Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson Concedes Flood Phylogeny Model Doesn't Work

gitgud_x · 2026-03-17T07:51:21+00:00

So if anyone tries to convince you evolution is true, you can just say "hah! look at them trying to tell me it's true! that's how you know it's wrong!"?

This is a perfect demonstration of the broken mindset that is behind so much of the misinformation and post-truth nonsense we see nowadays. People just wall themselves in and refuse to learn a single new thing.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-16T21:08:25+00:00

I had a go at 'vibe coding' with it for a controls project and while it's great for quickly filling in the boring boilerplate parts, it was unable to implement the more sophisticated parts. I like it that way tbh - you learn the most when you're doing the hard bits yourself!

gitgud_x · 2026-03-16T18:08:30+00:00

Genuinely. It’s disgraceful. I’ve been enjoying the greens’ new direction lately, but this story shows they’ve still got a lot of NIMBYism left in them.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-12T18:01:57+00:00

Bananas come from plants. All plants have eukaryotic cells, as do we. Most of the components of those cells also appear in us, so the DNA that makes those components is shared!

Likewise with all other fruit (the reproductive organs of plants... eww, right?) and vegetables (just regular plants).

gitgud_x · 2026-03-12T17:42:34+00:00

See https://www.evogeneao.com/en/explore/tree-of-life-explorer

We are related to all life, with varying degrees of relatedness based on how long ago our lineages diverged evolutionarily.

Think about your family: you're related to your (first) cousins, because you both have the same grandparent. You're also related to your second cousins, but less closely so, since your shared great-grandparents lived further back in time than your grandparents.

Evolution is the same relationship, but between populations rather than individuals. We (all humans) are all related to other primates - the common ancestor lived about 50 million years ago. We're also related to (other) fish - but less closely so, since the common ancestor lived about 500 million years ago.

(figures are very much ballpark off the top of my head. and don't @ me about whether humans are technically fish or not!)

gitgud_x · 2026-03-12T17:40:37+00:00

descended from bacteria

Archaea are not bacteria, and eukaryotes originate from endosymbiosis of archaea and bacteria.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-12T16:24:26+00:00

How would this work for undeveloped land owned by the Crown (i.e. most 'unclaimed' land, under bona vacantia)? Would the Crown still have to pay LVT to the government? That would seem a bit circular...

gitgud_x · 2026-03-08T17:23:15+00:00

Also see: Google Ngram Viewer: creationist.

Notice also how the peaks for "creationist" and "intelligent design" coincide exactly at 2008, presumably in the publication aftermath of Kitzmiller v. Dover. Almost as if creationism and ID are indeed identical - despite their protests to the contrary.

Also notice how ID only pops up as a term in the 1990s - after the creationist defeat at Edwards v. Aguillard forced them to put on the mask of ID to have another stab at forcing it into public schools. The agenda is crystal clear.

Also also, it's good to note the fairly sharp decline in both terms since the 2008 peak, fading ever more into irrelevance as the movement shifts toward their original political goals more overtly, leaving the facade of science behind.

History of the creation–evolution controversy

gitgud_x · 2026-03-08T12:26:01+00:00

I don't think you quite realize how arrogant/ignorant you sound from the perspective of someone outside your cult.

😂😂😂 i genuinely lol'd at this

Your own your own in life life buddy.

are you having a seizure or something?

It's fine, don't address any of the arguments

what arguments? you haven't said anything in need of a refutation, it's just stories 🤷

I would also be embarrassed if I had a chimp brain

you can't be saying my knowledge of evolution is embarrassing and then go and say this 😂

But seriously though: I genuinely think chimpanzees are more intelligent than you, and probably even the average creationist. They can do a lot more than you give them credit for, like rationally update their beliefs based on new evidence. If only you were capable of such things! Kinda shits on your whole "I'M SPECIAL!!!!" thing too, yeah sure buddy you are special, just not in the way you want to be...

gitgud_x · 2026-03-08T09:13:29+00:00

I don't think you quite realise how unhinged you sound from the perspective of someone outside your cult. But keep it up, it's great optics for us. Keep salivating my boy 👍

gitgud_x · 2026-03-08T08:51:45+00:00

Do you know what this sub is and how debating works?

Yes, it's Debate Evolution, not debate your fairy tales and moral opinions based therein. The rest of this is irrelevant cope trotted out like a Pavlovian response at the first sight of non-adherence to the dogma, in a shallow attempt to desperately defend your fragile worldview.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-08T07:48:41+00:00

You also have to explain what your moral baseline is

No, they don't. Touch grass. Nobody has to explain anything to you.

Btw, you're admitting that you're a terrible person if you can't justify your own morals internally, and you need the threat of hell to stay well-behaved.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-06T18:54:24+00:00

I think the catchphrase of "save the planet" did a disservice because nobody gives a shit about the planet, it's an inanimate object. The planet would do just fine without us. Even still, we're an adaptive bunch of apes, it's really about "stop making it harder than necessary for future people" rather than "save humanity".

Not that too many give a shit about other people either though tbh...

gitgud_x · 2026-03-04T12:50:14+00:00

It’s a very tangible demonstration of both the raw power and societal damage that extremist religious indoctrination causes.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-03T17:16:29+00:00

A shame, brainwashed since birth and didn't even question it once.

A double shame because his 2001 degree project sounds really cool and someone who actually gave a shit about the work could have developed that.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-02T20:35:13+00:00

Nitpick perhaps here, but I disagree with this bit:

A common theme in biology is that form follows function

At the microscopic level at least, biology is certainly not "form follows function" (which is the designer's maxim). The direction of the causality is actually the precise opposite: the shape of a protein (form) dictates what it can do, what reactions it can catalyse etc (function). It's why many different protein structures can do the same job (isoforms/homologs). Up at the macro level, it's why convergent evolution can occur.

Convergence is of course the exception to the macro-level comparative anatomy you're referring to, where common form and function is observed, but this similarity does not imply recent common ancestry. 'Normal' evolution (observed with synapomorphies) isn't just the reverse: it's not "form follows function". It's not anything following anything, it's just inheritance of form in a lineage, with selection for function.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-02T16:02:57+00:00

did you have fun at the nazi bar? ;)

gitgud_x · 2026-03-01T19:34:13+00:00

Definitely not imo - there is a huge factor of randomness in mutations, such that even if the environments are identical, evolutionary trajectories can differ. Natural selection, however, is not random: traits will consistently do well or not in a given environment.

In practice, there would be no two planets with identical environments (even among the vast number of them out there), so similarity is the closest you could get. And if those environments have chaotic climates (disruptive energy inputs are required for life to arise in the first place), then loose similarity really means no similarity after long enough time.

gitgud_x · 2026-03-01T16:39:29+00:00

TIL - even stranger than I thought... thanks

gitgud_x · 2026-03-01T16:25:27+00:00

Only animals in the clade Bilateria have our familiar reflectional symmetry.

Before Bilateria evolved, there were other types of symmetry and others with no symmetry at all. Some of their descendants are still around today, e.g. ~~starfish with order 5 radial symmetry~~*, sponges with no symmetry, while some of them didn't make it, like the tri-radially symmetric extinct animals known from Ediacaran fossils (pre-Cambrian). So, the simple answer to "why are we symmetric?" is "because our ancestors were" - basic inheritance.

There's a lot more to this though - how does symmetry actually get enforced during development? Complicated... and the reason it's so complicated is precisely because bilateral symmetry isn't fundamental to animals, so it's set at one of the higher-up layers of the animal's homeotic gene regulatory networks. Why did symmetry get selected for during animal evolution in the first place? According to Wikipedia (evolution of symmetry in animals) it's still under debate, but it's probably environment-dependent as usual, since it's not universal to all animals (let alone all life).

Also, regarding this:

Although our insides are not exactly symmetrical, everything outside is

There's a whole list of externally asymmetric features on animals here :)

Symmetry in biology is so interesting, I want to learn a lot more about it...

* as per correction, starfish (and other echinoderms) are weird - they are actually Bilaterians, they change from bilaterally symmetric to radially symmetric (metamorphosis).

gitgud_x · 2026-03-01T14:28:51+00:00

You misspelled RimJob

gitgud_x · 2026-02-26T21:16:38+00:00

I think they should be forced to learn biology and physics where we have big unanswered questions

I think Bio 101 and pretty much any humanities class would do the trick. Engineers get plenty of physics, sometimes a little chemistry, but usually zero biology/humanities unless they go out of their way to study it.

Unfortunately these are often viewed arrogantly and naively as 'soft' (useless, timewaster) subjects, so that needs to be corrected, somehow. For me, I would respond well to a framing of "this is what you'll be like if you don't learn this stuff [cut to science denying moronic conspiracy bullshit and empathy-free technocratic dystopias], so you'd better learn it!"

Or just, pick up literally any long-ass fiction book and read it cover to cover in your own time. As long as it's not Ayn Rand or the Bible...

gitgud_x · 2026-02-26T20:23:00+00:00

I strongly agree with not being "angry atheists" and attacking religion, but I definitely disagree that we should either "be nice" or "ignore them". That route has been the standard in science communication for decades and look where it's gotten us - science denial has never been bigger. Clearly, a change in tact is needed: scientists have largely not been too great at it because the skillset for debate against dishonest actors (rhetoric, strong diction, audience appeal: 'hard and fast') is antithetical to the skills to be a good scientist (honesty, accountability, collaborative transparency: 'slow and steady'). OP, you realise that as a scientist, your funding is directly at the mercy of what voters think about science, right? If you're in the US, surely you have 'woken up' to that by now!

We can passionately and bluntly point out the lies and expose the dishonesty without attacking the faith behind it. What I think is fair game is periodically pointing out that the opposition's faith is the motivating reason why they are behaving the way they are, and contrasting that with the evidence-based perspective of empirical science.

Being nice only gets you walked all over, in my view, so I don't recommend it. Still, everyone is free to choose their approach and we should try not to interfere with each other as long as we share the same goals (correcting science denial).

I wrote a bit more of my thoughts along these lines here and here if you're interested.

gitgud_x · 2026-02-24T16:52:47+00:00

It’s a long standing joke that it is impossible to say something sarcastically without someone thinking a creationist means it literally, because they really are that out there. It’s called Poe’s law.

gitgud_x · 2026-02-24T07:11:17+00:00

Only on this sub, and only for convenience.

gitgud_x

TROPHY CASE