HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 14:31:02 -0400 
From: "Arun K. Gupta" <ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: White skin: how did it develop

Dr. Pepper, the classification of black, white and yellow
was what was used by Lionel Tun, not Caucasian, etc.

While Indians are technically Caucasian, the difficulty
the general public (or even just the net community ) has
with that is amazing (just like the misuse of asian =
pacific rim people - polynesians). Take a look at the
past few weeks of soc.culture.asian-american to see that.

Lastly, in the good old racist days, when people from
Asia weren't permitted to immigrate to the US, an Asian
Indian who was being deported argued that he was Caucasian.
The Supreme Court disagreed (but he was granted an exception
and allowed to stay if I remember correctly.) But many
Asian-Indian immigrants who had come in the early 1900s
were expelled.

Even today, in Pennsylvania, for example, a marriage license
requires statement of race, and for at least one clerk on
one unpleasant occasion, Asia-Indian != Caucasian.

So, the "huh?" is not justified.

-arun gupta
ag3L@andrew.cmu.edu
From: xcpslf@decsrv.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (stephen l favor)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: SURVEY: Who has read Origen of the Species?
Date: 2 Sep 1992 14:38:37 GMT
Reply-To: xcpslf@oryx.com
Organization: Oryx Energy Co., Dallas, Texas.

Please answer the following:


What is your stance on evolution?

Have you read Darwin's Origen of the Species (or his synopsis of it)?


demographics (optional)

Age?

Level of education?

Ethnic origen?

Religious affiliation?


Please email to me.  I'll tally and post the results.

Thanks

P.S.- I'm mostly interested in how many on the creationist side have read it,
   but please everyone respond.
From: czl30@duts.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Lee)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Date: 2 Sep 92 20:06:02 GMT
Reply-To: czl30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Lee)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1992Sep2.171616.11246@cs.joensuu.fi> asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>	You seem be willing to misunderstood things and make white seem black. 
>	That is called lying and in this you evolutionists are good. 
>

A question for Andreas:

I do not know what an "evolutionist" is. Can you give me your definition?

>-- 
>
>		Andreas - Siperian Sirri   Siberian Stint


Chris Lee
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: Help needed to debunk creationism
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 06:00:46 GMT

In article <25147@castle.ed.ac.uk> eftv03@castle.ed.ac.uk (L R Watt) writes:
>
>    I've been arguing with a creationist recently, and I
>need information on some points that he raised.  Either
>postings to this group or e-mail would be greatly
>appreciated.
>
>1. Does someone have information on the dating of coral,
>   lake-bed sediment, ice cores, tree rings etc?  My
>   colleague thinks these methods are extremely unreliable,
>   or even completely at odds with other dating techniques,
>   and insists that climatic change in the past would 
>   give spurious indications of an old Earth.  

I'd like to see a climate that caused a tree to produce dozens of
rings a year :-)

>2. What is the evidence that radioactive isotopes have
>   constant decay rates over geological time?

What is the evidence that life as we know it could exist in
a universe where the physical laws where radically different.
Inorder for radioactive decay to be nonconstant you have to
change natural constants, one has to look at what changing 
these would do.

>3. I remember someone mentioning that Aardsma of the ICR
>   had debunked the evidence for a decrease in the speed
>   of light with time.  Could someone give me a reference 
>   for this?

Again you have the problem of massive changes in physical laws.
Look at what would happen to chemistry if you changed e0, not
only chemistry would be effected the stable and unstable isotopes
would be different.


-- 
>>Unix/C Contract worker available 5 years C/unix work experience<<  ______
Available for Telecommuting/Travel and contracts on the T Line       \    /
in the Boston MA area. Send me e-mail for a copy of my Resume.        \  /
       -- VWIS 508-793-9568 (2400 baud), Linux support BBS.--          \/
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Subject: Re: Linguistics and evolution
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 23:06:29 GMT
Summary: language complexity

In article <1992Sep2.160122.9635@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi
(Antti Siivonen) writes:

> 	Hmm, I'm an experienced user of many languages, both simple and 
> 	complex. I have found the structure of English language bit stiff
> 	and not flexible whereas I can use my imagination more when I use 
> 	Finnish, which is a primitive language. One good example you can see

The "stiff"ness is a result of syntactical complexities you have not
mastered.   Calling Finnish "primitive" is downright silly.  You are
simply begging the question.  It just has different kinds of structures
than English does.

You may well have an "intuitive" feeling that some languages are more
complex (for you, to speak or to learn, for example) and others less so.
There is even some sense to that observation; one might be able to give
some measure of hours of study required for native speakers of language
A to learn language B sufficiently well to, e.g. carry on simple conver-
sations with native speakers of A.  This would be a statistical measure
and would have to account for previous familiarty with related languages.
Even here, I suspect (on the basis of watching others trying to learn
a new language) that there are mutliple independent dimensions of dif-
ficulty, (most Americans are greatly bothered by morphology, some are
not at all; some have difficulty hearing/producing sounds, others don't.)
This is all irrelevant to gaining an objective measure of complexity in
a language, though I suppose one could "integrate" measures of the
average hours for A-speakers to learn B across all A, and then compare
the numbers for the B's.

The simplest demonstration of the equivalent complexity of languages
is that children learn them at the same rate regardless of which is
the native tongue.
-- 
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: Michael.Leugs@f88.n106.z1.fidonet.org (Michael Leugs)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: re: A religion which threatens eternal and unending torture for simply
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 11:49:12 -0500



 * Origin: Two Wheelers - The Bicylists' Communications Link (1:106/88)
From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden Numbering
Date: 4 Sep 92 02:21:20 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <KAI.92Aug31094228@kai.nada.kth.se>, kai@kai.nada.kth.se (Kai-Mikael J-Aro) writes:
> 
> Do giraffes lie down to sleep?  
> Kai-Mikael Jdd-Aro	email:  kai@nada.kth.se	    "Don't win, don't lose."
> IPLab	 		voice:  +46 8 790 91 05		-- Yoshigasaki-sensei
> NADA, KTH		fax:    +46 8 790 09 30
> S-100 44  Stockholm	telex:  812 6154 7052 SICS
> SWEDEN			teletex:2401-812 6154 7052=SICS

I honestly don't know, but they DO so something a good deal more interesting.

They carry their necks almost straight up;  it's the only way they can deal
with the weight.  One minor problem:  the blood pressure it takes to get blood
to their heads is immense.  It would blow our vascular systems apart.

McGowan and other experts are now claiming that sauropods had to have held
their necks our horizontally, that had they held them as high as the bones
might appear to allow for, there would have been no getting blood to their
brains.  The heart needed would not have fit inside their bodies.

Nonetheless, for a creature such as a supersaur or ultrasaur to have held 
its head out horizontally would have required musculature it didn't begin
to have.  Were such a creature to have 30,000 lbs of mass from the shoulders
outwards, and this seems conservative since it weighed 360,000 lbs, and a
center of gravity 15' out from the shoulders for this 30,000 neck, which
also seems conservative, then it was looking at 450,000 ft. lbs. of torque.

You've got a total dilemma here.  The ONLY way out is to assume that the felt
effect of gravity was then heavily attenuated.



-- 
Ted Holden
HTE
From: kml@cellar.org (John Galt)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Proof: God wrote the Bible
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:55:53 GMT
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system

kachun@astro.as.arizona.edu (Ka Chun Yu) writes:

> In article <1992Aug31.134328.202589@uctvax.uct.ac.za> fllant01@uctvax.uct.ac.
> I'm sure there are people out there who can give better examples of this.  (I
> working off the top of my head.)
> 
> >
> >If anyone is interested, I'll post more from the book. If anyone has
> >a more comprehensive book on the subject ('Seal of God' has only 4
> >chapters on it), I please mail/post title details.
> 
> Please spare us, unless maybe if you can get someone with that book 'proving'
> the Koran as the word of God, and then maybe you two can have a debate in a
> talk.religion newsgroup.
> 
> >My mail address has changed to afaull@cs1.uct.ac.za
> 

For great examples of this, check Georges Ifrah's book, "From One to Zero".
There's a great piece on the whole 666 nonsense; it can even be equated
with the inscription on the headpiece worn by the pope, if you try
hard enough.  

I heard that Lincoln had a secretary named kennedy, and kennedy had as 
secretary named Lincoln...surely that's as relevant as the 7's.



Note: the message you are about to post will be sent to thousands of machines
and will be read by thousands, if not tens of thousands of people worldwide.
Be sure you know what you are doing.

Never stopped me before.

  kml%cellar@tredysvr.tredydev.unisys.com - My other account is a Mercedes.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: duffy@aslss02.asl.dl.nec.com (Joseph Duffy)
Subject: Re: To Joe Duffy and T.O. et al.  - re: Abiogenesis (fwd)
Organization: NEC America, Inc. Irving, Texas
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 20:40:34 GMT

In article <584x02QY20uZ01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> jjh00@OUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes) writes:
>
>  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

Could it be then (or maybe this is what you're saying although I don't
want to overstate your position) that since initial origin or abiogenesis
is not regular and predictable that it is across the line and into the realm
where science should not tread? Even if a natural explanation for abiogenesis
were arrived at it seems as though science would not be able to make the
statement that "this *is* how life began". (To avoid at least some of the
predictable flames from the net let me add: No I don't believe that this
would automatically make God the winning hand in this discussion.)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith Allan Schneider)
Subject: Re: White skin-how did it develope?
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:06:26 GMT

lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:

>How strange. I thought evolutionists reckoned that all humans alive
>today are descended from a pair of ape-men from the distant past.
>Creationists believe all humans today are descended from Adam and
>Eve. Are the two approaches so different that you can brand one as
>impossible? Again this confirms that evolutionism is based on
>belief. Ie some top notch evolutionist makes a speculation, and
>others believe. Take the collection of speculations and just-so
>stories that I predicted would come in response to the original
>question that started this thread. Every budding evolutinist can
>come up with his own theory. None of these can be tested let alone
>proven.

Well, the determining factor in deciding which is plausible is the
time duration it takes to mutate.  Now, the creationists believe that
the present genetic diversity has developed within the last 10 000 years,
right?  And most evolutionists would say that such diversity (if indeed
all humans have evolved from a common ancestor) would take a much longer
time.  Now, if there were some sort of mega radiation blast, I suppose
that the mutation could have occurred as quickly as the creationists claim.

We should also note that skin color variations are present among the other
primates as well.  For example, a gorilla has black skin, while a chimpanzee
has lighter skin (those primates with darker hair tend to have darker skin,
just like humans).  You never really see a Scandinavian person with black
hair or very dark eyes, nor a Black person with blue eyes and blonde hair
(although I have seen an albino Black person, which was very strange).

So, could, then, human evolution be the result of a convergence of sorts,
or must all humans have come from a common ancestor.  I think some people
did some studies on such a thing.  They looked at the mitochondrial DNA,
which is passed only from the mother.  I don't remember the results.
oh well

keith
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Question for jloucks.....
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Date: 3 Sep 92 22:40:38 EST
Organization: Wright State University 



I s that Jloucks is back, care to comment on Ice Core Dating methods yet?

Sue
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: huston@access.digex.com (Herb Huston)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Vestigial organs
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:49:56 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA

In article <1992Aug27.192847.27988@cs.ucla.edu> frazier@kona.cs.ucla.edu (Gregory Frazier) writes:
>Dave Fisher writes:
>>I'm looking for a source of detailed information about "jury-rigged"
>>adaptations, vestigial organs, and the like.  I was considering reading
>>Darwin's book on Orchids... anyone have a better suggestion?
>
>Having seen the PBS documentary on the making of a baby, one is
>really quite struck by the jury-rigged nature of the human male
>scrotum.

Did the program also mention the lanugo and the grasping and Moro reflexes?

The lanugo is downy hair that covers a fetus until about the 8th month.
Some babies, especially preemies, are born with the lanugo, which no longer
serves any useful purpose except as a reminder of human origins.

Likewise, the grasping and Moro reflexes, which are crucial for the survival
of baby apes and irrelevant for the survival of baby humans, whose mothers
lack thick body hair.

Dave, these topics are covered in Desmond Morris' new book, _Babywatching_,
which is published in New York by Crown and has ISBN 0-517-58845-5.

-- Herb Huston
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Date: 4 Sep 92 05:53:06 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <95288@bu.edu> colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
|In article <1992Sep2.170957.11021@cs.joensuu.fi> asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
|>colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
|>>Her name is Lynn Margulis.
|>
|>	Thank you. And she is majoring at ...
|
|She is one of the most famous evolutionary biologists living(*).

Well, I would probably reserve that honor for Ernst Mayr or Stephen Gould,
but she certainly is among the more widely known :-)

|I thought
|you said you knew something about evolution? It would be almost im-
|possible to have any knowledge of it (or biology in general) and not
|know who she is.
|
|(*) author of the theory of endosymbiosis

Yep, and quite a broohaha it made when first published too.
People sceaming right and left it couldn't possibly be true.
Yet now it is accepted almost without comment with regard to mitochondria
and chloroplasts.  (The endosymbiotic origin of cilia is still disputed,
and I, for one, seriously doubt it).


The point?  Scientists really are willing to accept a radical new idea,
*if* there is evidence to support it, as there is in this case.

Of course they didn't all just bow down and accept Lynn Margulis ideas,
they made her demonstrate them thoroughly first.  All quite proper.

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: emc@doe.carleton.ca (Eli Chiprout)
Subject: The rise of consciousness
Keywords: brain,evolution,consciousness
Organization: Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 23:34:08 GMT

Some may have seen the latest issue of Scientific American on
the Brain.  I was curious if there is any literature, articles, etc.
on why consciousness should be necessary to evolution.  Why not
have automatons carrying out algorithms (which we may be) without
the internal perception of self or of the world?  Why, as well,
should consciousness only be associated (as far as I know) with
mobile species as opposed to plants, trees, or shrubs?

Perhaps the answer to the first is that consciousness if necessary
for pain/pleasure which is the main driving force of survival.  But
could not an automaton take a neural input of, say, nerve sensation of
extreme heat and translate it into a "move away" command?  Maybe that
would be too complicated a program to deal with all the cases.
I don't know what the answer to the second question is.  

References would be appreciated.

--
Eli Chiprout
Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
emc@doe.carleton.ca
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: keithd@well.sf.ca.us (Keith Doyle)
Subject: Re: White skin-how did it develope?
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 04:59:08 GMT



Lionel Tun writes:
>Good point. Christianity has been abused to perpetrate many evils.
>But the proper application of it has done much good. You live in
>the USA. The USA would not be the most successful, free and most
>powerful country in the world had it not been for its christian
>origins.

More accurately, if it were not for the fact that our forefathers
came here to escape religious persecution.

We could claim that if it weren't for religious persecutions by
Christians in other countries that we would not be the most
successful, free and most powerful country in the world.

Keith
From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Keeping time twice a day
Date: 4 Sep 92 06:48:36 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Sep2.175927@IASTATE.EDU> kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:
>In article <1992Sep2.035910.3128@smds.com>, rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
>writes:
>> I seem to recall that elephants don't lay down for very long -- an hour
>> at most if they can help it -- because of the problem of bearing weight
>> on the soft body parts.

>  So how do Elephant's sleep?  Couldn't the dinosaurs use the same technique?

Elephants sleep standing up -- sauropods presumably did the same.  The
reference for this, by the by, is _Dinosaurs, Spitfires, & Sea Dragons_,
Christopher McGowan, Harvard University Press, 1991, page 99.  [Yes, this
is the book that Ted keeps citing.]
-- 
Richard Harter: SMDS Inc.  Net address: rh@smds.com Phone: 508-369-7398 
US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742.    Fax: 508-369-8272
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: julian@tantalus.sfu.ca (Julian Shillcock)
Subject: Re: Science and God
Keywords: Science, God
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 17:03:48 GMT

keithd@well.sf.ca.us (Keith Doyle) writes:



>I wrote:
>>>This is related to the idea of "humility" as that quality of being
>>>unassuming in that you are not sure you are always right.  Christian
>>>"humility" however, does not include that characteristic, there is no
>>>possibility they could be wrong about Jesus.  When they apply that

>Julian Shillcock responds:
>>Aren't you being a bit sweeping here? Do all christians (proselytizers
>>or not) assume they are always right? I do not recall saying
>>this.

Keith says:

>The problem is that when they take it to the point of giving you "advice"
>is where we run into trouble.  As an offbeat example, suppose it was the
>of their own beliefs.  Christians presume to know what God thinks, when
>they cannot possibly know what God thinks, even if their basic tenets
>are true (accuracy of the Bible, diety of Jesus, etc.).

>I feel that no one, and in particular, no one who considers themselves
>humble has the right to "convince" someone else (with what is in effect,
>a "sales pitch") what they should believe beyond answering questions about
>what they themselves believe.  In short, proselytization and humility are
>mutually exclusive.  The salesman not only believes he's got the best
>product, but that you should believe it as well, even if he turns out to
>be wrong about it.


Julian:

This might be why Jesus told his disciples to "do" things rather than
tell people about him ( If a man hists you on one cheek...,
if a soldier makes you carry his coat...
Love your enemy...)
Only by example can anyone really convince anyone else of something.
     
Mind you, I would be somewhat suspicious of anyone who "considers
themself" humble???

But if one defines prosely... ( I cannot spell it) to be simply the
aim of telling other people about one's own faith then I don't
think it is incompatible with humility. The more extreme forms
of evangelism/brain-washing have little to do with faith anyway
and more to do with maintaining the "evangelists" life-styles.

If God loves us (and I believe he does) then that is "good" news and I want to show that it is good.
If I am mistaken then I am simply living mistakenly, as we all might be,
but it does not preclude demonstrating that love to others in a 
"humble" way. (All this talk of humility and love sounds so artificial,
rather like TV evangelism).

julian