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Genome
One thing Ridley discusses is how closely related humans are to many other species that seem quite unrelated. We share 99% of our genetic code with chimpanzees, which is more or less common knowledge. But we are also very similar to many other organisms, such as fruit flies. By comparing the genomes of different life forms, we can tell not only what creatures (and plants) we are related to, but historically when the genome split. Ridley explores possible explanations and ramifications of this knowledge (it's pretty hard to refute evolution with the facts he presents).
One of my favourite chapters in the book deals with self-assembly. How in God's green Earth do we develop into full-grown adults with a trillion cells, having started out as a tiny blob of a handful of cells? There are some really surprising discoveries here, such as the fact that the genes that lay out the general physical form of the body are laid out in order -- the gene for the head first, then the upper body, etc., ending with the rear. Another interesting fact is that the genes that define the front and back of a fruit fly also exist in humans, but are switched around. So the gene that defines the back of a fruit fly defines the front of a human, and vice versa. This means that at some point in our evolutionary history, one creature decided to walk on its front, and another decided to walk on its back.
Another chapter deals with why we age. Less than 50 cell divisions are required for us to grow into adults, but throughout life cell divisions are necessary for maintenance and repair. Each cell contains a complete copy of the genome; when a cell divides, it must make another copy for the new cell. However, the very beginning and end of each chromosome are not copied. In order to not lose important data, each chromosome has a long string of junk at the beginning and end. But with each cell division, a little more of the junk is lost and you get closer to cutting off the real data in the middle. In this way we've got a kind of built-in obsolescence; we are designed to live just long enough to bear and rear children.
One chapter is devoted to memory: how we create new memories and how we store them. Also discussed is the difference between instinct and learned knowledge, and why we need both. It turns out that language is a genetic thing; we have an instinctive capacity for language and we pick it up very easily as we develop. But then why is the vocabulary of a language not in our genes? Vocabulary is learned knowledge because if it weren't, it would be difficult for us to incorporate new words since they wouldn't be instinctive. Basically, as I understand it, static knowledge is often recorded in our genes (therefore becoming instinct), while dynamic knowledge must be learned.
Ridley dedicates one chapter to gene therapy and modification: how it works and the ethical concerns. I was curious as to how injecting a new or repaired gene into the cell of an organism could affect anything but that one cell. It turns out there are enzymes that will replicate the new DNA strand and go around distributing it to other cells -- a virus! Geneticists use the code from a virus that causes replication (leaving the bad stuff of course) and combine it with the DNA they want to repair or replace in an animal. They then "infect" the animal with the new code.
In short, I found Matt Ridley's "Genome" a fascinating book. The mapping of the human genome was a huge milestone in human history, and Ridley does an excellent job of using it to explain in layman's terms who and what we are. What we don't know about the genome dwarfs what we do know of course, and Ridley makes no bones about that point. But the bit that we do know just makes you sit back in awe. Ridley has a talent for translating his own enthusiasm for the subject to the written word.
You can purchase Genome from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
"Another interesting fact is that the genes that define the front and back of a fruit fly also exist in humans, but are switched around. So the gene that defines the back of a fruit fly defines the front of a human, and vice versa. This means that at some point in our evolutionary history, one creature decided to walk on its front, and another decided to walk on its back."
So would that mean that the fly's equivalent of a head is a human's equivalent of a butt? No wonder flies are so ugly.
On the same note... one wonders if this same backwards thing applies to the pointy hair boss species of the human race.
50 cell divisions - assuming that each cell lives for the duration of all divisions would yield 1,125,899,906,842,624 cells. Don't know if I would have put it in the terms of "only" 50 divisions. My only experience with this book being the review, I'm not sure that this applies, but I'm always a bit disappointed with books like this. Explaining the genome is all well and good, but I always want to see more "what-if" scenarios. Like would it be possible to make a fruit fly 50% bigger or something.
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4. I chase karma
5. I am witty
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8. I like to program
9. See 1.
10. I don't understand girls
11. I don't like the sun
12. I like the Matrix
13. I thrive on violent games and movies
14. I don't like fighting for real
15. I shower when I have to
16. I optimise my housework
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18. I do bad things to myself but not to others
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21. I want them to be nice
22. I want to be alive when BattleMechs are invented.
23.???
Oh, crap, I'm a code from Mars and you have to guess the 23rd chromosome.
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If you never thought you'd read a book about genetics, (or even if you have) then this is the book for you. Ridley shows how the genetic map that is being developed for us will lead us to many of the answers that we have sought about ourselves. He explains in basic terms how genetics and evolution works. The most amazing part of this book is that it is extremely enjoyable to read. While still in the second chapter I was contemplating reading it again. If you have any interest in how we got to be what we are and what the future may hold for us, (or if you want some great party trivia) then reading 'Genome' will be both entertaining and enriching.
-dk
Let me start this by saying that I enjoyed the book. But should books be held to a different standard than movies regarding reviews? I remember a recent review of U571 getting a bunch of shit because it was years late. Since the time that this book was written the entire genome has been mapped. In such a volatile field there are many things that go out of date fast. Maybe it's one thing to see a review of The Selfish Gene which although is 25 years old established an entirely new field of study, but this isn't groundbreaking material despite being well written and I'm pretty certain some of this material is out of date. I hope to not see a review of Misery or Hyperion any time soon on /.
At the risk of turning this in to an all-out flame war, I personally do not see any problem with combining creationism with evolution. The only thing that creation provides that evolution does not is a starting point and a way to explain the *IMHO* total leap of faith that random chance could produce beings with even the complexity of a bacterium.
There's nothing in my faith or bible that tells me to throw logic to the window.
As a human do you believe that the difference between "God's" Will and Self Assembly is discernable? In other words, even if you saw the two side by side, how would you determine intelligent design from evoloution?
Maybe it is fun to discuss these things. Bait Away.
GOD is into open source. Provided you can figure out what it means.
Actually life is pretty closed source because genetic code is really BINARY machine code that is executed within the cell's nucleus and mitochondria. Genetic research actually revolves a lot around reverse engineering the binaries back to a human-readable form, and the API (protein behavior and interaction) is pretty badly documented too.
If you assume that the laws of physics do apply in all scenarios, self assembly would look more like entropy, and "God"'s will would look more like what we have now.
Throw the second law of thermodynamics together with the law of conservation of energy, and I'm thinking that the leap of faith that it takes to believe that random chance "created" the earth is far greater than the leap of faith it takes me to believe that someone gave it a push.
Full disclosure: I consider myself a deeply religious person. I attend church twice a week, read the Bible, and send my children to a private religious school (at great expense).
However, I find Creationism utter nonsense. I do believe that God created man, but through the process of evolution. The evidence for evolution is so utterly overwhelming that Christians are left with two alternatives:
Whenever this subject comes up with the faithful, I try to change minds gently, and remember a quote (from whom I don't remember):
"A frantic orthodoxy is not rooted in faith, but in doubt."
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
"total leap of faith that random chance could produce beings with even the complexity of a bacterium"
There is no faith involved and very little randomness. Statistics is a harsh mistress. Given enough time anything that can happen, will happen. People will cross steel walls. Monkeys will write Hamlet. Pigs will fly.
When you consider the magnitude of the time involved, it is absolutely not surprising that evolution took place. It is also not surprinsing that the brain of the short-lived creatures developed under this evolutionary process is utterly unprepared to deal with the quantities involved. Hence some of us will always find it "impossible".
EatHam pointed out that he saw no problem combining creationism & evolution. I think he may be confusing the idea that God created everything with the actual hard creationism that you're talking about. It's hard sometimes to be precise because the hard creationists have done a lot to make it seem like their view is the only one consistent with God's creation, even though you and others clearly demonstrate that is not the case.
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Damn straight brother. Thanks for the quote I'm sure I'll use that one in the near future. :)
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Probably used assembley language. I mean he is a l33t guy after all.
Fear not, the closed system in question is going relentlessly into chaos. It will take billions upon billions of years, but the Universe will eventually manage to fullfil the theory...
Entropy can not apply to small subsets of the closed system. In the case of evolution, the System is the whole Universe, as cosmological events can and do affect us everyday (and this discussion assumes we can call this mess we are "order").
The final origin does not need to enter this discussion right now, because while local evolution was in some way "caused" by the Big Bang, the facts are so far apart in time and space that it would be the same as trying to analyse the human digestion in terms of the atoms composing the granparents of the human in question (in other words, I am discussing evolution, not the ultimate possibility of the existence of an extra-physical cause somewhere in the far past).
They are the same... Creationism: A "fireside story" simplifing Evolution.
They are different... Creationism: Defining God's joke on Mankind. Making Man think that Evolution is true.
Relign of century have been trying to prove the bible stories as true. Looking at DNA is one more method to of proof.
Evolution was a theory based prior on theories and examples, from "why are sea shells on top of mountians?" to "why do men look different, if all are created in God's image".
We know the mountains are getting taller as the crust of earth slowly shifts and press ridges form. We know that this rising is slow, so getting a sea bed of sea shells 7,000+ feet into air will take a LONG LONG time.
We find in the DNA that all men are (~) the same. DNA drifts slow over time as well - so at one time we were all in the same image.
So Evolution and Creationism support each other if you remove the TIME issue.
Now if the world was created some 5k years ago, then all the information showing it was longer, was great set dressing - hence the JOKE.
Now if world's clock is ALOT longer, then Creationism shows a simplified view of the Evolution making it easier to understand and giving man a referance guide to understand world around them - hence "fire side story".
Remember the bible was written by men, with God's help. So why not help his children unstand and learn about the world around them?
Sadly, your second bullet is the theory most hardcore fundamentalists stick with.
It's surprising how many people will say with a straight face that fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures were merely planted there by Satan to cause people to be skeptical of a literal interpretation of the first few verses of the Bible. The same goes for the carbon-14 dating of rocks and fossils that puts the age of the earth at well over 6,000 years. Apparently the Prince of Darkness will do anything and everything (including bending the Creator's own universal laws) to fool all those ungodly, Reason-worshipping humanists.
You just proved your statement wrong by yourself..
Throw the second law of thermodynamics together with the law of conservation of energy, and I'm thinking that the leap of faith that it takes to believe that random chance "created" the earth is far greater than the leap of faith it takes me to believe that someone gave it a push.
"someone" as in "God"? That would tend to say that God is a physical being, something "touchable" (for lack of a better term). In that aspect, what created this "touchable" God? Why cannot "God" and "Goddess" and "Marklar" mean the same thing.. Be a "capsule" for the terms and feelings behind Nature, Emotion, those things? If the people who believe in Faith, and the people who believe in Evolution can agree on the question I just asked, then we're really talking about the same thing. Only arguing about symantecs. (spelling, I'm a geek..)
When I say God, or Goddess, or Marklar, I am really placing a visual/marker on the group of emotions I am caring/thinking about in that moment in time. I think that is Human nature. Sure, "God" created the world/universe/all life, but by "God" I mean, Nature and scientific evolution. But I can still say "God". That's what I think most people are forgetting about.. "God" is not something "touchable", not someone but rather a wrapper for the collection of emotions, thoughts, seasons, and events we attribute to daily life.
Just my $0.02USD
Nope.. but have you ever been Gomorrahized?
Trust me, it's a lot worse.
"A frantic orthodoxy is not rooted in faith, but in doubt." can be attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. FYI, 'not' should read 'never', but then I'm nitpicking.
How about my $0.02? (For lazyness and to keep it short, I'll post the url)
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No. A vast quantity of time is a necessary conditon for an evolutionary process to produce meaningful results. It does not cause evolution, it only allows it to exist given the right factors (the same way, for instance, that the existence of a fertile female body does not "cause" a baby to be born - it is just a necessary condition).
What I mean is that given an evolutionary quantity of time, all factors will eventually have the opportunity to combine themselves in the ways necessary for evolution to occur, no matter how "improbable" the requested configuration is.
Depends on how you define "God".
:-)
The reason I put "someone" in there rather than "something" is that I like most humans who describe "God" tend to anthropomorphosize Him/Her/whatever. You could just as easily substitute "God" for "someone" in the above quote. The Bible tends to refer to God as "I Am" meaning that God exists outside of the constraints of time or that He has always existed. And "Marklar" is clearly a set of people, a language, and almost the entire contents of that language and not a substitute for the word "God". Go back and study Southpark some more!
Actually, it obvious that he used a high-level language - Look at the obvious code reuse between animals.
Making a human with Fruit Fly DNA? Now that's OO design!
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If we agree this is a side-issue in respect to planetary evolution, having all existing mass concentrated in a singular abstract point seems pretty ordered to me.
We don't know why it would explode into what we see. No scientist ever claimed to know, either. It may have been a god, it may have been some factor we can't know, it may be that things are just thus. But from a second after the explosion onwards to now we have a jolly good working picture.
Marklar is everything. I think it was just the first word that came to my head. ;)
I agree with how you define "God", I've always had the question of "what created whatever created.." Unless I remind myself that I can define "God" however I feel happy defining it. For the record, I am not Christian, but Pagan. Therefore "Mother Earth" is my "God". I find the Christian religion interesting, but I prefer to onlook and study. Various other religions as well, if anything from a "people" or "user" perspective, not historical. Anyway, I ramble.. The Bible refers to God as "I Am", meaning that god exists outside of the constraints of time..., what exists outside of God? Can there be "nothing" (or maybe I mean "that's it"). One can only go so small, maybe they can only go so large..
"Chaos" here means just that the temperature in every point of the system is the same. It is the physical equivalent of Fukyoama's "End of History".
But you point to the right direction. Entropy cannot be analised locally. The presence or absence of Earth and its warring primates means nothing in the cosmological scale.
...unless I remind myself that I can define "God" however I feel happy defining it
:-) Say you're standing in the middle of the street. You are deaf and blind. There's a cement truck barreling toward you at 65mph. Your seeing and hearing friend yells for you to get out of the way - there's a truck coming at you! That truck, however, does not exist for you - you cannot see, hear, or touch it (yet). You don't believe him and stay put. Does the truck magically go away because you don't believe in it?
Here's where it gets interesting. Does the way you percieve things or the way you want them to be affect in any way the actuality of that thing? Basically what we're discussing here is the nature of our baseline - Absolute Truth if you will. It follows along the lines of "I believe that Heaven exists, so for me it does" or "I believe that there is no Hell so there isn't". Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing for or against the existance of Heaven or Hell (personally I believe in both, but for the purposes of discussion, that is immaterial) - I am, however, arguing that regardless of what you believe, or how you want to define them, they are (or are not) what they are.
I know the following is a rediculous example, but it's the best I can come up with while typing with one hand and eating a sandwich with the other while writing code on the other computer, so bear with me
First "bullet": Here's where it gets interesting. Does the way you percieve things or the way you want them to be affect in any way the actuality of that thing?
;) So I guess everybody with religous "God exists" and "God does not exist" arguments can boil the conversation down to what we just discussed and all the wars can end. Sadly, it's Human nature to be stubborn. :(
;)
Before reading your deaf-blind-pinball-wizard example below, here was my thought:
On a purly mythical/out of my hands/bigger than I am standpoint, if I don't believe in something it may as well not exist. But like you pointed out.. that thought process and discussion is very unending. There are many many things out there that we have no knowledge of. Like you said, that doesn't mean that they don't exist. But nobody can say that it means that they do.
Bullet two: Ham Sandwich?
Bullet three: If I am deaf and blind, I probably shouldn't be in the street alone.
Then again, "God" can exist and does because I define it as I did above. "God" may not exist to me via your definition. That is up to each person to decide.. Which is why I think we're both on the same page, or at least within the same paragraph. If I define "God" as something that does not exist, such as.. an uncrashable version of Windows, then "God" may never exist, unless that comes along some day... (yeah, right ! ;))
:(
But if people can say "God exists to you because of what you believe", then we can all get along. I really dislike people who say "God doesn't exist, God is really just Christian crap" then go on to say they worship God and Goddesses. They're talking about the same thing, just using your definition of God to gain self esteem because they can offend you.
RE: Bullet One: You are correct. There are certain things that are unprovable - for instance, the existance (or non-existance) of God. Like the Big Bang. Like that the Universe wasn't created five seconds ago and you with a memory (think about that one for a while).
Bullet two: Turkey on a roll with mustard and lettuce.
Bullet three: You are deaf and blind, and therefore cannot determine where the sidewalk ends and the street begins. In addition, your seeing eye chimpanzee ran off and began humping a parked car.
I enjoy these arguments. Perhaps instead of the deaf guy example we should consider colors as a function of our perception. The values and names that we assign to colors exist onl in our own counsciounesses. (can't spell) We can measure the value of the wavelength and agree that blue is blue and red is red, but internally it may be different. Maybe that is why some people like "ugly" colors. basically, you can't prove to me that what I percieve as the color blue is the same counsciouness effect as you.
The universe could not even exist, we could be floating thought and all have memories to each our own. Sort of "lucid dream" like. Hrm, Matrix/Vanilla Sky like...
They have seeing eye chimps? And all along I thought he was just to help get chicks.
IT'S THE Q!!!
Moo.
Exactly. Yet people think they can prove it and have wars that last thousands of years and take the lives of many people "getting back" at other people. Sigh. Speaking of colors, I've always said that maybe "color blind" is in the eyes of other beholders.. If I raise a child to think that the color of a "red light" is "blue, then orange, then black", will the child be colorblind?
Clinical colorblindness isn't exactly that, but the ability (or lack thereof) to see the differences between colors or any color at all (B&W).
If we measure the peak-to-peak value of the wavelengths, how will we know we're all measuring the same thing? We all have different ways to measure! Inches, feet, seconds, Marklar. It's all a big big circle, this "Human mind" is.
Being slightly colorblind myself, I can tell you that what you describe is color ignorance.
I am fully aware that I can't prove the existance of God any more than someone else can disprove it. However, I also know that the downside risk of my perspective is substantially smaller than the downside risk of the people who don't share it. That said, "fire insurance" is a pretty bad reason to adopt a world view...
uh... but for someone to create, where does the creator come from? I find a "creator" just as mysterious as a first organism and how it came to be. For me, it's easier to see life happening by chance than there to be a creator merely existing forever in the past and forever in the future.
hehe. I agree with you, I like our thread as well. Fire insurance is only needed if you believe in fire. Personally, I think "Hell" is anything you create it to be. If you live the life of a model Human, (The mold being the Bible, et atl) then your "Hell" is fairly nonexistant. But if you take it apon yourself to lie, cheat, steal, murder, and do other unjust harm, your hell is well deserved and brought on by yourself. "Hell" being the consiquences (sp) of your actions, all across the board. Make sense? (Not asking if you believe, but I'm asking if I made sense in my definition.. ;))
Ahh, yes.. "color ignorance", thank you for defining that for me, I didn't even make that connection.
Actually life is pretty closed source because genetic code is really BINARY machine code
Technically, DNA would be closer to source code than binary. It's copied to mRNA, then big chunks of the mRNA sequence are removed (comments, perhaps?). The mRNA is then processed into proteins that either execute, or are used as parts of other executables (shared libraries!)
You do make sense in your definition, but if you do accept the concept of absolute truth, then what you believe Hell to be is insignificant. Furthermore, the entire point of the Bible is that there is nothing you can do in and of yourself to affect your final destination (Heaven/Hell), but that you must place your faith in God to do that.
One can only wonder - if I'm color blind, will the fires of Hell be orange, red, or crimson?
But then he'd have to rewrite humans if he wanted to put them in a universe running on a different type of processor.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
OK, short, short answer. Heh.
:)
People who believe in literal creationism (that is, literal "English" creationism - literally the process that is described in the English translation of the Bible) are taking explanations way out of context.
They should also go to Egypt and look for bread (made of grain) to fall from heaven on their heads (rather than manna, which is real), and far more amusingly, only forgive each other 490 times. After that, screw you, jackass.
The problem is that we are far, far removed from the people who read the original version of the Bible. We don't know the colloquialisms. Even scholars don't know. Even the original versions of the Bible (Hebrew) may be very far off from the true original, because we simply do not have the colloquial context. (For example: we use the word "heart" in multiple contexts, and it's difficult to discern which version we mean. There's no reason to believe that they didn't have similar concepts as well.)
I honestly wonder when people start supporting creationism. I really want one of them to explain to me what happened. What do they REALLY think happened? Genesis's account is vague - clear it up. Exactly how did God separate the Earth from the heavens? Basically, if you keep saying "How?" "How?" "How?" to someone espousing creationism, you'll get one of two answers. "He just did" or "I don't know." The response to the first is "that's not an answer", and the response to the second is "That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Here's the thing: if you can't reconcile Genesis with science in your head, you're not thinking enough. It's easy - it really is. All science does is stick a bunch of answers where Genesis is vague.
Religions answers "Who". Science answers "How". Don't people ever take journalism classes?
One can only hope they wouldn't be clear, that'd make for more pain than one would expect.
Placing faith in God, like everything else, holds different meanings. You make sense, but I know some people do exactly as you speak, others who place faith in "karma" or "the laws of three" and still some who just let what ever happens, happen. In all aspects, if you choose unwisly, you will feel the personally gained neglect from it. Same, but inverse, applies to "Good" decisions. I don't feel that one can say that all life decisions are placed in the hands of the Bible's God (not to be a derotgatory (sp) term, but simple ownership of the definition) and still have a consience. If anything, a consience is the voice of reason between "right" and "wrong" and "left". If decisions were up to God, you would not need that part of the day-to-day thought process. Or, maybe God has given you those "roads to take" out of the many he could have given you, therefore, no matter *what* road you take, you're going down a path chosen by God. Simply because he picked the choices out of the lot of 'em. Then again, does the phrase "God has given you those "roads to take" out of the many he could have given you" mean "Your past decisions have filtered down your current decisions to these in front of you..". Which begs the question, when does God leave us to ourselves? Never? Or after we take our first walking steps? Or did God leave "us" after Adam and Eve and from that point on, the steps and paths the Human race took were decided by your parents, and your parent's parents, etc..
oh goddammit!
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
... actually, it assumes a flowing system, for carbon dating life with C14. Carbon-14 dating assumes that there's continual carbon exchange, and at some point the carbon exchange stopped. For a living creature, that's when it died, as it stopped breathing.
Problems in C14 dating don't make the method wrong, they make the implementation in certain aspects wrong. That's like declaring that Wien's model of the blackbody curve is wrong in the exponential tail simply because it gets the early part wrong. C14 is very accurate if you know when the carbon exchange stopped, and that'll put the age of certain things very very old.
Most of us do the research. The problem is with people who claim that a method is flawed because they found one example where it (supposedly) doesn't work. Overwhelming evidence that supports it is enough to convince logical people.
Could you post some links to secular references that refute the accuracy Carbon-14 dating?
Not that I'm saying Answers in Genesis can't be right, but they seem more interested in molding any and all scientific data to fit their inerrantist view of the Genesis creation than in acknowledging anything that might contradict it.
Look, parameters of a theory, any theory, are not a matter dogma. There is no sitting evolution pope who now and then will speak ex-cathedra about the new evolutionary truths.
The "right" age of the Universe is as subjected to change as everything else in science. And when I say everything I mean everything. No principle, no equation, no inference is free from facing the hard evidence.
That is why scientists do not use expressions like "never make" and "never will".
As for your specific claim, there are so many other factors involved in making a monkey into a man that I believe you should study the "evil" scientific texts involved before we can discuss this matters in a meaninful way.
Depends on your definition of "evolution" and "creationism". If you define "evolution" as the change over time of the Earth into what it is today, and "creationism" as the instantaneous creation of the Earth at some time in history, then yes, they are the direct opposites of each other, and to negate one proves the other.
You're talking about specifics of evolution (which is scientific theory) rather than the evolution mindset (which is a mindset). Debate the specifics of evolution (theory) and you'll get dogmatic response, unless you go after something which is still an open question, from the community's point of view. You can't really debate a mindset, though.
And astronomy/physics is extremely dogmatic! All science is. Try offering an alternative explanation other than the Big Bang, and we'll look at you like you're crazy (because you probably are - you can SEE the Big Bang if you look at the sky in microwave). You're talking about "offering an alternative explanation for something that was considered over and done with." In any science, you'll get a sharp response in that area. The other end, where you're talking about non-constancy of physical constants, that's ALWAYS been considered an open possibility. You can find papers on that back over a hundred years.
Doubt me on the dogmatic nature of astronomy and physics? Look for papers on alternative answers to the Higgs boson, and see if you find papers which reference them and support them. You won't. Even though the Higgs boson hasn't been found, and there're still possibilities if it can't be found, they aren't being looked at.
This is kind of a pointless post, but I just have to say that's a great quote.
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There's a hell of a lot of data on calibration of C-14 dating. For some they used historical references, others they used tree-ring calibration. It's not far off, in most cases. If the parent to your post was trying to say that C-14 data gives dates >1 million years off, he/she's on crack: C-14 is only accurate up to 60K years or so. It's also almost definitely order-of-magnitude correct. The problem mostly stems from two sources:
:) The first one however can produce dates which drift significantly as you go farther and farther back in time, as the "C-14 timeline" will "compress" and "expand" - that is, certain stretches of "real time" will correspond to unequal portions of "C-14 time" based on the levels of C-14 in the atmosphere at those points.
1: Varying C-14 levels in the atmosphere over time (sunspots)
2: Point at which carbon-exchange ended in the object.
The first one is not that severe, honestly, and the second only applies to nonliving things. For living things we can pretty accurately assume that carbon exchange ended when it died.
Radiometric dating is very accurate if you know the ambient level throughout the period that isotope exchange was occuring, and then when the isotope exchange stopped. If you're off significantly on either one of those, you could have problems. But that's what cross-calibration is for.
The bible was written to test your faith in the great Zool. Anyone foolish enough to believe the bible literally has hell to pay. Praise Zool! Praise Zool!
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There are plenty of raging debates among serious biologists. As for evolution, that one has been settled a long time ago.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The fact that the visible evolution is there to be seem, no matter the amount of time you and I think necessary for it to occur. Unless you are willing to give room for extra-scientific data (gods, alliens). These may well have happened, but while we have no proff of those I prefer to keep trying with the data in hand.
Please notice I never stated the amount of time necessary for a monkey to produce Hamlet. I never even stated how many monkeys I would employ in the task. Nor do I care. I said "given enough time", whatever it may be.
But also notice that typing monkeys and evolving molecules organisms are completely different phenomenon. Your final jump from "proving" you would need 72 times the age of the Universe for a monkey to type a string to concluding that evolution could not have happened is amusing but false and logically wrong. Unless of course you can come with exact figures on the possibilities involved in eveolving from nothing to human (and, naturally, have this figures peer-reviewed and accepted by the scientific community).
"to negate one proves the other."
I disagree. They are both theories, and while there is evidence to support both, we could still be construing the facts we have to be wrong. What if aliens genetically constructed the earth as their terrarium, and real life is created in a completely different way than we think? What if the universe was laid by a giant bird? I know I'm being nitpicky, but I'm just saying that there aren't two absolutes.
If I understand what you're saying, you're questioning the nature of free will? If so, we have been given a free will. We can do whatever we want, but we are also responsible for the consequences of those actions. In addition, we inherit the consequences of those that came before us - including our parents and our grandparents. This is a concept that some people have a hard time with - like we have to suffer the consequences even if we've done nothing wrong ourselves. However, none of those people will complain about reaping the benefits from others' actions. Something like if your parents die and leave you a heap of money, you won't complain. Conversely, if they are terrible with money, you may end up having to pay for their funeral. Not your fault, but nonetheless, you suffer the consequences.
So I would say that it's a combination of your statements. I don't believe that God left us to ourselves, nor does he force us to take one path or another. He gave us both free will and intelligence [insert joke here] and we can take whatever path we want. That said, there are certain things that we do not have free will on, but those are mostly along the lines of having the free will to decide whether or not to jump off a bridge, but not being able to change your mind halfway down.
Reread my post: in the limit of the two theories that I stated, one is the direct opposite of the other.
Aliens genetically constructed the earth as their terrarium: that falls under "creationism" - instantaneous creation of Earth at some point in time in the past (or relatively instantaneous...).
Universe laid by a giant bird: Falls out of the scope of the theories, as the theories describe Earth's creation. Rewriting "Earth laid by a giant bird." Falls under "creationism" - instantaneous creation of Earth.
If you define evolution and creationism as I did, they're opposites of each other. If Earth wasn't created instantaneously at some point, it must've been created over some period in time. Likewise, if the Earth wasn't created over a period in time, it must've been created instantaneously. I didn't give you a "how". I gave you a "when".
Though the ones who flew the planes into WTC were certainly religious, it would not surprise me if the higher ups, including Bin Laden himself, WERE atheists. Atheists using religion as a tool to manipulate people in fighting over what is really a land dispute.
Even if Gould is far from uncontroversial, I am certainly prepared to concede to his (and your) ideas seriousness and importance. From all I (we) know, it all may well have happened the way he describes, all of a sudden (beware, kids, when reading this - "all of sudden" here is not what you may think).
But even punctuated equilibrium will usually require time to occur (in the same way winning in the lotery may require one, many or an infinite number of trials). So my insistence that time should be important.
Anyway, you probably know I was not exactly arguing against Gould. As I said elsewhere, a scientific theory is as good as the amount of undertanding it gives us about the past, present and future state of world. If a present theory is wrong no serious scientist should never hesitate to adapt, rework or throw it away, as the case may be.
Well, no, there isn't a way.
If you put an unlimited number of all the pieces of an airplane in an unlimited number of big piles, and let an unlimited number of airplanes sweep through them, and then sweep away the piles that don't look like you want them to look like - repeat ad nauseum, and in the limit of infinite repetitions, you'll get an identical airplane, and then no, you won't be able to tell them apart. The problem is that you're looking at an end product and saying "That must be designed." I could look at a pile of dirt, study it for years, and say "that must be designed" and still be wrong. See also Cydonia on Mars.
Human timescales differ from universal timescales. Evolution is a very messy process, and produces a lot of crap. People born with gills, for instance. But, hey, I'm not exactly one to criticize: I haven't built any universes lately.
I was under the impression that you don't even necessarily need to know the ambient level to begin with: you can simply analyze the ratios of daughter isotopes/elements to the parent, which tells you how much there was originally. The only problem I can see with this is that C-14's decay product is C-12, which is already abundant in a dead organism, so how do you tell which C-12 is the decayed C-14 and which C-12 was there to begin with? (Answer: cross-calibration, or other methods that are unnecessary with decaying elements that leave behind distinctive daughter elements, right?)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
(1): C14's decay product can't be C12, you'd lose atomic number there. C12 has 12 nucleons, C14 has 14 nucleons. C14's decay path is N14 (neutron -> proton + electron + antineutrino: Slashdot needs "physicscode").
(2): By ambient level, I meen "initial ratio" of C12 to C14. You need to know this. Without it, you have no idea about anything. So C14 dating assumes that the C14 level in the atmosphere was constant over time, and the crosscalibration indicates that assumption is mostly correct.
Right, I had long forgotten what C14's decay product actually was... N14, not C12.
Anyway, my point was that since C14's decay product (nitrogen) is also commonly found in things that have carbon in them, you can't simply look at the ratio of decay product to remaining parent element to determine the date. However, if C14's decay product was (let's say) the mysterious N13.5 (which is not normally found in organisms), you could simply measure the proportion of N13.5 to C14, and you wouldn't need any calibration value at all.
To extend the example... you find an organism that has 0.5g of C14 and 0.5g of N13.5 in it. Without any other info, you would be able to tell that the organism had died one C14 half-life ago (5730 years). Now, the problem in real life is that C14 decays into N14, so there's no way to tell whether the N14 in the organism was there to begin with, or whether it is the result of C14 decay, which is why you need cross-calibration for C14 dating. But for heavier elements that decay into things that aren't normally found in living organisms, you only need to know the ratio of daughter products to the parent product. Right?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Those higher ups must be quite hard-working atheists - hard working as in working hard to know the rituals of islam, to know their Koran etc. Or maybe somebody is doing that job for them and is just telling them the most important parts they need to use frequently to look like true believers.
Or maybe they're just real fundamentalists. Which is probably the case.
I am mystified by the lack of the following interpretation of the bible: the bible is a road map to where mankind comes from and where it should be going. Suppose you were an almighty being and you had to explain things to a group of mostly superstitous beings who believed in thunder gods and spirits. Would you tell them about the galaxies and distances they can't imagine? Or about electrons and microbes that they can't see? Suppose further that as the almighty creator, you had a destiny in mind for such beings. Would it be any use to stick to the true story of science? I haven't read the bible but listening to people trying to explain the bible to me, I wonder why so much of the story of creation is taken so literally. This seems to me to be one of the least interesting or useful stories in the bible.
No. Quadratic is having to do with a square. The word you are looking for is quaternary which means consisting of four.
The only thing that creation provides that evolution does not is a starting point and a way to explain the *IMHO* total leap of faith that random chance could produce beings with even the complexity of a bacterium.
These two points contradict each other.
If evolution doesn't provide a starting point, then it has no need to explain where the first life came from.
If it can explain where the first life came from, then it provides a starting point.
The first situation is the correct one. Evolution says nothing about the creation of life. As far as Darwin's fine theory is concerned, life could have arrived by natural processes, been placed here by God, or planted by aliens. It doesn't really matter.
What you should be critising is the theory of abiogensis (the creation of life through natural processes). This isn't a big issue, however, I like to correct it when it comes up as some young earth creationists like to confuse things by attacking evolution through abiogensis.
And one more minor point, abiogensis doesn't claim that beings similar to bacteria where created by random chance.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
Good point, You're good at this..
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If I didn't have so much code to write before Tomorrow's "demo" I'd reply in length. (Yeah, read "demo" as "lets see what we really asked for before we work up specs")
I guess I wasn't really questioning free will, maybe I was. I was curious where people thought that God's influence left the Human to be Human. We all make mistakes, and you're right, we all would rather have benefits than having to deal with the bills of those who passed.
I guess it's kind of "non-religious" to say that Humans are all "free" will, and are influenced by no outside forces. It's also kind of impossible.
I, for one, am terribly influenced by the world around me. It's hot, sticky, muggy, and my allergies are acting up today. Therefore, I'd much rather be inside in the AC.