HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Subject: Re: Linguistics and evolution
Organization: AT&T
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 22:33:20 GMT
Summary: a dubious proposition

In article <1992Aug31.171012@IASTATE.EDU>, kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:

> Since language is selected for simplicity, accuracy, and expressiveness
> (just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more) complexity
> is detrimental to the willingness to

um, you're just making this up, right?  individual languages are NOT
selected in anything like the genetic manner -- rather, selection is
through mimicry and imitation of parents and peers.  Beyond the most
basic communication functions, it is unclear (to me at least) that
there *is* any selective pressure operating -- the most salient features
of linguistic evolution are more analogous to drift than to natural
selection.

If you think "simplicity, accuracy and expressiveness" have anything
much to do with the case, I'd be interested in knowing why.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		The Son of Man has come eating and drinking;
				and you say "Behold, a glutton and a drunkard,
mls@usl.com			a friend of tax collectors and sinners."  And
standard disclaimer		yet, Wisdom is justified by all her children.
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Linguistics and evolution
Date: 2 Sep 92 16:41:36 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: revpk@cellar.org (Brian 'Rev P-K' Siano)

In article <ccBgqB2w164w@cellar.org>, revpk@cellar (Brian 'Rev P-K' Siano) writes:
>        Not to bring up a name that's got some bad memories for this 
>newsgroup, but this business about the 'exact same patterns' is a a bit 
>oversimplified.

It's so oversimplified, in fact, that I'm embarrassed I typed it in.
That's not what was found, just that the overlap is remarkable.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: Linguistics and evolution
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 22:10:12 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.154733.18325@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti
Siivonen) writes:
> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
> >In answer to the question of how biological evolution is important to
> >linguistics of all subjects, I know of two.  One is the question of the
> >origin of language itself.  The second is the origin of the variety of
> >languages.
> 
> 	You ignore the fact that languages have developed to simpler forms 
> 	not more complicated as the so-called evolution "theory" claims. 

  Evolution makes no claims about the direction genetic shift will go (except
perhaps that it will no go to those that decrease reproduction).  Since language
is selected for simplicity, accuracy, and expressiveness (just off the top of my
head, I'm sure there are more) complexity is detrimental to the willingness to
learn a new language, and so it would not spread as much.

  Also, there has already been a discussion over whether languages have indeed
become simpler or more complex.  The overall consensus, if I remember correctly,
was neither: languages shift their complexities between morphology and syntax.

 |  __L__   *******************************
-|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
 |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
/|   ___    * Math Department             *
 |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
 |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
 J  _____   *******************************
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde)
Subject: Re: 160' Diplodocus...  429,895 lbs
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 18:13:04 GMT


|> Nothing 41 tones lives anymore.  If it could happen, it would happen,

	Interesting logic.  If it can happen, it will, so if it
	hasn't happened, it cannot.

	People don't build 300 foot pyramids any more - must be impossible
	now.

	In the past, some creatures had far more bony armour than
	any large creature has today.  Must be impossible now.

	Dinosaurs grew new teeth throughout their adult lives, but
	mammals don't.  Must be impossible now.

	In case you missed it, just because something can happen
	doesn't mean it will.  Herbivores would benefit perceptably
	if they were allowed to grow new teeth to replace old
	worn ones, but they can't.  The required mutation(s) either
	have not occured or did not confer enough of a competitive
	advantage to be fixed in the population.

	If elephants were to grow larger they'd require more
	food, but be no safer from predators.  Thus they'd die
	off more completely in times of bad climate, and profit
	not at all in times of good climate.  Doesn't seem like
	much of an advantage to me.

						Bill Hyde
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia
hyde@Ice.ATM.Dal.Ca or hyde@dalac

Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Let's just throw evolution out
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 01:34:17 GMT

In article <2A9E7E8D.17573@ics.uci.edu>, bvickers@valentine.ics.uci.edu
(Brett J. Vickers) writes:

|>This seems to be what Drew Lawson is saying.  But there are a lot
|>of other things he is not saying:
|>
|>	- why we should throw out a theory that coherently explains
|>	  the evidence.
|>	- what would replace it.
|>	- how his religious faith is tainting his view of science.
|>	- how he doesn't understand what evolution or its evidence is.
|>
|>Before we cast aside evolutionary theory, we're going to need a better
|>replacement.  That means someone who understands biology is going to
|>have to show how evolution does not explain the evidence and is
|>then going to have to provide a theory that does.

You miss the point. This is a political struggle. Drew is asserting that
it is the perogative of religion, not science to determine truth.

This argument got settled in the middle ages when the church made some
injudicious assertions concerning the orbit (or rather lack of) of the
earth.


Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 22:09:17 GMT

There seems to be a competition between Riggs, Drew, and Antti to see who can
be the most abyssmally ignorant or who can pull our chains the hardest.

asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes:
>>Oddly, all standard biology texts disagree with you. Possibly you
>>haven't read any of them.
>	Yes, I have spent a lot of time with them, but it doesn't seem to get  
>	anywhere. Besides, I don't call that biology.

What then do you call biology?  Please tell us the criteria by which you
judge.

>	Also I have read the 
>	creationists opinion. You are right: They're mostly naive, whereas 
>	evolutionist books contain a lot of data. Yes, a lot of data. But, if 
>	you read between the lines, you find that it can't be true. Simply, 
>	if I would claim that 9 = 10, everybody would claim that it isn't true.
>	But if I hide it to a huge formula, then, if you don't read your books
>	well, you end up believing that 9 = 10. Very clever. 

Show us how it can't be true.  Empty claims are all you've presented.

>	Those evolutionists lack one thing: A holistic view of thinking. I would
>	recommend that each of you here, would do your own studies in some field
>	of biology -outdoors- not in museums. Ever tried to identify museum 
>	objects ? Know how hard it is ? It's because they're outside their 
>	context, normal environment. Doing hard work in the nature would give
>	you/them PRACTICAL knowledge about the subject. 

I know alot of biologists who work in museums (including myself) and we all
have performed extensive field work.

But the key word above is "holistic".  That's a traditional pseudoscience
buzzword that really means "fuzzy", "imprecise", or "mere assertion".

Mike Huben

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point
than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.  The happiness
of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."  George Bernard Shaw
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen)
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Organization: University of Joensuu
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 17:16:16 GMT

colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
>1.) I didn't mention Margulis by name.

	Now you did. 

>2.) I can't count the plant examples because unspecified animal
>crosses yeilded different results.

	I don't say that. 

>3.) Antti doesn't count speciation as macroevolution.

	We view speciation in a bit different way. Yes I do. 

>4.) Antti thinks I'm lying about the rocks (no support given for
>this assertion).

	Now I gave. 

	You seem be willing to misunderstood things and make white seem black. 
	That is called lying and in this you evolutionists are good. 

-- 

		Andreas - Siperian Sirri   Siberian Stint

	No ITU, love, evolution.           Tuusniemi ! Siis imein suut !
Xref: sparky talk.origins:10063 sci.skeptic:14977
From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Logic and God and Drew...
Summary: A statement worth repeating
Keywords: the two most common things: hydrogen and stupidity
Date: 25 Aug 92 19:20:07 GMT
Reply-To: jjh00@OUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA


  wsadjw@urc.tue.nl (Jan Willem Nienhuys) writes:
>
> Summarizing, the widespread prevalence of agnosticism in scientific
> circles is for a great part caused by the stupidity of many theists.


Yes!
Here's a statement worth saving, to quote later.

---
Joel Hanes
Organization: Masters student, Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 16:45:05 -0400 
From: David O Hunt <dh4j+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Young earth creationist logic NOT!

> GOD gives you a CHOICE. The wages of sin are DEATH.

Believe what I want you to believe, do as I want you to do, or you'll stew
in molten sulfer for eternity.  Some choice.

Suppose I suspended you over a vat of strong acid and said that the only
way to avoid being dropped inch-by-inch into that acid was to sign all
your worldly goods over to me, and agree to be my slave.

By your "logic", you'd sign it with free will.

David
dh4j@cmu.edu

"Nothing wrong with humanity that a few well-placed asteroid strikes wouldn't
cure." -- anonymous
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay)
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 21:31:03 GMT


asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
>> One famous biologist thinks most
>>speciation events are caused by changes in internal symbionts. Most
>>doubt this, however.
>
>	And no names. 

and later,
>	I know many biologists on the net and they are against evolution-      
>	nonsense. Still you talk as if all biologists were for evolution. 

No names? Possibly because they are in your imagination?

>>However, if wide ranges are searched, transitional forms 
>>that bridge the gap between the two species are sometime found in
>>small, localized areas.
>
>	Lie. 

Gosh, what sparkling logic. When Chris names the species, and gives
exact references to the discoveries, I suppose your rebuttal will
continue to be a one-word assertion.

>	You failed all your attempts to prove anything. Please, don't call
>	evolution biology ! It has as much common with biology as UFOs have
>	with astronomy. 

Oddly, all standard biology texts disagree with you. Possibly you
haven't read any of them.
-- 
Don		D.C.Lindsay 	Carnegie Mellon Computer Science
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: The rise of consciousness
Keywords: brain,evolution,consciousness
Date: 1 Sep 92 14:17:01 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: emc@doe.carleton.ca (Eli Chiprout)

In article <emc.715349961@uhura>, emc@doe (Eli Chiprout) writes:
>But this explanation is going in circles.  [circles omitted]

>This is not what I asked.  There are many such algorithms going on
>(it is the feeling of most researchers) long before they come to our
>conscious perception.  We, apparantly, do not become "aware" (conscious) of 
>the calculations going on in our brain at all times.  My question asked
>what selective advantage does conscious perception of these algorithmic 
>activities confer to a species.  I could conceive of designing a complete
>silocon based automaton that would do exactly the same calculations as
>I would and would therefor react the same way as I would, without
>(supposedly) having a conscious perception of the calculations. i.e.
>without perceiving colors, or feeling pleasure or pain.  Would it
>be possible to build such an automaton?  If so, what is the advantage
>of having perception against natural selection?

That "supposedly" of yours covers a wide yawning gap!  You should restrict
your disagreement with Mike Siemon on where you disagree regarding the nature
of consciousness, and not say that he's merely arguing in circles.  If indeed
consciousness is nothing but a certain level of mental computation, then he's
obviously not in a circle.

Without actually adopting Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind breakdown theory,
you can get a lot of impressive perspectives from his book.  One view that
I find quite plausible is that the rise of language is a necessary precursor
to our human sense of consciousness.  Brain-language coevolution selects for
more accurate communication and ends up with self-awareness on the side.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: To Joe Duffy and T.O. et al.  - re: Abiogenesis (fwd)
Date: 2 Sep 92 17:05:01 GMT
Reply-To: jjh00@OUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA


  duffy@aslss02.asl.dl.nec.com (Joseph Duffy) writes:
>
> One thought I am struggling with is
> why does science choose to rule out the "supernatural"?

Because that's the policy that works, that produces results.

Because no further useful predictions or conclusions can be
reached after a phenomenon is attributed to a supernatural agent.
Supernatural agents are by definition outside the
realm of natural "law" (regular, predictable behavior) --
so science *must* stop where the supernatural begins.

How could it be otherwise?

Can anyone write an equation that describes God's ways?
Will any conceivable experiment narrow the field of
God's possible actions in the past or future?

Between roughly 300 and 1300 AD in Europe, a community of
monastic and religious scholars tried to draw conclusions
about the workings of the Universe by reasoning about the
nature of God.  They got essentially nowhere - their
arguments produced maps that misled navigators, physical
"laws" that confounded the efforts of alchemists, and
a completely ineffective medicine that weakened and
poisoned many ill people, and caused many schizophrenics
to be cruelly tortured to "drive out demons".

As soon as the supernatural was discarded as a
choice of causes for phenomena, Europeans began to
make great advances in understanding the universe,
and in controlling it, advances that produced today's
science, technology and medicine.


God must be outside science, not because God has limits,
but because science has limits.
------------------------------

Scientific explanation is, and _must_ be, limited to those
agents and mechanisms that can be investigated and described
by the scientific method.


Perhaps the Hand of the Judeo-Christian God deliberately
and with malice aforethought built the first cells.
If so, the scientific theory of biogenesis will always
be wrong, and so be it.

---
Joel Hanes
Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.atheism
From: keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith Allan Schneider)
Subject: Re: worthless comic strips
Keywords: creationist propaganda
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 22:03:15 GMT

danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock) writes:

>   Week ago Sunday I was reading the paper and enjoying my coffee when I
>noticed the comic strip B.C. (by J. Hart) had Wiley doing a poem that said (my
>paraphrase) "The world just got here by accident.  Right.  Suuurrre".  Since
>this is a standard creationist line I started paying attention and sure enough,
>one of the daily strips was Wiley doing a poem about prayer in schools.  He was
>bitchiong that the establishment clause of the first amendment didn't contain
>the phrase "wall of seperation between church and state" and deducing that that
>notion had, as a result, no constitutional weight.

>   Leaving aside the fact that both these points of view require one to ignore
>all sorts of relevant information, does anyone else have examples of creationist
>or evangelical propaganda on the comics pages?  How long has B.C.
>been pulling this stuff?

>   PLEASE EDIT YOUR NEWSGROUPS LINE.  I CROSSPOSTED THIS TO TALK.ORIGINS AND
>ALT.ATHEISM.

I also despise Hi & Lois and Family Circus for similar reasons.

keith

Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
From: salem@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM (Bruce Salem[CONTRACTOR])
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Competition for Truth
Date: 1 Sep 1992 13:22:25 -0700
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: appserv

	A resolution of these separate definitions of truth (deleted)
is to say that language is inheritly limited and compartmentalized
by the differing fundemental standards of knowing from each type.
So you have mystic truth, zealot truth, lawyer truth, scientific truth,
"Common Sense" or informal truth, and scholastic truth, all with
different definitions of "truth", "evidence", "fact", etc.

rh@smds.com (Richard Harter) writes:

>This, I think, explains the heat of many people from the science side.
>A creation "scientist" expounds an argument.  As a general rule these
>arguments are utter rubbish, viewed merely as scientific claims.  Now
>the creationist is being honest, within his lights.  Science is a
>subsidiary source of truth; in any conflict between faith and science,
>faith wins.  The scientist reacts negatively both because the creationists
>claims are rubbish (considered as science) and because the creationist
>is implicitly invalidating the scientists paradigm of truth.

	You must go further and cite the "science is religion" ruse.
A strategy in this group has been to blur the distinctions and to
rhetorically manipulate ideas so that it seems that we are all speaking
the same languages when we are not. So, Creationists intentionally lie
sometimes in order to gloss over the destinctions.

	Other people, with much less of a hidden agenda, but with alot
less knoweldge of the distinctions between the ways of knowing that
you describe also speak as though the distinctions between mystical,
zealot, legal, and scientific language aren't that great. These are often
religionists who want a reconcilliation under a common language or who
mistakenly believe that Scripture, or other sacred textx, can be read
as scientific literature, as legalese, and as inspired (mystical) texts
at the same time.

	It should be emphesized that each way of knowing is limited, and
science most of all. Its reliance on objective definition and emperical
verification severely limits the questions it can attack. It cannot
attack the concerns that come under mystical or faith unless those
concwerns can become expressed as process or mechanism. In that sense
alone science does compete with religion when the latter generates accounts
of the physical universe. Science can offer alternative explainations for
events accounted for in supernatural explainations. It does not refute
either the seeming necessity for the mystical and supernatural and their
basis in faith.

	The suspended judgments of science are fundemenally counter to the
tendancy in legal thinking to catorgize and adjudicate, as scientists being
asked to give expert testimony before Congress and the Courts would attest.

Bruce Salem
From: Michael.Leugs@f88.n106.z1.fidonet.org (Michael Leugs)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: re:Young earth creationist logic NOT!
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 11:50:02 -0500

On Aug 23 1992, schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes:
 
>In <1992Aug20.171831.346@acuson.com> lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson) writes:
>>really centers around a metaphysical issue:  Are your
>>senses/experiences a source or truth.  Science holds that they are and
>>(from the sounds of this thread) that they are the _only_ source of
>>truth.  Religion holds that they are not the only source and may not
>>(depending on specific doctrine) be accurate.
>
>This would be a peculiar argument for a Christian to advance, given how
>much Xtianity relies on Scripture; how can anyone know Scripture other
>than through their senses?
 
WRONG ASSUMPTION!  Christianity does not rely solely or even mainly on
Scripture.  It relies on faith, and faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  You
could read the Bible until your eyes drop out and not be a Christian.  Likewise,
many have become Christians following minimal reading of the Bible or none at
all.
 
>I don't recall hearing any Christian claiming
>that the RSV, or whatever, pops into their minds while they sleep. And
>since they must absorb their knowledge of their religion through their
>senses, how do they know that it is not also an illusion?
 
But the H.S. is known to "pop in" to the Christian's mind via no physical sense;
Scripture usually phrases it as the Spirit "coming upon" the individual.  Drew
Lawson's argument stands.
 

Myself, I don't really see where this Creationism _v_ Evolutionism thread can
possibly lead.  Evolutionism argues _how_ the world came to be, Creationism
_who_ did it.  If God made the world, he must have had some means.  The
Evolutionists assume that those means were an _unscientific_ lightning zot or
magic trick.  That is an immature assumption.  Why couldn't the all-powerful
Lord have "used" (invented!) the means of Evolution?

Michael Leugs


 * Origin: Two Wheelers - The Bicylists' Communications Link (1:106/88)
From: rogue@ccs.northeastern.edu (Free Radical)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Creationism Philosophy  (was: White skin--how)?
Date: 3 Sep 92 02:55:36 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. @ NU

>In article <1992Aug25.102900.9620@city.cs>, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun)
>writes:
> 
>> Apartheid, racism, bullying etc are man-made evils. The
>> rejection of God and man's decision not to obey God's
>> will are the major contributors to this sorry state of
>> the world. Where is `love your neighbour' in the
>> evolutionary philosophy? 

But many very religious people are racists and supporters of
apartheid.  Ever hear of the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian?
They're also known as Aryan Nations.  And many South African
apartheidists (?) strongly believe in the Bible.  

You may argue it's not _your_ version of God they worship.  But to say
they're 'rejecting' God is getting into a religious debate, which I'd
rather not enter in to.

	RA

rogue@ccs.northeastern.edu
--------------------------
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Newsgroups: talk.origins