Harvester on 7/8/2011 at 00:15
Actually, Creationists do believe in micro-evolution, changes within a species, as seen here. They just don't believe in macro-evolution, that is a species evolving into a different species.
What I always think is a good argument against Creationism is the placement of fossils in the ground. They claim that the different layers of soil were all created during the great flood and are not evidence of a millions-of-years-old Earth. And they claim that all the species were created in a 6 day period. Well then, why do all the old (according to evolution) layers contain fossils of all the old, now extinct species, and the new layers of newer species? Why aren't there any human or modern animal bones in the oldest layers, if all species were created in 6 consecutive days and all the layers of soil were created in a short time period during the great flood?
They will then probably answer that more advanced species were able to reach higher ground during the flood, but that's only an explanation for a general tendency to have more advanced species show up in the highest layers of soil. What we see though is that not a single human or modern animal bone or fossil shows up in the oldest layers. Surely there should've been a few animals or humans that couldn't reach higher ground in time, or a few simpler life forms that could? The complete absence of "old" species in "new" layers and vice versa is really suspicious.
I've stopped following Creationism as a movement after too many "you're not a real Christian if you're not a Creationist" encounters, so maybe they have counter-arguments to this that I'm unaware of, but I've never seen them.
june gloom on 7/8/2011 at 03:15
Quote Posted by CCCToad
As, uh, interesting as that is about the beatles, its not really any different or less obnoxious than the way humans have to go about the same thing. It generally requires one to go about in institutions where music is blasting at a volume designed to make you deaf, dressing up and acting like a pretentious douchebag (or as some call it, "peacocking" and acting "cocky"). Human females will try to ward off lesser males by acting like a bitch to any approaches from males who, as judged by their demeanor, don't seem to make the cut.
So, we should add women to the list of things you have no fucking clue about? That makes perfect sense.
CCCToad on 7/8/2011 at 03:52
I don't think you've ever been out in clubs much.
Let me put it simpler: Women act like a bitch to drive away the losers because it works.
If you really think women don't react differently to approaches by different guys then you've never been in a position to observe. Try going out Friday night with an attractive female friend if you doubt me.
demagogue on 7/8/2011 at 12:08
By the way -- reading an article today -- speaking of ridiculous dissonance, this time on the atheist side for very cynical reasons:
Quote:
Although officially atheist, the Chinese Communist Party asserts that only it has the authority to pick top spiritual leaders [like the top Tibetan lamas], who, according to Tibetan theology, are reincarnated from deceased religious figures.
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/asia/07lama.html) Link.
That's insane and dreadfully cynical, though hardly surprising coming from the Chinese gov't. Religions may have weird rules, and you don't want those rules running politics, but they're still their own rules and it's just as dumb to see politics running religion like that.
SubJeff on 7/8/2011 at 12:51
Quote Posted by CCCToad
Let me put it simpler: Women act like a bitch to drive away the losers because it works.
If you really think women don't react differently to approaches by different guys then you've never been in a position to observe. Try going out Friday night with an attractive female friend if you doubt me.
Sounds like it's your friend who is the bitch. I've never seen one of my girlfriends or female friends act bitchy to stop a guy's attentions. Making things clear and being firm is not the same thing as being bitchy.
Vasquez on 7/8/2011 at 13:04
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Making things clear and being firm is not the same thing.
It could be, if you're the one turned down ;)
Syndy/3 on 7/8/2011 at 13:11
So a woman turning down a male's offer is acting like a bitch, because ... She should distribute her charms fairly across the whole male population? Is your view of women completely based on internet porn or just parts of it, CCCToad?
demagogue on 7/8/2011 at 13:48
You guys are getting side tracked by the semantics of the word "bitch", when the point is there are studies finding that women act differently towards the same suitors when they "know" different things about them, such as a hypothetical income, acting coolly or warmly as the case may be, sometimes both in the same encounter as their knowledge changes. It's not even a surprising claim. You guys just don't like his use of the term "bitch" to describe the cool-phase, which is fair enough, but it doesn't change the practice. And there's a good case it's rooted in (1) limbic regulation and (2) by extension, the logic of evolutionary psychology. (Edit: Whether or not that's what he actually meant, I think that's what he should have meant.)
SubJeff on 7/8/2011 at 13:56
Doesn't everyone act differently towards people depending on what they know about them? Isn't that a given?
That wasn't the issue - its CCCTit saying that " its not really any different or less obnoxious than the way humans have to go about the same thing" and then suggesting that women act "like a bitch" to ward of men.
Being "cool" is not the same as being "bitchy".
demagogue on 7/8/2011 at 14:35
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Doesn't everyone act differently towards people depending on what they know about them? Isn't that a given?
I don't know exactly where CCCT was going, so I'll stick with my own thinking from a few books I've read. We're talking about evolutionary psychology so ... I think you have to distinguish between responses that are rooted in the limbic system (strong urges in your gut that says something is "right" or "wrong" that come out as emotional reactions; for women: income-size, authoritativeness & their own fathers; for men: tit-size, hair length & submissiveness) versus "cold" responses that are coming from the frontal lobe where you reason out what you want to do and act on it.
In the former, there's a good case the urge is rooted in evolutionary logic, i.e., sexual selection strategies that statistically optimized gene-selection in the Pleistoscene era (already several times removed from relevance in our era in specific instances). In the latter, you can say the individual is being adaptive to their environment and they transcend their "base urges" so to speak, choosing their own path by force of reason & will (to take the existentialist bent; guess what I just played?).
Anyway, the difference between those two types of response is familiar to us as how emotive the response comes out. When a woman is limbicly turned off by a man, it comes out as an emotive cooling. If she's the kind that shows her emotion on her sleeve & has no habit of checking it (like a poker player), then you can imagine a look of disgust on her face, wrinkling of the nose, downturn of lip-corners, and bitchiness is in the cards depending on the personality. That's a natural reaction, and it can take a conscious choice to subdue it. Getting pissed at CCCT for overplaying the bitchy card I think is trying to give women more credit for being able to control their limbic reactions, and it's a cultural thing; we can imagine some women that joyfully let their disgust show and others that are very reserved and "proper", and have an opinion about the "society" they're playing into. (Or the analogous situation for men.)
OTOH, if a woman just acts robotically on her reason she can compose herself and then a guy can feel like she's giving everyone a fair chance and picks out the one that's actually better for her in our era rather than just caving to pleistoscene era bias, which may not even make her that happy. Then it comes across as "slavish" when people make decisions like that, and you want to hope people would be more open-minded & "rational". But of course there's a deep suspicion of people deciding things so "robotically" and "rationally", especially in matters of romance, which itself is probably a deep limbic reaction for evolutionary reasons.
Edit: I don't know if I have a point here. Most of my friends, men & women, I'd class in the low-key, college-educated group that are pretty composed in most situations, and might look down on somebody showing too much emotion as acting boarishly, though they probably wouldn't mention the "class" aspect arguably behind it, but that's part of it (but they wouldn't make a big deal of it anyway; they just wouldn't be in that kind of crowd), but they'd be quite adamant that it's very important to point out that *they* wouldn't be bitchy in turning down a guy. There's just the shades of culture-war dynamics behind CCCT's statement & the response.
