Mother Nature copies genes better than people copy Bibles

[arendt]

Louisiana House Passes Anti-Evolution Bill; Enactment Expected.

The Louisiana House of Representatives, by a vote of 94-3, last week passed an "academic freedom" bill that singles out evolution and other theories or fields of science and implies that they are controversial. Because of an amendment, the bill must now go back to the Senate, which previously passed it unanimously. Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) is expected to sign it. AAAS had sent a letter to all House members last Tuesday, June 10, opposing the bill. Meanwhile, Gov. Jindal defended discussion of intelligent design in schools during a June 15 interview on CBS’s "Face the Nation."

- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

American politicians have lost their minds, if they ever had them. This bill is the most transparent piece of high-level pandering to religion since the Terri Schiavo circus - and Jindal is on McCain's VP list.

If you know the first thing about genetics, you know that the mutation rate is well-known. Its a simple, observable fact:

Our results suggest that the average mammalian genome mutation rate is 2.2 × 10−9 per base pair per year, which provides further opportunities for estimating species and population divergence times by using molecular clocks.

- Sudhir Kumar and Sankar Subramanian, "Mutation rates in mammalian genomes", PNAS 99, 803 (2002)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=117386

So, the evidence is that Mother Nature makes 2 mistakes per year per one billion letters of DNA in ALL the animals in a given species.

According to: http://www.chiprowe.com/articles/fun-with-taxes.html, there are 774,746 words in the Bible. So, a single cell could make sequential copies of the Bible almost 650 times in a year and still have the same text, to the letter.

Given the tumultuous history of the compiling and dogmatization of the Bible, and the countless translations of the Bible into various languages and Versions (King James, Scofield Reference, Nag Hammadi, and everything in between) over the 1,700 years since the first official compilation at Nicea, there is no doubt that some mutations have crept in. In fact, you could consider the Bible to have evolved into mutually-incompatible species.

And yet, these idiot politicians are telling me that their crapola has equal time with science?

How do we put an end to this massive campaign to enthrone stupidity and arbitrary judgment about a pile of words without supporting evidence?

Would Obama dare to speak out on this?

arendt

[islandmkl]

1. "...dat'll show dem intlectuls whatzwhat...."

[MedleyMisty]

7. Well, you know that if you can spell

you're an intellectual snob who thinks that you're better than everyone else. Equality means equally ignorant.

[LiberalFighter]

2. May Jindal and his ilk all be struck down by lightening

Most of the errors made in the Bible were made from the time the Roman Catholic Church created the Bible and to at least the time of the Gutenberg Press.

[Juche]

3. No, Obama wouldn't

I like Obama and his policies, but I doubt he has the courage to come out and say what needs to be said. That we as a nation need to start acting like better citizens.

Barely 2% of us donate money to politics, most of us really don't understand the issues very deeply and barely half of us vote. Huge numbers of us are grossly ignorant or misinformed about civics (barely 20% know we have 100 senators and 2/3 of young people can't find Iraq on a map). I am by no means perfect either, I was mostly apathetic to politics until 2007. But if I spouted out a bunch of nonsense I would prefer people hold me accountable for it rather than pander to me for it.

For Obama to come out and say 'we all need to start doing better in our jobs as informed, rational citizens; myself included', would be extremely courageous and controversial, which is why he will not do it. He'll pander like the rest and pretend we are all doing a heckuva job in our responsibility as citizens.

And these creationists are the same people who think global climate change is a hoax. Huge numbers of us believe climate change is a hoax and creationism is a science. We need to be held accountable for this level of ignorance. Stupidity should be something to be ashamed of, not pandered to.

[pt22]

4. What you said. And it sucks that it has to be said.

:shrug:

[TexasObserver]

5. A state where far too many people have a family tree that doesn't fork ...

... it's a shame they dismiss genetics and evolution so readily.

[drm604]

6. 94 to 3?

:banghead: