This proves that there is indeed a new species.

Of scientist.

The chemist's understanding is even more deficient than you mentioned. He avers that commercial utility is the criterion of scientific truth, and then delivers this facile clinker: "Since evolution has been the dominant theory of biology for more than a century, it's a safe statement that all of the wonderful innovations in medicine and agriculture that we derive from biological research stem from the theory of evolution."

Instead of mock concern for the future of science students in backward Kansas, Mr. Thorp should be worried about the woeful education of chemistry students at the University of North Carolina, where he is Chairman.

Posted by: jd watson at May 12, 2006 1:22 PM

So what exactly is it that makes this a new separate species, and if those criteria were applied to humans, would the number of species be above or below a dozen?

Mr. Ortega, it's rude to ask the Whore's price before you have shown your're not a policeman.....

OJ's cranky crusade against the concept of species is, at the core, the same disagreement I had with a friend some years ago. He was claiming the concept of race was meaningless, because there were no clear-cut genetic markers, natural phenotypic variations, it was all a spectrum, etc. My response: "So are the concepts of night and day refuted by the existence of dawn and dusk?"

Same thing here. Obviously all living things aren't the same, and people started creating taxonomies long before Darwin. What constitutes a separate species is controversial, because living things aren't neatly designed and so don't all fit in neat categories.

So where does your idea stop, OJ? Genus? Family? Order? Class? Phylum? Kingdom? Or is it only the concept of species that is some form of mass illusion among biologists? And what, exactly, is the point of denying the existence of species? Do you think taxonomy undermines faith?

Well, PapayaSF, I would thing at the point were interbreeding isn't possible, but then there wouldn't be all those indangered 'species' would there? You only have to take money once to be forever labeled a whore.....

Papaya:

Exactly, that's why Darwinism leads to racism.

So Darwinism leads to racism because taxonomy undermines faith? So then taxonomy leads to racism?

Maybe because Darwinism pushs differences and competion for limited resources?

Pap:

No, because if you believe in species then the different races are different species.

Oooookaaaaaay, I say, backing away slowly. I must say I've never heard of anyone believing such a thing. Can you point to anyone else who does?

And you never answered my question about genus, family, order, etc. So it would follow that you don't believe there's a real distinction between plants and animals?

Papaya:

There is a distinction between people seeing a difference in what they encounter in life and postulating a hard objective, scientific difference in species or genus. Your fellow darwinist, Robert Duquette, is fond of arguing that the reason we have found so few intermediate species is that everything is intermediate and we are just not recognizing them as so. I have no doubt you reject the notion that different races are different species for non-scientific reasons that do you credit, but how can you justify that rejection scientifically when you are surrounded by excited scientists insisting every monkey, butterfly, salamander, etc. they stumble upon is a different species?

Papaya:

That's why the far Right beleves so fiercely in Darwinism and why guys like Gould bailed on it as sociobiology returned racialism to biology.

Papaya, Didn't Darwin write that in 'The Ascent of Man'? And of course the 'races' differ as much as the snail darter differs from a regular darter. I thought the whole point of science was to find natural law and understand it, apply it.

Forget man for a minute. Can anyone explain why a Duchsand and a Great Dane are the same species?

Careful, Mr. Cohen. Are you saying that pygmies aren't human?

Because they can breed.

I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for
the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember
what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being
overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The
more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow
in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant
date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been
eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.

Letter to W. Graham July 3rd, 1881

pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin/texts/letters/letters1_08.html

Churck:

Ah, what do you know about Darwinism....

OJ: I would say that I would pay money to see that, except that I really, really wouldn't.

Robert: Why would I say that?

David:

According to Darwinism, a Swede never having bred with a pygmy the two are different species.

Mr. Cohen I'm not accusing you of saying that, however; Poodle is to Great Dane as Pygmie is to normal person. Perhaps we need a clearer definition of 'species'?

There's no such thing as species. Give them their way and they'll destroy that of genus too.

The endangered Genus act of 2007? How would you write that up?

Yes, that's just one of their problems: note, for example, that the spotted owl isn't a species:

www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/2004/11/peppered_owl_1.html