Friday, November 26, 2010

Public Debate and Radio Interview Available for Download

Friday, November 26, 2010  AM  224 comments

Two downloads to listen to, public debate and radio show.

Last night in Belfast, public debate hosted by Comhdháil Poblachtach Ollscoil Banríona, Irish republican socialist student society:

Is the cure for Ireland's ills a 32 County Socialist Republic?
25th November, Belfast



Speakers (in this order)
Daithí Mac An Mhaistír - Éirígí
Eoin O’Broin - Sinn Féin and author of , ‘Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism’
Brian Hanley - Author of ‘Lost Revolution- The story of the Official IRA and Workers Party’
Anthony McIntyre - Author of ‘Good Friday- The Death of Irish Republicanism’
Q & A session

Download here: http://www.archive.org/details/IsTheCureForIrelandsIllsA32CountySocialistRepublic

Right click save as: http://www.archive.org/download/IsTheCureForIrelandsIllsA32CountySocialistRepublic/SocialistRepublicDebate25.11.10.mp3




Equal Time for Free Thought, WBAI:
Radio Free Eireann’s Sandy Boyer, and former IRA prisoner, Anthony McIntyre

To inaugurate Equal Time for Freethought’s new time and day, and move to a one-hour format, we have invited Sandy Boyer, producer and host of WBAI’s Radio Free Eireann (which will now air two hours before us on a regular basis) to talk with us about religion, politics, and humanist ethics concerning Ireland (past and present), and the lives of the Irish outside of Ireland (including here in the USA).

Joining Sandy will be a favorite guest of his, former IRA prisoner turned journalist. Anthony McIntyre. McIntyre spent 18 years in Long Kesh, 4 years on the blanket and no-wash/no work protests which led to the hunger strikes of the 80s. He completed a PhD at Queens upon release from prison, and left the Republican Movement at the endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement, going on to become a journalist. He is the Co-founder of The Blanket, an online magazine that critically analyzed the Irish peace process, and author of the book, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

Download here: http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/2010/11/20/show-367-radio-free-eireanns-sandy-boyer-and-former-ira-prisoner-anthony-mcintyre/

Right click save as: http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/podpress_trac/web/549/0/101120_183001etff.mp3

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AM - If I can follow this I am sure anyone who applied themselves they could follow it too.I have no degree just a thirst for knowledge and a job that allows me to study at the same time.Like what I read today about Bolivarian Government quoting on their wikileaks hosting site from the New Testament "the truth shall set you free".
Please don't draw conclusion on the back of the evidence I have supplied as this is just one example we have so far homed in on in detail as it was used by me to highlight the modern scientific advances that proves Darwins 'Evolutionary theory' is simply a series of biological speculations.There are numerous more examples that increase the more discoveries are made.Evolution is not a fact of life as you say.As of 2008 761 signitories from the Scientific community have come forward to question the theory.
Quote the DI website "During recent decades, new scientific evidence from many scientific disciplines such as cosmology, physics, biology, 'artificial intelligence' research, and others have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism's central tenet of natural selection and studying the evidence supporting it in greater detail.
Yet public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin's theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things. The public has been assured that all known evidence supports Darwinism and that virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true.
The scientists on this list dispute the first claim and stand as living testimony in contradiction to the second. Since Discovery Institute launched this list in 2001, hundreds of scientists have courageously stepped forward to sign their names.The list is growing and includes scientists from the US National Academy of Sciences, Russian, Hungarian and Czech National Academies, as well as from universities such as Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and others."
Nailing this back into it's relevance to Socialism, Darwin was seriously influenced by the Plenium Society of Edinburgh University - materialists and fervently anti-God.Alfred Russel who independently researched evolutionary theory 7 years longer than Darwin and drew his own conclusions posed serious problems for Darwin in 1858 via a letter.The letter was ditched, Russel melted into the background and Darwin took the credit for the torch of the new free thinkers.The Intelligent design problems Russel posed didn't fit the theory so the evidence was made to fit the theory as it continues to be done to this very day.
I quote now a letter from Darwin to Karl Marx,October, 1873 ...
"Dear Sir: I thank you for the honour which you have done me by sending me your great work on Capital; & I heartily wish that I was more worthy to receive it, by understanding more of the deep and important subject of political Economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of Knowledge, & that this is in the long run sure to add to the happiness of Mankind.
I remain, Dear Sir
Yours faithfully,
Charles Darwin"
I hope I have tried to illustrate a mindset of the time that God had to be extracted from the equation at all costs for the dawn of the materialist age.
In quick response to Alfie concerning Gods calling card..The way I see it the Almighty God, Creator of all things seen and unseen would be an unwise God to trust his secrets to his children on masse.Would you trust that knowledge with us if you was God? Better select a few who can handle it and slowely, carefully reveal thyself through them - Abraham, Moses, Elijah etc.
He is El Shaddai, he knows what he's doing.

Here is some further recent scientific research that has thrown evolutionary theory into dissary.

The Fitness costs of Genetic Mutation - scientific problems of evolution.
The interveiw I was listening too today Dr. Alcocer Ruthling put forward the evidence for genetic mutation (in this case strains of plants resistant to herbicides) having costs of not being strong enough to compete with original unmutated strains in natural enviroments.An example he gave of this applied to humans was Sickle-cell disease of which I've used Wikipedia to highlight.
Like resistance to herbicides this mutation is an attempt at resistance to malaria.
"Sickle-cell disease (SCD), or sickle-cell anaemia (or anemia; SCA) or drepanocytosis, is an autosomal recessive genetic blood disorder characterized by red blood cells that assume an abnormal, rigid, sickle shape. Sickling decreases the cells' flexibility and results in a risk of various complications. The sickling occurs because of a mutation in the Hemoglobin gene. Life expectancy is shortened, with studies reporting an average life expectancy of 42 in males and 48 in females.
Sickle-cell disease, usually presenting in childhood, occurs more commonly in people (or their descendants) from parts of tropical and sub-tropical regions where malaria is or was common. One-third of all indigenous inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa carry the gene, because in areas where malaria is common, there is a survival value in carrying only a single sickle-cell gene (sickle cell trait). Those with only one of the two alleles of the sickle-cell disease are more resistant to malaria, since the infestation of the malaria plasmodium is halted by the sickling of the cells which it infests."
I am sure you will see the implications this poses for the Darwinian theory of evolution being a process of successive mutations

The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds
Douglas Axe

Abstract

Four decades ago, several scientists suggested that the impossibility of any evolutionary process sampling anything but a miniscule fraction of the possible protein sequences posed a problem for the evolution of new proteins. This potential problem-the sampling problem-was largely ignored, in part because those who raised it had to rely on guesswork to fill some key gaps in their understanding of proteins. The huge advances since that time call for a careful reassessment of the issue they raised. Focusing specifically on the origin of new protein folds, I argue here that the sampling problem remains. The difficulty stems from the fact that new protein functions, when analyzed at the level of new beneficial phenotypes, typically require multiple new protein folds, which in turn require long stretches of new protein sequence. Two conceivable ways for this not to pose an insurmountable barrier to Darwinian searches exist. One is that protein function might generally be largely indifferent to protein sequence. The other is that relatively simple manipulations of existing genes, such as shuffling of genetic modules, might be able to produce the necessary new folds. I argue that these ideas now stand at odds both with known principles of protein structure and with direct experimental evidence. If this is correct, the sampling problem is here to stay, and we should be looking well outside the Darwinian framework for an adequate explanation of fold origins.

Continued from above...
Michael Egnor
Why I don't believe in atheism's creation myth.
I am a professor of neurosurgery and a medical scientist. As an undergraduate biochemistry major, I was uncomfortable with Darwinian explanations for biological complexity.
I read all that I could find. Johnson. Dawkins. Wells. Berra. Behe. Dennett. Dembski. What I found is this: The claims of evolutionary biologists go wildly beyond the evidence.
The fossil record shows sharp discontinuity between species, not the gradual transitions that Darwinism inherently predicts. Darwin's theory offers no coherent, evidence-based explanation for the evolution of even a single molecular pathway from primordial components. The origin of the genetic code belies random causation. All codes with which we have experience arise from intelligent agency. Intricate biomolecules such as enzymes are so functionally complex that it's difficult to see how they could arise by random mutations.
I saw that Darwinism was a Potemkin village. But it wasn't clear to me why evolutionary biologists were so passionately devoted to such pallid science. The evidence that the Darwinian understanding of biological origins was inadequate has been in hand for quite a while.
Why, when the genetic code was unraveled, didn't scientists question Darwin's assumption of randomness? Why didn't Darwinists ask the difficult questions that are posed for their theory by the astonishing complexity of intracellular molecular machinery? Why do Darwinists claim that intelligent design is untestable, and simultaneously claim that it is wrong?
Why do Darwinists claim that intelligent design theory isn't scientific, when both intelligent design and Darwinism are merely the affirmative and negative answers to the same scientific question: Is there evidence for teleology in biology? Why do Darwinists--scientists--seek recourse in federal courts to silence criticism of their theory in public schools? What is it about the Darwinian understanding of biological origins that is so fragile that it will not withstand scrutiny by schoolchildren?

AM – ‘If I can follow this I am sure anyone who applied themselves they could follow it too.’

A bit like the man with seven languages who tells us ‘even a child can learn language, why can’t the rest of you?’

I am sure we all could given time but most of us don’t have any and when we do we give it to other things like family rather than reading through science journals and familiarising ourselves with scientific jargon and technical terms. You having a job that allows you to study at the same time is the envy of us who would like to do likewise. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way for most of us. We feed and shelter our kids with the resources we can find not the ones we choose.

I find much of it technical, dry and beyond my comprehension. I presume most others fare the same with it. Perhaps not. They will soon let us know on this blog.

I don’t think conclusions are drawn on the basis of what you have said. Whatever Alfie may do, for my part, I skim read it and mark it down for more attention later as I do with a lot of stuff that catches my eye but which I do not have time to read on the day.

The voluminous quantity of material out there on these matters allows any of us to quote mine and present this or that chunk in favour of what we believe to be true or what we would like to be true. But how useful is that?

So to cut to the chase did we evolve or did we not? Did we suddenly appear and the as-built plan is all we need to know?

There are disputes about evolution, there are challenges to it, just as there are challenges to the Holocaust as a historical event but it does not invalidate what is being critiqued.

It is not whether Darwin was right about this or about that, it is about the issue of evolution. Darwin is only useful in so far as he was one of the early forerunners of the theory and helped create a major paradigm taking us away from supernatural explanations of our world. But like a 19th century medicinal practices and procedures we today should not be guided by them. We can’t really defend evolution and say that all thought ceased to evolve after Darwin.

‘Evolution is not a fact of life as you say.’

Again did we evolve or did we not? End of story.

The easiest thing in the word is for any of us to go and quote mine Hans Kung or other theologians with vast scientific knowledge and cite them in defence of evolution. They accept it as a fact of life but make the point that god was behind the big bang that kick started the universe and ultimately led to humanity evolving. The thing about evolution is that it does not disprove the existence of god. So many people who believe in evolution believe in god.

You cite the DI website: ‘Yet public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin's theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things.’

I find the DI statement disingenuous. There is nothing that could possibly fully explain the complexity of living things and I have yet to watch a TV programme that has made the claim. What is generally said is a natural explanation of events (set Darwin aside) explains our world much better than a supernatural explanation.

And the more people that question Darwin the better as far as I am concerned. All theories or systems should be questioned. Much more dangerous than the questioning is the attempts to suppress such questions.

All that aside I think your contributions here have seriously upped the level of discussion and allowed us to ponder things. And there is much more I want to come to but which time prohibits at present. You will find that my comments on much of what is said here lags well behind the pace and timing of what is being discussed.

without being rude, i think you need to have an interest to delve into the detail of that debate. I got the gist of what it was about and my eyes glazed over and my brain went into 'standby' mode.
Bit like when socialists get into discussions and arguments about detail that will take no one anywhere...YAWN.
I don't care if i evolved or was invented...we are animals like the rest of them only with ego's and a capacity and liking for destroying everything in sight.
YAWN.

Alfie-

it is true that without a time
machine, we cannot know for certain how every organiism evolved

If you had a time machine where would you go-
i'd go 100 years in-to the future
just to see how things worked out.

Larry,

'I got the gist of what it was about and my eyes glazed over and my brain went into 'standby' mode.'

I think that is a sentiment shared by more than just yourself.

Martydownunder,

so you are bamboozled. Join the club. It is TTT - total technical tedium.

And not for one minute do I think it is wrong for those who are discussing it in that Esperanto to do so. But they need to refrain from making the claim that it is easy to follow. It is anything but.

Still, I will follow it to the best of my ability and enjoy what I can derive from it. If Alfie's is a layperson's understanding pleas spare us from the scientists when we meet them!!! But appreciation to him (and Stephan) for taking the time to get it out there.

Anthony, Larry, MartyDownUnder et al,

Apologies for the technical jargon. I should have made an effort to be clearer and to define all the terms I used in ordinary language. Looking back on our posts, it does appear like Stefan and I are two bald men fighting over a comb, except, instead of using fists, we bamboozle each other with gobbledegook. Anyway, I know I gave these links separately before, but for anyone who stopped reading my posts because of the verbiage yet would like to know more, these two articles explain the issue much better than I can and the authors use as little jargon as possible:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex.html

http://files.myopera.com/Jaybro/files/Flagellum.pdf

NB. It is probably best to read them in the above order.

Alfie, Stephan

Credit to you both I thoroughly enjoyed posts.

Alfie - How do you know I'm bald haha, my profile has wearing a Roman soldier hat!
AM - My apologies for forgetting my providence.
You'se are right this isn't easy to follow.
Larry hits the nail on the head about Socialists.I've had philosophical debates with some heaveyweight acedemics and theology teachers with only Gods word as my Armour, like David and Goliath, me very much the underdog.
A lot of the time with many of the concepts put forward it did have a feeling of going a long acedemic route that could've been reached quite simply in Laytalk.Socialists, especially, have a knack of redifining terminology to suite the arguments they construct.What I learnt was how to speak their language and destroy their intellectualism with their own spear.
AM - I'm glad conclusions haven't been drawn based on only the small offering of evidence discussed here.I too have a family and my time is precious also and whilst yesterday evening was consumed dredging through my own archive to offer up a few small morsels of evidence that don't really go anyway to even denting this huge subject I give it up gladly for the cause.
I like your cut to the chase.
Did we evolve or was we created?
Genesis clearly states the creation of Human beings.
With the misinterperatation of Aramaic Hebrew there have been mistakes in its translation and understanding.
If the tide of this thread turns to focus on the historical evidence for the authority of the Bible I have discussed this many times and would be glad to do so here.
Larry - Your likening of the Human Race to animals highlights the very difference in our essence in so much as the depths of which our brutality can sink.

Alfie,

It is not a criticism of either you or Stefan. And Stefan to his credit has granted the point – it is not easy to follow. That does not make it wrong. And at times people linguistically proficient in the discourse of these discipline find it much easier to converse with each other in the agreed terms. It cuts out a lot of unnecessary waffle if you say to Stefan Y + T – X = J and he say back to you K – 4 X JK – P = 2Y, that saves both of you a lot of time that you would have to use if you were to break it down to the language that we can understand. And I tend to think that the more we explain a term in language other than its own we lose something. A bit like translating languages I imagine. But my original point to Stefan is that while free to post what he likes he might lose the most of us if it is too technical. He could write it all in French and tell us if he can follow it then the rest of us can too if we apply ourselves. Not much use on a Saturday night when we have a few minutes. How much French can be learned in that time?!

I certainly do not want to police any debate and demand that it dumb down. I am quite pleased that the discussion has taken place on this blog. And it is clear that while Larry has been alienated by it others like Tain Bo have been drawn to it.

Both you and Stefan were gracious in accepting the problems with technical terms.

Stefan,

The points raised in my response to Alfie address the issue of language we have discussed here so no need to repeat it.

I don’t doubt your time and family are precious. But you have a job that allows you to study whereas the bulk of us don’t. And for most people there simply isn’t the time to chase up on the technical issues raised through science journals. Hard enough to get a paper read in the course of a day for many. That is not a criticism of you, more a statement of envy on my part. I would love more time.

You misrepresented my question. I did not ask if we evolved or were created. I asked did we evolve or not? In your phrasing of the question the evolving and being created were polar opposites, an either/or situation. So again did we evolve or not? If there is a creator did we evolve from its act of creation or did we just arrive with the as-built plan?

‘Genesis clearly states the creation of Human beings.’
Is this statement incompatible with evolution? Does it rule out the creation of life that evolved into human beings? Or does it mean that the human being was created as a full human with no previous biological history?
Theologians like Hans Kung who defend the bible are quite at ease with the notion of a human being that evolved.
Are you telling us that the bible read literally is a valid historical document? Or are you telling us that through interpretation the bible acquires historical authenticity? What age do you think the world is? That is probably a better way of cutting to the chase.

AM - sorry for me its a two horse race, I mistakenly impress that on discussions I have on this subject.
We as Humans were created seperately from the animal kingdom.Not having a evolutionary biological history, animals and humans are still both biological life forms and therefore are gonna share co-opted sub parts from their overall systems that work best ways and are used over again as the most effective tool for the job.All we see in nature is an adaption of species to cope with certain conditions too the detriment of that original system not an evolutionary pathway .(Laymans explanation of fitness costs of Genetic mutation).
Regarding Earth age, I've heard good geographical arguments for 6,000 yrs, good arguments on the flaws of Carbon dating to assume 60,000 yrs but also good translations of Aramaic that run parrallel with a lot of Old Earth scientific data.
Quote - Evidence for God from Science: Christian Apologetics
Biblical Evidence for Long Creation Days...
"What does the text specifically say? The heavens (universe, solar system, sun, earth, etc.) were already created before the first "day" (Genesis 1:1, ~16 x 109 years ago) (3). In other verses, the Bible says that the earth is controlled by the heavens, refuting geocentrism (4). In Genesis 1:2, God was "hovering or brooding" over the seas of the newly formed earth (4.4-3.8 x 109 years ago, 5). We know from science this is where the first unicellular life forms first appeared"
109 being ten to the power of 9 ie 4.4-3.8 x 109 being 4.44-3.8 billion years.
I continue to research the subject in awe without drawing any conclusions.
What is more important in my opinion and more relevent to the struggles for a better world today is the concept of walking in the blessing of righteousness that was passed down from Shem to Abraham, Issac and Jacob through the Children of Israel to us.Forfilled in the time of Christ (Melchhizedek) the Gnostics have been trying to stop Gods children walking in this powerfull blessing.The Gospels are riddled with false writings planted by Gnostics that had to be sifted too compile the Holy Scriptures.Gnosticism through to Freemasonary penetrated the materialist free thinkers of Darwins, Marx and Engels day.The denial of people walking in the blessing is important right up to present day corrupt world powers who have made expert use of distorting Gods message to his children.Tony Blair speaking as a Roman Catholic and the criticism from Vatican sources comes to mind.
The Heirarchical structure of the Vatican comes in for criticism but throughout all its ills, and a structure as big as this cannot be without blemish the original Line of Melchizedek (king of righteousness) passes on.
Gods message is the most powerfull anticapitalist weapon available to mankind and the Imperialist powers know this.In the 4th Century Christianity was domesticated by the Roman Empire.The lessons learnt then apply today.In 1884 Pope LeoXIII had a vision after Mass regarding Satan having 75-100 years to destroy the Church.It has been likened to the Book of Esther.75 years from that point ended in Vatican II council and 100 years ended in Solidarinosc.The time for Gods message to be re-emphisised is now.There is a rear guard ('Heel' in Hebrew) in the One Holy Apostolic Church ready to Crush Satans head through Our Lady.
One of the laws of God to Moses was no interest on money lending.
Just imagine if this one Holy Law was adhered to.
What brought me to this site was the exposure of corrupt politics.
The world watches the 6 Counties in a way like it watches Jerusalem.
I watch Éirígí because of Breandán Mac Cionnaith and his previous invovlement in GRRC.
There are gonna be Nationalist Catholics in Éirígí.My hope would be this new project could be not just solely a Socialist effort as it will fail on the three temptations that have levelled all socialist efforts before it ie power, wealth and status.
Only those without sin can reject these...or atleast those walking in his blessing.

Stefan,

'We as Humans were created seperately from the animal kingdom.'

Ok. We disagree on that. You think we were created and I think there is no creator.

'Not having a evolutionary biological history, animals and humans are still both biological life forms and therefore are gonna share co-opted sub parts from their overall systems that work best ways and are used over again as the most effective tool for the job.All we see in nature is an adaption of species to cope with certain conditions too the detriment of that original system not an evolutionary pathway.'

I shall cut through that and ask simply what were humans before they were humans? Let's say Adam. Did Adam arrive on the scene as a fully formed human being or not? Was there a biological life form to Adam out of which Adam grew? There either was or was not. What is it?


'Regarding Earth age, I've heard good geographical arguments for 6,000 yrs.'

And surely you must have laughed at them given your bent for science and given that the Sumerians invented glue 7000 years ago.

Whatever the merits of the arguments you have listened to what age is the earth Stefan?

The biblical stuff does not interest me. Stuff about blessings and all that; simply does not compute here.

The last time I heard anybody talking like that to me was a screw in the H Blocks. He was a medic and a decent guy and I liked him. His bible bashing was as alien to me as a pop concert on Mars but for all of that he was very humane. It all sounded bunkum to me. And still does.

While I regard Intelligent Design as religion masquerading as science I always like to hear the scientific case that ID people try to make. But all that talk about bibles and whatever just turns me off. I wonder why religious people do it. As Stmaryhedgehog pointed out the greatest dissuader for religion is scripture quoting. You probably experienced the secular version of scripture quoting when you were with the Marxists.

As a matter of sheer personal curiosity what happened on your personal journey that as a Marxist you end up seemingly sympathetic to the rabid right in the Discovery Institute? Or do I infer too much? Feel under no obligation to answer as it is something I wonder about in relation to a lot of things. How we move in our ideas interests me.

Whatever reason you had for arriving on this blog is your own concern. You are entitled to be here and I think you have been made welcome. But you will find little in the way of an agreed position on anything. If you are looking for some rallying point for justice campaigns you will not find it here. It is just a blog and reflects diversity and little in the way of consensus.

Stefan,

With regard to the fossil record, of course there are going to be gaps and apparent discontinuites. Scientists do not expect all transitional forms will be found, particularly since many organisms do not fossilize well and some don't even leave fossils at all. Even for organisms that do, the environmental conditions for forming good fossils are not that common. So evolutionary biologists actually predict that there will be gaps in the fossil record. Despite this, many transitional fossils have been discovered, such as the remains of transitional organisms between modern birds and dinosaurs. Why would God leave these lying around? If he did, he's really taking the piss...


If you read the Wikipedia page on Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA), you'll find an explanation for its prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa. It seems that if you're a carrier of the SCA gene, you're less likely to catch malaria, which is endemic to the region. So these carriers (who don't actually suffer the debilitating effects of full-blown SCA) are at an advantage and so thrive by natural selection. Of course, carriers often pay a price for this advantage, whenever two produce a child with the full-blown disease. Anyway, it is no suprise that about a third of all indigenous inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa are carriers of SCA and that the prevalence of the disease is much, much greater there than among black people in the US, where malaria isn't a problem. So far from being evidence against mutation and natural selection, the study of Sickle Cell Anaemia supports them.

Due to time constraints, I haven't read Douglas Axe's article on protein folds. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to look at it this week or next; however, from a quick scan of the abstract, I can't see myself understanding all of it.

Alfie - Re SCA.The various negative complications (all listed on that wikipedia page) involved to a carrier apart from shortened life span for me proves the cost of genetic mutation that has also been proved in the work of herbicide resistant crops.
The evidence against transitional fossils is another huge can of worms.If you are interested I can dig out some of the best examples from my archive.
AM - Without that time machine no-one knows definatively what happened.At some point though two humans appeared in the Garden of Eden quite distinct from the animal species and likewise with regard to Earth age as much as science likes to assure it is the absolute authority it has only offered theories and the best dating techniques presently have been shown to be far from exact.
The reason why I quoted the scripture was too try and offer something towards the plan for a better world that socialism leaves out to its detriment.
You don't infer too much atall in asking what happened to me on my personal journey that as a Marxist I ended up seemingly sympathetic to the rabid right in the Discovery Institute?The DI put some solid arguments over deconstructing Darwin.In the same way I think private property has it's place in the natural order of things don't mean I subscribe to Capitalist freemarket ideology.I am sympathetic to Catholic social teaching, thirdway, distributivism.Explained best in Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII.
How I moved in my ideology I can sum up rather neatly in quoting a phrase from the CPB university - "Question everything"...this I did and I ended up where I am now.

Stefan,

Wikipedia states that sickle cell trait (ie. the carrier condition) is considered to be a "benign condition" with "rare complications". The carrier would still be at a significant advantage in areas where malaria is common. Just out of curiosity, why do you think God created sickle cell anaemia and other diseases? Isn't life hard enough already?

Indeed the carrier condition maybe so but look at the progressive degeneritive inheritance...
"If one parent has sickle-cell anaemia and the other has sickle-cell trait, there is a 50% chance of a child's having sickle-cell disease and a 50% chance of a child's having sickle-cell trait. When both parents have sickle-cell trait, a child has a 25% chance (1 of 4) of sickle-cell disease."
Evolution theory talks about new species emerging over time due to small genetic mutations.The fitness costs to mutation shown in just a few generations here doesn't weigh in favour for this theory with this scenario.I did hear once a renowned British Bacteriologist mentioning that in over 150 years of antibiotic research there are actually no new 'species' of bacteria!
I would lump SCD into the concept of bodily degeneration.This wasn't part of Gods plan, free will was.Adam had eternel life and was told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.He did thus inherited death through that knowledge with a little help via the fallen angel and Eve.I have also heard scientists are baffled as too why the body does degenerate if it is costantly regenerating itself.

Stefan,

You have to take into account the fact that those with full-blown SCA don't usually reproduce as they don't generally survive to adulthood in the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, only about a third of people in this region are carriers (and obviously this would have started at zero when the mutation originated), so they are more likely to reproduce with people who don't carry the gene than other carriers. Taken together with the protection the gene offers to carriers from malaria, it is clear that the proportion of carriers of SCA will rise in the population under natural selection pressure - but only to a certain point. This is because the more carriers there are in the population, the more likely they are to reproduce with each other and give rise to children with full-blown SCA. So that provides a countervail to keep the numbers of carriers in check. That's why the proportion of carriers of SCA is no more than about one third of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa, and this will likely fall as healthcare improves in the region. I should say that even a creationist scientist, Felix Konotey-Ahulu, who is a specialist in SCA, concedes that the disease does provide evidence of mutation and natural selection; though he argues that it does not provide evidence of evolution.

With regard to bacteria, my understanding is that new bacteria species have been discovered in recent years. Also some bacteria species have been observed to mutate and develop new functions in the laboratory:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

Also, from what I've read, most mutations are actually neutral, not harmful; however, of the significant mutations, most are harmful, but not overwhelmingly so. And anyway, harmful mutations tend to die and beneficial mutations tend to thrive, so when you consider surviving mutations only, most are beneficial. Of course, when I use the words "harmful" and "beneficial", I'm referring to an overall cost-benefit analysis, in the obvious context of the environment in which the organism lives. In this overall sense, every beneficial mutation has some downside, so there will be selection pressures from above and below; however, those organisms that, in sum, are most suited to their environment will thrive. In relation to the fitness costs of herbicide resistance crops, my understanding is that many herbicide resistance mutations have emerged in many plants, with positive, negative or neutral consequences for the plant's overall fitness. And, in at least one species that was studied, there is a negative correlation between the magnitude of the fitness costs of mutations and their prevalence in agroecosystems.

Why do you think God would punish billions of people because of some eejit eating a fecking apple?

Interesting reading that work of Lenski.The whole controlled enviroment of the Laboratory never replicates the scenerio in nature and brought to mind Craig Ventors work, the crit of which I've entered below.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/05/has_craig_venter_produced_arti035081.html
A crit of Lenski's work can be read here...
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/new_work_by_richard_lenski027101.html
I think the fall of man in Eden should be taken more as a parable that is then continued right the way through the Bible ie Mans insistence on straying from Gods word and the results thereof that take us slap bang into the eve of 2011 (excuse the play on words).

Stefan,

I don't think the critique of Craig Venter has much substance; it merely repeats the argument (made by other mainstream scientists) that Venter and the media probably overstated his achievement in cellular biology. Most of these scientists still think that what Venter had managed to do was very impressive - namely, synthesize bacterial DNA, insert it into a empty bacterial cell and get the cell working. However, they didn't think that the end result should be called a "synthetic cell". The Discovery Institute doesn't seem to contest Venter's work, just its significance.

I think the other piece, by Michael Behe, is disingenuous. He claims that most or all of the beneficial mutations that arose in Richard Lenski's experiment were "degradative". However, while some of the beneficial mutations that arose were accompanied by some downside (such as a tendency to produce defects in DNA repair), the beneficial effect in each case more than offsets the disadvantage. Indeed, the benficial mutations had a much greater fitness with respect to the experiment's environment than the original population. As I said before, there is always some "fitness cost" to an adaption, in that the organisms could reproduce faster without it in a permissive environment. That is why, for instance, some birds lost the ability to fly (in about a million years or less) when they got stuck out on oceanic islands without predators. Similarly, some of the bacteria in Lenski's experiment that developed the adaptions of increased cell size and more rounded cell shape also incurred a decline in their ability to survive in certain other environments. But the key point is that, overall, the beneficial mutations had a higher fitness with respect to the environment in which they found themselves than the original population.

I should say that believing in evolution and believing in God are not mutually exclusive. For instance, Kenneth Miller, one of the evolutionary biologists the DI attacks, is a Roman Catholic; also UCC's Willam Reville is a well-known scientist and Christian who argues for the compatibility of evolution and religion. Here's an interesting piece by Reville on this subject:

http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/origin-sin-prof-william-reville

Why do you think God made man so flawed and weak, yet at the same time expects him to adhere to incredibly high moral standards, especially in a world filled with disease and disaster? And why did God create beings to worship him in the first place? Does he have self-esteem issues?

MartyDownUnder,

I doubt very much if it was loyalism who did the deed. As you say, Afterlives shows what some are capable of.

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