I’m just sayin’…
Our president finally weighed in on the planned mosque in the absent shadow of the World Trade Center towers during his Ramadan dinner at the White House, according to the Associated Press;
“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York City and the nation.
“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said. “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”
Coincidentally, I found this video tonight;
The video was swiped from Grouchy Old Cripple, thanks to Rurik.
ADDED:
It seems that it not what he really meant to say.
“I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Mr. Obama said. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
“The Law of Gravity has less supporting evidence than the “Theory” of Evolution.”
I’m still giggling over the irony of gravity having “supporting evidence.”
Each and every fossil is one more piece of evidence. Maybe I exaggerated – they’ve probably only unearthed and cataloged maybe a few billion or tens of billions of fossils, all of them supporting evolution. And the theory of evolution does have predictive value. In the lab it is possible to manipulate bacteria’s environment and not only watch evolution in action, but actually predict how microrganisms will evolve in response, right down to predicting individual genes and DNA base-pairs. Scientists generally put the theory of evolution in the same category as the theory of gravitation as far as the level of acceptance in the scientific community.
Jacobite,
You’re correct about my spelling – or more accuratley, my typing. Just writing this stuff out in a hurry between other tasks and making mistakes in the process.
“Maybe I exaggerated – they’ve probably only unearthed and cataloged maybe a few billion or tens of billions of fossils”
Billions Joe? I’d love to see your supporting evidence for that.
In any case, while the Number of fossils that have been found may be astronomical, the number of Species these fossils represent only numbers in the hundreds of thousands. The statement you’ve made above is an unqualified overstatement that seems to be intentionally deceptive. Try again.
“Scientists generally put the theory of evolution in the same category as the theory of gravitation as far as the level of acceptance in the scientific community.”
Wrong again. There has never been a true scientific consensus on evolution, and religion aside, using the fossil record as proof for it is quickly becoming questionable. Prof. Steven Jay Gould of Harvard agreed, look him up.
Also try these books. Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, and Michael J. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box
Billions, Jacobite. Conodonts alone, or the teeth of deceased conodants some a fraction of a millimeter across and considered micro-fossils, have been excavated in huge quantities for decades, largely because of their value in finding deposits of gas and oil. They may be the most studied fossil around. Thats just one class of animal. I doubt anyone could venture an accurate guess, but I’m gonna stick with billions.
Also, Behe is a bad joke. Won’t dignify his tripe with a rebuttal. Rather tilt with unicorns.
May I suggest you tilt forward at a 45-degree angle in front of said unicorn?
A fossil unearthed is neither proof or disproof unless it can be tied to a long chain of ever changing fossils and if you have a billion conodonts that are the same it is no better than having one, that negates the rest as proof to evolution. I still would not put it in the realm of “billions” as 1 billion of the same thing is still the same one thing, unless we look at “billions” of apples falling as evidence gravity works. Predicting what bacteria does under lab conditions? While true, if you change the environmet the bacteria change as well but for having predictable results? Not yet my friend, they are not predicting genome changes yet with any reliability…not anything peer reviewed and replicated yet…
environmet=environment
OldTanker,
The beauty of the fossils of conodont teeth is that as you move through different layers and move through time, they change. By cataloging and noting these changes petroleum geologists can pinpoint exactly where they are in the stratigraphic column and in relation to oil deposits. So they are different, and evolved in a gradualistic, continuous way.
As for the bacteria, the predicitions came in a very controlled environment, but at least it’s a start.
But we digress – my original point was that with all we know about evolution and DNA, there is not much left to be explained by god, any god, christian, muslim, hindu…. I’m sure religion played an important part in the evolution of society, but now we need to grow up as a species.