Faith, Beer, and Other Things That Interest Geoff

Do Darwinists Subconsciously Disbelieve Darwinian Mechanisms?

Two events have been kicking around in my brain for a while now.

1) A dolphin was discovered with extra fins. Here is how it was described:

Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of hind legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.

2) A while back on the Family Guy, there was an episode where the Griffins get superpowers from toxic waste and they become bad guys. Mayor Adam West, in an attempt to obtain his own superpowers, rolls around in toxic waste. Cut to a seen in a doctor's office where the doctor breaks the news that he has lymphoma.

I found this dialogue online:

Doctor: Mayor West, it appears you have lymphoma... probably from rolling around in that toxic waste. What were you trying to prove?
Mayor West: I was trying to gain super powers.
Doctor: Well that's just stupid.
Mayor West: Stupid? Yes. Idiotic? Yes.

Notice something (probably because of the post's title)? Family Guy, who have poked fun at Intelligent Design before, know that mutations are most likely going to give you cancer, not some new comic book ability. The scientists from Japan assumed the previously unseen feature in dolphins were remnants, not a new feature. In other words, they thought the most likely thing to occur was a loss of a feature coming back to the fore, not the creation of a new feature.

I think people know the truth intuitively. Random mutations do not create a net gain of information in a biological system. At least not enough to do anything horribly useful and beneficial.

Labels: evolution, ID

Carbon Credits Remind Me of Indulgences

Labels: global warming

Liberals on Supreme Court Create Bad Legal Reasoning, Then Critique Responses Trying to Respond to Their Logical Mess

In 2000, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could not prohibit partial-birth abortion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a concurring opinion in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined. “Although much ink is spilled today describing the gruesome nature of late-term abortion procedures, that rhetoric does not provide me a reason to believe that the procedure Nebraska here claims it seeks to ban is more brutal, more gruesome, or less respectful of ‘potential life’ than the equally gruesome procedure Nebraska claims it still allows. . . . [T]he notion that either of these two equally gruesome procedures performed at this late stage of gestation is more akin to infanticide than the other, or that the State furthers any legitimate interest by banning one but not the other, is simply irrational.”

The line-up on the Supreme Court has changed: Justice Samuel Alito has, mercifully, replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. So the result has changed as well: Earlier today the Court ruled that laws against partial-birth abortion are constitutional (while leaving open the possibility that they could be applied unconstitutionally). This time, Justice Ginsburg wrote in dissent, joined by Stevens and the other two liberal justices. The dissenters raise the same objection that Ginsburg and Stevens had seven years ago, albeit a bit less pithily. They even quote the earlier opinion. Their argument deserves an answer.

Partial-birth abortions are not really worse than other methods of late-term abortion. There is indeed something irrational about concluding that a method of killing a seven-month-old fetus should depend on the location of his foot. But just who is responsible for making a fetish of location in the first place? It is the Supreme Court itself that has declared — with no support in the Constitution — that what distinguishes a fetus with no claim to legal protection from an infant with such a claim is whether it is in the womb. The child’s stage of development does not really matter in this jurisprudence: A premature baby has more legal protections than a full-term fetus. In an earlier abortion case, Justice Stevens himself has suggested that a “9-month-gestated, fully sentient fetus on the eve of birth” is not “a human being.”

Legislators seeking to ban partial-birth abortion are, therefore, trying to work around the irrational policy the Supreme Court, with the blessing of these dissenters, has created. They are trying to mark an outer limit to that policy: If children within the womb are not going to be protected, then at least children partway outside it should be.

This reminds me of George Will's critique of legal reasoning granting different rights to babies based on the trimester in order to show how they are legislating. If the human gestation period was a prime number, how would you divvy up a baby's rights based on age? If you have different amounts of rights based on the divisibility of an integer, you have questionable legal logic.

Via Physics Geek Jesus Freak.

Labels: abortion

Ginsburg's Partial-Birth Abortion Dissent: Ruthless Feminism

The dissent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart decision on Wednesday rests upon the sheer ruthlessness of modern feminism. Not a word of concern is spoken in her dissent of the barbaric dismembering of the unborn child that partial-birth abortion entails. The child's "health" is simply not to be mentioned.

Cut through all the pretentious padding and legal mumbo-jumbo and Ginsburg's dissent amounts to this: abortion is the sacred foundation of feminism, and Americans must never touch it; if this means permitting the skulls of unborn children to be crushed, oh well.

"Women it is now acknowledged have the talent, capacity and right 'to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation,'" she writes, invoking the earlier Casey decision. "Their ability to realize this full potential, the Court recognized, is ultimately connected to 'their ability to control their reproductive lives.'"

In other words, abortion is essential to obliterating differences between the sexes by emancipating women from nature so that they are the same as men ("equality," under liberalism, means making men and women the same not in dignity, but the same in all respects, no matter how irrational the results this understanding of equality produces). And access to abortion is essential to eliminating children as hindrances to careers -- or as Ginsburg says, "equal citzenship stature."

This analysis seems correct to me, and it shows the exceeding wickedness of the act. May God have mercy on all of us for our selfishness.

Labels: abortion

Alec Baldwin, Don Imus, and Bloodlust

I don't like what Don Imus said. I don't like what Alec Baldwin said to his daughter.

But I don't want to destroy people when they mess up. I have no desire to have people lose their jobs.

I'm tired. Not quite sure of what. But I think it is the desire to tear people down, even if they deserve it.

Harry Reid on Partial-Birth Abortion

Harry Reid: voted for the ban.

Harry Reid: wants the ban declared unconstitutional.

Enough Already

The media is acting irresponsibly with regards to the Virginia Tech shootings.

1) Stop talking about records. You are only encouraging the next guy to do it bigger and better.

2) Stop showing the tapes and pictures of the shooter. Again, you are giving the shooter post-mortum glory which will only encourage this in the future.

First Day on Job: $12 Million in Damages

Evolution, Photosynthesis, Quantum Mechanics and Magic

The article I linked to shows the complexity involved with quantum mechanics and photosynthesis. Let's just say I don't think Darwinism is a good theory for this one.

But the best part of this post was in the comments. Someone got it dead on:

We see very clearly a case where “evolution” is being used as a substitute for “magic”. Just like with magic there is nothing that evolution cannot do if you are willing to give evolution powers that a supposedly undirected “nature” shouldn’t have i.e. creating fantastic things out of pretty much thin air.

Here is how another poster described it:

In sum, photosynthesis is a process that converts sunlight into energy used by the cell with nearly 100% efficiency. The complex that accomplishes this feat requires 188 genes to construct. Molecular phylogenetics has produced no evidence of evolution, as you can produce 188 different trees of how it was produced. This leaves horizontal gene transfer as the only possilbe explanation besides design. The problem with HGT is that it can never be demonstrated. It is just this magical event that happened in the past where 188 genes came together, with slight modifications, to create an energy gathering mechanism of an astonishing 100% efficiency.

Labels: evolution, ID

Duke and Political Correctness

One of the things I've noticed over the years in politically correct circles is lack of concern about mistakes or frauds if it serves the greater good.

I noticed this in an article from the Duke student newspaper:

ome students said the confirmation of the players' innocence should not overshadow the underlying issues brought to light during the national reaction to the lacrosse case.

"We will never know what really happened on the night of March 13, but it is our sincere hope that justice has been served," the Black Student Alliance's outgoing and incoming presidents, Malik Burnett, a senior, and Simone Randolph, a junior, wrote in a statement. "The lacrosse incident has become much more than a case of alleged rape, but serves as a lesson that issues of prejudice and inequality still exist within our nation today."

Notice, "we will never know what really happened." But they hope those guys are innocent. In other words, don't give in to the obvious.

"Serves as a lesson." This is typical Marxist true-lie sort of thinking. It doesn't matter that Rigoberta Menchu's story was a fraud. What really matters is that her story shed light on the inequalties and things that were happening.

It doesn't matter that the players were dragged through all that legal stuff for a year. It helped shed light on prejudice and inequality.

It helped shed light that the college campus PC-crowd will overreact before guilt or innocence is determined if it fits preconceived Marxist ideologies.

Garrett Oliver and the Sermon on the Mount

I had the immense pleasure of being at a class taught by Garrett Oliver. He taught on beer & cheese, but he showed an immense amount of knowledge about wine.

I also learned why American cheese is not cheese and most bread we buy is not bread.

I asked a question regarding pairing beer with red sauce-based Italian foods. Short answer: Flemish sour reds. Long answer: both beer and food have trouble with red sauces.

When I asked about pairing if he releases his Monster Ale barley wine to be consumed in short order or if it was meant to be aged, I got a very interesting response. Something in between was the answer. You can make something that is terrible at the time of sale and will be great with age. You can make something that is great at the time of sale and goes downhill after that. You can make a beer that is good at the time of sale and then gets better.

For Monster Ale, Garrett Oliver chose the last option.

I've heard less-than-stellar reviews for Monster. But I have to say, the versions I had tonight were wonderful. I had a 2005 or 2006 (not sure which) and a 2001 tonight. Both were quite good.

After Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, those who heard Him were amazed because Jesus spoke with authority. He did not say "rabbi so-and-so heard from rabbi so-and-so X." He spoke with His own authority.

The authority of Garrett Oliver on beer, wine and food struck me with that parallel, albeit Garrett's authority is much, much, much less.

I always am saying "Garrett Oliver says...". It was great to hear food/beer pairings from the horse's mouth.

Labels: beer, garrett oliver

Washington Post Criticizes Pelosi for Going to Syria

That's bad.