http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary

the bottom line?

There can be no compromise with superstition, for superstition is the camel’s nose in the tent of science.

from: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/does-theistic-evolution-differ-from-intelligent-design-2/

the real battle is over supernaturalism and miracles.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2012/05/theistic_evolution_is_not_a_fo.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HTTLPR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLC6A4

http://www.neurosurgery.org/cybermuseum/index.html

http://listverse.com/2009/10/27/10-fascinating-recently-discovered-photographs/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/05/can-a-better-vibrator-inspire-an-age-of-great-american-sex/257108/

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/05/camp-lejeune-marines-breast-cancer-florence-williams

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9261-the-big-fix-documentary-exposes-bp-us-government-on-gulf-disaster

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/18/c-s-lewis-on-fact-vs-fiction/

i enjoy the genealogy hobby. i am painfully aware of some of the issues of trying to look into the past. it is curious to me that YECism poses a 6ky old universe based really on genealogies list in the book of Genesis.

i’ve seen the claim “you can’t measure the past”, i’ve thought of YECism’s Noahic flood or creation week as a curtain that descends over history. i’d like to understand the position a bit better, especially with reference to doing genealogy and looking at the records of historical processes like dendrochronology, lakes varves, ice cores etc.

what are the problems of doing genealogy, and why is it relevant to studying processes in the past?

there are two big historical events in every human beings life, birth and death, genealogy is the systematic study of building these links. everyone has a mother and a father, or an egg donor and a sperm donor.

now i assume there exists a chain of mothers and fathers for each of us. is that an assumption? yes. a good one.  can you argue that there was a virgin birth in the past so therefore i must be open to virgin births as i do my family tree? i think such a position is not only foolish but a bit theologically suspect. i also think this is the level that YECism makes it’s claims.

we have a problem with records. are they trustworthy? what is the reliability level of the evidence? why should i believe a paper marriage license from a courthouse? or more to the point why should i believe ancestry.com’s electronics stored scans of these pieces of paper? maybe their hard drives are subtly corrupting the letters, slowly over time turning all the a’s into o’s. how to i know? how can i have confidence in my data?

the same issues happen in the science of tree rings, lake varves and ice cores. they are all processes, seen today, measured today, then projected into the past. just as my daughter’s marriage license is essentially a piece of paper laid down like a tree ring in the county court house. they are analogous processes, historical, ongoing, visible.

the big deal is consilience, how different systems give the same results. this is the take home message of genetic genealogy, it can confirm paper trees.

but anyhow, exactly where does this inability to measure the past occur? why are YECists so radically skeptic about the past yet trust the Bible? do genealogies, and act in the world as if the past really is continuous with the present? is uniformitarianism really a bad assumption? how can we do anything without explicitly accepting it?

Ascension is coming up in the church calendar.
i’ve thought in the past how the 3 temptation in the wilderness represent a movement from lower to higher, reflecting the Hebrew words direction UP. from anywhere in the world, Israel is up, from anywhere in Israel Jerusalem is up, from anywhere in Jerusalem the temple mount is up.

the temptations begin in the Galilean desert, stones into bread. go up to the pinnacle of the temple, cast yourself down. then to the highest place in the world where all the kingdoms are visible, this must be near God’s throne in the Holy of Holies.

the ascension is the fulfillment of the 3rd temptation. God is lifting Jesus up so that everyone can see He is powerful. The Return, the Parousia, is pictured as the inverse. what i see interesting is how these things are embedded in a flat earth worldview. there is no mountain high enough(music playing in mind) from which to see all kingdoms. even that famous blue marble of the earthrise over the moon only shows 1/2 of a planet. but we are so much children of our time, so familiar with our dominant paradigms, that never does the Ascension or the progression of the 3 temptations feel jarring, despite the fact that they are impossible given our spherical earth. no such Archimedean point exists where we can see everyone or everyone see an ascending Messiah, someone will always remain in the dark.

but these thoughts must of felt wrong to those generations where flat earth was being replaced by spherical earth. i’ve read defenses of the Christian ideal of the flat earth versus the pagan spherical written as late as the 7thC AD. it is these folks who can feel the discontinuity, the way the older way of thinking-flat earth was intimately tied to the message. and how jarring it must have been to re-interpret with the new underlying ideal-spherical.

now the change from geocentric to heliocentric occurred much closer to our time. we can read how people fought and defended the old ways-as physics/astronomy misplaced the central role of humanity. the same thing will happen when we meet creatures from other worlds, that will jar loose many old paradigms.

for a 150 years the dominant paradigms of life have been changing in the West from a designer Paley-type God with Aristotelian fixity of the species and a theodicy built around the Fall, to something else with deep time, life as bricolage, common ancestor, and God as something else. it’s jarring to live in these times, steeped in the older ways of thinking yet feeling comfortable with the new. the YEC fight that feeling of being misplaced, of being out of sync with the world. they fight it by recapitulating the past paradigms, accenting the elements most in conflict with the new ways of thinking, and constantly reminding themselves that loyalty to God requires this stand.

it’s noble and futile, for the world is not flat, the earth is not the center of the music of the spheres, and life did evolve.

http://theaquilareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7298%3Areview-the-evolution-of-adam-by-peter-enns&catid=63%3Abooks&Itemid=139

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2012/05/rubjerg-knude-lighthouse-buried-shifting-sand/

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2010/02/photograph-of-the-day-submerged-church-at-curon-venosta/

http://www.alternet.org/rights/155487/tasing_a_pregnant_woman_in_front_of_her_kid_the_outrageous_–_and_dangerous_–_abuse_of_tasers_by_police/?page=entire

http://worldcrunch.com/where-grandma-needs-permit-have-grandkids-stay-over/5375

http://bigthink.com/ideas/why-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage-evolves-and-abortion-opinion-doesnt?page=all

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9174-the-spectacle-of-military-commissions-for-alleged-9-11-masterminds

> I would add that we assume maximal heterozygosity
> of alleles in the 8 humans and the kinds of organisms
> that would have been on the ark.

i’m curious how you would do this. with 8 people you can have 16 variant allelles in any particular amino acid, yet in something like the thalassemias we have literally hundreds of variants.

look at iceland, it shows founders effects in the genetics of it’s population even though those events got down into the low thousands(1k-2k) can you imagine the consequences of an 8 individual bottleneck? this idea of “maximal heterozygosity” is a pipe dream.

i appreciate the discussion and the attempt to model, but guys, we have good modern examples of founders effects destroying populations with far more than just 8.

> I guess the discussion is over then.

not at all.
it’s a worthwhile enterprise, but look at the details.

>are you saying the amino acid sequences themselves are variants? Or are you talking phenotypes?

the genes give rise to the proteins, the term variants can apply to both. the proteins give rise to the phenotypes. which level the discussion concentrates: gene->amino acids that form the proteins->proteins that create the visible phenotype, depends on what you are interested in.

the thalassemias are an interesting example.
the phenotype is often driven by the success of resisting malaria vs how the oxygen carrying capacity is effected.

my point is that the variation just in the hemoglobin chains, complexity created certainly because of how many different chains there are, how many copies of each exist in our genome, and even how many pseudogenes exist, demonstrate how difficult it is to even imagine 8 individuals carrying enough variety to result in the incredible diversity we see now less that 6k years after the proposed event.

it’s one thing to propose “maximal heterozygosity” but get down and discuss what it would take for 8 individual to include enough variation so that given normal rates of mutation for 6k years produce the incredible variation since in human hemoglobin.

the task is made a bit easier because we know a lot about this class of mutations, it’s easy to detect, is often done in areas endemic for malaria. there’s data.

> On the one hand…, maximal heterozygosity of
> genes would indeed allow for something like skin
> tone to reach its continuum from light to dark
> tones in very few generations since the tone of
> the skin is determined by the numbers of dominants
> compared to the number of recessives.

i would dearly love to understand human skin color from a genetic basis. i once tried to look at mammalian fur color and was overwhelmed by the data. perhaps you could post a link to your favorite genetics of human skin color review article so i could learn some of the details you know.

i do not know which genes you are referring to with “numbers of dominants compared to the number of recessives”, i really just need to get up to speed on the genetics of human skin color. which genes are involved, what are the control pathways, how many chromatic proteins are involved (at least pheomelanin and eumelanin) what are the genetic mechanisms.

?> It seems to me you are conflating mutations with
> simply passing on what one currently has in regards
> to alleles.

afaik, the alleles are the various mutations.
for example, if i have red hair, i have the allele for “red hair” which is short hand for having the mutation
(from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair) ” the recessive gene on chromosome 16 which causes a mutation in the MC1R protein.”
which in turn is “The alleles Arg151Cys, Arg160Trp, Asp294His, and Arg142His on MC1R are shown to be recessives for the red hair phenotype.”

so the alleles are the variant mutations that give rise to the phenotype “red hair” (staying with color pigments to build on this learning curve.)
in this case, the 4 alleles are the mutations list above of amino acid substitutions in those specific sites on the MC1R protein

> Yes, I said that above that the alleles you are
> referring to are the mutations, but this simply
> means that multiple mutations can cause a problem…

i’m not sure we are talking about the same things.

in the red hair example above.
we have a gene on chromosome #16 which codes for the MC1R protein.
there is a wild type allele, which many of us have, which makes a normal functioning protein (http://herebedragons.weebly.com/mc1r-red-gene.html) there are 4 alleles, which are the four listed mutations.

i do not understand what you mean by ” that multiple mutations can cause a problem” for it is those various mutations that are the alleles that are necessary to include in the idea of “maximal heterozygosity” .

going back to out OP, if Noah and his family have “maximal heterozygosity” for the MC1R gene then these 4 alleles need to be distributed within those 8 individuals or can be explained by normal mutation rates over 6k years. which is why i choose this example, we have good evidence when and where one of those mutations occurred historically.

that is the kind of detail the model needs to deal with and why i propose the variants of hemoglobin chains as a structuring example. i think these far less complex than skin color, but i’ll read your review articles to learn more about human skin color genetics.

> For example the ABO blood typing likely includes
> only a single mutation…the O because it doesn’t
> have a marker of which to speak.

this is simply not true.

testing at 23&me predicts abo and rh blood types

https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/abo/results/?profile_id=408e637b5880ed2a

it might require sign in to read, here’s the highlights

“We use a set of 11 SNPs in the ABO gene to determine your ABO blood type: rs8176719, rs1053878, rs7853989, rs8176740, rs8176743, rs8176746, rs41302905, rs8176747, i4000504, rs8176749, i4000505. However, there are many other mutations and deletions in the ABO gene that can affect blood type. If you have one of these more rare mutations, your actual blood type could be different than that predicted by these SNPs.”

that’s 11 possible mutations for ABO
it gets much more complex, suffice it to say that they can predict abo/rh blood group for about 80% of people. based on mutations-specifically SNiPs.

“Your RH factor is called using the SNP i4001527, which tags the deletion of the RHD gene.”
it is usually just this one mutation for rh

they got my genotype right: a/o rh+/+

the devil is in the details.
biology is not common sense, it is important to do your homework, to study and learn. i find that under the hood in biology is always more complex and more fascinating than i could imagine before lifting that veil…..(i know mixing metaphors, again)

i believe the vocabulary is not that precise

http://lifesci.rutgers.edu/~mcguire/toolbox-demo/Arrays/representing_alleles.htm

quote:
For example, at the gene locus for the ABO blood type carbohydrate antigens in humans,[3] classical genetics recognizes three alleles, IA, IB, and IO, that determine compatibility of blood transfusions. Any individual has one of six possible genotypes (AA, AO, BB, BO, AB, and OO) that produce one of four possible phenotypes: “A” (produced by AA homozygous and AO heterozygous genotypes), “B” (produced by BB homozygous and BO heterozygous genotypes), “AB” heterozygotes, and “O” homozygotes. It is now known that each of the A, B, and O alleles is actually a class of multiple alleles with different DNA sequences that produce proteins with identical properties: more than 70 alleles are known at the ABO locus.[4] An individual with “Type A” blood may be an AO heterozygote, an AA homozygote, or an A’A heterozygote with two different ‘A’ alleles.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allele

it really seems to vary depending upon the level of the discussion and how technical it is. and what you are trying to accomplish.

if i’m interested in the level of “11 SNPs in the ABO” system because i’m looking for which parent i inherited that entire segment from, i can refer to my mom’s allele or my dad’s allele A/O. but if i’m looking for a segment from a distant relation, i may very well compare individual SNiPs along the segment since crossover can occur within the abo gene. and correspondingly imagine each mutation a different genotypic but not necessarily a different phenotypic allele.

> Hopefully this made sense.

i think i understand most of the system under discussion.
the problem is the coarseness/fineness tuning of the thought experiment.

here’s the big objective:
can we explain the genetic diversity of human beings as descending from a group of 8 survivors of the Noahic flood?

if you set the knob to coarse selection and look at a-b-o as 1,2 or 3 alleles you get a very different result than if you set the knob on our simulator to fine and look at the 11 SNiPs that underlie the phenotypic alleles.

now if we simply draw blood from 100 people, test for a-b-o we get one set of mutation rates to create that group from noah. coarse.

if we look at their gross genotype a/a a/o etc. we turn the knob a little bit finer on our simulation and get a different answer. or a bit finer a`/a or a`/a“ distinguishing electrophoretic variants. yet another answer.

but if we look at the SNiPs along the ABO gene that actually create the genotype, we set the knob to finest distinguishing and really begin to see the actual genomic variation within those 100 people.

all are different tests.
from a-b-o to electrophoresis, to illumina chip.
which simulation most accurately captures the issue- is 6k years from 8 people to today’s populations doable?

http://herebedragons.weebly.com/index.html

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/18/486742/house-gop-throws-out-entire-summer-of-debt-ceiling-negotiations-in-less-than-10-minutes/

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/16/152818798/breasts-bigger-and-more-vulnerable-to-toxins?sc=fb&cc=fp

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201205/creativity-persistence-and-working-memory

http://www.colossianforum.org/2012/05/16/book-review-the-bible-made-impossible-why-biblicism-is-not-a-truly-evangelical-reading-of-scripture-by-christian-smith/

http://io9.com/5910682/a-virus-that-creates-electricity

i agree laughter is good medicine. we need to be able to laugh at ourselves and our foolishness, before it buries us.
where did all that borrowed money go?
the effective tax rate in greece is very low, people routinely avoid paying taxes. that is very different from both germany, sweden, and the US, tax compliance there is rather high. so effectively greece spent without taxes to pay for it.
we have lost an ideal of the commonwealth, the public sphere, until we regain it, life will get worse for most people. we have robbed the commons for a generation to transfer that wealth to corporations and the very rich, i suspect that this is parallel to the enclosure acts that privatized the commons through europe at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
commonize costs, privatize profits: the great secret of modern financial capitalism.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428653.900-biological-clock-began-ticking-25-billion-years-ago.html

It may even have driven their evolution. A gene-related clock, unique to cyanobacteria, appears to have evolved alongside PRX. What is more, another archaean that lives without oxygen and never had to deal with ROS has no PRX clock – and no circadian rhythms at all.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/02/10/5-must-read-books-about-language/

http://www.thefrisky.com/photos/14-ck-socks-to-dress-up-any-penis/

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/16-11

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/05/cosmic-hyperevolution-early-galaxies-of-universe-harbored-potential-for-planets-life.html

http://lifehacker.com/5911105/free-up-hard-drive-space-with-a-simple-search-filter-no-extra-programs-necessary

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_only_true_way_to_save_marriage_from_obama_20120517/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coyotes-are-the-new-top-dogs&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/here-is-the-full-inequality-speech-and-slideshow-that-was-too-hot-for-ted/257323/

http://theologica.ning.com/profiles/blogs/two-dozen-interpretations-of-genesis-1

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2008/10/brain-science-and-the-soul

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystrophin

http://physrev.physiology.org/content/82/2/291.full

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/14/new-generation-new-evangelicalism/?LLM=rog.jod%40bigpond.net.au

http://www.alternet.org/story/155414/5_ways_conservatives_are_destroying_the_institution_of_marriage

http://welldonechef.com/tricks-of-the-trade-cherry-tomatoes.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/education/at-explore-charter-school-a-portrait-of-segregated-education.html

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/commenting-moderation-and-provocation/46878

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2012/05/16/evolving-evangelicalism-part-7/

Ken Ham brings up a fascinating idea on his FB page.

quote:
Recently there was a news item about poor scores in science for American students. Over the past few years, I’ve seen articles by secularists where they blame the teaching of creation–but evolution has been taught as fact in the public schools for a long time–creation, Bible, prayer etc were thrown out many years ago. Actually, because the secularists basically dictate the science curriculum students are not being taught how to think correctly about science–for instance, students aren’t taught the difference between historical science (belief about the past–eg: molecules to man evolution) and observational science (empiricism-based on the repeatable test–it came out of a Christian basis understanding the laws of logic, the laws of nature and the uniformity of nature that only make sense on the basis of the biblical God). The more the curricula abandons the Christian basis it once had philosophically, the system will be bankrupt and scores will continue to be bad.
Richard Williams I’m not sure i understand the argument. The US has low science scores compared to such fully secularized nations such as Singapore, China, and Finland because Biblical creationism has been removed from the teaching of science in the US. What did i miss?

Ken Ham Richard -yes you did miss something–that is not what was said. Evolutionists have claimed at times that it is the teaching of creation that has contributed to low science scores etc–but that is nonsense as creation has all but been eliminated for years. Now it is true that even secular philosophers will agree that the empiricism that built our modern technology came out of a Christian basis philosophically–certainly other cultures have taken this and run with it from a pragmatic perspective.

Edward Lynch You can’t get good science scores out of a corrupt foundation. God will not bless our education system as long as we continue to leave Him out of it including the Bible. God is the perfect scientists since He created all the scientific laws in the first place. The evolutionists are really getting desperate trying to blame creationism for our failing science programs since they have almost total control of the U.S. educational system.
end quote

i think it is disrespectful to argue over at KH’s fb page, it’s not meant to be a discussion forum, but this place is a forum for thoughtful and helpful sharing..

so to KH’s ideas i reply thinking:
thank you very much, that does help.

So does the empirical, pragmatic, utilitarian bent of Chinese Confucian derived culture where education and learning is highly prized and sought after in places as diverse as Singapore, Shanghai and the dozens of Chinatowns around the globe give them an advantage when teaching modern science? why do they do so well in technology and science? they have no creationism inherent in their thinking at all. so that can have no effect. likewise there is little to no Christian influence in mainland Chinese thinking. if there is an influence from Christianity we ought to see it by comparing Singapore and Taiwan and Overseas Chinese to PRC.

i’ve long been interested in Chinese culture. it is entirely uninfluenced by the core greek-roman hebraic-christian ideas that formed western civilization until the missionary movement of the mid 19thC. what i’m curious about is how the Confucian ideals influence science differently than do the various forms of Christianity.

is young earth creationism, either by itself or part of a larger conservative subculture a hindrance on the scientific enterprise as KH claims the secularists claim?

there is the larger rather common claim made that Christianity gives rise to modern science and the auxiliary claim that secular philosophy can not by itself sustain science. that’s interesting but too big a topic i think.

that should KH propose? from the comments it’s clear that evolution is not really being taught in american schools, to many Christians who think evolution is wrong basically quiet down the ET teaching below the college level. which i think is borne out by studies showing most americans does actually understand the science of biology. if his ideal is to put the Bible and YEC into American classrooms, what evidence can he point to that this would increase scientific literacy in an significant way?

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/03-hidden-epidemic-tapeworms-in-the-brain

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/subway-convergence/

http://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/2012/05/jumping-genes-and-epigenetics.html

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/africa-cooking-charcoal-kills-millions.html

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/kindle-touch-review-giveaway/

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/blue_man_coup_how_gadhafis_mercenaries_broke_mali_20120516/

i wonder if he hit his head http://io9.com/5910735/icelandic-politician-moves-30+ton-boulder-onto-his-property-so-he-can-hang-out-with-elves

http://io9.com/5910629/the-practice-of-beheading-is-alive-and-well-today

http://www.cracked.com/article_19829_6-scientific-advances-courtesy-reckless-self-endangerment_p2.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/the-peculiar-victorian-taxidermist-who-created-the-national-zoo/257251/

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/05/15/484462/james-o-keefe-voter-fraud-north-carolina/?mobile=nc

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/05/afghanistan-like-football-may-be.html?ref=hp

http://worldcrunch.com/frog-killing-fungus-sweeps-globe/5274

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/2012/05/15/out_of_the_mouth_of_babes/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/05/16/freedom-from-fungus-why-dont-humans-have-chestnut-style-blights-and-white-nose-style-syndromes/

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/making-it-home/6-ideas-for-sensible-homes

http://gigaom.com/2012/05/16/google-shakes-up-search-with-new-wikipedia-like-feature/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/16/italian-police-open-a-mobster-s-vatican-owned-tomb-in-search-of-a-missing-girl.html

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/16/health/georgia-flesh-eating-bacteria/index.html

http://www.newser.com/story/146133/honda-unveils-segway-competitor-the-uni-cub.html

http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/alzheimers-gene-opens-floodgate-in-brain/

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2012/05/how_to_smartly_engage_with_the_1.html

how the vote goes depends of which communities are told about it and how motivated they are to click through to vote. it would be interesting to do such a poll and capture how those who voted found the poll and display those results.

Dougs Blog: Do you support the Presidents stand on same-sex marriage?

www.visionforum.com

Do you support President Obama’s declaration favoring same sex marriage?…

Richard Williams

our political discourse becomes clever jokes and one liner slogans.
impoverishing not just the sphere but much of public life.
i find it sad. the commonweal should be so much more.

Wall Photos

The Obama Value Meal, order anything you want and the guy behind you has to pay …

Richard Williams shared a link.

There I Fixed It: Parenting Level: Watermelon

cheezburger.com

http://io9.com/5910946/will-we-ever-have-an-hiv-vaccine

http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.malin/mb.ashx malin surname board

direct link to randal search there http://boards.ancestry.com/searchResults.aspx?db=mb&gss=ancMB&rank=0&adv=&p=surnames.malin&csn=Malin&cst=board&gskw=randal&psrch=on&_F00029CB=&_F00027E2=&period=&_80004003=&_F0002BF1=&hc=50

link to book http://www.worldcat.org/title/randal-malin-a-quaker-from-cheshire-england-to-chester-now-delaware-co-pa-and-his-descendants/oclc/39383182

inter library loan request done

http://www.pennock.ws/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/jobless-seniors-long-term-unemployment_n_1516735.html?ref=business

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/gay_marriage_divides_republicans_as_polls_shift_the_gop_calls_it_divisive_.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/

http://www.cracked.com/article_19798_5-terrifying-secrets-about-riding-in-ambulance.html

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/07/david-ogilvy-on-writing/

http://permaculture.com.au/online/articles/why-gardening-makes-you-happy-and-cures-depression

http://lifehacker.com/5910524/how-to-cut-costs-and-save-money-when-shopping-on-amazon

http://lifehacker.com/5910408/from-saucy-pics-to-passwords-how-to-share-sensitive-information-over-the-internet

it bears a striking parallel to modern science, we see professionalization, standards, common epistemology, what qualifies as data/facts. all of these things are part of a changing worldview that looks at the universe very differently than did the ancients.

the big question is if we can capture enough elements of the ancient worldview to make a good faith analysis of what they though, rather than impressing our ideas onto them.

in struggling to understand barbara armstrong’s distinction between mythos and logos i’m not sure we can escape our cultures over riding commitments well enough to be able to see their POV. instead we will fight this myth vs truth endless rather useless battle….

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/13/152519575/maya-artwork-uncovered-in-a-guatemalan-forest?sc=fb&cc=fp

http://linealarboretum.blogspot.com/2012/05/stanley-sudeikis-was-not-bigamist.html

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/uss-freedom-navys-600m-showcase-ship-springs-some-leaks

http://www.politicususa.com/john-boehner-thinks-blind-stupid.html

from ken ham’s fb page

Answers Magazine is the premier resource for helping Christians defend creation and the biblical worldview. Covers creation, evolution, Genesis, science, the Bible and other topics in Christianity.

—-warning lights go off at THE biblical worldview. it’s the same problem with the truth project. the identification with their view as the only possible proper one.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israel-should-cancel-the-institution-of-marriage-1.430260

http://rachelheldevans.com/wright-common-misreadings-scripture

http://www.politicususa.com/john-boehner-thinks-blind-stupid.html

did you know she is still alive?
starred in the good earth, 1937

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luise_Rainer

http://bigthink.com/ideas/how-to-lose-23-lbs-in-28-days-hint-it-requires-radical-system-hacking

how am i supposed to understand Paul of Tarsus when i am a child of my time?

we talk about the genres of literature and whether or not Gen 1-5 are history in our modern sense. but we do so, all sides of the discussion, as thoroughly modern people. our culture has shaped us since birth, has molded our minds into seeing some things as important and others not so.

all of these discussions are themselves a genre, we don’t generally argue in poetry, or break out in song when thinking about the meaning of yom, or be moved to write a story by the problem of the canon. we approach these things intellectually, with words mostly scientific and full of logical reasoning, didactic, aimed at persuasion and teaching.

here is a piece written as poetry, full of images, very different from our accustomed fare.

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=19590

it reminds me how many different ways there are of seeing the world, around me now, and how very far away i am from being able to understand 1st C hellenized jews like Paul let alone ancient near middle east minds like the writers of Genesis.

poetry can speak to our fears more directly than reading a textbook about the amygdala can. the genres of the Bible are those intended to last in how they speak to people. how well do you think a modern neurology textbook will age compared to these short piece?

http://www.bigthink.com/think-tank/what-everyone-needs-to-know-about-genetics

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/mayweb-only/romney-liberty-invitation.html

reading Scripture without reference to external sources=solo Scriptura and the problem of the canon

I am seeing the phrase “i read Scripture without reference to external sources” pop up in some of the discussions here. i label this hermeneutic “just me and my Bible” or solo Scriptura. the problem is that the object labelled “Bible” is already a result of external forces, in fact, a very long and checkered history of intrigue.

the very index, the list of works to be included in this book-the Bible, is a product of history not of any text included in it. i don’t know why people adopting this hermeneutic do not feel the tension inherent in the position, but apparently they do not. both those books included, what variant sections of those works to iclude and those works not the include is a story told by history and therefore external to the text itself.

the very name-bible is a reference to byblos, a historical place where the codex form of books and widespread paper-(itself from papyrus) manufacturing were done. the form the original works were written on was probably vellum in scroll format. but the fact of creating a book, a new format, with a table of contents, is a very new invention, one the writers of those scrolls did not participate in.

the problem of the canon is a serious one, for there is not a single canon but about a dozen represented by communities currently existing and many innumerable more gone.

historical communities created their version of the Bible, most likely people taking this position are reading an English translation(another external reference issue indeed) with a protestant 16thC post-printing canon, lacking a few of the verses the KJV included like the ending of Mark, which have been shown to most people to be spurious.

but in any case, how can the solo Scriptura position even begin to acknowledge the problem of the canon?

it is further curious that such people would ask for verses-chapter designations as those too are historical and therefore external to the text and by their own criteria inadmissible.

let me try to under the position that the events of gen 2 are not a competing creation account but rather a more specific accounting of day 6-creation of man&woman.

so day 6 dawns, i expect that the events leading up to the garden of eden’s creation could have been done the night before. the creation and filling of the four rivers that mark the site of the garden.

so God creates the garden. puts Adam in it and then creates all the wild animals and birds of the air. that ought to fill up Adam’s morning.

then he begins to feel alone. before an afternoon nap, where Eve is created.

my question is, where is the stopping point for what you desire to cram into the 6th day? the requirements from Gen 1 seem to be just their creation as male and female. but there is no mention of God resting on the 7th day. in fact the 7th day of rest is never mentioned in Genesis after chapter 1, there is no reference at all to a command of the Sabbath. the only ancient people to have a 7 day week were the sumerians, everyone else had the much more logical one of 5 or 10 days.

in any case, where does the 6th day end in genesis 2-5?

http://www.bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/taking-the-christianity-out-of-sex

http://www.bigthink.com/experts-corner/the-future-of-architecture-no-new-buildings

i see the issue as this great curtain that is invisible to the unbelieving not-YEC, situated 6Kya ago, it represents reality with the created by apparent ages projected on the back of it to deceive those who won’t exercise their faith properly to see that it is a curtain/screen.
real history-real time proceeds from the curtain.

the curious thing is why God who made this projection, this apparent history of the universe before 6Kya look so much like He evolved it. the only answer i can see is God is decartes demon, morton’s demon, the coyote trickster God who wishes to deceive unbelievers in YEC so that in the last judgement He can say “i told you so”.

my interest is in biology. if the current research on y chromosome and mitochrondrial mutation rates lead to a single couple at 6Kya i would seriously rethink things.

if the YEC curtain of history is proper metaphor.
the real issue is about the historicity of Adam&Eve.
they are on this side, the real history side, of the YECst curtain.
they are a unique creation according to the YEC so there ought not be any false projected history in their genome like there would be in the creatures around them.
if modern genetics pointed strongly towards a single foundational pair that was 6Kya, i’d be interested in resurrecting the whole issue.
but it doesn’t. at all. we can trace paternal haplotype mutations back far further than 6Kya.

https://www.vulcanhammer.org/2012/05/12/its-hard-to-explain-the-desire-for-freedom-to-people-who-have-never-had-it/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2012/05/khirbet-qeiyafas-model-shrines-and-the-accuracy-of-the-bible.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/05/guest-post-science-is-reliable-sorry-skeptics-no-grand-conspiracy-against-god/

http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929712001462.pdf?intermediate=true

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-lane/faith-according-to-the-bibles_b_1496778.html

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/romney-style-hair-preferred-at-liberty-univ.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

http://www.worldcrunch.com/ex-toyota-engineer-who-barely-survived-tsunami-build-floating-car/5302

http://www.worldcrunch.com/departing-gis-leave-german-host-city-huge-urban-planning-headache/5204

http://www.cracked.com/article_19791_the-6-craziest-people-who-are-overpopulating-world_p2.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

http://www.worldcrunch.com/squirrel-wars-italy-vows-eliminate-its-american-grey-invaders/5282

give me an airline ticket, i’ll be glad to help

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/facebook-co-founder-saverin-gives-up-u-s-citizenship-before-ipo.html

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/12/14/bbcs-richard-feynman-no-ordinary-genius/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/us/habitat-for-humanity-tries-big-scale-approach-to-housing-in-oregon.html?smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=US-E-FB-SM-LIN-HFH-051112-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

http://bigthink.com/ideas/how-stories-mislead-us

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/05/wildlife-services-sacramento-bee

http://theologica.ning.com/forum/topics/age-of-the-earth?commentId=2124612%3AComment%3A413141

http://rubiconblog.com/2012/04/30/the-hackness-gun-battery-in-orkney-napoleon-pirates-sir-walter-scott-and-fenians/

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/time_magazines_breastfeeding_issue_gets_the_photoshop_treatment

http://www.eonline.com/news/time_magazines_breastfeeding_cover/315338

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=huge-asteroid-vesta-actually-is-an-ancient-protoplanet&print=true

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/11-2

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/science/archaeologists-unearth-ancient-maya-calendar-writing.html?_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=SC-E-FB-SM-LIN-PMW-051112-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120510132715.htm

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/05/11/blackbird-is-a-super-charged-pedal-powered-super-cruiser/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/opinion/the-human-cost-of-ideology.html?smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-E-FB-SM-LIN-HCI-051112-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/11/152507126/for-evangelicals-romney-is-the-lesser-of-two-evils?ft=1&f=1016

http://www.everydayisaholiday.org/ wow

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/disputed-territory-is-mainly-underwater/

http://www.newser.com/story/145873/woman-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shot.html

http://www.livescience.com/20264-meteorite-hunt-california-fireball.html

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2012/05/a_follow-up_to_tuesdays_post_a.php

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2011-05/1304323585

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/05/09/152351793/obama-gambles-on-gay-marriage?sc=fb&cc=fp

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/05/09-5

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/09/going-solo-klinenberg/

-=-=-=-=-

i think you guys are right, there are here two competing fundamentally different group epistemologies. one, science, strives to be changing, trying for greater conformity with what people can see of the world. the other tries for stability, seeing it’s conformity with an ancient text as the root of it’s knowledge. as each looks at the other it criticizes based on it’s own approach.

so we see AiG and KH’s FB comments decry the ever changing nature of science as a REALLY BAD THING, completely oblivious of how their theology has evolved to get to them, because they think in terms of stability and consistency with the past. evolving is a bad thing.

-=-=-=-=-

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/obamas-leap-of-faith-on-gay-marriage/256975/

http://biologos.org/blog/series/godawa-cosmic-geography need to read later. book due today.

quote:

I am becoming more and more convinced that the vast majority of scientists value what one could call transcendent realities. I’m not talking about ‘religion’, which for some has negative connotations*. By ‘transcendent’ I mean experiences and ideals that are consonant with but go beyond scientific evidence: that feeling of pure joy when you find yourself discovering something for the first time; delight in the beauty of nature or scientific data; the standards we set for ourselves; or the importance we place on certain relationships.

from: http://scienceandbelief.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/transcendence/

http://www.worldcrunch.com/mother-56-thanks-assisted-fertility-now-fights-custody-daughter/5289

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/05/09/16-of-cancers-are-caused-by-viruses-or-bacteria/

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27836/?p1=blogs

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/05/08/could-a-renewed-push-for-access-to-fossil-data-finally-topple-paleoanthropologys-culture-of-secrecy/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/09/is_this_cold_war_2_0/?source=newsletter

Life and Scripture surprisingly parallel, both are bricolage.

I’ve been thinking awhile now due to threads here about Easter Eggs.
Those software secret pop ups that are hidden, just waiting for a click or other action to disclose.

bricolage is one of those fascinating words that capture the essence of something, in this case the rube goldberg, must use that is available at hand in this creatures genome.

Scripture is like that in several ways. It is part of the cultural scene of it’s times, it doesn’t have easter eggs, which would be the obvious way for any intelligent designer to write so that future generations would be very confident it came from a superior being. It would have been simple put easter eggs in Scripture so that when mankind got to that stage, it would pop out. Say, nuclear energy, or phasars.

Life could have been designed with easter eggs as well. my favorite example is what if God had made the human 3 codon transfer rna to amino acid coding table unique. With no other creature sharing it, everyone would be a creationist for human beings. No questions could be entertained, humanity must have been uniquely created. Or even better for YECists, each kind would have this extraordinary kind barrier, it’s own codon table.

easter eggs in the Bible, secret messages in life, did the intelligent designer miss an opportunity to prove his existence?

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/in-jerusalem-possible-site-of-ancient-church-s-miracle-is-revealed-1.429587