation of 1/9th of an inch could be 1/9th of an inch closer, but also farther away. In this case a larger deviation doesn't mean that you are going farther away, just that the absolute distance to the average orbit is larger.
12/30/2007 4:00:49 PM
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