Conserving Hunters
12.05.07Thanks Guav for sending me this interesting piece published by the National Geographic on the steady decline of hunters. In the last 15 years, the number of hunters has dropped from 14 million to 12 million. It touches on the subject of conservation, Ted “the douche” Turner, Guav’s ancestor ape-man hunters from millions of years ago, and other issues in regards to game management.
The great irony is that many species might not survive at all were it not for hunters trying to kill them. All the wings provided to Norman Saake and his colleagues throughout the country come from hunters, who fold them into prepaid envelopes, record the date and place of harvest, and mail them in. It is but one example of how the nation’s 12.5 million hunters have become essential partners in wildlife management. They have paid more than 700 million dollars for duck stamps, which have added 5.2 million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System since 1934, when the first stamps were issued. They pay millions of dollars for licenses, tags, and permits each year, which helps finance state game agencies. They contribute more than 250 million dollars annually in excise taxes on guns, ammunition, and other equipment, which largely pays for new public game lands. Hunters in the private sector also play a growing role in conserving wildlife.
I am proud of my apelike ancestors! They are way cooler than yours
# December 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pmThats not my ancestors. You can’t even see the similarity between that and my folks.
# December 5th, 2007 at 1:40 pmBut seriously, I think it’s pretty odd that some believers in creation get insulted by the idea of “descending from monkeys,” but are totally not bothered at all that they supposedly came from dirt.
# December 5th, 2007 at 4:41 pmhaha. i’ve never ran across anyone who thought that way. but there are alot of morons out there, in any outfit.
# December 5th, 2007 at 4:43 pmThere a huge difference between morphing from an ape to a human AND the Creator of the universe saying “Dirt shall now be man.” Not seeing your point, Guav.
# December 5th, 2007 at 9:11 pmOf course there’s a difference—one of them actually happened and the other one is a delusional fairy tale. We have differing opinions of which is which, obviously, but I don’t disagree that there’s a huge difference.
All I was saying is that I found it weird that people who are offended by the suggestion that their ancestors were other life forms don’t get offended by the suggestion that their ancestors were dirt. If I was given the option of living the rest of my life as a monkey or as dirt, I’d choose the monkey. If you choose dirt, I will be pooping on you
# December 6th, 2007 at 11:47 am(That being said, evolutionary theory does not claim that we evolved from apes, but rather that both we and apes evolved from a common ancestor.)
As far as science/knowledge is concerned, they are both delusional fairy tales.
# December 6th, 2007 at 12:49 pmGod created us in his own image and we’re fools?
# December 6th, 2007 at 6:18 pmLooks and brains aren’t the same thing.
# December 6th, 2007 at 6:20 pmYou and I are proof of that!
# December 6th, 2007 at 10:49 pmthat burn could go both ways. you gorgeous man.
but seriously… you sound like you take evolution as an undisputed fact. like when you watch animal planet and they talk about how polar bears evolved from eskimo’s 200,000 years ago… you probably nod your head and say “cold hard truth, my friend”.
# December 7th, 2007 at 10:32 amGuav is a sexy little monkey.
# December 7th, 2007 at 11:23 amI knew the burn could go either way, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to spin it, so I left it up to you.
Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do. Science holds as a matter of course that all conclusions are tentative and that nothing can ever be absolutely proven to a certainty—we cannot be 100% that we even exist, maybe we’re just a dream. If we combine our theory of the round earth with other theories such as the theory of a round moon and a theory of heliocentrism, we come up with the model that the moon orbits around the earth, the earth around the sun, the planets around a central star, so on and so forth. But none of this is treated as an absolute fact. We could find new information tomorrow that disproves this.
But when we’re as close to sure as we can be, we call something a fact. And evolution is a fact—that evolution occurs is demonstratable. It is also a theory, in regards to the mechanism—how does evolution occur. Darwin’s natural selection is just theory that seeks to explain the fact of evolution. It may or may not be correct.
So if you mean to say that Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution through natural selection is not fact, you are correct. I do hold it to be the most likely explanation—as do almost all biologists in the world—but it could be completely wrong. Unlike creationists, science doesn’t claim infallibility.
The creationist idea that God created the universe may or may not be true, but since it’s a supernatural event which would occur outside of the natural laws of the universe, there is simply no experiment which can verify any of its assertions and it must be taken on faith.
However, although it might cast doubt on the bible as a divine work, I see no reason why Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution over millions of years is inherently incompatible with a supernatural creator of the universe. In theory, they could both be at work—God could exist, he have created the universe and evolution could be one of the mechanisms he created, in addition to gravity, relativity, etc.
# December 7th, 2007 at 5:36 pm