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Still More Evidence for Evolution
Uche writes: "Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have uncovered the first genetic evidence that explains how large-scale alterations to body plans were accomplished during the early evolution of animals."
When we finaly evolve into apes. Hollywood doesn't lie, right?
Well, you have the good fortune to live in a country where the majority of people are sensible. Those of us who live in the US have to deal with states banning the teaching of evolution in public schools and other nonsense. I don't expect this to cause all the nuts to go away overnight, but hopefully this will speed their departure.
Evolution is accepted as fact by scientists and thinking people. It is no more or less a theory than physics or astronomy.
Many details of evolution are not understood, particularly the genetic mechanisms. This new discovery helps answer some of those questions, but it doesn't make evolution any more "real" than it already is. It's possible we haven't discovered every moon or even every planet in our solar system, but that doesn't mean the sun may actually revolve around the earth after all. We're pretty sure we haven't found all of the subatomic particles, and we still don't agree on what makes gravity, but physics is still secure and we don't expect the Red Sea to part on its own.
Accepting Creationism means tossing out all of established science. Creationism is the adversary of all science, not just Darwinian evolution.
The article only refers to the repressor genes, (i.e. 6 legs instead of 12). But the creature still has to go through the slow process of developing legs itself in order for the gene to have some effect. It also doesn't explain how appendages like for instance wings on that fruit fly came along. They would have to start somewhere and I can't see how wings could be useful in any but their mature form. They wouldn't be needed to slow an insects fall(as they are small enoguh not to be hurt) and I can't see a pair of fans growing the muscle control and speed necessary to flight. What steered the evolution of the fruit flies to lead them to functioning wings?
I stole this Sig
and this one...
Doesn't it seem that these scientists are going out of their way to discredit creationists? While the real bible-toting creationists constantly rail about the godlessness of science and the inherent evil they see in the theory of evolution, I always thought that the scientific view would be to let the results of solid research speak for themselves. A thinking person would be able to decide for himself what to make of the whole debate. These two paragraphs really disturb me. They clearly desire not only to further the study of evolutionary processes, but also to denigrate those who hold onto the creationist point of view for dear life (no pun intended). This seems to be way too over the top for my liking. Is it necessary to drag down opposing viewpoints while making your own best case? It's almost as though they actually see the by-the-book creationists as a threat to their cherished beliefs. Certainly, creationists feel that way about what science has shown us since the days of Darwin. Is it necessary to stoop to the same tactics?
Thank you, O Lord, for creating these wonderful genes which allow macroevolution to take place.
The tendency to relocate the act of creation just before the first-proposed-event is called the doctrine of the God of the Gaps. Wherever we don't know something, some religious thinkers will stick God in as a place-keeper.
./configure --with-booklungs --with-antennae --no-fishybits \
--legs=6 --enable-experimental-wing-thingies
make critter
./critter -buz
Just happened like a week or two ago.
The creationists mostly lied the whole time.
1) They misaplied the 2nd law of thermodynamics very poorly by treating a race of species as a closed system. A few chemist and myself (a physics major) were very upset at these outright lies.
2) They denied the existence of any transitional fossils, and basically said that scientists were arranging bones and fossils how they wanted to see them.
3) They made false accusations against radioactive dating that haven't applied sense the birth of the field.
4) And finally they had to make up for logical loop holes by stating that early man was far superior to present man, and that in the begining all species existed at once, including the dinosaurs.
5) In all of the debate, they only had one true argument, and it was a bad argument at that. Guess what that argument was? "Positive" mutations haven't been reproduced or observed in the laboratory, therefore they do not exist, therefore evolution is false. And this article is about just that.
Before the debate, I thought it would be interesting to see why someone would believe in creation. Afterwards I was a bit depressed. I had no idea how far a person would go to decieve themself and perpetuate a lie. I felf very sorry for the young teenagers that came with their church group. They were being raised by liars.
One of the debaters agrugment was based on the very results that this article brings up. I know if he saw this now, it would not change his opinion one bit. He has no reason, he creates what ever psuedo reason needed to calm the conflict between his arogant soul and his mind. I bet he doesn't even know that his words are lies.
Any way, I thought I would share this with you people. I don't know what can be learned from this, but anyway, good luck in this sad and ignorant world maya.
Many years in the future, a bunch of scientists manage to contact God.
"God," they go on to say, "we no longer need you. Anything you can do, we can do. We know now how everything works."
"Is that so?" God responds. "Well, in that case, how about a contest? You create a man, and I'll create a man and we'll see which turns out better."
"Agreed," the scientists repond.
"But," God continues, "you'll have to do it like I did and create a man from the dirt."
"Not a problem," the scientists chortle, knowing enough to be able to resequence basic elements into complex structures like DNA. So, in unison, the scientists get out their beakers, bend down, and scoop up some dirt.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," God says. "You get your own dirt."
My point? Evolution is a non issue. The real debate is in the origin of the framework by which everything evolves. Scientists playing with DNA can make pretty much anything happen. But they still can't create matter with a thought.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Yep, it's pretty simple.
Just because something is irreducably complex *now* does not mean it was irreducably complex at the point at which the crucial beneficial change was made which allows the current behaviour.
Evolution can break down a complex interaction of simple non-necessary "actors" into a simpler interaction of necessary "actors", as easily as it can produce the extra "actors" in the first place.
Evolution is the process of harmonisation of an organism to its natural surroundings, with the additional constraint of fitness. "Fitness" can mean dumping things that aren't necessary because you can do the job easier another way now.
An example, your appendix: At one point it was presumably useful (perhaps even necessary). Now it's an atrophying organ with no discernable purpose, or side-effects when removed.
So, in summary, the author makes the assumption of linear progress in time. This is a false premise, and his argument therefore does not hold. To get from A to B, evolution (remember, this is random chance followed by population migration) could might easily go A,G,F,E,D,C,B.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Unfortunately, while the scientists presuppose the existence of matter in your argument, you presuppose the existence of a God that can create that matter. No one wins this argument, like any other of this sort.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's already happening!
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's a shame that UCSD found it necessary to refer to the creationist bugbear. Creationism has been dead and buried for well over a century except in the USA, where it lives on as a political movement impervious to scientific discussion. Scientists should deny it the courtesy of appearing to take it seriously.
I am a PhD student in zoology, and I have an article in press about the phylogeny of winged insects. There are several theories about how wings originated, and where each steps is useful.
It has been suggested that wings were solar panels, turned into gliders and later, wings.
A theory that i find more plausible is that wings developed from gills in aquatic insects, and the transitional stages were used for skimming the water surface. Such gills are found on living insects like mayfly larvae, and they already have all the musculation and control nerves in place.
It's been, what, a little over a week sice IDEA (the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Club, which is apparently "An Affiliated Chapter of the IDEA Center") brought some guy to UCSD to explain how evolution is wrong. sigh.
Life has order and design.
Then where, pray tell, does the appendix come in? Or cancer? Or AIDS? Or cholera? Or smallpox? Are you saying that a malevolent, or at least basically incompetent, intelligence designed life? Well, the burden of proof is on you. Back up your claim with evidence, just as real scientists worldwide have done for centuries.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
Just skimming it, I have two points, one philosophical, one scientific:
- Behe points out that some of Darwin's arguments avoided the question of origins for some biological processes (e.g. eyesight) because the science of the time wasn't equipped to address them. I'd argue things aren't any different now. We're working on a vastly smaller scale and are much better informed, but the issues he tackles are on the far frontiers of structural biology and molecular evolution.
- There are cases where protein motor function exists without being used for real motion. Quite a few articles have been published on the "proton pump" ATPase. This is considered a classical example of a molecular motor, but its function is entirely different from dynein or myosin. This doesn't mean a thing, except that Behe is drawing too many conclusions with his argument of irreducible complexity; it seems very premature to say that the component proteins could not have arisen independently. There are many examples of large conformational changes in proteins, not necessarily having anything to do with locomotion on any scale.
Behe's work is interesting; he raises important questions that are well worth addressing. I think he's a little too eager to declare the issue resolved in favor of molecular design, though. I can't argue that evolution presents a well-formulated answer to these problems, but I don't see any reason why it can't or won't, eventually.
Darwin's Black Box Review
h .htmlhttp://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publish. html>). Specialists far more competent than me have analyzed the numerous and gross deficiencies in Dr. Behe's flatulent arguments in considerable technical detail (see especially ahref=http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/Behe.htmlhttp://w ww.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/Behe.html>), so there would be an emptiness in my remarks if I were to try to emulate them. If I am to add anything to the discussion, I am forced to choose to look at the book from a different perspective. The perspective I shall adopt is that of misrepresentation, for that quality pervades this book at every level.
The book basis its premace on six fallacies:
Fallacy one: There is a boundary between the molecular world and other levels of biological organization.
Fallacy two: The current utility of a given feature (molecular or otherwise) explains "why" the feature originally evolved.
Fallacy three: Unless we can identify advantages for each imaginary gradual step leading to a contemporary bit of biochemistry, we cannot invoke a Darwinian explanation.
Fallacy four: Molecular evolution: "a lot of sequences, some math, and no answers."
Fallacy five: There is a conspiracy of silence among scientists concerning the failure of Darwinian explanation.
Fallacy six: The evolution of complexity is unaddressed and unexplained.
More: Darwin's Black Box Review
Behe's empty box
"Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required."
"The point is there's no guarantee that improvements will remain mere improvements. Indeed because later changes build on previous ones, there's every reason to think that earlier refinements might become necessary. The transformation of air bladders into lungs that allowed animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen was initially just advantageous: such beasts could explore open niches-like dry land-that were unavailable to their lung-less peers. But as evolution built on this adaptation (modifying limbs for walking, for instance), we grew thoroughly terrestrial and lungs, consequently, are no longer luxuries-they are essential. The punch-line is, I think, obvious: although this process is thoroughly Darwinian, we are often left with a system that is irreducibly complex. I'm afraid there's no room for compromise here: Behe's key claim that all the components of an irreducibly complex system 'have to be there from the beginning' is dead wrong."
[b]The Fallacy of Conclusion by Analogy[/b]
When it comes to explaining science to the public, analogies and metaphors are essential tools of the trade. We all can better understand something new and unusual, when it is compared to something we already know: a cell is like a factory, the eye is like a camera, an atom is like a billiard ball, a biochemical system is like a mouse trap. An A is like a B, means A shares some conceptual properties with B. It does not mean A has all the properties of B. It does not follow that what is true for B is therefore true for A. Analogies can be used to explain science, but analogies cannot be used to draw conclusions or falsify scientific theories. Yet Behe commits this fallacy throughout his book.
For example:
[ol][li]A mousetrap is "irreducibly complex" - it requires all of its parts to work properly.
[li]A mousetrap is a product of design.
[li]The bacterial flagellum is "irreducibly complex" - it requires all of its parts to work properly.
[li]Therefore the flagellum is like a mouse trap.
[li]Therefore the flagellum is a product of design.
More: Features: Behe's empty box
Publish or Perish
On page 179 of Darwin's Black Box Michael Behe claims:
"There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems."
He closes the chapter with this ludicrous statement:
"In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish"
(Did someone say publish or perish?: The Elusive Scientific Basis of Intelligent Design Theory)
To be honest, I suspect that the extent of detail Behe is demanding would require a combination cutting-edge biochemistry lab and a time machine. How else can science fully recover, for example, every single step in the evolution of the bacterial flagellum that took place billions of years ago?
More: Publish or Perish
Review of Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box (1998)
For those who have not already encountered this book or one of its numerous reviews, let me simply say that the author sets out to argue that the organic world is so complex, particularly at the level of molecular biology and biochemistry, that Darwinian evolution cannot possibly have led to it. As evolution cannot produce irreducibly complex systems (the blood-clotting process, for instance, the biochemist's analogue of the eye), they must be the outcome of the activities of an Intelligent Designer. In other words, the book is a tiresome reworking at the molecular level of the timeworn "design" argument.
So much has already been written by reviewers of this book that it seems unnecessary to add anything more (go to ahref=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publis
More: Review of Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box (1998)
Sig goes here
A professor of Creatonism? que?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
The referred article (link to a lecture to the CS Lewis society) claims to provide examples of structures so complex & singular in purpose as to have to have been intentionally designed, and not to have evolved. They must have all their component parts to function at all, and so could have no evolutionary predecessor.
Unfortunately, this article and its examples are inadequate. Just because you cannot imagine how something could have evolved, doesn't mean that it couldn't have done so.
The author of the referred article insists that we understand each part of the structures which he describes as irreducibly complex, but he also implicitly presumes that he completely understands their history, and that it's completely linear. In fact, his whole argument hinges on his understanding the entire history of these "irreducibly complex" structures. That actually begs the question. You can't presume history to prove that same history.
I'd like to use his own mousetrap example (of something that couldn't have evolved) to counter his point.
Imagine a springlike structure with a completely different function, perhaps a stiff spine for protection. Imagine then that there are circumstances where that structure catches slightly while under tension, but can be released with some force. Ever had a sticky accelerator pedal?
Once that catching proves evolutionarily useful, then it might eventually develops into a relatively sophisticated release mechanism.
The mousetrap would not have been only a mousetrap through all of its evolutionary history.
In fact, I suspect that there are multiple mousetrap like structures out there in the biological world.
In the game of Life, there are what is known as Garden of Eden patterns, because there is provably no way that these things could have developed from any predecesor structure based on the rules of the game. In real life, we don't know all the rules.
Oh, and: Fundmentalist materialist? Are you trying to be insulting by calling me a fundamentalist? I'm certainly foolish for indulging in a scientific argument with someone for whom religious tenets are postulated as facts.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I read somewhere that they started out as radiators. Proto-insects, it is suggested, had raisable and lowerable fins on their backs as a way to control loss of excess heat. These evolved up to the size at which returns start to diminish (moving heat into the fin becomes too hard), which, by a fortunate coincidence, is just about big enough to be of some use in steering a descent when falling. This is valuable because it allows the proto-insect to (a) land the right way up and (b) pick a landing spot (on a leaf instead of the forest floor for instance). From there, they evolve to become bigger and more movable so as to steer better, then glide, then fly.
I haven't read "Darwin's Black Box", and I am a fan of both hideous complexity and Darwinism(I am a biologist after all ;-)
I highly recommend reading The Touchstone of Life as a fantastic explanation for the evolution of the cell from the ground up. In reality, a lot of it is about feedback, but read the book yourself. One of the best pieces of biological thought I've ever seen. It's not meant to be a refutation of Creationism as far as I can tell (the author is too well established to care about that) but rather, a genuine explanation as to how information grows to create life naturally.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think he's a little too eager to declare the issue resolved in favor of molecular design, though. I can't argue that evolution presents a well-formulated answer to these problems, but I don't see any reason why it can't or won't, eventually.
That's pretty much the science version of "the check's in the mail", isn't it?
Behe answers your point thusly:
"I agree with the commonsense point that no one can predict the future of science. I strongly disagree with the contention that, because we can?t guarantee the success of intelligent design theory, it can be dismissed, or should not be pursued. If science operated in such a manner, no theory would ever be investigated, because no theory is guaranteed success forever. Indeed, if one ignores a hypothesis because it may one day be demonstrated to be incorrect, then one paradoxically takes unfalsifiability to be a necessary trait of a scientific theory. Although philosophers of science have debated whether falsifiability is a requirement of a scientific theory, no one to my knowledge has argued that unfalsifiability is a necessary mark."
(http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_philosophicalob je ctionsresponse.htm):
Best,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
The Science Against Evolution homepage:
http://www.ridgenet.net/~do_while/sage/
I'm embarassed to admit it, but they're from my hometown- Ridgecrest, CA. They're constantly advertising in our local papers, and it gets pretty annoying at times.
Then you are misunderstanding what I wrote. What you say is true of a single indivisible object, but last time I checked, even amoeba were made of several quarks.
The word "complex" in the phrase "irreducably complex" should serve to signify that this is a collective system, and therefore my analysis applies.
The concept is very simple: A->B can be gained via a roundabout route. Once there, the roundabout route may disappear because of lack of use, or we may not recognise it, or what started out as A and B are now C and D so we're looking for the wrong thing.
This is really rather easy stuff. I'm not the one placing arbitrary limits on evolution here...
Physicists get Hadrons!
I don't pretend to understand this article, because my understanding of creationism and macro-evolution while better than most, is still inadequate.
Still, from what I could gather this still doesn't address some fundamental questions.
This deals with information already present. We are still lacking the fundamental information to make evolution credible - where did these genes that control all others like a master switch come from? This is working with information already present, which a creationist (I presume) would just argue were from the initial creation. Macro-evolution still needs to explain how these creatures came to this state.
Another problem is that when dealing with mutations we don't gain information, we only change.
All this article does is counter a small % of the arguments presented against evolution, while at the same time providing even more evidence of the intricacy and amazing design of the initial creation. This shouldn't, as far as I can tell, be trumpeted as such a breakthrough.
I would love someone to enlighten me if I have missed a major point.
This isn't true at all really. Granted, we might never have zapped an E.coli with enough UV light to make it grow arms, but we've certaintly gotten plenty of positive function out of mutations in labs.
For instance, there is a well known tool in microbiology known as the "Temperature-Sensitive Mutant". A good way to get one of these is to zap it with UV or some other mutagen to induce a random point mutation (change in one nucleotide). This could alter the gene product just enough to make it non-functional at high temperatures, making the organism more sensitive to the environment than it was in the wild type form. This new sensitivity is a gain in function for the organism. It might not be beneficial, but it is a demonstrable gain of ability for the organism.
Another example would be oncogenes, which aren't always active, but can be activated via mutations, causing cancer.
There's some foddder for your next debate. Remember, a positive gain in function may wind up killing the organism, which is one reason why evolution takes so long. But random mutations certaintly have been shown to have an affect beyond deletion of the gene.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This particular problem has frequently been pointed out by creationists, but evolutionists have dismissed it as a non-issue. Until now. Now when they have found an answer to the problem, it suddenly makes sense to address the issue.
Creationists are some of the most dedicated (not best, just most dedicated) folks around at finding weaknesses, real or imagined, in our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. So much so that many scientists are tempted to ignore the creationists. After all, why bother paying attention to a group that has insisted for 20+ years on misapplying the second law of thermodynamics?
The fact is, it's easier to ask questions than it is to answer them. If a creationist had come out and found this genetic switch and said 'oops, I guess nature really did find a way to do this. we were wrong.', I'd be more inclined to give the creationists props for this.
So a creationist claim that evolutionists cannot answer is irrelevant. A creationist claim that evolutionists can answer is relevant.
I really doubt this particular claim was ever considered irrelevant by biologists working in the field. The creationists bringing up this claim might have been treated so, but not this particular technical question.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
And what really irks me is when they have the unmitigated gall to assert that evolution is as a much a scientific fact as gravity. As if I can make a fly mutate into an elephant as easily as I can drop an apple and watch it fall!
So you're saying that because the theory of evolution postulates the common descent of elephants and flies from an ancestor that lived many hundreds of millions of years ago, you should be able to do the same feat as easily as dropping an apple? The theory of evolution doesn't say that you or I or anyone can quickly change an animal's genome in any kind of reasonable way. Quite the opposite, evolutionary theory postulates that the way that nature has developed complex organisms is through an ancient interplay between the chain of organisms and the environment, each changing and shaping the other.
We can, however, track mutations over time in the genetic makeup of all kinds of organisms, and we can do computer simulations of mutation and selection that demonstrate the principle. If you can demonstrate the theory of evolution on a computer and you can demonstrate the theory of gravitational attraction through a mathematical simulation, perhaps they are not so different as you think?
For all you folks who think that, you are WRONG, and your pathetic fools too. But don't take my word for it. READ A FEW BOOKS THAT DEMONSTRATE THE ABSURDITY OF PURELY NATURALIST EVOLUTION.
The thing is, I have read a whole bunch that try to demonstrate that, and I've not yet found one that was at all convincing. If you know of a book that demonstrates the absurdity of naturalistic evolution, by all means do share.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
So what about the garden of Eden then? After all, that's pinpointed too (See Gen2.10-14) very specifically, but there's no garden and no angel with a flaming sword there.
And how about any record of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt? The only one we've got is a mention of Israel on a stele talking about them after they had formed their nation. No mention of plagues or mass exodus to the wilderness, and certainly no mention of an army drowning in a parted Sea.
Well, Roman records have no mention of this man, nor do Jewish records outside of the Bible itself, so I suppose there is some doubt that he did exist. I'm willing to take it as a fact that he did exist though, but even then, how accurate is what we have? He says many times that the disciples will see the Kingdom of God come, and that he is the messiah. Of course, in Matthew he also rides in to Jerusalem on both a donkey and a colt at the same time (now that takes talent!) in order to fulfill the author's interpretation of Isaiah. None of the gospel texts were written until well after his death, and they all seem to stem from another source (known as "Q") that is lost to us.
And, most importantly, like the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament does not seem to be written with historical accuracy in mind, but rather a thematic goal to impart to the audience. So asking about Jesus' existence is almost a silly thing, because what matters is whether or not the theme is correct, which is very much open to interpretation. Same goes for the Hebrew Bible (although that one seems to have been fulfilled with the establishment of Israel).
You are welcome to believe what you will, as am I, but if you are so concerned about looking for the truth of life, I wouldn't recommend closing your mind to things like scientific evidence. Presuppositions (including the existence of God) really get you nowhere. In addition, learn about the historical and political contexts in which the scriptures that you cite were written. They may give you some new perspectives on the texts themselves.
Well, we haven't shown how life itself came to be because it's kind of difficult. Try it and you'll see. But we've made some incredible progress there, if you'd look at the literature you might be surprised. The depth of makeup does not really tell us anything because just about any natural system is complex. It's the designed ones that are generally simple. Plus, both UNIX and life itself teach us that you can get an enormous degree of complexity from relatively simple systems interacting.
Overall, you are correct in saying that life has order. It has to, otherwise it wouldn't work. Design though, is another matter. A mountain or river doesn't really have any design (you might say it does, but not in the way that life might) but it still functions and has order. A river allows water to flow to a given point (order) and a mountain blocks movement across certain vectors (also order).
None of this denies the existence of a God at all though. Darwin himself believed in God. A scientist is trying to find out about the mechanisms of the world, not necessarily what put them there.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Statements like, "Evolution is accepted as fact by scientists and thinking people. It is no more or less a theory than physics or astronomy." What would you have said when all thinking ppl, said that the earth was flat?
Maybe, 'look at the shape of the shadow of the earth on the moon', or 'look at how the length of a shadow cast by the sun from a rod of a fixed length at a fixed time varies based on latitude'.
That is, look at the evidence.
Just because something is supported by the majority does NOT make it fact. Understand this and you'll have a crack at making some real discoveries.
Science says that that which is supported by the best evidence should be granted the presumption of the closest fit with reality. Evolution is simply the best fit with all available physical evidence.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I think you're missing the point. This sort of thing isn't really taking a stand on the issue you're talking about, although we all tend to jump right to that anyway. Like you said, it can't be proven (or at least, we have absolutely no conception as to how to prove it right now) but what they are finding is the mechanism by which these things happen.
Before you discount the importance of this in the face of "God/No God", think of this: where would we be if Newton hadn't told us that, yes, the universe does have rules. Pasteur told us that, yes, there is something tangible (not just "sin") that causes disease. It might not directly be addressing your fundamental question, but it is an important thing to answer for both sides of the debate, as well as anyone in the middle or way out in left field. If you're looking to understand God or the Universe or something else entirely, discoveries like these help to realign your perceptions about how the world works in very jarring and enlightening ways. You don't have to go around believing you got the plague because you were a bad person, even though you thought you did everything right. You don't have to believe that there was a storm because you were destined to wind up at the bottom of the ocean for that affair you had. You can believe these things if you want to, but you gain the freedom and knowledge to make a more informed decision than our ancestors were able to make.
That, in my opinion, is the ultimate form of progress.
This does not really impact the fundamental question that you're addressing at all, nor does it take away from the beauty of the world around us. Indeed, I think things like this only serve to enrich both, and I find it sad that most people use these sorts of findings just to deconstruct the world for science or God.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
> This particular problem has frequently been pointed out by creationists, but evolutionists have dismissed it as a non-issue. Until now. Now when they have found an answer to the problem, it suddenly makes sense to address the issue.
You seem to be unaware that scientists have been growing insects with extra body segments, legs sprouting from their heads, etc., for decades now. All the quoted text means is that they have found the built-in mechanism for managing this, not that they have suddenly discovered that it is possible.
Thank you for showing the lurkers how bad creationists are about twisting everything around in hopes of discrediting science, and how pathetic that spin control is when you dissect it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I feel silly dignifying this with a response, but...
Let me start by saying that I'm not a rabid evolutionist, nor am I a rabid creationist. I suppose I could be called a very weak theist, but those of you who aren't philosophers should probably just think of me as agnostic. It's not exactly accurate, as I believe that there is something greater than myself, but I'm not nearly so arrogant as to say that I know what that something is (or anything else that is essentially unknowable).
In response to pkplex: they're trying to prove evolution for the same reason that you are trying to prove your very specific version of creationism; they think that it's true. They ARE looking for truth, though you (and I) might disagree with where they're looking for it.
Noah's ark has been found, eh? If that was actually a known true statement, rather than just something that someone said and you believed (much like the theory of evolution is to others) then you'd have a very good point. I don't think you do. Here are a few very quick questions about The Ark. Dimensions for it are, as you said, given in the Old Testament. 300 cubits x 50 cubits x 30 cubits. A cubit is approximately 18 inches (it's actually a measurement from a person's elbow to the tip of the person's middle finger). We therefor have (with dimensions for my fellow Americans) 450' x 75' x 45'. This is quite the engineering project for one man and his family. The acquisition of the gopher-wood and cypress that was to be used in its construction would have been rather fun for several people. Oh, and the bible says that it was done by Noah, not by Noah and God. Let's assume, though, that it was a success, and all of the animals were brought onboard, and they all had enough to eat (including the carnivores), and everyone disembarked merrily after the end of the flood. What do the carnivores now eat? What about the herbivores? If even one member of any species (save human) died at this point, the entire species would be wiped out. Oh, and if the "God will protect them" argument is used, why not just have him float them and forget the whole "Ark" nonsense? Or just have him kill all the people that the flood was intended to kill? Even assuming they all have enough to eat AFTER the flood, what about genetic diversity? Two members of a species do not a diverse population make.
You also point out that there is historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Good for you. I'm going to pull a similar trick: I exist. Amazing, I know. I don't, however, have a religious following. It's one thing for Jesus Christ to be a historical figure. It's another thing entirely for him to have been exactly as portrayed by a group of writings picked during a convention a little before 400 AD (I want to say 397 AD, but that might be off by a bit).
I agree that life has order and design; as I said, I'm a theist. But the existence of order and design in the universe (and even if one believes in evolution, one must either believe in an almost limitless multiverse or in a designed universe for one's beliefs to be taken seriously) does not point a person toward any particular religion. What it CAN do is point a person away from certain false systems of belief.
You're looking for a better explanation of life than is being handed you be the scientific community in general. Great. Just don't use bad arguments and the assumption that your personal religious beliefs are unquestionable truths to attack evolution. Come at it with something of substance.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. --H.L. Mencken
You'll find some of these peoples writings by searching for 'evolution' on this site:
http://www.khouse.org/
I'm afraid that their simplistic and biased arguments aren't really worth the effort reading.
a) A part or particle considered to be an irreducible constituent of a specified system.
b) The irreducible, indestructible material unit postulated by ancient atomism.
Oh, look, atoms once were irreducible. Guess they must still be.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I studied a biology degree. There were three creationists on my course. The university had to accept them onto the course, so as not to be accused of religous bias. They were awarded degrees as well, although the examiners had to give their coursework and exam papers special treatment to take into account their beliefs.
Personally, I think creationists should simply be banned from studying any biological science at degree or higher level. This may seem a bit extreme, but to allow a creationist to study a biology degree is like allowing someone who doesn't believe 1+1=2 to study a mathematics degree.
I just wanted to provide a link to the graphic used to illustrate what these scientists claim to have discovered.
. jp g
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/graphics/images/mchox2
Do they purport that this genetic switch creates the numerous organs required to allow flight, including a complete set of wings, as well as creating the numerous changes in the brain to allow flight to be controlled? Does it create the numerous changes to the articulation of nearly every visible limb on the illustrated insect's body? If not, isn't this illustration sophism at it's very worst?
Hey slashdotters! Try looking at this article half as critically as you would a press release from Microsoft.
... so that we can give our kids the needed tools to spot, analyze, and tear apart ALL intellectual fraud and pseudoscience.
:-)
Along those same lines, I would expect to teach:
o) geocentricism, "the moon landings hoax/nasa big lie", "mars face", etc. in astronomy
o) flat earth in geography
o) "free energy", "100mpg carburetor" in physics
o) "breast enlargement pills","penis enlargement pills" in sex ed
o) all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry.
etc etc etc.
Most of the effort in current teaching methods seems to be emphasis on teaching existing theories, and little to no effort is given on how to dissect and examine "alternative" claims for validity.
You actually sound like a thinker, I find that cool. You might enjoy this link, it has quite an interesting argument Re: whether or not there ever was a historical Jesus behind the gospel stories.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
"Accepting Creationism means tossing out all of established science. Creationism is the adversary of all science, not just Darwinian evolution." Why?
Because if your mental mechanics allow you to believe in something that is basically magic , then your fundamental thought processes are flawed , and any "scientific" works you produce are suspect by default.
I'd present a historical argument against this, if science is still working on the real one.
A few hundred years ago, God was creating organisms. Then, through the magic of vivisection (ugh), we started to understand conception and development and the scientific explanation of how a organism comes to be. So God made the jump to creating species, and Creationism has been in retreat ever since. Did God hand-make species? No, that's natural selection. Species types? Dig some more through the fossil record... and that's still natural selection. Hmm, so what about natural selection itself? Inheritable characterists, surely such a transfer of essence bears the mark of the divine? No again, genetics turns out to be a relatively straightforward molecular process. Ah hah, molecules! God created the complex molecules! And if the response to that is "We'll get back to you, give us a few decades.", well so?
They will get back to you, eventually. And the Creationists, if they wish, can move the bar again. God can keep getting smaller and smaller, that's in His nature, and there will always be a scientific frontier, that's its nature. You can point to it and say "God is there!", and no one will be able to say otherwise. For a few years anyway, until it ceases to be the frontier.
Creationism will never be fully disproven, but how many times does the same basic theory have to be debunked and rewritten before you get the idea?
> Last time I checked a dictionary, irreduceably means that it cannot be broken down into smaller parts, i.e. that if it is irreduceably complex now, it has always been irreduceably complex since the beginning of time.
You have fallen for Behe's trick. He gives a precise meaning to "irreducible complexity", but he gives it a name that will lead the casual reader to think it means something other than what his definition says. (I suspect that this is deliberate deceit on his part, though of course I can't prove it.)
His actual definition is "if you remove a part it quits working properly". It does not follow from that definition that something that is IC has been IC since the beginning of time. Next time you're in a building with stone archways you might want to ask yourself whether they meet Behe's definition of IC, and then ask yourself how they were built.
The whole "intelligent design" form of creationism is just a collection of smoke and mirrors designed to mislead the unwary.
And it's targeted at the unwary rather than at critical thinkers, because it's part of Johnson's "wedge strategy" for sneaking creationism into the public education system in the USA. That requires a political win, not a scientific win. And that's fortunate for them, because they aren't doing any science -- they're just going through the motions in hopes of fooling the masses and the courts.
People who want to know what's going on with Behe, Johnson, irreducible complexity, intelligent design, and the wedge, and all that stuff, should visit the talk.origins archive and browse the FAQs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is nothing more than spin doctoring. What Behe hopes his audience doesn't know is that real science starts with the evidence and builds a theory to explain it; he, OTOH, has started with his 'theory' and is now fishing around for evidence to support it. (He has offered a few catches, but they have all been refuted.)Thou quotest Behe thusly:
I agree that any scientific result is subject to being discarded if new evidence conflicts with it. But that's not Behe's position at all: Behe doesn't have any scientific result to begin with, because scientific results are the results of evidence.
Behe just wants a blank check, "Accept my theory now, and I'll muster some evidence for it someday." Alas for him, no scientific theory has ever come about in the absence of evidence. He might just as well be arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Michael Denton's explains this all brilliantly in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Read it extremely carefully THREE TIMES and if you are lucky you will be jolted out of your ignorance
Two thorough refutations of Denton's facts and methods are here and here.
Denton's flawed and dishonest methodology is exposed in this discussion of proteins:
At the molecular level, Denton discredits himself by quoting Emile Zuckerkandl to show that "it is now generally conceded by protein chemists that most functional proteins would be difficult to reach or interconvert through a series of successive individual amino acid mutations"(Denton, 1985, p. 320). Zuckerkandl's quote (Zuckerkandl, 1975, p. 21) seems quite damning to the casual reader, but when one reads the entire article, one finds out that Zuckerkandl largely contradicts Denton. By Zuckerkandl's analysis, most advanced functional proteins cannot interconvert directly, and cannot be reached by some saltational mechanisms, but that they certainly can each be reached through gradual evolution from a common ancestor.
If Denton is the best that creationist can produce, statements like "I can assure you that you are completely wrong" need a firmer foundation.
In all of the debate, they only had one true argument, and it was a bad argument at that. Guess what that argument was? "Positive" mutations haven't been reproduced or observed in the laboratory, therefore they do not exist, therefore evolution is false. And this article is about just that.
What about antibiotic resistant bacteria? A relatively quick case of evolution in action. Obviously not a positive mutation from our viewpoint - but a positive one from the organism's viewpoint.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Found an article that nicely describes antibiotic resistance and evolution:
From the FDA Web site The Rise of Antibiotic Resistant Infections:
The increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance is an outcome of evolution. Any population of organisms, bacteria included, naturally includes variants with unusual traits--in this case, the ability to withstand an antibiotic's attack on a microbe. When a person takes an antibiotic, the drug kills the defenseless bacteria, leaving behind--or "selecting," in biological terms--those that can resist it. These renegade bacteria then multiply, increasing their numbers a millionfold in a day, becoming the predominant microorganism.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I'm European.... Not that I believe that you could realy call anyone really European.But we have had the Romans, the Spanish (cathaolic) inqusition, the Nazis we have had our share of extremist and selfrightious groups... However many of us are also childeren of the people who where the Romans, the Spanish (cathaolic) Inqusition, or the Nazis.
;->
It hard to be hardlined and see the world in black and white only if you have so much history to deal with.
Also things tent to move more slowly and being dutch with much more communication... Nothing is really deside anymore, we agree upon a common plan and that is it then. It's just to hard to agree on religious and political and other dogmatic idears so in most cases we make a exception for those.
This is however not really european, it's dutch. I mean in Greace and in France many religious groups are restricted just because the officials are of another group. That is just bad, and de european courts agree, but nothing much happens. This is a very sad time to be an European.
Americans seem to use to be irrational. The current president thinks very much in black and white. We on this side don't have the luxery of ignorence anymore, everything is and are shades of grey now.
My view is that microevolution is working.
Also: God created the universe and de planet earth a long long time ago, a really long time ago. Then God made the planet in 6 periodes like it is, and right now we are living in the 7th periode (I guess a creation day is a bit longer then 24hours)... and by the time the 7th day ends God will have restored the world to what would have been had Adam not sined. Humans will be perfect and life forver in peace and happyness... Just think of the progress that would be posible then!
Also I think that God created the species after their kind. However, Mozes defines a specie as follows: Two individuals are of the same kind/specie if and only if they share a common ancestor. Evolutionist do not see it that way
What I cannot create, I do not understand
never looked at DNA synthesis (or RNA transcription for that matter). There's also the argument that if some superbeing had put this all into place he wouldn't have fucked up so much and left a 10**5 chance of mutation. After all, he'd have to see his original creation as perfect right? Pitiful creationists, hate em.
On the other hand, I think a lot of evolutionists are neodarwinistic, they have this idea that everything happened via random mutations and natural selection, which is contrary to all the other processes of life. Where's the tight feedback loops? Where's the error correction? This is something truely worth criticising and the Gaia people do a good job claiming that co-operation and retro-viruses pay a much bigger part than most evolutionists make out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Co-operation and altruism are - in a bilogical sense - utterly self-serving. How contrary.
It's better to hunt in a pack, or group together in a colony, as I have a better chance of survival in a group. Collective resources, collective defense, etc. More chicks around too.
In the end, we can gamble our life against the Reaper alone, or in a group. Either way, you're still gambling. Everything is amoral in the face of survival.
Actually I won't speak for the theory known as creationism, but the general idea behind such thoughts.
I'm personally both an atheist and I view evolution as a well established fact. This new discovery does nothing for me, except fill out a few holes. It also does nothing for the genereal idea of "creationism", except it might discredit people foolishly trying to argue creationism through science or lack of evidence, when they should have gone the path below:
God could just have created the world like this. Look at it as a test. He could have created evolution, people and filled us up with memories, yesterday (or a minute ago), if there were such a being as God. I don't think anything ever can proove the non-existance of God. Of course prooving the existance, would require some seriously visible signs of Godly intervention, which hasn't happened yet.
As someone else has mentioned, science gives people a choice. We no longer have God as the only explanation for everything.
In children, this attitude is cute and interesting. In philosophers, it's part of the trade. In adults making a reasoned argument, it's ingenuous and artificial.
Please snap out of it.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
OKay.
I can't breath underwater or fly. That means fish and birds are the result of some supreme spark plug changer?
I can't trail long bits of poo out of my ass as I swim about in a bowl placed on a television - dear god why am I so neglected!
These things came about because they gave those creatures a competitive advantage in changing climates. So they survived, shagged, had some babies that were like them. etc...
We got smart, elephants got big, mice got small, toads can sleep for months, sea monkeys can survive in packets of salt for YEARS, rabbits do it all the time, tutles live for centuries, spiders have eight eyes.
I seriously can't see where you get the idea that you need there to be some Human Centric All Powerful Dude out there somewhere to explain all that. Seriously!
First, the thing to keep in mind is sucess is not being better at anything, success is passing on your genes. If you manage to pass on your genes, you're done. For all intents and purposes, you can drop dead at that point, your job is done. Now it's up to your offspring to procreate. As long as they manage that, the "species" is OK. Just keep poppin' em out faster than they drop dead or get eaten.
/. with some guy about the eyeball, I don't want to have it again.
Second, nobody said you need to grow a fully formed stomach when there was none before. I've already has this conversation on
Stop thinking stomach, and start thinking proto-organs, or even single cells that exist symbiotically within another organism. Ameobas don't have stomachs, they have, I dunno, specialised cell groupings that secrete a 'digestive' chemical that extracts nutrients from any external piece of whatever that happens to float by. This is not a "chicken/egg" problem, so stop coming at it from that angle. As for those 999,999 generations of nonworking "stomachs": that took a whole 2 or 3 days of debugging in a pond somewhere to get the right one, way back 600 million yrs ago. After that it was just code tweaking.
What is it with people and evolution, that they can't imagine some slimy chemical mud that has "intent" - in so far as it gravitates toward another chemical gradient (food) - being alive?
Imagine Q or Rod Serling standing next to a small puddle explaining this to you OK? Here we have a pool of chemical x that naturally moves towards chemical y. In a few moments, this chemical soup will undergo a common reaction involving common chemicals. It will become "alive". It will contain a few simple organic compounds that, given some quiet time to themselves, will intermingle and maybe even begin to replicate - the ablity to harvest nearby chemical compounds and assemble them in a *near* mirror image. Hell some of those compunds can be from other "proto-organisms" and we already have predator and prey evolving. Neat huh?
Asking how stomachs and eyeballs formed while imagining them as real functioning eyeballs and assholes is like asking how you get a fully formed modern man equipped with a cell-phone -- from a club-swinging neanderthal. You don't. Because the neanderthal never picked up a club with the express purpose of building a cell-phone. If he did, he would have quickly found that he was without the proper environment to create one, let alone NEED one.
So too, did early life not set out to outfit itself with a stomach, but instead went for the more practical "I just found a new way to eat my food by actively enveloping it instead of passively absorbing it from my environment -- COOL"
what follows sounds like a linux bash but i cant be bothered to clean it up, take what you want. I'm getting tired....
And your comp sci analogy doesnt work either, as building the Linux kernel that way is akin in biological complexity to building a chamaeleon or something from scratch. Try creating a kernel that can "eat", "defend" and "replicate"(sounds like windoze). Your Linux/chaemaleon is wasting time trying to be 10 different species/server tasks. Whereas a flatworm just does what it needs to divide and move on. Maybe you should write the comp sci equiv of a flatworm (haha windoze again), then maybe your flatworm kernel will be able to withstand random mutations?
Ha. You Heathens. Go to Hell.
Everybody knows that God created the world in six days. YHWH calls it "Release Candidate One". He stayed up for six nights with a pack of RedBull coding this pig and then released it for beta testing. On the seventh day, he let the project languish on sourceforge and hasn't touched it since.
My friends and I have been batting this one around, maybe you can help. It concerns how one gets from a primordial soup full of replicators (see 'The Selfish Gene', by Richard Dawkins) to something like a cell, way before anything like a regulator gene.
.5%, you go through each of the 62 characters / genes in an agent, roll the dice, and if it comes up .5% or less, you mutate that character.
Every environment can be thought of as presenting a utility function to the organisms that inhabit that environment. Dawkins gives an example of the following utility function:
Try to see if a population of organisms can "discover" the line of poetry "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." You'll note that there are 29 possible choices for each letter (26 letters + commas + periods + spaces). And in the above string, there are a total of 62 characters. So, to present the power of evolutionary theory, Dawkins imagines a population of agents randomly initialized to 62 characters. One of these might be:
"jkdzcn43asdf lkjasdfhaokjshfla ksdhfoiuykjahs, asdasd. sdfsdf."
you can imagine that each agent reproduces unequally based upon how well it does given the utility function -- in this case, the utility function returns an integer from 0 to 62, where 0 indicates no letters match and 62 represents a perfect match for the entire sentence. Each generation is exposed to mutation in the Dawkins example, though one could easily add crossover (which implies sexual reproduction) and inversion. The code is roughly:
1) initialize X agents in a population to random strings of length 62
2) write a function where each agent reproduces unequally based upon how well it optimizes the utility function given above. This choice matters, but not a lot. For our purposes, imagine that every organism below some threshold X has a 10% chance per time period of dying outright. And every organism above this threshold has a 10% chance of replicating.
3) After step 2 (which represents one tick on the clock), expose each organism to genetic operators. Mutation is simple: pick a % chance Y (where Y is small; if it is too large, you lose information too quickly) for each character in an agent (or gene if you prefer) to mutate to a random character. Thus, if Y is equal to
4) repeat steps 2 and 3 until you see equilibration of your population.
After a bit, it should be obvious to you that most of your agents will approach the correct sentence, whatever their starting values. Further, not all of the organisms in a population will ever be at the "right" outcome, given mutation in step 3.
So what does this tell us? Simple math helps out. To optimize the utility function above is simple, and we know this because we can compute the number of steps it would take to optimize it. Couple of points:
1) the function Dawkins uses (outlined above) is separable. No character / gene depends upon any other character / gene to determine the utility of its expression. This is huge. Think about it until you get a smile on your face. For real organisms, this is NOT the case (i.e., genes are non-separable). This is why evaluating the results of the genome project is ugly. If we had, for example, one gene acting alone to determine intelligence, it would be easy to detect / modify. Sadly, multiple genes acting in concert determine intelligence, and modifying one gene in the set changes the value for the entire set.
2) The number of steps needed to optimize the above function is 29 * 62 = 1798, which is an extraordinarily TINY search space.
3) If the characters / genes were non-separable, as they are in real organisms, things are quite different. Worst case is completely non-separable -- i.e., every character depends upon the value of every other character for evaluation under the utility function. In this case, you have 29^62 (where the '^' represents the exponent function). Obviously, this is a freaking HUGE number. Even low levels of non-separability (e.g., pairs of genes that depend upon each other to produce a trait) generate huge search spaces.
The fraud of Dawkins is thus simple. He proposes a set of operators that
define his theory of evolution -- unequal reproduction, crossover, mutation,
and inversion, and illustrates their efficacy (i.e., the "success" of the
theory) on a simple toy problem. The ugliness, however, is that solving
separable problems, which is the class of utility functions Dawkins uses
to "test" his theory, is trivial. Everything / anything works well on them,
and there is no real way for any given theory to fail on this class of
utility functions. The other, more interesting class, which has the
property of being an analog to REAL ORGANISMS WITH REAL GENES is when the
utility functions are non-separable, and the theory / set of operators
Dawkins proposes has NO success searching the spaces induced by this type of
utility function.
It is as if I set up a craps game, you come to play, and the rules are, I
win all double sixes and you win everything else. You commence to roll
double sixes until I have all the money in the world. I assert that the
dice are not loaded.
The dice for complex life are loaded somehow, or we don't understand the
mechanisms of genetics. The existence of these regulator genes simply begs
the question.
None of this, of course, displaces evolution as the best fit for the
available evidence.
Karl
The second derivative of the space-luck curve is infinite at my nexus, at least on the pong axis.
Gentry's haloes are a good start; the absence of intermediate fossils launched Punctuated Equilibrium (which otherwise has no leg to stand on); simple maths shows that it's impossible anyway and the list of ``reasons to suggest it is incorrect'' rolls on towards the horizon.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This is the only real way to respond to mobs. Appeal to reason when one is strong, so that the reasonable people in the mob can defect.
In the end, it is reason that should rule, and that's all that matters.
So explain Psychology,
I see your point. God MUST have created us, because of Psychology!
you conscious (if you have one),
You either mean consciousness (self-awareness), which other animals have been shown to have; or conscience, (awareness of right vs. wrong), which is part of abstract reasoning which does indeed make humans unique. I'll give you that, even though some researchers believe otherwise. But your argument wasn't that humans were unique, was it?
human compassion
Define compassion. Some humans have it, some don't. Will humans ever be able to live more peacefully than, say, deer? I doubt it, but one can only hope.
why we can talk,
Hmm. This is one of the arguments used to bolster evolutionary theory.
why we have a great capability to learn and a drive to achieve...
Because it increased our chances of survival in ancient times?
But you say, oh apes can talk and can learn, and have compassion. And I say, you are correct, so can my dog. But neither has made any great advancements in scientific research lately
You mean like the research you are currently discounting out of hand?
and my dog likes to go pee on my fence on regular basis.
Um, my arguments end here.
-bp
bp
For being such an accepting crowd, you all sure have a great way of stereotyping a very large diverse group of people. Not only that, but Creationist are also the majority. (Creationist != Christian, there are many more religions which believe in creation.)
Any comment that starts off by saying "Ha, damn those creationist bastards, they're all stupid and don't believe in science.", makes you look about as intelligent as the cockroach in my bathroom.
Intelligent conversation and discussion can only occur when you throw away all your stereotypes before stepping up to the table. Some philosopher talked about this once, but basically, you are supposed to try your best to approach the situation without making any assumption about the person/people with whom are you discussing, how it will benefit you, etc. You go in and debate for the purpose of the issue.
Bah.
What?
>Surely it would be genetically better for me to mate with as many girls as possible?
;)
It is, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise
For both male and female animals, their biological imperative is to procreate. For females, procreation is a serious long-term investement in time and resources. For males, it's not. In higher mammals and primates (note they are usually animals with complex societies), it is in the best interest of the female to have a male around to protect her and *his* offspring (if it's not his offspring, what the hell does he care?) and provide resources while she raises the babies.
Most males are solitary animals (some travel in small packs) that protect their territory and invest time and energy into being the baddest motherfucker around, just in case any young shithead gets any ideas come breeding season.
Most females travel in groups with immediate and extended family members, and for the most part make a collective effort in the raising of offspring. And they avoid males usually as the males will try to kill offspring they have not sired. In the "less-evolved" species, females tend to be solitary as well. There are exceptions. Bears are highly developed, as are cheetahs, but they do not tend to form social groups -- male or female. Lions form harems, some birds form pairbonds. The point is that generally, males procreate amongst many females and compete against many other males. Females hang out together and generally mate with the "best" males, usually the one who kicked the most ass.
Now the same generally holds true for humans. Except our higher brain functions and learned behaviour can override our urge to hump everything in sight. Society deems it bad to do X, so X is bad. Who/What is society? Why, the Illuminati of course.
Just kidding. Our morals are transient and in flux.
Society defines our morals. Society is allowing the Holocaust to happen. Society is the Civil Rights movement. Society is the flavour of the week in essence, as our morals are really just a response to the environmental pressure of today. Those same co-operative alliances (social pacts and norms) that keep you safe at night from burglars and rapists also keep you from climbing in open windows and following women around tasting their urine for days on end ala Discovery Channel. That's why I said that solitary or altruistic evolutionary strategies were both a gamble. Our evolutionary choice to form social groups - an inherently complex model - has caused us to gain advantages in defense and predation at the expense of certain procreative strategies.
the early evolution of animals.
animals are the expressions of genes
gene's evolve, animals don't
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Well, for one, your hypothetical kernel has no environemental feedback. It doesnt react or respond to its surroundings. Its state is too fixed. On or Off. Optimal or Sub-optimal. Under those conditions, Life is impossible. Your kernel needs room for a state == 'bootable, no usb drivers loaded', and still replicate itself -- compile and infect the next machine on the net. To introduce randomness into the kernel you need a system that functions with a broken kernel.
Wait. Stratch that. The current Linux kernel *is* random. Everytime a new patch goes in, that's a random event taking place with unkown consequnces. And the feedback mechanism is whether it compiles or not. Then it's released after some testing, and it goes up against the environment (the users). If it craps out, we'll wait for the next generation. Who wants to use 2.4.15. Not Me. Looks like the kernel *has* been evolving. The kernel is alwyas broken because its not optimal, and is under pressure to improve, better xyz support, etc.
And don't even get me started on "human intelligence" or any intelligence for that matter. I'll conced to more complex wiring. How many of your waking hours are devoted to the routines of your lizard brain? How many signals from your body never get to the frontal lobe because they get handled at the base of your spine? How many hours devoted to competing with the herd for resources? Wake, defecate, urinate, eat, work (used to be forage for berries), eat, socialise (so they dont kill you in your sleep for food), go home, eat, relax and devote some time to higher brain functions, usually Sports Night or Martha Stewart depending on your bent, sleep, rinse lather repeat.
Hmm, it just ocurred to me that a possible solution is to have a small OS running in memory. It listens to the network (environment) then it takes stray arp and broadcast packets and assembles the data into something useful. That takes care of eat and interact, and it if can "ingest" enough, then it can "replicate"
See, protons never degrade (so they say) which means the universe has the advantage of a really long time to let matter interact and do nifty things, like form stars and linux kernels. We dont have those kind of resources to play around with, letting our perpetual motion machine chug away at creating an OS from random cosmic rays coming through eth0. Plus, we may be on the wrong side of a thermodynamic curve, where it is increasingly difficult for systems to organise themselves spontaneously in local systems. Maybe it was entropically (is that a word?) easier to assemble life 600 million years ago or a billion. We mgiht be at the middle-age Bday party of the Universe and not even know it, it' all thermodynamically downhill from here folks...
Just thinking(farting?) out loud.
Well, it is certainly *not* predetermined. Predictable, maybe, predetermined no. Therefore, in my books, it's random. Hell, predictable is still random. Ask Schrodinger or Heisenberg.
There's no telling what bugs will be introduced or found after a new patch or feature is added. How is that non-random? I intend to eat breakfast in an hour, that doesnt mean all will go as planned. Just because so-and-so plans to add feature X doesnt make it a done-deal. Linus could drop dead tommorrow. Random.
The whole "intelligent design" form of creationism is just a collection of smoke and mirrors designed to mislead the unwary.
Maybe. For the seriously skeptical, however, it's wise to keep the possibility that it's correct in mind, even if it's not your favorite belief (note the last word).
Creationism *isn't* a scientific theory, because it is irrefutable. There is no concievable observation that could contradict it, because the creationist could just say "It's important to God's plan that you observe that, so He put it there for you to observe". It is not even difficult to come up with a reason why it might be part of God's plan. One obvious one is that it's there because rational minds that choose not to have faith in God need some alternative explanation (else they couldn't choose disbelief). If that doesn't float your boat, we can always fall back on "God's mind and plans are beyond our comprehension."
Okay, so creationism isn't a scientific theory, no matter how much misguided people want to say it is. So what? It's a logically viable explanation (don't believe me? Just try to disprove it with logic). Occam's razor can't touch it either -- what could be simpler than one all-powerful force directing everything? An incredibly long chain of random events is more appealing to some people and less to others, but it's hard to argue that it's *simpler*.
The simple fact is, that science is a belief system just like any religion. In it's purest form, science requires that we only accept whatever can be known by logical deduction from independently repeatable observations. Religion takes a different approach, one that allows for knowledge to be received by revelation (which is also a sort of observation, but not necessarily independently repeatable). And whether or not you buy into revelation, it's pretty reasonable to think that there may be truths out there that cannot be determined through scientific methods.
Science is currently a very popular belief system, but that has obviously not always been the case, and not because people were stupid or uneducated. Many theologians both today and throughout history are/have been highly educated and very intelligent.
To summarize: It takes Faith to believe that science is the One, True Way to perceive Truth. I don't have that faith. I find science very useful, and accept that the oft-repeated observations are correct and the theories are sufficiently correct to be highly useful, but I also keep open the possibility that other truths exist which will never be found via scientific means. Where other ideas contradict observations, I discard the inconsistent ideas, but creationism, for example, can easily be construed in a way that does not conflict with observations.
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There's the other problem of how the genes affected by Lox evolved without showing any changes in the phenotype at all (since they were repressed by Lox). They must have mutated randomly, since natural selection couldn't have any effect on genes that don't express themselves in the phenotype. I think that this is the real show-stopper for this particular mechanism for evolution. Note: I am not saying that another mechanism could not be theorized that handles this objection quite easily. I'm just saying that the mutation-amplifying gene Lox (and others like it) doesn't come close to solving all the problems.
http://pythonisito.blogspot.com/
Isn't it funny how that bible states that the earth is round? and this was written in the bible when the earth was still considered to be flat.
;)
;)
Could you cite the scriptures this is in? And in any case, what's your point? It's not as if people couldn't observe the world around them and draw their own conclusions about Nature. For example, you can see the tops of a ship's sails before you see the rest of the vessel. Gazing out to the sea, you can observe a slight curve to the horizon. I hope you aren't implying that the Bible predicted or introduced the idea of a spherical world. If anything, the Church flat-out rejected the idea of a spherical planet for hundreds of years.
People are so gullable these days. Because some scientist somehere says something, everyone believes it, without question. Especially when he says something that supports evolution.
I'd say something nasty about religion here, but I won't. Let's just say that I think faith requires more gullibility than scientific reasoning. However, I do agree that when a scientist publishes a study, it generally gets more attention than some random Joe publishing one on his own. Of course, that's because science is more empirical and objective, something I don't believe religion is associated with much.
How can you predict what happend some 12 billion years ago? The weather is bearly accurate to more than one day, and yet evolutionists claim they know what was in the earths atmosphere billions of years ago.
Through evidence left behind and through an understanding of how things work now. Are you saying that our estimates of the sun's age are wrong? That we can't date rock? We can, with an ever-increasing degree of accuracy, uncover more and more detail about the past. Predicting the future is also becoming more and more accurate. Your example of the weather is pointless, because weather is about as chaotic and unpredictable as you can get. You will notice, though, that our predictions are...for the most part...accurate to the point where we can plan our schedules out to a week. That is, unless you live in Texas.
People dont want to believe that there is a being somwhere in the heavens that is superior to them, a being that created them and the universe. This being is able to create the universe, and all that is in it, from giant starts, to microscopic life in six days.
Maybe some people can't fathom the notion that their religion may be wrong. Just a thought.
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
There's nothing oxymoronic about "belief in atheism". Atheism requires just as much belief as theism does. "Belief in agnosticism" is pretty close to being an oxymoron, but you could argue that "I believe that I don't know" is still non-paradoxical statement. In fact "I believe that I don't know" is probably the most skeptical position possible :)
One more nit: Technically, an oxymoron consists of just two words, so neither "science for creationism" nor "belief in atheism" are really oxymorons.
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o) all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry.
Well, I'm sorry that you find "Health Food" so obnoxious...
I'm not a creationist, I have a Bachelors degree in Applied Physics, and a Masters Degree in software engineering. Just so that you don't think I'm an irrational sucker.
I'm from the UK, but I'm living in the US these days. When I moved here I was perfectly capable of drinking regular British milk. I didn't have any trouble with American milk either.
After about six months I could no longer drink American milk. Something in it makes me ill pretty quickly, I won't go into details. However, I can drink Organic American Milk without any problems.
If I wasn't a "Rational Scientific Type" I would assume that non-organic milk is bad and that organic milk is good. It's an easy assumpition to make. As it is, I am pretty certain that there is something in American milk, that isn't in British milk, and isn't in Organic milk. This makes me suspect that it's a hormone or additive that isn't allowed in the UK.
Now, tell me again that "Health Food" is bad. It may be that it is no better for you than non health food in most cases. But in some cases it is a "cure".
If you want proof of this, come around here with a pint of milk, a pint of organic milk, and enough money to compensate me for the incredible discomfort that you are about to put me through...
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
The same thing can be said for creationism. The same way that you refute the proof about evolution can be used to refute the proof of your religous beliefs. I can look at what you say is proof of creationsism and simply ignore it, just as you can look at proof of evolution and simply ignore it.
Both are built upon faith. They are just faith in diferent things. Although, I have to say that you are ignoring what it is to be a Christian, if that is your religion. Because, Christians follow the teachings of Christ.
Jesus, was known to consort with anyone and taught people to refrain from judging people. So, by judging the belief and people that have faith in evolution, you are going against the teachings of Jesus. You have no right to do that, you simply have no right to judge.
Only GOD could judge a person by their actions, you proclaiming otherwise puts you at odds with GOD. So, if you dislike the idea of evolution, simply do not believe in it. I am not judging you, simply stating the facts.
A real Chrisian would never judge a person, because that is what Jesus taught. I think he said something along the lines of, "Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone."
I am not a Christian, simply someone that my family is attempting to convert. I only know what information they feed me and that is one thing that they really stress to me.
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> Isn't it funny how that bible states that the earth is round? and this was written in the bible when the earth was still considered to be flat. Isn't that interesting? Think about it... Now, how on earth could that get into the bible? And it wasnt by pure chance, unlike the theory of evolution which depends puerly on chance.
There are a few possible answers to this. If I felt contrary, I could say that the "Earth=round" was inserted into the Bible after the fact. Maybe it was a lucky guess. Perhaps it really was divine inspiration. The point is that it's not compelling evidence that it's divine inspiration. Oh, and evolution doesn't rely solely on chance. That's an extreme oversimplification, usually only used when one is trying to "straw-man" the theory.
> People are so gullable these days. Because some scientist somehere says something, everyone believes it, without question.
No argument here, although I'd extend it to anyone with a real or perceived claim to authority or expertise.
> How can you predict what happend some 12 billion years ago? The weather is bearly accurate to more than one day, and yet evolutionists claim they know what was in the earths atmosphere billions of years ago.
You have a skewed idea of the definition of "predict" if you think one needs to predict the past. The reason the weather long ago is better known than the weather tomorrow is that the long ago has already happened. Scientists can tell what the Earth's climate was like long ago by seeing the evidence of its effects. When meteorologists predict the weather, they're merely taking what they have and extrapolating educated guesses.
> When Charles Darwin came up with the theory of Evolution, not only did the world not believe it, but neither did he. As i see it, the theory of evolution was made up to create a substitute belief to creation.
Whether he believed in it or not is irrelevant to whether it's consistent with the evidence. And, as I see it, it was put forward as a theory to explain biological diversity in the Galapagos Islands.
> People dont want to believe that there is a being somwhere in the heavens that is superior to them, a being that created them and the universe. This being is able to create the universe, and all that is in it, from giant starts, to microscopic life in six days.
Based on the fact that 95% of the world believes in said higher power, I'd say that people do want to believe in a higher power.
> People dont understand how this is possible, and so they create a theory, which allows them to deceive themselves into thinking that they are the superior being. They dont want to have to submit to the one and only true God, they want to do their own thing, which is evil.
Apologies, but this is just nonsense. Firstly, nobody who follows the theory of the origin of the species thinks they they are the controlling factor in that origin, so your claims they they're thinking they are the superior being is incorrect. Second, "the one and only true God" is not science, it's religion, so it can't be applied to the theory of origins in any meaningful way.
> I'm not providing much scientific evidence here for creation, but, any critical person, should be able to see that the theory of evolution is only a THEORY.
You seem to imply that because it's a theory, that it's necessarily wrong. The theory of relativity is also considered a theory, but it has stood up to much experimentation. "Theory" means "not yet proven" but should not be extrapolated to mean incorrect. It's more appropriate to say that theories are incomplete.
> How can we, who dont even understand life, who cant create life in a controlled enviroment, claim that life came about by chance?
There are two points here. First, nobody on Earth can explain why gravitation works. Nobody knows the reason why massive bodies attract one another. To say, however, that this means we can't discuss gravitation in a meaningful way is just silly. We discuss gravity by examining its effects on our universe. We discuss evolution the same way.
Second, I don't personally know anybody who claims that life "came about by chance", and this is the classic straw man argument about evolutionary theory. All this statement demonstrates is that you haven't actually read or studied the theory, because your statement demonstrates gross misunderstanding of the mechanisms of evolution. I won't go into the gory details unless you wish me to do so, but suffice it to say you're badly misinterpreting evolutionary theory, and it ruins your argument.
> With all of our intelligence, we have not been able to create life in a lab, and this is with inteligent input. There was no intelligent input in the theory of evolution. Just chance.
Refer to my statements above about incomplete understanding, and about the "evolution=chance" argument. I will add here that not being able to create life in a lab has no bearing to this discussion, because it assumes that because we haven't done it yet, we never will, and because we don't understand it now, we never can. A mere one hundred years ago, nobody could build a heavier-than-air flying machine, or a computer, or a television, or any of a thousand other things. We learn. It's what we do best.
Virg
Maybe God created a World that looks like the result of billions of years of evolution.
Or maybe God created a world that is the result of billions of years of evolution. I'm not particularly religious, but it has always amazed me that so many people apparently believe that a very old Earth/Universe and biological evolution somehow preclude the existence of a higher power. The last time I checked, biology (and the natural sciences in general) was in the business of answering the "how" questions. It makes no attempts to answer the "who" or "why" questions.
Certainly, if a person believes in an all-powerful God, then said person must (by definition) believe that said God would be capable of creating life by employing evolutionary processes. If you were an engineer charged with populating a planet, would you design a species, wipe the drawing board clean, and start from scratch to design another species that is 99% similar to the one you just got done with? I know I wouldn't, and I'm just a lowly code monkey.
I'm an apathetic agnostic, but as far as I can tell, this whole "evolution versus creation" debate is the biggest non-issue in recent history since, by and large, they are the same thing. Oh, I'm aware that there are problems with evolution if you are one of these Biblical literalists who believe that every last word of the Bible is 100% true and that the Universe is 6,000 years old. But I've always been under the impression that these folks constitute a small (but vocal) minority of American evangelicals. Certainly, the Christians that I talk to consider these folks to be a bit of an embarassment.
The "rift" between science and religion (to the extent that there is one) is largely a creation of militant fundamentalists and militant atheists taking pot-shots at each other from opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence. To the rest of us, there is a large middle ground that has more than enough room to hold us comfortably.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Nonsense. Any good scientist, when faced with a mystery, will be more than happy to say "I don't know how that happened" and start trying to figure it out. Can't get much more intellectually honest than that. A good Creationist, faced with a question s/he can't answer, says "God did it". Now this answer may well be true, but it's almost useless for predicting future outcomes (which is one thing that science can be awfully good at).
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Let's just say that I think faith requires more gullibility than scientific reasoning.
Why do you have to contrast faith with science? I think they are two halves of a whole, the spiritual essence of man and the reasoning essence. I think faith is not about "gullibility" (if that's a word), but rather the acknowledgement that we are imperfect and we strive towards an ideal, which we'll never reach, but through striving we become "better," however you want to interpret this.
And the fact of the matter is, regardless of how sophisiticated your weather prediction science is, you don't know what's going to happen to you tomorrow. Period. Life's like that -- you don't know whether you are going to be hit by a car tomorrow (God forbid!).
Maybe some people can't fathom the notion that their religion may be wrong.
But how can you say, how can you unbiasedly (now I'm making up words) determine what is wrong and what is right from some kind of an independent position? Are you God?
Bush Lies Watch
Actually, evolution (survival of the fittest) in theory has been proven to be a theorem for at least 150 years, and that's more then any physic theory ever will accomplish (well that would be if in case the all-be theory wont come around).
Except, of course, for Newton's laws, which have been around for 300 years.
1+1=2 is a theorem.
Incorrect. 1+1=2 is a set of symbols, which we have arbitrarily made up and declared certain semantic rules on. Since the semantic problem space is infinite, we can make up all sorts of other symbols and rules.
Survival of the fitest is a theorem.
Incorrect. Survival of the fittest is a speculation made by Charles Darwin. He does not propose a way to disprove his statement.
Gravity is a theory.
Incorrect. Gravity is a phenomenon initially observed by human beings on the planet Earth, which term is also used to describe similar phenomena of other celestial bodies and systems they form.
Bush Lies Watch
Bias Disclosure: I am a Christian and Biblical Creationist.
The article opener claims that this finding can explain how sea creatures could evolve into insects. That isn't what it explains at all.
So they change a key gene or two and the shrimp lose some legs. SO WHAT? As useful as this may prove to be for gene therapy and all, this does not explain away the Creationists' argument!
To my knowledge, no evolutionist claims that insects were the first land animals. An animal that can survive in a marine environment just cannot migrate to land, no matter how many legs it has.
To explain away the Creationists' argument, not only does a candidate mechanism such as this have to be found, but there must be a detailed explanation of which changes occurred, to which species, in what order, and how the resulting creatures could survive in either land or water.
The evolutionists still have a lot of work to do. If a shrimp loses legs and gills, and absorbs oxygen through the skin, can it still survive in water long enough to go ashore?
Whenever I get in a discussion with evolutionist types, they often respond with an attitude of over-skepticism. Stuff like, "I won't even consider this belief system without absolute proof!" Are those same people now criticizing Creationists for not bowing before this non-proof?
Now as for myself, I have very little knowledge of Biology (just high school level), but I'm no dummy. I know all about the black and white moths, and the drug-resistant bacteria, and the Galapagos finches, and all that. No one I know, Creationists included, doubts that variations occur over time. But I for one reserve the right to doubt an idea like evolution, that if true would completely invalidate my world-view, without more evidence than we currently have.
NOTE: I did not say that I have no doubts about Creationism. I have quite a few, not the least of which is the "Starlight & Time" problem. But that's another topic.
My point in summary: Lots of you Slashdot types love the stance of universal skepticism, but everybody believes something they can't prove. Evolution may be yours, or atheism, or astrology, but Creationism is mine.
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cultural prefrences still exhibit selective breeding. What does this mean? Human beings will continue to become more intelligent, probably taller, and probably more beautiful.
More intelligent yes, more beautiful yes, but taller not necessarily, as for one thing, humanity of AD 2001 is a tool-using species, with machines to do work and platform shoes to make up for deficiencies in physical appearance, and for another, some people are attracted to the disabled. Even the "more intelligent" part is in question: what if the human race forks over the next couple hundred millennia, leaving the cuter (as in Precious Moments cute) but slightly less intelligent people above ground, where they become herbivores, and putting the slightly more intelligent people below ground, where they evolve night vision and a taste for the flesh of those above ground?
This is how the human race will have evolved in the year A.D. 802701 if the late H. G. Wells has his way.
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Not only that, but Creationist are also the majority. (Creationist != Christian, there are many more religions which believe in creation.)
You don't determine the truth by majority vote.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Still more evidence Earth is round" or "Still more evidence light has a finite speed"?
I'm the stranger...posting to
True, the most zealous Creationists are the most likely to be online debating, but the moderate Creationists are there too, as well as the neutral, and the moderate "Evolutionists".
Not everyone is online in mailing lists to debate. Many are just trying to learn. More and more, the Internet is made up of all walks of life.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
A theory is an idea or belief that has been concocted by a scientist to explain a portion of the universe. Until this theory can be wholly proven or wholly disproved the scientist and others that believe in that matter have faith that they are correct.
The same can be said for people of religion. They have faith that what they believe in is the truth of existence. However, there is very little that can be proven. Many of the theories simply are untestable by our current levels of technological advancement. Does that mean that we will never be able to test religous theories? No, we may one day be able to test those theories and prove or disprove their truths.
The Pope himself has stated that evolution is a very good theory. He followed that up by saying that God started/created evolution. This was decreed by the Pope only a few years ago. Look it up, or choose to ignore that actual fact, like many Christians do.
Who is to say that the Pope is wrong? It is very possible that evolution was created by God, it is possible that evolution simply happened through ways we have yet to be able to fully explain. The major difference is that we have better prove of evolution than we do of God.
Once again, that does not mean that there is no God. It is just something that we currently are unable to prove or disprove. The faith in the existence of God is to great to simply dismiss. We just need sound methods or proving or disproving God's existence.
One way that would prove that God exists is for him/her/it to show up on international TV and simply say, "Hey, I am God. Check this out..." (Waves hands) "Here is a new species." Until then, people simply have to have faith that God exists. One day, we may have another method of proving whether or not God exists, right now that is all we can hope for.
Believing in something can be a strong thing and simply cannot be denied. Whether that is the theory of God or the theory of anything. Until it is proven to fully be truth and is more than simply words, all you can have is faith in what you believe.
I am not claiming either as being fully correct or fully incorrect, I am merely sharing my beliefs on these subjects.
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Were you interviewed for PBS by Alan Alda? I remember seeing some program he hosted which detailed exactly this theory.
this outlines all my beliefs
l en .pdf
http://www.edition-fatal.de/isbn3935147082-quel
aliens rule this world and the illuminati are its agents... prove me wrong!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
>I'm still not convinced that evolution answers the question of where we come from...
That's OK. Scientific theory is far from perfect. It is self-correcting though. Theory gives way to empirical data, and things like Bohr's model of the atom give way to de Broglie's model. Science itself evolves. I'm no evolution theory zealot, but I've read some of the Creationist's material, and it is sorely lacking in consistency at the very least.
Evolution is IMHO the best description available for what is observed. Someday it will be usurped, hopefully sooner than later. Sorry bout the entropy rant, I also subscribe to Complexity theory....
From now on, schools should teach creationism and evolution at the same time. Included in the classwork: [a half-dozen-plus creation mythologies]
You forgot the halflings' creation myth. But seriously, I wonder why school literature classes don't teach comparative mythology. At the high school I attended, the mythological curriculum was restricted to the Greek myths, presumably so they could lead from that into Homer's epics.
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For those of you with proof that evolution does take place, theres a creationist guy offering $250,000 for it. Enjoy.
http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=250k
There are very few "creationists" who would argue that evolution in the sense of adaptation or survival of the fittest does not occur. The big question is, can something as complex as a human being really evolve from a single celled creature in the mud, no matter how much time. I agree with PingXao in the sense that it has always seemed odd to me that evolutionary scientists get so bent out of shape by creationists. There is a lot of irony in that. Not to mention it is not very scientific.
Just my $.02 that's likely to get lost in the /. noise:
First, just so everyone knows where I'm comming from, I was raised a creationist. And in the past I've been a devote creationist that would try to "debate" with others to promote my point of view -- thinking that if you believed in evolution you were an atheist. However, as I have matured (a little bit, not much), I can say that my own beliefs have evolved.
I don't understand anymore this animosity that Christians and Evolutionist have between each other -- this fierce compitition. When I read the Genesis account (first few chapters) and get all the imagery out of my head that I was raised with (the presuppositions so to speak) I see a very general story that is not intended to be a science text book. I think details are purposely omitted because the point of the book is not for us to know exactly how everything came into being, but to understand that a supernatural being created it and the relationship that we have to this being.
Christians that are threatened by evolution don't have a true concept of the omnipotence of an all powerfull God (or Yahweh, Jehovah, Cosmic Spirit, or whatever name you attach). Think about it, if you had unlimited processing power and data, you could drop thousands of pieces of paper from a plane at 10K feet and know exactly where each paper would land. Moreover, now assume that you can control all of the variables (wind speed/direction, ordering of papers, turbulance, etc) -- then you would be able to cause each of these papers to land where you wish them to land. Now, back up to the Big Band (or whatever started the Universe). Assuming that all energy and matter that exists in the universe today was involved in the Big Bang (to my knowlege science has not found any exceptions to the law of conservation of energy and matter). Now lets assume there's an all powerful being that causes this Bang and sets up all the variables to Its liking. This being, in theory, could then foreordain the entire universe as we know it today in a single instance at the time of the Big Bang. To the Creationist, all of this appears to be the work of God, Its creation. However, to the Evolutionist, all of this appears to be the work of chance (just a question for thought, but is anything really random? Or do we just label events as random when they become too computationally complex?). Add to this that God is outside of time (exists in all of time at all instances at once) and you realize that there's more the the Genesis account than meets the eye! I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think that science and the Bible are mutually exclusive.
Now, on the flip side, I don't understand why some scientists are so bent on disproving the Bible and slamming Christians -- almost a fear of Judeo-Christian beliefs (well...maybe I do, there have been and still are some pretty crummy people that call themselves Christans). The Bible was written by over 40 authors from 3 continents and from various backgrounds (kings, prophets, common folk, political prisioners, etc) and it was written over a span of 1500 years! What a wealth of knowlege and wisdom it contains. Some claim that it contains a meta-narrative of a God trying to reconcile a relationship with mankind. If nothing else it contains history and 1500 years of culture and living experiance. How you choose to read it is where faith comes into the picture. It's just a shame that there are all of these debates about the Bible and Science, but very few people actually read the Bible (including Christians) even though it is classic literature and a great read once you understand the context/culture/timeline in which it was written.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
Oh, I didn't realize that C++ compilers fell together by random chance, with no guiding intelligence! I'll bet Bjarne Stroustroup will be downright disappointed about that, eh? Think about what the hell you are saying.
Get a grip. You said the following:
So the mechanism that produces protein is an extremely precise machine that is itself made of protein. How did it originate? What produced the protein in the protein-synthetic apparatus? Did it originate with "random" proteins. Ya, I know you've got it all figured out in your little mind, but the problem is that your "random" proteins do not exist. Oh, I know, they once existed, but now they are all gone. Isn't that too bad. The story always seems to be the same, doesn't it?
He was responding to this by giving you an analagous circumstance, where a (simpler) mechanism existed that allowed for bootstrapping of the system. When the more complex system built on top of the simpler became complete enough to build itself (the C++ compiler in his example) the earlier scaffolding was no longer needed.
This is also the primary refutation of Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" thesis, which I have indeed read in full.
No one suggests that the complex protein, DNA, and RNA system spontaneously self-assembled in a single step. Creationists who throw around impossibly large numbers to show the Vast improbability of that happening are indeed correct. The only way that such a phenomenon could be explained without saying "god did it" is to accept one of the following:
It's that last possibility that most scientists working in the field believe to be the most likely. All you need to trigger the evolutionary feedback loop is some configuration of chemicals that can make it more likely that a simliar configuration of chemicals will be produced in the immediate vicinity. Once you've got that, then any change that makes the replication process more efficient will 'catch', and life is off to the races. Eventually, the more refined replication process may lose the pieces that were needed at the beginning, and wa-la, you've got a C++ compiler (RNA, DNA, proteins) that can compile itself (reproduce) without keeping the vestigal pieces that made the production of the compiler a simpler task.
That's complex, surely, but if you have water and energy and carbon compounds and a billion years of time, who's to say it's impossible? The most primitive, fragile form of life imaginable would still be life so long as any kind of replication, no matter how slow, fragile, or inefficient, was there.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
(1) marsupials got off the ark at Mt Ararat with everybody else,
(2) kangaroos and koalas can't swim across an ocean,
(3) there wasn't enough continental drift for australia to be accessible by land, and
(4) there's been no significant speciation, evolution or genetic drift,
it's a real stumper as to how these critters got to australia and nowhere else.
I play Nerd-Folk!
- all the current all-natural/herbal/psychic/magical/religious "cures" in the "health food"/"alternative medicine"/"complimentary medicine" industry
Emphasis mine.Re-read the stuff in Bold
Where do you find Organic produce? Predominantly in "Health Food" Stores. Are they "All Natural"? Yes.
Organic does not just mean that they are using traditional techniques. It means that they are Certified as being produced to certain standards. For example, the feed that was fed to the cows has to be free from additives, the cows must not be injected/fed hormones. The standards vary (Californian Organic Standards, Oregon Tilth Standards) but the premise is the same.
Yes, this is not a "cure" it is an avoidance. But, having lumped All-Natural/Health-food in with Alternative Medicine, I had to point out that the reality is different.
Some All-Natural Alternative Medicines might have a genuine scientific basis (maybe even currently unknown) but some ARE pure quackery. At the moment a diet pill is being promoted very heavily in this area. It uses the astounding claim that you can lose a pound a week, (this is the rate that you can expect to lose weight if you watch your diet and exercise... as they suggest). I had a look at the ingredient list and it contained three "active" ingredients. An Ephedrine derivative (Sudafed anyone?), Caffeine, and a chromium dietary supplement. Considering some of the effects of both Ephedrine and Caffeine, you'd be as well off taking a few cups of coffee. Sure it makes you feel more "alive" or at least awake. Sure if you diet and exercise you will lose weight. But the pills... don't do jack.
I am not against denouncing quackery, I am against denouncing an entire, vaguely related, industry without any proof.
Z.
Book Burning... Now THAT is scientific debate
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
Wow.
;-P
All of this creationism hot air. But on Slashdot? Isn't this a technodweeb's paradise? A science geek's home?
Whenever a debate on evolution springs up on the net, does some appointed sentinel of the far right ring the clarion call of Christian Fundamentalism and call forth a vanguard of babbling halfwits running to the scene of the crime to proclaim The Truth?
I'm really sorry. Mod me troll, mod me flamebait. I know it is no good to throw a pail of water on the idea of commentary on a website devoted to comments. But this is Slashdot, isn't it? We believe in science and tech here, no?
Look, some guidelines for non-creationists, as I see it, for whatever it is worth:
Don't talk to them.
PLEASE! Don't take the bait! They only relate babbling pits of tomfoolery to your mind. You can not reason with them! Every pound of logical heft you hurl in their direction will be replied with immediately by 10 pounds of so much clangityclank of the brain that you will only be left dumbfounded by the psychology of it all. The point is to not engage them. Because engaging them will not allow their ideas to die the ignoble historical death their ideas deserve. The dustbin of history must not be disturbed, as it is already disturbed enough as it is. The more you try to persuade them to reason, the more you breathe life into a sinking ship. Your pleas for reason will only be replied with with flim flam.
They mean well, and that is their problem. But they can't get their brains past a bad idea. They must justify it, by any means possible. So the harder and harder you blow against them, the harder they hold their cloak of belief. Stop blowing, let time and solitude relax their grips on their insanity.
I hear some primitive tribespeople fear having their pictures taken because they think the camera steals a bit of their soul. So if they don't see a camera, they don't get excited. And when their backwards beliefs are not challenged, they live peaceful, harmless lives. In other words, don't show creationists cameras. Get it?
After all, Al Qaeda is nothing more than a Muslim Fundamentalist backlash against the "decadent West." New ideas are dangerous. Progress is disturbing to some people. Some do not accept new, and better ideas. They instead cling to old, crazy ones and get very defensive about it. They frame it in absolutes, that evolution goes against God, for example. Evolution does not go against God. Science is not allied against religion. Any forward-thinking religious person can incorporate evolution into their world-view without evolution challenging their beliefs. It will, in fact, enrich their understanding of the world, deepen the mystery of life by making more clear the complexity of it all, and therefore, eventually, reaffirm their belief in God. But all of this assumes an open mind. Unfortunately, there are a lot of closed ones.
Don't show creationists cameras!
Leave them to their strange ways. Left in peaceful backwards isolation, they will eventually go the way of the Dodo, no irony intended. Right now their numbers are too large and the voraciousness of their passion too disturbing in the USA to be considered harmless. They are quite harmful, to the education and intelligence of all of our children. Give it time, many years, and they will fade away into history. Someday, decades from now, creationism will sound almost cute and harmless, like we laugh at the Spanish Inquisition in Monty Python skits.
Until then, they are just a massive pain in the ass. Please, ignore them! Here on Slashdot, and in the rest of your life. Your intentions are good in trying to challenge them in honest debate, but please, just walk away from them. There is no winning, just lots of hot air for you to inhale.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What are the chances of two such mutations happening in a complex organism that needs another organism to reproduce? NOT GOOD!
Kosh - Ambassador of the Vorlon Empire
Well, according to a 7th grade geography book I've looked at....Glaciers move uphill!!
The book was poorly written or you are misstating the interpretation.
Glaciers carve valley walls in the same way water erode stream channels. The flow on the valley walls is from side-stream erosion.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
But isn't this precisely why we have peer review? While one, two, or even ten scientists might delude themselves into seeing something that's not here, eventually someone is going to come around and see things for what they really are.
;-)
Oh definitely, peer review and especially replications done by other labs. (Although you'll recall that in the case if Blondot, there had been replications -- but by fellow French scientists who may have been swayed by nationalistic urgings.)
There are some genuine points of disagreement about the same datum between scientists of different theoretical schools. Consider the following:
"Let us consider Johannes Kepler: imagine him on a hill watching the dawn. With him is Tycho Brahe. Kepler regarded the sun as fixed: it was the earth that moved. But Tycho followed Ptolemy and Aristotle in this much at least: the earth was fixed and all other celestial bodies moved around it. Do Kepler and Tycho see the same thing in the east at dawn?" (p. 5 of Hanson, N. R. (1958). Patterns of discovery: An inquiry into the conceptual foundations of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
"For Hanson, part of what is involved in learning a particular science is learning to see the world in a particular way. Hanson proposes that the difference between the trained observer and the untrained observer is similar to the gestalt shifts that any of us can experience when we look at ambiguous figures." (p. 45, Bechtel, W. (1988). Philosophy of science: An overview for cognitive science. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.)
"In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds." (p. 150, Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. (2nd Ed.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.)
Of course, we know that Kepler was right and Brahe wrong, but there was a time when this was unclear, and two viable theories led their proponents to different interpretations of the same experiences/data/observations.
That's the great thing about science, unlike bible *cough* theory, is that it keeps evolving
Agreed. "Creationist science" is science by no one's definition (except Feyerabend's, but that's another story). While scientific data might be theory-laden, but Creationism is not a scientific theory...
Here are some other fun quotes along these lines:
It is the theory which decides what we can observe. - Albert Einstein.
These are the opinions upon which I base my facts. - Adlai Stevenson.
Political structure determines language and language determines thought. - George Orwell.
Correct. Your pretty much missing my point!
> Behe gives exceedingly detailed examples of bio-molecular structures that fit his notion of being irreducibly complex. That is his evidence. His hypothesis is falsifiable if anyone can give a plausible sequence of mutations that conform to natural selection and can result in these structures.
Sorry, but you have been misinformed. A readily accessible reference is here.
Several times Behe has staked a claim, had it refuted, and responded with "No? Well, how about this one?" The result has been an (apparently) infinite postponement of the evidence.
So again I say: his claims are not derived from evidence; he made his claim and is offering a series of guesses as 'evidence'. He is not even meeting the scientist's responsibility to scrutinize his own evidence carefully before running to the press with it. Meanwhile, he has not retracted his claim; he feels entitled to an infinite number of tries.
That's pseudoscience. Real science works forward from the evidence to the theory. Behe can't very well do that, since he never had any evidence to work from, just some lame claims that were only good enough to mislead the uninformed.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
- An evolutionist looks at the available data and comes up with a theory that explains it.
- A creationist comes up with a theory and then keeps only the data that supports that theory and discards the rest.
I you're asking which came first, the data or the theory when it comes to Creationism, the answer is all around you.
Creationism explains the data gathered through observation over the thousands of years prior to the writing of Genesis, and continues to explain the growing complexity we understand as the universe. When peering through an electron microscope, more than one scientist has reevaluated his ideas on God.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
You know, there is a scientist somewhere who says he can detect silicone leaked from breast implants showing up in patient's bloodstreams... And the *only* ones who believe him are the lawyers who stand to make money and the women who are trying to figure out why their joints aren't as good at 40 as they were at 18.
When Charles Darwin came up with the theory of Evolution, not only did the world not believe it, but neither did he.
This is another bit of evangelical christian propaganda taking a bit of what he said out of context and ignoring the body of evidence of Darwin defending his conclusions... But in any case, it doesn't matter whether what Darwin said is completely correct or if he believed it. Contrary to what hard line creationists think, Origin of Species is not a scientific holy book. Science moves on and keeps discovering, improving and adding to its body of knowledge.
any critical person, should be able to see that the theory of evolution is only a THEORY
The rules of science are pretty clear cut... Whatever your idea is it must be testable, repeatable and falsifiable. The requirements for something to move from not being a theory anymore aren't so clear, but if evolution is testable, repeatable and falsifiable it isn't really a theory, it moves into the accepted body of knowledge.
Case in point, why is Einsteins Relativity called "Theory", when Relativity has never not been observed?
With all of our intelligence, we have not been able to create life in a lab, and this is with inteligent input.
General Electric patented an oil eating microbe it had developed for reducing the ecological devastation from oil spills in the ocean. No organism like it is known to have previously existed. I recently saw a program on the Soviet biological weapons program where they developed a virus which caused a myelin-like gene expression which the immune system attacked. After recovering from the infection, affected rabbits died of complications from their immune system attacking the myelin around their nervous system. This certainly didn't exist before. In both cases the intended function of the new life was determined before starting the lab work to create it. Was it created from scratch? No. Was it evolved through selection and a little genetic engineering? YES.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Good points, AC, though the question of the "science-ness" of a subject is a matter of the approach -- the methodology used to analyze the evidence -- rather than an arbitrary standard made simply because one position finds its roots in religious thought while the other presupposes that no non-natural causes can ever lead to observed effects. I do, however, believe that in the realm of scientific study, we must be careful not to simply leap to the conclusion of divine intervention. But we must also not invent constructs and call them factual if they are not supported by the evidence. What is called for here is a standard of intellectual honesty to which all sides in this discussion must adhere.
What I think we should see in schools, personally, is a class (or course unit) devoted to teaching the basics of logic and scientific reasoning. After these skills are mastered, then follow with an open and honest evaluation of the extant evidence related to origins (fossil evidence, geology, anthropology, basic genetics, the basics of microbiology and biochemistry, etc.). The presentation should highlight what is solid about the evidence, what isn't, and how this relates to the theory of evolution and the here-termed "creation hypothesis" (and other mediating positions), either positively or negatively. Giving students the tools to think in clear terms about the matter rather than being spoon-fed one idea or the other would both put the discussion back squarely on the data and how to interpret it and help kids learn to apply good logic to other areas in their lives.
After all, shouldn't our public schools focus on teaching how to think instead of what to think?
Except, of course, for Newton's laws, which have been around for 300 years.
Um, you do know that Newton's laws aren't quite right, right? They are only a good approximation at low speed and manageable mass.
Incorrect. Survival of the fittest is a speculation made by Charles Darwin. He does not propose a way to disprove his statement.
For starters it was a speculation popularized by Darwin. And if you cannot think of a way to disprove his statements, you are in serious need of a basic science course. Science doesn't require you to publish how something can be shown false, only that an educated person can.
Gravity is a phenomenon initially observed by human beings on the planet Earth
What a coincidence! Evolution is a phenomenon that was also initially observed by human beings on the planet Earth!
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Or I just sort by most recent.
~ now you know
Easy. If say the ancestor of a shrimp has 20 pairs of legs, but a mutation with 3 pairs of legs could swim just as well, then the 3 pairs of legs mutation will have a selective advantage because the shrimp needs less energy and resources to keep itself alive and reproduce. It hence would tend to be selected for over the 20 pair original.
You'll notice of course that the 3 pair shrimp could be less well adapted to whatever the niche of the 20 leg pair shrimp was and still out-compete the 20 pair shrimp just so long as the advantage of needing less resources and reproduces faster outweighs whatever advantage the 20 pair shrimp has an an individual
Lots of variations you can play on this one - the above assumes that to 20 and 3 leg pair shrimp continue to live in exactly the same ecological niche - which ain't necessarily so
but in the case of HIV, for example, those variants are known to appear at a strinkingly high rate as a result of mutations. Any population will naturally include variants with unusual traits, but those variants do also change over time, and new ones come into being. Read this.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Great, six fingers, we'd be able to count up to 4096 on our hands. It's an historical occurrence as well.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There's a paper in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience from Stuart Firestein's group at Columbia that provides some really interesting evidence from a very different angle. Some background: mice are animals that rely heavily on olfaction, or their sense of smell. Over half their brain is dedicated to it. In "lower" mammals (or however you want to look at it), the sense of smell is also very important (dogs, cats, etc.) For humans, however, smell is not as important. We don't smell predators coming or track prey by scent; we use vision (and a huge portion of our brain is dedicated to it).
Anyway, In this article they do a rigorous analysis of the data on olfactory receptor (OR) genes from the recently acquired mouse genome compared to the data from the human genome project. I forget the exact numbers, but mice have about 1000 OR genes. Humans have about the same number, but something like 75% of ours are pseudogenized. Basically, this means they've been converted to pseudogenes, or sequences in the genome that obviously used to be functional genes but have mutated to a nonfunctional state. This much was known before. In this paper, however, they use techniques based on similarity of sequences to group the mouse OR genes into families and subfamilies. Then they group the human OR genes into the same families. To sum up what they found, if you were to take a random group of say six mouse OR genes, there will be five or six human genes that are the human counterparts of those mouse genes (over 90% of human OR genes have a mouse gene that's over 95% identical at the protein sequence level, and 77% have a mouse gene that's over 99% identical, so reliable identification is not a big issue). However, within that group of five or six human genes, all but one of them has been converted to a pseudogene. They find this over and over again. There's only one functional gene in each group. Each group, BTW, can be thought of as sensing when a certain class of feature is present on a molecule. In an analogy to vision, it would be like if mice could see different shades of six types of red, but we could see only shades of one.
Okay, here's an evolutionary explanation. A long time ago humans were monkey-like animals. Before that, dog-like animals, before that mouse-like animals, etc. Whatever animal we used to be, it was heavily dependent on a highly-developed sense of smell for survival (hence an entire 2% of our genome being dedicated to it--think about that). However, as we progressed evolutionarily, having an exquisitely sensitive and precise sense of smell became less and less important, but smelling things in general was still necessary. The genes mutated and mutated, but if the last member of a family became pseudogenized, that would compromise our ability to smell molecules with a certain class of molecular features (by analogy, if we couldn't see red at all), and those pre-humans would die. As a result, we're left with the HIGHLY nonrandom distribution of working genes. I want to point out that while this could be written off as "microevolution," consider two things: #1- all humans on earth will turn out to have >98% identical OR genes. #2- I say this because that nonrandom of a pattern with that many genes involved would take a LONG time to evolve, or at least a lot longer than humans have been on different continents. Almost certainly longer than we have been Homo sapiens.
Can anyone come up with a non-evolutionary explanation that explains 1) why so many of the genes are pseudogenized, 2) why the selection of which genes are pseudogenized is so highly nonrandom and optimized for the real world? I'm not asking for a critique of my evolutionary explanation, as the reasoning as I've presented it is not intended to be bulletproof. However, I do think that the underlying model is correct and I don't think there's any better explanation.
A computer scientist is a scientist about as much as a sanitation engineer is an engineer.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
It most certainly does.
Mutation, for example, is almost universally bad - especially in terms of the immediate survivability of the organism suffering the mutation, such as Sickle Cell Anaemia - yet somehow lots of this badness is supposed to accumulate together to make improvements, and without leaving any trace of the steps in between.
Lots of creatures (and processes within creatures) have no sensible path from what was supposed to have been its ancestor, across a metabolic ``death chasm'' to a functional system which would be highly destructive to the organism if at all incomplete (immune systems being a classic example). How did the organism cross the gap? Obviously, some kind of planning must be involved, yet there is no such mechanism even postulated in evolutionary theory, mostly because doing so would attract condemnatory cries of ``teleology!''
I have many more examples, but not many more minutes.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Evolution requires no magic poof, just an unlikely event in a large timeframe (origin of life). Theories on the origins of matter come closer to a need for a magical poof, provided you feel the need to fill all unknowns with magic poofs. And scientists are generally intellectually honest about admitting where the unknowns are in a theory.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Venereal diseases are a pretty direct counterexample to that assertion.
And what has the Vatican got to do with Christianity, to say nothing of common sense?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Lets suppose that I would have a better chance of surviving with an eye at the back of my head. Such a mutation simply would not happen within one generation, it requires to many patches.
Insects and amphibians can fairly easily have mutations which give them extra limbs, even in places far removed from the proper location. Sometimes the limbs are functional, even. Usually this would not be a beneficial mutation, but on occasion it might happen to be, and the chance of that happening again is increased.
Now, as for the development of the eye in the first place, rather than novel locations. There is evidence for that as well. There are examples of scores of different eye strategies, at different stages of complexity. Some microscopic organisms have light-sensitive patches which they use to avoid predator shadows, seek or avoid sunlight, and/or modify their behavior based upon time of day. if you have several patches in pits, you can sense direction. A transparent covering would prevent occlusion by debris. Better shapes for the covering increase accuity. Aiming muscles would increase the range that each eye could cover. The detail level and the brain complexity then evolve hand in hand according to the needs of the species.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Nope. You've described agnosticism. Look it up.
Atheism is disbelief. Not lack of belief. Disbelief.
Agnosticism is the belief that God's existence is not known.
People who are agnostic but call themselves atheist ('cause agnostic sounds too wishy washy) have been trying to redefine the term by introduction notions of "weak" atheism (really agnosticism) and "strong" atheism (real atheism).
Just because some people want to redefine a word doesn't mean I have to buy into their "claptrap".
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
How many times do you need to be told that the purpose of science is not to give you absolute truths?
Who said anything about needing absolute truth? OTOH, why believe something that's false if you can find the truth? Take whatever you can get, analyze it, throw out what doesn't work, wash, rinse, repeat.
It's called critical thinking. I highly recommend it. I also recommend learning to discourse like an adult, rather than a 16 year-old.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yah, we're talking a very, very small fraction of a percent uphill, and the rest downhill. Uphill is waaaaaaay outvoted.
No, that gene was borrowed... and the bacteria are designed to do that.
I take it that you don't like the concept of irreducible complexity? No, I'm not parroting anything. Black Parrot does that. (-:
True, but it's even more true (if that's possible) the the organism has to survive with the part-features; even more so, in order to survive for very long, the part-features have to avoid burdening the creature until enough miracles happen that the part-feature becomes whole (else the creatures without the part-feature will out evolve it). While this is happening, the feature has to be spread throughout the population, and the un-part-featured are ``trying'' to do the same thing.
As if that all wasn't enough, I'm describing part-features which are lethal to the organism. Say we have three kinds of organism, original, half-featured and full-featured. What do you do when the intermediate feature would be instantly lethal?
Now consider that each of these part-features has to be transmissible as well, and we're well into the realms of fantasy. Hey, lookit all them zeroes, all lined up!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Glaciers can and do move 'up hill' when pushed upwards from the glacial mass below and behind. I'm sure that's what the book was talking about. If the book gave you the impression of giant magical ice-cubes forging their way up hills like so many charging rhinos, well, chalk it up to lackluster writing. I shudder to think of the images that popped into your head when you read about 'tectonic plates'... ; ) Apologies if your post was just a joke.
**>>BELCH
The only ones I've found on the 'net, such as ev.p, have massive fundamental flaws in their operating assumptions. Also, no less than Walter ReMine agrees with me. Don't confuse genetic load and genetic cost. Have a hack at really solving Haldane's Dilemma while you're there.
No, but we will claim, backed by figures provided by fervent evolutionists, that the mechanisms in question are nothing like enough - even under ideal conditions and given lots of dumb evolutionary assumptions about dates and the like - to produce the results we observe today.
The conclusions to which you refer are not based on evidence, they are based on a collossal and theoretical house of cards, made necessary by a Gnostic base philosophy.
We will also ask: when we have observed varved rock establishment in real time (with pictures), why do evolutionists prefer theory to observation as an explanation for the origin of varved rocks? (more pictures here, same story, different location, strata not as clear). And when mammalian remains are found in rocks dated at 280Ma old...?
If you're serious about this, I can easily bury you in pictures (my budget doesn't extend to actually flying you to site, which is what the usual toromanura demands amount to) of many other sites directly showing either processes in action which geology prefers their own theories for, or out of place fossils and formations.
What's your specialty? We can probably find something that's right up your alley. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ahem... My post was in response to someone who was using that argument, so you are making my point for me.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
gdyas wrote:
"It's when creationists push for that delusion to be the basis of other's lives through law and forced creationist teaching in public schools that I get indignant."
wberry wrote:
"Not only does this statement reply to something I did not say, it's a misrepresentation of the push for Creationism in education. As an aside, the real reason for the push is to guarantee that students are aware that some people disagree with evolution and why. All they want is a descriptive (not persuasive!) treatment of both schools of thought in the classroom. If evolution is so obviously true this should not be a problem."
Following that train of thought, why is it, that schools aren't teaching "anti holocaust" history? How about "Why I joined the Ku Klux Klan, and why you should to" in social studies? "How to perform female circumcision, and why it's a good thing" (would look real good in class)? "Satanism - how to sacrifice a child"? "How to have sex with a goat"?
What creationists are trying to do, is to teach others about their religion (christianity/judaism) - why can't they settle for that being taught in classes about religion? Why do you feel the need to push YOUR religious beliefs onto people of another religion? How would YOU feel, if your children were forced to learn about one of my suggested topics? I think "outraged" would be close to home. Evolution isn't a religion - it doesn't involve any kind of deity, it doesn't invole a 'set' text that can't be changed, it doesn't set down a set of guidelines for behaviour - in other words, it lacks any of the things, that define religions (perhaps excluding primitive shamanism). And, evolution is being examined and taught by people of all kinds of religious persuasions, just not people who are stupid enough to belive everything their religious text says. My favorite to quote in that regard is that most every religion has a prime rule that says "don't kill - ever!", and yet later they all go on to say "you can kill, if [insert insane reason here]" - don't tell me, that an omnipotent deity would make that kind of blunder, not to mention - why would such a being even need us to punish people? I think a 5,000,000 ton rock appearing 2 meters above an infidels head with a sign attached to it saying "don't [insert deadly sin here]" would be a lot more effective, than "if you don't behave, then you'll go to hell when you die" if you had just seen someone get squashed by a 5,000,000 ton rock with a sign attached saying "behave, or else!" to it.
But hey, I'm just a cynical infidel who don't believe in religions - but I do belive, that there IS one or more deities out there.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
"I had a look at the ingredient list and it contained three "active" ingredients. An Ephedrine derivative (Sudafed anyone?), Caffeine, and a chromium dietary supplement. Considering some of the effects of both Ephedrine and Caffeine, you'd be as well off taking a few cups of coffee. Sure it makes you feel more "alive" or at least awake. Sure if you diet and exercise you will lose weight. But the pills... don't do jack."
Dude, caffeine is totally a weight-reduction treatment option. This will work for weight reduction, but I don't know about the chromium supplement. Of couse, these self-medications probably don't come without the warnings of known side effects of caffein (disruption of sleeping schedules, grogginess, other well-known problems) but caffeine has been used for weight reduction for years. Ephedrine and Chromium are probably extraneous and have their own side effects for much less benefit.
Organics, Health-food supplements, and all have great potential to help people. It's the free-for-all attitude promotes quackary and profiteering far above beneficial effects. Be very skeptical, and watch out; most vitamins and supplements are unnecessary to take (and possibly harmful) if you eat right. And if you eat wrong then vitamins, organics, and all will be of little help.
-Ben