Evolution of Mammals Re-evaluated

AaxelB writes "A study described in the New York Times rethinks mammalian evolution. Specifically, that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs had relatively little impact on mammals and that the steps in mammals' evolution happened well before and long after the dinosaurs' death."

Comments

What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most paleontologists now think that birds descended from dinosaurs. So in a sense, even dinosaurs in one form escaped the calamity.

Don't forget varanus komodoensis ... and Strom Thurman, he died out only four years ago and was the most prominent organism to escape the icy grasp of natural selection!

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Dinosaurs were created on day 6 of the creation week approximately 6,000 years ago, along with other land animals, and therefore co-existed with humans."

"...Dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants;" and "pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning."

"Dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood;" and "some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark still roam the earth today."

And you can look that up!

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[BigFoot48]

How big was the support Ark that contained all the food that the dinosaurs, elephants, hippos, alligators, lions, polar bears and kitty cats required for 40 days? Saying God made them diet is cheating!

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Monokeros]

Easy. Elephants, hippos, alligators, lions, polar bears, and kitty cats were the food for the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs made their way through the dragons, unicorns, hobbits and fairies by the time the flood ended and the rest were spared. They're living on a ranch in Montana now.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[arminw]

....Saying God made them diet is cheating!......

The biblical record states that the animals come to Noah. It wouldn't be cheating if all those animals were babies or at least very young. There is nothing that says they had to be fully grown. Such little animals would eat much less and eventually grow up to reproduce.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

nowhere in the Bible does it say all the animals were full-grown adults. The dietary needs as well as the amount of sheer space would be well minimized if the animals onboard were very young.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[iminplaya]

They're living on a ranch in Montana now.

"Gonna be a dental floss tycoon"

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[truckaxle]

The biblical record states that the animals come to Noah.

The Noachian flood is falsifiable on so many different levels - it really only takes a few minutes of unbiased thinking.

Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.

Or better yet on the other end. Why is there *strong* geographic patterns of species distribution. For example, how did the marsupials almost exclusively arrive in Australia?). Biogeography, is only one of many different conclusive evidences that discount the Flood story.

Such little animals would eat much less and eventually grow up to reproduce.

I dunno I would not want to feed, baby elephants or grizzly bears, let alone baby Sauropods.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[wiredlogic]

And you can look that up!

"Conservapedia". That's a good one. Of course, I had to go to an authoritative source to find out more facts about this aberration.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[wiredlogic]

The Noachian flood is falsifiable on so many different levels - it really only takes a few minutes of unbiased thinking.

I'm not a creationist here, but there is a theory that a significant flood of the Black Sea happened around 5600 BC. This would would have likely wiped out many settlements in the affected areas and have been recorded by the sirvivors as a significant event. While this is not a flood of truly global scale, it is a likely source for the Noah story.

With regard to the dinosaurs. I always thought that the explanation is that they didn't get on the ark and, subsequently, they all went the way of the unicorn.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Conservapedia". That's a good one. Of course, I had to go to an authoritative source [wikipedia.org] to find out more facts about this aberration. Liberal scum! go to a real source for authoritative information!

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

I don't find that flood story explanation is that compelling. There certainly was a local flood in the area. Most civilizations tend to settle next to water and water tends to have floods. However, beyond this I see little to no evidence that there was or even needs to be a historical source for a literary myth. Noah's Ark is almost certainly a rehashing of the Epic of Gilgamesh from the Sumerians and Babylonians. It is entirely possible that idea of a major flood comes from such an event. It is highly suggestive, but beyond providing very minor details for the setting it conveys almost nothing of the story. The source of the idea for the setting of the story has nothing to do with the setting itself much less the story proper. Such a comment does not explain any part of the 'why' in the question why does the story exist or any of the events in the story. It only suggest why they think floods might exist.

Well, Noah's ark is a myth through and through. Everything from about Genesis 1 to Exodus 40 is entirely fiction (probably true even through Revelations with an extremely minor caveated exception for Hezekiah, which actually has a secondary external source to verify some claims). The reason why the "dinosaurs missed the ark" isn't an acceptable answer is because biblical literalists take the Bible literally. The Bible says all the land animals got on the ark and all the land animals lived. So creationists jump through a huge number of hoops to save the fish who would be crushed by the water or explode because of the altered salt content, stop the plants from dying out, restoring the ecosystems to their previous state, putting all the different animals in the specific places that only they exist, explaining fossils, and providing a way for the dinosaurs to live... even though they went extinct 64 million years ago (save the birds which are part of a certain branch) and certainly aren't around today.

So oddly enough, to cling to a couple throw away words in a myth they insist the dinosaurs were alive and happy the last time Noah saw them, which would have been about the same time as the laws of physics were changed to make rainbows exist (Genesis 9:13) as a way of saying sorry for killing everybody (all-knowing deities should know better).

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

My question is what color was the sky prior to Noah's flood?

Oddly enough, in the story, after God drowns everything for being completely evil. Man, woman, child, infant, fetus... all dead. God feels really really bad about it. Apparently he didn't think it through or know what was going to happen so in Genesis 9:9-13 he makes rainbows exist as a way to say, "I'm really sorry and will never do it again." -- However, rainbows are produced by a fairly trivial byproduct of the diffusion of white light through a medium. This is roughly why we have a blue sky. The light from the sun is diffused and the blue light is diffused more than the other colors. However, if this diffusion didn't exist before God screwed up by drowning everybody and everything (seems like a better solution than later sacrificing Himself to Himself to pay Himself for the debt mankind owes to Him and worse than just not keeping a grudge against people who didn't do anything wrong but somehow get the blame for some other mythological couple doing something wrong without the facilities to tell right from wrong), what color was the sky?

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[toadlife]

One small correction that doesn't refute your point. It *rained* for 40 days, but after the rain stopped, the Ark was adrift for several months before finding land again.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. Elephants, hippos, alligators, lions, polar bears, and kitty cats were the food for the dinosaurs. Well, seeing how I have personally seen elephants, hippos, alligtors lions, polar bears and kitty cats, but never a dinosaur (or dragon, unicorn, hobbit or fairy), I suspect it might have actually been the other way around...

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[jotok]

Just a quick question, since you seem to have a ready answer--

When you say that these events are "not true," do you mean that it's not true in the sense that the literalists think it IS true? Ie, you think it is a story or a myth or something, but definately not literally true?

Or, do you take a more extreme position that absolutely nothing in the stories is true?
I'm thinking of Aesop's fables, where the story is almost certainly made up (as I do not know any talking foxes who desire grapes) and yet describes a truism of some kind.

As a Catholic I was taught that, so far as Genesis goes, the argument over whether or not events ocurred exactly as described was a waste of time. Rather, the "takeaway" from Genesis is that the earth (the universe, I suppose) is a made thing, with a specific purpose, and that it was generally considered "very good" although people have an innate tendency to fuck it up. Noah's flood is a story about obedience and God's propensity to pull a Joe Pesci from time to time, moreso than a literal account of the fate of this or that species.

Do you believe that these things are also "not true," and if so, in what meaning of the phrase?

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[steelfood]

The dieties in the old testament are not the all-powerful, all-knowing Diety in the new testament. The god in the old (who admits he is actually one among many in the first commandment through forbidding of the worship of the others) might be significantly more powerful than a mere human, and immortal to boot, but not nearly as "perfect" as the God in the new. Attempts to reconcile the two would only result in numerous logical inconsistencies. Why, for example, would an omniscient diety need to test believers. The omniscient already knows whether Abraham would sacrifice his own son. Further, if the diety of the old is not omniscient and perfectly good, then how did the death of Jesus transform said diety into one who is omniscient and perfectly good. And why was magic commonplace and an accepted part of life in the old but considered taboo in the new? Did said diety suddenly revise his stance when he ascended from mere god-dom to God-dom after the death of his supposed son?

Don't forget that Christianity was historically a weapon used to control the masses. In order to control people through belief, original thought must be extinguished. Those are the easiest people to control: the ones who are so desperate for something--anything that might bring meaning to their life that they'll eat up every lie the controllers tell in order to keep them in line and remain in power.

The tale of Noah's ark is littered with signs of ignorance. Certainly, a flood could have happened way back when, and someone could have built a giant ark to live upon before that flood, and that person could have loved and kept all sorts of animals on said ark, but to say that the flood covered the whole world, and all the animals of the world were in the ark, would be quite impossible. Human technology and dominance has never been more advanced, and such a feat today would not be possible, simply because we have not yet categorized all the animals in the world, nor are we capable of building self-contained environments wherein the species within would survive for a long period of time. Both are due to the lack of knowledge, something that cannot be reconciled by the non-omniscient old testament diety. That, and even if both the knowledge and technology were sufficient at that time, such an ark would be of a fair enough size that it would have left enough traces for us to easily validate its existence. As such, we still don't know where it is, if there ever was one.

Personally, if the knowledge and technology existed for such a creation as described in the old testament, I would think that Noah actually took the ark and his family into space and never came back. After all, who would want to live on a planet that's controlled by such a wrathful diety in the first place?

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Yoozer]

The Noachian flood is falsifiable on so many different levels - it really only takes a few minutes of unbiased thinking.

And the idea of having 8 people shovel out massive amounts of manure. Every day. Goodness, what a job.

And the idea that if you rise all the waters you'll get a pressure-cooker of an atmosphere.

Not to mention the structural integrity of the boat.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Fordiman]

We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon - Only way to fit five-thousand species of mammal on the same boat...

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a man is hungry, because of his diety, should he be abolished for steeling his food?

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[rtb61]

The end of the last ice age, was an ever more severe flooding event. Sea levels rose 130m, and a lot of that water came down flooded rivers. The likely trigger for the end of the ice age would have been a sufficient drop in sea levels to allow for the break down of methane hydrates.

This could have combined with the decomposition of a huge amounts of debris being dumped into the oceans as a result of flooding generating even more methane, which results on the flooding of low lying coastal plains, generating even more methane. A global event for a global story. Inland flooding as a result of rainwater and melt water run off and would have been just as severe as coastal flooding.

Plagiarism has existed through out history, if it is a good yarn, and it works with the public, all they do is change the good guys and the bad guys to suit the rulers of the day and to get the message across that supports their ideologies.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Peter La Casse]

Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.

Magic.

Oh, you don't believe in magic? Then you don't need any more reason to disbelieve that a magical being caused a worldwide flood, but you'll need harder questions than those to convince people who do believe in magic that it doesn't really exist.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[gr18563]

Wow can we have one discussion about the actual topic without it degrading into a "bash the creationist" campiagn. This is sad you know. Just drop it and get back ontopic.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Princeofcups]

> Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.

And don't forget about the ducks. http://fourdinnersblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/tyrann y-of-ducks.html

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Citizen of Earth]

Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.

And once there, how did Noah have room for over 1.25-million different species of animals on his boat? Did Noah save the plants? How did they get there?

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[jerralb]

Well the dimensions of the ark itself come from Genesis 6:15:

450ft long, 75ft wide, 45ft high.

Or about 1.5M ft^3.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[arminw]

.....Why, for example, would an omniscient diety need to test believers.....

For you to even ask such a question shows ignorance and shallow thinking. Does a teacher test students for his own benefit? Does he not test them for the benefit of the student? God gives tests or allows testing so we can find out where we are lacking in education and character. If you find a wallet full of $100 bills on the sidewalk, you are the one that finds out something about your honesty and integrity, depending on what your actions are.

Noah did not have to go and gather animals, they came to him. Noah did not close up the ark, but God specifically did. Your underlying premise is that either God is a myth or that at best, is uninvolved in his creation.

(.....controlled by such a wrathful diety .....)

Most people, you being one, criticize the Bible, having never read it, let alone carefully studied it with an open mind. If you had, you would read passages like:

Exodus 34:6-7 And the LORD passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah! Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty , visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons, and on the sons of sons, to the third and to the fourth generation.

God hates evil, but loves people. The absence of good is evil, just as the absence of light is darkness. God lets us choose, but also tells us what the consequences of our choices will be. Noah warned his generation for 120 years. Finally the flood did come. It is predicted that the next world wide judgment will be by fire. We have developed the technology to destroy the world by nuclear fire. It was used to wipe out two cities and will be used again.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[arminw]

.....My question is what color was the sky prior to Noah's flood?.....

You are asking the wrong question. It should be: "Did it not ever rain before the flood?" To make a rainbow, the color of the sky is irrelevant. It takes only rain drops and sunlight. Since the sun did shine before the flood, it must have been the absence of rain that prevented rainbows before the flood.

In order for rain to happen, two things are needed. 1) a low enough temperature and 2) some particles in the saturated air around which drops can form. If conditions before the flood were such that BOTH of these requirements never were met, then there would have been no rain. We are in fact told in Gen 2:5-6 "For the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. 6 But there went up from the earth a mist and watered all the face of the ground."

Since you are ignorant by something as simple as to how a rainbow is formed, it doesn't surprise me that you show ignorance in your understanding of God and the Bible.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[arminw]

.....how did Noah have room for over 1.25-million different species of animals on his boat....

If you would read the Bible more carefully, you would realize that the word "species" is never mentioned. It is a fact that all of the world's dogs, for example, can be bread from two generic dogs, over not all that many centuries. There are many different species of sparrows, but they can all come from a single pair. The Bible uses the word "kinds" which is not an exact scientifically defined term.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[truckaxle]

If you would read the Bible more carefully, you would realize that the word "species" is never mentioned.

Not surprising since the concept did not exist at the time of writing.

It is a fact that all of the world's dogs, for example, can be bread from two generic dogs, over not all that many centuries.

Dogs are a species! No one is suggesting that the Ark contained the Boston Terriers and Siberian Huskies.

There are over 300,000 different species of beetles! If the Ark only contained a pair of beetles and all of today's beetles originated from that pair you would have some very very rapid .... get ready for it .... Evolution.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, a disclaimer. I'm agnostic, though I was raised religious. Graduated from Christian high school, even. And in that high school, they taught us that God probably had Noah take young dinosaurs, ones that would have been smaller than full-grown, but old enough to reproduce once they got off the ark. As one of my teachers pointed out, a T-Rex egg is about the size of a football, so the T-Rex coming out of that egg would have been not too much bigger.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[powerpants]

If I had mod points, you'd get one (a good one).

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[SourGrapes]

So you're aware, the Bible doesn't say that God created the rainbow after the flood, it just says that He used the rainbow to signify His new covenant with Noah subsequent to it. The implication that there were no rainbows prior to the flood doesn't exist in the text.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you please quit trying to apply logic to the Bible? You're making my head hurt!

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

Pfft. Just about everybody knows how rainbows are formed, and why. And I show a very clear understanding here, on account of explaining the diffusion of light and the laws of nature. I applied that understanding to the diffusion of light which colors the sky. I didn't say that rainbows were caused by the color of the sky, I said that sky color and rainbow color are both caused by the same thing: diffusion of light.

Under your interpretation I would feel really sorry for the plants. That's a hell of a lot of years before you get a drop of rain. Even though 2:5 and 2:6 are clearly explaining how God made rain. Not that there wasn't rain until several chapters later. Your claim is plainly ignorant. Doubly so on account of giving the citation of exactly where in Genesis god makes rain. Even the KJV gives this pretty cut and dry. There wasn't any rain, God made a mist, it rained.

Gen 2:5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth* and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth* and there was no man to work the ground,
Gen 2:6 but streams* came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground--
  --- From NIV

I have a great understanding of physics including those responsible for rainbows, and apparently a much better understanding of the Bible. As for God, well she doesn't exist and you seem to neglect this fact so I'll give myself higher marks in that department too.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

I think they are not true in the same sense as the stories of Hercules are not true, insofar as they are false. You can certainly take lessons from Aesops fables, and I dare say far more prudent lessons than don't get all corrupted or God will drown you. There are no elements which represent actual events. There's no need to split hairs about things being metaphorically true, or spiritually true, they didn't happen; we call that false. Take anything you want from whatever stories you want. I find a number of things in fiction to be extremely moving, but simply striking an emotional chord doesn't make something true.

Though viewing this story, I don't see how anybody can view God as anything more than an abusive protagonist who beats humanity to death just to sober up in the morning and beg forgiveness for hitting you.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

Any more than asking asking about strange questions concerning Superman. Could he fly around space holding a large yellow star? Do his sperm have superpowers? Why did that last film suck so hard that I felt like I had time stolen from me?

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

I fully understand this. Early OT stories are clearly from a henotheistic culture. One which is polytheistic though they have their personal God. "Your Lord who delivered you out of Egypt." -- as opposed to all the other ones who didn't. Elohim which literally translates to "the gods" booted Adam and Eve out of Eden not as a punishment but to protect his other magic fruit tree (tree of life), which if they ate it would make them immortal and like "us".

Thomas Paine made a great point concerning why there be two testaments? Shouldn't an all knowing God have got it right the first time? In any event, I disagree with you heavily when you say that Christianity is a weapon to control the masses. It has been said, of the gods, that the wise men found them equally false, the stupid equally true, and the politicians equally useful. However, I don't think it is a weapon that some bad men use for evil deeds, rather it seems fairly true that it's a willing participant in evil deeds and one need only cite the Bible verse they want to rouse a willing bloodthirsty army and ignore the verse which says to do the exact opposite action.

I think Christianity had a very typical genesis as one of the many dying and rising savior cults which existed in the first and second century with a major amount of creative force around the mid-second century, about the time Israel was abolished by the Romans, as well as when Constantine helped it gain a major foothold of the Roman empire (in exchange for Christians helping Constantine gain a major foothold in the Roman empire). I think that original thought and testing religion must be extinguished not to subjugate others but to allow a false religion to survive even the most shallow of reviews via common sense.

Secondly, I disagree with your explanation that Christianity moved to make God all-knowing and all-powerful from the origin of the Gospel (you clearly gave this impression). I daresay the original followers of the Gospels could easily have been Arians viewing Jesus as a separate entity from God, wholly created by God, as a sort of super-angel like figure. And this is certainly borne out in the Gospels. Does not Jesus on the cross say "Myself, Myself, Why have I forsaken myself?"

Much of this thinking was later established. Some God qualities have been even invented in the last hundred years or so, such as outside spacetime. There was nothing wrong with God living in the sky until we looked around and figured out what was up there. Trinitarianism and most of the omnimax powers so ascribe to the modern Judeo-Christian god are fairly extra-Biblical. Even today the theology is evolving, granting souls to people at the moment the sperm meets the egg and perhaps the moment the zygote splits and into two making identical twins and one of them vanishing when two zygotes merge into a chimera and then this merged soul going straight to heaven when this merging leads to a birth defect which rejects in the fourth month.

There certainly isn't any logic behind the idea, and I understand that applying the Omnimax God of today to the situations of the Bible will produce a Bible-sized errata. That isn't a detractor, it makes the endeavor amusing to no end. Hey look in this passage of Revelations the stars fall to the surface of Earth. HAHAHAHAH, they think stars are like snowflakes stuck in the sky!

None of this really matters to my original comment. Noting that there was a flood in the region does not provide anything more than a suggestion as to how the setting for the story of Noah's Ark may have come around. This is no more impressive than noting that crows can eat cheese while in a tree for the setting of the Fox and the Crow.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Tatarize]

>>For you to even ask such a question shows ignorance and shallow thinking.

Hardly. I'm not the one defending myths on a technology forum.

>>Does a teacher test students for his own benefit? Does he not test them for the benefit of the student?

Well, typically the teacher tests the students to check how much progress they have made and to give them a grade in the class. However, we are talking about an all-knowing God. Testing students when you already know the results would be silly and stupid.

And killing you hardly allows for enrichment. Moreover, killing everybody seems pretty well a bad idea all around. Sure, God killed your kid to "test" you, but what was he doing with the kid? Just killing folks willy-nilly to make a point?

>>Your underlying premise is that either God is a myth or that at best, is uninvolved in his creation.

It is hardly a premise. The God of the Bible is fiction, this isn't a premise but rather a conclusion to thousand prudent arguments.

>>Most people, you being one, criticize the Bible, having never read it, let alone carefully studied it with an open mind. If you had, you would read passages like:

I have read the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon. This is nothing more than a nonsense assumption on your part. I daresay I wouldn't be as atheistic as I am today had I not read such books. I wish more Christians would read the Bible, as well as perhaps the Age of Reason. The Age of Reason being ofcourse the second most effective book at deconverting Christians to atheism.

>>Exodus 34:6-7 And the LORD passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah! Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty , visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons, and on the sons of sons, to the third and to the fourth generation.

I am astounded you even find this passage remotely comforting. Forgiving transgressions and sin, but not clearing the guilty, rather visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generations? You honestly think that punishing the great great grandkids of sinners is the sign of a merciful god, our legal system today is leaps and bounds more fair than your all-loving God's rigged-up system?

Did you dig through all of the Bible and this turd is the best you can come up with? Apparently the God of the old testament stopped ordering the genocide of millions and the raping of the divvied up virgins long enough include a point where Moses is groveling to get another set of tablets to look exactly like the last set he broke... even though the new set says crazy things like don't go whoring after other gods and don't seeth a kid in its mother's milk or make molten gods. You think a quote of somebody sucking up makes up for all the parts that say have slaves, murder these people, treat these women like crap, guilty until proven innocent, kill anybody working on the sabbath, kill anybody who dishonors their parents, kill anybody who commits adultery, kill anybody who is gay, kill anybody worships other gods. Demanding the slaughter of animals to pay some kind of blood-sin price for menstruation and other such sins.

>>God hates evil, but loves people. The absence of good is evil, just as the absence of light is darkness.

Yes, God hates the act of gang-raping a five year old... but loves the people who do it so much that he won't stop such vile actions. Or rather is this evil only existing in the world because God isn't omnipresent. God can't be everywhere at once. I mean, he was busy sorting his pog collection when the Boxer Day Tsunami starting washing infants out to sea... that's why bad things happen.

Theodicies are bad enough, you don't need to mix and match them. In any event, you end up with a God with the power and intention to prevent the greatest evils sitting around as Jews are matched into gas chambers, and girls are raped by their fathers. The only thing which slightly redeems the reputation of the Christian God is non-existence.

Re:What About the Other Dinosaurs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Baby dinosaurs are little and require a comparatively small amount of food. God is smarter than you.

no theory of evolution....

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals chuck norris has allowed to live....

Re:no theory of evolution....

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals chuck norris has allowed to live.... I thought that was Dick Chen... Oh wait... he only shoots lawyers these days.

In the Article--Mod Parent Redundant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is "your friend" TFA? Because that same goddamn paragraph is in the fucking article!

Alternate theory

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Most sensible explanation

Re:Alternate theory

[AeroIllini]

This is a good one too

Re:Alternate theory

[franksands]

Sorry for the comment abuse, but I just had to post this comment from youtube:

evilc27 (2 hours ago)
The fact that we are born babies and evolve into people is evidence enough to dispel the myth of evolution. If we were born monkeys, then there would be billions of monkeys in the world as there are billions of people. This does not equate. People have called me stupid for expressing my facts, but I am far from stupid. I took an IQ test at my church school, and I scored 95. You cannot get more than 100% and so I am in the top 5% of the smartest people in the world. chew on that disbelievers.

This just made my day.

Re:Alternate theory

[Anonymous Coward]

"...People have called me stupid for expressing my facts, but I am far from stupid. I took an IQ test at my church school, and I scored 95. You cannot get more than 100% and so I am in the top 5% of the smartest people in the world. chew on that disbelievers."

This just made my day.

Mine too. Thanks for posting. :-)

Re:Alternate theory

[Fordiman]

Gah!

Oh my god, I don't believe I've ever seen such unbridled stupid!

Honestly. With the mostly well assembled gramer and proper punctuation, I have to assume that was satire; you'd have to have an IQ below 75 to say that shit.

Re:Alternate theory

[penp]

It leaves me to wonder what kind of questions were on his 'church school' IQ test. Maybe they told him 100 was the highest score to make him feel better about himself?

Re:Alternate theory

[Anonymous Coward]

My friends - we're all hardcore atheists and we always make fun of them the religios freaks..
What a bunch of monkeys :) Arthur Peacocke, Russell Stannard, John Polkinghorne, and Francis Collins.
Not to mention Alister McGrath, Keith Ward or Kenneth Miller.

LOL - this is funny!

95 :) evryone knows you cannot have more than 10, I mean, how can you be such a looooooser?!

yeees, keep them coming - these make my day !

Re:From a friend

[Tackhead]

> a similar analysis for birds, published recently in the journal Biology Letters, revealed that more than 40 avian lineages survived the mass extinctions. Most paleontologists now think that birds descended from dinosaurs. So in a sense, even dinosaurs in one form escaped the calamity.

In other words, chicken tastes like dinosaur!

(In Creationist America and Lysenkoist Russia, dinosaurs taste like chicken!)

Wasn't this common knowledge?

[elhondo]

I had thought this point was actually a point of disagreement between Gould and Dawkins, with Dawkins pointing out that the cambrian explosion wasn't as sudden as Gould had pointed out. I think this particular point was discussed in Bryson's "A Brief History of Nearly Everything". I didn't think anyone still held this viewpoint about mammalian evolution anymore.

Re:Wasn't this common knowledge?

[AJWM]

What the hell does the cambrian explosion have to do with mammalian evolution? There's a several hundred million year time span between the two, and that's just to the beginning of the mammal line with the synapsids like dimetrodon. Add another hundred million or two before we get to anything that most people would consider mammalian.

Re:Wasn't this common knowledge?

[elhondo]

It has to do with the way evolution works; i.e. slowly. The cambrian explosion "debunking" was done by implicitly stating that evolution is slow, whether it be in mammals, reptiles or little crawling things.

Re:Wasn't this common knowledge?

[victorvodka]

Dude you said "cambrian" - there was a cambrian explosion too and perhaps that's what you mean. But here we're talking about the Cretaceous, 65 Million years ago instead of 600 Million years ago.

Re:Wasn't this common knowledge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow an Actor and a Basketball player discussing evolution.

If you think about it, where did the Gorilla Dunk come from? It couldn't have possibly evolved here. I mean with a name like Chocolate Thunder bringing down the pain, it had to come from another planet.

Re:Wasn't this common knowledge?

[AJWM]

Evolution rate is determined (at the upper limit) by the gene change rate per generation. Whether that's "slow" or "fast" depends on how long a generation is and what niches are available for variant offspring to be more viable in than their progenitors. That latter is why we tend to see rapid speciation some recovery time after extinction events: a lot of niches are left empty by extinct species. (Obviously, though, those niches were temporarily absent or the previous occupiers wouldn't have gone exinct -- extending the definition of niche here a little to include criteria like "not raining flaming death from the skies" ;-) Although clearly, if a critter is well adapted to its environmental niche, mutations away from that optimum are going to be selected against -- which is why we still have critters like crocodiles and sharks (although we have variations of those).

Note that sex -- gene swapping -- greatly accelerates the rate of evolution (in terms of per generation, not necessarily in absolute time) since offspring are then no longer clones of their parents. That probably triggered the Cambrian explosion as much as anything else, although the fact that soft-bodied invertebrates tend not to leave much in the way of fossils may have exaggerated the explosion in the fossil record. I.e, it's not so much that there wasn't a huge diversity of multicellular lifeforms in the precambrian, it's that they were of a sort that tends not to leave easily detected fossils. (Fossil jellyfish, anyone? Or octopus, for that matter.)

Re:Wasn't this common knowledge?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cambrian 'explosion' is the name given to the sudden appearance in the fossil record of many distinct types of organisms with complex and different body plans. Objectively, one moment (give or take a hundred million years) there was almost no multicellular animal life, and what was there was very simple, the other moment there were all kinds of complex animals each with a different structure. That was the start of multicellular animals almost as we know them today - worms, arthropods, mollusks, starfish, fish - and nothing comparable has ever happened since. The enigma is how come did all those complex body plans evolve so abruptly - that is, with no known earlier stages - given that no new body plans have evolved since.

Just how much time mammals took to diversify after the disappearance of dinosaurs has pretty much nothing to do with anything. And in fact since last year's discovery of quite advanced and diversified mammals as early as 160 million years ago - remember the 'mammal explosion' is being said here to have occurred only 50 million years ago - the whole issue is a non-issue.

Re:From a friend

[Cro Magnon]

So in a sense, even dinosaurs in one form escaped the calamity. I found it pretty cool.

It's not so "cool" having to clean dinosaur droppings off my car, though.

Hrmm...

[grub]

But can they shoehorn it into the framework of a 6000 year old Earth?

Re:Hrmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

The uneducated Fundies have modpoints again...

Re:Hrmm...

[mark-t]

Well, that all depends how you measure age.

If by *all* appearances something appears fully mature, is it? What if it was merely created to look that way so that it would be functional immediately, rather than waiting for however long it takes to be viable.

Of course, the anti-creationist might be inclined to criticize such a remark with the reflection that if that were so with the universe, how would we know that everything was not, for example, merely created yesterday, complete with all apparent history?

Well... in general, we wouldn't. Unless it was pointed out to us. Of course, even if it was, we would never be able to prove it, because the actuality the universe was younger than it appeared would not be perceivable from within the universe. Even our own sense of reason and logic would be bound by it because that would have been created just as the universe itself would have been. And no evidence within the universe could ever be uncovered to genuinely prove that it was young, simply because it would have been explicitly created in a mature state to provide immediate functionality and use.

But to be frank, whether you believe in Creation or not, it really doesn't matter whether you think the world is six thousand years old or nearly six billion. The earth doesn't appear to get offended at misguessing its age by a factor of a million or so, so don't sweat it.

If we spent as much time and effort into simply trying to get along with people who are different from ourselves or have different values as we do trying to prove that we are better than others, or that we are right and others are wrong, the world would be a far, far better place.

Evolution? I thought Jebus created the dinosaurs!

[Ralph Spoilsport]

How could it be true otherwise?

Here's an interesting question: how long did it take for creatures to speciate after the Permian extinction? I wonder if there was the same amount of lag-time after that disaster...

RS

Re:From a friend

[Anonymous Coward]

That friend of yours is the article you just lifted the text directly from? Does it come to your parties?

This is Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the next "re-thinking." Will we ever have hard evidence, or just thought experiments?

Re:This is Great

[Coryoth]

Until the next "re-thinking." Will we ever have hard evidence, or just thought experiments? But we do have hard evidence - indeed it was hard evidence that helped lead to this rethinking. Recently there have been a number of finds of surprisingly large mammals that are much older than had previously been expected. They include a beaver like (pre)-mammal from the Jurassic that was almost half a metre long, discovered in 2004, and two species large carnivorous mammal from the cretaceous (dated to about 130 million years ago - or 65 million years prior to the dinosaur extenction) which were discovered in 2000 and 2005. Such large mammals (relatively speaking) during the time of the dinosaurs draws into question the previous belief that mammals were restricted to small rat/mouse like scavengers at that time. Instead we see evidence of large, active, meat eating mammals. This implies that mammals were rather less marginalised during the dinosaurs "reign" than previously thought, and imples that mammal evolutionary history needs to be rethought accordingly.

Re:This is Great

[Coryoth]

I should add that these fossil discoveries lead to various people taking a more serious look at the presumed facts of mammal evolution and were the catalyst for a "rethink", however there is even more "hard evidence" in the paper cited by the NYT article which was a far more detailed study looking at far more fossil (and apparently molecular) evidence.

Re:This is Great

[corbettw]

I'm neither a evolutionary biologist nor a paleontologist, but hopefully one of the people reading this is (or at least claims to be on Wikipedia) and can answer a question for me:

I was always under the impression that the reason it was presumed small rodents were the only ones to exist with the dinosaurs is because if they were any larger, they would've been wiped out by the K-T extinction event. If there were large mammals that existed with the dinosaurs, and if they were in the same distinct groups that exist today as another poster said, then do we need to go back and question the importance of the K-T event? Especially since dinosaurs didn't so much go extinct as they evolved into birds, maybe having a ginormous hunk of space rock crash into the planet isn't as cataclysmic as we have been assuming all this time (for the planet as a whole, that is, it would certainly do a number on your neighborhood).

Any experts out there who can quash my thinking and point out the flaw in this line of inquiry?

Re:This is Great

[Xeriar]

I'm no expert, but it would appear that the surprise is, in fact, that some of these larger specimens actually survived. It's been known for some time that primates diverged about 69 million years ago, for example, and it seems that more orders are being added to the list.

Re:This is Great

[cens0r]

It wasn't clear from the article, but I assumed that the large existing mammals and birds died off as well. What the article stated was the the lineages already had split. So there was a proto-primate and other proto groups. The actually surviving species may have been quite small though.

Re:This is Great

[arminw]

......draws into question the previous belief ........

All evolutionary thinking is nothing but a belief system masquerading as science. It is based on the assumption (belief) that time itself as well as our measurement thereof is correct and absolutely constant. If is a belief that fossils were somehow made over vast periods time by unknown processes that nobody has ever duplicated, even today. Nobody has EVER made a fossil. NO fossils are being made anywhere today, especially by any slow, gradual process, sometimes imagined by evolutionists. When an organism dies today, it becomes food for others. We call this decay. To prevent this, a dead body needs to be put in an environment that prevents all microorganisms from feeding on the remains and oxygen must be excluded. This has to happen very quickly. A sudden disastrous upheaval such as the Biblical flood could certainly account for fossils.

Rocks are dated by their radioactivity. The unwarranted assumption (faith) is that such radioactive decay rates have never varied over the vast periods of time evolutionists need in order to make their assertions seem plausible. Radioactive decay is a process that comes from the properties of the various kinds of atoms. This rate of decay is governed by certain "constants". There is NO known law of physics that mandates that these all remain invariant over the vast periods of time involved. It is assumed (believed, faith) that these constants, and therefore the radioactive decay rate has always been what it is today. There is evidence that some of these so called "constants" have changed greatly since the beginning of time.

Until the 1800s, the term "dinosaur" was invented. In all the preceding centuries these same creatures were known as "dragons". Every culture has tales of and depictions of these fearsome beasts that are quite consistent across time and civilizations. There are mountains of recorded history of humans having feared and fought these huge creatures.

Re:This is Great

[Fordiman]

"Nobody has EVER made a fossil. NO fossils are being made anywhere today, especially by any slow, gradual process, sometimes imagined by evolutionists."

Two words: Snow Mummies.

"To prevent this, a dead body needs to be put in an environment that prevents all microorganisms from feeding on the remains and oxygen must be excluded."

Hm. Like drowning in tar?

"A sudden disastrous upheaval such as the Biblical flood could certainly account for fossils."

Yes. Because there are no waterborne microorganisms.

Read as "Naturally occuring semi-modern fossils"

"The unwarranted assumption (faith) is that such radioactive decay rates have never varied over the vast periods of time evolutionists need in order to make their assertions seem plausible."

In order for radioactive decay rates to change, there would need to be some fundamental changes in a number of unary (ie: they equal 1) quantum constants. These constants only exist to translate from conventional units of measurement into quantum units. I would submit that you need to show evidence to suggest that any QED constant has drifted by any small percent over the time we've known about them.

Seriously. Is it that you're trolling on purpose, or are you actually someone who is *just* educated enough to sound this stupid?

Re:This is Great

[arminw]

......in order for radioactive decay rates to change, there would need to be some fundamental changes....

One of the "constants" is h Planck's constant that governs a number of atomic quantum processes, including radioactivity. It is inversely related to the speed of light c.

Astronomers measure something called the "red shift". The red shift itself is a measured fact. It's cause is commonly thought to be the doppler effect. This explanations however requires all sorts of convoluted constructs, such as dark matter and energy, which have NOT been observed. If this red shift is caused by the drift in the speed of light, then such conjectures fall away. There is NO known law of physics that requires that the speed of light be invariant. We KNOW that light can be speeded up and slowed down by the media it traverses. All age dating must be corrected for the drift of these constants. The red shift evidence points to the fact that this change has been about a factor of 300 million. This drift is however highly nonlinear over time.

Re:This is Great

[Fordiman]

"One of the 'constants' is h - Planck's constant - that governs a number of atomic quantum processes, including radioactivity. It is inversely related to the speed of light c."

Not quite. It's inversely proportional to the speed of light in a perfect vacuum, c. In perfect terminology, this is the linear photonic propagation velocity in a medium without physical impedent. And this doesn't change for the medium, and nor does c (again, the speed of light in perfect vacuum).

Besides, if we're talking about quantum processes and radioactivity, you're missing the strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetism (which all play a part in governing radioactivity, as well as every other function an atom performs). Are you going to tell me they drift too?

Do you know what would happen if, say, the strong force got just a percent stronger? The planet would collapse in on itself. And just a percent weaker, and atoms wouldn't hold together. The planet would dissolve into a dusty patch of vacuum.

The various quantum and cosmological constants are just a means of taking our existing arbitrary measurements and fitting QED in. Nothing more, nothing less. I mean, I could state my height in planck lengths, or even molar planck lengths, but no one would get it.

"Astronomers measure something called the "red shift". The red shift itself is a measured fact. It's cause is commonly thought to be the Doppler effect. This explanations however requires all sorts of convoluted constructs, such as dark matter and energy, which have NOT been observed."

Uh. Red shift has nothing to do with dark matter. It has to do with the speed of light (propagatory) being a constant as the source of the light falls away; the waves, then, become farther apart, as the distance from the source to your eyes is farther. They 'stretch', to use a partially inaccurate metaphor.

Where the dark matter you mention comes in is as a way to explain the cause of relatively uniform red shift coming in from all directions. Dark matter is not an actual explanation, you know, and nor is it supposed to be some special esoteric type of matter. It's matter that's - get this - too dark for use to directly observe. Same for dark energy; it's energy that, by the time it reaches us, has fallen below the cosmological background radiation level - and therefore is "dark".

"We KNOW that light can be sped up and slowed down by the media it traverses. All age dating must be corrected for the drift of these constants."

So, you're saying that because light moves slower in air or water, this somehow effects time. Riiight. You do realize that the slowing of light's speed through a medium is within a few percent of C, yeah? Besides which, you're essentially trying to say that just 6000 years ago, the vacuum of space was denser than plexiglass.

"The red shift evidence points to the fact that this change has been about a factor of 300 million."

Actually, the red-shift from distant stars is uniformly from within visible spectra to within visible spectra. Since the visible spectra is a band that is from ~800nm to ~400nm, without doing too much math, that means the maximum red shift would be a factor of four (lowest=violet, highest=200nm -> lowest=1600nm to highest=800nm), not a factor of 300 million. I don't know where the hell you got that figure.

This also shows that much of the universe is speeding away from us at about 75% c.

*shrug*

Hey, maybe, on the Seventh Day, when your God was resting, he let out a stink-bomb of a queef and the rest of the universe just ran.

God bless his holy queeftitude.

"This drift is however highly nonlinear over time."

Yeah, that's convenient. You have anything to back that up with, or are you just making it up as you go along?

I'm really sorry that you think 'Magic Man Done It', dude, but you really gotta stop trying to pass off your pseudoscience in a forum full of real science buffs.

Re:This is Great

[Fordiman]

Calculated for the fun of it:
I am 187.2 mega molar planck lengths tall.

One mega molar planck length is 1.038039 cm long.

Re:This is Great

[Fordiman]

Correction: 1 Mmolhl = 0.9633547008547008547008547008547 cm

Re:This is Great

[arminw]

........Besides which, you're essentially trying to say that just 6000 years ago, the vacuum of space was denser than plexiglass....

Actually just the opposite. Light travelled very much faster than today and radioactivity also proceeded at a proportional faster pace.

(....This also shows that much of the universe is speeding away from us at about 75% c......)

That is only true if the doppler assumption holds. It is this incredible assumed velocity of distant galaxies that makes it necessary to postulate dark matter and energy. The measured fact is that the red shift is QUANTIZED. This precludes the doppler effect as the cause of the red shift.

If the speed of light changed, and there is other evidence that it has slowed down about 4% since it was first measured, then all time keeping mechanisms using the atomic forces (electroweak and electromagnetic) would have to be corrected for this. There is evidence that even now, the clock using the atom as time keeping mechanism is still slowing against clocks that use gravity to keep time. Equations governing gravity, unlike those of the atom, have NO time dependent elements in them. Gravity depends ONLY on mass and distance, nothing else. Before the speed of light was actually measured to be finite, the prevailing "accepted" scientific dogma was that light speed was infinite. It took about 50 years before it became "accepted" that light had a definite velocity.

Therefore if you say that the universe is billions of years old, as measured by atomic time, you would be correct. However, that translates into a much smaller (in the thousands) number of gravity years as defined by the earth's orbit. There is a highly non-linear conversion between the two clocks.

(....So, you're saying that because light moves slower in air or water, this somehow effects time.....)

It affects the atomic clock we use to MEASURE time. The electrical and magnetic properties of free space are measured and determine the speed of light in the same way that these same parameters affect an electromagnetic wave in any other medium. The possibility that the idea of billions or even millions of years collapsing into the only thousands (not necessarily 6000) is like a big stink bomb with evolutionists.

Re:This is Great

[Fordiman]

You're still making the assumption that the speed of light has changed, you're invoking quantization of the red shift (which only postulates that the energy of light, ie: its frequency, decreases as it travels in discreet steps - not that the speed of light actually changes). This is observed over long distances and light isn't affected over conventional ones. As a result, not effecting the vibration of atoms, as is measured by atomic clocks, and not effecting the decay rates of radioactive atoms.

That said, red shift quantization is an effect that's been pretty well known among astronomers since 1987, and is generally taken into account when giving estimates of the size and age of the universe.

Meanwhile, there's evidence that atomic clocks are actually speeding up relative to the rotation of the earth - but this is only because tidal effect gradually decreases earth's rotational speed to match that of its orbital speed, much like what has happened to the moon.

"The possibility that the idea of billions or even millions of years collapsing into the only thousands (not necessarily 6000) is like a big stink bomb with evolutionists."

Only because it's a stupid, unsupported idea that creationists with just enough smarts to think they're clever like to tout. It's a bad habit to search for holes in scientific theory to hide in. Those holes will be filled one day, and you'll find that location a little snug.

Seriously, you'll do better just holding faith in the face of evidence than trying to mangle evidence to fit your faith.

Re:This is Great

[arminw]

......which only postulates that the energy of light, ie: its frequency, decreases as it travels in discreet steps.........

If the frequency of the light, that is its energy, changed, that would violate well established conservation laws. The energy of light doesn't change when it slows down in water or glass. So why should it change when it travels through the medium of free space? It is still unclear how the electrical an magnetic properties of space change as it expands. The large new accelerator now being built at CERN in Europe may give us new insight in some of this and other mysteries.

(....Meanwhile, there's evidence that atomic clocks are actually speeding up relative to the rotation of the earth......)

You are correct there. But the rotation of the earth is not controlled by gravity, but simple inertia. Tidal friction does slow this rotation as well as the orbit of the moon. The orbit of the earth around the sun however is determined by gravity and distance to the sun. The atomic clocks have slowed in relation to this.

Another evidence that the billions of years is bogus is the fact that there are still comets. Astronomers realize this and postulate fictions such as the Oort cloud as a source of new comets. The problem is that no such thing has ever been observed. Comets only last about 15000 years or less, before they are dispersed into space.

(..you'll do better just holding faith....)

Evolution is faith that present processes (including radioactivity) have always been as we observe them today. It is faith that fossils form over long periods of time. Time, lots of time is the magic faith ingredient of the religion of evolution. Nobody has ever made a fossil, nor observed one formed today, because dead bodies simply decay. The Evolution religion has pulled of a neat trick: Label it as science and get support from my taxes. This patently unconstitutional.

So, you can hold onto your faith that you have no higher purpose and descended from a rock or your ancestors crawled out of the primordial slime. I'll hold onto mine that I was created by a transcendent, intelligent God, who has a plan for His children.

Re:This is Great

[Fordiman]

"The energy of light doesn't change when it slows down in water or glass. So why should it change when it travels through the medium of free space?"

No vacuum is perfect. Encountering interstellar hydrogen could easily explain why light remodulates down in discreet steps. There are plenty of explanations that are less wonky than postulating a variable speed of light.

"But the rotation of the earth is not controlled by gravity, but simple inertia. Tidal friction does slow this rotation as well as the orbit of the moon."

Tides are an artifact of gravity on a large enough body. Don't contradict yourself.

"Evolution is faith that present processes (including radioactivity) have always been as we observe them today. It is faith that fossils form over long periods of time."

Blah blah. The difference is that if a fact comes along to change how existing theories interact with one another, things get modified to fit. This wouldn't do with a faith, but it's not people's ego's we're after here, it's a model of how the universe works.

"So, you can hold onto your faith that you have no higher purpose and descended from a rock or your ancestors crawled out of the primordial slime. I'll hold onto mine that I was created by a transcendent, intelligent God, who has a plan for His children."

So, you'll hold on to the idea that your the slave of some deity, and I'll hold onto the idea that my destiny is self-determined.

Surprise, but not a showstopper

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolutionary is just a theory, not a law, so it is okay to have these revisions. It's interesting, surprising news, but it's not earthshattering and shouldn't shake our faith in evolution.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[Oligonicella]

Evolution is a theory of science, not a parlor talk theory. There is no faith in evolution, only vast reams of empirical data supporting it.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[Dasher42]

Faith in evolution? Faith? Quoth Dan Barker:

"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it." :)

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[glitch23]

Evolutionary is just a theory, not a law, so it is okay to have these revisions. It's interesting, surprising news, but it's not earthshattering and shouldn't shake our faith in evolution.

It also shouldn't shake our faith in Creation. If it is just a theory it can't explain everything and therefore shouldn't be taken as the final answer despite many people treating it as such. There is still room for other ideas contrary to what the proponents of this crackpot evolutionary theory will say. It's interesting how there is evolutionary theory on one side and simply Creation (with no 'theory' qualifier) on the other.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[ajs]

Evolution is a theory of science, not a parlor talk theory. There is no faith in evolution, only vast reams of empirical data supporting it. That over-states the case rather drastically. First off, there's an awful lot of faith in evolution, and that's actually a point that far too many folks who defend evolution blindly should accept, otherwise they get blindsided with the news that ... shock, some corner of the theory was actually wrong.

There's faith in the idea that what we observe is representative of what happened before recorded history. There's faith that empiricism is generally valid (watch how many people leap to defend empiricism and tell me that that's not faith). There's faith that the vast majority of collected data hasn't been tampered with. There's faith that, on the whole, scientists are conscientious about their work, and do not seek to deceive. There is even faith that no one is holding a gun to the heads of everyone who has ever worked in the field to gather data, and telling them to lie.

I happen to share all of this faith, as I think it's a fair set of assumptions on which to base one's faith (as opposed to invisible men in the sky, to paraphrase George Carlin). That doesn't mean that it's anything other than faith, however. Fundamentally, all of this can be boiled down to a faith in Occam's Razor, a principle which was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of convincing the budding, and as yet unnamed scientific movement that the Church wasn't necessarily wrong (they didn't go that far for another 50-100 years), but that they were not the only authority on which to base the evaluation of truth. Occam's Razor leads directly to the explosion of thought surrounding empiricism in the Renaissance, and ultimately to what we call science, today. That we rely on this grounding in pre-Renaissance thought to this day is an often-explored and frequently questioned element of faith in the process that we call the scientific method.

As for the vast reams of facts supporting evolution... there are vast reams of fact supporting a lot of crazy ideas. What's interesting about evolution is that those facts corroborate each other in intricate ways that would be very difficult to unravel as a whole. Certain facts may turn out to support conclusions which they did not originally seem to point to, but the whole has many more inter-related facts on which to stand.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[fucksl4shd0t]

It all boils down to faith, indeed. Because without it, we would each be forced as individuals to verify and review all of science, and if we had to do that before we could accept it, we'd still be breaking flint into flakes to attach to the end of sticks and hoping it doesn't rain today.

The choice in who to place your faith in is similarly simple. Do I trust millions, consisting of my peers, colleagues, friends, and family with a modern viewpoint and the benefit of education? Or do I trust what by today's standards are a handful of illiterate and superstitious people whose very existence can't even be known for certain, based on books whose original copies have long since been destroyed?

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[grub]

There is still room for other ideas contrary to what the proponents of this crackpot evolutionary theory

There would be room for other ideas if they had even a shred of evidence to back them up.

Claiming a religious magic book holds the answers without any proof to support that assertion isn't a theory and it sure isn't science. It's circular logic and a fallacy.

Is the book "Green Eggs and Ham" evidence supporting the existence of a creature named Sam-I-Am?

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[Morky]

Would you eat them poached or fried? Would you eat them crucified?

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[testpoint]

I have recently examined the Marzeah Papyrus (7th century B.C.), fragments of the dead sea scrolls, septuagint leviticus , septuagint exodus and Gospel of John fragments all from the 3rd century A.D. Modern, nonparaphrased, versions of the Bible, corresponding to these fragments are accurately translated.

Many of the original writers and earliest translators could write and speak multiple languages. While you might consider them superstitious they weren't illiterate. William Tyndale, a 16th century scholar and translator was fluent in eight languages. His work influenced Shakespear and the King James version of the Bible.

Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake because a version of the Bible that could be read by all, transferred power from the King and the Pope to the church, which Tyndale translated as congregation or congress (people) rather than church (hierarchy). Many credit Tyndale and his translation for furthering the concepts of representative democracy, individual responsibility, and equality.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[ajs]

I think the point was that the ORIGINAL texts (of which the, admitedly ancient text you refer to are mere copies) are lost to history. We'll never know if they're quite the same as what we're looking at, and certainly the Catholic church had a couple of rounds of eliminating books that they considered to be non-canon ... and when I say eliminating, I mean hunting down every copy and burning them.

As for the literacy thing... you're correct insofar as the new testament goes, but the OT is another matter. Many of the stories told therin are believed to be word-of-mouth tales that were told through generations before being committed to the written word, and there's no evidence that the original tellers read or wrote any language.

Sure, there were brilliant Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and members of many other faiths. That's not really the point. The people who created those religions and told us that invisible men in the sky were talking to them all died many, many generations ago (even Smith, the founder of Mormanism is long since dead, and that's a RECENT religion). We have no reason to believe that these people could forsee the social issues present hundreds or thousands of years later, nor that they understood the world around them well enough to craft a book that would speak to issues which would take other men millenia to figure out. Only if we appeal to the existance of invisible men in the sky can we believe that these books would continue to maintain any relevance other than historical.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[Anonymous Coward]

If only I had mod points. roflmao!

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[Hognoxious]

Evolutionary is just a theory, not a law

It's neither - it's an adjective, meaning of, or pertaining to, evolution.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[VdG]

I disagree. Science relies not on faith, but on trust.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[mdwh2]

If it is just a theory

There's your problem right there - no, creationism isn't a theory.

There is still room for other ideas

If by "room for other ideas" you mean that there's science, and then made up stories, then sure.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[mdwh2]

Evolutionary is just a theory, not a law, so it is okay to have these revisions.

Laws can be revised too, or known to only be an approximation (e.g., gas laws). In science, contrary to what is commonly assumed, "law" does not mean "proven to be certainly true", a law is a simple expression representing some observed relationship. A theory is something different, and much wider in scope - it's a model which explains how things work.

Re:Surprise, but not a showstopper

[mdwh2]

There's faith in the idea that what we observe is representative of what happened before recorded history. There's faith that empiricism is generally valid (watch how many people leap to defend empiricism and tell me that that's not faith). There's faith that the vast majority of collected data hasn't been tampered with. There's faith that, on the whole, scientists are conscientious about their work, and do not seek to deceive. There is even faith that no one is holding a gun to the heads of everyone who has ever worked in the field to gather data, and telling them to lie.

The problem is that we are conflating different meanings of "faith". Yes, we can't ever know anything with 100% certainity, but we do have large amounts evidence supporting such beliefs. I presume this is what the grandparent post meant.

OTOH, "faith" in the creationist or religious sense can mean believing something even without any evidence, and this is presumably what the parent you replied to meant.

Trying to suggest that these are both "faith", and therefore that believing in something with strong evidence is no different to believing a made up story with no evidence, is a common creationist tactic, but they are hardly comparable.

Re-evaluation

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean there could have been divine creation, and not evolution, at least in the case of humans? I know that cold hard facts should trump what we wish to be true, but for a question as fundamental as the origin of our own existence, maybe it works the other way.

Re:Re-evaluation

[needacoolnickname]

I'll give you the option for divine creation if you give me the option for evolution.

Re:Re-evaluation

[zappepcs]

Yeah, sure. This one species of mammals is totally different from all the rest of them.

Not to bait flames here, but the evidence for divine creation is pretty damned weak if you take into account all the imperfect humans that had to be involved in bringing us 'his word'... while the evidence for evolution is getting stronger all the time, and this little theory of evolution doesn't mind a few corrections here and there. It's a bit tolerant of the process of discovery.

Re:Re-evaluation

[Oligonicella]

So, you propose that because we are humans, somehow we should ignore the tons (literally) of evolutionary evidence concerning our origins? Nope.

Re:Re-evaluation

[Anonymous Coward]

> but the evidence for divine creation is pretty damned weak if you take into account all the imperfect humans that had to be involved in bringing us 'his word'

What? You're saying that because the people preaching about God are not perfect, God must not exist. Interesting. So how's that work in terms of scientific logic. (From a scientific standpoint, that's just as strong as a Christian saying, "The sunset is beautiful, so God must exist." Both, from a scientific standpoint, are utterly stupid.)

> while the evidence for evolution is getting stronger all the time, and this little theory of evolution doesn't mind a few corrections here and there. It's a bit tolerant of the process of discovery.

This "correction here and there" is kinda big. What it's saying is that mammals evolved separate of reptiles. That doesn't make sense in the theory of evolution since the better of the two should win out (or combine or whatever).

Besides, I always liked this argument: If God exists - who's to say he doesn't use evolution to make/change creation?

Re:Re-evaluation

[Anonymous Coward]

This "correction here and there" is kinda big. What it's saying is that mammals evolved separate of reptiles. That doesn't make sense in the theory of evolution since the better of the two should win out (or combine or whatever).

Allow me to offer a little correction here. The theory of evolution is simply "A change in allele frequency over time." This means that over time a poulation will show genetic changes. Why it happens is still best explained with Darwin and the fittest surviving. Note that is fit not best. Better suggests that there is some progression. There isn't. Genes mutate randomly, the environment decides who is fit to survive. It's friggin obvious if you think about it.

This story demonstrates the strength of science and the evolution theory. Science is obligated to examine and correct itself based on evidence and this evidence doesn't shake evolution one bit.

Of course mammals and reptiles evolved seperately. Otherwise they'd be the same thing.

Re:Re-evaluation

[micromuncher]

This story demonstrates the strength of science and the evolution theory. Science is obligated to examine and correct itself based on evidence and this evidence doesn't shake evolution one bit.

And creationism demands blind faith to discount fact, history, and science. Who is to say that the creationists are wrong, because by their definition you cannot argue with them :-)

Re:Re-evaluation

[arminw]

....I'll give you the option for divine creation if you give me the option for evolution.......

The constitution guarantees that you can believe either one or anything else you want. The government is not supposed to prefer one religion above another. However, the evolutionary religion has managed to sell itself as science and illegally gets billions of dollars of tax money. Maybe it is time the ACLU sued the government for supporting religion.

Re:Re-evaluation

[Kaki Nix Sain]

Evolution is not a religion; you receive a 0/10 on this quiz. Neither, incidentally, is the theory of natural selection, but you get 5 bonus points if you can explain the difference between the two.

Re:Re-evaluation

[fucksl4shd0t]

As a firm Turdist, what do I get when I tell you the difference between evolution and natural selection?

Re:Re-evaluation

[ChrisMaple]

The purpose of having words, sentences, and languages is to express thoughts. Throwing together phrases in defiance of sense defeats this purpose.

I know that cold hard facts should trump what we wish to be true, but for a question as fundamental as the origin of our own existence, maybe it works the other way.

This is just nonsense. For fundamental and crucial things, it is of the highest importance to use the rules of logic that make human understanding possible.

Re:Miss Leading title

[gardyloo]

Speaking of misleading titles! I got all excited about your post's title, anticipating a link to some Miss Universe-type website. Instead, all I got was a one-sentence comment.

Mammals versus Dinos

[Anonymous Coward]

I just watched a special on Animal Planet about mammals and dinos. They were saying that the T-rex actually evolved from half evolved bird/dinos. The young had a feather like coating that shed as the T-rex got bigger.

well, duh.

[Triv]

I've known about this since Sunday.

Triv

Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[jeevesbond]

From Conservapedia:

The Theory of evolution is a materialist explanation of the history of life on earth. Despite being the scientific standard, in the United States, there are a significant number of lay people who do not accept evolution. According to a CBS poll, only 13% of American adults believe humans evolved without divine guidance.

A CBS survey said there's no evolution! If 87% of people say there's no evolution then this article is a sham sir!

Back on-topic, what interests me is:

But the researchers conceded that much more research would be required to explain the delayed rise of present-day mammals.

If it wasn't the dinosaurs stopping the evolution of mammals (i.e. dinosaurs dominating the habitat), then what did? Could it be that the available habitats were just better suited to dinosaurs vs. mammals? That's the first thing that springs to mind (although am no paleontologist). As ever with this sort of thing, the finding raises more questions than it answers!

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[Phu5ion]

First of all, 99% of polls are useless. :P

They are all subject to the bias of the analyst. What Conservapedia doesn't tell you in the blurb is that an additional 27% of Americans believe people evolved with divine guidance. What's sad (IMHO) is that greater than 50% of "All Americans" believe that we were just winked into existence by a divine power.

the poll

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[geek]

Well, I may be corrected on this but I'll say it anyway since it's what I was taught in college. The median world temp around the peek of the dinosaurs was very high, somewhere around 130 to 140 degrees and there was a much larger amount of CO2 in the air. I would have assumed that as this changed mammals were given their chance at the top of the food chain.

I always interpreted mammalian evolution to be parallel with climate change. I suspect however many people would disagree.

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[WalksOnDirt]

The higher temperature of the Cretaceous has already been referred to. Estimates suggest that at the beginning of the Cretaceous, the Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) was around 20C (about 5 hotter than today's value of 15C), and was about the same at the period's end - but peaked to a high of 25C in the Upper Cretaceous.

From http://www.bbm.me.uk/portsdown/PH_130_Envmnt.htm#t empr

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[E 99]

According to a CBS poll, only 13% of American adults believe humans evolved without divine guidance.

A CBS survey said there's no evolution! If 87% of people say there's no evolution then this article is a sham sir!

There is no 87% saying there's no evolution. They are saying there's no MATERIALISTIC evolution. It's probably the 87% of us who believe that life itself has divine guidance. Whether evolution or anything else is random/mechanical or divine-influenced is a purely philosophical one, not a scientific one (at this point at least). That includes the arguement for "random mutation". There is obviously no evidence that the mutations which gave rise to speciations were "random" and not in some way directed, naturally or supernaturally, or otherwise forced in some particular direction. Once we arrive at a better understanding of how DNA works, perhaps it will be possible to form mathematical models to determine whether or not the "random mutation" theory is feasible. Maybe it's only feasible during intermittant radiation events that decimate populations by causing widespread mutations, leaving a few individuals with improvements, who go on to reproduce and build up populations again. Maybe it's not possible at all.

If it wasn't the dinosaurs stopping the evolution of mammals (i.e. dinosaurs dominating the habitat), then what did? Could it be that the available habitats were just better suited to dinosaurs vs. mammals?

But that supposes that this event was an inevitablity just waiting to happen. If you're going to ask that, you might as well ask what was stopping single-celled organisms from evolving into multi-celled organisms for 2 BILLION years. Awaiting an extremely unlikely series of random events? Awaiting a global radiation event? Awaiting divine influx? I don't know.

But a harsh environment doesn't stop evolution, it enables it. If a species has plenty of food and no significant predators, then a lot more will survive than just the fittest, and there will probably be many thousands of disadvantageous-but-not-fatal mutations passed on to the species for every advantageous one that comes along. Sex selection could mitigate this a little, maybe, but not much.

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

There is obviously no evidence that the mutations which gave rise to speciations were "random" and not in some way directed, naturally or supernaturally, or otherwise forced in some particular direction.

"Obvious" if you ignore pretty much all work in molecular genetics at least since Watson and Crick.

Once we arrive at a better understanding of how DNA works, perhaps it will be possible to form mathematical models to determine whether or not the "random mutation" theory is feasible.

You mean, the way bioinformaticists and statistical geneticists do all the time, right now, and have been for years?

Maybe it's only feasible during intermittant radiation events that decimate populations by causing widespread mutations, leaving a few individuals with improvements, who go on to reproduce and build up populations again. Maybe it's not possible at all.

Do you have any data, at all, that would support either one of these hypotheses? Or are you just cut'n'pasting from some ID site somewhere?

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[bogjobber]

There is obviously no evidence that the mutations which gave rise to speciations were "random" and not in some way directed, naturally or supernaturally, or otherwise forced in some particular direction.

Well, apparently you have your own definition about what is obvious. An *overwhelming* amount of evidence points to genetic mutations being random. Your claims have no scientific basis. None whatsoever. What you are saying is pure speculation, with absolutely no proof to back it up. Saying "sometime in the future our views may change" is not good enough. Go read a biology textbook, and stop trying to make a scientific justification for your faith. It doesn't work.

Re:Shamelessly off-topic, but must be done...

[GWBasic]

There is obviously no evidence that the mutations which gave rise to speciations were "random" and not in some way directed, naturally or supernaturally, or otherwise forced in some particular direction. "Obvious" if you ignore pretty much all work in molecular genetics at least since Watson and Crick.

What if God uses a pseudorandom number generator in the laws of physics that make evolution appear random? In that case, both the scientists and the (cough) faithful are right.

For example, let's assume that there is a God who can know everything about the universe it creates. When it "starts" the universe, wouldn't it know the eventual outcome? Would it have the ability to change the starting conditions such that it can change the eventual outcome? Such a God would have the ability to create a universe with random evolution that it can influence.

Remember, Darwin, Einstien, and Hawkings all make references to God.

Re:Evolution? I thought Jebus created the dinosaur

[rucs_hack]

I thought it was about six million years, could be wrong though.

The big thing was grass, it hadn't been around for most of the time the dinosours had existed. The domination of grasses after the CT event really helped the spread of species

Re:Uhmmm, NOT TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

You are fucking retarded. First off, I am pretty sure that even Muslims believe in creation, and this isn't likely to change for a while. Those Christian religions that don't place a literal meaning to the 6 day creation story in Genesis are growing, just as happened with other parts of the text. Christianity is probably 700 or so years more advanced than Islam just based on it being around longer. Until Islam goes through something like the Dark Ages and wakes up it will remain the bastardization of a religion combined with a social plan. With Islam there is no separation of Church and State - remember that.

I'm posting AC since this is so off topic.
ak3ldama (554026)

Science rethinking.

[CannonballHead]

So... I'm not trying to argue for or against intelligent design/evolution. Science is often championed as being very sure... especially evolution, it seems, when one looks at the court cases and news articles when the controversy comes up in schools, where it taught as pretty much proven fact. Does it raise questions in no one else's mind when it is quite consistently being "rethought?" It seems it should not be dogmatically asserted as it is now, nor should a "rethinking" be taken in stride as if it's entirely normal behavior for science. And yes, I know it's not a scientific fact, it is a scientific theory, as most scientific thoughts are - but most school kids don't know much of the difference between "fact" and "scientific theory." It's simply taught. Here's the chapter on gravity, here's the chapter on evolution. Maybe informative materials should be re-evaluated when the theory itself is re-evaluated.

Re:Science rethinking.

[flitty]

Science is often championed as being very sure... especially evolution,

I'm calling you on this rediculous statement. Science is only as sure as they can prove. You'll hardly find a scientist who, under new evidence or studies, will say "nope, the way we used to believe is more correct, and i'll be damned if i take your new evidence into consideration!"
Sounds more like religion to me.

Re:Science rethinking.

[physicsboy500]

I'm calling you on this rediculous statement. Science is only as sure as they can prove. You'll hardly find a scientist who, under new evidence or studies, will say "nope, the way we used to believe is more correct, and i'll be damned if i take your new evidence into consideration!"

Sounds more like religion to me.

You two should stop fighting and realize that it was actually the flying spaghetti monster that created it all!

Re:Science rethinking.

[RatBastard]

A valid question. That evolution happens is a known fact. That animals adapt over the generations and change to the point that disparate isolated populations can no longer interbreed is a fact. What is constantly being reevaluated is the actual mechanisms that drive this change. Early assumptions are reexamined when they don't hold up to scrutiny. Theories are revised when we discover that things are more complex than we thought. Natural selection (higher survival potential) does not explain creatures like Peacocks and birds of paradise. We examine what is going on and discover that sexual selection (breeding age members choosing mates for particular reasons) is also at work. While the Peacock's tail is an impediment to personal survival, the extravagance of it tells females that the male is healthy, strong, has good genes and would make a good choice as a father to their offspring.

And then there is the subject of this article: which is not the whys and wherefores, but the histories of evolution. They are not reevaluating the means of evolution, just the details of the timetables of when things happened. Much like a police officer looking at a crime scene and sorting out what happened when, discovering a new piece of evidence or talking to a new witness and adjusting the description to fit the facts.

Re:Science rethinking.

[Coryoth]

Does it raise questions in no one else's mind when it is quite consistently being "rethought?" It seems it should not be dogmatically asserted as it is now, nor should a "rethinking" be taken in stride as if it's entirely normal behavior for science. And yes, I know it's not a scientific fact, it is a scientific theory, as most scientific thoughts are - but most school kids don't know much of the difference between "fact" and "scientific theory." It's simply taught...Maybe informative materials should be re-evaluated when the theory itself is re-evaluated. I think we should be clear on what is being re-thought here. The theory of evolution itself, that variation and descent, combined with selective pressure, will lead to complex organisms with the appearance of design, is not being rethought. The theory that evolution via natural selection is responsible for the diversity of species of life on earth is not being rethought. All that is being rethought is the particular history regarding the evolution of mammals. That the theory of evolution can be used to explain this particular history, but there are unknown factors in the specifics of the history, so the particular explanation provided as the most likely by evolutionary theory may change as particular facts regarding the particular history of a particular line of organisms changes. Let's consider an analogy: the theory of gravity is a relatively well accepted theory. It can be used to provide an explanation for the history of the development of solar systems, and has been used as a basis for developing a theory as to how our particular solar system developed. As it happens, that particular history is being rethought, as we don't know all the facts about the particular history of our particular solar system. As the available facts regarding the particular history of a particular solar system (ours) have changed, the explanation of that particular theory furnished by the theory of gravity has changed. You have no more reason to think that "informative materials regarding the theory" of gravity should be re-evaluated than you do with regard to "informative materials regarding the theory" of evolution.

Re:Science rethinking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ramen!

Re:Science rethinking.

[E 99]

While the Peacock's tail is an impediment to personal survival, the extravagance of it tells females that the male is healthy, strong, has good genes and would make a good choice as a father to their offspring.

That explanation doesn't hold water, because many, if not most, male birds have bright colors that are attractive to the females of their species, yet their bright colors are no hinderance to their survival. Furthermore, the gene that makes peahens attracted to extravagant impediments to survival would have been selected against from the moment it appeared.

The common explanation that the various species of male birds evolved bright colors because the females are attracted to those colors is a copout, as it presume the females were attracted to bright colors before the bright colors existed in the males, and doesn't explain how they came to be thus attracted before the objects of attraction even existed. More than that, it doesn't explain why this process has apparently happened over and over in many different species of birds, whose different colors require different molecular pathways, but hasn't happened in any species outside the bird class. Anything resembling a complete theory would need to do those things.

What is constantly being reevaluated is the actual mechanisms that drive this change... ...They are not reevaluating the means of evolution, just the details of the timetables of when things happened.

These statements seem contradictory. The second one is true. Evidence can, and constantly has, improved our understanding of the history of evolution. There is no forseeable evidence that can improve -- or disprove -- the accepted theory of the mechanism of evolution. Until we can make a full mathmatical model of how DNA encodes organisms, and simulate a complete organism in a future supercomputer, it is an untestable and unfalisifiable theory, and therefore no has greater basis in science than saying that God directly and arbitrarily split each species into subspecies at various points in time. While science isn't interested in theories that don't have factual basis, religions such as Christianity and Atheism often are.

Re:Science rethinking.

[fucksl4shd0t]

but most school kids don't know much of the difference between "fact" and "scientific theory."

That's because there isn't a difference. When you say "theory", the scientific term that most matches it is "hypothesis". "Scientific theory" means "fact". At least, as far as translating technical scientific jargon into vernacular is concerned, that's how it is.

Re:Science rethinking.

[arminw]

.....That evolution happens is a known fact.......

That depends on your definition of evolution. If you say an example of evolution is shown be how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, then that is a fact. They may in fact adapt, if you will, "evolve", to the point where they cannot interbreed any longer.

If you are saying that evolution is how reptiles became birds or monkeys became human, then that is faith. The immunity of bacteria and the breeding of dogs is fact that has been called evolution. Then this gets extended beyond the breaking point, with no evidence whatsoever for any of the large changes (even in tiny jumps) needed to turn a fish to a reptile and other transformations of totally different kinds of living things. Science is based on observation and experiment, not conjecture of what might have happened in the past to explain what we see today. There are no intermediates between a dog and a cat, reptile or fish or bird. They are distinct kinds of creatures and there will NEVER be a semi-dog or a semi-cat, half one and half the other, at least not without the intelligent interference of man.

Evolution is based on some fundamental assumptions (beliefs, faith) about time and space and the measurements of parameters thereof. If these assumptions are false (and there is evidence they are) then the whole house of evolutionary cards collapses in a heap.

Evolutionists are also totally ignorant about the nature on origin of information. Where does the immense amount of information coded in the DNA come from? This information is software, detailed code in how to build the particular life form. In computers, software comes from a mind. Where do the software instructions come from to build even a single cell?

Re:Science rethinking.

[Morky]

Dogs and cats had a common ancestor. One did not evolve from the other, so there would not be an intermediary. But why am I even bothering with you? You're intellectually lost.

Re:Science rethinking.

[dscruggs]

...most school kids don't know much of the difference between "fact" and "scientific theory." It's simply taught. Here's the chapter on gravity, here's the chapter on evolution. Maybe informative materials should be re-evaluated when the theory itself is re-evaluated.

Um, that's what happens already. Textbooks aren't written just once; they're revised often. Biology textbooks started talking about comet destroyed the dinosaurs theory when I was in high school. Ditto the Big Bang.

Students shouldn't just be taught scientific theories. They should learn the scientific method. hearing that the theory of evolution is, uh, evolving should be no more surprising than hearing that last year's cancer scare is actually good for you. (That great bugaboo coffee is now believed to prevent liver cancer.)

Re:Science rethinking.

[Ian Alanai]

Let's take this one step at a time and keep it general.

You accept that small but significant changes can occur in a species over time. Good.

Question, did Zebras exist 70 million years ago? Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exist 350 million years ago? Did multicellular life exist 1 billion years ago?

The real physical evidence suggests the answer to all these questions is no.

So where did all the different animals that exist now come from? How did we go from single celled creatures long ago to the Blue Whale now? Why were there no Blue Whales a billion years ago?

The answers are commonly a) 'God did it' or b) Some natural mechanism has promoted increased complexity in life over time aka Evolution.

For me b) seem the simpler and more useful answer. As far as I'm concerned I can see *no* valid reason to dispute that Evolution *has* happened. The how and other exact details of the process are open for discussion perhaps, but even here there is plenty of general consensus.

Re:Science rethinking.

[Fordiman]

Summary:
Evolution, the historical record of species evolution on earth is being rethought, as there is new evidence to refine our understanding of it, and is as yet theoretical.

Evolution, the process of speciation (the forking off of species) and adaptation through natural selection, is quite firmly proven.

Re:Science rethinking.

[chuckT]

Yeah, except that the essence of science is that it is aimed at disproving a model, not at proving anything. It is only really in maths that you can logically 'prove' anything to be true.

What you do in the real world is:

(1) make observations
(2) propose a model that explains the observations
(3) make predictions based on the model
(4) make further observations, to test predictions, until model breaks
(5) repeat from (1)

What happens is that the models get better and better, so that the time spent at (4) tends to increase the longer people work at it, but since all our models are imperfect approximations of reality, they will all eventually need some kind of revision.

This is why science is uncertain: by definition, almost any hypothesis advanced is expected to be slightly wrong.

Chuck

Re:Science rethinking.

[Wildclaw]

"survival of the fittest" is a rather bad metaphor for evolution, which has caused many laymen to think that evolution has to do with survival. Survival is not a demand on evolution, and often the opposite is true. The only demand is the ability to breed offspring that in turn breeds more offspring.

The only demand placed on survival is that the organism has to survive until it can produce offspring. After an organism has reproduced its only evolutionary value is its ability to improve its offsprings ability to reproduce. This can include taking care of the offspring, getting eaten by the offspring (or mate carrying the offspring) or just leaving the the offspring alone and trying to reproduce again elsewhere.

Assume we have two peacocks, one beautiful and one less beautiful but more apt at surviving. If the beautiful peacock has a 10% greater chance of getting a mate, while the less beautiful peacock has a 5% greater chance to survive until it is time to get a mate, the genes of the beautiful peacock will win over time. Of course, if the environment changes so that the less beautiful peacock gets more advantage out if its survival abilities (maybe an introduction of a new predator), it may begin to gain ground instead.

Re:Science rethinking.

[arminw]

.....Question, did Zebras exist 70 million years ago? Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exist 350 million years ago? Did multicellular life exist 1 billion years ago?........

Did automobiles, airplanes, computers etc. exist 150 years ago? If not, where did they come from? Did they come about by unplanned natural processes not involving intelligent minds?

On the molecular and atomic levels, a single cell is far more complex than a Boeing 747. Nobody would suggest that such an airliner came into existence without effort of mind. Why should life then have come without processes of thought and planning?

The millions and billions of years evolutionists always conjecture about are also based on assumptions (faith) that the time measurements as well as time itself have always proceeded at the present rate. There is evidence that the fundamental constants upon which these clocks are based have not been anywhere near constant. Einstein has shown that time itself is not an absolute thing.

Re:Science rethinking.

[arminw]

.....Dogs and cats had a common ancestor.....

Really? Has anyone actually found hard evidence of such an ancestor? Has anyone found even a fossil that has part characteristics of both? All Airplanes have wings and therefore they had a common ancestor; some kind of bird? Cars and oxcarts have wheels and therefore they also have a common ancestor, namely a log rolling down a hill? Maybe these man made things have common design features, based on the underlying laws of physics as discerned by intelligent human minds? Is it then not plausible that the same principles apply to the natural living things as to our man made and designed creations?

Re:Science rethinking.

[Ian Alanai]

Ah, ok. So this *is* a Religious argument.

Why didn't you just say so at the start so I didn't waste my time?

Re:Science rethinking.

[Morky]

A fossil of the exact common ancestor at the exact point these two particular lines diverged? Probably not. However, there is plenty of evidence of a tree of life branching from an original organism. Airplane and oxcarts are tools designed by a highly intelligent tool-making species. I won't respond again, but if you really want to get a basis of understanding of the evidence for evolution, spend a lot of time on talkorigins.org.

Re:"Rethinking"

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

A. Coward wrote:

Until the next "re-thinking." Will we ever have hard evidence, or just thought experiments?

Actually, the ideas contained in the Nature article are based on new, hard evidence, not a "rethinking" of thought experiments. Or didn't you read the linked NYT article? That's how science works.

Many mammalian lineages predate the K-T extinction

[saforrest]

If you read The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins, you'll find that recent genetic evidence suggests that many of the distinct branches of modern mammals predate the K-T extinction.

In particular, by the time of the K-T extinction, I believe that the primate lineage had already separated from rodents, as well as the laurasiatheres (all hoofed mammals, lions, tigers, bears, etc.), xenarthrans (armadillos, sloths, etc.), and afrotheres (elephants, manatees, anteaters, etc.).

So, while most mammals in the Cretaceous may still have been tiny shrew-like creatures scurrying around in the underbrush, many of the modern lineages had already come into separate existence.

It is also interesting to read, in the book, that our nearest non-primate relatives aside from the tree shrews are rodents. I can sort of see it: give a mouse a little more finger dexterity and it wouldn't not that different from a lemur. It also might explain why rodents are such good laboratory specimens.

Yes, and....

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Specifically, that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs had relatively little impact on mammals and that the steps in mammals' evolution happened well before and long after the dinosaurs' death.

Do they think that those steps ever could have taken place if the dinosaurs were still around?

Re:Yes, and....

[jc42]

Do they think that those steps ever could have taken place if the dinosaurs were still around?

Actually, Stephen Jay Gould wrote a fair amount on this topic, as part of his "contingency" hhypothesis. This is the idea that a fair part of evolutionary development is random and accidental, and if we could reset the clock to an earlier time, things would develop differently.

He viewed the K-T extinction event as a "natural experiment" with this. Before it, there was wide diversity in both dinosaurs and mammals, but the large animals were dinosaurs. Afterwards, when things settled down, there was wide diversity in both dinosaurs (which we now call "birds") and mammals, but the large animals are mostly mammals.

Gould argued that this wasn't because back then, dinosaurs were superior, while mammals are superior now. It's more because the first time around, dinosaurs accidentally got hit by mutations that gave them the large-animal niches, and the second time around it was the mammals that got those mutations. But at smaller sizes, which is most of the ecosystem, both dinosaurs and mammals (and reptiles) were of roughly equal diversity 70 million years ago as they are today.

And, let's face it, spectacular as the giant beasts may be, it's really the mice and sparrows (and anoles) that are the important species. They'll all be around when we're long extinct, no matter what kills us.

Of course, there is a major extinction event going on right now that's wiping out most of the large species. And it's well understood what caused it this time: humans. So whatever species develops intelligence in another 10 or 50 million years will have another major extinction event to analyze and argue over. I wonder what they'll conclude?

Re:Uhmmm, NOT TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

Wantonly beating their wives? Nonsense. Some Islamic countries have the toughest laws around. Why, you can get up to 3 months in jail for an honor killing!

Re:From a friend

[maxume]

Did you go with Geico?

conservapedia is NOT satire

[tak amalak]

You must be a moderate, level-headed conservative, because that website is NOT satire.

Re:From a friend

[beckerist]

...because you could get a caveman to do it!

Specific Gene?

[burning-toast]

I am definitely outside of my field of study here, and not really sure if my question is quite on topic but here goes:

The fuse thing bothers me. It leaves the impression that mammals were going to burst into proliferation at some point no matter what. Like there was a guaranteed start to that. I still think it was an accident by natures "need to survive". I can't think of another species which would be a better candidate however but that is not helped by my lack of understanding in the field.

To me it seems more likely that a freak accident (or "natural accident") may have activated a specific genetic sequence or mutated some aspect of mammals which increased their survivability rate. This just seems like evolution at it's best.

My assumptions about mammals and what has made us more adaptable than some other species:
We are warm blooded - Much larger geographic areas are available to us and we are a much "hardier" species for extreme weather.

We have hair - Goes along with being warm blooded and the geography thing mentioned above.

We nurse our young - Our young are not fully developed before birth, to me this signals that we have exceeded some "original" amount of time anticipated by nature that it should take to give our young rudimentary skills. Remember some species are born with everything they need to know for life already in their programming. Learning and experience mean more to many species of mammals than just wrought memorization like you frequently see with reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, etc. By virtue of how "we" do things as mammals we give our young much more time to learn, adapt, and become "ready" for the world.

We are omnivorous - Mammals as a whole are generally omnivorous, though in the context of millions of years ago I would venture to assume that much of this is by adaptation anyhow. In any case this drastically expands our food selections as most (all?) mammals are not limited to eating one food group or even a very narrow selection of foods.

Maybe another disease died out, or maybe this is where we started developing a better immune system. It's hard to tell when our internal workings developed from so long ago just because of a serious lack of soft tissues. Maybe our eyesight just took a while to improve from being nocturnal for so long? Maybe the Dinosaurs were the primary reason for mammals to be nocturnal, and once the large ones were gone it took a while for evolution to "switch back"

Now I am just rambling, but maybe someone with a clearer understanding of such things would be so kind as to disprove or converse about some of my ramblings.

Re:Specific Gene?

[rucs_hack]

Your analogy of a freak accident isn't far wrong. It is a mistake to think of evolution as a planned process. That's where a lot of creationists try to poke holes in it by saying "what's the use of half an eye" The argument makes the assumption that an eye was the intended goal, but there was no intention.

It goes like this. Animal A and animal B are attacked by animal C. Animal A has some cells on its skin that are light sensitive, even if only a tiny bit. Neither A B or C have eyes, so animal A escapes because it gets spooked by s small change it the minimal light level it detects, but C catches B because it hasn't managed to get away (leaving out the means by which C is able to hunt).

So Animal A gets to breed, the light sensitive cell patch mutation is reinforced. Random changes to it that improve its detection of predators mean that favorable mutations survive, and eventually you have a whole eye.

Simplified, but you get the point? It's very much random

As for the survival of Mammals, well we're generalists, or were at the time, like rats, we could live off anything. That meant a dead dino was as good a meal as anything, and we could eat worms, bugs, absolutely anything, so we lived.

Then we speciated, and became the wide variety that exists today.

It is not that we are warm blooded that helped us spread. It is that we are able to adapt without waiting for evolution. Need a thicker coat? Go get one of that animal over there and wear it. Need to live in this area that is dominated by another species? Kill them off and take over. We have the bigger brain, we were capable of abstract thought and planning for the future. That was the deciding factor.

Incidentally, there is a theory that crocs and alligators survived the CT event because they were able to survive in the delta's on dead animals washed down the rivers. scavenger's are at an advantage when there is a mass die off, especially when they can go for very long periods between meals and actually prefer putrid meat.

Our young are not born fully developed because humans have much bigger brains, and these cannot be pre programmed to know what to do with the body from birth beyond the autonomic nervous systemm without a far longer gestation period. Its a consequence of evolving as a creature that lives in packs/groups, we can afford to birth our young in a weak state, which gives the advantage that our adults are back to the essentials of pack survival fast while the young are able to be cared for We do not have the ability to walk away after being born. Strangely though, newborns can swim, I have no idea why this might be, unless the aquatuic ape theory is correct.

Some mammals are specialised now (Panda's are an easy to research example), if there was another mass extinction, most mammals, likely including us, would die, unless we had some far more impressive technology, certainly the human species would be drastically hit. Rats and so on would probably make it, for the same reason we managed to survive the CT event, since we were that size at the time.

Hope that helps with some of your questions

Re:Specific Gene?

[Viceroy Potatohead]

Besides the warm-blooded = expanded environment advantage, it seems to me there is another, possibly more important advantage to being warm-blooded. Gestation can occur within a mobile incubator (mother), rather than forcing the mother to either remain more or less sedentary (and therefore both easier prey and at a disadvantage for food gathering), or bury/hide eggs where other species may root them out. Besides this, heat regulation in a warm=blooded body is likely superior to a pile of fermenting vegetables, near a volcano, or whatever. I would think the advantages would continue to rise as gestation periods got longer (up to a point), besides it allowing for more development before birth.

Then again, maybe that's just what the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Bless His Noodly Appendages) wants me to think.

Re:Specific Gene?

[jc42]

... a lot of creationists try to poke holes in it by saying "what's the use of half an eye" ...

It's perhaps worth mentioning that in the past couple years, researchers have discovered a very early stage of a "half eye" that has been developing for only around a millions years or so. Google for "brittle-star eye" to read about it.

It's pretty clear that this new eye is of survival value to the starfish that have it, although it is barely able to resolve anything. Its angular resolution is only around a degree or so, so the sun and moon are each less than one pixel on their visual screens. But they can detect large things moving around in their environment, and that's a good enough advantage over other starfish.

These critters' eyes are of interest to us, to, because they have evolved an interesting high-quality lense that optical researchers are trying to duplicate. It's possible that artificial brittle-star lenses might appear in some of our video equipment in the near future.

Re:Specific Gene?

[davidbofinger]

Mammal red blood cells don't have nuclei. IIUC that lets them be smaller and hence more efficient. If we're looking for a single key advantage mammals had then that's my theory. Unfortunately I imagine it's hard to know how long ago it evolved.

Sadly, probably so

[KingSkippus]

Sadly, this article will still undoubtedly be used my the uneducated to try to show that the Theory of Evolution is inferior to Intelligent Design because there are still things we don't know entirely or change our minds about based on new evidence. (Whereas, of course, they have it all figured out beyond question.)

Of course, when I see articles like this, I think it's a very good thing, not bad. It shows the beauty of science, that there is always room for refinement of our ideas of the way things are based on new evidence and new ideas. No, we don't have it all figured out yet, but unlike Intelligent Design advocates, at least we're trying, and we're open to new possibilities. (Yes, even Intelligent Design, if there were any credible proof of it.)

I always think it's kind of funny that Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents think that there's some kind of scientific conspiracy to advance the evolution "agenda." I believe in the Theory of Evolution, and believe me, if I could prove that it was false beyond any shadow of a doubt, I would in a heartbeat. For one thing, I'd be world-famous and likely very, very rich from book deals and talk shows. For another, I'm not interested in an agenda, I'm interested in the truth, as in things that can be observed and tested, not just taken on faith in spite of a large body of evidence to the contrary.

sigh... Oh well, I'm glad this showed up on Slashdot. At least now I know what my Creationist/ID friends are going to try to beat me over the head with next.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[Anonymous Coward]

I always think it's kind of funny that Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents think that there's some kind of scientific conspiracy to advance the evolution "agenda."

The only agenda that I see consistently, particularly here on Slashdot, is to denigrate and deride people of faith because they believe in God.

Not everyone who believes in God is an idiot, particularly not simply because of that belief. Not everyone who believes in Jesus thinks the world was created in literally 6 days. Christians can be real scientists, and are (in scientific fields, where such things as reproducible results and predictability are required to be considered REAL hard science).

Want to perpetuate the idea that there's no evolutionist agenda? Show some class and treat people with respect. But then again, I suppose your core beliefs don't really reflect that people are worth respecting.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[gardyloo]

But then again, I suppose your core beliefs don't really reflect that people are worth respecting. Perhaps the parent poster believes that people's ideas are worth respecting.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[Fordiman]

The only 'evolutionist agenda' is a subset of the scientific agenda: to promote the understanding of how the universe works, and to investigate the universe to widen our understanding.

The only thing that causes evolutionary theory to stand out as a pariah is that it interferes with the credibility of religion. So it becomes an 'agenda', rather than a subset of biological science to those who are offended by the offense to their imaginary friend.

Can't deal with reality? Sorry, that's not my problem. Want to espouse your unsupported view? As with any semi-academic forum, you'd better be prepared for a debate - and as with any internet-based forum, you'd better be prepared for flaming.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[Fordiman]

"A man's religion is to be respected about as far as is his belief that his wife is pretty and that his children are smart."
- Richard Dawkins (?)

Re:Sadly, probably so

[Armageddonoutahere]

You have Creationist/ID friends, Sad, You should get out more.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[KingSkippus]

Not everyone who believes in God is an idiot, particularly not simply because of that belief.

I didn't say they are. But I'm sorry, Creationism is an idiotic belief.

What I don't like is when people have this "God trumps all" attitude; when people take the word of a 2000-year-old book (that, incidentally, has been heavily edited over the years for various agendas) over a body of persuasive scientific evidence in forming their opinions on scientific matters.

If you want to believe in religion to tell you how to live, answer philosophical questions, or give you comfort when you ponder the end of your natural earthly life, go for it. I have all the respect in the world for your beliefs, and will vehemently defend your right to have them and practice them. But when you want to propagate that religion by mucking with kids' science classes, tossing aside the science of it and teaching "theories" that aren't theories because they have absolutely no basis in tests or observation, we're going to have a bit of a problem. There's a huge difference between making your own kids stupid and using the power of government to make everyone's kids stupid.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but there's a lot more to life that *doesn't* fit into scientific theory. And the mechanism by which something occurs is not always the *reason* it occurs. And obvously I don't even have to debate you to get flamed - just mentioning my faith seems to upset you.

I deal with reality just fine. Your statements show exactly the type of bias that I was talking about. You assume I'm some sort of uneducated, unscientific moron who can't handle life so I retreat into some kind of fantasy world, simply because I believe in Jesus. That's not the case at all. My educational background is in physics and astronomy and I've been part of several projects that you might have heard of (for one example, I worked on the Hubble Space Telescope at STScI). I am well aware of the scientific process. However, the scientific method is a tool to be used, not to be worshipped as many here seem to do.

I am a Christian and I'm not afraid to say so. I believe the Genesis 1 account of creation is a literary mechanism to describe the creation of the universe. I believe that evolution in living things occurs, but, being familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, I have a hard time believing that the level of order necessary to create a living being happens by chance. Evolutionary science seems a lot like some of the social sciences to me. Until you can predict an outcome based on your models, to me it's not hard science.

Lastly, knowledge is a wonderful thing. But it's not the ultimate objective in life. I've known plenty of very bright people who no one could stand to be around, because they always made a pompous ass of themselves. To paraphrase the Bible, "If I [...] can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, [...] but have not love, I am nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:2 Jesus died for you so that you can live, if you will accept his sacrifice. All you've got to do is truly accept the offer and you'll see. Until you get to that point, you never will understand.

Re:Sadly, probably so

[Wildclaw]

Moderate followers are the worst because they are a much larger group and give credability to the extreme fundamentalists. That comment doesn't only apply to religion, but to all parts of life. Group psychology is dependent on the support (or more accuratly lack of resistance) of the silent majority.

As for insults, I insult people who pray to mass murdererers and torturers. The biggest targets being the Christians and Muslims who pray to someone who according to their beliefs annually condemns tens of millions of people to an eternity of torture. I also insult religions and religious leaders who control and subvert people. Finally I insult people who indoctrinate children with beliefs about imaginary beings (and that includes Santa Claus as well as gods). Such indoctrination is very near child abuse.

Basically, if you happen to be someone who believes in a neutral deity that isn't used to scare people, promote warfare, scam money or enforce morals and you don't indoctrinate your children with your beliefs, I will not insult you.

I may even be able to ignore the promote warfare and scam money part, because it isn't only religions that do that. I will however never ever tolerate religions that use fear to indoctrinate young children. Such religions, and the people who follow them will always be the target of my insults.

As for the subject at hand. The reason scientists laugh and insult Intelligent Design is because it presents arguments against evolution that aren't valid. They talk about irreducable complexity while using examples that are clearly reducable. They talk about missing links when we already know that fossalization is very rare. When they are cornered, they ask how the first reproducing being was created, failing to realize that that subject is outside the scope of both evolution and ID.

Re:conservapedia is satire

[Anonymous Coward]

"all sex is rape - even sex between married people" Does it matter if they are married to each other, or happen to both be the same sex?

and that's sad...

[CasperIV]

Whats worse is that some of those surveyed might not be in Alabama...

Re:and that's sad...

[ksalter]

You're right, some might be from the Northeast (like Dover, PA for example). So us dumbass, inbred rednecks from Alabama do not have a lock on scientific ignorance and religious idiocy.

Damn, whatever will happen when the Deep South is no longer looked on as the primary source of bible beating, homophobic, racist, ignorant fundies? Unfortunately, when that day happens, it will be the entire US that is looked on as the primary source of bible beating, homophobic, racist, ignorant fundies.

Re:Quick! Call Kansas BOE

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been partial to this alternative theory of Intelligent Design. http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

Re:conservapedia is satire

[mdm-adph]

Satire? Don't be so sure. There are plenty of people who believe things exactly the way a place like Conservapedia has written them. As a matter of fact, look at their article on Evolution [http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution] -- nowhere do you see any mention of carbon-based dating or radioactive dating of any sort. A satirical site would've tried to make at least a passing funny reference to radioactive dating, don't you think?

Re:conservapedia is satire

[Anonymous Coward]

Dworkin wasn't much of a liberal. As a conservative fellow-traveller, she did everything she could to help the Meese Commission, for instance. She was a perfect combination of the my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism of Ayn Rand and the sex appeal of Hurley from "Lost."

Re:conservapedia is satire

[Harry Coin]

Nope. It's not satire. It was created by Andrew Schlafly, son of arch-conservative anti-femininst Phillys Schlafly, and is used by her Eagle Forum.

If the ideas presented on that site induce laughter, it is because neoconservative ideas are completely ridiculous. Really, Mark Twain couldn't produce satire so deep. I honestly hope that the GOP uses that site as their definitive reference. Within two generations, they'll be too stupid to breed.

Re:"Rethinking"

[Anonymous Coward]

Or didn't you read the linked NYT article? That's how science works.

By reading NYT articles? Is that where you get all your scientific facts?

Re:conservapedia is satire

[Anonymous Coward]

If the ideas presented on that site induce laughter, it is because neoconservative ideas are completely ridiculous.

You don't have the slightest idea what "neoconservative" means.

Devine 'evolution'

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely no evidence for devine evolution whatsoever (sorry, the bible doesn't count), so could the creationists and 'intelligent designists' please leave the building. Let's not forget that intelligent design is just the boilerplate for a group of scary people who teach their kids that the speed of light must have been massively slower in the past few thousand years and that fossils have been created over a few thousand years since a 'flood'.

  It's all just a crock cooked up by a load of religion toting crooks who need to keep the cash flowing in from the faithful (or should that be fearful).

Re:Devine 'evolution'

[rucs_hack]

alas putting the argument initially in such a confrontational way doesn't help.

You need to get them to really debate. Most won't, and spout the same stuff over and over.

Thing is, two centuries ago everyone was a creationist, we would have been as well, there was no alternative. They are however fighting a losing battle if you look at the numbers. It will likely be another century before creationism is dead, and then only maybe.

Re:Devine 'evolution'

[91degrees]

My problem is understanding why the creationists are so obsessed with evolution being wrong. After all, Heliocentrism vs. Geocentrism has all the same merits (i.e. we can see the sun goes round the earth, proving the opposite to the layman is difficult, Heliocentrism is a theory, literal interpretation of the bible says the arth is the centre of the solar system), biut doesn't cause nearly as much debate.

Re:Devine 'evolution'

[rucs_hack]

If non creationists were wrong, it would be that there was another scientific reason for evolution, or, as with what happened with Newtons work in Einstein's time, it could turn out that evolution/natural selection alone are woefully inadequate explanations.

We would absorb the new information, reprint our textbooks and move on, no worries.

If a creationist is proved wrong then the very basis of their personal world view or power base (if they are considered to have authority due to their assertion of their views) is removed. Everything they believe would have to be questioned, and new things, like proof based learning would have to be adopted for them to survive. That's a tall order, and too much for many to cope with, so they are fighting it.

Re:Devine 'evolution'

[steelfood]

There's mathematics and physics around geocentrism. Math cannot be disproven and physics is much harder to argue against (like the pinciples of centripetal force, momentum, and gravity for example). For example, how does one account for the seasons and the position of the sun in the sky during those seasons in a heliocentric model? One cannot. If the world is spherical or near spherical, the sun cannot revolve around the earth in the way a spring might (because the period of one "solar revolution" doesn't change with the seasons) AND reverse directions every winter/summer without an external force constantly acting upon it.

Besides, there's no contest to the moon revolving around the earth, and the sun's path is definitely different from the moon's. If the sun also revolved around the earth and the above was possible, wouldn't the moon exhibit the same or a similar orbit?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong!

dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood; and... some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark still roam the earth today.

Trolly trolly troll troll.

[SatanicPuppy]

Re-Thinking? Well, hell if you knew it wasn't right, why didn't you say so before?

Jeez.

See, this is why Creationism is right...No rethinking required. Ever.

Re:Trolly trolly troll troll.

[fabs64]

or just thinking, conveniently enough ;-)

Re:Trolly trolly troll troll.

[mrbluze]

See, this is why Creationism is right...No rethinking required. Ever.

If people only said things because they really knew they were right, then the silence would be, well, golden! I don't 'think' we'd even have to deal with Creationism either!

Re:Trolly trolly troll troll.

[Ian Alanai]

Truth Brother! That I why I only drive cars with fixed suspension and steering. None of this wishy-washy lurching over bumps and veering from the True Path for me!

Re:From a friend

[maxume]

Please don't do this, at the very least, to me.

What, you ask? Why, explain the joke I made so as to completely suck any humor out of it.

Re:"Rethinking"

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Or didn't you read the linked NYT article? That's how science works.

By reading NYT articles? Is that where you get all your scientific facts?

No, but it was linked in the main article and gave a reasonably accurate synopsis of the Nature article. Nature has an abstract of the article on their website, but you must be a paying subscriber to read the full article online, which few /.ers are, I assume. You can read the full text at any university library and at many public libraries. Which of these do you plan to do to confirm your original statement?

Get a clue retard

[nbritton]

Evolution:
1 + 2 + x + y + 5 = 15

Creationism:
x^2 + 1 = 0

Re:Get a clue retard

[Anonymous Coward]

To elaborate on the 'Duh' of the previous poster...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number

Despite zealous arguments to the contrary,
both camps require some hefty use of imagination.

Its simply a question of where you decide place your faith.

Re:Get a clue retard

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. You can either have "faith" in the observations of hundreds of thousands of scientists over the course of over a 150 years from a great many different disciplines all reaching a consensus that evolution happens and that there are known mechanisms behind it, or you can have faith in a narrow, sterile, intellectually and theologically bankrupt literalistish interpretation of a particular book that has been mistranslated (both intentionally and unintentially), selectively edited, and modified from a pile of papyri and scrolls written by a bunch of uneducated Roman zealots describing events that were reported to them second-hand or worse, glommed onto a stack of equally selectively edited mistranslated pile of dusty old scrolls written by a pack of even more ignorant Bronze age shepherds from a third-rate regional power, and all of the fabrications, lies, and contradictions therein. Such as Genesis I and Genesis II--the order's different but 999 out of 1000 literalistish fundies don't know that...with the remaining 1 selling snake oil and scientific creationism (but I repeat myself).

Re:Get a clue retard

[Morky]

I used to believe in Genesis. That is, until Phil Collins sold out to do Michelob ads.

Look out, R.O.U.S.!

[deoxyribonucleose]

Recently there have been a number of finds of surprisingly large mammals that are much older than had previously been expected. They include a beaver like (pre)-mammal from the Jurassic that was almost half a metre long, discovered in 2004, /.../

"Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes

Magic man done it theory

[Bowling Moses]

A magic man done it! With "forcey forces" of coursey.

Re:Magic man done it theory

[Fordiman]

That dude is hilarious. I saw him on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the ep with the guy from Torchwood.

Yes it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you completely ignored my question: what if I put up a website with caricatures of liberal ideas? Wouldn't you call me out on it?

Now, I'm not a liberal, but it would be pretty easy for me to take all of the most extreme, ridiculous ideas of liberalism and put them into a wiki. I could have articles on:

1: all sex is rape
2: all whites are racists - blacks cannot be racist.
3: no one should be allowed to own any property. All your money belongs to the state and we allow you to keep some of it.
4: all rights come from the state. We give you a few rights and expect you to say "thank you"
5: you do not have the right to defend yourself against crime. If someone breaks into your house and you fight them, you should go to jail.
6: if your opinions are wrong (that is, not politically correct) you should be "re-educated" by force.
7: you do not have the right to raise your children as you see fit. Children belong to the state.

And then, after I create this website, people would start quoting it back to you, "OMFG LOOK AT WHAT THESE IDIOT LIBERALS BELIEVE!" Wouldn't you point out that the site was a joke?? What would you say if I came along and declared, "oh no, that site is real."

I think it's sad that your views of conservatives are based on a stereotype that you invented. It's says a lot about you (and other slashdotters) that you take everything negative from a group and put them together to build a boogeyman. I guess that's the only way you can have your two minutes of hate every day. But it's possible to do that to any group. Some slashdotters are virgins. Some live with their parents. So I could put all that together and create this caricature of a nerd and use that to write off everything on the site.

But that would be pretty ignorant of me, wouldn't it.

LIAR

[Doc Ruby]

Conservapedia is self-parody, but it is produced and maintained by "Conservatives" as a repository of official "Conservative" dogma. Because they think Wikipedia is "liberal", as they clearly state in their About page. Typically Conservative, they're using the Wikipedia software for free, but don't even mutter a minimal thanks to Wikipedia - they just bash it.

Anonymous Conservative Coward is a typical Conservative: trying to have it both ways, all ways, whenever it's convenient. There is no "truth" for today's "Conservatives" (What are they "conserving"? They're wasters, reckless consumers and rampant destroyers.) So whenever they dart out from behind their favorite weasel words to make a clear statement, they're usually a joke, at least because they contradict whatever other statement they made before that was once convenient then.

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert

Re:LIAR

[camg188]

What do you mean the parent is "trying to have it both ways, all ways, whenever it's convenient." The parent just expressed the opinion that the referenced web site is a parody. I think your comments show a lot of bigotry.

Re:LIAR

[Doc Ruby]

Like "Conservatives" in general, their words have value only in exploiting a moment for maximum political benefit, without regard to what those words will mean later. Political rhetoric is bad enough, "Conservatives" have turned hypocrisy from a momentary contradiction into a permanent stream of propaganda, beyond inconsistencies into an ocean of lies.

Whether the Conservapedia is a parody or not is not a matter of "opinion", but of fact. The fact is that it is not a parody, but real Conservatism. Which looks like a parody when collected in one place, rather than dispensed situationally inside some medium controlled by "Conservatives", because its Conservative messages combine for a worldview undeniably absurd when collected together - as it must be, to reflect the reality it attempts to control.

Pretending that wrong facts are forgivable "opinions" is a typical "Conservative" weasel trick for having it all ways, whenever it's convenient. Calling "bigotry" my simple analysis that I have backed up with facts and logic, as well as citations of the blatant reality that is the silly Conservapedia is another weasel "Conservative" trick. It's not bigotry to treat bad people badly, when they're bad by choice.

I think your comment shows a lot of nothing, except typical "Conservative" weaselly tricks to attack people without basis.

Re:LIAR

[powerpants]

Pretending that wrong facts are forgivable "opinions" is a typical "Conservative" weasel trick for having it all ways, whenever it's convenient. This is certainly not limited to the right end of the spectrum. Don't forget that the Left gave us Social Constructionism.

OT: They're not cavemen.

[zippthorne]

They're just scruffy house-dwellers with poor hygiene. So they're like one step up from hippies.

What kind of marketing genius dreams up an entire campaign involving alleged cave-people who don't exhibit the only qualifying criterion for that status that exists? i.e. living in a cave.

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[UncleTogie]

What kind of marketing genius dreams up an entire campaign involving alleged cave-people who don't exhibit the only qualifying criterion for that status that exists?
From the buzz it's generated, and the fact that "GEICO caveman" is a phrase almost everyone here recognizes, my guess would be a fairly canny marketing genius.

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[tepples]

What kind of marketing genius dreams up an entire campaign involving alleged cave-people who don't exhibit the only qualifying criterion for that status that exists? i.e. living in a cave. What is a house other than an artificial cave?

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[Skater]

Have we actually seen where they live? I don't recall seeing any houses or caves connected to the cavemen.

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[zippthorne]

More of an idiot savant.

not necessarily as a result of the ads, I know about the Government Employees Insurance Corporation, but I neither have it, nor intend on purchasing it. I was suckered by the much more relevant-to-car-insurance ad campaign by Progressive.

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[jotok]

I'm sorry, but this needs to be said: somewhere, the dude that came up with that ad campaign is lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills, and he's the idiot?

Ok. How's that DeVry education serving you, sonny jim?

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[zippthorne]

He's not lighting MY hundred dollar bills. He put the word geico on my mind, but not in a way that makes me want to actually buy anything from them. If I'm typical, then he's not lighting any dollar bills. If I'm not typical, then most people didn't notice the absurdity of alleged cavemen not actually living in caves; that part of the plan is a failure.

Unless that part of the plan didn't exist, and only happened by accident. Which brings us back to the concept of an idiot savant.

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[jotok]

Oh yah, it's absurd. But the way advertising works, no matter if you like a product or not, so long as when you think "car insurance" you think "Geico," and you're NOT thinking "State Farm." It doesn't matter if you hate the ads and you're never going to buy their product. If you hate it then it's still taking up cycles that could be spent thinking about a competitor.

And, I'm sure the guy who thought up the caveman ads has a tidy pile of his own 100 dollar bills and doesn't need yours :)

Re:OT: They're not cavemen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an idiot, but probably gay like most men in advertising. Would a gay man stink himself up with a cigar? Although, since advertising is dominated by women, it's very likely the brain behind the campaign is a woman.

Re:From a friend

[beckerist]

....because you could get a caveman to do it!

Re:Evolution? I thought Jebus created the dinosaur

[sponga]

If you watched that show on the Discovery channel I believe it was the episode of 'Mammals vs Dinosaurs'. They showed how vegetation played a big role in the mammals survival and how dinosaurs when young were not able to hide in the vegetation from larger creatures because the mammals were the dominate species in that level of vegetation.
Something along the lines of that....

So the mammals killed off the dinosaurs at a young age.

Re:Evolution? I thought Jebus created the dinosaur

[rucs_hack]

I don't have a tv, although I do watch other peoples from time to time.

I have heard of the vegetation thing, but it was other flora, not grasses, so far as I understand, ferns or somesuch.

Re:Many mammalian lineages predate the K-T extinct

[rapett0]

While I am a programmer at heart I supposed, I do have a strong interest in biology (amongst other things). I just wanted to add to any geeks out there who have any interest at all in biology, read this book. I found it to be excellent on many levels. I am not here to do a book review, just wanted to say it comes highly recommened from someone *not* in the field. Also, if your in OC (SoCal), I think I saw a flyer that he gave a speech down in Laguna Beach a few months ago. Not sure if he is normally in the area or not.

Re:Many mammalian lineages predate the K-T extinct

[belg4mit]

>It also might explain why rodents are such good laboratory specimens.
See, you're actually assuming that they are good models, whereas it's not clear that they are.
Indeed, regardless of how good a model they are, they are rather used because of their size,
cost and fewer objections by laity. People want to save the cute bunnies (actually lagomorphs,
close cousins of the rodents), but most don't care about the white mice in the cage next to it.
And some people object to being compared to monkeys, apes or pigs :-P

Re:Evolution? I thought Jebus created the dinosaur

[xocp]

According to a report in National Geographic:

The researchers believe that various species of grass had spread before India became geographically isolated from other continents about 125 million years ago.
With the CT event at 65.5MYA, grasses may have already been around for a while.

Good For ET?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the evolution of intelligent mammals isn't tied to a random event like the extinction of the dinosaurs, does this greatly increase the chances of there being sentient extra-terrestrial life?

And the venerable answer is

[Anonymous Coward]

i

Duh...

Re:Evolution? I thought Jebus created the dinosaur

[rucs_hack]

Oh yes, they were around, but only as a relatively minor plant. They became dominant after the CT event.

Is Creationism Imaginary?

[nbritton]

Evolution:
x + 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + y + 13 = 42

Creationism:
x^2 + 43 = 42

Re:Is Creationism Imaginary?

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh... x = i ?

Re:Is Creationism Imaginary?

[vga_init]

uhh... x = i ?

The i is for "intelligence."

Re:Is Creationism Imaginary?

[Bob-taro]

uhh... x = i ?

I was going to say "x=j" for Jesus. (I'm an engineer)

Re:Many mammalian lineages predate the K-T extinct

[saforrest]

See, you're actually assuming that they are good models, whereas it's not clear that they are.

Yes, that's true.

It may well be that any old mammal would do, and mice are merely good because they are small (and for breeding purposes, they have a very short generational cycle and large litters).

I suppose what I was trying to suggest was that mice may be particularly good to compare for specific genetic reasons beyond the obvious ones I just mentioned. Though any argument about our particular closeness to mice could be made about any other rodent or lagomorph just as easily: mice are just as close to us as the cute bunnies are, and as the R.O.U.s would be if they existed.

Preposterous!

[FMota91]

How dare you defy the wise words of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Arrr!

Re:Preposterous!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ramen, fellow pastafarian!

Don't know many scientists, do you.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll hardly find a scientist who, under new evidence or studies, will say "nope, the way we used to believe is more correct, and i'll be damned if i take your new evidence into consideration!"

Go look up Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen metabolism and last champion of Phlogiston.

Of course, this makes any idea that receives broad support from scientists in many cultures (such as evolution, or global climate destabilization) even more likely to be correct. Scientists make mistakes and refuse to give up silly ideas just like anyone else.

Genesis 1-2 says it all....

[Dr. Network]

God created the earth, and all the hosts therein, in six days, resting on the seventh, and establishing the Sabbath as a memorial of creation. The recurring seven day time period (we have come to call one week) occurs ONLY in the account of creation, and no where else, and yet, all of us observe it to a great extent. The evolutionists can (and will) continue to change, reshape, and rethink their theory until the return of Jesus. They'll be forced to do so, as it becomes apparent to them that some scientific fact arises for which the current iteration of said theory cannot account. This is just the latest example. Sad really. Most evolutionists would consider themselves critical thinkers, and they've concocted a theory supported by very few threads of actual evidence.

Re:Genesis 1-2 says it all....

[Morky]

Acutally, I don't observe Tuesday, which causes no end of trouble when I try to plan meetings in Outlook.

Re:Genesis 1-2 says it all....

[Fordiman]

"The evolutionists can (and will) continue to change, reshape, and rethink their theory ..."

Hence the term 'Theory'. Of course, there's two distinct parts of evolution. The history (theory) and the process (speciationa nd adaptation via the law of natural selection). Of course the history gets continuously revised; we don't have all the data yet. We know what the beginning must have looked like, and we know what the end looks like, and we have a lot of data on the middle, but there's hazy bits. That's what's being rethought. The history, not the process.

"...until the return of Jesus."

Irrelevant, and wishful thinking.

"They'll be forced to do so, as it becomes apparent to them that some scientific fact arises for which the current iteration of said theory cannot account."

Ah, the words of someone who didn't bother reading the article. Thanks for playing.

Re:Genesis 1-2 says it all....

[Viol8]

"The recurring seven day time period (we have come to call one week) occurs ONLY in the account of creation, and no where else, "

Really? So it doesn't occur in ancient hindu and chinese texts then? Hmm , someone better tell them their history books are wrong!

Incidentaly , you ever considered that 7 days is exactly 1 quarter of a lunar cycle? No? Well theres a susprise. You go back to reading your simpletons guide to the universe.

Diverse != Big

[Tablizer]

[Specifically, that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs had relatively little impact on mammals and that the steps in mammals' evolution happened well before and long after the dinosaurs' death.] Do they think that those steps ever could have taken place if the dinosaurs were still around?

Even if there was mammalian diversity *before* the meteor event (dino extinction), that does not necessarily mean the mammals were large. Having lots of species and having big species is not necessarily the same thing. Thus, even though there may have been lots of mammals before the meteor, they still might have been small. The relatives of elephants etc. may have been small, for example. Cute little cat-sized elephants (well, maybe they looked a lot different back then).

Thus the view that the death of dinos made way for *large* mammals still seems to be accurate, or at least not refuted. I don't know of any large mammal fossils found before the meteor event.

"...Discoveries Continue to Erode Darwinism"

[ThisGigIsUP]

http://www.icr.org/article/3191/ Several years back, this writer attended the International Conference on Dinosaur/Bird Evolution. One afternoon, a number of us took a field trip led by a recognized "expert." He asked us if the field in which we were standing could have been a dinosaur-age environment. Several said no, because there was grass present. Evolutionists maintain that grasses were not present during the age of dinosaurs -- In my review |i.e., Eschberger, ed.| of Disney's new movie "Dinosaur," I mentioned that one of the few scientific inacurracies |sic| that I found in the movie was the presence of grasses in the dinosaur nesting grounds.3 However, in a 2005 report we read, "Plant-eating dinosaurs munched on grass, say scientists who had thought the plants emerged after the beasts died off."4 Students were taught that the only mammals during the "age of dinosaurs" were small, and barely able to stay alive among the terrible thunder lizards. Evolution theory said that the mammals were nothing more than "shrew-like insectivores that hunted at night." That radically changed with the recent discovery of large, dinosaur-hunting mammals!5

Re:Uhmmm, NOT TRUE

[Hognoxious]

even Muslims believe in creation

It seems they prefer destruction.

Re:conservapedia is satire

[Fordiman]

Unfortunately, Conservapedia was started by a group of fundie literalists in New Jersey to correct what they felt were 'glaring errors' and a 'liberal agenda' in Wikipedia.

In other words, yes, there really are people that stupid.

Re:Uhmmm, NOT TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

Christianity is probably 700 or so years more advanced than Islam just based on it being around longer.

I see. So how many revisions did the bible go through in that time?

Film at 10

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Thanks. Now make a note in your diary so that when it gets to December, you don't forget to inform us all that reindeer can't actually fly.

Re:From a friend

[thePig]

Can it be because there is more selection pressure due to the dinosaurs?
If there is more selection pressure, more the chance of diverging to new species.
And when dinosaurs died out, the mammals had a field day.

Broad Brush

[dunc78]

Paint with a broad brush much? Its easy to generalize either side, because it is usually the ones furtherest from center that have the biggest mouths. More centrist liberals would probably realize such.

Re:Broad Brush

[Doc Ruby]

The more "Conservative" you are, the more you suffer the personality defects I mentioned. One (among many) essential characteristics of "Conservatism" that's not symmetrical in liberalism is the Conservative (actually conserving something this time) value of ideological purity. Liberals are much more heterogenous, even conflicting, in their beliefs.

Personally, I am neither. I want to conserve some things, from progressive gains through the humanist era, through some of the cumulative wisdom not proven wrong or suspect by increasing sophistication and freedom, and including the environment. To do so, I am very progressive, especially in undoing the radical revisions we've suffered in the past decade or two. I'm just a person, with my complexity. I don't have the kind of truncated political view that turns people into "*ists" of whatever denomination. But it's perfectly evident that many people do have it, and are that - or at least struggle to act like that.

So my "broad brush", with its carefully sculpted tip, covers quite the right parts of the human canvas to which I apply it.

Modest Mouse - Bukowski

[thegnu]

Woke up this morning and it seemed to me,
that every night turns out to be
A little more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.
But God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?
God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?

Well we sat on the edge of the river,
the crowd screamed, "Sacrifice the liver!"
If God takes life, he's an Indian giver.
So tell me now why, you'll tell me never.
Who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?
Well who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?

Well see what you wanna see. You should see it all.
Well take what you want from me. You deserve it all.
Nine times out of ten our hearts just get dissolved.
Well I want a better place or just a better way to fall.

But one time out of ten, everything is perfect for us all.
Well I want a better place or just a better way to fall.
Here we go!

If God controls the land and disease,
keeps a watchful eye on me,
If he's really so damn mighty,
my problem is I can't see,
well who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?
Well who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?

Evil home stereo, what good songs do you know?
Evil me, oh yeah I know, what good curves can you throw?

Well all that icing and all that cake,
I can't make it to your wedding, but I'm sure I'll be at your wake.
You were talk, talk, talk, talkin' in circles that day,
when you get to the point make sure that I'm still awake, OK?

Went to bed and didn't see
why every day turns out to be
a little bit more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.
But God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?

NBC

[thegnu]

But NBC says wikipedia can't be trusted! Now I know I have to watch TV if I want to know things.

Re:conservapedia is satire

[Harry Coin]

You're absolutely right. Conservapedia appears to be run by theocratic paleo-conservatives who think that science is a tool of the devil, not neoconservatives who think that democracy can be spread at gunpoint. My mistake.

God is Luv....

[truckaxle]

Most people, you being one, criticize the Bible, having never read it, let alone carefully studied it with an open mind. If you had, you would read passages like:

Sure like:

Deuteronomy
"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."

In this neat little passage we have slavery, genocide and rape by command of the god of the OT.

Here is something to describes the character of the god of the OT...

Exodus
"The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name."

And here is some more OT god mercy and graciousness and long-suffering. Obviously the love and mercy did not apply to young virgin children girls.

Numbers
"They warred against Midian, as YAHWEH commanded Moses, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain ... and they also slew Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire ... Moses was enraged ... 'So you spared the women ... kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man but keep the virgins for yourselves ... divide them up evenly.'"

Now here we have clearly child rape. Keeping in mind that the Midians were pure evil (the standard apologetic response to the above passage) just how young do think these virgin children were? Does not your OT gods grace apply to them?

God hates evil, but loves people.

Is that why whenever the "spirit of the lord" moves within Sampson he goes out to kill people. Yup the love of people just is quite clear in the above passages.

In my experience biblical illiteracy is widespread among bible believers.

Finally the flood did come.

No it did not! The flood is a not only a myth but a borrowed myth. Check the story of Gilgamesh, of which sources predate any OT sources. Try to read something other than Christian Apologetics.

Further the proof the flood does not exists is clearly and abundantly obvious in Geology. Get out into the field take a book or surface geological map and look around and will encounter geological formations that deny the flood.

Re:Uhmmm, NOT TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

It has gone through what could be considered 'revisions', but they are more of a translation change and not necessarily to the original text. The situation at the heart of this is something else though: Is there really a difference between interpretation and revision? If the generally held belief on the wording of a text disregards portions or takes into account different viewpoints then the text remains the same but the meaning is partially/drastically altered. There are many things to take into account (if one so chooses) such as the context of who said it, who it was said to, and the times it was said. These and other things can allow the 'text' of a writing be disregarded or taught differently. Usually this takes time, which is what the GP, I, was referring to.

Again posting AC since this is so off topic.
ak3ldama (554026)

*antagonist

[Tatarize]

doh, nt