[QUOTE=Kieran Horn]Just to clarify, Buttars is a STATE[/i] Senator. Orin Hatch and Bob Bennet are our Congressional Senators.[/QUOTE]

Good to know, Kieran. I still think it's silly, but pretty soon I hope someone comes up with an idea of how to jettisson a state into outer space. Get rid of Utah and Mississippi at the same time. \m/

Time for a little education. Freelancer, what does it take to elect someone as senator?

The military would never allow it. Utah is the military's greatest source for linguists and I believe helicopter mechanics as well. Also, part of our state is pretty much one big training ground for the Airforce to test new aircraft and weapons as well as just get general practice. There are even rumors that a new "Area 51" was established in Utah.

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Time for a little education. Freelancer, what does it take to elect someone as senator?[/QUOTE]


Hehehe.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Good to know, Kieran. I still think it's silly, but pretty soon I hope someone comes up with an idea of how to jettisson a state into outer space. Get rid of Utah and Mississippi at the same time. \m/[/QUOTE]

Do you really want 'alla dem marminz' floating above your head with our stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons (Dugway) missile silos (Green River) Large Air Farce base (Hill) and most frighening of all, two Marine Reserve Units (Ft. Douglas and Camp Williams). Oh yeah, theres all the Army units too. Don't forget the local militias with their space landing craft, and my posse with our rifles. Actually, send Utah, Missouri, and Israel into space and you can keep the Mormons pretty happy.

It looks like he's a state senator, as in he serves in the state legislature. They tend to be far more loony than then US Senators/

I was kidding guys. Joke. God, no massassians can take a joke this morning.

Oi!

Durham and four years! :p


If I can chuck in my two pence about hpw I was lucky in school, that'd be nice.

My biology teacher said so much as 'Here is the theory of Creationism, it's there, I have to mention it, and you all know the score; Adam, Eve and soforth. Right, now that part of the syllabus is covered we will now be spending the next three weeks studying the theory of evolution...'

Come on. It's UTAH. No one goes to Utah.

Sept the thousands of people who live there...

[QUOTE=Yummy Cookie]Sept the thousands of people who live there...[/QUOTE]

*cough*

2 million.

Thousands can add up to 2 million so hush.

Thousands is more appropriate to say because there exists multiple thousands in Utah, not multiple millions. Only a Couple million.

As I recall, a theory is a collection of facts, which may or may not be interpreted. Being a collection of facts doesn't make something a fact in itself. Theories can blantantly contradict each other and still both be accepted. The best example I can think of this is electron flow theory vs. conventional flow theory. The first states that electrical current flows from negative to positive, the second states that it flows from positive to negative. Both are accepted theories, both are in common use, and you can design electronic circuits using either theory. Which goes to show that just because two theories conflict doesn't mean that only one works. Apply that idea to evolution vs. intelligent design (or whatever you want to call it). There are, IMO, a few signs of "reverse" evolution, some of which were mentioned on the site Tenshu posted. But that depends on interpretation of facts. The fact is that something evolved. Which way it evolve may not be quite as clear.

Take flightless beatles, for example, and lets say a creator designed them to fly. If they don't use that ability to their advantage, they will de-evolve. Just like the dodo bird. According to scientific account, it came from a normal flying ancestor, landed in a place that had plenty of food and no predators, and de-evolved, making it flightless.

We all know from mere human experiences that designing something a certain way doesn't mean that it will be used for it's original purpose.

[/thought]

Wolfy and I live in Missouri.

then "hundreds of thousands" is appropriate

[QUOTE=Yummy Cookie]:rolleyes:[/QUOTE]
ahahaahaha yeah I don't even know why i said that...bored i guess.

Meh happends to the best of us, heck look at the September 11th thread for evidence of people with to much time on their hands.

We...kicked out the Mormons years ago. Now we just have whacky Cult on the Rock churches.

The label 'law' should be used very sparingly, and it's fuzzy when it applies and when it doesn't. It's usually used to describe a "fact" people instinctively feel is true, example: memory fades over time. Again, it has a fuzzy definition, and 'common sense' means **** in science.

You call gravity 'law of gravity', but in essence it's just as much theory as evolution, or flat earth. Law is a single fact, for example: species evolve over time. The theory itself is the collection of observations, predictions and facts, ie punctuated equilibrium, fossil record, molecular genetics, etc...

Dogsrool, I never really got your stance on evolution - you say you don't believe in 'classical' creation, but what is it you believe in?

Also, species don't 'devolve' - they are subject to selection pressure. We're not inherently more evolved than gazelles or sparrows.

If they don't use that ability to their advantage, they will de-evolve.

This shows a very limited knowledge of natural selection. Again, species don't de-evolve. Second, traits and phenotypes don't disappear because groups of animals stop using it, or 'don't use it to their advantage', but because in a given environment, those traits aren't selected for or even selected against.

Dogsrool, you talk about theories often blatantly contradicting eachother, but this criticism only has surface value - it's inherent of science that such contradictions will be corrected over time. If two theories compete for explanations of the same phenomena, we simply devise a prediction one of those theories makes, and the other doesn't. We test it, and see which prediction fails and which one stands. Then we throw away the one that didn't make it. So, if you have a theory that describes, organizes, predicts natural phenomena as accurately and elegantly as evolutionary theory, be sure to propose it. Right now, being more or less in this 'industry', I don't have much hope for it though.

I don't know about the example you gave us (current flow), but most likely it's because we don't have the technology yet to test it. Again, I don't know.

Yep.

Well, I'm just glad that science allowed grandpa to get a hard on before informing us exactly how we got here.

(It's a joke, nothing serious. :p )

Well, I'm not really interested in the evolution debate again and I believe that the good senator from Utah was probably taken out of context but that's not based on any factual knowledge on my part. It just seems fair that all relevant theories should be treated equal by educators and if some are teaching one as the *ahem* gospel (pun intended) in a public school they should be dealt with.



Oh my good friend. Let this be a learning experience for you. If you're going to continue to debate these "hot topic" issues, you don't want to come across as ignorant yourself. You need to pay attention to the language used. The two US senators from Utah are (my favorite) Orin Hatch and Robert Bennett. States have their own senate and this is where this other guy is from. Those dudes are referred to as State Senators. Chris Buttars is one of twenty-nine state senators from Utah as listedhere.

No, if theories contradict, then one of them is wrong. Two conflicting theories can never coexist, as has been with Newton vs. General Relativity, General Relativity vs. Quantum Mechanics, and more recently Quantum Mechanics vs. String Theory vs. Supersymmetry.
(Supersymmetry is interesting because it doesn't offer conflicting theories, but rather it offers five theories that all work equally well. something very odd is going on there)

Electrons are negatively charged and so will be repelled from from the cathode and attracted to the anode.

The 'conventional current' isn't a theory. Before they knew about electrons, they knew circuits flowed and they had to pick a direction. They arbitrarily picked postive to negative. They were wrong. But before they knew they were wrong, they had written a lot of books. And lots of other people had written lots of books. And it would have been a real pain to change all those books, so it stuck, an artefact of history.
With the knowledge we have today, it is absurd to suggest that current flows positive to negative, but the idea that it does clings on only because books have to rewritten.


As for what a 'law' is, I'd basically reitorate what Tenshu said. The word 'law' has no real special meaning, it is no different from any other theory (do note we're using the proper definition of 'theory' as outlined before, not the 'common-sense' one).
I suppose 'law' might refer to predictions that are very general, perhaps encompassing what might be a Theory Of Everything.
Calculus is as much a theory as Evolution, and Calculus actually has a fatal assumption considering time to be continuous, which might possibly be wrong. Evolution is more stable and more concrete than Calculus, and Calculus is never labelled as 'just a theory'.
This is really the hypocrisy of the Intelligent Design movement, in that they appear to be benevolently looking out for children's education making sure they don't get confused by what is 'just a theory', but this distinction is only being applied to Evolution, and nothing else.




Too late.



That's sort of the whole point of the discussion.

Intelligent Design, Creationism, is not relevant and is not a theory.

Science doesn't do 'balance', science doesn't do 'equal', science does truth, and there's only one of those.

You're going to have a hard time finding conclusive evidence on events that happened thousands or billions of years ago. You could come up with any of a hundred theories that would work, just some are less likely than others.

*Remembers saved reply to previous thread on evolution* Shoot!

I'm sorry. I would have typed slower had I known you would respond. They are certainly relevant because they are commonly accepted alternatives to the theory you prefer. It also should be noted that because something is elevated to the status of "theory" that it is not necessarilly scientific fact nor is there uniform belief among scientists that a particular theory is correct. Like I said, I'm not interested in a boring debate on evolution. You can just declare yourself the winner when it becomes the Law of Evolution.

Oops, too late! We already did.

Conclusive evidence? Where?

Fossils, geographical data, biological remains, ice samples, etc.

While those are highly indicative, I wouldn't classify them as conclusive.

But the information for such abilities remains in their DNA, it's just not used. A huge amount of our DNA seems to serve no purpose at the moment. If the Dodo had been exposed to a threat that was slightly slower acting than people eating them they may have got their flying abilities back suprisingly quickly.

Think of things another way, humans have the genetic instructions to allow us to grow more fingers than we have, this is made obvious by the fact that some people have 6 fingers on one or both hand. There may be an environmental catastrophe (nuclear fallout perhaps) which threatens the health of our species, so what happens is not that the radiation suddenly causes loads of mutations but rather "unlocks" mutations that have existed for thousands of years to essentially try them out and see if they aid in our survival.

Wow. I can't believe the ignorance of some people about this topic.

Why can't people have an open mind about everything and not say "My view is right, so STFU n00b"? I myself am an extremist Darwinist, but both sides really have no point in disscussing this unless they both have the mind to say "Well..I see his/her point, it is possible...but what about this?" and rebudle there.

Also, if you are so ignorant enough to say "OMG THERE IS NO PROOF HAHA MY CLAN WINS n00Bz!" without actually searching for proof yourself, then you shouldn't claim that you're right and that there is no such evidence.

This thread is going nowhere, and that is why I'm not suppressing the views of our residential Creatianist Massassians. Because there is no point. They won't listen to you, and you won't listen to them. Guys, you can throw evidence at them all you want and they can say "OMFG DARWIN IS A n00blet dont listen 2 him" and disregaurd evidence.

Scientific progression in the exploration of the truth in the orgins of humankind is stumpped by religion...because it is a threat to them.

If you don't want to get into a 'boring debate', then don't post on it, because you obviously haven't read any of the posts on it.

Creationism is not commonly accepted. You get me a list of Creationist scientists and I will get you a list of Evolutionary Biologists called Steve. The Steve list is a whole lot bigger.

I've already addressed the difference between 'theory', 'fact' and 'law', and Evolution is fact. They are not equal, competing theories. The five supersymmetry theories are equal, and sort of competing, and if you take a PhD in theoretical physics, you will study all five. 'Intelligent Design' simply isn't science. It's just religion with an agenda.

It doesn't matter if something is 'popular', science isn't a democracy. Science is truth, and evolution is just that.

Oh yeah man, project Steve is awesome. Had I been named that, I would've definitely bought the T-shirt.

I had some Mormons stop by today, I lied to them

Don't worry. They lied to you too, Genki.

You know Mort, sometimes you don't help your own case very well...

How is science a threat to religion?

Sure, forget about the other few billion people.