GMO vs. Organic food products

[Felidire]

Half of the food is probably fine, the other half is probably bad for you, (or will yield some kind of adverse biological affect that they never considered later on down the track). And both halves, I really can't be bothered reading the lables or taking the risks. We're actually covering a lot of this stuff in college, but personally i'm not really into agriculture.

In my opinion, we humans cannot make anything any better than it already is. The complex and inteligently designed world can not be improved

Well we can.. temporarily, rofl.
The good changes are never permanent.

 

[Harlequin]

I'm sorry, you seem to be contradicting yourself here and there. Could you be a little more clear on these parts?



I'm not ignoring your points. Sorry, I will reply on the other parts later. Maybee a few days later. Sorry again.

The process is not random. Yes, the mutation is random, but the natural selection part is most assuredly not random.

Step one: mutation
Step two: is mutation beneficial y/n
Step three: if n, organism dies. if y, organism lives.
Step four: organism breeds.
Step five: evolution

The process of evolution via non-random natural selection is exactly that: non random. A degree of "randomness" is needed for the mutation, but even then mutations don't occur randomly - it's well understood how and why a mutation can occur. The only random part is what it does.

(Most of the time a mutation causes cancer.)

 

[Doctor Jimmy]

If you wish to not eat genetically modified foods because you fear their effects, I suggest that you find somewhere away from human influence with a wide variety of animals and plants for you to forage from.

It's called natural selection; the thing that is decided by evolutionary traits and "survival of the fittest," and has been done without human intervention for billions of years.

It's also called extinction; the thing that is decided by human recklessness, and is what killed the dodo bird. OK, so maybe we won't directly kill another species. But if corn is insect-repellent, and insects need this corn to live, where do you think they'll find food? Another corn patch? Even then, these insects aren't existing where the repellent corn is. And other species need these insects to survive. If they go extinct because they can't feed off our corn, then we have a serious problem.

Also, about the dodo bird: why did it become extinct? Because we kept killing them generation after generation until they died out. Our food may be genetically modified as it is now, but how will it turn out in the next hundred years or so? The effects of imbreeding, for example, doesn't happen over a single generation; it's done repeatedly. I think that repeatedly modifying this corn can cause something to happen later down the road. Just like how pugs have breathing problems now because of generations of modification, I think that corn will suffer something similar. So if we stop the GMOs now, then maybe we won't have this problem.

Corn, for example, used to be a wild grass with a few tough seeds growing at the top.

Source?

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

but... they aren't o.o

On the contrary, in the months following the introduction of genetically modiefied soya to Britain, the amount of people in Britain with an allergy to soya rose sharply. I was in a debate about GM food a few months back and this was a point one of my teammates used, I can't quite remember the source.

I think that genetically-modified foods such as the high-yield ones that opal mentioned are a good way to bolster a starving country but for long-term self-sustainability, they're unsuitable. The main reason for this is that the companies that produce GM foods do not allow farmers in these countries to keep the seeds of the fruit or vegetables. This is mainly done through the use of "traitor" or "terminator" genes. The more common of the two, "terminator" genes work by having the plant produce sterile seeds. In other words, these plants will not be back.

Even in developed countries, genetically-modified foods are not a viable source of food, because they interfere with other non-GM producers. When seeds from GM crops are transported, whether by insect, animal, wind or water, they can breed with non-GM crops. Without their knowledge, the farmers' plants have become contaminated and they're product is compromised, if they're marketing as organic or fresh homegrown or straight from the farm or whatever, and it's discovered their plants are contaminated with GM DNA, they can be fined for false marketing and they're entire crop will have to be pulled back. All products created from processing the crop will have to be recalled, the chain effect will require either the farmer or the government to pay out compensation for lost profits and the GM grower will never have to pay a cent. Even if they're grown in a secure subterranean bunker, the GM seeds will find their way out into the world and into non-GM plants and there really is no way to contain them.

As I said while debating this, the answer is a plant that many of you are familiar with but few of you have eaten; hemp. Hemp contains all the necessary fatty and amino acids for survival, including those that the body cannot produce itself. It has a very high yield, it producing three to four yields a year. And it can be produced without leaving the ground fallow because as it is grown, hemp makes the ground more fertile, rather than less. Hemp can be processed into almost any kind of food substitute, it's more diverse than soya. Hemp can not only be grown in almost any climate concievable on Earth, but apart from food, it has numerous applications which would also aid poor countries, it has medicinal properties, it can be made into clothing and when mixed in a fifty:fifty ratio with limestone, forms hempcrete, which is cheaper, stronger and lighter than concrete. So, while GM foods may be a good, short-term solution, the long-term solution, in my opinion, is hemp.

 

[Vladimir Putin's LJ]

lol you're a creationist.

 

[Negrek]

It's called natural selection; the thing that is decided by evolutionary traits and "survival of the fittest," and has been done without human intervention for billions of years.

Umm, yes. But what we're talking about here isn't natural selection--it's artificial selection. Humans have been doing this for thousands of years. When you cultivate a crop, you place it in an artificial habitat where humans--not the wild--are in control of how it reproduces. Crop plants are not produced by natural selection; because humans control their reproduction, they also select for the traits that they want. So yes, it's called "natural selection"... if you're not talking about cows or something.

It's also called extinction; the thing that is decided by human recklessness, and is what killed the dodo bird. OK, so maybe we won't directly kill another species. But if corn is insect-repellent, and insects need this corn to live, where do you think they'll find food? Another corn patch? Even then, these insects aren't existing where the repellent corn is. And other species need these insects to survive. If they go extinct because they can't feed off our corn, then we have a serious problem.

Extinction is caused by many, many, many other things than human recklessness. It's a grand old tradition that's been going on for tens of millions of years, which is why you don't see trilobites or pterodactyls nowadays. I believe that humans should attempt to reduce their impact on the biosphere, which does mean that it would be beneficial to be considerate when producing genetically modified foods. However, here you again ignore that foods have been bred for insect resistance for a very, very long time. While we can generate insect resistance faster with genetically modified foods, this is largely irrelevant because we already do our best to prevent insects from eating crops as it is in the form of pesticides. Would you rather we continue to spray a large quantity of toxic chemicals on fields in order to reduce insect damage, or create crops that can produce their own repellents and reduce the need for pesticides? Or, alternatively, letting the bugs take what they want and dramatically reduce food production, causing worldwide shortages?

However, I wouldn't worry about the insects. So far as I know of, there are none that survive solely on crops. Why? Because of the way that humans cultivate them. Cultivated food doesn't provide a good niche because, first, there's relatively little of it. It's hard to get a species going when all you've got are scattered patches of cultivated land containing high densities of species that exist nowhere else because, as before, they require humans to help them grow and reproduce. Further, these species are pretty heavily defended in terms of pesticides and so forth, making them difficult to exploit. Finally, these resources are inconsistent--for reasons of crop rotation and simple market pressures, farmers don't grow the same crops year to year. Therefore, if you're an obligate cornivore, you're out of luck when Farmer Bill decides that soybeans are the way of the future.

Thus, the species that live off food cultivated by humans have to be generalists, able to exploit pretty much whatever's out there. Insects that eat corn also eat other things. They already wouldn't be able to sustain themselves if they did otherwise. Reducing their ability to feed off corn is not going to cause a collapse of that species because it has to have other food sources to turn to. Unstable environments like farms favor the development of generalist species that can adapt quickly to change, not extremely specialized forms that are going to get wiped out because they can no longer feed on a specific crop plant.

Our food may be genetically modified as it is now, but how will it turn out in the next hundred years or so? The effects of imbreeding, for example, doesn't happen over a single generation; it's done repeatedly. I think that repeatedly modifying this corn can cause something to happen later down the road. Just like how pugs have breathing problems now because of generations of modification, I think that corn will suffer something similar. So if we stop the GMOs now, then maybe we won't have this problem.

You can't tell what will happen with any species a hundred years down the line. Genetically modified foods are no different than any other crop/livestock/non-domesticated species in that regard. What do you think could happen that a) could not be foreseen by appropriate testing, b) would be as a result of human intervention and not natural variation caused by, say, mutation, and c) would be a serious threat to the biosphere? Nothing is certain when a new mutation hits the scene--whether it will be the next big thing, or whether it will cause the species that possesses it to decrease in fitness. This is true whether the mutation is natural or caused by human influence. I fail to see how genetically modified foods are worse in this department than any other species, except that we're trying to make them "stronger" than the environment. However, we've always been doing this with the production of food crops.

The thing about pugs essentially boils down to "if people don't do stupid things, bad stuff won't happen." Inbreeding is bad news in any species. But if we hadn't domesticated dogs in the first place and practiced selective breeding, pugs wouldn't exist at all. I don't understand what you mean by "corn will suffer something similar." It's not like all the corn in the world is going to be replaced by one single strain of genetically modified corn produced by a lab--genetic diversity is important for any species, even if we were to entertain the idea that this were possible enough to be a remotely plausible eventuality. I also don't understand what you're afraid of, here. That some corn might develop a genetic deficiency as a result of tampering and therefore be less productive or something? If that's the case, then you don't allow that corn to reproduce--same way it's been done for ages. It's not like inbreeding in pugs is a difficult problem to fix; people can choose to not inbreed them. It's a huge problem for people for whom pedigree is a big issue, I suppose, but with food that's not so much an issue. All I see here is a very easy fix for an unlikely situation that would only arise out of mismanagement in the first place.

Overall, just what do you think genetically modified food is going to do to the biosphere? How is it so different from "regular" cultivated food that has already been tampered with? If you intend to pursue this line of reasoning, then I'm not going to be able to accept "genetically modified corn is bad" unless you are willing to acknowledge and argue that this translates to "all corn is bad," because as already stated, all corn is genetically modified.

Source?

You can read about it loads of places, but here's a nice article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050603074643.htm

In general, Googling "corn" and "teosinte" should get you all the results you need.

On the contrary, in the months following the introduction of genetically modiefied soya to Britain, the amount of people in Britain with an allergy to soya rose sharply. I was in a debate about GM food a few months back and this was a point one of my teammates used, I can't quite remember the source.

I wasn't able to find a ton of scholarly work on this subject. I'm not sure that you'll be able to see the full text for the links that I give, because a lot of these are provided through databases to which my university subscribes, but I'll post the links and relevant text anyway:

From the Journal of Experimental Botany, 2003 (http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/54/386/1317):

Biotechnology critics have claimed that an apparent rise in the
number of soybean allergic individuals in the UK is correlated
with the development of GM soybeans for the American market,
however, there is little GM soybean availability in the UK and
therefore little exposure. The soybean sensitivity increases are
more easily explained by the recent acceptance and wide
availability of soybean products and processed foods in the UK
marketplace. As a result of consumption, the soybean-sensitive
component of the population is being identified that will likely
peak with the same population fraction as seen in the US. These
people will need to practise avoidance of soybean products in
order to minimize adverse reactions. The primary GM soybeans
grown in the US are herbicide-resistant. Experiments have
directly tested the allergenicity of herbicide-tolerant soybeans
using immunological tests with samples from soybean-sensitive
people. These assays have shown that herbicide-tolerant GM
soybeans do not present any measurable differences in
allergenicity compared with non-GM soybeans (Burks and
Fuchs, 1995) and are, therefore, substantially equivalent by
allergenic criteria. Sensitive people remain allergic to GM
soybeans, but there is no additional allergenic risk to others.

Thus, the rise in soybean allergies was not attributable to the GM species; rather, because more soybeans were being consumed, more people who were unaware of their allergy and were finding out about it, rather than people who would ordinarily be able to eat soybeans just fine being allergic to these particular crops. Soybeans naturally have a high rate of allergenicity.

A very recent study that finds no significant difference in allergenic potential for GM vs non-GM soya: http://content.karger.com/ProdukteD...ikelNr=102611&Ausgabe=233084&ProduktNr=224161. You can't read the full text, but the conclusion is at the bottom of the abstract. "Soybean endogenous allergen expression does not seem to be altered after genetic modification."

This is an interesting article about GM foods in the UK; I'm pretty sure that you can get to it with the public link: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.govarticlerender.fcgi?artid=1299063. Doesn't talk much about soya in particular, save for mentioning this:

...but not in Europe,
where contention continues despite the
fact that millions of US citizens eat GM
soya without any ill effects in a very litigious
society, and many Europeans have
eaten GM soya while in the US without
any adverse consequences.

I think that genetically-modified foods such as the high-yield ones that opal mentioned are a good way to bolster a starving country but for long-term self-sustainability, they're unsuitable. The main reason for this is that the companies that produce GM foods do not allow farmers in these countries to keep the seeds of the fruit or vegetables. This is mainly done through the use of "traitor" or "terminator" genes. The more common of the two, "terminator" genes work by having the plant produce sterile seeds. In other words, these plants will not be back.

You know why this is? Because of this:

When seeds from GM crops are transported, whether by insect, animal, wind or water, they can breed with non-GM crops. Without their knowledge, the farmers' plants have become contaminated and they're product is compromised, if they're marketing as organic or fresh homegrown or straight from the farm or whatever, and it's discovered their plants are contaminated with GM DNA, they can be fined for false marketing and they're entire crop will have to be pulled back. All products created from processing the crop will have to be recalled, the chain effect will require either the farmer or the government to pay out compensation for lost profits and the GM grower will never have to pay a cent. Even if they're grown in a secure subterranean bunker, the GM seeds will find their way out into the world and into non-GM plants and there really is no way to contain them.

GM plants that are designed to be self-terminating are made that way in order to prevent the interbreeding that you're worried about. If there are no seeds, there are no seeds to be transported. I also fail to see how seeds kept in a subterranean bunker are going to find their way out into the world except through human carelessness. It's not as though they have legs, although that's sort of besides the point. There are clearly ways to prevent GM plants from hybridizing with other populations; you mentioned one yourself.

Even in developed countries, genetically-modified foods are not a viable source of food, because they interfere with other non-GM producers.

I fail to see how this makes them non-viable. It suggests that there must be precautions taken in introducing them, but it's not as though GM crops stop being food because they have the potential to interbreed with strains grown on other farms.

As I said while debating this, the answer is a plant that many of you are familiar with but few of you have eaten; hemp. Hemp contains all the necessary fatty and amino acids for survival, including those that the body cannot produce itself. It has a very high yield, it producing three to four yields a year. And it can be produced without leaving the ground fallow because as it is grown, hemp makes the ground more fertile, rather than less. Hemp can be processed into almost any kind of food substitute, it's more diverse than soya. Hemp can not only be grown in almost any climate concievable on Earth, but apart from food, it has numerous applications which would also aid poor countries, it has medicinal properties, it can be made into clothing and when mixed in a fifty:fifty ratio with limestone, forms hempcrete, which is cheaper, stronger and lighter than concrete. So, while GM foods may be a good, short-term solution, the long-term solution, in my opinion, is hemp.

Why not GM hemp? It's not like "GM" and "hemp" are somehow mutually exclusive terms. If you like hemp as a solution to whatever, that's fine. However, using a lot of hemp for stuff doesn't not mean using GM products for a lot of stuff at the same time.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

GM plants that are designed to be self-terminating are made that way in order to prevent the interbreeding that you're worried about. If there are no seeds, there are no seeds to be transported. I also fail to see how seeds kept in a subterranean bunker are going to find their way out into the world except through human carelessness. It's not as though they have legs, although that's sort of besides the point. There are clearly ways to prevent GM plants from hybridizing with other populations; you mentioned one yourself.

I should have been clearer in the context of each. When I was referring to the interbreeding, I was talking about people who grow GM foods in their own back gardens after buying the seeds from producing companies; these seeds are not fitted with terminator or traitor genes, because no profit can be made from such a small amount. When I was referring to the use of the self-terminating genes, I was referring to large-scale growing of GM crops, where the grower could make a profit by selling excess, profit which the GM companies believe rightly belongs to them.

When GM companies produce their own GM food rather than sell seeds, they don't use the terminator or traitor genes, because it would cost them money to make new seeds rather than the seeds of what they produce.

Also, the subterranean bunker thing. Let's say it's watermelons we're growing. You can't take the seeds out of a watermelon without ripping it to shreds. It's the same with most fruit and vegetables, though admittedly not cereals. When we get the theoretical watermelon, we eat the delicious fruit and throw away the seeds. Unless we deliberately destroy them, chances are the seeds will find their way outside and be picked up by the wind, an insect or an animal. The seed is transported and settles on a plant it can breed with, badabingbadaboom, tainted strain.

I fail to see how this makes them non-viable. It suggests that there must be precautions taken in introducing them, but it's not as though GM crops stop being food because they have the potential to interbreed with strains grown on other farms.

As illustrated above, unless terminator and traitor genes are installed, it's almost impossible to contain the seeds and in most cases, the terminator and traitor genes are not installed.

Why not GM hemp? It's not like "GM" and "hemp" are somehow mutually exclusive terms. If you like hemp as a solution to whatever, that's fine. However, using a lot of hemp for stuff doesn't not mean using GM products for a lot of stuff at the same time.

Unless you don't think you should use GM crops >->

 

[Valerunner]

I really don't fucking care about religion.

Anyway, we should at least try GM foods; they're cheaper to produce plus they help the starving countries eat, but we still have no idea what they do to our bodies or the ecosystem. We should at least be given the choice between natural or GM foods until the skeptics shut up; the public have no real choice since both sides have scientific claims and we really have no idea what they mean to us.

 

[Aura Cobalt]

OK.

Let's assume B (I'll return to that). C doesn't follow. Why would a creator, no matter how intelligent, necessarily create things perfectly? Here:

A) Humans are intelligent.
B) Humans create things.
C) Some things humans create don't function correctly.
D) Therefore, an intelligent creator does not necessarily create perfect products.

Let me explain a little better...

A)Every finite being has a cause.
B)Nothing finite can cause itself.
C)A causal chain cannot be infinite in length.
D)Therefore, there must be a first cause.
E)This first cause, whatever its nature, may be defined as God.
F)Being the first cause, God is infinite.
G)An infinite being is, by definition, a being which has no begining or end.
H)All infinite beings must have existed together alone.
I)Therefore, all infinite beings are equal.
J)Infinite beings are greater than finite beings.
K)The art of creating things is finite.
L)Therefore, God could not make a mistake.

But returning to A: I agree with you completely, but not in the way you think. Yes, life is complex. Yes, no way it got there randomly. Nope, randomness will create information only with the most vanishing of odds. But that doesn't mean there was a creator. The process of evolution by natural selection is not random, and by the way you've worded your points it's obvious you don't understand that.

Yes, the first step is random. Mutation is random. But evolution is more than just mutation: it's the natural selection bit that is important. Mutations are inevitably going to be either harmful, beneficial, or entirely neutral; ignoring the last option, which of the first two do you think will be passed on by the animal? The mutation that allows it to escape predators and other dangers, or the one that kills it early in life? The process is the exact opposite of random.

I understand Natural Selection. And I don't deny it. I believe in micro evilution, not macro evilution. But now I understand that you don't see what the "first step" is. What about the first living cell that supposedly caused all other cells to form? Was that not random according to you?

I mean life as in "living things". Life fails to work all the time. There are plenty of flaws. Look at any of a number of disorders, genetic diseases, and so on: look at, for example, diabetes I, or more precisely, its treatment. Until the synthesis of insulin became available, cattle insulin was used instead; however, because it is very slightly different from human insulin, some people who took it for diabetes suffered ill effects because their body's immune system attacked the foreign protein. See? Life f***ing up! And then we bright humans came along and solved the problem by synthesising the proper protein. And that example is merely the first to jump to mind: I can name plenty more, if you like.

Like I said, its our own fault. According to my religion, Christianity, when the first two humans sinned after being tempted by the devil, pain, suffering, and desease was poared out over all the Earth. (Genesis 3)

lol you're a creationist.

Who, me? I am Not a creationist. I believe in inteligent design, but that does not neccisarily mean I believe the Earth was created in 7 days.

Just don't be ignorant and don't ignore my points, okay? Nothing is more frustrating in a debate.

Now, did I miss anything?

 

[J.T.]

And I don't deny it. I believe in micro evilution, not macro evilution.

That's like saying you can have millions of inches, but they will never add up to miles.

Like I said, its our own fault. According to my religion, Christianity, when the first two humans sinned after being tempted by the devil, pain, suffering, and desease was poared out over all the Earth. (Genesis 3)

So why did we have to be punished for something our great great great (and so on and so on) ancestors did thousands of years (according to the Bible) ago?

 

[opaltiger]

A)Every finite being has a cause.
Fair enough, although I would argue the wording.
B)Nothing finite can cause itself.
Sure.
C)A causal chain cannot be infinite in length.
Here's your first problem. Why not? If you accept that there is an infinite thing, called God, why can you not instead accept that there is no beginning?
D)Therefore, there must be a first cause.
Okay, assuming C. Let's see where this leads.
E)This first cause, whatever its nature, may be defined as God
F)Being the first cause, God is infinite.
G)An infinite being is, by definition, a being which has no begining or end.
H)All infinite beings must have existed together alone.
I)Therefore, all infinite beings are equal.
Okay. I think your logic is wonky, especially around H, but let's accept all this.
J)Infinite beings are greater than finite beings.
K)The art of creating things is finite.
L)Therefore, God could not make a mistake.
I don't see the connection between "God is greater than finite beings" and "God could not have made a mistake creating finite beings".

That said, arguing this on grounds of logic is a little silly, because when you're throwing around abstract terms all the time, it loses a lot of meaning. Watch:

A) God created the world.
B) The creation of the world is the greatest possible act of creation.
C) Let us define the greatness of an act of creation as a function of its value and its maker's disability.
D) By B, the creation of the world must have the highest value of any creation, and its maker the most disability.
E) The greatest disability is non-existence.
F) Therefore, God does not exist.

I understand Natural Selection. And I don't deny it. I believe in micro evilution, not macro evilution.

Saying "I don't believe in macro evolution, but I do believe in micro evolution" is a contradiction. Macro and micro evolution are the same thing, just on a different timescale.

But now I understand that you don't see what the "first step" is. What about the first living cell that supposedly caused all other cells to form? Was that not random according to you?

Ah, that's what you meant. Well: yes. Yes, it was random. And now you will say "but the odds of that happening are astronomical!"

Yes! Yes they are. However, the timespan in which the origin of the first living thing had to happen is immense. Billions of years. If you take astronomical odds and put them into an astronomical timespan, you'll find you end up with pretty good odds overall. Even if the odds of life arising randomly are countless trillions against one, given the timespan and the huge number of organic molecules in the Earth's early oceans, it was bound to happen eventually - and it did.

Remember, too, that several experiments have shown that many - twenty plus, if I recall correctly - amino acids have been created from component molecules in an atmosphere like that which the young Earth probably had (although Miller-Urey probably didn't simulate the overall atmosphere, it is believed to be quite accurate in terms of local conditions). So, organic molecules have been synthesised from non-organic components in ways that were both possible and quite likely billions of years ago. From there, the leap to the first organism is not so large.

Like I said, its our own fault. According to my religion, Christianity, when the first two humans sinned after being tempted by the devil, pain, suffering, and desease was poared out over all the Earth. (Genesis 3)

I'd appreciate it if you refrained from using unreliable thousands of years old texts as a basis for your entire worldview. Or at least refrained from using them as a source in a debate.

Who, me? I am Not a creationist. I believe in inteligent design, but that does not neccisarily mean I believe the Earth was created in 7 days.

Intelligent design is the exact same thing as creationism, except in creationism the "designer" is specified.

 

[Aura Cobalt]

That's like saying you can have millions of inches, but they will never add up to miles.

No, its like saying that according to my belief, there has not yet been enough inches to add up to miles.

So why did we have to be punished for something our great great great (and so on and so on) ancestors did thousands of years (according to the Bible) ago?

Because they sinned... have you ever?

And besides that, people suffering the consequences of other people's actions is not at all unusual. If a father is a drunkard and a prostitute and abandons his family, do his children not have to suffer the consequences?

 

[GameFreakerZero]

Let me explain a little better...

A)Every finite being has a cause.
B)Nothing finite can cause itself.
C)A causal chain cannot be infinite in length.
D)Therefore, there must be a first cause.
E)This first cause, whatever its nature, may be defined as God.

Cosmological argument is dumb. Why does the 'first cause' necessarily have to be a deity and why is a deity allowed to be infinite and not the universe?

I understand Natural Selection. And I don't deny it. I believe in micro evilution, not macro evilution. But now I understand that you don't see what the "first step" is. What about the first living cell that supposedly caused all other cells to form? Was that not random according to you?

I laughed at how you spelled "evolution" "evilution" but obviously you don't understand evolution if you can accept it but don't accept what it can cause, even more so when you think that evolution has anything to do with abiogenesis.

Macroevolution is microevolution when looking at it over millions and millions of years. You cannot separate the two, only delude yourself into thinking the Earth isn't old enough for the former to occur. Abiogenesis, meanwhile, is separate from evolution as evolution deals with the results of abiogenesis, rather than having precedence over all of life as people seem to assume. I'd suggest reading more on both subjects if you really want to get an understanding of biology and the world around you. Wikipedia's always a good place to start.

Like I said, its our own fault. According to my religion, Christianity, when the first two humans sinned after being tempted by the devil, pain, suffering, and desease was poared out over all the Earth. (Genesis 3)

Ignoring Genesis being a fairy tale for a second, I'd like to ask you how what my ancestors did affects my score on the sliding scale of good and evil? If you were conceived through rape that does not mean you're a rapist, if your parent was a murderer that does not mean you're a murderer, if your ancestor was a pirate that does not mean you'll feel the irresistible urge to pillage and swash buckle, not even music. If some temperamental deity says otherwise it can go stuff it up its ass, especially considering it supposedly created us and should know that already.

No, its like saying that according to my belief, there has not yet been enough inches to add up to miles.

I suggest reading talkorigins.

Because they sinned... have you ever?

Sin is a disgusting word that only results in hatred for humanity in the deluded belief that it is somehow 'cursed', despite being such a special and brilliant animal.

 

[J.T.]

No, its like saying that according to my belief, there has not yet been enough inches to add up to miles.

But there's plenty of evidence that there's been enough inches/changes.

Because they sinned... have you ever?

By this logic, I should be in jail right now because my hypothetical great-great-great-grandfather killed a man.

And besides that, people suffering the consequences of other people's actions is not at all unusual. If a father is a drunkard and a prostitute and abandons his family, do his children not have to suffer the consequences?

But until they ate the apple, they didn't know good or evil, or right from wrong. This is exactly why we don't give a young child a life sentence for accidentally killing a man - they don't know any better.

Besides, God could have just punished Adam and Eve. Instead, he decided to curse the entire fucking human race for something two people did. Sure, the children are going to be punished, but in this case the drunkards (aka Adam and Eve) didn't know any better.

 

[Mirry]

And besides that, people suffering the consequences of other people's actions is not at all unusual. If a father is a drunkard and a prostitute and abandons his family, do his children not have to suffer the consequences?

This may be so... but do you really think that's FAIR? You're dad wasn't the greatest guy in the world so now everybody else hates you too because of HIS mistakes which you had no control over?

If you think that's fair, then you must be a pretty awful person. If you don't think that's fair, then "god" isn't fair, either.

 

[Tarvos]

I don't want to chime in on the religion debate because everyone a) knows where I stand on it and b) opaltiger debunked it rather efficiently (btw we need to talk sometime soon), but getting back to the actual food topic.

GMO and organic material aren't very different in their chemical makeup. The only difference between GMO and organic material is that the organisms producing the food have been modified to have more desirable qualities. This is an advantage because knowing this we are able to much better control whatever substances are in our food, and therefore assess the ability of harm being done. The idea of religion and meddling with organisms in food is not a relevant distinction to make because genetically modified organisms already exist, they in fact appear every day. It is not about playing God, it is merely our ability to use tools (and I am using that in the broadest sense of the word here) that discerns us from other organisms and allows us to manipulate them into a symbiotic relationship. We do that when we breed dogs as well as when we breed plants, or pigs, or anything else. Remember that a plant and a pig are both organisms; the genetic makeup of plants and animals is inherently similar, as the same amino acids code for almost the same things.

If organic is good enough, there is no need to change (if for example organic food has more desirable qualities than GMO does) but if using GMO presents a definite commercial and physiological advantage, I see no reason not to use GMO.

 

[Aura Cobalt]

I don't want to chime in on the religion debate because everyone a) knows where I stand on it and b) opaltiger debunked it rather efficiently

btw, I do plan on making a reply. I have been reading the posts and planning what I will say a little, I just haven't had the time all at once to actually post. No promises, but I will try to reply tomorrow or the next day. Sorry my life doesn't revolve around these forums.

 

[Tarvos]

Why are you apologising? I'm not gonna respond to that part anyway.

 

[Dewgong]

What I don't get is why people make a post saying that they are going to post about something later

You might as well just wait until whenever you were going to post

 

[Mirry]

On the topic of GMOs, I don't really see anything inherently wrong with genetically modified food as long as we're not sacrificing quality for quantity. That is, that we're actually working on developing food that is going to be tasty and nutritious for us, rather than forgetting that with the goal of producing as much as possible. If the food is tasty and healthy though, I don't much care where it came from or how it was made.