Slashdot Mirror
Butterfly Unlocks Evolution Secret
Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC has an article about a dramatic discovery in the quest for understanding evolution. From the article: 'Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Given our planet's rich biodiversity, "speciation" clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species.'"
And in a week or two, this submission will evolve only slightly and will reappear, slightly reworded, as another species of submission! Ain't evolution great.
Mutations occur, and when they occur in parallel for members of the same species, and those mutations survive into succeeding generations, you achieve speciation. End of story. What am I missing?
Now, if you want to talk about butterflies and evolution, then answer for me how it is that butterflies could have evolved in the first place. You're talking about a two-stage organism here, one stage does nothing but eat, the other stage does nothing but procreate. Which came first?
If it was the caterpillar, how is it that it suddenly figures out how to create a cocoon, lay dormant for a winter, then emerge as a completely different creature? They obviously had the means for procreation on their own, so why bother becoming a butterfly?
If it was the butterfly, why even bother with the caterpillar stage? If you can already fly around and stuff, why bother crawling?
People cite all these other examples trying to bring down evolution, and to me they never succeed, it's obvious to me for instance how eyes evolved. But caterpillars turning into butterflies still boggles my mind.
--
Why didn't you know?
Oh, I remember that! Isn't it on kindergarden, when we throwed colored tint into a piece of paper and folded it on the middle? Then open it again and you've got a butterfly!
Sorry, this sig is beneath your current threshold
I don't remember, do they eat or do they produce butter?
are racist...
... why a code fork happens.
Zonk has evolved. Duh.
Here's a thought:
The important reason NOT to only teach evolution is to teach children good science--so they know that even the most basic parts of science are open to question, which is why we know that they're probably right.
I am sure that given enough time, scientists can plug holes in the theory of evolution and answer questions that critics throw at it like. Remember, a theory can always be changed and disproved by evidence unlike intelligent design which can't be disproved(and no one seems to have proved it either).
And before someone starts an intelligent design rant, please remember, unprovable assumptions like 'there's a naturally occuring ipod on the dark side of the moon, since you can't disprove it, it exists' have no place in science at all. Also remember, science is self criticizing and self correcting, read up on the criticism on string theory if you have any doubts.
This space for rent.
I have a "theory"... it's about this invisible man who lives in the sky. His name is "Jesus H. Christ". He's responsible for everything good in the world. He's everywhere all the time and you can talk to him anytime you want. He's very nice if you believe in him. If you believe in him, you get to live with him when you die. If you don't, then you're in bad shape. Oh yeah, and he hates gay people, and thinks they should all die. That's a funny theory, huh?
But the only "good science" theory of development is evolution. There is no other theory that has the same sort of factual backing. Now there are many theories of evolution--all of which are taught in schools. Punctuated equilibirium, Peripatric evolution, Darwinian natural selection, etc.
they've decided to fork?
- passion
FTA
The other mechanism that can theoretically divide a species is "reproductive isolation". This occurs when organisms are not separated physically, but "choose" not to breed with each other thereby causing genetic isolation, which amounts to the same thing.
Does this mean that geeks are soon to speciate and then ultimate fail as the male/female ratio is horrendously out of wack?
Check it out it here :)
v olution.html
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/e
It is one thing to teach that theories aren't solid. But it is quite another to teach that every theory is equally valid. There is an extensive fossil record, etc. for evolution. Does this mean that God couldn't have just planted it there to trick us? No. But at the same time if there is a "God" that would do that, then he could also reverse all of the laws of physics tomorrow. Does this mean that we should discredit them? No. We should simply teach that based on past observation, this is how the think x works. We aren't sure, but we have a lot more backing it up than we do for every other theory about x.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Evolution is just a theory. There are other theories as well. Please make sure your kids get taught every possible theory or you will probably wind up in hell... or worse.
Not that I believe in it, but what's worse than hell?
The BBC has an article about a dramatic discovery in the quest for understanding peanut butter. From the article: 'Why one brand branches into two (creamy and extra crunchy) is a question that has haunted consumer researchers since Wells. Given our supermarket's rich selection of brands, "crunchification" clearly happens regularly, but consumers cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, marketers studying a family of Des Plains, IL think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed peanut butter manufacturing processes
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Expect really concentrated attacks on this research by the redneck^Wcreationist brigade. "But speciation has never been observed" has been the strongest rallying cry of evolution-deniers for more than a century...
Maybe I'm missing something but doesn't the question just now become, "Why don't the butterflies want to breed with butterflies that look slightly different?" In speciation through geographic separation, the answer is clear: they simply can't so there's no choice to be made. In this case the tendency to make that choice must be the result of evolution as well. This may make sense but it certainly isn't as clear cut as geographic separation. The snake seems to be eating its tail here.
Evolution isn't a "theory" in that sense of the word, any more than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". Both are fact as far as the scientific community is concerned. And what could be worse than hell? Could it be ignorance?
Read the sig, read the sig, ziggy ziggy ziggy zig!
Please make sure your kids get taught every possible theory or you will probably wind up in hell... or worse.
I refuse to worship a god that claims to be all-loving, but threatens us with eternal torture if we don't do what he says.
Zonk can still mate with Zonk and is still classified as Zonk but as we can tell he is beginning the split into a new species which won't maintain compatibility for long (people will have higher expectations of him).
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
It's said this 'team striping' has happened before with early man and chimps. Early chimps were no more hairy then Italian women, but the disastrous results lead chimpanzees to get as hairy as Turkish women which discouraged human-chimp hybrids.
The article says that the mutations have different wing-markings, and descendents prefer mating with those of the same wing-markings, keeping the two paths separate.
http://www.pvponline.com/archive/2005/pvp20050628. gif
Yay! Are there many born-again evangelical Christian adult films?
After reading the the article I wonder why dogs, for example, do not fracture into mutliple species? Great Danes for example do not repoduce with say Boston Terriers. Their genetic line are continously reinforced and isolated.
My mother-in-law's house?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Evidently Harvard would have us believe that a butterfly that looks like a butterfly, smells like a butterfly, and flies like a butterfly, but has a different colour stipe on its wing....
...has become something other than a butterfly????
Perhaps some day they will begin to utilize the same level of improbability in their research to discover why people care about this article.
Then again, harvard is busy trying to remember the words environmental adaptation and consequence.
When the butterflies start doing math...then send me the article.
So, what does this study mean?
After reading this article I got the impression that butterflies developed a natual mechanism to discourage inter-breeding with genetically distant butterflies (and to encourage breeding with only closely related butterflies) to promote the retainment of traits beneficial to that particular subgroup of butterflies and to promote forward evolution.
How does this translate to humans? Is this basically saying that race mixing is inheritly deviant to nature or to natural evolution?
It has been well known that butterflies are responsible for all of history for decades. Just
go back and read Bradbury again.
So what's so new about this article anyway?
So is the human race going to evolve into seperate species based on skin colour then?
I feel that this result would be a bad study to quote in a casual argument supporting evolution because of the taboos surrounding perceived sexuality and race in general.
duh, if you replace he with "she" it all starts to make a bit more sense...
What is new? Eventually even mankind will evolve into different species.
Oh well, what the hell...
Um, I assumed the answer to the question "why does speciation happen" is "why not"?
Same problem - two stages - but both gets eaten... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
Hold on here. I'm not going to in any way turn anti-Christian here but there are some misconceptions I'd like to clear up, not with your post but in general since you brought up the topic. First of all, evolution exists. Every year humans slowly but surely get taller. It happens. Evolution is a varifiable fact. Second, it's exactly like you said. There's no reason religion and science need to clash with eachother. If you view genetic mutation as the will of God, everything works out just fine.
I don't mean to seem condesending but I taught a class for my chruch's bible school this summer. I was teaching 6th and 7th graders. The material I was supposed to present to them would have easily been disproven by any 4th grade science textbook (well maybe not one from Kentucky). The worst part was that the kids were clueless. I asked how long ago they thought Jesus died. One of them in all seriousness thought Jesus died 30 years ago. Yeah that's right, we love Jesus because he stopped Hitler!!! I told them Jesus was a Jew and they didn't believe me till I got a Bible to show them. I'm sorry. I don't know if it's bad parenting or what but if we're to have an open discussion on evolution or any other subject that's touchy for the chruch we need to have some basic understanding about religion itself.
Butterflies are specious...
... I guess dictionary word attacks won't work on anti-script word images...)
(Impudent
Maybe software-based image grabbers/readers will defeat these protections, morphing into an allusive, specious attack...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Evolution is just a theory. There are other theories as well. Please make sure your kids get taught every possible theory or you will probably wind up in hell... or worse.
Not that I believe in it, but what's worse than hell?
My mother-in-law's house?
So if I don't teach my kids alternative theories your mother-in-law will abduct them? That gives me an idea...
We were created, man. Get used to it.
No we weren't. Get used to it. And Grow Up.
Great Danes for example do not repoduce with say Boston Terriers.
I think you will find that with a little Viagra, duct tape, creative patting, and yes, even a little TLC, you can get most any dog to mate with any other dog.
--
My home videos are all saran-wrapped.
Considering that ignorance is bliss, and bliss comes with Windows...well, maybe.
>"But speciation has never been observed" has been the strongest rallying cry of evolution-deniers for more than a century...
And it has been a falsehood for at least half that time. Speciation has been observed in both the field an in the lab... repeatedly. Creationists trumpet the no observed speciation line until they are called on it, and then it becomes, "But they're still [fruit flies, fish, whatever]," The moving goal posts are the hallmark of creationism.Remember, the "scientists" at the Institution for Creation Research have to sign an oath that nothing they "discover" will ever conflict with a litteral interpretation of the Bible.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I can disprove it: There is no dark side of the moon, thus, there couldn't be an iPod there. :-)
Not only is there an iPod on the dark side of the moon, but the Dark Side of the Moon is on the iPod.
I find all these evolutionary threads amusing. I know for a fact that God exists, but I'm still trying to figure out if evolution does. People do make a good case about evolution.
...and I'm a Borne again, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddist Confusion...
All it takes is One World, One People and One Crazy MothaFukka!
Oh well, what the hell...
i wonder how long before the creationists demand the scienctists personal data:
0 2224&tid=158
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/24/0
I wonder if this has any impact on the view of racism?
Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?
What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?
I'm not suggesting that racism is good. But, might these be related?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
First of all, evolution exists. Every year humans slowly but surely get taller.
this is probably nutrition based. and there'll be an upper limit to height, because various organs will run into trouble in certain body form factors (e.g. heart cannot pump blood properly in "giants").
would be the realization that they were all wrong all along... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
no. man evolved. trolls didn't
Evolution isn't a "theory" in that sense of the word, any more than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". Both are fact as far as the scientific community is concerned.
If evolution is "fact" then why the need to study it further?
To me, a confirmed fact would mean that we know (that we know) 100% of everything about the theroy to be correct - therefore, why study it further?
Don't get me wrong, my beliefs sway strongly towards evolution as there is a lot of evidence associated with it. But it is still a theroy - it's just a lot more plausible than many others.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
I love it. I just wish my girlfriend had a sense of humor; then I could tell it to her, too.
Would you float "on the spirit of God" after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge? No? Then a bee must be more devout than you.
Now God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Benevolent and Personal; since He cares about me and is infinitely powerful and all-knowing, he will have a place in heaven for my pet bee. In heaven, who will fly, my pet bee or you?
sounds like this would definitely encourage reproduction, but speciation?
Hmmm, I somehow thing that's what happens when cooing cocoon politicians become presidents... and, since secretes is my image word, maybe some of their secretions need to be secreted away...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
In higher order animals, such as Orcas, behavioral differences can bring about the separation into two species. There are two distinct groups of Orcas, those which hunt fish and those which hunt seals. These two behaviors are fairly different, as fish hunting Orcas herd schools of fish to make consuming them easier. Seal hunting orcas are know to "dive" several feet onto ice flows to catch seals. They also thrash seals around in the water to subdue them. These two groups do not mix as their learned behaviors and sub-environs are different. It is easy to imagine that these two groups are slowly diverging, as they engage in different diets, breed within their own groups and engage in different physical activities.
Of course, I am a physicist and a mathematician. All of my bio-knowledge comes from The Discovery Channel.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
How is this relevant to biology?
the inside of the moon is pretty dark!
*Note the parallels with gravitation: gravitational attraction between objects is a fact. Theories of gravitation seek to explain how that attraction works, thus allowing us to make predictions about how systems under the influence of gravity will evolve over time.
Nothing. It represents the usual psuedo-intellectual babble spout off by people who actively live fearing and hating science becuase it is a threat to their religious dogma.
/me looks at self for stripes that keep the females away
Don't tell the Kansas schoolboard - they have enough on their hands trying to deny all of the other evidence for evolution to have to handle another one.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I have two things for you to think about that may possibly allow you to understand why Hell exists. First of all the Bible makes it very clear why we were created, God got bored and wanted toys. He also realized that boring toys that do whatever they are told are boring and he wanted to be loved, think a wind up toy with a button that you push saying I love you every time. Now making toys that have a mind of their own has a consequence, they must be given choice, and this choice means they may make a poor choice (look at real life if you don't believe me). Now free choice is a very important thing and quite frankly our lives would suck without that freedom of choice. But it also has a lot of consequences like Hell. So my point is that God cares for us, but he wants to give us freedom of choice, and he can't have both. Now for another food of thought on another line, what if God is not in control apart from outside this universe. We are never told whether or not God has rules to abide by in his own little universe, but I think he may (though these rules are obviously much broader than ours). What if God has no direct control of his angels, which I believe he may not as look at the fall of Satan. And what if the rules of the game are that you can try and win souls, but you cant steal one anothers souls. Now the first argument is clearly true and can be backed up by numerous verses and also makes sense you can't have humans who choose to love you and then only give them the choice to love you. The second one is off the wall and I always wondered it myself but I have no reason to believe it other then a thought I came up with. Now back to the topic I also think that this article doesn't prove macro evolution, which never has been proven. Micro evolution has time and time again. Most creationist will agree that this butterfly "anomaly" when the butterfly becomes a bird or a new species now you have something. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/LifeScie nces.html
Here we go again... Science has to be run by "The Bible" before it can be judged correct or not. Ridiculous. A quote from a recent article On msnbc.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7013405/ summed it up exceptionally well.
"When scientists talk about a theory, they mean something far different from the everyday understanding of a guess or a supposition. "'Theory' means a logical, tested, well-supported explanation for a great variety of facts," the National Center for Science Education says. The "theory" of evolution is like the "theory" of gravity -- it is as close to a fundamental truth as anything can be."
I was trying to think up a parallel for the Bible vs Science for my kid. I came up with: Take a rock, a scientist can look at it with his eye and a microscope, dissect it and tell us it's chemical make up. With out a question he has a rock. But wait, check with the Bible first! No.. sorry.. The Bible says you have a chicken! Doesn't matter what it looks like the Bible says its a chicken, end of discussion!
This kind of "Logic" drives me nuts and for the life of me I'll never understand how people can believe it without question. How do you think they got Polar bears and Koala's onto the Ark??? (just to name a couple)
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
1. The Bible is fiction.
2. Get over it.
...So Fork You.
Geez. The mods have no sense of humor. Clearly he was not trolling... Look at his karma history.
you are describing something close to the discredited lamarkian theory of evolution, that things evolved because they were needed, such as giraffes getting long necks because they need them rather than the pre-giraffes with longer necks would eat better and live longer than the ones with shorter necks.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Evolution isn't a "theory" in that sense of the word, any more than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". Both are fact as far as the scientific community is concerned
Yes, and no. The theory/law of gravity is easy to test, since it's macroscopic and since gravity travels (probably) at the speed of light. Anyone can observe gravity acting on any object just by throwing it up in the air.
Evolution, on the other hand, happens more and more slowly the more complex the organism, and is only supported in humans by fossil evidence which, while rigorously scientifically analyzed, is far from complete. Major leaps in evolution involve major changes to the DNA, a molecule that wasn't even posited to exist a century ago. Furthermore, exactly how evolution happened on Earth is something that get revised with surprising frequency, while the only major question science has about gravity today is just how fast it travels.
Is evolution accepted scientific theory? Yes. Is it as rigorously studied, tested and accepted as gravity? Certainly not.
And what could be worse than hell? Could it be ignorance?
On the contrary, I was always told ignorance was bliss.
...which to cut a long story short is a Catholic carry-over from the Mithraism which preceded it, just like the concept that all of our dear departed are squinting down at us from a kind of celestial balcony seat.
Ain't nothing like an infinitely vengeful diety and a billion watchful relatives to scare the flock's bowels clean and keep them in line. A reasonable deity doesn't suit control freaks so well, and routinely gets shut out.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
What, a hundred and fifty years isn't enough?
Newton published his laws of motion in, I belive, 1679. Einstien published his special relativity paper in 1905, "disproving" Newtonian mechanics.
And we're still of course not sure Einstien has the last word. In fact, it's almost certain he doesn't.
No, 150 years isn't enough time.
This article from the BBC is misleading. I tracked down the original article in Nature.
The researchers didn't actually unlock any major secrets. It is no secret that two species who would not produce viable offspring together will try to avoid mating with each other. There are various mechanisms for doing that - having different wing colors so that species can distinguish their optimal mating partners is one method. If the two species are geographically separated, there is no need to develop other methods of separation, and thus their wing colors can look similar. There is nothing new about this.
Also, the BBC article never explains that the speciation of these butterflies occurred while they were geographically separated (this is called allopatric speciation, and the Nature article specifically states that the butterflies evolved this way). The species only developed different wing markings when they came back into contact with each other. This makes a lot of sense - they were now genetically very different, and offspring between members of different species would not be successful, so they needed ways of telling each other apart.
It's a nice finding, but certainly not the unlocking of a major secret.
What, a hundred and fifty years isn't enough?
Actually, it was. Any "holes" have been pretty much plugged. Unfortunately, that doesn't slow down the people who prefer to remain ignorant...
True. Which is why the labelling of evolution as "science" rather than "creation myth for Atheists" has long puzzled me.
Perhaps because it is, in fact, science?
Of course, I must admit that the sheer arrogance of the uninformed to think they know all the answers has long puzzled ME.
The theory of evolution is not "safe" to criticise, since it can be tested in our own back-yard and has immediate theological implications whenever something that's effectively impossible to produce by evolutionary processes is found. And you know what? Each time something like that is noticed, it's written off with a statement along the lines of "we'll eventually find a way of explaining this with evolution, never you mind". That statement is an act of faith. "There's no evidence for it here, but I believe in evolution, brother, how about you?"
There's plenty of evidence for evolution. Please educate yourself before you spout nonsense.
Of course, given that you believe yourself so knowledgeable that you can tell God how He must have created the universe, I don't suppose the knowledge of mere humans means much to you.
Why is it that animals that are "domesticated" or mostly live in close cooperation with human societies, like pigeons, develop highly variegated markings?
Think about it, cats, dogs, chickens, pigeons, cows, all of these exhibit wild variation in marking and coloration when they live with humans. Even humans themselves seem to have more variability when compared to other primates.
Perhaps human ecosystems and breeding have removed other pressures so the marking variations are more likely to express? I dunno. Just an observation. Any geneticists or evolutionary theorist out there have any ideas about this?
here is an extensive fossil record, etc. for evolution. Does this mean that God couldn't have just planted it there to trick us? No. But at the same time if there is a "God" that would do that, then he could also reverse all of the laws of physics tomorrow
One problem that the theory of evolution has in comparison to, say, the laws of Physics is the fact that the much evidence is very different. Anyone can perform empirical experiments to prove for themselves that, for example, F=MA (for relatively slow moving masses of course Mr. Einstein).
However much of the theory of evolution comes from someone subjective studies of skeletons and in this case "wing colours". Evolution has very few hard predictive theories. For example, with the "wing colours" theory these researchers can't predict what the wing colors will be. Of course this has alot to do with the complexity of the theory and the interactions of the species. But the problem still exists.
Personally, many evolutionary studies remind me more of a "soft science" psychology or sociology study than a hard science physics or chemistry theory. The only hard science being done IMHO is in the realm of genetics. I want to see someone come up with a computer model showing how we got from a single celled organism to us with all of the branches inbetween.
Brian EllenbergerA theory, according to the OED, is:
This topic on Gamefaqs.com's "Southeastern U.S. Board" has been thriving for quite some time now. Every time a creationist gets debunked, a new one comes in to make the same argument again. Did you know that Darwin recanted on his deathbed? ;)
I wonder if the Evolve-o-Matic could help your post evolve...
See http://www.jhuger.com/evolve.php
Let me explain evolution... theres specie Geek, the Vi x Emacs force a species split up. Then we've got Vi Geek and Emacs Geek, after couple years they can't even talk to each other anymore, the Vi Geek always trying some cryptic commands and the Emacs Geek mutating more fingers to type even bigger key-chords... it's the same with butterflies I think... RGB Butterfly, CMYK Butterfly...
-- Por mais que eu ande no vale das trevas e da morte, meu PowerMac G4 Não Travará!!!
Really? You have to type? God just miracles my computer on and miracles all this code into existence for me so I don't have to program at all. I just pray and give all my money to the nice church people. In the morning my car starts not because of the scientists and engineers and mechanics who built it using science and scientific principles but because god miracles it on.
Sucking great steaming tourdes straight out of George W. Bush's puckering starfish?
Being married for more than a week or three to some skank ho narcissist like Paris Hilton? OK - that would be more like Purgatory, I suppose.
Going to a wedding in Afghanistan and have the US Air Force napalm your family celebration?
Wake up one morning and realise that Civilisation is DOOMED and everything you have spent your life working on is just a waste of time to keep your mind off the fact that you live as a wage slave at the convenience of your corporate task masters and will die a meaningless death in an uncaring universe?
Having to choose which of your children must die so the other may live?
Living a life as a good Moslem Dupe / Xian Retard / jew Bagel asswipe and then as you spin into the great oblivion, realise it's all just a big hoax, and you have been lied to by power mad fuckwits?
Be executed for a crime you did not commit?
I dunno - I think there are lots of things worse than any "hell" religious wackjobs might conjure up.
AC
I suspect the changes to go from fertilized egg, to embryo, to infant are just as dramatic, just compressed in time and confined to the womb.
Over millions of cycles things change, if they happen to be better, then we tend to keep them, if they are worse we dump them. Evolution is just a method to take 'intelligence' out of that selection, so you can think of ourselves as our creators.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Unfortunately, detailing exactly WHY "creationist" arguments are full of crap is rather complicated; schools have a hard enough time getting science taught properly as it is. Covering the subject thoroughly would be very challenging for the typically abysmal public school science teacher.
Not to mention, the creationist types would probably sue the school for religious descrimination (and might actually have a decent chance, sadly).
Here is a good visualization of how man evolved
Would you care to express "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" in term of physical processes and not in romanticist language?
My skepticism would be greatly reduced.
Evolution is a fact. It has been observed in the fossil record, and observed in the present day.
"Observation" proves anything. For hundreds of years everyone "observed" that a heavy stone falls faster than a feather. The Scientific Method proves things: http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/Appendi xE/AppendixE.html
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
Observation alone does not satisfy #3 and #4.
So Darwins theory made a prediction that turned out to be true and your saying the theory of evolution is weaker because of that?
If evolution can't explain something then either the theory will be changed to fit with the new and existing observations or a completly new theory will replace it.
Whats going to happen when those touting Intelligent Design realise their theory is full of holes? Oh thats right, it's already been done and they went with the ostrich method of ignoring anything they can't make fit their theory.
Actually, I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ does not, in fact, hate gay people. You may wish to revise your theory in light of new facts (that's the scientific method, after all! :D).
How do you think they got Polar bears and Koala's onto the Ark???
Why two by two of course!
Even though this may be a troll, I want to respond anyway.
I cringe every time I hear someone say evolution is just a theory. They don't understand what it takes to get to the next step beyond theory (law). Let me go back a hundred years... This guy named Einstein proposed that Newton's Laws of Motion may be incomplete when the numbers get reallllllllly big. Turns out he was right. Well, the scientific community felt a great amount of embarassment that something they had accepted as law was flawed. Since then, pretty much nothing has become a law, just in case it gets proved wrong.
So, evolution is a theory because that's pretty much as far up the ladder as things go these days!!! Not because the scientific community isn't quite sure. What most people think of as a theory (a conjecture that hasn't been thoroughly tested yet) is really called a hypothesis in the scientific community.
Read here rof a second opinion http://wilstar.com/theories.htm
"I want to see someone come up with a computer model showing how we got from a single celled organism to us with all of the branches inbetween."
You might not be able to find a computer with enough RAM and storage space. If such a program did exist, you would just find another reason to object.
By the way, do you understand what "random" means? What about "stochastic process"? You don't necessarily end up with the same outcome when you "start" a random process. (Analogy: Suppose you have a sequence in a compact topological space. It has a convergent subsequence. Find the limit of this subsequence. Now do it again. Do you get the same limit? If the original sequence converges, then your answer is "Yes". If not and if your selection of subsequence is "ramdom", then the answer is probably "No" (depending on the details).) A realistic computer program would not yield your "Uncle Bob" and "Aunt Fran" (or even humans); it still might be an excellent model of "reality".
The creationists claim that all the biodiversity presently seen comes from speciation of a few animals that were temporarily stored in a wooden Ark. What I remember them hawking was that no new animal types have sprung into being; we've only seen small variations on the old ones.
This is a claim that most evolutionists would easily admit to; the discovery of a new species is usually attributed to it not having been found previously, and only extreme macroevolution could produce a new animal type in the few hundred years since people started categorizing flora and fauna.
No we weren't. Get used to it. And Grow Up.
I'll jump in just for the sake of defending a man of the faith...and I think the grandparent is grown up.
If you'd read the news and read the Bible, you'd understand better than we are in the midst of prophetic events forecast thousands of years ago. Read Daniel for the whole revived Roman Empire piece that corresponds to the EU today. Read Matthew to get the signs of the end predicted by Christ. Earthquakes in diverse places, seas and waves roaring and men's hearts failing them from fear. When these things begin to happen, look up, for your redemption draws near. 2 Thesselonians says that in the end days men will be lovers of money, greedy, adulterous, losing natural affection, etc., etc., etc.
Many think that since they don't believe in hell it doesn't exist. But I'd like to hold an optimistic view that all will come to Christ and be saved. For He is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except by Him. (And, as awful as it is for many that subscribe to other faiths or no faith at all, millions may perish one day soon).
I believe the Lord created all living things. I have worked on so-called contradictions on the Bible from that Skeptics Annotated Bible site and have successfully debunked all that I have studied. Therefore, the Bible being inerrant in my belief, the Lord created the universe and all life on earth. And continues to do so to this day.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
It is easy to imagine that these two groups are slowly diverging, as they engage in different diets, breed within their own groups and engage in different physical activities.
That might actually apply to humans as well. I mean take Conservatives and Liberals. They engage in different physiclal activities and (mostly) breed within their own groups. So will the two eventually evolve into seperate species, Homo Conservativis and Homo Liberalis? Probably, however, due to the high population denisty among humans they will also be unable to escape having to interact with each other. So the two resultant species and their behavioral patterns will influence each others evolution won't they? I mean you would for example expect the Homo Conservativis to evolve sophisticated selective hearing in order to avoid hearing anything that Homo Liberals might say that contradicts with their religious ideas while the Homo Liberals will grow thick Neanderthal like skulls due to Homo Conservatives incessantly thumping theim on the head with a Bible.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Disclaimer: I am not a creationist.
I do, however have the following problems with evolution, none of which have been properly explained to do this day. I base my decisions on nothing but logic, and logic would dictate that evolutionists have taken natural selection as a theory and blown it into some religion on the theory of life.
Here they are:
1) Chance over probability. This is probably the weakest argument (because we *could* be the 1 in septendecillion instance), but it is a significant one, because many of the same individuals that believe we evolved from single-cell organisms also believe in extraterrestrial life within our own galaxy. You'd think these individuals would actually be ID proponents.
2) Second law of thermodynamics. While another somewhat weak argument in the eyes of many evolution proponents, the significance of a mutation actually increasing the intellectual properties of of an organism would be a major scientific find of unbelievable proportions and would indicate that our analysis of closed systems needs to be rethought. Specifically, I'm talking about DNA and the "information argument". Species don't just get smarter, yet it is clear that we are more intelligent than dogs, for instance. The hard part is determining *why*.
3) Fossilized records. This is one of the more common arguments so I won't focus on it, but where are the fossils of these transitory species? It is believed that many species of frogs and other amphibians which are more likely to experience natural selection have been undergoing this on a regular basis, yet no evidence has been found of such.
4) Dating methods. Another small but significant argument. Rocks that have formed within just the last century are often mis-dated as being formed billions of years previous. There are many documented accounts of this which get poo-pooed by evolutionists.
5) Spontaneous generation. It's never been proven. This is the work of 1400s urban legends about maggots forming when a cow's tail hits water, to see esteemed scientists falling to this level is nothing short of a tragedy.
6) Micro-evolution is observable and falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not falsifiable. If something is not falsiable, like creation for instance, it's considered part of a belief system or religion.
7) Evolution of the eye. We have no indication of how or why the eye evolved. Likewise, we have no indication of why there are creatures that have existed for 50 million years, like bats, and have been blind for the entire period.
8) Evolution of the vertebrae. IMHO, this may be the strongest argument against evolution. We have absolutely no idea why or how the vertebrae came into existance.
but empiricism. Scientists have done it in the past (even if they had to scrap an entire framework or two) and if they use the same methods, it's safe to assume that they will do it in the future too. Kind of like assuming that the gravity will exist tomorrow because it has risen in the past. Unlike religion which is based on blind faith when there is no evidence like John 20:29.
I am half-ashamed, half-impressed to say that this book, actually, although not entirely, converted me to the camp of "Intelligent Design".
Calculating God
Although, naturally, the aliens are pure speculative fiction, the things that the aliens and humans discuss are actually true, and the first half of this book, before the terrorists, is very well-designed, and converted me, an apathetic Deist, to someone who does not dismiss Intelligent Design, and actually argues it with his more "chemical chance" oriented friends.
Good book, highly recommended for ANYONE, even people who won't be swayed.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Einstein did not disprove Newtonian mechanics. He showed they work only in a limited (but very broad) range of physical situations, and showed how to extend physics beyond that case.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
As the AC pointed out, height increases are due to improvements in nutrition (mostly increases in protein) and have nothing to do with genetics. This is an easily verified fact; many immigrant families have children much larger than their parents, and children don't grow as big in countries where famines occur.
There have been several published papers which document this.
That's not faith, it's extrapolation. There's a difference.
Cow Cube
heh, someone needs to take a few courses in statistics and mathematics and an understanding of basic cellular biology. not trying to make this an ad hominem attack, but there's no way we evolved from simple cells to human beings.
There's plenty of evidence for evolution.
For microevolution - yes, there is some. None for macroevolution or abiogenesis, both of which are quite important to the completeness of the theory. No, extrapolating from microevolution to the other aspects is not an evidence.
Please educate yourself before you spout nonsense.
Do you believe you are educated enough to spout nonsense?
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
in heaven, pet bee flies you!
Mod parent up.
It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
And no, I'm not a creationist or an Intelligent Design proponent, that's stupid too.
Don't confuse Evolution with Natural Selection. One is theory that change and speciation exists. The other explains how that happens. Evolution was believed long before Darwin, and it was he who came up with Natural Selection. If you read Creationist propaganda, Evolution is used as an umbrella to cover everything that is considered unbiblical - ranging from continental drift to the big bang to the fact that light from stars wasn't created "on the way" to overcome the vast distances. We need to understand the difference between Natural Selection and Evolution so we can easily confront such nonsense as "if we're all constantly progressing according to evolution, why are there still cockroaches?"
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Gravity is also part of a theory. I guess they shouldn't teach that in schools either.
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
For microevolution - yes, there is some. None for macroevolution or abiogenesis, both of which are quite important to the completeness of the theory. No, extrapolating from microevolution to the other aspects is not an evidence.
Drawing a distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is all the proof I need that you don't know what you're talking about.
It is not my responsibility to give you a biology education. Stop closing your heart and mind, and maybe you'll see that instead of telling God how He must have made the world, you can look with curious eyes upon His creation and seek the knowledge of the tools He used.
On the other hand, for a scientist "believe" means "I think that this is true because it's a logical conclusion drawn from occurances which I or someone else have directly observed. Additionally, if presented with compelling evidence (i.e. direct observation) that refutes this conclusion, I will cease to believe it."
That's the key here: evolution is the best explanation (so far) for what we observe without relying on "because somebody said so." That's why it's a theory: It's a conjecture derived from observable facts through logic. Moreover, this also explains why creationism isn't a theory: it relys on assumptions that cannot be derived from observable facts (at least, so far).If you apply what I said about scientists' use of "believe" you should now understand why this isn't the "act of faith" you think it is. The scientists aren't saying they disregard the facts in front of them; they're saying that those facts aren't enough to disprove evolution and that they also don't have any scientific explanation that fits the facts better than evolution. Creationism is right out from the beginning because, as I've said already, it isn't a rigorous, logically-deduced argument to begin with.
If you can think of an explanation that fits all observed facts better than evolution and doesn't rely on Faith, then you can start complaining about some kind of conspiracy among scientists to reject anything that's not evolution.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
heh, someone needs to take a few courses in statistics and mathematics and an understanding of basic cellular biology. not trying to make this an ad hominem attack, but there's no way we evolved from simple cells to human beings.
Statistics and mathematics? Oy, vey.
Let me guess, you probably think evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, too? Ahahaha. XD
By the way, do you understand what "random" means? What about "stochastic process"?...A realistic computer program would not yield your "Uncle Bob" and "Aunt Fran" (or even humans); it still might be an excellent model of "reality".
No need to get snippy. Geez. Anyway, since we already have a result (humans) you should still be able model the theory of evolution and find the set of random variables that resulted in humans. This model should also predict the pre-humans, apes, etc that correlate to fossil records. We also should eventually be able predictively assign probabilities to future mutations (humans mutating wings vs humans mutating different skin colors). This sort of evidence is alot more convincing than some random scientist's comparison of butterfly colors. Sadly I don't see too many evolutionary scientists interested in these sorts of hard studies.
Oh, is that all? We just have to document every bit of structure in the entire universe, and the path it took for every quanta of time since the beginning of time itself, and prove that every path taken could have been random, and then we're done?
That certainly sounds like a reasonable argument. Lets say you start with all existing structure in the universe, and show that it makes sense for every bit of it to be designed, and show how it was designed, every step of the way. The first one to document every bit of structure in the universe, wins.
Lemme guess, you don't believe that prime numbers continue infinitely, because nobody has actually provided you a list of all of them...
The Wizard utters the word 'frobnoid!' and cackles gleefully
Damn smart butterfly
They have markings because humans like them to look like that, so we select for animals with markings.
For example, dalmations are often deaf because the same gene for a white coat leads to deafness, but we (humans) keep breeding dalmations anyway. Why? Go ask a human. It's humans doing it.
From an evolutionary perspective: domestic animals with attractive (to humans) markings are better adapted to being allowed to breed by their human overlords, whereas less interesting looking domesticated animals are less adapted to pleasing their human overlords, and therefore being allowed to breed.
(And, as awful as it is for many that subscribe to other faiths or no faith at all, millions may perish one day soon).
Yea... Millions... Except, more.
There are, roughly, 1 billion Christian/Protestants in the world. Ther are, roughly 1 billion Christian/Catholics in the world. Now because of their tradition and some more unique views (Catholics believe in 'good works', etc vs modern protestants believe more in a pure faith.. And mormons, that have added significantly to the base religions(a whole new testament))... we can roughly say that 2 billion "Christians" exist, but in reality, 1 prostetant's more techincal faith contradict with anothers. The way Catholics believe they get to heaven is not the same as other denominations, though the core belief is generally the same.
Ok, so yada yada, 2 billion christians.
Now, there are 6.3 (and growing) people in the world. Assuming that every "christian" is saved, that they have a clean slate, are not liars or "sunday christians" and are on the up-and-up with regards to Christ, that leaves 2 out of every 3 people not even having a CHANCE at salvation.
2 out of 3. Just one of the many things to think about.
PS: During the end days, 7 year tribulation, etc, there are likely to be converts (if the way I have heard the book of revelations is remotely accurate, given how metaphorically it was written). So this number could surely increase, but only by so much.
Many billions of people will like be sent to hell, not just millions.
You're entitled to your belief system, and I'm entitled to mine, which is: a belief in God(s) is a relic of an unenlightened age which is increasingly causing problems in a world that has, by and large, moved on and realised the truth (whatever it turns out to be, we don't have it all yet) is both more complex and more beautiful than the silly old myths of old. Resorting to the "God hypothesis" as an explanation for the phenomena we see around us is, to my mind, childish in a very real sense. Hence the "grow up". It's time mankind grew up. Religion is a crutch and letting it go will be a difficult and traumatic process - but we must do it, otherwise as a species we have no future. We can make a start now by stopping this politically correct pandering to religions that is going on - and I mean all religions, none of them are any better than any others, as they all take as their starting point some ridiculous creationist notions. Superstitious silly nonsense, all of it. And to kill in its name is the height of stupidity; it amounts to a mental dysfunction of staggering proportions. If we don't get over it we are doomed.
our new hyper-evolved butterfly overlords? (been watching too much venture brothers recently)...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Please mod parent up!
the "Left Behind" series is whaat you are looking for. Pornography for christians.
It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
This really isn't the case. The distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is not the big deal it's made out to be; all changes are small, but the timeframes in which evolution works are GIGANTIC, allowing the small changes to accumulate.
Because Evolution has very specific requirements for how organisms change, it IS in fact falsifiable; the fact that it hasn't been is what gives it strength.
The most simple way to falsify evolution is exactly what the Intelligent Design crowd stumbled on; to demonstrate that a particular feature in an organism could not arise as a series of incremental changes from other organisms.
Unfortunately for the ID crowd, no such feature has been found. They do a lot of hand-waving and lying, but in the end there simply isn't such a thing as irreduceable complexity among life on Earth. All life forms have the same basic composition, a lot of the building blocks and sub-components are very similar, analogous structures and shared genetics can be found in very different organisms... it all fits together.
There's a difference between something that cannot be falsified by any possible evidence and something that cannot be falsified by evidence that actually exists.
For cogent replies to all his points, check out the Talk.Origins Archive.
Asparagus has many and excellent powers.
disproving" Newtonian mechanics
Not disproving, extending... Newton was right and still is to a first approximation at the speeds we experience as human beings. Einstein merely extended Newton to work for light speeds.
This is reflected in the fact that modern engineering (spaceshots, etc aside) uses Newton, not Einstein, and buildings still stay up, and machines work. The tiny error correction that Einstein brings to Newton is still way below the tolerances that modern engineering works with.
Unfortunately, detailing exactly WHY "creationist" arguments are full of crap is rather complicated;
No, it's not. It's horribly simple. In fact, THAT's the reason right there.
"It's possible there was an intelligent designer--but it's not certain, and it's equally possible that there wasn't. And since it's simpler to not have one, we act as if there weren't one."
Not to mention, the creationist types would probably sue the school for religious descrimination [sic].
Not likely. If you're teaching their theory and pointing out why it's not the majority theory, you're doing everything they could ask for.
Claiming it's a religious thing is the quickest way to get creationism OUT of the public school. In fact, that's what happened.
That's a very accurate answer.
The catapillar stage is considered an extended larval stage. Basically a caterpiller is larva that can walk around and eat leaves.
See larva.
It seems possible to me that simpler organisms may be able to cross-breed easier. Perhaps at an early stage of evolution a simple bug which happened to hibernate in a cocoon bred with a simple bug that had wings. Perhaps this is a one in a billion chance, or that the first offspring only had tiny wings or had a short transformation phase, but perhaps over millions of years, through other mutations, butterflies developed as we know them today.
It seems impossible that one single organism could spontaneously develop a cocooning stage and wings at the same through a mutation. I don't see how that organism, over the course of it's very short lifespan could adapt to such a radical change, survive and then procreate successfully.
Demanding the scientist's personal info. Can't have such blasphomy against the bible(tm) getting confirmation! What's this science crap anyway? ...
"...mainstream news source mangles simple science! More at eleven."
Sigh.
First of all the Bible makes it very clear why we were created, God got bored and wanted toys.
And you think this makes me more likely to worship a god like that? A god that thinks of me as a toy?
And what if the rules of the game are that you can try and win souls, but you cant steal one anothers souls.
So not only am I a toy, but the only reason the god wants me to love him is so he can win a game? Again, do you think this makes me more likely to worship a god like that?
you can't have humans who choose to love you and then only give them the choice to love you.
You think that there is a meaningful difference between creating humans that have no choice but to love you and creating humans that are given the choice between eternal torture and saying they love you?
Suppose the god you describe exists in the circumstances you describe. There is no need for hell. Just give the humans the option of loving you and don't punish the ones that don't love you. Simple.
I also think that this article doesn't prove macro evolution, which never has been proven. Micro evolution has time and time again. Most creationist will agree that this butterfly "anomaly" when the butterfly becomes a bird or a new species now you have something.
Speciation has been observed several times.
You seem to know about as much history as your students.
Flat-out wrong. Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics always differ.
As someone who took 2.5 years of genetics, speciation is something well understood. At some point breeding between the two populations is physically impossible (due to pysiological/geographic reasons) or does nto result in fertile young (mule). Everythign else is just details.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Disclaimer: I am not a creationist.
Ah. Well, as you are neither a creationist your own beliefs, nor, it would seem, are you interested in discussing the actual article...Logic would dictate that you are merely posting deliberately contentious material to stimulate. You are then, by definition, a troll.
Q.E.D.
I get frustrated with evolution being called "just a theory" as ID people try to play semantics. Here's a question - According to the (OT) bible, how many people has god murdered - answer maybe as many as 5 million. How many has satan killed - answer zero (Job's wife and family was killed by satan, but under instruction of god) Wake up all of you - this religion thing is a farse!
Two things:
First, hence the quotes around "disproved".
Second, the AC that also responded to you is right. Newton is never 100% right. However, with the speeds, forces, etc. we experience on a regular basis, Newton is so absurdly close to being correct that it works just as well as Einstien, and the errors that simplification introduces are more or nothing compared to measurement errors.
The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
Once you learn what the word 'abiogenesis' means, you'll be able to embarass yourself less on slashdot. Until then, bring it on, numbskull.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I'm puzzled how posts that are objectively wrong get modded to 5's as informative.
The article referred to here is typical: we believe that speciation drives evolution,Just now, after more than a century of holding this as nothing less than an article of faith, we think we might be seeing it happening. Maybe.
No, speciation has been widely tested and confirmed. Usually geographic speciation is easier to measure.
It is unfortunately true that evolution is sometimes taught in government schools as a dogma to be taken on faith, but any slashdot reader should be able to pick up a few books and understand the testable scientific basis, and understand how they can design and run experiments to confirm evolution.
I've got news for you: speciation is pretty much inevitable from the perspective of a creationist. Any differentiation due to information loss or separation is, starting from the premise of a fallen, decaying world.
Ok, you have speciation. Do you also have natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and each of the other characteristics of evolution? That would come in handy for dealing with reality.
As to your Intelligent Design straw-man, it's easy to disprove. Simply show that all existing structure is practically achievable through random chance, and you're done. That's a lot harder row to hoe than you assume.
That's a strawman. (A strawman is like a man, but the project of design rather than evolution.)
Chance is part of the process, but so is selection. Fitness is a shorthand way of referring to, that nature tends to reward organisms that do a better job of managing information about their environments. Evolution then is a process by the which the universe moves over time from being dead matter to self-awareness. Even slashdot contributes to the growing universal self-awareness. Perhaps dupes can be explained with reference to the adaptive functionality of creative redundancy of information storage and retrieval.
No, it's not. It's horribly simple. In fact, THAT's the reason right there.
:\
"It's possible there was an intelligent designer--but it's not certain, and it's equally possible that there wasn't. And since it's simpler to not have one, we act as if there weren't one."
Okay, that much is simple enough, you're right. I meant to actually go through and knock down the common creationist arguments; as faulty as they are, a lot of them sound pretty persuasive to people who aren't already educated.
Not likely. If you're teaching their theory and pointing out why it's not the majority theory, you're doing everything they could ask for.
What they REALLY want is to have their theory taught as if it IS the currently accepted theory (or, at very least, equally valid). They won't be satisfied with anything less, especially if it goes to any length to explain WHY it isn't the commonly accepted theory. You give the creationists too much credit, I fear.
Claiming it's a religious thing is the quickest way to get creationism OUT of the public school. In fact, that's what happened.
Yeah, because what the creationists want is for religion to be presented as if it was science, which clearly doesn't belong in the schools. It could be included if the creationist arguments were treated from a scientific perspective (see above), or if the religious aspects of it were considered in a non-science class (comparative religion, or some such).
If I sound overly pessimistic, I grew up around these sort of people. I speak from personal experience.
Did anybody else misread the word "buttocks" into this headline?
1) Chance over probability. This is probably the weakest argument (because we *could* be the 1 in septendecillion instance), but it is a significant one, because many of the same individuals that believe we evolved from single-cell organisms also believe in extraterrestrial life within our own galaxy. You'd think these individuals would actually be ID proponents.
1.This is a logicly flawed argument. For my part I belive that we evolved but don't belive that that there is any form of intelligent extraterestrial life just based on what we've seen so far. I'm sure that there are some people who belive in UFOs and Creationisim. People are free to belive whatever they want, in what ever combination they desire.
2) Second law of thermodynamics. While another somewhat weak argument in the eyes of many evolution proponents, the significance of a mutation actually increasing the intellectual properties of of an organism would be a major scientific find of unbelievable proportions and would indicate that our analysis of closed systems needs to be rethought. Specifically, I'm talking about DNA and the "information argument". Species don't just get smarter, yet it is clear that we are more intelligent than dogs, for instance. The hard part is determining *why*.
2. Intellingence is not a form of energy or matter, but instead a quality we observe in people and animals, like beauty or charisma. Specificly, inteligince arises from a larger, more complex neural structure. This structure is paid for the animal having to consume more nutrients from its environment, thus satisfieng the Second law.
3) Fossilized records. This is one of the more common arguments so I won't focus on it, but where are the fossils of these transitory species? It is believed that many species of frogs and other amphibians which are more likely to experience natural selection have been undergoing this on a regular basis, yet no evidence has been found of such.
3. I'll admit that the fossil record is sketchier than I like, however there are many examples of different fossils found that illustrate a species evolution over time. Given the time and geological stresses that these fossils had to endure, it amazes me that there is as much left as is.
"The moment "pride" is lost, "freedom" is also lost." - Ramza.
Not in practical results. We don't take relativistic effects into account in designing cars do we? Newton's laws work just fine, from calculating the path a baseball takes as it arcs through the air to sending a spaceshuttle to the moon.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Simply show that all existing structure is practically achievable through random chance, and you're done.
But that is a strawman in itself. Natural selection is not random at all; it specifically relies on selection of those genetic traits that are ultimately favourable toward producing more offspring.
While the mixing of genes during sexual reproduction, and DNA changes due to mutations, are both random processes, they only furnish the mechanism for exploring different directions with respect to genetic configurations. Natural selection then 'chooses' which direction a species is going to take, in a decidedly non-random manner.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
First two minor points, then I'll get to the real subject, the math of evolution.
theory is a theory my friend
Every field of science is a theory, my friend. Everything from the theory of the atom to the theory of zymosis (that's fermentaion). You may as well try to attack relativity as being "just a theory".
sortof like the unprovable assumption of evolution?????
What unprovable assumption of evolution? Evolution fundamentally says that if if you have heritable variation and mutations and selection pressures on that variation then you will get evolution over generations. This is trivially observable fact. There is no genuine scientific dispute over biological evolution exacly because there is so much evidence that cross checks and cross validates across so many feilds, both current observations and study of prehistorical evidence left behind. Trying to even scratch the surface of this mountain of evidence in this post would be hopeless. If you are questioning the quantity and quality of the evidence, I suggest you either crack open a text book on the subject or at least browse the talkorigins website. It's all well documented if you actually question the issue. If you don't truely question the issue and you instead simply reject the entire subject on non-rational grounds, well obviously you're not going to be swayed by something silly like actual evidence and actual science.
Anyway, the real issue I wanted to address was this one:
the sheer numeric improbability of evolution
Correction, the sheer numeric CERTIANTY. There's powerful mathematics to evolution, powerful effects going on that you don't hear about in the common explanations of evolution. The common idea of evolution is as a sequence of individual beneficial mutations, like climbing a ladder. If that's how evolution actually worked then critics would be right, it would have been mathematically impossible for evolution to produce the incredible complexity we see today.
To show the true mathematical power of evolution I will first abandon that "ladder climbing" of beneficial mutaions. In fact lets assume that every single mutation that occurs is either neutral or harmful. I'll demonstrate that we still get the real and powerful mechanism of evolution, the math of evolution.
A good place to start is with the common complaint of creationists that mutation and evolution "cannot create information". Well in the initial mutation phase they are right. When a mutation occurs it introduces noise, it tends to degrade information. But look what happens the moment that mutation gets passed on to an offspring. That mutation is now no longer random noise, it now carries a small bit on information. It carries a little tag saying "this is a nonfatal mutation". The presence of this mutation in the offspring is new and created information, the discovery and living record of a new nonfatal mutation. Over time the population builds up a LIBRARY of nonfatal mutations. This library is a vast accumulation of new information.
That information actually undergoes even more processing and synthesis. Over generations beneficial mutations would obviously multiply, but we're assuming there are none of those here. However entirely neutral mutations will also tend to accumulate and multiply. Nearly harmless mutations would also accumulate and multiply to a lesser extent. Somewhat harmful mutations will even accumulate, and extremely harmful-but-nonfatal mutations will pop up and disappear at the rarest frequencies. So not only do we build up a library of nonfatal mutations, the mutations get tagged with a tagged with a frequency, the percentage of the population carrying that mutation. Each mutation is tagged with a measurement. Every mutation now carries a cost/benefit information tag at the population level. The best ones have a high percentage representation and the most harmful ones have a near
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yes, but see, you have the intellect of a cockroach.
The very idea that a supreme being would condemn someone to an eternity of damnation is insane. Said being would be the ultimate evil. I have no idea what the true nature of the universe is, but neither do you.
Fucking retard.
I'll jump in here because I think you're wrong. If you'd read the news and read the Bible, you'd understand better than we are in the midst of prophetic events forecast thousands of years ago... My 10th grade english teacher had a fascination for scenes in books that she interpreted to symbolize the Garden of Eden. If there was a tree in the book, she interpreted it to symbolize the Garden of Eden, even if the tree was just mentioned in passing. Does that mean she was right? I don't think so. You can read the Bible and find similarities to current events if you want to. But, I think that's all you're doing, reading into the Bible things that are not true. Answer me one question. 2000 years ago, there were certainly earthquakes all over the world. Men were lovers of money. They were greedy and adulterous. These things were not new 2000 years ago, have not changed since then and are not likely to change any time soon. So, given that these are your sure signs of impending doom, what makes you think that the end of days is drawing near now? Why now? Why not 1000 years ago? Why not 1000 years from now? the Bible being inerrant in my belief This, I believe, is your biggest mistake, as well as the biggest mistake of many believers. I believe that the Bible was written to be a guide. I don't think it was ever meant to be interpreted literally. I think the basic message of the Bible is "Believe in God, treat each other well, and you will reap the rewards in heaven." I think the parts about believing in God and reaping rewards in heaven are only there to entice people to treat each other well. Then again, I could be wrong.
"Good enough" -- even "almost perfect" -- doesn't mean "right".
It is not impossible, just very unlikely. However, the universe is "fucking big", possibly even infinite, and has many, many planets where the process failed. We however appear to have been lucky.
Even if the chance is 1 in 1000000000000 there are more than 1000000000000 planets for it to have been tried on. And atleast one of them suceeded.
Macro-evolution would be an ape having a human baby. That would be a miracle and would pretty much disprove evolution right there. There is no such thing as a macro-evolutionary event. I can't even stand the word; it implies an event occurs when evolution never makes any claim of the sort. If you STILL insist on using the word, at least define it correctly: macroevolution would be the result picked out of a chain of generations of micro-evolutionary changes.
Evolution really isn't a difficult concept to grasp. At least learn what it's really about before you make yourself look stupid attempting to burn your strawman.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Are you calling us all chimps?
Why is it, that everytime evolutionary research hits the media, it is attacked by random fundamentalist christian groups? Im simply amazed that a modern western country, in all seriousness, is teaching 'intelligent design'. Lets play with this mindset alittle:
:)
1) Evolution is true, and god is fiction.
2) God is real, evolution was created by god.
3) God is real, evidence of evolution was put here to confuse us.
If (1) is true, then all religions a like is pointless. There is no right or wrong, only consequences.
If (2) is true - whats the problem?
If (3) is true, god has a bad sense of humor.
Some interviews and articles i read about 'creationists' seem to attack science as something designed purely to corrupt their children and send them all straight to hell. Puh-lease.
The attack on science is also ridiculous, be it research in evolution or global warming, its always the argument 'but its just a theory!'. Well guess what? So is god.
What, a hundred and fifty years isn't enough?
Oh, wait, I remember... it takes millions of years, doesn't it? (-:
One generation can be enough, so for bacteria 1/2 hour is how long evolution often needs.
True. Which is why the labelling of evolution as "science" rather than "creation myth for Atheists" has long puzzled me.
It's because it has facts and theorems supporting it.
. Just now, after more than a century of holding this as nothing less than an article of faith, we think we might be seeing it happening. Maybe.
Clearly, you haven't been paying attention since darwin mentioned we might have come from apes. There are over 2000 scientific studies re-enforcing evolution as explanation for the current biological state.
And you know what? Each time something like that is noticed, it's written off with a statement along the lines of "we'll eventually find a way of explaining this with evolution, never you mind".
This is what we call science. What do you propose, we accept a theory and never ammend it? it must have been perfect to start with? Complete strawman arguement.
If it turns out that these butterflies speciate -- or not -- it will be no more a proof of evolution than the variation in beak shape amongst Darwin's Finches was. If there's honesty in modern science, it's in the follow-up study to that one, which showed that the beaks changed right back when the environment changed right back.
This is called selection, it is the driving force behind evolution, the genes for normal bills are in the gene pool but a different selective force makes one more common.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Then you've got tandem sequence repeats... which is a whole 'nother story, but they are very susceptible to DNA copying errors and you can evolve e.g. a very different curve of a dog's snout in a century by selecting for different lengths of tandem repeats.
Yes, all this stuff is on the web. Everything you need to completely and authoritatively refute every argument made by creationists (the "intelligent design" brand or the traditional) is on the web.
(Okay, who's the Slashcode nitwit whose filter cancels the <i> tag when a list is started?)
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
...a synonym for "impossible".
True story.
It is statistically rigorous to regard odds of 10^50 against as "impossible" and the statistical likelihood of abiogenesis having ever happened anywhere in the universe as we know it, ever, are at least several times as many orders of magnitude less possible than that.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hrm. I watched Mississippi Burning last night and one thing that struck me dumbfounded was the irrational hatred towards blacks shown by the white protagonists in the film.
That article makes me wonder whether racial hatred is in part inspired by this "team strip" concept in the butterflies. In other words, the white protagonists are acting on their animal instincts to use "reinforcement" (as the article calls it) to encourage speciation.
I'm aware there are countless other factors involved in racial bigotry, including the fact that the white supremacists are a bunch of pathetic losers, but I'm always interested in scientific rationales for seemingly irrational behaviour.
...so what do you believe is the best explanation?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Pickup:/ explore-items/-/0679400036/0/101/1/none/purchase/r ef%3Dpd_sxp_r0/102-3877462-9979321
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sim-explorer
For an excellent run down on evolution.
Btw... I think this book shows clearly that evolution is _not_ a theory.
One of the more interesting expirements conducted was with tropical fish in South America. More or less there are several species of small river fish. Higher up the mountain the fish are striped, lower down the fish are spotted.
A scientist introduced fish from the bottom (spotted) of one river into the top of another river that had none of these fish. They watched and observed and over time... lo and behold... at the top of the new river there where stripped fish, and at the bottom spotted fish.
The utility of stripe vs spots is attributed to effectiveness of camoflage. At the top of the river, in mountainous terrain, strips work better (overhead foilage is rare). At the bottom of the river spots work better (overhead foilage is common).
There were also some very interest graphs, though without the supporting math, that illustrates a correlation between resource availability (food and water) and speciation (this pertained specifically to finches).
Anyways it was an excellent read (won a pulitzer).
Mod parent up.
It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
And no, I'm not a creationist or an Intelligent Design proponent, that's stupid too.
There is no such thing as Micro-evolution/macro-evolution. Evolution is evolution. We see it. There is no seperating. It is a definition obstification introduced by the pro-ID side to try and discredit the fact we observed evolution in many many studies.
It's the equivilent to you saying "I have just seen brad pitt the movie star downtown" and me saying "brad pitt, you mean the line backer in our senior varsity team, you have not I ran him over in 1998." Your follow up should be "no dumb ass, brad pitt, the guy who married jennifer aniston then slept with angilina jolie".
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Incorrect. Newtonian physics are indeed incorrect for all "range(s) of physical situations" except when the mass is at rest. It's just that the error is so low that you can't easily tell.
Disproving evolution is pretty do-able. Finding a human sitting inside of a Dino would kill evolutionary theory pretty soundly. Having a new species suddenly appear in mass would also do a good job at killing off evolution, or in the very least cripple it. Hell, aliens could drop down in a UFO and say "We control evolution!" and that would do a damn good job getting scientist to take intelligent design seriously.
Disproving God on the other hand would be impossible. The closest you can ever get to disproving god is to literally understand everything that ever has and will happen in the universe down to the smallest particle and show that nothing (god) is intervening... at which point the exercise is moot as you are pretty much a god yourself. This is why scientist don't even touch it. If you can't use the scientific method on it, it isn't science, and in order to use the scientific method, you need a way to test your theory.
Now as to evolution, it is not nearly as cemented as you might believe. We have the basics of evolution down pretty well. No scientist worth his salt is going to tell argue against evolution. The real question is what the mechanisms of evolution are. We are cursed in the study of evolution with our terribly short existence on this world. The theory of evolution hasn't been around for more then a few hundred years, yet we are trying to study a process that takes thousands and millions of years to really notice a change. In all likely hood there are still gapping holes in our understanding. The evolution of some complex traits are still baffling. Are there intermediate stages that we didn't see? Is there some mechanism to throw together a bunch of worthless traits into something useful all at once? The truth is that we don't have a full grasp on what is going on.
That said, the response to not having a full understanding isn't to throw up our hands and just say "Eh... god did it." You just need to put your head down and keep plugging forward and filling in the gaps. The whole "We don't know, so it must be God" silliness would have meant that after Newton figure out his famous theories we would have thrown up our hands and declared that God must be holding our feet to the other, because we sure as hell don't know what gravity is, only that it exists. Hell, to this day we can't reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity without resorting to outlandish theories that we can't prove - that doesn't mean we throw in the tall and just rack another one up for "God did it!"
For your specific points, these are very common questions / issues from creationists and others (except the bone question), so the Index is useful:
True faith is never blind; it is based on facts and experience. It is not required because of the absence of evidence, but because something can't be seen. Kind of like how we believe that we are made of atoms, though we can't see of feel them. We are persuaded of their existence by scientists we respect. Faith works the same way. So don't be so quick to dismiss ALL religion as blind and ignorant. And don't feel all superior because you call your faith "empiricism" or whatever.
There will always be unexplained phenomena in any scientific field. Call them "holes" if you must, but they are not indicative of a flawed theory (rather, they are indicative of insufficient data.)
...priesthood-of-scientists dogma once again.
Scientists are people, not omniscient robots. "Believe" means exactly the same thing for a scientist and a paddy farmer.
Many of the things that scientists believe are demonstrably false. I know this to be correct from empirical experiment. Yes, even when they're speaking ex cathedra.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
We need do no such thing. Proving that abiogenesis is probable would be enough.
That's going to be hard. Very hard.
We have some fine ideas about how many quanta of time are available, and how many quanta of matter. Factoring all of those out under the most optimistic of conditions (e.g. that distance doesn't exist and that every particle interacts in every temporal quantum) results in some stupidly big numbers of universes in which life doesn't happen. The odds stand at thousands of orders of magnitude against.
Doing things by degrees makes those numbers much worse.
Invoking a random (i.e. non-ID) anthropic principle (a principle, by the way, which lacks any direct evidence) doesn't help very much, since the vast, vast majority of the vanishingly small number of probability universes in which the way-beyond-impossible happens should all be considerably more hostile to life than the one we observe. If we are here through random anthropocentricity, we are still literally impossibly lucky.
Asserting that life is inevitable given the properties of matter is not only distinctly unobservant, but even if it had a grain of truth in it you would be facing another Pandora's box: why should those physical principles exist as such?
And so on.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I have several problems with this whole deal.
First: The only difference between the 'species' of butterflies (or theorized 'pre-specisation'} is colour? What about different coloured humans? There is some tendency among humans to mate with humans of similar colour, (however, Enlightened Minds frown on doing that exclusively) but that hardly makes our different races different species, and God forbid you actually theorize that it is even a precurser to specisation.
Second: I'm not sure how the researchers were able to follow the entire butterfly lifespan from egg-maggot-butterfly reliably enough to be sure what colour who's mommy and daddy were, or if colours change with age, like many other animals (human hair for instance.)
Third: I hate it when scientists sensationalize like this (I guess it's mostly news writers, but still) "I just discovered the secrets of our universe!" NASA did that with the whole comet screwing thing, "We hope to unlock the secrets of the universe!"
Regardless of whether speciaciation indeed happens or not, authors of the article don't make much sense. According to them, new species are being created because of distinctive stripes. Distinctive stripes are good, because they help to fight hybridization.But wait, if all butterflies were the same to begin with, where did hybridization come from? No hybridization - no need for stripes. No need for stripes - no physical distinction. No phyiscal distinction - no speciation. Am I missing something?
"Macro" evolution is nothing but a large number of "micro" evolution steps piled together.
Most creationist will agree that this butterfly "anomaly" when the butterfly becomes a bird
Standard rediculous creationist claim. Under evolution nothing can become anything other than a variation of what it already was. For example cats: house cats, lions, tigers, pathers, lynx, cheetah, jaguar, puma, they are all cats. Across the entire cat family they are clearly separated by nothing but a bunch of "micro" evolutions. Lions and tigers are seperated by different hair patterns and a handful of other trivial differences. In fact lions and tigers can even interbreed. A house cat is seperated from the cheetah merely by a larger number of "micro" evolutions. They are simply a diverging branching tree from some original cat. The entire existing cat tree converges on a single ancestor roughtly 10 million years ago. A cat cannot become a dog. Working backwards over a far longer time span, the cat family and dog family and bear family and raccoon family are all branches from a common carnovour ancestor around 40 or 50 million years ago. There are merely four or five times as many "micro" evolutions between cats and dogs as there are between house cats and cheetahs. Again woring backwards cats and cows and dolphins and humans are all mammals. They are simply a diverging branching tree from some original mammal roughly 220 million years ago.
A butterfly cannot become a bird any more than a dolphin can become a fish. However dolphins are a perfect examply of just how far one one thing (a mammal) can diverge into something that "completely different" and look a lot like a fish after 220 million years of "micro" evolutions. Given 220 million years worth of "micro" evolution, yes some butterfly will become something extremely "macro" different, it might even resemble a bird in the way a dolphin resembles a fish, but it will never be a bird.
Macro evolution is just a meaningless creationist term to wave away the mountain of scientific evidence that they can no longer deny. It's like attacking the theory of gravity because we have not yet seen Pluto make a full orbit. We first discovered pluto in 1930, and we will not see it complete an orbit until the year 2278. We will not see the Milky Way galaxy complete an orbit for about 228 million years. None of this weakens the theory of gravity.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No - there's extensive evidence for design. But, science starting in the twentieth century was redefined to only allow naturalistic causes. Before that time, scientists allowed the first cause to be supernatural.
That probably sounds goofy to many of you, but think about SETI and forensic science where intelligent causes ARE acknowledged.
The "permanent juvenile" characteristic is known as neoteny. It's also been suggested that homo-sapiens is a form of simian neoteny. This is discussed quite extensively in writings by Steven Jay Gould for example.
Oh... Wait, I get it -- this wasn't a computer-related article, right?
If you want to teach children good science, then you show them what areas of evolution are up for debate, and the evidence behind the debate--the mechanisms behind speciation, for example.
What you don't do is teach them hazy and conflicting usages of terms like theory. In science, a theory is even more solid than fact, as it makes testable predictions about future knowledge. In the vernacular, a theory carries even less weight than a term like hypothesis--its just some idea of how something works or doesn't work.
Then the nutjobs like James Dobson and Bill Frist try to put ideas like creationism, (which would be a totally crackpot idea if it wasn't for the fact that it was the *only* hypothesis in most of the west (excluding native american tribes, of course) from the rise of christianity until the mid-nineteenth century) on equal footing with evolution, despite the fact that there is NO evidence for creationism--only a book of the Bible.
While we see plenty of beauty and elegance, we also see large numbers of botches: mistakes no intelligent designer would ever make. Examples include the human back, which is flawed enough to keep chiropractors in business because we descend from four-legged creatures and the back isn't really optimized for walking on two legs. But there are bigger ones: the nerve that connects the larynx to the brain goes through the heart, both in the human and the giraffe. We have a blind spot in our eyes because of the way the optic nerve is connected, though it isn't hard to come up with a design that lacks this flaw.
Evolution will get rid of botches that interfere with survival and reproduction, but it's neutral with respect to botches that are just annoying. And that's what we see.
Our racial traits likely evolved because of a near-extinction (to humans) event 70,000 years ago: the Tobu supervolcano eruption. During that time, humanity went down to about 1,000 individuals and random evolutionary neutral traits (like eye-folds or hair shape) became more common in the then widely separated groups. But for all of our history before and after that event, humans have been moving around constantly, never allowing an isolated population to exist for that long.
Positive "racial" mutations like skin color changes (actually we all have the same skin color, its just that we have diffent saturation) or malarial resistance (sickle-cell isn't just a "black" disease) happened to any group of people who moved to significantly different areas. Race doesn't correlate with race, in other words.
I'll go ahead and say it: I'm a creationist.
That said, I think it is ridiculous to assume that evolution does not exist. Here's an example why.
The Bible never mentions bacteria, but it most definitely does exist. Why no mention? Because people had not discovered germs yet. Anyway, bacteria is the reason why undercooked pork will make you sick. Instead of confusing people by trying to describe bacteria, something they had absolutely no concept of, and how it can be bad for you, God said "Don't eat pork," and that was that.
Similarly, people in early OT time had no concept of the number one million. IIRC, the Greeks were the first civilization with a word for "million." Combine that with the fact that genetics research was just a few thousand years away, trying to describe evolution as a way of creation would have been impossible. He said "I made it all in 6 days," and that was that, because either way the important part is that God was responsible for it. Heck, people these days have a hard time conceiving millions of years, and it's a few thousand years after the Greeks.
Expecting science to conform to religion, especially one particular religion, is madness. Science by its nature is a-religious and deals only with what can be directly observed, and for the most part the supernatural cannot be directly observed. It is up to religious leaders to interpret scientific findings in the context of their religion.
I don't expect biologists to be theologians, nor theologians to be biologists. That's reasonable, right?
...the person who submitted the article made an interesting statement by saying the speciation happens regularly. I tend to agree, and so does a lot of what scientists find. So... it stand to reason that there is a lot of speciation going on within the human population. I'm not talking about races. I'm talking about actual differences between humans that result in completely different traits, abilities, etc... Why is it that this live of thought tends to eventually degenerate into some form of "superiority" when one group wants to subjugate another? Why can't we just accept that some differences are genetic and can't be overcome. (Why in the hell didn't this get submitted on Tuesday!!?)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
This whole article sounds like propaganda for Kentuckians to marry their sisters.
-THE END-
A significant number of people in West Africa have a particular susceptability to sickle-cell anemia; the same group of people, at the same time, seem more resistant to malaria. This seems to be the way evolution is supposed to work.
Read Daniel for the whole revived Roman Empire piece that corresponds to the EU today.
Which part of the Roman Empire corresponds to Norway? How about Ireland?
______ This mind intentionally left blank.
Someone tries to discredit evolution by saying it's just a theory ought to get a nuclear weapon dropped on them. Special relativity is a theory too. Doesn't mean it doesn't work for what we've been able to experimentally see.
eh, lucky??? try adding some zeros there...how about something like 1 in 10(add sixty zeros) to come up with just one 'working' protein...and are you suggesting that all planets can sustain life??? give this a read if you really want to get an idea of what you're suggesting: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php? command=view&id=2177
w3.org?
I was under the impression that the HTML specs don't let you put block level elements (eg lists) inside inline elements (eg italics). Corrections welcome of course.
Maybe you should try using blockquote elements instead?
Heaven.
Once humans stop natural selection and start applying our own standards of selection, camoflauge becomes a neutral trait: we, not camoflauge, protect the flock or the field.
Just a couple extra to add to your list: bacteria passing around plasmids and viral insertions. I bet there are several functional genes that were given to us by virii, long ago. I know it would be a little tricky to pass on viral DNA, but if a virus were able to infect a fetus, it might make its way into germ cells. Hell, add phagocytosis to your list, because mitochondria and chloroplasts had to get inside cells somehow.
Additionally, one of the most variable parts of the genome deals with the immune system and pathogen recognition. I bet we have a fair amount of bacterial and viral DNA in our genomes, so our immune systems can better recognize infectious agents.
Yes, all this stuff is on the web. Everything you need to completely and authoritatively refute every argument made by creationists (the "intelligent design" brand or the traditional) is on the web.
The problem with many creationist arguments is that they are untestable, and therefore unrefutable. But what is refutable is that the assertion that there is anything scientific about "Intelligent Design." It's an entirely different type of belief, based on faith rather than fact, so has no place in the classroom.
My favorite of all the idiotic arguments counter to evolution is the one based on the second law of thermodynamics: they say that because life has less entropy than inanimate material, then life cannot be explained by physics, and must be explained by God. Of course, their argument is based on a misunderstanding of the second law--the entropy of the universe (i.e., a global scale) is always increasing, but on a local scale, entropy can decrease. If entropy everywhere were always increasing, it would be impossible to make water into ice. Or to put a bunch of spilled marbles in a bag, for that matter.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
We don't know 100% about ANYTHING. Gravity for example--we're still not sure about the existence of the gravitron, the nature of dark matter, whether or not we need a cosmological constant or if gravity just works differently at very large distances, etc.
But we generally don't go around saying that gravity doesn't exist because, well, that flies in the face of common observation and common sense.
Evolution HAS been observed, and evolution DOES follow common sense (unfortunately, many people lack this trait and bring up a bunch of completely ridiculous and irrelevant objections.) Therefore, most scientists simply take it for granted, just as they take the fundementals of gravity for granted--but that does not mean we don't have anything more to learn about how life evolved.
this is probably nutrition based. and there'll be an upper limit to height, because various organs will run into trouble in certain body form factors (e.g. heart cannot pump blood properly in "giants").
And then, a stronger heart / improved circulatory system will become a survival trait allowing even taller humans to develop.
**** lying is wrong even for sleeping dogs
Please go to drdino.com and order a set of DVD/Video Cassettes - when you recieve them in the mail copy them onto your computer or onto another video cassette / dvd disc, then return it for a full refund.
IF YOU CANT DO THIS YOU ARE AN IGNORANT PERSON AND DO NOT WANT TO LOOK AT BOTH SIDES OF THE ARGUEMENT FAIRLY. -_-
This reminds when scientists in Nebraska were searching for remnants of ancient humans. What they found was a single tooth and they claimed it was the missing link for evolution. Later it was discovered that the tooth belonged to a dead hog. I think this one of those things where not much proof is taken in before they call it a "missing link". Just my $0.02
Fallout 3 will suck.
Some creationist claims like "there was a global flood" are falsifiable, and they've been falsified. "Creationist theory" could be falsifiable if creationists would actually provide a theory (other than "evolution can't be true").
has "News for NERDS. And STUFF that matters." rang truer!
In unrelated news: Tennessee bans butteflies.
You need to install an RTFM interface.
Morality evolved.
Some people like to claim that it was created by Kablooie the Space Lizard, because they aren't too clear on the ideas behind evolution and they really like feeling like the favored flock of Kablooie.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Dude, you rock.
"I refuse to worship a god that claims to be all-loving, but threatens us with eternal torture if we don't do what he says." That's the ultimate religious smackdown. It's the elephant in the cathedral that no one wants to acknowledge. The Christian god is a tyrant that is no more deserving of worship than Saddam Hussein.
If, at Saddam's trial, he claimed, "I didn't shoot all those people and dump their bodies in mass graves, they shot *themselves* by not doing what I said!" you would laugh at the absurdity of it. And yet, that's Jehovah's claim.
If anything, the god of Abraham makes Saddam look like Mr. Rogers. There have been approximately 100 billion human beings on this planet, and about 75% or so have been non-Christian. Therefore, Hell would consist of the majority of all human beings -- approximately 75 billion souls -- sentenced to suffer for all eternity.
At least Saddam thought he was putting them out of their misery. And Christians actually want to worship this thing? Ugh.
Thanks again for pointing out the grotesquerie of worshipping a God who would condemn people to Hell. It can't be done often enough, in my opinion.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [as the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
But what if they adopt?
I meant zoologists are the last stand on race, not anthropologists.
The later is the group required to parrot PC doctrine about races only being skin deep (if they want grant money, etc).
Christianity does not achieve mass appeal by being rationally constructed. It does well because it exploits *irrationalities* in the psyche -- insecurity about what might happen in life can be alleviated by remembering that there's a big friendly dad up in the sky watching us, and that as long as we are a Nice Person, nothing that goes wrong really matters.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
My favorite refutation of the bogus Second Law criticism is a seed in some soil in a terrarium. You add nothing but maximally-entropic hydrogen and oxygen in the form of water, maximally-entropic carbon and oxygen in the form of CO2, and sunlight. The seed will sprout and proceed to reduce the entropy of those raw materials in its own growth. The fundies who assert the 2nd Law don't realize that the system creates huge amounts of entropy; it's just leaving in the form of the ~300K waste heat that was once the 5700K solar blackbody spectrum.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I don't see too many aircraft designers interested in flying around the world 8,000 times on one tank of gas--it isn't currently feasible. If we had the technology to model a full ecosystem capable of encompassing all of life's existence don't you think we would have cured cancer by now? Look, even a very (comparatively) simple model is so far beyond our current reach it is unbelievable. We can barely run protein folding models let alone model complex ecosystems simultaneously on macro, micro, and atomic scales.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
genetically speaking, it's meaningless. There is no "white race" or "black race" or "asian race", or any of the rest. Humans do appear to have instincts towards forming social hierarchies, and distinguishing between "in my tribe" and "not in my tribe", but the concept of "race" has no real basis in biology or genetics.
Sorry to disappoint you, but your prejudices will need to find some other foundation upon which to rest.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
The niches natural selection forces the raw goo of speciation into are sometimes formed by the predilection of the participants. In other words, big antlers get bigger because females prefer them. There is something similar in human linguistics; that is, regional dialects emerge because high-status women speak that way. The same cause may easily select for race -- a trivial variation, genetically speaking, with major importance for those who play the game.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
You make being a theory sound like it's some unexamined hypothesis that some idiot came up with off the top of his head.
The way it works in the scientific world is that a theory is a hypothesis that repeated examination shows to be the best available explanation.
Gravity is just a theory. I'm confident enough in it and its predictions that I will not be jumping off a tall building anytime soon. I would welcome anyone who says "just a theory" to give that a whirl.
Sometimes this process isn't perfect, and a DNA strand pair gets part of the other's chromosome or loses a chunk.
Just to be abrasive, this isn't exactly true.
DNA replication is almost perfect. Of course we may not be here if it was perfect everytime, but it's pretty close. A (professionally published) 350-page book is more likely to have 5 spelling errors than the chance of mutation due to DNA coding errors. (Even though a "Harry Potter" maybe edited at length by computers and people).
You can never underestimate the fact that outright mutation is very, very, very rare in animals. Certainly seems to give a case to "Intelligent Design" but to me 'nature' seems that much more awe inspiring.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Evolutionary Biologists have long known some of the mechanisms of speciation. And any freshman in any college intro to Population Biology class knows these quite well...
For instance, one of these mechanisms is spatial segregation, in which some members of a single population become physically separated from another group of that population, by some phenomenon (think changing tidal patterns/river flow paths). This physical separation causes reproductive segregation/separation that leads to speciation by non-shared mutation.
Another is behavioral segregation, which has been mentioned in this thread (orcas hunting fish vs hunting mammals), which leads to social exclusion and, again, reproductive segregation.
Finally, there is selective segregation, which refers to segregation of members of a population due to proficiency at some task necessary for survival. For instance, the Darwin Finches of the Galapagos Islands are under quite strong selective pressure surrounding the size and shape of their beaks. Some finches with long and thin beaks are able to feed on fruit that has small holes in the fruit body, while other members of the same species have larger and stronger beaks that they may use to crack open other kinds of seeds. When food is plentiful, both phenotypes are able to get along just fine on seeds and fruits that lie inbetween these extremes, but when selective pressure is applied (in the form of a famine, perhaps), this small phenotypic difference in beak size/shape results in survival for these two, now more genetically distinct, genotypes, while those finches that fall inbetween the two extremes tend to not survive. If such a selective pressure (famine) lasts for long enough, the two resultant populations may achieve speciation. All of these mechanisms have something in common, they all require reproductive segregation of some sort. This research is all at least 10 years old, and this article is just scientific fluff.
For an extremely interesting and pertinent read, try The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner.
This is not evolution but purely an adaption of the same kind of animal. I can gaurentee that in one billion years from now, they all will still be butterflies :)
Need an ISP in South Africa?
because, as I understand it, I'm likely to evolve more fingers
Then clearly you don't understand it, not by a very long chalk. So why not read a bit about it and then come back and argue it. Try "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it's a good start.
No, really... It took them this long to figure this out? Seems kinda obvious. ummmm, like I knew this already even, as if I learned it in a book in biology in the early 80's.
I thought this article was going to be about an easter egg in Evolution, the email client!
because no one suspects the butterfly.
Accept any challenge, No matter the odds.
If someone told you they loved you and advised you to stay within the yellow and white lines on a highway or else you'd crash and die, would you ignore their advice?
It gets dismissed out-of-hand nowadays mostly because it has been refuted over and over for almost two centuries (evolution is an old body of theory). For driving evolution, only natural selection is necessary. There is no randomness involved beyond that which comes from chaotic processes (and perhaps beyond that which comes from quantum fluctuations) which, as a modeling variable, is called chance but is not.
There is overwhelming evidence, however, for the fact that those insisting in intelligent design badly want and need to believe in god. They just are unable to accept any alternative explanation, as that would leave them stranded in an ocean of insecurity, guilt, and despair.
Moreover, the religious discourse of those who insist in intelligent design keeps repeating the ages old axiom that truth requires you believe, and that disbelieving certain facts is a sin that will be punished. People who hold that axiom (and that include phicisits who believe in god) will always be dubious scientists, twisting facts here and there in the name of "god".
Beyond that, I find it funny that when confronted with evolution, which is a simple and understandable mechanism which can be watched in action even in a computer, proponents of ID say "this is hard to believe". Instead, the bible with all its miracles and baroque medievalisms is for them the most plausible thing of all.
Always want 'proof' of evolution? I mean, doesn't their theory rely on a 'blind faith'? Don't get me wrong, if talking to a big, invisible friend in the sky helps... whatever gets you through the night.
False analogy.
You are talking as if the god is warning you about a bad thing, when in actual fact, it's the god that created the bad thing in the first place, and the god's decision whether the bad thing will happen to you.
An analogy that would work is if somebody said to you "don't walk on the sidewalk or I will push you into the traffic". That's not advice, that's a threat.
Breeding of domestic animals.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
lalalalala
Waiiii!!!!!! I have bad karma!
I can only imagine an old fart whom totally wasted his life coming up with theories that are worshipped by other farts and/or fart wannbes. "We can't really tell you shit about the human body or how it works, we have no idea how to cure diseases that have been around for a few thousand years, we have these little papers with little lines coming out from a machine that maps your DNA but we can't really tell you what it is that you are looking at. We have a few million people dying from AIDS and cancer every year but this is not something that we should really look into because we are very busy with this theory about everything. The theory is just genius shit, we figured out that we all come from aminoacids and chaos. We can't prove shit and when things don't match we make them up but the important thing is that we have this brilliant theory. We should give someone the Noble prise about this shit because it's just fantastic shit."
I'm not going to argue with your "points against evolution" at the moment - talkorigins.org has plenty, if you're curious.
(BWW, the point of the original poster was not necessarily to say that it's equally supported, but that they're both theories so that saying "evolution is just a theory" is pretty worthless)
But I *am* going to dispute your claim of how well we know gravity...
Firstly, you say that "anyone can observe gravity acting on an object by throwing it up in the air..."
Which is actually a bit of a tautology. We can see that objects that we throw come down. We pretty much define gravity to be the force that makes them come down, and then find out its properties... If you look at it from this perspective, then really, all we know well about gravity is its strength - proportional to the mass of an object, though we have no clue why.
There are many major questions science has about gravity. For example, why do objects with more inertial mass also exert more of a gravitational pull?
One of the things that scientists would say we "know pretty well" about gravity is how it travels - it's conveyed by particles called gravitons, with certain properties.
Except - nobody's ever observed a graviton, in any way shape or form, I don't think. That's just the way we think it should be based on the other particles we know. Totally speculation, isn't it?
Of course, there's also a totally, totally different way of looking at gravity. Einstein's general relativity dictates that gravity is just the distortion of space-time. Which has made pretty darn good predictions (though we still have never observed gravitational waves). Which isn't the same view as the particle-transmitted-force... but still has similar questions - there's no particular reason for gravitational mass to be equal to inertial mass, it seems fundamental but on the other hand it could just be coincidence.
Basically - we have the big picture. The details, when we look, turn out to be not-that-well known. We can even be pretty sure that somewhere along the line we've got some concept horribly wrong, since General Relativity is totally incompatible with Quantum Mechanics, though in their scopes they fit well...
With evolution, it's a similar story, though of course it isn't as well-known.
We can get the big picture pretty well. Observe that fossils that come from different periods of time show different species. Observe that, as far as we can tell, the only way for animals to come into existence is through the reproduction of existing animals. We know this has to be violated in some conditions and in some ways, but in all situations that we can simulate so far, that's been the case. Hence, the conclusion that the current species must have descended from the previous ones, with the exception of the first one(s), the ones that were earliest in time.
That's the big picture.
Then the details - how did they evolve? why? what drove this process? - those are in much dispute and being changed and modified.
They're both theories.
What are the chances for life to live on this earth? If it were too cool, or too warm, all species would be extinct. A little closer- or farther from the sun, *poof*. A little more of this gas, or that, or different weights in the forces. This goes all through the atmosphere, ozone layer, green house effect, water-bed streams down to the tiniest organisms like bacteria, molecules, atomic-forces, quantuum states whisking in- and out of existance.. It is GRAND and then we haven't even begun to look towards the stars, bending of space-time and gravity yet!
Everything is playing a role in a big play. Intelligent design? I don't know anything about that, I just know that there is a Big Mind behind it all. I don't pretend to know how it functions or expect certain things out of it. Especially: it's not just human, so how can we expect to understand it.. Then what's the point arguing about it? Like ants arguing about the demi-god roaming around the garden making large craters.. In fact, I know NOTHING about it, but I know it's there.
Existence is a fact, but LIVING is an Art.
Life is beautiful this way!
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
If you go searching for diversity, you'll never run out of it in this universe. Likewise, if you search for unity, everything is in concerted unity. This is a mysterious place..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Oh. I see that even the BBC now uses "regularly" to mean "frequently". Morons.
ROFLMAO! I never heard that one before.
To be a Windows C programmer in hell, and when you just finish typing your application in a diskless computer, A BSOD appears?
Your experiments are not really valid...
Assuming that there is a God, and evolution is the mechanism by which he designed the earth, then it is perfectly feasible that he designed humans to have a blind spot, because perhaps without our inferior eyesight, we would not have evolved some other important part of our genome.
Evolution is such a tricky thing because there is no way you can look at an organisms feature set now, and deduce what circumstances caused it to evolve over a billion years.
Those who say a scientific theory is "just a theory" generally do so because they don't actually know what a theory is. They understand a theory to be a guess or a hunch (that's a hypothesis not a theory).
In science, a theory isn't a guess or a hunch - it's something a great deal stronger than that. A scientific theory makes testable predictions that can be verified by observation.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Man goes on to prove black is white, and is killed at the next zebra crossing.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Again I ask, what are the physical underpinnings of this philosophy called evolution? If your hand is empty, please quit preaching its authority.
Not "physical underpinnings" - mathematical underpinnings. Given two populations, one of which reproduces at a greater rate than the other, that one will flourish (especially if they're vying for the same resources). This is pretty obvious, and can be proven mathematically.
Once you throw in the concept of random mutations, you can once again mathematically prove that organisms get more complex in a complex environment.
That's the principle of evolution, and is supported by the most tool of science - mathematics.
Last post!
same DNA. Think about it.
Yah, cos men have never been greedy, adulterous, money-lovers until just recently.
Sheesh.
Uh, you seem a bit confused. If the butterflies speciate, that is a demonstration of the fact of evolution. Period. Just as various lab experiments involving fast-reproducing organisms of various kinds have been. I don't really know why you immediately assume that proof of the existence of the process actually says anything about the origins of life itself. That's an archeological/historical matter, pretty much unrelated.
And when did speciation 'drive' evolution? I'm fairly certain it's simply one of the more obvious observable aspects of the process, and definitely closer to being a result than a cause.
Basically, stop whining about evolutionary processes when you apparrently have no idea what evolution entails. Take a biology class or something so that you can at least attack the actual theory rather than some wierd patchwork beast you've constructed in your mind.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Drawing a distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is all the proof I need that you don't know what you're talking about.
:-(
You are probably a happy man then. I usually need something more solid than my beliefs for a proof.
It is not my responsibility to give you a biology education.
Should I feel humiliated and lose my confidence now? Please educate _us_ instead of spouting hot air bubbles, which neither give information nor prove anything...
Stop closing your heart and mind, and maybe you'll see that instead of telling God how He must have made the world, you can look with curious eyes upon His creation and seek the knowledge of the tools He used.
Funny - but that's something that I find very appropriate to be told all those die-hard evolutionists... well, with one exception: I wouldn't involve God in scientific (vs. "scientific") argumentation. Read your sentence again - it may also give you something to think about. Regards.
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
great article.. i think its definitely a step in the right direction as far as figuring out the secret(s) of evolution.. i don't see why anyone would "waste" their time bitching about the people who are actually finding answers to the questions we've been asking for thousands of years... quit jerkin off and something with your life..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
"Bottocks underlys evolution secret".
(I know it's written wrong; maybe there is dislexy with automatic spelling correction...)
This could be said for almost every issue. It's always the vocal minority that seems to influence policy. I'm not sure what the reasons are behind this phenomena; maybe because the moderates either don't have good enough arguments, or more likely, really don't care either way. In issues such as creation vs evolution it really doesn't matter, but this silent majority phenomena has devastating effects when it comes to issues like civil rights and liberties.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
In the poster's defense, bees ARE pretty devout...
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Under those false assumptions, one could say that "The automobile has clearly evolved through evolution, and nobody actually designs them, because they do not come out perfect."
Intelligent Design != Perfection, Intelligent Design just means that something intelligent created life. It didn't say it created it perfectly, or even with any purpose, or anything else. The basic fundamental hypothesis of intelligent design is simple creation, not inferring intent or purpose of the intelligence.
And the mistake here is assuming that any intelligent designer would ONLY create perfection. All you proved was that life is imperfect, not that it wasn't the result of an intelligent designer.
If you are going to tout science, then by all means, actually use it. A first year journalism student could disprove the arguments here without knowing any science at all.
This is similar to the famous joke, "If God is love, and love is blind, is Ray Charles God?" You're jumping very far outside the evidence to a conclusion. That's called faith, not science.
I am a believer that both theories can be correct, and that evolution is a tool of an intelligent designer. I consider it the same as those programmers out there that create virtual life and virii on their desktops via evolution software, and that life is not perfect. This is what demonstrates, to me, the plausibility of Intelligent Evolution. But, I would never confuse that as scientific evidence.
I8-D
If the subject of evolution (human or otherwise) interests you, check out Stephen Baxter's aptly-titled book, "Evolution."
It's sci-fi, not fact, btw.
No, he is clearly saying that men have only become greedy, adulterous, money-lovers since Jesus Christ came and founded Christianity 2000 years ago.
According to the bible, Jesus is God (if i understand this 'trinity' thing correctly).
God destroyed Sodom because its inhabitants practiced homosexualuality. Correct?
Therefore, as Jesus is God, he must hate gay people as he wiped a city of them off the face of the earth.
Why use the word 'know' when the word 'believe' would work? You do not have knowledge of this Big Mind, hence you do not 'know' that it exists. Did you chose to use the word 'know' because you feel that it is more emphatic or well respected than the word 'believe'? You are free to hold a belief stronger than you hold a piece of knowledge.
;-)
:-) But to move somewhere, you need faith, not blind faith, indoctrination or dogma, but just faith enough to put energy into it.
;-)
;-) that more and more of the mystic wisdom will be directly proven. For example, take the entangled particles that are sent to the "edges" of the universe. This correlates directly with mystics claims of the entire universe being connected. Everything is inter-connected, yet up until Einstein and Bohr, people mostly believed in the Clock Work universe.
;*)
You have a mind, yes? It is real to you. It makes you observe, act, reflect and regret
How about your cells, do they have a mind? In a way, they must have, because without them you have no body. 0+0 would always equal 0 in any other case.
What makes up your body-mind is thus the cells of your body AND their organisation.
Likewise, it is with the entire universe. With an organisation on this scale, anything else is really absurd. It is maybe a different mind than we're used to relate to on a human scale. However, I believe this because it is both logical and can unify the universe in one big swoop. There are tons of information in this area for those who are interested.
This Big Mind, is not an old man with beard sitting on a cloud..
However, for one who have no faith in this, it is impossible to even get into it, because this is a world-view. There's no point in arguing about definitions.
For somebody who has studied what has been recorded in the ancient Vedas of India, it makes perfect sense
You see, when I stop discussing this here. You have two choices: Disregarding this entire thing, or investigate for yourself, not accepting MY words for this.. I'm here just to point the direction, not put concepts into minds or convince anyone. If I do that, I have failed. What use is teaching anybody, if they don't investigate and think for themselves?
A classical book about this is "The Tao of Physics" by Fridtjof Cappa. This book from many decades highlights the similarities between quotes from quantum physics and eastern mystics, and is still astounding, for those who still has capacity to become astounded
As science progress, I believe
Well, I hope I have inspired for some investigation. Just be wary of shady internet-sites and New Agers flying up in the sky waiting to be taken up by UFOs
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
If this is your concept of Christianity, you have just proven the parent post's point about people being uneducated about religion.
No where does Christianity call God a "big freindly Dad" or say that nothing bad happens to us if we beleive. I think you'll find many challenges to your idea of Christianity if you look into it more.
The real wonder here is that the puddle woke up. I think it is the same with us humans. Never stop wondering about it.
If you don't believe anybody or anything, how can you believe your own words.. Then there is no progress, for you cannot progress without any faith. No hard-core sceptic has ever invented anything.
I put faith in what makes me happy.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Supermodels and the like have quite different facial structures from average.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I find your faith refreshing...
An important observation. But it is faith in the scientific method, which has been extremely successful in the past explaining and discovering things we didn't know.
That makes it rather different than faith in God/religion. Such faith has a terrible track record predicting things we didn't know or providing theories that are testable and have survived empirical tests.
Tor
Of course there is a difference between variations within skin tone, hair(wing) color, hair texture, etc; and growing an extra arm or wings
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
And loud voices have a tendency to attempt to frame the debate in their terms. Additionally, most extremists (on any issue) tend to be very polarizing and dualistic - with us/against us type of attitudes.
This tends to push the moderates to one side or the other; normally it's the side that's less noisy and idiotic.
I don't think it's ever a matter of weaker arguments, but what the arguments are trying to accomplish - a moderate's argument will normally be based on rational thought and logical progression to reach a conclusion that attempts to solve the whole problem. That's why they're moderates; they look at all the merits of a case and decide upon their position. Extremists normally argue poorly - emotionally based arguments that are designed to trigger response, not invoke thought.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
My grandmother, an ardent Southern Baptist, always insisted that the fossil record was put here by Satan himself to tempt us into disbelief of the biblical account. She even had a college degree.
For me, the Southern Baptists themselves always seemed more dangerous than the devil they described.
But how in Earth do I ask a squid to do that and get the squid to communicate the results?
Do squids use Blackberry? Or morse code?
I can easily disprove intelligent testing because this tought experiment seems non-feasible.
A well thought out post, and I agree with Aeternal's analsysis . . . this is very true with, say, bacterium or insects (with a massive reproduction rate allowing a huge amount of "tests") but when you're getting to larger life forms, where the amount of offspring dramatically lowers, there aren't as many tests that are performed in one species, correct?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Anyone got directions to Sabina? ;)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I know people who think exactly like you, and a sense of humor is the one thing I wouldn't credit them with. . . ;)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The trouble here is the word "believe" is used so loosely.
We need two new words to describe the differing statuses. I propose bunghoolie and squink:
Bunghoolie: The state of starting from directly-observed evidence, proceeding with logical inference and Occams Razor, deriving a "current best theory" from which to work, and being ready to discard said theory the second a better-supported one comes along.
Squink: The state of being handed a conclusion by others, lacking access to all the reasoning or evidence which which to assess its correctness, and refusing to abandon said belief until it is unequivocally disproven (whether or not it can be, and sometimes not even then).
So, scientists can say "I bunghoolie that evolution is the driving force behind our development" and we can all nod wisely and argue about how it actually works or if we can come up with anything better.
Creationists and ID-proponents can say "I squink that we were created from scratch by a big beard in the sky, that you can never prove the existence of, only he made some deliberate mistakes, and you can't ever know what he intends anyway", and we can all pat them on the head, mumble "that's nice" and return to the grown-up discussion at hand...
Problem solved - scientists reinforce the fact every time they make a statement that it's a provisional answer that will be discarded if a better one is presented, and creationists are prevented from equating their irrational beliefs with the regimented, double-blind, experimental processes scientists use.
Thoughts?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Border collies are bred for intelligence and not looks. Smarter dogs are better herders (able to respond independently to commands, etc.), which is why there is so much resistance to the AKC trying to categorize the 'typical' border collie--the physical attributes are mostly meaningless in the face of herding ability.
Another thing I found interesting is that police dogs used for drug and bomb sniffing work can be nearly any breed (in fact they're often mutts) and are chosen through a rigorous training and selection process based on ability and intelligence alone. It seems that that sort of talent is difficult to breed for, so police departments will hit the local pound for recruits.
steampunk web design
You would realize that the struggle, the relgion, the culture, and everything else you describe as "living life" is irrelevant. The only
"purpose" to life is to create more life.
So get out there and procreate!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
This is what monotheism has sunk to?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You guys don't still believe that evolution crap do you?
There are at least two examples in which metamorphosis presents useful options for a species. In the first, you will note that many immature forms use a different food source than their mature parents. This lets the young feed without competing with the adults. Kind of like you getting your own Play Station, so you don't have to wait until the kids are done using theirs.
The second is a separation of environments. Mosquito larvae, dragonfly nymphs, etc. live under water. The adults are terrestrial/aerial. Not only do they no longer compete for food, they also don't compete for space (or share the same dangers). Kind of like you getting your own room to play your Play Station in, because the kids' room is full of Beanie Babies and stuff.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
What's so amazing about how eyes evoloved? Any organism that out of freak chance develops even the most primitive of eyes still has an advantage over no eye, and then the next generation develops a slightly better eye and so on.
If a blind man fights a man with really bad eyesight it's pretty obvious who will win... unless one's a ninja, then all bets are off
Why would the chattering bother the seals, if they know it is from fish eating orcas? Now REAL evolution would occur if the seal hunting orcas started chattering amongst themselves so that the seals would THINK that they are fish eating orcas. Why does this sound very Gary Larsonish? :)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Unfortunately the internet is also good for spreading lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Remember white supremicists, media outlets, terrorists, and kids from Indonesia all use the web on a relatively equal footing. If the web is this shining beacon of truth and information and anyone can make a web page how do we get the kid in Indonesia to see the right version(s) of the *truth* and not some sick twisted uber "Bush loves the little children" or uber "America is evil, we 9/11'd ourseleves" story?
Being able to gauge the quality of information so that Sally, Vishnu, and every other kid in the world knows that someone is full of crap... dude that would be "the killer app".
I'm just curious, and am asking this more out of wariness of bad science and studies then of anything that supports evolution. How do you know Humans are getting taller? Which people are they measuring? How long has the research been going on? Can you give more details of the study, and is there any possibility of, say, factors such as famines in Africa eliminating short people as a geographical cause rather then an evolutionary one (because tall populations live elsewhere)? Just curious.
How did this get modded as insightful? It was a clever reply, but at least SOME people were talking about evolution and it's evidence rather then simply wittily replying to stupid posts. I might as well add in:
Yes we were. Get used to it. Grow up. And get a girlfriend.
And then he can reply, and we can slowly build a stupid argument the size of Hamlet that won't succeed in doing anything at all. Funny, perhaps, but insightful?
Of course there is a difference between variations within skin tone, hair(wing) color, hair texture, etc; and growing an extra arm or wings
Yes the other obstification. Actually there is no difference, it's all an expression of genes. And you can breed feature out easily. We've made legless/wingless flies. We can also make flies. creating a alternate feature out of an esiting one is also posssible, spine wings and such. Also, the point of evolution isn't to take a fly and make it a man, it's to take a fly and make a better suited fly to it's enviroment. If it happens because this fly has 8 legs instead of six then that is the creation of "an extra arm". The whole idea that it's suppose to randomly sprout useful appendages is one for the truly daft.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Of course, if God made the world yesterday (I don't argue He did) to look like it was made much earlier, your science would be utterly wrong.
The scientific theories are only as valid as the assumptions behind them. And yes, there are assumptions behind science.
Given some assumptions, yes, I find evolution theory the best guess for how human life came to be. The problem with science is that these assumptions are so built-in into scientific theory that scientists don't even call them assumptions, because the talk about them is no longer science.
I repeat: Science is only as correct as the assumptions behind it.
One of the assumptions in scientific theory really is that things need to be explainable without a Supreme Being. The theories that rely on this assumption are only conclusive as far as this assumption is correct.
For example, some of the ID people criticise the scientific community, in my opinion rightly so, for refusing to even consider the possibility - in fact, having the assumption that there is no such possibility - that in the beginning of the period that their theory is concerned about there was complex life with humans and animals of some kind. (See eg. the baramin theory for more about this).
This really is one of the things that makes evolution theory a "best current guess" for most people. No matter how hole-ridden it is, it is the one scientific theory, the one theory with the (very real) assumptions of science that has the least holes in it.
I do see a nice logical fallacy here though, that is usually disregarded because people fail to recognize that science indeed has some assumptions. Partly this is probably because people want to believe in science would be next to useless without these assumptions, and partly because people are proud and really want to boast that We Know.
Being a believer (and a former atheist/agnostic (whatever, I fail to see the important difference and why some people are so picky about it)) myself, I think that this pride is one of the major things keeping people separated from the Creator of this universe. And I don't mean because of the Evolution/Creationism dispute - I couldn't really care much less about that, it's the people's attitude and pride that matters.
I have to say that there clearly is a misunderstanding of evolution by either the reporter or the scientists; most likely the reporter. Species are not defined by their inability to reproduce. That is a creationist myth that somehow got accepted as being connected with evolution. Darwin saw it differently. First, start with variations in animals. Variations like long ears and short ears are defined as animals living today where "steps" linking the two animals can be found still living. Between the short ear and the long ear can be found not so short eared, medium length eared, and not so long eared, etc. That is variation. Species are linked not by "steps" living today but by "steps" in the fossil record. Today you would only find long eared and short eared and nothing in between. Only when you dig into the fossil records do have a hope of finding the lost "steps". Remember that only a small insignificant amount of creatures get fossilized and are found by us. The rest are lost to us. So once again variation is separated by space and species are separated by time. Whether the long eared and the short eared can mate together is also a matter of a gradient from full fertility to zero fertility of individual animals; not a cliff like separation. Every once in a while (every seventy years or so) you hear stories about a mule that gives birth. Can a giraffe and a fish mate? No, because the divergence of the two in time is so great that their reproductive systems are incompatible. Can a zebra and a horse mate? Yes, but with extreme difficulty and is dependent on finding two individual animals that can mate; i.e. less variations between the two in the reproductive area. Can coyotes and wolves mate? Yes, and it seems to be happening more and more to the point where the grey wolf will be replaced entirely by a new type of animal that is a mixture of wolf and coyote.
Just my two cents: I had a teacher once (I think my calc teacher) who said that the difference between an engineer and a mathematician is an engineer will say "good enough" and a mathemitician will say "it's not exact"(big time paraphrasing, its been a while).
I think your argument is an engineering argument: Newtonian physics are "good enough" to create cars and fly space shuttles. I think the parent is making a mathematician's argument: Newton's laws are not exact (or complete, or however you want to convey it ), as proved by Einstein.
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html
3)???
4)Profit
For a creationist, "believe" means "I have faith that this is so, not because of any empirical evidence, but because it's what I've been told by 'good people' who assure me they're telling the Truth."
There is also quite a difference between articles of faith. I for one believe "Faith in God" litterly means God has spoken to you and has specifically said "do this". Weather you saw a demon with hell fire wings while smoking the pipe light night circa 5,000 BC has yet to be seen.
Faith in God does not even mean faith in say the Bible since it's possible to believe the Bible to be fallible (although we don't have many of those people these days because they were all put to death... Remember the Cathars in France?)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
That is exactly why I can't figure out how there are still so many Christians who hold to the rediculous concept of eternal torture. As a Christian, that idea is not compatible with my faith, or with the rest of scripture. Taken individualy, some texts might be misunderstood to suggest the common myth, but in context it just doesn't hold water.
Hell being a place in the middle of the planet that is run by a red, pointy-tailed being with a pitchfork is pure fairy tale fantasy and not solid theology. These ideas are often based on tradition and "my momma told me..." than serious scholarly study. That is not to say that hell does not exist, just that many people have a fundamental flaw in their concept of exactly what it is.
Try this concept of hell. It relates closely to a more accurate understanding of death as described in the Bible. (more) Also fully compatible with a better interpretation that deals with that silly "secret rapture" notion fundamentalists make laughable movies about.
No, the science would be exactly as valid as it was before. The entire concept of science is about explaining what we can directly observe. It doesn't matter if God tried to fool us; the conclusions drawn from the facts we observed are still valid because the facts they were deduced from haven't changed! 2 + 2 = 4 no matter where the 2s came from.
The only assumption that science makes is that anything we haven't observed doesn't exist. I think this is quite a reasonable assumption, since there's no way to draw logical conclusions from stuff we haven't observed anyway, regardless of whether it exists or not.
Just because something can be explained without a Supreme Being doesn't mean he doesn't exist -- I see no problem in believing that God set up the rules that govern the universe, for example. Scientists aren't trying to disprove God; that can't -- by definition -- be done. They merely seek to find logical explanations for what we observe. The only area where religion and science conflict is when dogma disagrees with observable facts, and, believe it or not, the particular details of that dogma are not important! The usefulness of religion comes from the moral lessons it teaches, not the particular details of "[foo] begat [bar], who begat [baz], who..." etc.
So, the ID people are criticising the scientific community... because they're being scientific?! Look, the whole point of science is to restrict theories to that which can be directly observed. Nobody's saying that humans absolutely couldn't have existed at the beginning of the Earth, they're just saying that they can't see how that could happen based on the observable facts, or in other words, within the domain of science.
This doesn't mean that what the ID people have to say is invalid, it just means it's irrelevant. The proper context to discuss ID is within philosophy, not science.
Yes, exactly! I don't understand why you have a problem with this. Science deliberately restricts itself to this assumption because that's what enables it to make useful predictions. Saying "this skyscraper will stay up because God wills it so" just isn't useful in everyday life, while saying "this skyscraper will stay up because the arrangement of materials used is strong enough to withstand the forces affecting the structure" is.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, but where does the Bible say you have a chicken?
And if you found such a verse, the best idea would be to read the rest of the book and put that verse into the proper context. You might be surprised to find that it isn't discussing what you are currently holding in your hand at all and was talking about dietary advice instread of geology. Surprise.
It's funny because it's true!
Not a bad idea, but I think qualifiers (i.e. scientific belief vs. philosophical or religious belief) would work just as well and be less silly (but is that a good or a bad thing?).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Anyway, bacteria is the reason why undercooked pork will make you sick. Instead of confusing people by trying to describe bacteria, something they had absolutely no concept of, and how it can be bad for you, God said "Don't eat pork," and that was that.
It's not because of bacteria, it is because The Lord Your God considers creatures who do not graze the fields to be unclean (why He created them dirty is not specified... for kicks and giggles, maybe).
And of those that graze, only the ones with legs that end in a cleft hoof with two points are ok to eat, the others are also icky. So, no rabbit stew for the faithfull.
Also, polyblend fiber cloth is an abobination unto the Lord Thy God, so all of you with 50% cotton shirts: See you in hell!
I don't like the whole "ID" scam where they are selling useless textbooks to schools, but there is a grain of reasonableness in this movement. Historically, the teaching of evolution has been slanted towards saying, "mutations, genetics, and the struggle to survive are sufficient to explain the origin of species, so all the life we see around us today is the result of dumb luck and thus there is no god". Darwin himself was particularly anti-religious in his writings, and unfortunately that seems to have influenced this debate for a long time.
The *only* thought behind Intelligent Design that I can see is the notion that there is no such thing as dumb luck. If an animal survives and procreates, or if a species gets wiped out by a meteor, or if John Doe wins the lottery, it's because it was part of God's plan. This isn't science, but neither is the opposite viewpoint.
I would have no problem with rewording textbooks to be more neutral about this, so long as it doesn't explicitly teach any religious viewpoint. For example, they could emphasize the huge number of small-scale events which have lead to the diversity we see around us today, and lay off of the "there's nothing but chance" language. On the other hand, I think it's outrageous to teach from a specifically Christian textbook in a science class. What's next, history textbooks that say that we won the Cold War because God was on our side?
Well, I sort of meant Christians who believe the Bible is fallible or least partly untrue (which are rare moreso these days than they were in the middle ages), but yes there are plenty of non-Christians who believe the bible is fallible. ;)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
That is exactly why I can't figure out how there are still so many Christians who hold to the rediculous concept of eternal torture.
Instead you believe that after people are dead; God burns them to death?
Wow. So long as you're being all gullible; you know, if you pay me a million dollars, and then throw your baby into a blast furnace, you won't be able to see it, beause of the blast, but your baby will become an beautiful happy winged unicorn for all enternity!
Reserve your tickets now at www.flamingbabyscam.com!
It still seems like you're saying "race" isn't inheritable. Here's the counter view. At one time, homo-sapiens were more genetically homogenous (less diverse) than today. Because of geographic separation, isolated groups (clusters) started to diverge genetically (passing on mutated genes to their offspring). Please provide more information as to why this is an incorrect notion. Maybe you're using your own definition of "race"? Let's try and solve that problem by using the simple minded test: differentiate the races by measuring the amount of melanin present in the skin. That method might not be capture 100% of what everyone thinks of "race", but I think it should correlate close enough to get your point across.
For most practical purposes the earth is flat. What's your point.
Even if life is very improbable, it's a very, very big universe out there, so even very improbable things happen occasionally.
And even if conditions suitable for life are very, very rare, it will necessarily be the case that every living observer will discover the it is living in a place where it is possible for life to survive.
Try this concept of hell.
From that link: "When Christ spoke of everlasting punishment he did not mean everlasting punishing."
Uh-huh. More: "Sodom and Gomorrah suffered eternal fire but they are not burning today." Right.
So basically, I should believe what you say about heaven and hell, rather than what the Bible claims Jesus said? Because, according to you, Jesus didn't really mean it? Even though he said it?
Typical Christian. When confronted with a clear case of the Bible being utterly crazy, "reinterpret" it to mean something other than it quite clearly says, rather than admitting the Bible is utterly crazy.
So, the ID people are criticising the scientific community... because they're being scientific?! Look, the whole point of science is to restrict theories to that which can be directly observed. Nobody's saying that humans absolutely couldn't have existed at the beginning of the Earth, they're just saying that they can't see how that could happen based on the observable facts, or in other words, within the domain of science.
:-) You almost make it sound like the community doesn't claim it explores truth but "only science".
:) The logical fallacy however I by mistake left a bit unexplained, sorry about that. I think the fallacy is that, while science proves "if A then B", some religion claims "!A and !B", and people see here a contradiction and claim that the religion is wrong because "science has proved so". Substitute the "hidden" scientific assumption for A and evolution for B here.
I really do wish this would be as you say. However it not being so is really what I'm attacking. In practice it is very often found that there is such a presumption against complex life existing "in the beginning". What for example the baramin theory says (it doesn't say anything about God or about the way complex life originally came to be) is that first there was complex life that gradually devolved (note the different direction) into the current plethora of species. The proponents of this theory have specifically made the claim that this fits the evidence better than the evolution theory; however the science community at large seems unable to discuss this theory seriously, "because it implicitly asserts a Supreme Being" and thus is not science. In doing this the science community has in effect endorsed the assumption that there was no such complex life in the beginning.
So yes, if we take science the way it's usually taken, it's exactly being scientific that the scientific community deserves to be criticized.
I think we really agree about much more than you think, just we're "from the opposing sides" (which of course is a loaded statement, I'm not here to oppose anyone but to spread and work for the truth as I see it).
Yes, exactly! I don't understand why you have a problem with this. Science deliberately restricts itself to this assumption because that's what enables it to make useful predictions. Saying "this skyscraper will stay up because God wills it so" just isn't useful in everyday life, while saying "this skyscraper will stay up because the arrangement of materials used is strong enough to withstand the forces affecting the structure" is.
Of course. And in that sense, those assumptions are useful. However it also makes those results conclusive only subject to those assumptions. If God exists, he surely can make the skyscraper fall if it's his will. Of course it is the normal case that He doesn't influence in such a way, and this is why science really is useful.
I see no logical fallacy; however, I don't believe science would be useless without these assumptions (on the contrary, the assumption is what makes it useful!)
Um, the assumptions are what makes it useful (I agree), hence without the assumptions it would be useless (as I said in the post you replied to), right? I don't see where we disagree here.
and I know better than to assume that "I Know!" The people that think these things are just as deluded as the people who think ID belongs in the domain of science.
That's nice to hear. However I do see that kind of pride in most people, even if they don't themselves recognize it as pride.
Well, no wonder you don't get it -- the difference between athieism and agnosticism is the most important difference in the world!
[...]
In case you haven't figured it out by now, yes, I am agnostic. Maybe there's a God, maybe there isn't; I don't know. Either way, it doesn't actually make a difference in my life, aside from the fact that I don't waste time p
Because Israel has once again become a nation. I believe Israel is God's timepiece. After the Romans ran out the Jews around 60 AD, the nation ceased to exist as a nation until about 60 years ago.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
Which part of the Roman Empire corresponds to Norway? How about Ireland?
Ireland's already in according to this Wikipedia page. Finland and Sweden are already in. And the EU isn't done building yet. Norway has applied twice before but has been rejected.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
Yah, cos men have never been greedy, adulterous, money-lovers until just recently.
You're right. Men have always been this way since the original sin. The Lord couldn't find but six people to save during the flood. Many were offered safety and they laughed and refused.
It's the combination of all of the things I mentioned, not just the greedy, adulterous items that makes it. Israel becoming a nation again after 1900 years. Jerusalem being the burdensome stone (think Palestinians and Israelis). China upping it's military (the Bible speaks of a 200 million man army from the east in the last days), Soviet - Iran relations, increasing intensity and number of natural disasters. Nothing is prophetically left before the rapture and the tribulation.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
hell is having to listen to idiot xtians, who look just like their inbred parents, whining "evolution is only a theory!"
I have worked on so-called contradictions on the Bible from that Skeptics Annotated Bible site and have successfully debunked all that I have studied.
Including the parts of Leviticus that say grasshoppers only have 4 legs, bats are birds and rabbits chew the cud? I'm impressed.
Including the parts of Leviticus that say grasshoppers only have 4 legs, bats are birds and rabbits chew the cud? I'm impressed.
Easy. Grasshoppers have six legs. Four they can walk on and two large legs they hop on.
Now do rabbits chew cud? Absolutely. Rabbits colons create fiber-rich "pellets" our of their own feces that they eat to help digest their vegetarian diet.
Bats aren't birds? That's man's opinion. Both have arms that stretch into fingers/wings. Both are covered - one in fur, one in feathers. But one is classed differently according to scientists. But the word "birds" comes from the Hebrew "'owph", meaning "to cover or to fly". So the Hebrew word is used to signify flying, winged things. I would think that flying dinosaurs would have been included in this list.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
This is from the second article:
So, the situation is more complicated than I thought, but my basic point, that the observed genetic clustering of humans is not well-correlated with popular notions of "race", remains solid.
In other words, if you took genetic samples of a bunch of people, ran clustering software that grouped the genes of those people into groups of genetic similarity, the groupings you'd get wouldn't match up with the groupings you'd get if you were asked to group them according to "race."
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Easy. Grasshoppers have six legs. Four they can walk on and two large legs they hop on.
Sorry, they use all 6 to walk.
Now do rabbits chew cud? Absolutely.
Absolutely not, actually. Eating feces pellets is completely different from chewing cud. Cud chewing involves bringing partially-digested food back up from the stomach for further chewing.
Bats aren't birds? That's man's opinion.
Yes indeed, but one is a mammal and one is a bird. They are not even close to being the same thing.
But the word "birds" comes from the Hebrew "'owph", meaning "to cover or to fly".
So, the Bible is only inerrant in Hebrew?
You give the creationists too much credit, I fear.
;) (What do I mean by "Technical?" That I don't try and aruge that science prooves God. If the Almighty can cause someone to win the lottery, He can either create life via evolution or create the universe so we can learn how life will evolve going foward.)
As a technical creationist, I beg to differ.
Yeah, because what the creationists want is for religion to be presented as if it was science, which clearly doesn't belong in the schools. It could be included if the creationist arguments were treated from a scientific perspective (see above), or if the religious aspects of it were considered in a non-science class (comparative religion, or some such).
Exactly right. Except that what, IMO, vocal Creationists (i.e., not me) want is for atheism to be treated like any other religion -- i.e., they don't want the science class saying "God doesn't exist."
As a technical creationist, I beg to differ. ;) (What do I mean by "Technical?" That I don't try and aruge that science prooves God. If the Almighty can cause someone to win the lottery, He can either create life via evolution or create the universe so we can learn how life will evolve going foward.)
Okay, well... just to make sure things are clear, at all points when I've said "creationist" I refer PURELY to young-earth creationists, 'Intelligent Design' advocates, and other people who seek to undermine science in support of their religion. There are a large number of people, including many evolutionary biologists, who believe in a creator God without that conflicting with science.
Given that the process of evolution is itself an elegant design concept that has produced systems far more complex than human engineers can create, I see no reason why it couldn't be how God would create the world.
My problem is, and always has been, with people who use religious justification to make statements about science--not to mention dictating to God that He must have created the world the way they want, rather than using the insights of science to learn more about the world that God did create. The idea that evolution is incompatible with God is rubbish, and an insult to both science and religion.
Exactly right. Except that what, IMO, vocal Creationists (i.e., not me) want is for atheism to be treated like any other religion -- i.e., they don't want the science class saying "God doesn't exist."
I don't think science classes DO say that. If they do, they shouldn't, because that's highly inappropriate for multiple reasons.
Science does not deny God's existance; it is merely indifferent to Him. Science is a process of investigating the nature of the universe we live in with as little interference as possible from preconceived notions. It does not require God's presence nor does it exclude it. Some people's conceptions of God may conflict with science, but that is the fault of humans who use God as an excuse for their own arrogance and ignorance.
Modern scientific understanding of the universe does not REQUIRE any God. This is a very different thing from disproving or excluding God.
His point is that if you are to tell people today that Earth is flat, they would laugh at you. Even though for most practical purposes, the Earth is flat. See the difference? One is right and one is wrong. It's "good enough" for most things doesn't make it right.
XYY males are typically taller than normal and are more statistically likely to end up in prison. The plot of Alien 3 revolves around a prison colony full of them.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
"Nonsense. There are plenty of examples in Nature where simple situations give rise to complex results without a designer or without intelligence" (Decaff -42676) @ 9:38... The more we learn about the universe the less random things become... My point, I thought, was quiet clear: Did you see a "recognizable pattern" i.e. did you see The Mona Lisa (Not a reflection), or perhaps the word 'Hi' The overall point is as a previosly stated:"Fluid + Heat...basic Chemical Reaction - The Complexity already exists" ID = New Created Complex, existence. i.e The Mona Lisa... or Bill Clintons face.. Sorry for not being specific enough
"1. This argument centers on belief in life outside our solar system. Your response has given me no indication you think to contrary of *many* evolutionists. If the majority of evolutionists believe in life outside our solar system, is it really any surprise that Intelligent Design has worked its way into public debate?"
Here is what you originally said:
"Chance over probability. This is probably the weakest argument (because we *could* be the 1 in septendecillion instance), but it is a significant one, because many of the same individuals that believe we evolved from single-cell organisms also believe in extraterrestrial life within our own galaxy. You'd think these individuals would actually be ID proponents."
Your statements appear illogical to me. So far, we have a grand total of one planet with life from which to draw conclusions. Assuming that physics and chemistry work the same on other planets, and assuming that life arose on our planet without the help of some Intelligence, it is reasonable to assume, given the size of the galaxy (let alone the universe) that life arose elsewhere. How you get ID proponents from this line of reasoning escapes me. The probablility arguments used against the likelihood of life arising without an Intelligence are beyond specious. This article, "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Abiogenesis Calculations," discusses some of the issues involved.
"2. The earth is a closed system. Let me repeat, the earth is a closed system. Our environment allows energy and not mass to pass into the system."
You can repeat it all you like... it's still incorrect. The Earth is closed to neither mass nor energy. Plenty of material appears to have impacted the Earth during the solar system's early history, and, to a lesser degree, continues to do so today.
"Thus, the argument has to be that energy-cause mutations can increase information."
Google "Kolmogorov-Chaitin Complexity" for a discussion of information and information increase. Your seeming complaint against "energy-cause mutations" is best seen in this light.
"In such mutations, the organism cannot reproduce or at least, cannot reproduce with those of the same species."
Eh? How do you go from "energy-cause mutations" to this?
So, tell me: how do you think life came to arise on this planet, and how do your ideas as to how life changes over time differ from those expressed in modern evolutionary theory?
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Ohhhh, if you want then...
Yeah, the words were silly, but I was serious about the motivation - "belief" is an emotionally-charged word, and "scientific" versus "religious" belief is just too slight a difference to really stick out. Entirely new words force people to stop and remember what it means, whereas both those phrases would just get lazily shortened to "belief" again, which rather defeats the point.
Besides, the ID crew are already mis-using words like "know" and "scientific", so do you think merely tacking a modifier onto the beginning of the phrase would be enough to stop them misusing it?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Your point about lions and tigers being the same except for trivial differences, and even the opportunity to interbreed them is close to the mark. What you neglected to point out is that when they are bred together, the offspring is infertile.
The only reason there are different breeds of cats and dogs and pigeons, etc, is that humans have looked for specific traits, and then selectively mated only parents who had those traits, over and over again. However, if you stuck 15 different dog breeds together for a few generations, you would see, not continued exclusivity in breeding, but a return to the basic dog.
Macro evolution is just a meaningless creationist term to wave away the mountain of scientific evidence that they can no longer deny.
Your point dies here. There is no mountain of evidence supporting macro evolution. If anything, the mountain supports creation by a supreme being. Too many simultaneous changes must happen in multiple specimens that then decide to interbreed in order to achieve evolution.
Every true species (and German Shepherds are not a different species from Chihuahuas) has unique aspects to it that do not line up with other species, even though overall they share similar traits. An extreme example is the similarities between hummingbirds and emus. They're both birds. But hummingbirds are a definite, separate species. Getting an emu and a hummingbirds out of the same original bird doesn't make any sense. Just like getting housecats and lions out of the same original cat is irrational.
And what about all the animals out there that serve no purpose, like the hippopotamus? Hippopotami eat vegetation, the males fight for control of the pod, and a few parasitic animals live off of them. But they serve no purpose in life. Certain fish glom on and eat the dead skin off their hides, and others follow them to consume their dung. Another example is the rhinocerous. Rhinos are in the business of eating and making new rhino babies. Occasionally they fight some other animal away from their territory, but they serve no purpose beyond that. They're not food for anything but the eventual carion eaters like buzzards and hyenas.
There are far too many holes in the naturalistic philosophy of evolution to believe without tubs of faith poured in. There are no holes in creationism. While we can't determine why the hippo exists, we know an intelligent being put it there.
antipaucity
Einstein *refined* Newton's laws of motion, taking into account some variables which disappear when you play with the speeds and precisions which Newton had available to work with.
Back with Newton, they still thought light travelled instantaniously, because they didn't have instruments precise enough to measure the time to took to travel from one place to another.
"Natural selection" refers to convergent stochastic probabilities; "survival of the fittest" is an obvious tautology.
Anything that is survives is deemed "fit": hence, the maxim reduces to "survival of that which survives". It's hard to argue with tautology, really.
The "fittest" can sometimes just mean the luckiest, like group of weak, stupid outcasts from whom an entire species may be derived, because they weren't in the wrong place when a natural disaster struck.
There's nothing romantic about evolution: it's all based on three fairly obvious premises:
a) dead things don't breed (part of the definition of "dead"),
b) you get your genes from your parents (we've got a lot of evidence to support this), and
c) mutations may be rare, but they do happen (again, we've seen them happen)
Put together, if you get a mutation that improves your odds of survival, odds are your kids may inherit it. If they do, they're more likely to survive (by definition of the mutation) than people without the gene. Odds are that gene will continue to be passed on until it becomes a hindrance rather than a help.
That's it. Just basic convergent probability. It's like pulling coloured balls at random out of a bag. Suppose you start by pulling them out randomly, but every time you pull a red ball out, you put two red balls back in the bag. Every time you pull out any other colour, you throw it away. After a few thousand iterations, the bag will be mostly full of red balls, despite the initial randomness involved in the selection process.
--
AC
I wrote an obscenely detailed explanation to Aeternal over here. The implicit parallelism is within each individual.
Bacteria do NOT have this enormous multiplier because they generally do not sexually recombine their genes. For the first few hundred millions of years life on earth plodded along with nothing but bacteria and little noticable change. It is beleived that sexual recombination and this implicit parallelism effect was one of the primary driving forces in the first big explosion of diversity.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
P.S.
I wanted to clarify that the Schemata Theorem is a mathematical proof that all of these parallel schema contributions and measurements blended in a single individual through the number of offspring really do contribute to the genetic distribution in the next generation in this manner. Schemata are basically building blocks. The contribution of each individual schema twords the offspring success of an individual may be tiny, but just as many tiny raindrops can acumulate to form a river these contributions accumulate form the makeup of the next generation, and as and a river can carve the grand canyon, the the population preforms vasty more powerful evolution because of it. The key is in the sexual mixing in creating new offspring. You amplify the good, and then in the mixing you generate a vastly different set of schemata to test in the child. Mixing the building bloks. The schemata you test in the next generation are statistically related to the distribution in the previous generation in the right way, but children are a well randomised mix of those schemata to test an entirely new range of patterns and to continue to independantly reinforce or diminish each pattern and subpattern.
I also completely neglected more sophisticated types of mutations. They doesn't directly fit in with the implicit parallelism, but they are interesting additions to the evolutionary bag of tricks. Clusters of genes form useful schemata, and even portions of genes are useful schemata. Clusters of genes that control other genes and regulation to formation of a leg can be turned to double duty to regulate the formation of arms, or even dumliated wholesale to regulate the formation of arms and then mutate independantly. Genes for enzymes and other protiens often do double and triple duty in interation with other components in different organs of the body, and such genes are often duplicated and then independantly mutate to different tasks. Even portions of genes can be mixed and matched... a mutation may cross over one gene in the middle of another gene, or insert part of one gene in the middle of another. Each portion of each of the genes is a useful schema building block producing some portion of a protein or enzyme. When different peices of genes are mismatch in this way there is a fair chance that they will stich together two functional halves of two protines or enzymes into a new and useful protein or enzyme. If genes or portions of genes controlling the growth and structure of one body part or organ get mismatched into the regulatory system of a different body part or organ then the coherent schema will probably have some coherent operation in the new context. One regulatory sequence substuted for another regulatory sequence. The result will likely still be a deformed and malfunctioning bodypart or organ, but the chances of getting a useful result are vastly higher than a blind random mutation.
Schema building blocks that often get duplicated and put to new use. When crossover missmatches do happen it is usually because the surrounding DNA was similar, and one sort of building block is being substituted for a similar sort of building block somewhere else. Accidentally stuffing the right type of building block into the wrong place is infinitely more likely to produce a functional and maybe useful result than attempting to stuff a large chunk of random garbage into that slot. Half of one hormone plus half of another hormone has a good shot of functioning somehow.
I've gotten kinda tired and need sleep, I hope I havent lost clarity in writing this post. If I did, well that's why. Chuckle.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Evolution requires an enormous amount of faith. Just as much as believing in creation.
There is no mountain of evidence supporting macro evolution.
No, just spend some time reading an actual text book on the subject and you will see there are mountainloads of evidence from a variety of fields.
The only way you can wave away the evidence is if you want to claim there is a malicious deceiving god that deliverately planted overwelming genetic and fossil and isotopic and geographical distribution evidence of a chain of creatures that appears to be an evolutionary sequence of intermediate forms from a common origin of land mammals to modern whales, and hundreds of other such examples. Oh, and I guess god planted false dating evidence to deceive us into thinking all of these perfect sequences of fossils are actually diferent ages and that that look like they are in just the right order to make exactly the right sequence. They were all actually drowned on the same day by the Great Flood and god glued false aging evidence on all of them.
If you simply weren't aware just how much overwheling evidence there *is* then I suggest you try spending a little time at the talkorigins website. Of course if you simply do not like evolution and you don't care how much "so-called evidence" there is and just how solid it is and how solidly it all interconnects and cross-verifies, then obviously there's no point in you wasting time reading about it. In that case it's much easier to say this is my interpretation of the Bible, and the Bible must be right and my interpretation must be right, and therefor all of that evidence must be mistaken or a deliberate attack by atheists to banish god.
What you neglected to point out is that when they [lions and tigers] are bred together, the offspring is infertile.
Incorrect. I just so happened to be reading this exact subject on Wikipedia the other day.
Under the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger">liger entry you will find:
Female ligers are often fertile and can be mated to a tiger resulting in ti-liger offspring or to a lion resulting in li-liger offspring.
and under the tigon entry you'll find:
a tigon named Noelle in the Shambala Reserve mated with a tiger to produce a "ti-tigon".
So yes there are sometimes fertility problems, but no they are not infertile as a group. You can get grand-baby li-ti-liger-tigon-whozimawhatchamacallit-gons if you want.
Of course this really isn't particularly signifigant either way. If there weren't cross-fertile it certainly wouldn't disprove evolution, and if you want to reject evolution you can make the claim that lions and tigers are the same "kind" as created by god, and that it's merely common error that we call them different speices and that there's only "micro" evolutions between lions and tigers, but there's still some sort of "magic macroevolution" between pumas and panthers and "magic macroevolution" between lions and lynx and "magic macroevolution" between houscats and cheetahs. Yep, it's just those odd lions and tigers that have those really really big "micro" evolutions between them. Chuckle.
Too many simultaneous changes must happen in multiple specimens that then decide to interbreed in order to achieve evolution.
You might be able to get some moderate shift in a species in one to three generation by severly decimating a population some crude collection of latent traits in a population, but in general coherent shifts occur over scores or hundreds of generations. It may often seem "simultaneous" in the fossil record, but that's only because anything less than 10,000 years or so is "simultaneous" in geological terms.
Getting an emu and a hummingbirds out of the same original bird doesn't make any sense.
Why not? It certainly makes more sense to me than a practical
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
What's "Darwin Award" then?
That's evolution in action for you and you can _see_ it.
However, if you stuck 15 different dog breeds together for a few generations, you would see, not continued exclusivity in breeding, but a return to the basic dog.
Yes, you probably would lose the dinstinguishing characteristics of each breed, at least if evolutionary theory is correct. See, if you "stuck them together" for many generations, they would all be subject to similar evolutionary pressure - they would all be vying for the same niche. Divergence generally happens when a large population has the opportunity to fill multiple niches.
This isn't an argument against evolution, because what you expect to happen is exactly what evolution predicts.
There is no mountain of evidence supporting macro evolution.
Sure there is.
If anything, the mountain supports creation by a supreme being. Too many simultaneous changes must happen in multiple specimens that then decide to interbreed in order to achieve evolution.
1. That isn't necessary to "achieve evolution".
2. That isn't necessary to produce the few cases creationists hold up as examples where it is supposedly necessary.
3. Even if it was necessary, you yourself describe a situation in which evolution can do this.
4. Even evolution is not required to produce the few cases creationists hold up as examples where it is supposedly necessary - on a large enough timescale, even the possibility of random mutation doing it approaches 100%.
Getting an emu and a hummingbirds out of the same original bird doesn't make any sense.
Why not? Do you even understand what evolution is? Inherited changes over time. To argue that two different animals are too different to be related ignores the very concept evolution is built upon - that of change.
And what about all the animals out there that serve no purpose, like the hippopotamus?
What about them? Evolution doesn't say that animals must serve a purpose. You are presupposing that an artifact from your religion - purpose to life - is present in evolution, when it isn't.
Indeed, he hates sin, not sinners.
Being created gives us as a race purpose. Being here as the process of billions of incredibly improbably mutations that happened to survive and compound upon each other does not. What is the meaning of life if we weren't placed here by a god? Your creed seems to be "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". If there's no purpose to life, there's no reason for you to defend your belief in a godless existence to me.
The fact that you defend that position means that you think there is a purpose to life. Please tell me what that purpose is, without any form of god being involved.
antipaucity
Which brings us to an even more interesting question: how is selective breeding and modern medicine degenerating the human gene pool? Are we going to be muscle-less blobs that can't survive without robots? Are we going to be so stupid that we need computers to run our lives?
Survival-neutral genes may drift through a population, but they don't take over as long as other genes are survival-beneficial.
Or is that only going to be the Slashdot population, and the 'beautiful' people will become more cosmetically disfigured by gigangic breasts and other such desired features? Is that how human women got such big titties in the first place, at least in certain lineages?
Sexual selection could certainly be a factor, but other reasons may be involved. Perhaps larger breasts provide better insulation in cold climates, or perhaps they act as storage for energy-rich fat to help the bearer last through droughts and famines.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
My point was to point out that the Bible makes claims which have no basis in fact or science or common sense. The only reason anyone believes them is because they are in the Bible. Parts are so obviously wrong but people still cling to them as the truth. Like a kid who wont stop believing in Santa Clause.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I don't need to spend time reading 'real textbooks'.
... God in general". My post *was* hostile to the notion of a "malicious deceiving god", hostile to those creationsists who have faced the mountains of overwhelming evidence of various sorts and who deal with it with what amounts to a claim that God planted false evidence and that the scientists were deceived. Being hostile to the notion of a malicious deceiving god and to stupid arguments based on a malicious deceiving god is entirely different than being hostile to god in general or attacking god in general. Secondly I'd like to bypass the deep "meaning of life the universe and everything" philospical issues of steps (2) and (3) that you challenged me to answer. Instead there is the very simple answer that step (1) in the reasoning is false and the entire chain of logic falls apart. In particular I would like to address both of these issues by reposting a portion of a post I wrote just three days ago:
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but you appear to be saying that you "do not need" to understand evolution, that you do not know and do not need to know what evidence there is, and that you do not care because you have reached a conclusion based on an independant logical basis.
Again, correct me if I am wrong, but your reasoning appears to be as follows:
(1) Evolution says there is no God;
(2) No God would imply that life is meaningless;
(3) Life being meaningless is an unacceptable/unbelievable conclusion;
therefore (4) Evolution must be false.
If that is the basis of your argument, fine, I will gladly address that. In fact that strikes me (in my past experience) as a refreshing breath of honesty and straightforwardness in anti-evolution arguments. However I'd like to remind you that your prior post tried to claim that evolution was not just as scientific as any other field of science and that supporting evidence does not exist. Perhaps you can understand a bit of animosity when I've run into a long string of creationists arguing points and making statements where they they have no background and no understanding and who have absolutely no willingness to reasonably and in good faith address the arguments they themselves raised, and that they have often gone to absurd lengths and dishonesty to pretend that they are actually arguing the science and scientific basis. I believe most or all of them had actually reached their position on the same or similar argument you now present, but they are almost never willing to admit it or address it. They go to insane lengths to make uninformed and incorrect arguments within the field of science trying to conform to their goal and their predetermined conclusion.
You then directly say that I was hostile to God and ask me address steps (2) and (3) in your reasoning.
Assuming that I have not wildly missunderstood you, I would like to address two problems there. First of all if you re-read my post you'll see it did *NOT* contain "animosity towards
-----
If you're concerned that evolution somehow says there is no God, it doesn't. It's funny, I've seen countless creationists complain that evolution is some sort of conspiracy to say God does not exist, yet I don't think I've ever seen anyone on the pro-evolution side ever suggest any such thing. Evolution does not say anything about God, and it certainly does not 'prove' he doesn't exist. In fact most Christians in the world fully accept evolution as compatible with their religion, [additional note, even the Pope himself has declared that evolution is NOT in conflict with God or Christianity at all] it is only in the US that we're seeing any signifigant conflict between science and religion.
When science first figured out that the earth goes around the sun because of gravity, and later figured out that the sun shines because of fusion, none of that 'proved' that God did not exist. Peop
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I have read, while not an enormous mountain, a fair number of science texts that approach science from the worldview of evolution, and throw out any discussion of creation and creationism (like the intelligent design thinkers) as being merely religion and has no basis in science. I would also like to take a moment to define the term 'Christian' as I use it, in being someone who claims a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, as opposed to the mainstream 'religious right' and broad chistendom (which would include roman catholics, baptists, episcopalians, anglicans, lutherans, pentacostals, etc).
I don't think there is any more of a vast conspiracy to throw god out of society because of evolution than I would of other, more vehemently anti-god, ideologies.
I also would like to preface the rest of our discussion with the fact that I have a relatively literal understanding of the Bible, and more often than not lean towards the simple, unadorned, non-symbolic understanding of most passages, except when there is no reasonable way to understand the text without extensively studying the symbolism that is in the text. That being said, I don't believe in a "malicious deceiving god". I believe that the God who created us, made the world in a perfect state, with the vast majority of current plants and animals in place, waiting for his supreme creation, man, to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." [Gen 1:28ff]. The current state of the world, following this initial background, then, is the state which we descended into after Adam's disobedience to God's order to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
With this background of my beliefs, I'm more than happy to engage in a discussion of the topic. You will notice from my earlier comments that I believe in microevolution. I don't think a God who was able to speak the world into existence would have created a process whereby every current species would have needed to descend from the 'original mammal'. Breeding, and minor speciation (such as your distinction between panthers and pumas) do acceptably line up with my beliefs in an all-powerful, wise, generous, and kind God.
I look forward to hearing from you again. If you wish, we can continue this off-site. You can reach me via email from my URL link.
antipaucity
Without having been created there is no purpose in life for anything. I might as well just come kill you because then I can take your stuff, or you should come take mine.
If the only reason you don't come kill me is because a dusty old book tells you not to, then please, by all means, stay the hell away from me you evil psychopath. You really can't conceive of any non-religious reason why you wouldn't want to murder somebody? What kind of sicko are you?
In case you think I'm being funny, I'm not. Really. I think the idea that only belief in a supernatural power can stop people from murdering each other is the product of an extremely sick mind. What happens if you lose faith? You have no morals to fall back on to stop you from committing horrific crimes?
I know a few people with the attitude that only religion stops people from hurting one another. I don't think that it's coincidence that they are also the few people I know that treat other people like absolute shit. If people just get their morals handed down to them instead of developing their own personal set of morals, then they tend not to value them in the slightest.
Being created gives us as a race purpose. Being here as the process of billions of incredibly improbably mutations that happened to survive and compound upon each other does not.
That's reasonable.
What is the meaning of life if we weren't placed here by a god?
Let me get this straight - you believe we were created because you want there to be a purpose to our lives? It hasn't occurred to you that your logic is entirely backwards? The reasonable thing to do is to try and determine the truth, and then figure out what that means. You seem to have decided what you want the conclusion to be, and thrown away any possible theory that doesn't support that conclusion. That's backwards.
Yeah, evolution doesn't give purpose to our lives. That doesn't mean evolution is wrong.
If there's no purpose to life
Just because evolution cannot provide purpose, it doesn't mean no purpose is possible. I have purpose in my life, I just decided it for myself, that's all. Nobody has to give it to you; in fact that's a pretty damn degrading point of view - you aren't allowed or capable of giving your own life meaning? You are denying yourself the root of all human rights.
There's no such thing as in-laws for a slashdotter.
We need louder moderates.
The problem is that they tend by nature also to be moderate in volume.
All too true. As they say, all things in moderation...