Sure, a vast majority of the posts at Evolution News & Views and Uncommon Descent are full of scientific and philosophical errors, but you have to admit that they at least make some superficial sense, even if that surface layer of sense-making is brushed away by even the slightest touch. Well, Denyse O’Leary, a “good friend” of mine, noticed that trend and clearly sought to even things out a little – you know, put the concept of intelligent design in an intellectual environment that reveals more of its true nature.
Presenting: “Just a hack writer, but … question” Oh. Dear. Lordy-lord.
If you didn’t just click on the link above and read it, do so now, just do it. Do it and be prepared to have at least 60% of your neural tissue undergo apoptosis in order to provide nutrients for the other 40%, who just realised that they’re going to be doing a fair bit of overtime work in the next week. Do it and be prepared to encounter, perhaps for the first time ever, something that you will never ever fully understand.
I can’t post it all, because I’m not mean enough to inflict harm on the people who decided against clicking the link based on the medical warning I gave, but I can post snippets, short segments that might warm up those apoptotic biochemical pathways, but won’t unleash the full cascade:
But now! We’ve got him! We will put a chimp from the local zoo of similar age beside him (securely buckled in, because we would not want anything bad to happen to our man).
If both are more than 30 years old, and are normal specimens, how many people will believe that they are 98% identical?
What woman, otherwise consigned to being a spinster, would marry the chimp if she didn’t get the man? After all, the chimp is supposedly 98% of a man.
What?! Because if the woman did think they were 98% identical, then she would marry the chimpanzee?! What has a woman’s marriage preference got to do with evolutionary theory? Would the woman (assuming she’s heterosexual) marry a woman if she didn’t get a man? After all, female and male humans are part of the same species, and therefore are about 99.9% similar. Of course, I forgot, the woman has no choice, does she? Someone’s genetic similarity to oneself dictates sexual attraction! This is a basic fact of life that we all learn in high school!
…
Actually, the chimp isn’t a man at all. He belongs in the wilds, or a preserve, or a zoo somewhere. Whatever works. Every woman in the world knows this.
Yes, he does, because he’s a chimpanzee! That ~2% of genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is quite a bit, in terms of changes that might affect a certain individual’s choice of whether or not they want them as a mate. Too much body hair? Could be due to one gene change. Different facial features? Only handful of developmental genes might be responsible.
It doesn’t take much to “deform” (from a “normal human”) someone genetically until they are completely unattractive to another person of the same species. O’Leary should realise this, because she is, of course, a woman, which is a highly relevant characteristic when it comes to thinking about genetics and determining sequence similarity from visual appearance only.
The last part of the article is the most confusing, because I think I know what she’s trying to say, but the wording is so strange and weird that she could be expressing something entirely different. I really have no idea:
So, my question is, what is this 98% similarity thing based on, other than to discredit genetics?
How does… How does a measured 98% similarity in genetic material between two species of organism discredit genetics? How?! What possible problems could arise with the concept of chromosomes, with sexual reproduction, with mutation, with DNA packing, with transposons, with introns, with RNA interference…because of this observation?
Oh, O’Leary… You can’t top this…
I… just… how do you even… this makes no sense on any level whatsoever. I honestly don't understand these people. Maybe they are a different species from the rest of us.
This is just weird and nonsensical. Even for her.
Atheists
GET OUT OF MY UNIVERSE…
you little liars do nothing but antagonize…
and you try to eliminate all the dreams and hopes of humanity…
but you LOST…
THE DEATH OF ATH*ISM – SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF GOD
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?t=280780
Einstein puts the final nail in the coffin of atheism…
*************************************
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vpw4AH8QQ
*************************************
atheists deny their own life element…
LIGHT OR DEATH, ATHEISTS?
********************************
***************************LIGHT*********
************************************
I love you, David!
Oh, David Mabus. So many pseudonyms, so little time.
At the risk of feeding the trolls, I must admit that I'm curious: "but you LOST"? Lost what? Did I miss that memo?
Did I say "weird and nonsensical"?
Weird and nonsensical attracts weird and nonsensical, Mick.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by naontiotami: New Homologous Legs blog post: “O’Leary – Argh, my brain! You’ve melted my brain!” http://is.gd/b9h34…
Thanks for this disclaimer. Saved my brain cells
No worries. Always thinking of you, Sean. You've seen enough stupid over the years that you need to conserve that buffer of neural tissue you installed. ;)
Actually, a woman's marriage preference has everything to do with sexual selection!
Sorry to be serious, but it is a useful post. It demonstrates the complete lack of understanding of genetics out there – she obviously thinks there's some sort of one-to-one correlation between genes and appearance. And I can see where she would get this idea, check out highschool genetics and it's mostly about eye colour and peas. So it tells us an area where we have to look at education and do a better job. As a Secondary science teacher, that's useful.
Of course, sexual selection does exist. But Denyse isn't talking about that, she's rambling and babbling about something completely separate. I… think… :p
Yes, genetics is very misunderstood. I wish they taught more of it in high school – and made it interesting. I knew a lot of people in high school who hated genetics, simply because of the way it appears in textbooks and how teachers explain it.
I'd like to purchase her house, and right here, I have a big stack of US$100 bills. What do you mean? Doesn't it look like just a stack of money? I have another question: Since when do you have to marry non-human specious just to mate with them?
Juxtapose Denyse O’Leary with a female chimpanzee, and I know who I'd want to date. Pucker up Cheetah, Tarzan's home.
And if I'm not mistaken the human genome is about 3 billion base pairs. Multiply by 2%, and we get a 60-million base difference between humans and chimps. And a 2.94-billion base similarity. Do creationists have this much trouble understanding how not all frogs are toads, but all toads are frogs?
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Um, wow. That last bit sounds like she really is trying to "discredit genetics." Apparently that's yet another field that needs to be rejected to support anti-evolution attitudes. And to think that ID tries to appear to be more moderate than more honest forms of creationism…
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