willpayton

@arcus said:

@willpayton said:

@batwatch said:

@willpayton said:

Except that Planned Parenthood doesnt sell fetus parts for profit. They get money to cover costs, which is perfectly fine. Also, these "undercover" videos are usually heavily edited and distorted.

@sommie7890 said:

Every one of the PP videos have been released alongside an unedited version. PP just claims they are distorted through editing and hopes nobody bothers to check.

Unfortunately I dont have time to watch that whole thing. Where are the parts where they say or do something that's illegal?

I think people just get worked up because in the video they seem to be discussing this in a matter-of-fact way and people think that translates into something sinister. This is an emotional reaction and exactly why people can be manipulated to doing what other people want them to do for political gain. I'd rather look at just the facts and the context.

Few times where they're discussing profit

I dont have time to go through the video and transcripts to find all these scenes, but I'll do the first one above.

This is exactly why the anti-Planned Parenthood side cant be taken seriously and is basically just trying to distort and score political points by putting out misinformation. The quoted dialog in that screenshot is taken totally out of context. If we look at the entire transcript of that part of the video we see what was really said:

ACTOR: Okay. And so of that number, how much would personality of the personnel in there, would play into it as far as how we're speaking to them --

NUCATOLA: I think for affiliates, at the end of the day, they're a non-profit, they just don't want to -- they want to break even. And if they can do a little better than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they're happy to do that. Really their bottom line is, they just, they want to break even. Every penny they save is just pennies they give to another patient. To provide a service the patient wouldn't get otherwise. [The Center for Medical Progress,

So what she's saying is pretty clear... they're not trying to make money, they're trying to break even. And, if some more money comes in they use it to provide more services to the patients. Implying that this is some "for profit" situation by editing and/or taking out of context dialog is deceptive and it's just plain lying.

I also found some more quotes from the videos that clearly show what the PP position is on "profit":

"(Clinics) want to do this, but they want to do it in a way that’s not going to impact them, and it’s much much less about money. You could call them up and say, ‘I’ll pay you double the money,’ and they’re almost more inclined to say no, because it’s going to look bad. … To them, this is not a service they should be making money from, it’s something they should be able to offer this to their patients, in a way that doesn’t impact them.

"Again, affiliates don’t — affiliates are not looking to make money by doing this. They’re looking to serve their patients and just make it not impact their bottom line.

"At the end of the day we just want to keep the doors open. And we don’t want to let jeopardize keeping the doors open. We just want (the cost per specimen) to be reasonable for the impact it has on the clinic. This is not a new revenue stream the affiliates are looking at. This is a way to offer the patient the service that they want. Do good for the medical community.

"Like I said, is to give patients the option without impacting our bottom line. The messaging is this should not be seen as a new revenue stream because that’s not what it is."

People need to stop automatically believing all this propaganda and distortion being put out by the anti-PP groups and do some research for themselves. Stop believing these stupid screenshots that have out-of-context dialog. Start realizing that this anti-PP group is trying to manipulate you by lying and fear-mongering.

You're making a lot of claims here that are just not true. I bolded every statement that you made that's false.

You started by claiming that Evolution is impossible, and to support that you're not giving any evidence, only giving other statements that are factually incorrect.

Here's my question: I just told you that all the stuff above is false. On what basis or expertise do you claim that they are correct?

Thanks for the answer.

What I think you're saying is that some things can change because of what you do after you're born (so, based on environment and behavior) and some things cant because they're in your DNA. Is that correct?

Now, the problem here is that you're making the statement that nothing in the DNA can change, buy you havent said why you think that. Also, you actually gave examples of things that can change because the DNA changes... "A person with an extra limb" and "There are people who grow enormously" and "people who can put their bodies in what would he impossible positions for normal people".

So my next question is, why do you say that some things cant change? Part of the Theory of Evolution says that DNA can change due to mutation and recombination. There is no question about this in science, it's a fact that it happens and there's tons of evidence to support it. But you're saying it doenst. What's your basis for claiming that DNA doesnt change over time?

Unfortunately I dont have time to watch that whole thing. Where are the parts where they say or do something that's illegal?

I think people just get worked up because in the video they seem to be discussing this in a matter-of-fact way and people think that translates into something sinister. This is an emotional reaction and exactly why people can be manipulated to doing what other people want them to do for political gain. I'd rather look at just the facts and the context.

It's not just semantics, it has to do with whether they broke the law or not. The law says that they can charge reasonable fees and as far as I know that's what they did. The fees are not profit because they go to paying for costs and only that. No one is making bonuses or commissions that I know of. PP has operating costs and Republicans have seen to it that they dont get enough money from Congress so they obviously need to fund operations through other means. Since they provide a service to doctors and institutions, it's only correct that they can charge for those services.

There's some information about it here:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/aug/05/politifact-sheet-8-things-know-about-plan-national/

Ok I see what you mean. Yes, I'm familiar with the Golden Ratio (GR) and the Fibonacci sequence of numbers.

The short answer is that, no, the GR and the Fibonacci numbers dont show that there's any intelligent design at work in the universe, or that everything in the universe is connected.

The long answer:

First, the Fibonacci sequence is not really that special. Its property in relation to the GR (~1.61803...) is that at the sequence gets bigger, dividing one number by the one before it gives you increasingly more accurate approximations to the GR. That sounds nice and all, but actually any sequence of numbers that follow that pattern gives the same results!

So for example if I make up a sequence that starts with 2 and 5, I get: 2, 5, 7, 12, 19, 31, 50, ...

If you do the math you'll see that in this sequence a number divided by the one before also approaches 1.61803... as the numbers grow larger.

As far as sequences that have this property, actually there's a number sequence called the Lucas Numbers that are more interesting than the Fibonacci numbers. The Lucas Numbers are: 2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29, ... These numbers have the cool property that every power of the GR when rounded to a whole number gives you a Lucas Number. So:

• 1.61803^2 = 2.6180... => 3
• 1.61803^3 = 4.2360... => 4
• 1.61803^4 = 6.8540... => 7
• 1.61803^5 = 11.090... => 11
• 1.61803^6 = 17.944... => 18
• 1.61803^7 = 29.033... => 29

Now that's an interesting sequence!

As far as the GR showing up all over in nature... well that's also not true. Many things like the spiral arms of galaxies or pine cones or whatever are just logarithmic spirals... which happen for reasons like energy conservation and other natural forces. They have nothing to do with the GR other than sometimes they look similar. In other cases it's hard to know for sure because ratios are similar to the GR but not exact. Claiming that the human face has the Golden Ratio in the features is a little dubious (since everyone has different facial ratios), but if true it's probably just that humans find that ratio aesthetically pleasing, and so faces with those ratios would tend to be more attractive and those people would reproduce more. So, Evolution at work!

Then you have examples in art or architecture... but again that's attributable to humans liking the idea of the GR and intentionally putting it into things.

So the final takeaway here is that while the Golden Ratio is an interesting ratio, and we sometimes see things that look similar to it (like logarithmic spirals), there's really nothing in it that suggests anything too special, and certainly doesnt show any sort of design in nature.

Can you tell me more about what you mean by "connected"? I have to admit I'm not entirely sure what phenomenon you're talking about, but if you have some links where I can read about it I'll gladly tell you what I think.

What I can tell you is that there are many phenomena in nature that appear to have underlying mathematical or geometrical patterns... and sometimes those patterns seem really weird or even unnatural. But, a lot of times when we look deeper it's not that mysterious or weird at all, it's just that certain laws of physics or statistics naturally yield similar results in many environments.

For example, there's a statistical law called Zipf's Law that says that many unrelated physical and social phenomena tend to follow a certain distribution in the data. It's kind of spooky, but most likely arises from certain other principles in nature that apply throughout many areas. Here's a good introduction to this phenomenon:

Except that Planned Parenthood doesnt sell fetus parts for profit. They get money to cover costs, which is perfectly fine. Also, these "undercover" videos are usually heavily edited and distorted.

I've seen this guy once before on a video someone posted on FB where he also advocates against gun control. Unfortunately the argument he made in that video was pretty deceptive, comparing the US rates of murder to those of third world nations and active war zones, and just generally playing fast and loose with the statistics.

I decided to do my own research to find out the truth and what I found is that the data shows that there is a correlation between gun ownership numbers and gun deaths. You can look at the data and make up your own minds:

According to this analysis there is actually a pretty clear linear correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths in the United States.

This website has data that shows that the U.S. easily tops the list of developed countries in gun killings. It's important to compare the U.S. to other developed nations and not just *all* nations because you need to do an apples-to-apples comparison. If you just look at all nations the data will be too muddled to yield good conclusions. You need to take out countries with unstable governments, war zones, and those that are going through painful transitions that lead to violence. Also, many non-developed nations just dont keep good records of things like violent crimes.

I havent given any proof because we werent talking about me proving proof of anything. We were talking about your claim and me asking you to support it.

You say that you've given proof, but I dont see it. What you're doing is a tactic in debating that you use when you cant support your claim, you try to turn the burden of proof and make the other person prove you wrong. It's a disingenuous tactic and it shows that you're not debating in good faith. Sorry, I wont play that game.

I can very easily give lots of evidence for Evolution, and I have in this very thread many times in the past. But, you claimed that Evolution was impossible and I'm asking YOU to prove it. Why dont you?

If you want to be informed then my honest suggestion is to start by admitting that you dont know that much about biology or Evolution. There's nothing wrong with this. If you want to learn you first have to admit that you dont know. But if you decide that you know enough to say that 97% of scientists in the world are wrong even though you have no actual background in either general science or biology, then this is a problem. I see people come here all the time who know nothing about biology making the same claims you do, and arguing with them and presenting evidence is pointless... at least that's been my experience.

LOL...