# Any conservatives want to defend Palin on these quotes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2009, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625 "2009-11-15T02:42:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/101 "2009-11-18T05:37:20Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > These are merely genetic aberrations related to already established physical features. That’s what all mutations are. > [@](#): > > They aren’t even close to what I was talking about, but I think you already know that. Then what you’re taling about has nothing to do with evolution. > [@](#): > > I’m talking about things like the genetic opposite of sightless eyes. Where is half-formed anything, not already part of some creature’s established feature set, which is on the way toward becoming some previously non-existent feature that is beneficial to its survivability? There is no such thing as a “half formed” anything. Evolution doesn’t have a destination. Every single mutation is only a slight variation on some already present characteristic. Nothing brand new is ever formed. Those slight variations accumulate over time until they can become something vastly different from where they started, but no single mutation is ever anything but a slight change in a characteristic that already existed. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/102 "2009-11-18T13:33:30Z")
**StarvingArist** to expand on **DarwinsFinch** a bit more. Here is a hypothetical timeline. Single cell organism that reproduces through division. Having more than one cell glom together, but cells are still undifferentiated. One cell splits off at some point in life cycle to form new organism. Cells in multi-cell organism differentiate so that a single organism is made up of more than one kine of “part”. Differentiated cells glom together to form organelles. One of those organelles becomes light sensitive. Sensing light allows organisms to move towards the surface of the water where there is more food available. Organism splits off two kinds of cells to reproduce. Both kinds are necessary for reproduction; i.e., start of sexual reproduction). Sexual reproduction allows for greater genetic diversity and more rapid change because cells from different organisms can combine their own genetic material. So now we have gone from single cell organisms that reproduce asexually to multi-cell organisms with specialized parts (including rudimentary eye) that reproduce sexually. Each change was small and each built on previous features. Now take above and realize it took 100s of millions of years to happen and that billions of organisms took part. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/103 "2009-11-18T13:56:13Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Exactly. Most people are far too busy with their romantic relationships, their families, shopping and running errands, taking care of the house and getting their kids homeworked, bathed and off to bed to be delving deeply into the finer points of evolutionary theory and micro-biology. You’re an apologist for ignorance here, at best. Yes, most people don’t have the knowledge required for evolution. Personally, I don’t think that knowledge required is too deep - if you simply think about a system in which traits are inherited, there’s random mutation and variation in physical traits, and that some traits are more likely to allow species to survive and reproduce - it pretty much all goes intuitively from there. No needing to understand how mitochondria developed is necesary. But even so, we aren’t talking about the people who are merely ignorant. We’re talking about people who reject what our best thinkers say on the issue, and who reject all the evidence we’ve gathered to support our observation. People who want to teach this prescientific nonsense in our schools. It’s no better teaching that the Earth is flat, except it’s a little easier to intuitively grasp a round earth to their weak little minds. I don’t understand chemistry too well. The idea that everything breaks up into little molecules and atoms, and that elements can change into one another through ditching and picking up electronics and all that shit “strains credulity”, doesn’t it? It’s not exactly intuitive. And yet I don’t go out there telling all of the scientists who have studied and made great discoveries in chemistry that they’re wrong, that it’s actually the influence of pixies that causes chemical reactions. I don’t try to get my local schoolboard to teach the magic pixie controversy. So this is not only ignorance in the sense of simply not being familiar with an issue. This is malignant ignorance, the kind that wants to spread itself, the kind that denies and attacks truth. > [@](#): > > To most people the idea that all of this could just develop from out of nowhere, no matter how long the process, stretches credulity pretty much to the breaking point. So belief in God seems to be the more likely answer, and at the very least it appears no less credulous than evolution, which appears to be more adaptive than creative anyway. > > … > > As for myself, I’m taking a more wait-and-see approach but I do have to admit that I find evolution alone as an explanation for all this to strain credulity as much if not more than belief in God. (And then there’s also the possibility that evolution, to whatever degree it exists, is God’s creation also. :p) What does “more adaptive than creative” even mean? Are you saying that God creates a mutation which is creative, and then evolution adapts from there? For every tiny mutation for every species? Saying the truth backed by every bit of evidence we’ve ever seen that has been agreed upon by all the experts we have is less credulous than “GOD DID IT!” is just being an ignorance apologist. What are you waiting to see, exactly? We have multiple lines of evidence, huge fossil records, and just the common sense of how a world in which random mutation, heredity, and natural selection exists would work. I think you’re misrepresenting your position here. Your position seems to be “I believe in evolution. Kinda. Well, it doesn’t explain all this stuff!”… it’s really not a position which you can pick and choose your belief on. It’s like saying “I believe in gravity… except for human beings. I think our feet are held to the ground by invisible elves. But everything else… yeah, that’s gravity”. If you accept the basic premises - mutation and physical variation, heredity, natural selection, then everything logically plays out from there. I don’t see how you could accept all that and express doubts over things that are easily explained by that (and again, I’m not including biogensis here). So I think your real position is that you probably don’t believe in evolution at all, but you know that would get you treated like an idiot around here, so you hide your position by claiming to believe in certain parts of evolution, and explaining why it’s so reasonable not to believe it… > [@](#): > > You say necessity has nothing to do with evolution, but how can that be. Everything I’ve ever heard or read about evolution contradicts that. Why did eyes develop without the need to see? How did teeth develop with the need to chew? How did reproduction develop without the need to reproduce? See what I mean? All these things are said by evolution’s proponents to have evolved because for whatever reason it was advantageous to the life form in question to do so. To me this equates to necessity, at least to a certain degree, although not in the sense that it was a conscious need on the part of the creatures of that time. The same also holds true in reverse: why do deep sea fish have unseeing vestigal eyes if the need for seeing eyes no longer exists? It was that lack of evolutionary need that has resulted in their no longer being able to see now. This is either sort of semantical (either misunderstanding or misusing the word need in regards to adaptation) or a misunderstanding. Things don’t evolve because they’re “needed” - who would even determine that? Things evolve by having essentially having random noise in the genetic code, and what works sticks around, and what doesn’t fades away. The first seeing creatures did not develop light-sensitive cells because they “needed” to, but rather, some creatures happened to develop those cells and it made them better able to survive and reproduce. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/104 "2009-11-18T19:06:14Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Really? Then what is all this talk about thousands and thousands of quasi cells forming incrementally before they finally become cells? And then thousands and thousands of mutations resulting in living creatures or whatever it is we’re talking about? First, what do you define as life? Is a virus living? I ask because the concept of a cell popping up out of nothing seems to be a common theme among those who reject evolution. Second, even if a cell did get specially created, evolution would still be responsible for the rest of the story. My observation is that creationists are far more worried about man evolving from “monkeys” (like in the Palin quote) and not being specially created than they are about cells being specially created. Do you think they would be any happier with evolution if we somehow discovered that aliens dumped primitive cells in the ancient oceans? > [@](#): > > Again, most people are too wrapped up in living and/or dealing with their own lives to be delving into the finer points of evolution, especially considering that, by your own admission, it does’t speak to the creation of life in the first place. Sure, no one can spend time thinking about everything. But a certain part of the population can’t be bothered to find out what evolution really says, yet does have time to rant about how wrong it is. Hell, it seems that most people don’t have the time to learn and understand algebra, but few of them carry on about giving alternative mathematical systems equal time in the schools. ---
**Author:** ![Mapache](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@Mapache](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mapache)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/105 "2009-11-18T19:33:58Z")
Starving, perhaps you would care to comment on my post #76 above. I’ll even simplify my point; never mind the botflies, liver flukes, or the various plagues that afflict people and animals, just provide an explanation for sickle cell anemia: Malaria exists, is transmitted by mosquitoes, and infects millions of people in tropical areas around the world. A mutation on one or more genes provides some protection from malaria, by modifying the function of red blood cells. This mutation is passed to descendants, in the usual AA, AB, BA, BB pattern (meaning that, if both parents are heterozygous- one allele for + and one -, their offspring may be homozygous AA, hetero AB or BA, or BB) (If the parents are homozygous then they aren’t parents because they’re dead.) A child that is born with AA, meaning both alleles for sickle cell, usually dies, in great pain, by the age of five, from sickle cell anemia. A child with BB dies, also miserably, from malaria. AB or BA children have some protection, in that they don’t usually die of malaria, although they do get infected and live, with a lot of nasty symptoms, long enough to reproduce. This is exactly what one would expect of evolution, which is not concerned with “morality” and can only work with the mutations that happen, by pure chance, to have occurred in the ancestors of whatever organism is evolving. The mutation doesn’t work very well, but it’s better than nothing. I assume you are a Xian, and therefore believe in a benevolent father god of one description or another. What sort of god do you imagine would deliberately design some of its creation so that half the children are condemned to a short and unpleasant life, so that the other half could live an equally unpleasant, if slightly longer, life? For that matter, it supposedly designed several million species of insects that don’t carry malaria; why didn’t it design mosquitoes the same way? ISTM that, if you want to believe in “intelligent design”, you also have to ascribe to your god a combination of malevolence and incompetence that would make even GW Bush blush. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/106 "2009-11-19T19:15:27Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Yes, but remember, that highly unlikely event is only the beginning. How does the cell survive? How does it reproduce? And if it is surviving and reproducing, how is it managing to develop the highly complex electrical and chemical and organic systems that have developed in its wake when there is no apparent need for them in the first place? I don’t think these questions can be answered merely by laying them at the feet of natual selection. > > Pretty much 50/50. 😃 > > But I will say I find it very hard to believe that organisms could develop teeth and eyes and split into opposite sexes, both of which are necessary for reproduction (and why would this be necessary if the organism was already reproducing…and how could the transition be made without the organism dying in the process even if the need to make such a transition should suddenly spring forth in the first place? Because one did good, but two working together did better. and three working together did better than that. and four working together did even better than that. and five working together did even better than that… Ones with a rudamentary sense organ did better than that and one with a more delveloped eye did better than that… Ones with a stub of hard enamel did better than ones without. Ones with n=more devleoped teeth did better than that. Organisms with asexual reproduction did ok, but ones with two sexes passed on more traits and better traits… See, not that hard to understand if you are actually making an attempt. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/107 "2009-11-23T23:41:03Z")
> [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](#): > > I’d be very interested to see this paper. Sorry for the long delay in responding. I plan to start a GD thread on the recent computer science study that established that the Book of Mormon was deliberately plagiarized, but I don’t have enough time to dedicate to that plan at the moment. Also, the findings are based on new and extremely sophisticated computer text-analysis algorithms, and before trying to defend the results on my own here, I want to better understand these algorithms so that I can elaborate on _why_ the Stanford group succeeded in plugging procedural and logical holes where previous attempts have been more open to valid methodological criticisms. I worry that if the debate begins before I’m better prepared to elucidate these issues, a GD thread on such a controversial and contentious issue will much more likely spiral down into something that wouldn’t be nearly as productive as it otherwise could have been. I’m confident you understand the kind of mess I’m worried about… - - ---
**Author:** ![Mapache](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@Mapache](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mapache)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/108 "2009-11-24T02:05:44Z")
One last try, not that I really expect Starving Whatever to answer, but if he/she wants to there is my post 105 to deal with. If not, I’ll start a new thread and let all the theists have a go at explaining the Omnimax god vs sickle cell anemia paradox. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625/109 "2009-11-24T05:17:45Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > I’m confident you understand the kind of mess I’m worried about… No problem; I understand. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-conservatives-want-to-defend-palin-on-these-quotes/517625.md?page=5)