juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
By Sufi's rules? No, nothing is or ever will be.
Genetically modified foods are a personal concern. I know they've been with us awhile now, and supposedly no ill effects. Sometimes ill effects can take decades to manifest, and even then a clear cause/effect may be difficult to reach.
There's the "yuck" factor...such as Corn with Bacillus Thuringiensis. BT has long been used by organic gardeners to combat various caterpillars and soft bodied pests and is generally considered safe, though standard practice is to wash the veggies before consuming. By inserting BT wholesale into the Corn, the BT permeates the whole plant, including the fruit/seed. Which means it doesn't wash off, and when we eat this Corn we eat the latent BT.
Farmers here Stateside are not allowed to keep Genetically Modified seed. Traditionally farmers would keep a portion of their crop to plant the next season. Monsanto has very strict contractual arrangement that none of their GM seed is to be kept. If you think this odd, you are not alone, but it was a big thing a few years back when Monsanto brought lawsuit against a farmer who kept part of his crop to replant...and the farmer lost the suit.
There's the "conscience" factor... Commercial hothouse Tomatoes were crossed years ago with Flounder, a fish, to give greater resistance to cold. I've forgotten the details, and clearly it wasn't in the natural sense, only a small snip of the Flounder gene was inserted into that of the Tomato. But what are the ramifications for a religiously strict Vegan?
Monsanto drew so much criticism (and to my knowledge still ongoing in some places) over these two examples alone, that their further research has gone silent for public consumption...truth be told, we don't really have any clue what exactly we are eating in processed foods anymore.
Back years ago I posted here about Alba the rabbit. A little background, apparently biologists in the lab have routinely used a certain jellyfish gene that glows under certain lighting to tag various organs and biological experiments. So this "artist" comes along and convinces a lab (in France?) to tag a rabbit embryo with the jellyfish gene, the result was Alba the rabbit. Alba would glow under certain lighting because the fluorescent tag permeated her entire being, not just a piece as was typically used in the lab. Because of concerns the artificial manipulation might get loose into the wild, the artist was never given the rabbit, the rabbit remained confined in the lab where she was created until she died of natural causes. I have also seen images of a monkey which had been created in the same way. So it is possible to artificially insert genetic material in such a manner as to affect an entire being. Since (it is suspected but not allowed) Alba could reproduce with other rabbits, she was not at any time ever considered to be a new species.
A great deal of the entire ToE discussion revolves around adaptation. Clearly animals adapt to their environments...or perish, in which case we wouldn't be discussing them. Moths changing from light to dark is an adaptation, beaks growing larger in order to eat harder seeds, shaggy coat versus thin coat (or even hairless: Xoloitzcuintle)...these are adaptations. The argument sometimes brought out is that over millenia adaptations can add up to speciation. Maybe, maybe not, it is difficult to find any straight line evidence to prove the conjecture.
Having said that, there are transitional creatures to be found in the fossil record. So it is a bit of a "push me - pull you" argument. The safe zone for the evolutionists is to say it takes so long that we cannot show how it works, but it clearly works as evidenced by the fossil record. I see a wee bit of cop out there, not sure I can put my thought into words, but these tend to be the same people who produce the long list of "evidence of speciation" that ultimately isn't.
One thing about the fossil record I find intriguing, is the instances of "Punctuated Equilibrium" as Stephen Jay Gould and others point out. Seems according to these folks "in the field," there are documented instances in the fossil record of expedited speciation. I am not well versed and can't speak to details, but apparently there are a few instances at least where Nature / G-d / Creation had a great deal of fun playing with organics types and styles. Clearly I am waxing poetic, but there were explosions of species and sub-species, and those who were better suited to their environmental niche went on, those who could not perished. Humanity, it is argued, is where we are because we were so effective at adapting to multiple environments, from jungle and desert heat to tundra and alpine snow, from the equator to the artic circle. I'm not arguing for or against, but this is accepted teaching as of this moment, and in my opinion it holds merit, but how it merges with ToE I am less certain.
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