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Study Explains Evolution's Molecular Advance
pnewhook writes "The New York Times is reporting that 'by reconstructing ancient genes from long-extinct animals, scientists have for the first time demonstrated the step-by-step progression of how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts. The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.'"
It was only a matter of time before scientists discovered the steps and had enough knowledge to connect the dots.
Frankly, I'm glad they're finding more and more of how biology works. I don't want to get into a creationist debate, but it has always astounded me that people would argue that life is too complex for it to have been made "naturally" and that a higher being must have helped along the way. But, by saying that, they're saying that God is not powerful enough to create such a universe in which evolution can happen, that a universe created by God could not possibly work by itself.
How dare they...
Okay, I realise most people here have never had a chance to partake in this activity after they were born, but you get the picture.
That should be: Can God create a stone so heavy he can't lift it, if he can, he's not all powerful because he can't lift the stone, if he can't he's not all powerful because he can't create the stone in the first place.
Simon
that they ended with a quote by Behe.
When will he just give up? He's just grasping at straws....
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
(Douglas Adams)
Semper en excreta sumus solum profundum
Wikipedia has several solutions to this apparant paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox
There is nothing without God.
This is a science discussion - proselytizing has no place here.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It is amusing that religions touting a Creator God are excellent examples of Evolution in Action. The Creator God is the equivalent of the alpha male of a troop of primates. The idea of the Creator God speaks not to the present alpha male but to an idealized father founder of the tribe. The sense of history inherent in a Creator meshes with our sense of our own history. The concept of history, partially embodied in burial rites, points to the ideas of teleology and the status quo ante that underpin many religions. The idea of death as examplified in burial and a belief in a life after death are ideas that need to be examined as they define us as a species.
Religions posing an alpha male Creator Father have evolved through many generations of selective mating. Those who strongly believed in the tribe's faith were more likely to find suitable mates. Those who couldn't bring themselves to believe in a Creator God were often killed outright as heretics or were driven from the tribe. Many generations of mating based upon religious beliefs should give us a population the majority of which advocate a belief in God. Religion is Evolution in Action.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The most common people to claim otherwise seem to be the more rabid IDers and creationists. Go figure.
And for the most rabid athiests, I would point out that lack of proof is not proof of lack -- eg: Just because you'll never find the body doesn't mean I never killed mikie (don't tell the cops). Similarly: the fact that a 'missing link' is currently missing doesn't mean that it will never be found.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Not yet anyway.
e .html?ex=1302062400&en=c4dfe0138d4cdb4b&ei=5088&pa rtner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/science/07evolv
They aren't saying that God is not powerful enough to create a universe with evolution. They are saying God didn't create a universe with evolution. Significant difference there
God rests his case.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
In response to your first paragraph, please consider Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Did anyone manage to show how a live cell can be created from basic organic, non-live ingredients?
If anyone does, someone will accuse him/her of "playing god".
What?
When I was young I used to think that once some guy got married to a girl, babies were automatically born as an after effect of marriage. It was just like my Mom said when I was 16, "When you grow older, you will grow a beard !".
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I imagine they've got enough genes by now! If they haven't I'm sure they could just use some frog DNA, anyhow. That should do the trick.
Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?
I've found that most people who are ignorant of evolutionary processes lead sheltered lives. They are vaguely ignorant of where the beef on their table came from, they couldn't tell you how rainclouds form and they don't have a clue how much oil may be left in the ground. However, they darn sure know that men couldn't from monkeys.
In the sage words of H. Simpson - "Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot, that he himself could not eat it?"
When science thinks they understand something, credit should be made to God.
To which "God", out of the thousands of deity constructs worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history, do you refer and why do you reference that specific God to the exclusion of all others.
And there were thousands of witnesses to miracles he performed, and that he rose from the dead.
Please provide references to independent accounts for each of the "thousands" of witnesses.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
You might want to take something to help you relax. It's obvious that you're way too concerned about where you are, where you're going, and where you've been.
I have nothing to say.
The disbelievers will in the near future miss out on genetic enhancements/cloning/implants and thus be weeded out of the population as they become unable to compete. Problem will fix itself.
They are claiming that God couldn't have made those enzymes, or the manner in which they function.
The letter string "God" did not occur anywhere within the article. I believe that you have misinterpreted the claims made in the article, or you have mistaken read a different article than the one referenced. Your conclusion cannot be drawn from the actual article.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Carl Zimmer,who is of course, THE MAN! of parasite parables and paraphenalia, has posted a more in-depth analysis of this story at his weblog, The Loom , going into the genetic/molecular mechanism. Additionally, Zimmer responds to the creationist take on the story (the usual move-the-goalpost panic of those advocating irreduceable complexity). Of larger concern, why does this incredibly fascinating discussion about scientific sleuthing and the potential and beauty of proteomics, get automatically sidelined into a discussion on "what does creationism say about this?" I don't blame Zimmer for responding; indeed, that's the duty of science writers as gifted as he. But it diminishes the power of the story itself to have to ask, imnsho.
When it comes to evolution, I don't think there is really a "missing link" anymore.
The theory is fairly well fleshed out. Scientists and archeologists know what they're looking for, where they're looking for it and when (in the past) it should be found. The only thing a "missing link" can do now, is to reinforce & reconfirm the existing theory.
What will be much more interesting from a science perspective, are animals or chemical processes that don't fit in with the existing body of knowledge. Those are the types of discovery that will expand and advance the theory, anything else (while important) will, like I said previously, just reinforce the existing body of knowledge.
Science is much more exciting when you get unexpected surprises than when you get heaps of data to support your hypothesis/theory.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If the Great Creator Spaghetti Monster wanted you to read the article, he'd have provided you with a free registration.
Oh You POS
I can say that the Ori are attempting to destroy the galaxy, that doesn't make it true. And the Greek/Roman gods walked the earth plenty of times in their stories.
In response to your whole post: Show me the proof of God. And show me the proof Jesus actually did miracles--there's no special mention of Jesus in Roman books, which there would be if he made such miracles. The only actual witnesses to those we have today are the Gospels. Jesus was almost certainly just a man--a very brave man, to stand up to the leading religious thought of his time--but still, just a man. Too bad modern Christians have fallen into their own blind religious hate. If Jesus were alive today, he'd be absolutely pissed at what Christianity has become.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
It is? And Religion is never wrong? ('Cept for those Geek God worshippers and Roman God worshippers,.. oh, and all the other religions that are not mine ..)
Was Galileo wrong when the Church banned many of ideas? Does the sun indeed revolve around Rome?
How about, lets just keep an open mind. And the next time you see a doctor, remember, if this doctor is a medical doctor, the doctor has studied science. Hope the doctor is not wrong 99% of the time.
The disbelievers will really be in trouble when we genetically engineer hyper-intelligent monkeys who can work in Walmart and Mcdonolds and take their jobs.
It must be nice to be God. You get credit for everything that anyone ever does right, from scientific discoveries to touchdowns, it's all the Big Guy's work. But the fact that "science is wrong 99% of the time", well that's because the scientists are fallable humans. Doesn't sound so much like an all-powerful being as apologist spin. Small-pox vaccine? God's inspiration. No Aids vaccine? Human failure.
That so many otherwise intelligent people are prepared to accept such circular notions is perhaps the strongest argument against evolution. I'd expect millions of years of natural selection would have weeded out such soft-headedness.
yp
Pet dinosaurs?
I predict we can make millions selling the smaller ones to Creationist families. After all, don't they want to be closer to the original man?
I can see the ad campaign now: Get your child a pet dinosaur so they can ride them just like man did before the flood! Now you too can have a beast of the earth, just as God gave to Adam! (Discounts given to Church groups buying more than 3 pet dinos.)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Somebody ought to send Dr. Thornton this even-handed, thoughtful rebuttal by Jack T. Chick.
Program Intellivision!
Anyway, it was pretty easy demonstrating what a moron you are. You have demonstrated an inability to think beyond what most 5 or 6 year olds can achieve.
I'd dismiss you as a troll but as I've seen so much evidence that many people do 'think' like you I'm taking you seriously.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
The answer: He creates the stone, and he can't lift it with his hands. He'll just have to use his incredible Divine Level a Bajillion mind powers to move it. Or, he can just choose not to use the word "lift" any more, and kill anyone who does. Therefore, even though he can't -
Oh, I get it - sorry guys, I fed the troll.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I wonder if you are defining the word God as "He who made everything", or whether you have an alternate more complex definition that would embrace theists of other conceptions of deity.
Would God still be God to you if instead of a directing mind that "created everything", he was (as I believe the Mormons think) a fellow intelligence that may have advanced from a lower level akin to our own to what He is now, and working inside the constraints of the system that he was in rather than constructing one from scratch?
Would God still be God, if instead of a trinitarian deity, he was divided along Male-Female principles as I think the Wiccans worship?
"He made everything, and the rules of the system."
According to which religion? Or don't you particularly mind which God made those rules, as long as you believe that *some* intellect did?
Really, the trick to battle theists is the old "divide and conquer" technique. Let them see that no matter how they try to make common cause with other theista against non-theists, us non-theists see right through them and their united front is as hole-ridden as their argument. Don't let them argue for the existence of *a* God, without defining *which* God that is.
Twenty-one grams?
Cripple fight!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
What the hell, man? There's nothing about God in this article.
If evolution was universally accepted, there would still be believers in God, and if God was universally accepted, there would still be believers in evolution.
I don't know how you got modded either insightful or flamebait, much less both. Your post is simply off-topic.
The value of a theory lies in its ability to make accurate and precise predictions about the future. Religion has very little value in this sense, because it places few constraints on what to expect in the future; even if it is accurate, it is very imprecise. Evolution is the best theory we have about life because it makes the most accurate and precise predictions about life.
I can imagine that for people who do not know what it means to be accurate, or precise, this whole brouhaha about science must be a great mystery. I would recommend reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's Excellent Introduction to Technical Understanding , especially the paragraph on the dragon.
First: Science does not deal with truths, only with models.
Second: Science cannot be applied everywhere. There are questions that cannot be answered by science, because no answer fulfills the requirements. (Like, "what is outside of the universe", or "why are we here".) There comes a point where the only thing you can do is - believe. In something. Some believe that there are no higher entities (science cannot disprove them, but because of this they are filtered out by Occam's Razor, just like all non-disprovable things). Some believe that life is guided by some god, some believe in a living an conscious Mother Nature etc. Claiming that atheism is "The Only Way" (tm) is just plain wrong because it does not have any advantages over other beliefs.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
It's worth noting that most mathematicians already think ideas like Irreducible Complexity and Complex Specified Information are a load of hooey, despite the appeals people like Dembski and Behe make to having made innovative breakthroughs in these areas:
b -at-dembski-vacuousness.html
- irreducible-complexity.html
w een-ic-and-it-arguments.html
One good blog on this subject I've found is Good Math, Bad Math, and some posts relevant to this topic are:
-CSI is basically incoherent: if you translate the definition of CSI into non-obscure words, it essentially boils down to either "something that contains a lot of information, but doesn't contain a lot of information" or a definition for which EVERY piece of information is specified:
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/04/one-last-sta
-IC, when translated into math, makes no sense. We can actually PROVE in math that there is no general proof that some system is the simplest possible (which IC requires), much like we can prove that we can never solve the halting problem.
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/problem-with
-Even if they did make sense, CSI and IC basically conflict with each other, arguing contradictory things:
http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/conflict-bet
That's okay, we can look at this matter in a more light hearted way.
Imagine a scientist looks at an ancient CVS repository of the Linux kernel and notices that the source code evolves and branches. He is able to compute the diffs between each source code revision and to recall an early snapshot of the Linux kernel. He concludes that the code must have evolved on its own.
Moreover, he claims this justifies that Linux kernels must have evolved from a monocellular organism, which kind of makes sense because Linux kernels are monolithic kernels. If it wasn't monocelular at its origin, how can it be monolithic?
I once had a signature.
I don't know that we have as of yet been able so show a living cell bootstrap from basic inert materials (I'm using non-living as the definition of inert in this context. There may be a better word, but I didn't think "dead" would be appropriate, as it has an implication of "once was living".)
However, it has been shown that many organic materials can be created in an environment similar to primordial earth. It has also been shown that many of these materials do tend to self-organize in a way that would be compatible with a cell possibly forming given enough organic material and time.
Cell wall: phospholipids, mostly being hydrophobic with one or two ends being hydrophilic tend to organize in sheets or water filled bubbles, and so could naturally form a cell wall. Amino acids do self aggragate to some extent, and a random aggregation could form a useful protein, ditto for RNA (which I believe preceded DNA evolutionarilly for a number of reasons.)
There is only one protein that would have to aggregate naturally before life as we know it could arise... ribosomes (or some suitable analog.) From there RNA could be transcribed into protein. At first most of the protein would pretty much be useless globs, untill a protein arises that can create copies of RNA. This protein could either aggregate naturally or be encoded by random chance into a strand or RNA. From there Darwinian evolution kicks in and as more beneficial RNA sequences come about that improve the transcription process and copying mechanism as well as the defense mechanisms, cellular life would not be too wild of an outcome. The progression of life would seem to be fairly slow at first, but the copying mechanism in RNA would probably be so imperfect that new variations arise very frequently, but most of those variations would likely be detrimental. Eventually better copying mechanisms arise, and eventually use of a more stable genetic material (DNA) make life blossom, expanding at a decent pace. Once some organism figured out a way to systematically capture and store energy from sunlight (or any energy source, really... thermal vents, gradiants across a thermo/chemocline etc) and a way to release that energy, then evolution can start proceeding at an exponential rate.
So, if it can be proven that a ribosome or some other RNA-Protein copying method could eventually arise from a random mix of amino acids it would greatly support the possibility of some method of abiogenesis. It does not have to be likely that this ribosome would arise in a human time scale... it could take millions or billions of years. It just has to happen eventually.
Complex hemes, carbohydrates and many other materials that are necessary for life at a complexity of ours would not be necessary to bootstrap the system from inert materials. Just some strands of RNA and something like a ribosome. Once you have those, something as complex as an RNA transcriptase could eventually arise from random permutations of RNA strands. And once you have RNA that has RNA -> RNA transcriptase encoded somewhere inside of itself and has some ribosome analogue working on it, then you have the bare bones beginning of organic life.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
The solution is that the original precursor gained the ability to bind a new hormone by a single point mutation, and this did not disrupt the ability of it to bind its old hormone. The new receptor then diverged and through a well known process of gene duplication, begat multiple and independently evolving molecules. One retained the function of binding the old hormone, whereas another mutated further to lose the ability to bind the old hormone and could now only bind the new hormone. Viola -- two seemingly "designed" systems out of one precursor -- evolution at its finest, and IMHO, damning evidence against the basic principle of Intelligent Design.
On a personal note, it never fails to amaze me how much people deny the intelligence of humans to figure things out... the old "just because we can't explain it now, it must have be an unexplicable force, like God." I'm sure lightning and earthquakes seemed supernatural too. Evolution is no different -- it can be dissected and explained.
In the interests of good discussion, I'd like to answer any questions that those questioning or unfamiliar with evolution have about the basic idea. We always seem to get a lot of sniping and pile-ons, and cross debate on this subject, so I thought I'd at least offer a place to express doubts or ask somewhat more general theory questions. Most of what I'm best experienced with as regards to evolution is common descent, but I've been studying the subject for quite some time now both as an amatuer and as an aspiring grad student, so I feel pretty comfortable with the broad scope of evidence and debate as long as it isn't too overly technical, even if it's outside my general focus of zoology.
God cannot be
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and Good
all at the same time
Fact: the world contains evil.
Fact:Creation of evil is an evil act
Conclusions:Either God performs evil acts and cannot be trusted, God is bound by some greater force requiring balance, or God cannot accurately predict the consequences of it's own actions.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It is ridiculus and demeaning to all human scientific progress to suggest that articles published by researchers are to be used as a "counter argument" to ID.
Please compare: What is their argument and what is ths scientific argument ? Who and where are their researchers ? What "science" do these reseaerhers do ? Is it a coincidence that almost all of them are Fervent Christians ? Do these peope want REAL answers to questions in the Universe or have they decided their answers already ? Imagine what would happen if their "science" becomes mainstream in schools and Universities: Something similar to what would have happened if Nazi bigotry had become mainstream.
What I'm trying to say is, it is stupid, demeaning and a complete waste of time,for example, to present arguments of the level of Einsteins work to someones who's bigotry driven intelligence is barely comparable to a below average high schooler. (not to demean high schoolers).
The only way to tackle these lies is to hit the root of the Big Lie: Who, what and where is this I in ID that they speak of ? Showing them Science journal will come later.
From Columbia University's electronic encyclopedia:
So I'd say it does deal with truths (as in known facts).
Developers: We can use your help.
Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?
As the article points out, near-high-school-dropouts aren't the only ones who have questions about evolution, and I'm not just talking about proponents of intelligent design.
But maybe it's not so much that we care about what those who "question evolution" think as that good science doesn't simply stick to whatever the prevalent dogma is. Maybe it's that good science continues to come up with and test hypothesis after hypothesis and continually refine its case.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with questioning evolution or even our current conception of how evolution works.
Tweet, tweet.
Indeed. Most scientists roll their eyes at the use of "missing link" because it obviously misleads far more than it informs. The basic idea is that we have a family tree of life. There are millions upon millions of branches (species), and billions upon billions of twigs (individual creatures) alive over time, but only a very very tiny proportion are still alive today. That means that there is a far far vaster space of animals that died that are NOT the ancestors of any living creature than there are.
Hence, since fossilization is basically a rare and random crapshoot, the chances of finding THE common ancestor are always unlikely, and we can't even reliably tell if we had. But, fortunately, it's also irrelevant. That's because we can learn more than enough simply by finding a fossil that's past a particular branching point about the creatures that led to those we see today. We are trying to learn the general, overall shape of the tree, and since features all tend to be unique to any given lineage, we can still always tell everything we need about the prior branchings from the random sampling of fossils we have.
Currently we have so many that all the basic connections are pretty clear. And when you add in genetic studies that confirm these relations, the conclusion becomes about as rock solid as can possibly be. Creationists often try to confuse the debate over how particular twigs branch with a debate over whether there even is a tree of life pattern and branching at all.
Now can this story please explain it without using terms of design.
"reusing and modifying existing parts"
This begs the question who is modifying and reusing existing parts? Can't evolutionist stop using concepts and words describing a design that is implemented by intelligence? Won't that more than anything help them put to rest intelligent design.
indeed, some time ago i saw a movie that tried to "proof" the qoran as a "true" book of god. I found it quite of funny to see that they sad things along this line:
1. well, we see the stars moving away from each other so the universe must be expanding.
2. so if they are moving away from each other there must have been a beginning point, a "big bang" place
3. that is where allah created the universe.
the previous pope held a simulair belief.
while I neither believe in Islam nor in Christianity i do believe that religion will go on for quite some time, even when there would be total proof of evolution.
religion refused to die when the earth appeared to be round after all, and it will refuse to die after evolution is proved to be right.
It will only change the way that religious people will interpet there "holy" scriptures. perhaps one day science will have all the answers to "capture" the religious folks, but if you really really want to believe something, there is not really much science can do for you.
--
Nietzsche: there are no truths, only interpretations
Did they find His Noodly Apendage?
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
That something has not been found doesn't prove anything by itself. For the lack of proof to be considered proof of lack, you would also have to prove that you've created (usually contrived) conditions where, if it were possible for the 'missing' item to exist, you would have been certain of finding it.
The above statements apply to both fossils and gods.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
When we talk about evil, people usually attribute it to Satan. However, Satan was first created to be the most beautiful being of all things, anointed as a guardian cherub and adorned with precious stones in the garden of Eden (Ezekiel 28:11-19). But he chose to betray God.
If you look up Ezekiel online, note that subject in Ezekiel's discourse is King of Tyre, but Tyre is used to allude to Satan.
God did not create evil. His most beautiful creation turned evil on him. God knew this would happen and already foretold the destruction of Satan.
You can ask why did God create Satan knowing he would turn evil and bring suffering to the people? My understanding is too shallow to answer this question, but I believe that God is doing this for a globally optimal solution. When you look at it locally, it may not be optimal. It's not a greedy algorithm.
I once had a signature.
After RTFA I have to say I'm impressed with this study. Science for far too long has neglected to roll its sleeves up and get to the nitty-gritty of how biochemical evolution might have occurred. Usually scientists show us a chart of, say, eyeballs, from the primitive light-sensitive patches of worms all the way to the more advanced eyeballs, like the humans. This is usually followed with some vigorous handwaving, capable of producing hurricane-like winds. "Behold! Evolution!" shouted with triumph, but without scientific backing.
Okay, they've shown us the simple to the complex, but there's a lot more to these organs evolving, as Dr. Thornton has tried to demonstrate. I hope he's able to do more work and tackle something a bit tougher, like the eye, or bacterial flagella, or perhaps our immune system. The enzyme cascades in blood clots would be incredibly interesting as well. These are the holy grails of irreducible complexity.
The hormone receptors, while an interesting scientific challenge, are a far cry from the problems presented by the biomechanical processes and machines listed above. Until a study can demonstrate, step-by-step, how the bacterial flagella (and the other IC challenges listed) came into existence without divine intervention, the Irreducible Complexity camp will not cower in defeat.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
no dna can survive 100k years no matter how conserved and you cant just fill the huge gaps of that giant puzzle. But 10k year extinct sabertooth pets or similar old species are almost realistic.
Do automobile manufacturers create car crashes?
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The gist of the paper seems to be that the belief that intertwined mechanisms had no purpose prior to their union is false. While we may not currently know what purpose the individual mechanisms originally served, it does not mean that they arose solely to work together. The belief that they arose to work together seems to be a sort of bias toward the present-day--an assumption that what there is now is somehow better than what there was in the past, and therefore the past must have been working solely to achieve the present.
I'd like to see a journalist go back in time and do an interview with a T-Rex, who can't wait for the day that his entire sub-order will be wiped out so as to pave the way for humans to come about...
Wasn't sympathy from Sir Mick Jagger enough?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
There are two reasons why we have a recent uprising of ID. One is that there are people whose religious beliefs are found in conflict with evolutionary science. The other is that people are simply ignorant of the science, in large part because of lousy science education and hard-to-read science literature.
In response to the ID debate, scientists have been motivated to clean up their acts. First, they have targeted specific areas of research that the ID proponents have harped on. Secondly, they are working harder to improve science education.
Things like ID arise ultimately due to a fault in the science. Well, we know science has faults, so the only result here can be an improvement in the science.
According to creationists, that person would be God. Per definition ;)
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Would they create uncrashable cars if they were benevolent and omnipotent?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
My understanding is too shallow to answer this question, but I believe that God is doing this for a globally optimal solution.
I credit you with admitting that you don't understand it either. But that's the problem, I think. I'm not saying I can understand everything, and I don't think that life is a net loss (i.e. I believe there is more good than evil). But it seems quite understandable that any all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God could allow the evil that has happened to have happened. And saying that it's okay because it's the next life that matters is a cop-out: if this life doesn't matter then why have it at all? If it's a test, it's not a fair one as we don't all get the same one. The whole system reeks of organic disorganization. Mysterious ways indeed.
Anyways, as someone who was raised Christian and eventually became an athiest because of the above line of thinking, I just thought I'd throw it out there since you're thinking about it too. In the end everyone believes what they want whether it makes sense or not.
Cheers.
Its established Paloentological fact that the Sabertooth Tiger has appeared, went extinct, and reappeared at least four times in prehistory. This is due to genetics. Every big cat and every domestic feline carries the genes that could become active again and thus bring about the reappearance of the Sabertooth.
All one has to do is think of DNA as a complex computer program. It can correct itself if errors are found, and it can change itself to adapt. Its not hard to imagine that Evolution is a byproduct of DNA's ability to rewrite itself to suit certain situations. Its not Intellegent Design, its just how DNA functions.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
You had me worried for a little bit, so I did some looking around. Modern theories state that it wasn't even RNA that was the original genetic carrier, but self replicating proteins. Turns out it would have statistically taken somewhere around the order of one year for the creation of a self replicating protein to arise on the primordial earth. That gives plenty of time for that self replicating protein to have a couple of chances at being in the right place at the right time in the right conditions to bootstrap the life process..
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Please don't use such subtle humour here... this is slashdot!
No, god does not exist. He hasn't been here at all.
He has been proven to be true.
Sure, whatever. In the mean time, more intelligent religious people keep their god out of the realm of science. Every time god steps in there, he gets his butt kicked.
Nobody else can say their God walked the earth except Christians.
Every ancient religion had gods that walked the earth. Don't be silly.
That should be proof enough that God created everything.
No, that's proof that people are still as gullible now as they were thousands of year ago.
This is an excellent question that causes a great deal of controversy. Since every possible outcome, event and possibility is happening and will happen, then all good and all evil balances out in the superverse. After the reality of multiple worlds sank into our collective thought, the one basic change to all religious dogma is the concept that good and evil does not exist as an organized force in our lives nor can it be used as a useful way to judge what God may think of a situation. Good and evil are personal experiences that can only guide what we do as individuals and how we relate to others. This outlook also makes it impossible for me to judge any other person or event. We cannot see the entire universe as God sees it therefore we will never be Gods or be capable of judging anything outside of ourselves. My actions can only be judged as good and bad by me and my God.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
If you really want an answer to this conundrum, read St. Augustine. His argument, which is still widely accepted among theologians (I think), is that there is no such thing as evil. What we call evil is simply an absence of godliness.
You can make an analogy to atoms. The space in between atoms or sub-atomic particles doesn't have any properties in and of itself, we simply categorize it as emptiness by describing it as the absence of something.
The same thing goes with evil. Evil doesn't have any properties by itself, it is just the way we categorize something that is "less divine".
That's actually what I'd expect. Shouldn't a creature the recently picked up the ability to think rationally do it imperfectly, and not all the time? Shouldn't there be holdovers from previous types of thinking, like instinct and "emotional logic"?
The first vertebrates to move onto land weren't very good at it. I'd expect the first critters to use intelligence to be just as flawed.
The reason the NYT is giving this the "doubters of evolution" spin is that there's this guy, Michael Behe, who wrote a book around 1995 somewhere called "Darwin's Black Box". The central idea of that book was the allegation that evolutionary science treats the cell like a "black box" that nobody attempts to look inside or explain. Evolutionary science, said Behe, only concerns itself with larger structures, and only assumes the stuff inside the cell "just works". Because evolution can't explain, subcellular structures, evolution lacks a foundation, is built on nothing, and is wrong.
This is, of course, silly if you're actually familiar with the science, because to whatever extent scienists ever treated the cell like a "black box", it was because we didn't know how to look inside yet. Viewing machinery the size of a molecule is really hard. Scientists could analyze things, but have only relatively recently gained the ability to view the full picture of things, much as they might have wanted to.
Once the technology for understanding the molecular structures that make up cells really started to take off (say, at the beginning of the 80s-ish), a revolution of sorts started in microbiology and genetics. And as this happened, Behe managed to exploit a neat trick of timing; he wrote his book just as a lot of fascinating questions were appearing through this revolution in microbiology, but before (since the questions had only just been asked) we really knew what the answers were. Behe was able to craft the illusion, since we didn't know the answers to some of those questions yet, that the questions didn't have answers or would never be answered and thus evolution was flawed-- not mentioning that work was underway or even partially completed to find answers to all of these questions. In the time since Behe wrote his book, cell microbiology has progressed by leaps and bounds, but the book itself is able to do a neat little job of making it seem like the cell really is just an inexplicable black box, because he wrote it just as science totally finished picking the lock.
Which brings us to this story: The one scientific "big idea" in Darwin's Black Box was what Behe calls "Irreducible Complexity", and the publication of Darwin's Black Box was the main way this idea was popularized. The idea behind irreducible complexity is that there exist structures that contain one or more parts, and that if you remove one of the parts, the entire thing stops working. But one would expect that evolutionary mutation can only change "one thing" at a time; the idea that a single new allele that could simultaneously create two separable and interlocking structures seems wholly unbelievable. So how did irreducibly complex structures evolve?
This is an extremely reasonable question, and one evolutionary science is obligated to answer. The problem is that Behe, and the rest of the ID crowd:
The answer to how irreducibly complex structures could evolve is pretty simple: all that would have to happen is for a structure to change its purpose over time. That is to say, it doesn't matter that irreducibly complex structures can only evolve one part at a time, because it is simple to imagine each of the small structures in an irreducibly complex system independently evolving for some other purpose than the big IC system performs, then being adapted into a bigger IC system with rube goldberg style ingenuity, then gradually losing the ability to function for their original purpose indepen
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
While you paid attention to some portions of your philosophy/religion class, you missed the part where God is defined as an all-powerfoul being that can do the logically possible. I.e., you can't set up inherently contradictory claims and then deduce from them the contradictory nature of god.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The flipside of the evolutionary topic is, well, what if we just say there is no God and move on?
I do not see how this is, in any way, an "evolutionary topic". The theory of evolution says nothing whatsoever regarding the subject of deities.
Dismissing the existence of God in no way advances the human condition.
To which "God", out of the thousans of deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history, do you refer and why do you reference that particular deity to the exclusion of all others?
Consider, why does one need to foolishly accept that a better adapted emergent species is not fundamentally better than a less adapted one?
I do not see that one does need to do this at all. "Better adapted" is itself a relative condition, and there is no means to judge any one species as "fundamentally better" than another in an absolute sense. I do not understand what point you are attempting to argue.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The only way to be truly benevolent is to allow free will. Thus, there is a possibility for evil.
To use my car analogy: You could have a crashless car, but you would not have the freedom to choose where the vehicle went or how it operated. That is the only way to guarantee "no crashes". So, in having a vehicle where we are free to control it, there is a possibility for catastrophe; but the "bad" was not created. It is simply a consequence of freedom. If you want more information on this particular question, google The problem of good and evil.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
My post was meant as a joke, ya' silly sod. :P
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Yes, God is indeed an all-powerfoul being.
I figured babies had something to do with kissing.
I had a really good reason to be majorly grossed out by kissing as a little boy, I think...
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Thank you for sharing in detail what makes him "...absolutely stupid...". You realized it was so obvious that you skipped right to ad hominem attacks. You're a shining beacon of humanity.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
You're kidding, right? This would have no bearing on our day to day life. Of course we must judge what is right and wrong outside ourselves. I'm sure you do. And when you're living in a way that lines up, more or less, with your beliefs, then you don't really believe them.
Cheers.
Scientific American gives 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.
Memorize them for your next party
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
"Universal" means "the same, everywhere".
If evolution were universally accepted, there would, by definition, be no dissenters(i.e. believers in "god/creation").
If god/creation were universally accepted, there would, by definition, be no dissenters(i.e. believers in "evolution").
Come hear me sing!
And then someone ruins the joke by pointing out that the kernel source was signed by its authors...
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You might call a man evil, I may call him extraordinarily indifferent to other beings. I think they can be explained by mere psychological and physiological differences, circumstance, and perspective.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
I do not see how this is, in any way, an "evolutionary topic". The theory of evolution says nothing whatsoever regarding the subject of deities.
There are those in the evolutionary camp that would argue that science displaces the need for God, and therefor, science itself should assume the social role of determining moral values.
To which "God", out of the thousans of deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history, do you refer and why do you reference that particular deity to the exclusion of all others?
It doesn't matter, it's really, which ever one wins.
I do not see that one does need to do this at all. "Better adapted" is itself a relative condition, and there is no means to judge any one species as "fundamentally better" than another in an absolute sense.
I disagree with that. Take two people and put them in a pool and tell them to swim laps. One will last longer than the other, and is better.
You could, concievably, with more work, evolve a mathematical metric that values all of a person's probable contributions to society, and arrive at an empiracle definition of who is better. Of course, the definition would change over time as society evolves. That's why some people are paid more than others - in a free enterprise system, the masses of people decide who is better with their wallets, and in a socialist system, it's a committee. If there is no God, can you admit that you are a loser for not having a billion dollars? Can I? Boy, that's a tough, tough pill to swallow.
This is my sig.
You're standing on one. Make a rock heavy enough, and the lifting issue sort of takes care of itself.
Now, I'm not endorsing intelligent design. Personally, I believe in evolution, not out of faith, but because the evidence is in, has been in, and will continue to be in, on the fact that evolution is the truth.
That said, I've recently been reading a lot of biology stuff and I have to say, the mechanisms, even at the cellular level, that have evolved, are simply astounding. Here's just a single example: The membranes of cells contain proteins for different functions. For example, there may be a protein that collects "food" of some sort for the cell. Some of these proteins, will just sit there and when a "food" molecule comes by, it binds to the protein, the protein then changes shape in such a way, that it pulls the "food" molecule inside the cell. It then releases the "food" inside the cell and then changes shape back to the way it was.
I mean, I can see how someone can look at that and say, "That can't just evolve." It did, but I can understand the counterposition on it. And that's simply one example, and that's just a lowly cell. You've got 70kg of cells (+ or - depending on the person) in a person, each one doing it's own thing, and somehow, it's a living, breathing, thinking, person. It's all pretty mind boggling.
And even after seeing the individual steps of how each piece evolved, each protein, each cell, each organism, it's still hard to believe that all these amazing little mechanisms work together, in sync, and they weren't designed by anyone.
I mean, hell, it's all we can do to build a robot that walks upright, and mother nature did it without any thiking at all. How stupid are we.
You can be a really educated person and understand a lot about biology, and you can still question evolution simply because it's so friggin' hard to believe on a lot of levels. So, while I understand most of us here believe in evolution, I'd ask that you keep an open mind and try to understand the other side as well. I'd also ask that people on the other side try to keep an open mind and understand why we don't want to be preached to and told what we should believe.
There are those in the evolutionary camp that would argue that science displaces the need for God, and therefor, science itself should assume the social role of determining moral values.
Such individuals are clearly in the minority. Their opinion does not change the fact that the theory of evolution makes no statements whatsoever regarding the existence or nature of any deities.
It doesn't matter, it's really, which ever one wins.
It does matter. Dismissing a "God" who demands human sacrifice, for example, could arguably improve human society.
I disagree with that. Take two people and put them in a pool and tell them to swim laps. One will last longer than the other, and is better.
This would demonstrate that one individual is arguably a better swimmer. From this, I cannot deduce who is better at Calculus. "Better" is a relative standard, requiring a frame of reference.
You could, concievably, with more work, evolve a mathematical metric that values all of a person's probable contributions to society, and arrive at an empiracle definition of who is better.
Nonetheless, the standard is still arbitrary, as it is defined by "potential contributions to society". Not only is the declaration itself arbitrary, but the contributions possible could well vary based upon the society in question.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"Dismissing the existence of God in no way advances the human condition."
You mean other than removing the need for some to kill the non-believers and heretics in "his" name?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
So you managed to pass philosophy 101 and think that because you can take the most pithy argument about the problem of evil and 'prove' god does not exist. Alvin Plantinga, a standing professor at Notre Dame, dealt extensively with the problem of evil and has several books on the topic. Many philosophers, even those who categorize themselves as secular, generally agree that Plantinga's Free Will Defense is a logical and mostly complete answer to the questions the problem of evil poses. Johnathan Kvanvig, at Missouri, has some incredibly excellent works on the Problem of Hell, a much more difficult topic. Both authors are well worth reading. Furthermore, theologians don't just say 'god exists, nyaa!' and leave it. The argument from contingency (St. Aquinas sustaining cause, further developed by Swinburne as an inductive study) has real legs in demanding the need for "something" to exist other than the universe. Mind you, NONE of this actually will equate the sustaining cause to the Judeo Christan God, but that's what other branches of philosophy and theology is for.
I tend to agree with Kenneth Miller. Anyone that claims to be of faith should read his book 'Finding Darwin's God' where he attempts to bridge the gap between hard evolution and it's implications for religion.
I stole this
Such individuals are clearly in the minority. Their opinion does not change the fact that the theory of evolution makes no statements whatsoever regarding the existence or nature of any deities.
It's a heck of a minority though, Dawkins comes to mind.
It does matter. Dismissing a "God" who demands human sacrifice, for example, could arguably improve human society.
Theoretically, not that I've been playing too much Rise of Nations and Age of Empires, the God whose people had the most villagers would ultimately win, assuming he withstood the rush strategies of other Gods.
This is my sig.
You mean other than removing the need for some to kill the non-believers and heretics in "his" name?
Well, yes, except that, killing nonbelievers, Islam excepted, hasn't really been a factor in Western civilization except for maybe a short period from the dark ages through the 30 Years War. Before that, wars were generally fought for plunder, as, indeed, wars after that were fought for plunder as well. Nazism is sort of the ultimate proof that you don't need a Godlike God to go and destroy other people. They did it using a hopped up form of social Darwinism as their shtick. And Communism certainly didn't have a God complex either, but, there's plenty of dead in that shtick's wake...
So yes, removing God from the equation accomplishes nothing.
This is my sig.
Look, I want to agree with you, but I have some bad news. These barsteds are legitimised whatever scientists do. It is time to bombard the public with the message "ID is wrong, science have proove it for the 400th time". Until the public is sick and tired of hearing how utterly wrong ID is, we have to fight them. You cant pretend like ignoring these people will make them go away. It's time to turn the entire scientific establishment on the antiscience that is ID and obliterate it.
The public will think there is a legitimate scientific conflict whatever we do. So our best bet is to make every result, every piece printed in the paper, every section of programming on TV, every portion of the media, every address by a scientist would can make a relevant contribution about the subject into an attack on ID. The foundation of science itself is at stake, and it is time that the scientific establishment fought at least as dirtily, if not dirtier than these idiots.
Vinik after discovering Ingap hired a public relations person. And it was all a miracle until the phase 2 tests. Hwang Woo-suk risked and lost all credibility in cloning just by trying to be the famous. And the list goes on forever.
If it works so well show us an application. Otherwise show it to your peers that can have a qualified opinion.
How hard can it be to understand evolution?
Time + slow variation + selective extinction = sophistication.
Beats the hell out of
Undetectable magician + ineffable motives = sophistication.
Dr. Behe has some serious sour grapes going on.
He's redefining complex as "at least three" instead of just a combination which could be two things that have changed together in this experiement that's been conducted sucessfully. Once other scientists start validating it, and expanding on this reasearch, we should see a decline in the number of "experts" standing behind Intelligent Design's "give up" attitude.
Oh You POS
And for the most rabid athiests, I would point out that lack of proof is not proof of lack
No, but as Dawkins says, we'd laugh at someone who believes that there's a teapot orbiting Pluto.
"... God is defined as an all-powerfoul [sic] being that can do the logically possible..." Sort of kills off the ALL-powerful part of the program, doesn't it? Brings him down to being just another poweful entity with restrictions on his behavior. In that case he's probably not all-seeing or all-knowing either. Has a staff to manage those kinds of details...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
>>> "Can you believe it's 2006 and we still care about the near-high-school drop-outs who continue to question evolution?"
Yes.
I can't believe you got plus-5 insightful for that flame-bait.
If you don't question things you're not a scientist. I question evolution, I question every facet of existence that I come across.
Incidentally I've got an honours degree in Physics and Maths and an undergraduate diploma in computer science. No big guns I know but that's me. I consider myself to be a philosopher. What about you?
"Nobody else can say their God walked the earth except Christians."
According to the mythos only the mortal son of God walked the earth, not God Him/Her/Itself.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Can we please stop bringing up intellegent design in every artice pertaining to evolution. This is slashdot for jeebus sake. Your preaching to the choir.
Could it be that Intelligent Design is like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in that it tells us the limits of what knowledge can be? Well, no. While nothing that HUP predicts not to be knowable has ever been known, it seems things that things Intelligent Design predicts to be unknowable are being gradually explained. This shows it to be a very bad theory. In Science, as opposed to other realms of inquiry, theories that are disproven are ABANDONED. Hey wingnut creationists, time to imitate the behavior of the rats that left your sinking ship!
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
"Nazism is sort of the ultimate proof that you don't need a Godlike God to go and destroy other people."
I think you meant Stalin. As crazy as Hitler became in his later years when he saw organized religion as just another obstacle in his way, his whole basic anti-semetic philosophy was basically a plagarism of Martin Luther's "On Jews and Their Lies" and the manipulation of centuries of church-approved anti-semetic prejeduce. Hitler referenced God and god's authority in his speeches as much if not more often than politicians today. The highest Nazi honor was the Iron Cross... and so on. The idea that a highly religious country like Germany somehow magically transformed overnight into a bunch of atheists is absurd.
You don't need evidence to demonstrate that the godless can be bad people. We're just people, after all, not some radically different form of life.
April 7, 2006
Study, in a First, Explains Evolution's Molecular Advance
By KENNETH CHANG
By reconstructing ancient genes from long-extinct animals, scientists have for the first time demonstrated the step-by-step progression of how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts.
The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.
"The evolution of complexity is a longstanding issue in evolutionary biology," said Joseph W. Thornton, professor of biology at the University of Oregon and lead author of the paper. "We wanted to understand how this system evolved at the molecular level. There's no scientific controversy over whether this system evolved. The question for scientists is how it evolved, and that's what our study showed."
Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, "If it would be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
Discoveries like that announced this week of a fish with limblike fins have filled in the transitions between species. New molecular biology techniques let scientists begin to reconstruct how the processes inside a cell evolved over millions of years.
Dr. Thornton's experiments focused on two hormone receptors. One is a component of stress response systems. The other, while similar in shape, takes part in different biological processes, including kidney function in higher animals.
Hormones and hormone receptors are protein molecules that act like pairs of keys and locks. Hormones fit into specific receptors, and that attachment sends a signal to turn on or turn off cell functions. The matching of hormones and receptors led to the question of how new hormone-and-receptor pairs evolved, as one without the other would appear to be useless.
The researchers found the modern equivalent of the stress hormone receptor in lampreys and hagfish, two surviving jawless primitive species. The team also found two modern equivalents of the receptor in skate, a fish related to sharks.
After looking at the genes that produced them, and comparing the genes' similarities and differences among the genes, the scientists concluded that all descended from a single common gene 450 million years ago, before animals emerged from oceans onto land, before the evolution of bones.
The team recreated the ancestral receptor in the laboratory and found that it could bind to the kidney regulating hormone, aldosterone and the stress hormone, cortisol.
Thus, it turned out that the receptor for aldosterone existed before aldosterone. Aldosterone is found just in land animals, which appeared tens of millions of years later.
"It had a different function and was exploited to take part in a new complex system when the hormone came on the scene," Dr. Thornton said.
What happened was that a glitch produced two copies of the receptor gene in the animal's DNA, a not-uncommon occurrence in evolution. Then, for reasons not understood, two major mutations made one receptor sensitive just to cortisol, leading to the modern version of the stress hormone receptor. The other receptor became specialized for kidney regulation.
Dr. Thornton said the experiments showed how evolution could and did innovate functions over time. "I think this is likely to be a very common theme in how complex molecular systems evolved," he said.
Christoph Adami, a professor of life sciences at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, Calif. who wrote an accompanying commentary in Science, said the research showed how evolution "takes advantage of lucky circumstances and builds upon them."
Dr. Thornton said the experiment refutes the notion of "irreducible complexity" put forward by Michael J. Behe, a prof
"definately"
I take that as no insult from someone who can't spell "definitely".
Just because he has Dr. in front of his name doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about or isn't trying to mislead you.
Oh You POS
Ahem...just as they say 'a feature is a bug with seniority' in computing circles, I guess biologists can say that a function is a mutation with seniority.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
The only way to be truly benevolent is to allow free will.
That's a strained definition of benevolence.
You haven't considered the notion of free will without evil, for instance:
You could have a crashless car, but you would not have the freedom to choose where the vehicle went or how it operated. That is the only way to guarantee "no crashes".
This is nonsense. If carmakers were omniscient and omnipotent, they could give you a car that would take you any where you wanted to go, but would never crash. Would never hurt anyone. You could do anything you ever could with a normal car...except cause harm.
You also are ignoring the incredible burden of evil and suffering that is through no fault of anyones, was not brought upon them by an act of free will.
Play Command HQ online
The question you ask is illogical. Infinity can not be compared to infinity. Operations between infinite numbers are not defined in mathematics. By saying "so heavy he can't lift it", you make God (an infinity) comparable to something lesser/greater than infinity (the stone).
The question also assumes that time and space exists for God, which is outside of the universe, as it exists for us, who are inside the universe. Of cause this does not make sense, because if the structure outside the universe is the same as the universe, then the outside par would also be part of the universe.
Generally, all actions attributed to God assume that time and space exists for God as it exists for us. Which is something highly illogical, since time and space where born with the big bang.
Spock out.
"The existence of evolution is not inconsistent with the existence of god. Most scientists agree on that point."
Actually, it is. One of the reasons that God created the universe and us, is to interact with us. A God who just pushed a button and then left us alone, would be no God: the whole thing with God is that he interferes with out lives at key moments for humans and for each person separately.
There are many cases where God has interacted with humans: the destruction of Sodoma, Noah, splitting the water so Moses can pass, the ten commandments, sending Jesus to Earth, etc.
"Claiming that atheism is "The Only Way" (tm) is just plain wrong because it does not have any advantages over other beliefs"
Actually, it does. Many people live a life where they wait God to come and save them. The result is that the governments of the countries where these people live in take advantage of those people.
If more people said to themselves "look, I AM responsible for my situation, not God and not any other" and "no one affects my good will but me", lots of bad things that happen today would not happen.
For example, the caste system of India would have been demolished centuries ago, and India would be a democracy long before it did. And they wouldn't be so many poor people, because people would take matters in their hands.
It's interesting that such a simple question has provided inspiration for the most intricate and airy logical constructions that the world's finests theologians could create for thousands of years, when the obvious answer lies open for the youngest child to grasp.
Play Command HQ online
"how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts"
So now evolution "creates" and "reuses" stuff? Why not call it a win-win for both evolution and creationism and go home already.
If scientist ever manage to 100% prove evolution is an actual autonomous process that happens because of natural selection... it kinda still leaves place for creationists to claim God created evolution :)
/shocking: we're not made out of mud after all/)
They've stepped back and adapted numerous times before (from flat earth, women rights, earth centric system, sun centric system, biology, there was also the claim we'll bring on the Apocalypse for researching atoms and subatomic particles
You don't need evidence to demonstrate that the godless can be bad people. We're just people, after all, not some radically different form of life
I agree to disagree with your historical assesment as to the meanings of Nazism, but, since I'm a Republican you'll have to trust that I'm more familiar with it.
In all seriousness, there's that aspect of liberalism that believes that if we eliminate God from the social discourse, humanity will improve. There's a lot of people of that John Lennon ilk "Imagine there's no religion", that believe that if we could deconstruct every existing social institution we could have new world order where everyone would love each other. And me, I just think that will give us some new thing to have wars about. Of course, in saying that, that doesn't mean that there's not aspects of conservatism that are equally stupid. Intelligent design comes to mind... I mean, what takes more of God's brains, designing a plant leaf by itself, or, designing an entire unwinding mechanism of physics and chemistry so that plants and animals and man would arise as a part of a majesty of his will. It's almost like to argue ID is to say that God is too stupid to design an evolutionary process or too vain to give Man free will upon the Earth.
This is my sig.
If there were a God, the only kind I can possibly imagine would reward the former, not the latter.
God really is a bloodthirsty volcano god of doom! In which case, he's going to reward whoever screws with people the most to make Universe 1.0 the most entertaining screen saver ever!
This is my sig.
I prefer Douglas Adams' explanation. Although that's pretty nice, if misguided because the Linux kernel has no mechanism of coding itself.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Personally, I feel like events such as hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in the indian ocean, and September 11th offer a much stronger proof of the lack of a personal god.
Either that, or at least strong proof that if there IS a god, he/she's a sadistic bastard without anything resembling our idea of morality, justice, or fairness. In other words, any god that regularly lets shit like this happen deserves our scorn, not our adoration.
Either way, religion is shit.
I don't know, I haven't studied that particular situation. Anyone know? Google it?
how is being sexual in nature more conducive to survival? if you've been married, you'd know better... if not, you will...
Sexual selection is thought to work in a roundabout way such that those that are seen as most fit by members of the opposite sex are seen as more attractive. The selected attribute may actually have something to do with survival ability, or it may be as arbitrary as a difference in color. The real answer is that being sexual may not be more conducive to survival itself, but is more conducive to reproduction.
why do i have an amazing, astounding, ingenious, freaked out eyeball of complexity and teeth that want to fall out? weren't teeth important to survival, too? especially 10,000 years ago?
Normally eyeballs don't fall out. But they do help you to survive much better than you would without them. Teeth are important to survival, but 10,000 years ago, you may not have lived to an age long enough to have them fall out. But as long as you lived long enough to reproduce, that was enough.
how is a hybrid land / water ear advantageous on eithe rland or water? btw, no such ear has ever been discovered. just postulated.
For the first creatures crawling out of the water, their water ears probably didn't help very much on land. But since they were the first creatures on land, there wasn't much else for them to hear anyway. As more and more creatures crawled out onto the land and started to stay there, competition began. Those that whose water ears heard a little bit better than the others, in general, survived to reproduce better than the others. Through random mutation and natural selection, eventually those "water" ears worked much better as "land" ears.
if the platypus lived and went extinct x thousands of years ago... what would an evolutionsit claim claim about it being transitionary? how would slashdot react?
A particular species going extinct doesn't necessarily any bearing on whether it is transitory or not. Either the species has diverged into different species with the original species no longer existing, or the species went exinct before then and didn't. An "evolutionist" would claim one of the two, whichever scenario happened to be the one that happened. Slashdot probably wouldn't care one way or another.
how does life come from death?
Usually happens when you hear "CLEAR!!!" Or, if what you really meant was how does life come from non-living material, current hypoteheses are discussed here. Note the difference between chemical abiogenesis and spontaneous generation, which traditionally refers to fully formed organisms like maggots forming from dead or nonliving material.
how do appendages that offer no benefit stay around long enough to eventually become a benefit?
Example?
why are my ears facing forward instead of backwards? i can see forward, so wouldn't the greatest benefit come from having my ears pointed backwards so i could better hear prey coming up from behind? *especially* before language existed? or did ears come into existance *after& language came into existence?
I don't know about you, but I have more than a front and a back, I also have a left and a right and thanks to the concept of stereo hearing, I can identify sounds all around me, including the behind me.
how come we can't repreoduce macro-evolution in the lab? why can't we turn bacteria into something entirely different than bacteria - even thoug we've dramamtically increased the speed of reproduction?
We can increase rate of reproduction and watch thousands of generations happen, but even at such rates we would still be waiting around for millions of
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Apparantly the n00b with mod points isn't aware that BugMeNot is an extension which automatically logs one into sites such as the New York Times which require registration. Oh well.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Two points I feel compelled to raise in response to things implied by the statement above:
(a) This is by no means the first evidence supporting evolution, nor the most substantive, and
(b) So-called 'Intelligent Design' (and I have little doubt that "doubters of evolution" refers to proponents of such) is not a scientific argument that deserves scientific refuting, given that "ID" is non-falsifiable in the same way as the "theory" that the universe was created three seconds ago and the memory of all that came before was implanted.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
This is dead on. You nailed it: a) the process has been demonstrated b) it is not in conflict with god or the bible.
Why are we still arguing about this? Honestly I don't know. As I said in another post people have an emotional reaction to this for some reason and I don't expect any amount of truth to dissuade them. Yes, like with Galelio. Maybe another hundred years from now we'll be past it as people die off.
And that's the ultimate purpose of death: to clean house.
Cheers.
Study explains evolution's molecular advance Friday April 07, @12:24PM Rejected
Way to go samzenpus, keep up the good work.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"since I'm a Republican you'll have to trust that I'm more familiar with it."
:) Read Martin Luther's "On Jews and their Lies": the text that Hitler read that got him all fired up and which he cited over and over: you'll find pretty much the blueprint for everything the Nazi's did in the writings of the founder of Protestantism.
Unless Republican is synonymous with "historian" or "logician" I'll have to take that with a gargle of salt.
I don't really understand the state of denial here. The fact that Germans were religious, and did bad things anyway, is not some horrible secret that needs to be covered up. It doesn't mean that religion is bad, anymore than Stalin demonstrates that not having a religion is bad. Christianity used to be very anti-Semetic, but thanks in part to absolute disgust at the Holocaust, it's purged itself so completely of that that there is almost no sect in the world where someone can express anti-semetism and not be condemned for it. That's an incredible achievement, not just for Christianity, but for human society.
"And me, I just think that will give us some new thing to have wars about."
I agree. I don't think religion is bad anymore than I think sports are bad. If people express views and beliefs that I think are bad, I can say so. Trying to pin it on religion, or anything else, is a fools game. Worse, it allows the people who actually chose the act to move out of focus: they're the ones responsible.
"It's almost like to argue ID is to say that God is too stupid to design an evolutionary process or too vain to give Man free will upon the Earth."
That's what Kenneth Miller argues in his "Finding Darwin's God" a great book on the controversy. A common analougy is a pool shot: who's the better player, the guy who picks up each and every ball and drops it in the pocket? Or the guy who sinks the whole table in one shot.
I'm not sure I clearly communicated the intent of my car analogy. I was not saying "if car companies were omniscient and omnipotent they could make a safe car". What I'm saying is that it is possible to make a car which has the full capability of safe operation - which cars today do have - and yet the possibility still exists for damage to occur through the use of those machines. Does that mean the car companies created crashes? No. Likewise, there is the possibility that an omnipotent being could create people in such a way that they have the capacity for 'good' living but the possibility of 'evil' living is also present. Was that possibility created? It's a philosophical question, to be sure; if one creates a positive space and therefore a 'negative' space remains, is the 'negative' space a created thing? I cannot say I know all the aspects of that argument but I'm sure philosophers in the past have wrestled with it.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "the incredible burden of evil and suffering that is through no fault of anyones". Now, suffering I can grant you: the physical world is a harsh place. But I do not equate 'suffering' with 'evil'. Evil, in my mind, can only be perpetrated by someone who is also capable of good. Otherwise it is a moot point to talk about 'good' and 'evil'. Now, I make a distinction there between 'pleasant' and 'unpleasant'. A bear eating a person because it is hungry is not 'evil', but it is surely 'unpleasant.' A hurricane destroying something is 'unpleasant', but it is not 'evil.' The only reason people think a murderer (for instance) is evil is because that person is assumed to have the ability to choose to not murder. If a person is incapable of good, then nobody would be offended if that person committed a crime. A hurricane has no choice about being destructive; it just is what it is. (I am unable to contemplate a universe with laws of physics so different that hurricanes would not arise, and, given the current physics, hurricanes will exist and will be destructive).
So, if there is no standard by which to measure 'good' (as in the good vs evil sense, not the 'desirable' sense), is there such a thing as good? I do not know how to answer that question.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
If God made the Universe, then he probably understands how to tweak things with minimal effort. For 'someone' who has existed for 14 billion years, spending a few hundred thousand years to 'tweak' humans into existence wouldn't be a big deal -- and the end result would be indistinguishable from 'natural' evolution.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I mention this because it opens a possible wedge of attack by creationists, namely that mutations in non-reproductive cells won't get passed on and so cannot contribute to evolution.
And your proof of this is.... ?
Horizontal gene transfer to gametes would allow pretty much any genetic material to enter the reproductive cycle, even viable, proven mutations in other parts of the body, or (even more likely) from some other genetic material.
It turns out that genetic material is promiscuous. Bacteria and viruses like to exchange genetic material with all kinds of things, including you and me.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Belief in evolution as a primary cause is just as much an act of religious faith as believing in God, because we observe only the results, not the process itself.
... how evolution created ... may be a poor phrasing, but it certainly doesn't equate to a belief in a super-being as first mover. As described, evolution is a natural process, and belief in natural processes is certainly more rational than believing in God.
I'm not sure where you are going with this. What about those of us who accept the theory of evolution as the most likely description of the process that shapes and changes biospheres?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Have you ever looked into genetic algorithms and genetic programming? There you see the creation of "higher complexity out of thin air" before your very eyes.
But it seems quite understandable that any all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God could allow the evil that has happened to have happened. And saying that it's okay because it's the next life that matters is a cop-out: if this life doesn't matter then why have it at all?
Christians, as daughters and sons of God (1 John 3:1), have holy spirit dwell in you (Acts 2:18). You have the authority to dispel evil (Mark 6:7, 13). God also wants us to share his glory. "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding." (Ephesians 1:7-8).
Since you are given all the authority to rule over evil, what more do you want? You just have to keep in mind that this authority does not come from you, but it is from God. I don't know your circumstance for being unhappy with your life, but I think learning to be a Christian is a long and gradual process, and that you didn't try enough before you quit.
I do know some people who walk with God already enjoy success in their lives, given to them by God's glory. It appears to me that this life is important. I don't know where you get the impression that you can simply look forward to after-life in heaven and waste this life.
A lamb that belongs to God will never be lost.
I once had a signature.
Many evolutionists operate under the faith that evolution occured and it occurred purely through natural processes.
It is not "faith" if it is supported by MOUNTAINS of evidence, as evolution theory is.
No divine or other intervention has been involved.
This is not what most people who actually understand the science say. What they do say is something along the lines of, "There is no evidence of a higher power."
Any attempt to suggest teaching people otherwise is met with stiff and dogmatic resistance.
Again, there is no evidence of the divine, that's why it shouldn't be taught in science class.
It has not been absolutely proved that only natural processes have brought about our current situation, ergo faith is involved.
Science doesn't absolutely prove anything. Your saying it should belies a basic misunderstanding of what science is.
They may believe that all the evidence points to their conclution, but it is still faith.
Just because you (and others of your ilk) continue to say it over and over doesn't make it so. If, at a murder trial, the murder weapon is found at the suspect's home with the suspect's fingerprints on it, the victim's blood is found in the suspect's car, the suspect was seen entering the victim's home just before the time of death and seen leaving just after, and the suspect was the victim's ex-boyfriend, and the victim's friends said she had just broken up with him, is it "faith" to hand down a guilty verdict? If so, you have a very different definition of "faith" than I do (or any dictionary you care to mention).
Why do you set your alarm clock in the morning? Because you have faith that it will work, that the sun will rise, that your job will still exist, etc. You have no absolute proof of this, but you have pretty good evidence that these things will be so.
This is absolute bollocks and leaves me wondering why I even debate with someone like you. Not only would my alarm clock and my company suddenly have to cease to function overnight, the very solar system would have to cease to function. If you call that "faith", then it is a completely different kind of faith from religious faith, and the two shouldn't be compared as you are attempting to do.
But that is not to say that evidence for a creator is moot.
Please offer us some empirical evidence of a deity.
Some are so entrenched that they cannot see anything but what they want to see...
Now there's something we agree upon.
"Intelligent Design" doesn't move anything forward, it is a political movement consisting of nothing but empty speculation based on religion.
/.: why the hell am I here?
Full disclosure: I was raised as a Chinese-Pagan syncretised Buddhism. I was never atheistic because I believed in Buddha and the spiritual world, though there was a time I had strong resentment on Christians because I had a tough time growing up as a teenager and I blamed it on them. I supported evolution, rejected and ridiculed creationism. About a year ago I admitted Christian faith, and I believe the decision was made on an informed basis.
I've lurked on Slashdot much longer than I become a Christian. I've never tried preaching on Slashdot, but it's worth trying.
I once had a signature.
It's God's archenemy, freshman philosophy-major man! ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rubenomnipotenc e.jpg
Some of us are actually interested in the science of evolution, but it is next to impossible to find posts about that in this swamp of pro-contra-creationism posts.
I do not understand what the fuss is about here. I am not talking about the ID-Evo debate. What the good Dr.Thornton seems to have discovered, is only a case of moonlighting, which is well known in biology. Moonlighting is the phenomenon when a single protein fulfills several, often unrelated and even more often unexpected functions in a cell. Biologists are aware of this fact, and hence understand this to be one of the basic ways in which molecular evolution occurs. The fact that an aldosterone receptor can exist before aldosterone is not really surprising. Drug designers are designing molecules all the time for which receptors already exist. Basically, I do not think that it is a novel as the NYtimes would have us beleive. Here is an interesting paper describing several such moonlighting occurences.[Warning: PDF]. Further a presentation for non-biologists on moonlighting is here One of the leading researchers in the field of moonlighting proteins is Dr.Joel Sussman. He works on how the AChE enzyme may be affecting a variety of other aspects in neural cell biology.
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Thus, the real problem here is in the nature of people, because as a society we will always act in a way that actually undermines, to a certain extent, the common good, because we care more about ourselves than other people. If human beings were perfectly loving, there'd be no need for government. Wouldn't *that* be the ideal situation, not some individualistic do-it-yourself world where no one helps you to regain your footing?
You're mistaken. In a perfectly loving world, we'd all be screwed. We'd be copasetic, complacent people with no drive, no skills, no challenges and no drive to ever learn/do anything. I guarentee you one thing, and that's that there is at least something worse than an stupid person, and that's a complacent person.
Don't you think your argument only applies to the Christian God?
God is ignorance.
Some are happier in god; some argue vehemently to defend their position in him.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Accepting evolution does not preclude belief in god, and vice versa. The two are not mutually contradictory.
Evolution and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis are another story, but that's another argument entirely.
For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
I guess I didn't make a very clear post there.
I never said I was unhappy with my life. Actually, I'm quite happy and at peace. I would even say such feelings of peace and hapiness increased when I stopped trying to fit what I saw as contradictions into my head.
I agree that I have authority to rule over evil in my life, and I do my best to keep it under control. The evil I was talking about in my post isn't in my life. Right this very moment there is a child being raped. There is a man being tortured for speaking the truth. There is an adulterer ruining a family and enjoying it. The last light is leaving someone's eyes from starvation, and they never had a chance to experience great joy. And a million more tiny crimes, too. That is the evil I was talking about.
And I agree that this life is important. I believe so quite strongly since I think it's all we have. But I have often heard from Christians, that the attrocities of this life are inconsequential next to the afterlife. As I said, that explanation seems a cop-out.
Cheers.
Might as well fully disclose too: I was born and raised in a strong Christian environment: my grandfather was the pastor of the Pentecostal church in the town I grew up in. He was a good man, too. But by the time I was 18 and had read most of the Bible, the whole thing made a lot more sense as a work of man. And the way the world functioned made much more sense without any guiding force. I'm 32 now, and as time goes on I find more and more peace in my naturalistic beliefs. Even facing death, I'm at peace with the idea of my one brief life. I try to make the most of it, and to help others make the most of theirs.
Cheers.
There is a catch to this. A lot of mutations[I use the term loosely as it is used on Slashdot] occur due to the individuals tendency to acquire them, ie, genetic predisposition.
If somatic cell mutations occur and confer an advantage to the organism, it will presumably manifest as a greater chance for the organism to pass on its genes, and thus pass on the genetic predisposition to acquire that mutation.
One on-field implication of this, is that many types of cancers tend to develop resistance to drugs through identical (!) molecular mchanisms, even though resistance is obviously developed de novo in different individuals with the same type of cancer. This is because the administration of a same drug applies identical selection pressure and thus causes the identical, (apparently) most probable and stable phenotype to appear in the cells.
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
> why are my ears facing forward instead of backwards? i can see forward, so wouldn't the greatest benefit come from having my ears pointed backwards so i could better hear prey coming up from behind?
;-)
You ears face forward so that sounds originating from *behind* you sound different from sounds originating *in front* of you. That way you can determine the direction of a noise source more accurately.
Jeez, I learned that in junior high biology. What the hell were they teaching *you*?
> how is being sexual in nature more conducive to survival?
Dude, were you even AWAKE during biology class?? I guess not....
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
Infinity can not be compared to infinity. Operations between infinite numbers are not defined in mathematics.
;-) number of distinct infinities.
Yes, they are. Pretty well defined, in fact. Some infinities really and truly are bigger than others.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the whole God argument going on around us, but mathematicaly, there an infinite
A fairly simple demonstration that there are at least 2 different ones
More complicated but a demonstration of the fact that there are infinitely many infinities.
Again, pretty complicated but it demonstrates how while operations on infinity are pretty well defined, they can't be understood as well as most people would like.
Okay, here's a contradiction for you:
...including our asses.
:-D
Given: God is omnipotent, which means God is all-powerful and can do anything.
Question: Can God create a stone so heavy that even He cannot lift it?
This is the worst kind of contradiction possible -- a dilemma. If God can make a stone too heavy for Him to lift, then he's not omnipotent! If God can't make a stone too heavy for himself, he's *still* not omnipotent AND he gets embarrassed by us humans! (Ever packed too many books in a large box and discovered you couldn't lift it off the floor?)
While you're mulling that one over, here's something just for shits and giggles:
Given: God is omnipresent, which means God is everywhere and is in everything.
Therefore: God is inside all of us, and is inside all parts of us
Therefore: God has his head up everyone's asses.
And...
If: "Everyone" includes "God"
Then: God has his head up his ass!
That definitely explains why everything is so fucked up here....
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Creationism is pure stupidity. If we are to take the Bible's story of creation literally, which if the TWO should we use. Pick up any Bible, read the two first stories. Both describe God's creation of the world and man, but they contradict each other at several points.
I'm sure the creationists could counter the argument with some theological hand waving, but any reasonable person would understand that you aren't supposed to take these stories literally. They are myths, and myths are meant to be interpreted.
Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
Ribosomes are not proteins. They are mostly RNA with some proteins grafted on. This image shows this fairly clearly.
(See here for more info. Especially the 'Implications' part)
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
No. Operations on infinity are undefined. Operations on cardinals on infinities are defined though, because infinity is reduced to a countable number. In short, inf + n, inf - n, inf * n, inf / n etc are undefinable.
From a mathematical point of view, there is no such thing as 'minimal effort' for God, because God is infinite, and any effort God makes is minimal no matter how big it is (since there is always a bigger effort). That's a classic mistake though: God can not have concepts like 'effort', because 'effort' means spacetime similar to ours. And if you put God in a separate spacetime, then there is something already bigger than God that it is infinite: the universe God is in. For all these reasons, the concept of God is illogical.
From a philosophical point of view, God had interacted many times with humans, after humans were created. As I said, various events in the Holy books describe just that (devine intervention).
Atheism will not cause people to look after themselves" only, but to organize themselves so they can achieve greater things. Now as it is, a large part of people have left themselves "in the hands of God", i.e. open for exploitation.
So with atheism, there wouldn't be a chance for a dictator, because a state would never be in such a bad situation that would allow one person to claim power.
"...who's the better player, the guy who picks up each and every ball and drops it in the pocket? Or the guy who sinks the whole table in one shot."
Hard to tell. The first guy's not even playing pool.
Then again, it's a good analogy. The Creationists aren't even studying science.
Science is not about "truth," it is about probabilities and -- very important -- predictions. You determine the probability that something could happen and predict how it will be seen in the future. That is science, not some abstract, higher notion of "truth."
Evolution predicts that random mutation will give rise to new variations within a species and eventually a new species. This very Slashdot-linked article describes how someone reverse engineered DNA to show us the roadmap it took. How we predicted evolution occurred is being corroborated with evidence from this study.
If, on the other hand, this study found that the DNA sequence showed the opposite, a non-sequential series of steps that could only be explained by outside engineering (i.e., an intelligent designer), then a major aspect of evolution would have been demonstrated false. But it wasn't rendered false. It merely adds to the body of evidence for evolution. The data best fits the evolutionary theory given.
This is how science works: probabilities, predictions, and falsifiability. Now your turn.
How can Intelligent Design:
If you cannot come up with a reasonable answer for all three of those questions, you are not talking about science; you are talking about theology and dogma.
FYI: Archaeopteryx is indeed a transitory species. We are all transitory species. There is no such thing as a "finished" species. It was only probably not in the direct lineage between dinosaurs and modern birds like previously... *cough* *cough* predicted *cough* *cough*
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Thanks for posting -- I do have a quick question;
Why isn't there a gradient of species today between various species? Even, say between man and ape. There seem to be places where man and ape have coexisted for many thousands of years, but there is no apparent species gradient.
"Ensatina eschscholtzi" appears to be a species in the midst of evolution. However, it rather proves the point; both subspecies in question are "salamanders." Given time, enough changes and species splits could occur such that something completely different would arise. However, you'd then have several hundred species in gradient, or so I would think.
Can you shed some light on this?
(For the sake of the discussion, here's my viewpoint; Creationist for logical and philosophical reasons, but happy to change given a decent explanation not based on faith. I already know the Bible isn't quite the "perfect word of God", so it's not a crisis of faith for me to accept the evolutionary mechanism.)
Thanks for your offer. I hope I've worded my question clearly.
Chris
cej102937
It may be that that is simply the way that God chose to do things. It is god who mad man in his image, not the other way 'round. Who am I to (or you) say that God is required to do something a specific way. I'm just looking at what (s)he seems to have done.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Well, if you think of the rules of the game pool as sort of like the laws of nature, then some people might be impressed that someone is violating them: those lifted balls are miracles.
But then, of course, you remember that the laws of nature would have to be things that God laid down in the first place. So now we have God violating his own laws to accomplish something that he apparently couldn't do by playing by his own rules.
And if you try to fit all this into what we know of the history of life on earth, a history without evolution, what we end up with is a tinkerer: a God who has to intervene CONSTANTLY in his own natural world to fix a constantly failing and unsustainable creation.
Were I a believer, I don't see how I could ever imagine such a circumstance as being particularly majestic for an all powerful being: bizarre is more like it. But then that's the problem with creationism: it's not a theory that's thought through to its logical conclusions. It's a very brief smokescreen meant to distract, meant to get people to stop thinking and back to just affirming.
They're not undefinable. They're all infinity for whichever infinity you're using.
Taking infinity to be Aleph0 whch is what most people mean by it (i.e. the cardinality of the integers) all of those operations work just fine and the result is Aleph0.
2^Aleph0 is a strictly larger infinity. That operation is also perfectly well defined.
I think you're forgetting a few things. Nation sized entities have never really gone to war for religious reasons. Individuals though, and even fairly large groups engage in violence all the time over religion. It's also a nice method of convincing your populous to go to war (for other reasons).
Here's the Wikipedia site on sectarian violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarian_violence
Note that the Irish situation is semi-contemporary (although it's calmed down a lot in the last few years) and the Shia-Sunni Muslim conflict, which admittedly isn't really western, is definitely ongoing. Note also that sectarian violence is between members of the SAME religion with only slightly differing beliefs! There are lots of mosques, temples and churches vandalized even in North America every year though.
I'm not sure I clearly communicated the intent of my car analogy. I was not saying "if car companies were omniscient and omnipotent they could make a safe car". What I'm saying is that it is possible to make a car which has the full capability of safe operation - which cars today do have - and yet the possibility still exists for damage to occur through the use of those machines. Does that mean the car companies created crashes? No.
First, there isn't any truly safe way to operate a car, and second, if car companies were omniscient and omnipotent, then yes, they created crashes, since they foresaw every future crash of their device and had the power to design away from each crash or to reach out their hand and stop each crash as it occurred. Likewise, is it impossible to imagine an omnipotent God who gives humankind free action to do anything except that he reaches out his hand to stop evil? We can chose to drive to Chicago, or New York, but not through the neighbor's kitchen.
Are natural forces evil? I don't think that's relevant. Saying that kids dying of cancer is not evil does not explain why an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent god allows it to happen. If God is omnipotent, that physical laws are just a useful fiction, there is none in reality except God's will.
So, if there is no standard by which to measure 'good' (as in the good vs evil sense, not the 'desirable' sense), is there such a thing as good? I do not know how to answer that question.
I think there isn't really a standard. If we were a species or culture that cared nothing for life, would murder and cancer matter to us, would murder still be evil?
Are you justified in valuing the life of your family more than a Pakistani family around the globe?
Imagine a Pentagon planner. Information about a terrorist safe house is forwarded to him, and he gets to make the call among three options: don't strike, strike while warning neighboring families, possibly tipping of terrorists, or strike without warning.
Now imagine by grace of God the call is misrouted to the office of a man who's family lives next to the house. Don't you think his evaluation will be different than the Pentagon planner? Can there be any objective standard to decide who's action would be more "good" and less "evil"?
Play Command HQ online
Natural disasters may now be partially alleviated through choices that civilizations made, but this was not the case for most of our history, and is not always the case now. So how do you explain that in the majority of cases, natural disasters represent an evil for which there is no corresponding action of will?
In any case, the phrase "worse than it should have been" gives the game away. Even making the best possible choices, there would be suffering. An all loving, all knowing, all powerful God could easily take away all suffering that is not directly caused by free will, yet He does not. Therefore, He must not be all loving, all knowing, and all powerful.
If God is all powerful, he could create free will that was free of the possibility of evil. For instance, free will is now free of the possibility of flavenfurgen (a meaningless concept I just made up.) You can't choose to commit flavenfurgen. Yet even without this choice, you have free will. An all powerful God could create a free will that could not conceive of, let alone choose evil. To state otherwise is to admit that God is not all powerful.
Just because you cannot conceive of how this could be does not mean that an omniscient God could not conceive of it or do it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The research article did not mention ID. An accompanying commentary, written by someone else entirely, did.
Unless Republican is synonymous with "historian" or "logician" I'll have to take that with a gargle of salt. :)
Actually it was meant as sort of a joke. A lot of lefties around here assume Republicans and Nazis are the same and I thought it entertaining to make some humor of it for a change.
As far as the history goes, I used to be avidly interested in World War II and how the Nazis came to pass, and I don't recall a source for Hitler having an epiphany by reading Martin Luther. I don't seek to defend protestantism, but, for the historical accuracy, I do believe that Hitler seems to have formed his mission at a young age - he speaks of being caught up with Wagnerian Operas and had already identified with being a historic figure as a child. When World War I broke out, Hitler was more than delighted to volunteer and go. With that said, the region was already violently anti-semetic even at the turn of the 20th century, if not earlier than that. You almost don't need a dramatic moment to make a Hitler out of that batch. You just need a grandiose kid, permissive recognition that a particular minority is a problem, and boom, you got yourself a Hitler.
The question is, how pervasive and how deep is that general labelling of a minority as a problem is necessary? Right now if you walked into a bar, in the USA, and said that, "I think we should pull all the troops out of the middle east and just nuke all billion of them", a lot of people would agree with you, but I still don't think we're not at the cattle car point yet - the Germans during their Nazi heyday would see things like Abu Ghraib as harmless entertainment by rightful exploitation of an evil but weaker race. But, left unchecked and for a few decades more, who knows, maybe a genocidal war against the middle east of the sort that Hitler waged against Poland and then Russia is not out of reach for the United States.
I agree with the rest of your post completely.
This is my sig.
Windows 1.0 couldn't possibly have mutated into Windows XP.
Large changes come in small parts. A little less fur here, a little more defined a nose there.
I mean, seriously. You'd think you've never seen evidence of that sort of action in a retirement plan.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
if you believe god is both omnipotent and omniscient there can be no free will. by creating a being or object god already knows every interaction that object or being will have and it's effect on the universe.
what reason would a purely good being have for willfully creating a being of pure evil? unless it either had to be done as balance or to prepare things for some inevitable occurance which even God cannot prevent.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I don't explain or attempt to explain. I cannot fathom all the possible reasons for a natural disaster to happen. Punishment might be one, living in the wrong areas and destroying the hbbitat might be another. A natural disaster might be the direct cause of anothers actions completly around the world . Skyscrapers, man made damns and other objects can cause earthquakes wich can in effect cause tsunamis wich both can have devestating concequences. The perception of evil also is reletive to the opinion. I saw the Tsunami and Katrina and though great. in one place we have clensed the earth of over population while in another we have found government shortcommings and waist that should ensure lesser effects of furture catastrophies. Others looked and though how could this happen.
But who ever said the (a)god was just all loving, all knowing, and all powerful. The bible clearly outlines a malicious god who takes vengence for not aligning your free will with his spirit. This is displayed before any o fthe softer sides of it. Katrina had warnings, people didn't listen to these warnings. The california quakes had warnings and no one listened (that they were in an earthquake prone area and minor quakes happened in the previous months). Almost all disasters have some sort of warning that we just don't pay attention to or can fault on someone else. This reminds me of a story.
A preacher recieved news that a flood was comming, He said the lord will take care of him. Still everyone else started evacuating. then the waters rose anf a guy in a boat came by asking him if he wanted a ride to saftey. The preacher replied "no thankyou, god will take care of me" The water got higher and he was sitting on the rof of the church. Along came a helicopter wich lowered a rope and the preacher replied "no thankyou, god will take care of me". Well after he died and went to heaven, he asked why didn't god take care of me. An angel replied, "he sent warning of the impending flood, you refused the help. He sent a boat and you refused to get in. He sent a helicopter and you refused the airlift to safety" "now you are in heaven when didn't he take care of you?.
He could create it but it wouldn't serve a purpose. This is the common theme I see when people disclaim a god. First they cite somethign they don't agree with and say if god was real he wouldn't have let it happen. Actualy that is greed and at best only shows you have an opinion about whatever you disagree with. People understand the good and bad of actions. This is why we need something to contrast the possibilities of our actions. suffering can teach us lessons. Lessons that aren't being learned. The first time you grab a hot stove, you "suffer" and think twice about grabbing a hot stove again. The same can be said about other lessons in life. The problem is insteead of learing the lesson, we focuse on how a god could let somethign happen or if he actualy exist because to happened. The book of job watches a god torture a guy to win a bet based on free will. In the end he realized a wealth and riches.
The article doesn't actually mention ID.
On the other hand, ID has leaked into the scientific establishment. This is a problem; it's religiously-based pseudoscience. It pollutes research in a sneaky way - because without thinking too much about it, it's plausable.
I've heard arguments here and there: It's impossible to create a DNA strand complex as a human's by throwing random numbers at a wall for centuries (like they never heard of genetic AI techniques); an 'indivisible structure' couldn't have evolved (like they never heard of microbiological repurposing); while microevolution has been proven, macroevolution hasn't (driven (by survival) small change * time == large change, guys).
Non of 'em have quite flown with me.
The fundamentalists survive mostly on spreading FUD; all the IDers have left is the uncertainty and doubt aspects (Fear of God's Divine Wrath isn't there). We can't let that sort of shit grind our scientific community to a halt. It's not fair to science OR God.
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Anyhow, if you want more insight to the processes behind everything (and it sounds like you have a clue anyhow), read the book "FAB" by Neil Gershenfeld (ISBN 0-465-02745-8, hardcover). In the last section, entitled "The Future", the author discusses how ribosomes, messenger RNA and transfer RNA work together to create proteins, one of the basic building blocks of life. When it gets right down to it, this combination is nothing more than a very funky version of a UTM (Universal Turing Machine), where the ribosomes are akin to the read/write head, and the messanger RNA/transfer RNA serve the role of the read/write head encoding and "infinite tape", with the output being new protein. A similar mechanism (to a ribosome) called DNA polymerase actually does copying of DNA.
If you could figure out how all of this work (simple thing there, uhuh), in theory you could build (grow?) anything (provided it was protein based, likely). If you could create a silicon (or other hard material) nanomachine analog, you could construct nearly anything.
Yeah - in each of our's and other species cells lie something very similar, if not the equivalent of, Turing Machines - miniature computers, whose instruction set is a series of codons in a certain sequence. When that sequence is "off" (either through chemical degradation or cosmic rays, or similar), the computer mis-translates, which in effect become "mutations". Some of these mutations may be helpful, some may be deadly. Ultimately, it is these mutations which serve to move things forward in harmony with evolution.
There are many other books I could reccommend you read as well - I have posted lists of these here on /. in the past, so I am not going to rehash it (suffice to say there are several). I suggest you track my lists down and read those books as well. Please note that I don't consider FAB to be one of these books, but it is a good, quick read - something I ran across at the library as I was thinking about building a 3-axis CNC milling machine...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Dunno about you, but I took the biology classes, saw the processes, grew legs on the head of a fly.
Ok, that was kinda graphic, but you get my point. Where, in Sunday School, do they let you speak a small colony of bacteria into life? And no, I'm not making fun of your breath.
Anyway, the point is this: Science actually empowers those who study it. There is no belief; in fact, the main tenet of science is disbelief of possibly flawed results, and encouragement to test them.
This is not some hermit in a closed room whiling away his time writing about the ineffabilities of life, then promptly forbidding others to eff them. Science attempts to explain HOW to eff those ineffabilities, and asks anyone who has the brains to help in the effing.
Hm. I just said that aloud and it sounds a bit dirty.
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And
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Question... Where did God come into this conversation?
No, seriously, I want to know. Cos I'm pretty sure this article is about a scientific find concerning fossil record evidence about evolution.
Bringing God into it is basically a null statement: waste of space.
Of course, it's possible you ARE a waste of space. It happens; there's a large number of people on this planet who happen to be wastes of space. They're called business majors.
You're not a business major, now are you?
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*yawn*
No, really man. If you're going to be a whack job, you should be posting on slashdot, not he-
Shit, I'm on the wrong site again.
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Actually, it does. Many people live a life where they wait God to come and save them. The result is that the governments of the countries where these people live in take advantage of those people.
Wait - you forget something. What you are talking about is the classical dogmatic religion with high priests, rules, and non-thinking. You have to differentiate here. Belief is not the same as religion.
One should find out what to believe by oneself, NOT by hearing some old priest reading from a thick book. Everybody asks "why am I here", "what is the purpose of life?" etc. these questions, while being non-addressable by science, are valid. The point is that one has to find these answers by actively thinking about it, searching for them etc. As a result, you start looking at yourself, asking who you really are, what you really want in life, questions which are VERY important because they shape a person. This involves a LOT of critical thinking (especially about yourself - one of the hardest things to do), and has the side benefit that you become a critical and very self-aware person who is hard to manipulate. Thus, IMO belief is much closer to philosophy than religion.
But what is religion? Organized, preprocessed belief (which is actually an oxymoron). This is what makes religions so dangerous: high priest X already thought about things, or got wisdom from God/Allah/whatever, you are supposed to follow this - and DO NOT think about it or even question it! (This is why I don't see Buddhism as religion; its far too personal and does not think for you.)
As a consequence, most people are actually doing things the wrong way. And the only reaction is the complete opposite: Atheism. Its ok if you get to become an atheist after thinking about things, and finding your way, but its NOT ok if one chooses atheism simply because religions are so evil.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
If this is a troll: nice try.
If this is serious: read Popper.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Your logic is ill-conceived.
Just a few quick points that seem to escape you (I have very little time or I would quite enjoy piercing every single comment you made with mere logic and fact). The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. This time-frame is impossible for the majority of humans to grasp. Instant and spontaneous species generation would be impossible to witness. Thankfully, there are libraries filled with evidence to guide us. Yes, you were taught wrong. Science is not about truths as stated (P.S. Gravity has not been "proven" as you suggest either. Not one piece of evidence, nada, zilch, etc... Science still does not know gravity's origin or mechanisms, just like evolution).
Most of your arguments are spastic drivel with nary a spot of logic. You seem to know nearly nothing about the ways of discovery. None. Just realize this, we do not know the truth about most things, but we do leave the door open to discovery. In other words, I leave the space open to have the blanks filled in via science, whereas other seem to want to plug them in with "magical creatures" such as a "maker", because it's easy to do (see all throughout history, and religion's losing battle with science). It's the difference between having the answers spoon fed to me and eating it with a heavy dose of indoctrinated "faith", or realizing that millions of years of human discovery and understanding about this Universe we live in has been the only guiding light with regard to discovery. The choice is clearly simple for me...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
I agree that I have authority to rule over evil in my life, and I do my best to keep it under control. The evil I was talking about in my post isn't in my life. Right this very moment there is a child being raped. There is a man being tortured for speaking the truth. There is an adulterer ruining a family and enjoying it. The last light is leaving someone's eyes from starvation, and they never had a chance to experience great joy. And a million more tiny crimes, too. That is the evil I was talking about.
If you know you have the authority, it should be your best interest to tell other people that, they too, can have this authority if they believe in God, and to teach them to use it. A Christian should not keep one's faith to oneself (see Matthew 25:14-30).
I once had a signature.
Before claiming you'd researched it. Had you done so, you'd realize that right in the first paragraph, it says this
"The saber-tooth morphology is an excellent example of convergent evolution as it occurred repeatedly and independently in at least four distinct mammalian groups."
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
my grandfather was the pastor of the Pentecostal church in the town I grew up in.
If my understanding of Pentecostalism is correct, they have an emphasis that persons baptised by the holy spirit can speak in tongues, especially one for a mystical language.
I think this is a misunderstanding of Acts 2. The disciples, upon receiving the tongue of fire, spoke in tongues of existing languages spoken by nearby regional people: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, ..., Cretans and Arabs. These were not random utterances or a mystical language. The purpose of that is so the disciples can reach out to different ethnical groups and spread the gospel.
Furthermore, in 1 Corinthian 14, Paul addresses the issue of speaking a mystical language. Someone in the Pentacostal church should have noticed this.
I once had a signature.
Go ahead and tell all the victims of the tsunami or hurricane katrina about the lessons they need to learn from their experience. Not all suffering has a purpose. In any case, the God you describe is not something I would ever worship.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That may all be the case. It doesn't really matter to me, though. All Christian religions can be found in conflict with the bible on a point or two since it has conflicting information in itself. My reason for not believing is more fundamental than that. I don't believe because it just doesn't seem true.
Cheers.
But I don't get the authority from God. I get it naturally as a birthright. I can choose to be good or evil. And I've chosen good. Of course I try to spread this to others, but that doesn't change my original point: that life on earth is a terrible thing for some innocent people and I can't fathom a creator who would allow such things to happen.
Cheers.
But who said they are suffering? This again is a reletive term.
Do what you want. i wouldn't ever worship a god to begin with.
Here is a lesson to learn though, Don't build your home directly in the path of a hurrican prone shoreline. and if you do, expect to lose your home. Don't build you home directly around a fault line in the middle of an ocean. More importantly, When warnings about somethign bad is about to happen or is happening, listen and seek higher ground. Don't rush to the beach with a video camera trying to film it or surf the wave. There was warnings in the tsunami as well as Katrina and some people did the exact oposite of those warnings.
You clearly have a contradiction. You think certain birth rights are inherently yours naturally for granted, but you blame the lack of these birth rights on a creator.
You don't sound like a true athiest to me. If you are, you would shrug off the terrible things that happen to innocent people as something by chance or consequential of natural law, which serve no basis to prove or disprove the existence of God.
In the atheism framework, the ability to choose between good and evil is purely incidental. You do not have it as a birth right. Moreover, neither good nor evil has a meaning. If everything happens by chance, then these tags---"good" and "evil", "suffering" and "joyce"---are simply assigned to certain things arbitrarily. In fact, this is how a search engine sees the world.
Clearly, you can see any discussion in this framework falls into a dead end, and no more meaningful discussion can take place.
You will only find a solution if you're willing to follow the way of God.
I once had a signature.
It looks like you don't know the bible well enough to claim that something it says "doesn't seem true."
Christian religions contradict the bible on a point or two because of someone's misunderstanding of the bible. It has nothing to do with the bible itself.
Suppose I give truth tables of "AND", "OR" gates to a group of monkeys, but none of them can derive the correct truth table for "A AND (B OR C)", then is my truth table at fault?
I once had a signature.
You are quite possibly one of the most callous people I have ever conversed with. Not that that's wrong or bad, but I think you are missing out on one of the greatest feelings a human can have: empathy.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I tend to agree with what Albert said when quoting what some other guy said about free will, "A man cannot will what he wills". For a detailed explaination see the books "Godel, Esher, Bach" by D. Hofstadter and "Unweaving the rainbow" by R. Dawkins.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I really don't see empathy as a great thing. It is more like a cripling disease then anythign great. When it aligns itself with my needs, i see ampathey as a tool but then again that what most people (especialy politicions) do.
Wow. Just.... Wow. The scariest part is that you think most people are like you. Look up the definition of sociopath sometime, see what it says about empathy.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lets face it, the majority of people with empathy are pushing an agenda. There are a few legit people who see someoen elses suffering and fell for them. The majority of people though see it as a way to exploit an agenda. Now lets be real, compasion and empathy are two different things and While some would say they are inseperatable, It is far easier to have compasion then empathy.
But of course compasion is harder then empathy because it generaly requires some type of action. Compasion can also be exploited by others but at least someone requiring support/help gets somethign from the deal.
There's no contradiction: I don't blame anything on the creator. I'm just saying there isn't one. If there was, he'd be a jerk, not a good guy as most religions claim. That's the contradiction and it doesn't fall on my side of the fence :)
You obviously don't know many athiests. Athiests have a wide range of philosophical beliefs -- being an athiest doesn't mean one believes any particular thing, just that one doesn't believe in a god. And that is most certainly the case for me. Yet without god I can still form concepts of good and evil and have great compassion towards my fellow man. I don't believe in destiny but I don't believe in everything being random either: I believe in will, which man exercises to great effect. I believe in responsibility for ones actions.
The world seems far to big and complex for any single minded God. That's just our only easy way of comprehending things: to project a personality onto the natural world. But it just doesn't line up once you dig down.
Cheers.
I'd be willing to put money that I know the Bible as well as you. I certainly know it far better than most people who call themselves Christians. Of course, it's so ambiguous and believers are so comfortable with loose interpretation that you can never really demonstrate a contradiction to a believer's satisfaction, but if you spend a few minutes trying to reconcile the laws of the old testament with the attituded of the new testament, you'll see what I mean. Of course someone will always say that the new replaces the old, but Jesus himself said he did not come to change the law. And some will say that the old only applied to the Jews. But in any case if I saw Jews stoning their children for misbehaving, even before Christ came, I'd have a problem with that, as would you. And the idea of a God who punishes generation after generation for the sins of the parents, yet is somehow called merciful and loving. And even the very core idea of someon dying on a cross cleansing other people's sins. As if a crucifiction several thousand years ago has anything to do with some guy beating his wife today. It doesn't make a lick of sense.
But it doesn't have to. People just want some static framework for life so they don't have to try to fit the complexity of the world in their heads. And religion does a pretty good job of that for the most part. But it's pretty obvious that's all it's for if you think about it.
Cheers.