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Scientists Wonder What Fingerprints Are For
Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reports that scientists say they have disproved the theory that fingerprints improve grip by increasing friction between people's fingers and the surface they are holding. Dr Roland Ennos designed a machine which enabled him to measure the amount of friction generated by a fingerprint when it was in contact with an acrylic glass at varying levels of pressure. The results showed that friction levels increased by a much smaller amount than had been anticipated, debunking the hypothesis that fingerprints provide an improved grip. Ennos believes that fingerprints may have evolved to grip onto rough surfaces, like tree bark; the ridges may allow our skin to stretch and deform more easily, protecting it from damage; or they may allow water trapped between our finger pads and the surface to drain away and improve surface contact in wet conditions. Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our fingerpads' touch sensitivity."
nt
I noticed this at the zoo watching a bunch of monkeys swing from branch the branch in a cage. The tree branches they had been given had been worn smooth through long use and every time a monkey grabbed on to a smooth branch I felt a jab in my fingers in sympathy. There is something bad about grabbing a smooth object and relying on it to save your life.
So maybe finger prints improve grip with smooth timber surfaces. Testing against glass doesn't sound very realistic. We didn't evolve to grip glass. Or maybe (as the summary suggests) it is something to do with detecting the texture of a surface to find a place to grip.
Of course they don't ask why people have unique finger prints. Maybe it evolved to make murderers easier to catch.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It's obvious fingerprints were designed by our creator to help the Police catch murderers.
I also love how they never counterweight their centrifuges.
If it takes an equal amount of resources for the body to grow a finger without fingerprints then it makes sense that they not meant for anything. Not everything has to have a purpose.
Sounds about right. Such micro-ridges, I think, WOULD increase grip on rougher surfaces, which is what we would run into in daily life. Also, if those ridges - generally the top layer of skin - would rip off or shred, the damage done to the hand would be less than were it smooth, I would guess. IOW, maybe a safety feature?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
It's more likely for something used this much to have functional features than not. Fingers and claws have been around for quite a while. It's hard to imagine them not evolving useful properties. Of course, this can go too far. Try peeling a gecko from a wall, you need to call the Hulk to help.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
They're for US immigration to scan. Other than that they serve no other purpose, like wasps.
Seriously though, did you know that identical twins have different fingerprints? Not so identical after all.
Summation 2
you idiot!
Throughout history, there have been lots of questions that science has not been able to answer. But science is not static. Over time, it has been able to answer more and more questions and close more and more of the 'gaps.'
For any theist, the 'God of the Gaps' defense is pretty weak. Just because we don't understand something doesn't require a God (or gods) to explain it.
This is not a rejection of theism, but simply a comment on science - just because we don't have an answer now doesn't mean we won't have an answer in the future. And not having an answer does not imply that there is a (or many) God(s).
Then we invented lube
Agreed. I'm not a scientist and to me the answer is as obvious as it is to you.
It is clearly a case of aliens genetically modifying the species to easily identify individuals; we do the same in tagging wildlife.
They use auto-balancing centrifuges.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Sorry.
I'll get my coat.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
There is a fair amount of evidence that they increase tactile sensitivity. We have nerves that are sensitive to specific vibrational frequencies. As fingerprints run over edges, then generate vibrations at frequencies we have maximal sensitivity for.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5920/1503
...to suppress the knowledge of a designer, particularly with such a stupid idea as evolution!
Maybe they work like treads on car tires... let there be someplace for liquids to move *away* from to improve grip. Or, maybe having "with oil" and "without oil" surfaces that can be selected by varying grip allows gripping different types of surfaces.
Also, grip isn't the only thing hands do. Wiping or scrubbing with your fingers requires some level of abrasiveness.
I suspect that there may be a connection between building calluses and having prints. Possibly, prints are just the way we make "tough" skin that is more resistant to injury.
Just one more thing science can't answer. Of course the answer is obvious but no scientist would ever consider [i]that[/i].
Obviously its so God can sort you out later.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
"Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our fingerpads' touch sensitivity."
:/)
from TFA (sorry i can figure out how to use the quote function
how is this not obvious? where he have some sort of ridge like pattern (hands, feet) we have more sensitive nerves there. The ridges increase surface area of our skin which means we can feel more using up less volume
the star nosed mole is the perfect example of increased surface area for more touch sensitivity.
Hi 120795, I'm 939458. It's very nice to meet you.
Can I bum a sig?
Makes me want to stab you.
Of course they don't ask why people have unique finger prints. Maybe it evolved to make murderers easier to catch.
I would guess that the only question is why at all do we have finger prints. The uniqueness would then be expected since it would be much more complicated for a system giving rise to same print for everyone to evolve. Start with a system that produces finger prints (for whatever reason), and the usual error while copying the genetic code would certainly make sure that people get unique finger prints.
Is not a city in China.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I always thought it might be to give me more pleasure while I fap.
signature is pants
The USA's National Public Radio show, "Science Friday" discussed this:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105310429&ft=1&f=5
The show talks about this result, and reveals that New world monkeys have similarly ridged
skin on the gripping side of their tails. Touch sensitivity, and resistance to blistering are
posited as potential answers.
More grip, larger surface, which means more flexibility, more nerve-endings - more sensitivity, better warmth-exchange, 'folded-up-ness', which means more protection from wounds, easier to clean (like footprints, the mud just falls out), 'little bits that stick out' - meaning more sensitivity again.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
With articles such as this, it's hard to tell whether we're being subjected to bad science or bad journalism. Both the summary and TFA quite categorically state that the "myth" of fingerprints being used to improve grip has been disproven. They then go on to describe how this experiment tested whether fingerprints helped when grasping an extremely smooth surface, and found out that they didn't (well okay, actually they did, but not by very much).
Finally, some alternate hypotheses as to why fingerprints evolved are posited, the first of which is: they may improve grip on rough surfaces. Not acrylic glass or anything, but those other kind of surfaces - you know, the type that actually occur in nature.
I'm pretty sure I don't know much more now than I did before I read the article.
Why do they have to be for something?
Evolution does not forbid random things, that are neither bad nor good for something.
Sometimes, humans try too much, to fit things into the artificial set of meta-rules that they did create, to describe the complex results of more basic and emergent rules. But those meta-rules have their own artifacts, that are not present in the basic rules and therefore are not present in the world. Like there having to be a "reason" for everything. A human concept that should describe causality, but adds something more to it, which does not exist in reality.
Other than that, it is obvious, that they enhance the grip, even in situations with liquids.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Book 'im Dano.
"My preferred theory is that they allow the skin to deform and thus stop blistering. That is why we get blisters on the smooth parts of our hands and feet and not the ridged areas: our fingerpads, palms and soles."
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=4715
I can't tell you how many times I've been out back, trying to climb up my giant sheet of plexiglass, wondering why I just can't seem to get a good grip.
Now I know! Thank you, "scientists"!
My view is that the reason science and religion come up with different answers is because they ask different questions.
Science can tell you how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people. Religion can try to tell you whether or not creating such a bomb is a good idea.
So what? Who is to say they aren't slowly evolving away and they were much more pronounced in the past when we needed it living out in the wild?
Much like an appendix, its most likely something once useful that is on the way out. Evolution doesn't happen overnight.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am going to go with...They are for increasing touch sensations on the fingertips to increase detection of differences and variations in textures of objects.
"This is not a rejection of theism"
Wimp. Reject theism. The only thing it gets used for in society today is to justify prejudice.
Celestial barcodes. The gods are thinking of moving towards an RFID based solution but for now it works.
My view is that the reason science and religion come up with different answers is because they ask different questions.
Q: What makes a rainbow?
Science A:A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. They take the form of a multicoloured arc, with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch. The light is first refracted as it enters the surface of the raindrop, reflected off the back of the drop, and again refracted as it leaves the drop. The overall effect is that the incoming light is reflected back over a wide range of angles, with the most intense light at an angle of 40 - 42 degrees.
Religion A:It's a sign of God's promise to Noah to never again flood the earth. (Genesis 9.13-15)
Science, to me, is about observing the world, and hopefully learning something. Religion seems to be about accepting answers from thousands of years ago without questioning their merit.
Humans are the only species who regularly consume large amounts of ice-cold beer. Fingerprints enhance the displacement of water, providing a firmer grip and thus increased consumption and less spillage. I for one am exceedingly thankful and have left my prints on cans and bottles throughout this world.
I'm guessing that there probably wasn't a whole lot of acrylic around during the evolutionary period when fingerprints developed.
Now god only flood small parts of the world at a time...
Isn't this the same question as why we have 5 fingers on each hand instead of 4 or 6?
Evolution won't remove/change features if it isn't a disadvantage for the survival.
So perhaps you have to look at species way before humans and monkeys.
that's the problem i have with evolution. i find it hard to believe that people born with a few extra ridges in their fingertips were so improved that they dominated the species so we all have them. And troll me if you want, but when did a birds body get the intelligence to start growing feathers even though for hundreds of generations the feathers must have been completely useless?
And whats up with the big bang?! Who made that shit up?!
By properly using the subject line to state the subject, and the body to state that which you wish to say.
The only difference between you and someone who doesn't understand logic is.. almost exactly nothing. Science doesn't require irrational belief, it is simply based upon more and more thorough observation and testable hypothesis', while religion is based upon shallow observation and wishful thinking.
The key difference to me between religion and science is that religious folks have to explain all new observations in such a way that it will fit into their current worldview, because they are terrified that conflicting ideas will mean their god doesn't exist. Most Christians in my family are terrified to look more into evolution, with the only time they view anything on it being when they read Christian articles to reassure themselves that it isn't true without doing any research. Scientists will simply say "oh well we were wrong about that, now we can record this new and more accurate understanding of things and keep working to understand even more". They do not let irrational fears restrict their thinking.
which is totally what she said
Fingerprints are for creating jobs for law enforcement, all part of the master plan.
Hope is the currency of fools
Religion can try to tell you whether or not creating such a bomb is a good idea.
Ah, so as an Atheist, I have license to blow shit up because I don't have a god to know any better?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Picking your nose seems like a good enough reason.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
For some reason, when I look at my fingerprints, I think of tree rings. When we were little fetuses still growing fingers, perhaps there was something about how the skin extends itself that causes an oscillation pattern. This would explain why all the ridges curve along the tip of the finger. There are a few major forms of fingerprints that are caused randomly, which may be explained by the environment the hand area was in when the fingers were formed. Maybe whorls are formed when a side of the developing finger was rubbing against something. Arches seem to be the most natural shape, just skin pushing itself out.
Fingerprints might not have any use. There could be a multitude of reasons why people have them. People could find them sexy or fear anyone that doesn't have them. They could simple be a by product of another mutation that benefited humans. Evolution is a fun random thing without any real directional purpose. Some times yes mutations are beneficial other times not. People have a lot of trouble understanding that.
Roland Ennos designed a machine which enabled him to measure the amount of friction generated by a fingerprint when it was in contact with an acrylic glass at varying levels of pressure.
Acrylic glass. Now that sounds like something primates would be gripping thousands of years ago!
The results showed that friction levels increased by a much smaller amount than had been anticipated, debunking the hypothesis that fingerprints provide an improved grip. Ennos believes that fingerprints may have evolved to grip onto rough surfaces...
This proves that fingerprints do not improve grip... instead we hypothesize that they might be evolved to improve grip. Really? *shakes head*
Perhaps they helped attract mates?
Aetheism is a religion.
So was this a test to determine if we've developed a characteristic through millions of years of evolution that allows us to grip acrylic glass better? Last time I checked, how well something grips depends considerably on what is being gripped. I doubt there was much natural selection for the ability to grip "acrylic glass." Now, if they'd tested for grip on tree bark while swinging they might be on to something ...
I lose my fingerprints from time to time due to a skin condition, and I drop things a lot more when they're not there. While that's anecdotal and lacks a lot of scientific rigor, I'm not inclined to discard the idea that they're there to improve grip.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Right, or you can just ask someone with no fingerprints, like my uncle who went through a certain kind of auto-immune chemo treatment which caused his fingerprints to peel away permanently over the course of several months.
He says his fingertips are no longer nearly as sensitive to heat and cold, and his ability to identify different sorts of rough surfaces has diminished severely; he can't tell the difference between rubber and suede for example without looking now.
I'm sure he'd be willing to have a phone call with an inquisitive scientist, should there be any out there who also have a well developed sense of the obvious.
Juvenile bullshit. How old are you?
People are evil. Religion provides a convenient hate concept and rebellion outlet for teenagers, but it is in no way the cause.
Morality and ethics can do the same, and do not require the belief in an invisible sky wizard.
wrong, on more levels than you are aware.
Why do they vary so much? Aside from a few mutations and birth defects, we all have 2 arms, 2 legs, 10 fingers, etc. Even if they don't serve a purpose, why does everyone have different fingerprints?
Hey people are fanatical about their religions and people who believe in science as their god are embarrassed to admit their faith. But believing in something you can't prove is faith. What a conundrum.
Fingerprints are for nothing. Fingerprints are a byproduct of the processes necessary for the production of new cell growth.
Just one more thing science can't answer. Of course the answer is obvious but no scientist would ever consider [i]that[/i].
Forgive me for feeding a troll, but I am assuming that the obvious answer is whatever religion your pappy taught you...So why would a god or devil or FSM care about fingerprints?
Fingerprints are the md5sum of our DNA code.
This may be off on some random tangent but it sparked some feelings within me that have always been bothersome: why are we so set on the idea that God and science are mutually exclusive? Why is it that evolution negates the very possibility that a god exists while belief in God requires us to reject evolution? Is it simply because of what is said in the Bible....? Perhaps it's my Christian upbringing coupled with my natural curiosity for science (I am by no means a science expert, simply a "fan" so to speak) but my view of the Bible, creationism in particular, is a little more abstract than literal.
Think of it this way: if you are explaining a difficult concept to a small child, how do you go about doing it? You dumb it down, put it into words they can understand. You use ideas that they are familiar with in order to get the message across. Doing so may sometimes change the literal meaning of what you're saying but as long as it helps the child understand the concept your goal is achieved. I believe that is how the Bible was written. Concepts of how the world came to be or how we came onto this planet would have made no sense to the people when the Bible was written, so the message was dumbed down. The important thing is the underlying message, not an exact historical account of what happened. This can also explain the existence of different religions as well since different people would have thought differently.
I'm sure I'm not the first to have these ideas but it amazes me how more people don't feel this same way. I don't know, maybe it's just my mind's way of neatly explaining away the inconsistencies with the Bible and the world, but it makes sense to me, and in the end if there is no God but my beliefs help me to live my life as a good person then religion has done its job.
"I believe there is no God" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
Just one more thing science can't answer. Of course the answer is obvious but no scientist would ever consider [i]that[/i].
Just a tip: we speak HTML here. We don't look kindly on outsiders coming in here and speaking BBCode.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Maybe the rainbows are a warning to the other parts.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Theists are always using the wrong arguments when the try to disprove atheists. They're all about how well bananas fit in the hand and whatnot. That kind of stuff is easily explained by evolution.
Now this, on the other hand, is a good argument. We're all equipped with unique signatures for easy identification, and not only that. We leave a trail where ever we've been so we can be tracked using the same unique identifiers. They provide no apparent benefit, the identification/tracking part can clearly not be attributed to evolution since we figured out how to use it only a couple of thousand years ago.
Now why do we have unique identifiers that also allows us to be tracked easily?
I'm an atheist, but this is the kind of stuff that makes the debate interesting. ;)
(I guess it's a "good" argument for intelligent design, but not really for an omnipotent, omniscient deity)
It's flamebaity point but it's not completely false. Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages. As Christianity lost its grip in Europe science picked up again. Mind you scientfic progress wasn't exactly stellar in the pre Christian Roman Empire too. Even the Roman Republic didn't seem to produce much science or literature compared to Athens.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
My view is that the reason science and religion come up with different answers is because they ask different questions.
Erm...Religion tries to answer all the questions science does. That's why Galileo and Darwin have been declared heretics; religion tried to answer a question, and scientists provided a better answer, with evidence. The difference is that behavior and philosophy are subjective and cannot be proven or disproven by the scientific method.
So, as Science continues to advance, those who would have previously proclaimed "Religion answers all questions" are now being forced to change their proclamation to "Religion answers all questions that science cannot". But I still have my doubts about the later claim.
Most atheists explain it as "I won't believe until I see proof of it", though, which is very much scientific.
Atheism isn't a religion any more than black is a colour, or cold is an additive property.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
More accurately, the rainbow was representative of the promise that God would never again destroy the whole earth with water. We get fire next time.
And how do you call someone who tells you "I don't care wether there are any gods or not, because I don't have a need to believe in a deity"? Isn't this atheism, too?
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
I imagine fingerprints are just the way the cells happen to divide and the unique pattern is just the result of random growth.
It's like if you look at the back of your had, you see slight lines everywhere, that makes your skin look like scales. It serves no purpose; it is an artefact of growth.
This is an armchair theory though.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/fireice.htm
read the interesting comment by Tom Hansen, about the 3rd one down.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Our original alien creators gave us fingerprints for identification purposes. Just because we had lost that information before we regained it, doesn't change anything. It is for ID purposes...
They are there to make it easy for our Fingerprint-taking Overlords to monitor and control us
It's not so much that you have license as that you believe you have license.
Actually, Galileo was declared a heretic because he was a complete douchebag and deliberately offended men powerful in the Church.
Although that seems like a good idea at first, if the treatment was powerful enough to remove his fingerprints, it could have caused some nerve damage as well, which could cause his diminished sensitivity. However, if he (and other such people) were to submit to tests and scans and general research, they would surely prove helpful in deciphering the mystery of the fingerprint.
just believing in something doesn't make it a religion, i can believe that the cia caused 9/11, doesn't mean that's a religion.
the point to religion is that it has narratives, symbols, practices, rituals and supernatural beings. atheism has not one of those things.
So, the whole bloody thing is total waste of time.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
In Related News
The Beauty industry say that regardless of functionality, they will soon develop fingerprint smoothing hand cream; to go with pore-less look foundation. Soon you will be able to say goodbye to unsightly fingerprints.
Creationists say they are not surprised and that God gave us fingerprints because he wanted right wing governments to be able to keep track of unbelievers better. They note that no angel has ever been known to have finger-prints.
Palm readers everywhere say that this truth had already been revealed to them through years of study. Sceptics countered that it is easy to say that after the study has been released.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
They are there as a tag system so that our alien slave masters can register their property. Don't everyone know that?
Odd how they neglect to remember that the dermal papillae also serve to expose more epithelial tissue to the blood supply easier. Did they forget to read their High School Anatomy book?
How do you know there's not using an auto-balancing centrifuge? I mean, I don't watch the show myself, so maybe I'm way off base, but it sounds like a dumb complaint to me.
Comment of the year
The "faith" of an atheist is not the same as the faith of a theist. You're conflating two different uses of the word. I have faith that there is no god in exactly the same way that I have faith that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster, or that I have faith that Russel's teapot does not, in fact, exist. If you want to call that "faith," it's within the boundaries of English usage, but it's an entirely different faith than positive faith in a particular god. And you clearly have no clue about scientific evidence. The default position is we assume things do not exist unless we are presented with positive evidence to the contrary. It's the theists who have the burden of proof, not the atheists. To this point, the theists have failed spectacularly.
Because there is so much other evidence to show that fingerprints do help. The stupidest example is rubber gloves. Rubber gloves are often made with an increased surface area about the finger tips to help in gripping, and I think there are those who have had burns and stuff on their hands where their fingerprints are gone also have a harder time of gripping.
This is my sig.
An agnostic
I completely agree with your views. I find that a lot of fundamentalists, whether aethiest, christian, muslim or whatever, completely miss the point of religion.
Perhaps the cells that detect touch and temperature were also damaged? Do people who temporary remove their fingerprints (would this be doable with a file without damaging the living cells underneath?) notice the same loss of sensitivity?
Maybe it's less obvious than you think. Even when it is, your uncle alone would not be sufficient proof.
By this definition of faith everything I don't believe in and yet lack a scientific proof that proves it's non-existance means I have "Faith". This certainly makes me a man of a million faiths!
To start with I would like to take this opportunity to declare my faith in the "non-existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster".
Obviously the aliens who seeded our planet millions of years ago wanted some way to identify which strains eventually became most successful.
That's because the original 512 genetic strains dumped on our planet were created as part of a lottery...so there's a lot of cold stinky alien cash riding on the results of this seeding.
My research shows they are arriving around 03:14:07 January 19, 2038 UTC to perform the final census.
Occam's razor should be applied in these situations so people don't run off on odd whimsical tangents. This is all so obvious when you stop and take the time to ponder it.
"I believe there is no God" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
"I believe there is no Easter Bunny" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no Easter Bunny but Frank". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
i believe it provides protection against minor cuts, an alternative to thick skin. And provided feedback in assessing textures.
Can you honestly not see how asserting a positive without evidence is different from asserting a negative based on lack of evidence?
Hint: in the former case, like in your Allah example, one is ascribing specific properties to something that is unobservable, impossible to test, impossible to prove. There is another word for this: fantasy.
There is no scientific evidence for unicorns, but I believe they're out there anyway because I want to/an old book told me to think that/it's convenient to my laziness of intellect.
Of course. And "I believe there are no pink unicorns" is equally a statement of faith using your logic.
An atheist actively believes there are no gods. An agnostic believes that, in essence, whether or not there is a god is not knowable or testable, and is therefore merely a point of theological discussion with no useful result. Your posited person would probably fall into nontheism. Personally, I'm an apathetic agnostic most of the time.
NOT. Maybe they can prove what their asses are for.
Evolution certainly does not "negate the very possibility that god exists". Nothing can do so, it is quite impossible to prove from any evidence that god does not exist.
God may very well exist and created a universe where evolution would happen, on purpose. It is also possible God created the world exactly like we see it (perhaps last Thursday morning, there is no need for 6000 years or anything), however it does appear he really wants us to believe life evolved as he created a huge mass of evidence for evolution at the same time, so I don't think it is wise to go against his wishes.
Creationists do not realize that all their arguments are equivalent to "my god is too stupid to create evolution so he must have created the end result". They do not realize this however because they are blockheads.
No it's not. Atheism is a belief: a belief in there not being a god.
Belief is not religion.
The statement "I believe in little green men" is not a religious statement. Neither is the statement "I don't believe in little green men."
So why should a belief in no god be a religious statement? By your logic, very few things are not religions.
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages
Yeah. Articulated armor, steel long-swords, and crop rotation aren't science at all....
And it sure wasn't religion that got all of the Greek city-states to stop fighting every four years and come together for the olympics. Nope. Not that, either.
You're arguing from authority, and "noted atheist says religion is bad" is no more credible than "pope says modernism is bad."
wrong, on more levels than you are aware.
Look, if you have a firm belief about the nature of the Almighty, as well as a supporting set of lore (lessons, parables, and secondary beliefs), that's a religion.
"Atheism" is "I know that God doesn't exist." Or, rather, "I believe that God doesn't exist."
If your statement is "I do not believe God exists", as in "I don't know that God exists or that He doesn't", then you're properly labeled an "Agnostic." (Which is a word coined by a member of a 19th century atheism society, to distance himself form the anti-Christian zealotry he found there.)
Science tries to understand the world using evidence and logic. Religion presumes to already understand everything, despite a complete lack of evidence. This is the difference.
Your little illustration is really poor. Someone could play that stupid game another way: Science tells you how to cure a disease. Religion tells you whether or not you should kill infidels.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Look at which other species have fingerprints.
Is it just apes?
Do dogs/cats have individual paw prints?
Do Horses have hoof prints?
Do the tip of our nails have nailprints that would distinguish them if we looked close enough?
Do octopus suckers have fingerprints?
It could just be background noise.
They could be vestigial.
They could be an echo of the growth process since they are on the tips of our fingers and toes.
Would we find similar swirly distortions on the tips of dog tails, fish flukes?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
Atheism has its ROOTS in foreign words that roughly translate as "without gods." But it doesn't mean that any more than "Pagan" means "woodland religion."
Atheism: A religious creed that posits that there are neither God nor Gods, nor any supernatural entity.
Agnosticism: A religious creed that posits the existance or non-existance of the divine is beyond its members knowledge.
Pagan: Any religious creed that posits a belief in a God or Gods other than that described by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.
Neo-Pagan: A reliigous creed that asserts belief in many gods, supposedly with its basis in pre-Christian Europe.
Aside from "Pagan", all three are relatively modern inventions, each younger as a viable religion than the United States of America.
I mean, these are just theories that you and I could come up with in a brainstorm session.
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages. As Christianity lost its grip in Europe science picked up again.
As if the plague had nothing to do with that. Or the breakdown of civility with the fall of the Roman Empire and rise of bands of knights in perpetual raids and gang wars for their lords.
Anyway, there was a lot of progress on science and math during the Middle Ages in the Muslim middle east, which was not exactly a bastion of atheism.
I agree with the multiple reasons - e.g. better grip over rougher surfaces.
But maybe the ridges also allow you to more easily detect that you are losing your grip (sliding) while still allowing the skin to be/grow thicker (calluses) and more resistant to wear and tear.
Should be quite important to most primates to detect that they are losing their grip on stuff.
Slippage-detection might even be more important than having better grip in the first place. Since you can often increase grip by increasing the force. e.g. "Uh oh, I'm slipping, better hold on tighter - and look for something else to grab on, quick!".
It's so Xenu knows who is who!
IIRC, there was an article on either Slashdot or Arstechnica where evidence was presented that at least one real role of fingerprints is to increase tactile sensitivity.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
"I believe there is no God" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
There's a pretty important difference between "I believe there is no God" and "The idea of an invisible man in the sky controlling everything is retarded and not even in the realm of possibilities"
I don't believe the people who live next door are spying on me with hidden cameras that can see through walls. Does that make me religious, since I explicitly believe that something fucking ridiculous is not happening? Or does it have to be impossible to prove, and therefore meaningless?
I've had the experience of having no fingerprints for a time. I worked at UPS unloading trucks; one of the customers shipped many thousands of small boxes just before the end of the year; the boxes were the precise size that the only way to grip them was with the pads of fingers and thumb (I'm looking at you, Daytimers!). A large portion of those boxes passed through my hands. Shortly after I started work there, I noticed that I was having trouble gripping items that were wet - a water glass with condensation on it would routinely slip through my fingers. When I examined my hands I saw that the ridges of my fingerprints were basically worn away. I wore gloves for a bit while working and the problem cleared itself up.
Another illustration would be to look at the skiving on the bottom of a pair of deck shoes. On a dry surface, they offer no advantage whatsoever, but on a wet surface the difference in grip is remarkable. Or for that matter tire treads - a set of slicks is the absolute best way to maximize grip - unless it's wet, at which point they become the WORST configuration.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Despite the advances made in evolutionary science, there still persists this belief that everything has a reason. This is a legacy meme from ancient religions and schools of philosophy. Everything does NOT need to have a teleological cause. It might be that fingerprints developed because they rendered some advantage, or it might be that they happened randomly, and persisted because they did not cause a disadvantage. You're scientists, so quit with the magical thinking.
Dogs have noseprints that are as unique as fingerprints (and in fact are legal ID for dogs in Canada).
Uh... why exactly is Canada defining legal and illegal ways of identifying dogs?
Actually, as a scientifically-minded agnostic, I have to agree that atheism is definitely a religion.
We really do lack sufficient evidence to comment on the existence of entities powerful enough to be called gods, who could potentially do things like create planets or influence evolution in a specific direction. In fact, given how vast the universe is, I'd even have to bet that something like that is out there somewhere. (Of course, true omnipotence or omniscience are quite impossible.)
Now, non-circular evidence for the existence of the gods of the religions of Earth is non-existent. All signs point to the fact that they are ideas created by men to control other men. It can be argued whether this was conscious pre-meditated intent by a few specific individuals or just an aggregate effect of collective ignorance and natural opportunistic tendencies, but the end result is the same.
Knowledge != Intelligence
"Long ago and far away man was a monkey."
False. Man and monkey most likely had the same ancestors, long ago and far away. This is a very different statement than yours. Monkeys exist because they've adapted under different circumstances and environments than we. I can guarantee you that, without proper equipment and preparation, a monkey is more likely to survive in a forest than you, while you are more likely to survive in the habitat that you evolved in.
Ok, according to you, is there such a thing as a position relating to lack of concern with religion that's not a religious creed?
It seems very odd to call atheism a "religious creed", since there's about zero in it that is alike to a religion. Depending on the brand it can be perhaps described as "irrational belief", or "belief without proof", but religious?
Atheism and agnosticism have no church, no doctrine, no priests, no rituals, no saints, no tales about what happens after death, no prescribed standards for behavior or morality, etc, that the "adherents" agree on.
Two atheists may not necessarily even agree on "god doesn't exist". Possible positions include: "There's positively, no god". "There's no god that has proven its existence to me", "Whether it exists or not is immaterial to me", "The concept of god doesn't make sense", "Of the gods I heard of, none seem plausible", etc. They may have completely incompatible positions on morality. This simply doesn't happen with religions. Two christian or jewish people may have some minor arguments about the exact meaning of a verse, but there always will be a lot they can agree on.
science includes things like psychology, evolution of ethics, statistical probability, criminal research, economics.
these, and many other, can easily explain why creating a particular bomb at a particular moment with a particular intent might be a bad idea.
Rich
Or maybe it didn't evolve that way for any particular reason.
The fact that fingerprints are so conserved among primates, and some even have them on their tails which they use to grip trees as well, to me that suggests it's a functional feature. Were humans the only ones with fingerprints I would agree that it might not be an evolved feature.
We use fingerprints for identifying criminals, but clearly that's not what they were evolved for. In the absence of the conservation, had the friction studies shown a positive result, that still would not have meant it was evolved for that purpose. But the fact that primates have kept fingerprints around through multiple speciation events really makes it seem like it had some function. There's also the possibility that it is somehow necessary to develop fingerprints in order to develop primate fingers.
it's not. word 'believe' in that context means "most likely, with a very high probability".
aaand you can't disprove something for which there is absolutely no evidence.
it's the same with flying unicorns.
Rich
To all of my sibling posters: I do believe you've just been trolled.
Some things just don't have a purpose. This study is just about as stupid as asking, "Why is water wet?" --- It is what it is. Perhaps, the better question is, "Why do we have skin?" but we all know the answer to that. Prints are just another outcome without reason.
If I want better grip, I where those sticky rubber work gloves. Has our brain power negated all bodily evolution?
-=[ place
FTFY. I'll never, ever, ever, let religion (be it through the words of an either long dead or alive-and-kicking prophet or some thousand-year-old book) dent my moral choices.
My 0.02 cents
Well, if you choose to ignore the concept of "burden of proof", yes, it is.
"There is no god" is a reply to "There is/are a/some god/s". The former does not make sense without stating the latter first.
I believe there is no god on the same grounds as I believe there are no orange polar bears. In order to prove that there actually are, you just need to provide a single instance of them. Until that moment, the default position is believing that there are no such animals.
A belief which, consequently, can be changed by showing me a single polar bear, so no, it's not one of the religious kind.
My 0.02 cents
That and the flood is old testament. The new testament explicitly says they're allowed to throw out pieces of the old testament they don't like (which is why Christians eat bacon), so I don't see any reason they can't reneg the flood promise.
"Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our fingerpads' touch sensitivity."
Yeah, because we knew back then how we would control the cursor on our laptops.
Since we were genetically engineered by an extraterrestrial civilization they designed fingerprints in our DNA so that they could catalog us for later use.
Man, look at the fingerprints on her!
Depends who you vote for.
He's either in the White House, or he just left it. DrrrTISH.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He ditched the BDUF methodology and embraced extreme programming - small frequent releases.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, it's apathyism. DFTTYW!
At the bottom of the
That and the flood is old testament. The new testament explicitly says they're allowed to throw out pieces of the old testament they don't like...
Just some of the rules, but it's a moot issue. The superficial rules (people went overboard in deciding what counted as "work" on the Sabbath, among other things) are discarded, but the important ones are distilled down to the two most important ones. "Do not commit murder" and "Do not steal" are redundant with "Love your neighbour as yourself".
http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/wescourses/2004s/ees227/01/spandrels.html
"The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme
Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin
Republished from the original with the kind permission of The Royal Society of London: Gould, S. J. And Lewontin, R. C., "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique Of The Adaptationist Programme," Proceedings Of The Royal Society of London, Series B, Vol. 205, No. 1161 (1979), Pp. 581-598.
An adaptationist programme has dominated evolutionary thought in England and the United States during the past forty years. It is based on faith in the power of natural selection as an optimizing agent. It proceeds by breaking an organism into unitary "traits" and proposing an adaptive story for each considered separately. Trade-offs among competing selective demands exert the only brake upon perfection; non-optimality is thereby rendered as a result of adaptation as well. We criticize this approach and attempt to reassert a competing notion (long popular in continental Europe) that organisms must be analyzed as integrated wholes, with BauplÃne so constrained by phyletic heritage, pathways of development, and general architecture that the constraints themselves become more interesting and more important in delimiting pathways of change than the selective force that may mediate change when it occurs. We fault the adaptationist programme for its failure to distinguish current utility from reasons for origin (male tyrannosaurs may have used their diminutive front legs to titillate female partners, but this will not explain why they got so small); for its unwillingness to consider alternatives to adaptive stories; for its reliance upon plausibility alone as a criterion for accepting speculative tales; and for its failure to consider adequately such competing themes as random fixation of alleles, production of non-adaptive structures by developmental correlation with selected features (allometry, pleiotropy, material compensation, mechanically forced correlation), the separability of adaptation and selection, multiple adaptive peaks, and current utility as an epiphenomenon of nonadaptive structures. We support darwin's own pluralistic approach to identifying the agents of evolutionary change.
1. Introduction
The great central dome of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice presents in its mosaic design a detailed iconography expressing the mainstays of Christian faith. Three circles of figures radiate out from a central image of Christ: angels, disciples, and virtues. Each circle is divided into quadrants, even though the dome itself is radially symmetrical in structure. Each quadrant meets one of the four spandrels in the arches below the dome. Spandrels-the tapering triangular spaces formed by the intersection of two rounded arches at right angles are necessary architectural byproducts of mounting a dome on rounded arches. Each spandrel contains a design admirably fitted into its tapering space. An evangelist sits in the upper part flanked by the heavenly cities. Below, a man representing one of the four biblical rivers (Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and Nile) pours water from a pitcher in the narrowing space below his feet.
(this image at www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ ~suchii/spandrel.html)
The design is so elaborate, harmonious, and purposeful that we are tempted to view it as the starting point of any analysis, as the cause in some sense of the surrounding architecture. But this would invert the proper path of analysis. The system begins with an architectural constraint: the necessary four spandrels and their tapering triangular form. They provide a space in which the mosaicists worked; they set the quadripartite symmetry of the dome above.
Such architectural constraints abound, and we find them easy to understand because we do not impose our biological biases upon them. Every fan-vaulted ceiling must have a series of open spaces along the midline of the va
Just a tip: we speak HTML here. We don't look kindly on outsiders coming in here and speaking BBCode.
Sounds rather hostile there .. .. ...
I didn't see a sign BBCODE gets frowned upon
We did understand him/her, let's just hope he/she will find out html tags soon
Else [F][i][d][o], the new pup around the block would already have eaten them up! The user*euh*BBcodes I mean .. you know?
on another note: I wish [F][i][d][o] could sniff out these slashdot bugs buggering my firefox all over ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I like to call that Apatheism.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I can't believe it when I see articles debating the purpose of fingerprints. They are mechanical amplifiers for vibration in the skin, thus enhancing touch perception; it's been known for 50-70 years that the ridges form a specific arrangement with the sensory fibre endings. In fact the ridges are CREATED by interactions between the developing skin and the nerve fibres which innervate it to provide touch sensation - this is why some nervous system defects result in abnormal fingerprints (e.g. Down syndrome). The only "Scientists [who] Wonder What Fingerprints Are For" are those unaware of the basic literature in the field. Here's a starting point: http://stke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;323/5920/1503 Hope that helps.
If a textured surface doesn't increase traction, why do they bother putting treads on tires? Wouldn't smooth tires work just as well?
There are animals that have very few offspring, but for several reasons are very good at defending them.
Quantity only works where the quality of the parenting is relatively poor (fish, insects, etc).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Humanity was created by aliens literally more than dozens of years ago. When this happened, they wanted to be able to distinguish between two people without doing a DNA scan, since all you - er, us humans look alike. So the aliens engineered us to have these useless fingerprints.
My view is that the reason science and religion come up with different answers is because they ask different questions.
Science can tell you how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people. Religion can try to tell you whether or not creating such a bomb is a good idea.
I agree that science and religion ask different questions but I would suggest that Science will tell you discover how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people, Religion will tell you to use it on those unbelievers over there.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
atheisim is the only "theisim" that defines a group by what they do not believe. we dont have a theisim for people who dont believe atoms exist or whatever.
Oh and..atheisim is not a religion go read a book, a statement of faith != religion.
And they also have lab techs performing interrogations, all of them seem to be happy with their hair in their face while they're searching for fibers on a mattress or gathering evidence from a crime scene.
What a waste of a study if you didn't include toe prints. Who picks up a glass with their feet except my ape masters.
That sounds far more agnostic than atheist.
Atheism is a hard-line that God doesn't exist. Even if an atheist saw God, provided they could form any explanation about him/her/it, they would disbelieve God.
In fact, that only way to prove to an atheist that God existed would be to do it in an inexplicable manner. This includes ruling out hallucinations, aliens, or what have you.
Not to be crass, but this is one of those situations where differential reproductive success directly impacts the evolution of a trait - the scientists should have tested it on the hair and skin on the backs and sides of female primates and/or whatever surface female primates grab onto while 'making sweet sweet love'. No grip, no offspring. Branches? Acrylic? What? Whatever.
I take issue with the folks that ask why do fingerprints have to do anything. Even if they were ever a "neutral" mutation. Nature has an insidious habit of stumbling into situations where they do provide a benefit. They have been preserved, even have flourished. We have them and we will find more uses for them. It's like "junk" DNA. If we ask the right question we find this stuff that does not transcribe still plays an important role in the way genes are expressed.
This is not as simple as it sounds. 'Mutation' can mean any of a very large number of kinds of changes to DNA. IAAEB, by the way., so I have to chime in. It almost counts as working.
It's really more accurate to say that most mutations that are kept are *not harmful*. While this may seem like nit-picking, you have to remember that the reason evolutionary theory is hard is that it is based on mathematical models of really complicated processes.
When you express a mathematical model in plain language, you have to be nit-picky or you won't express the real meaning of the model and you can draw false conclusions.
About the only way to say that a physical feature is 'for' some particular purpose is by a lot of experimentation using gene knockouts, breeding experiments or other techniques. Even then, we can't be sure we have found the full evolutionary reason for the feature.
This is the reason most biologists don't have to think about evolutionary theory very much. It is difficult enough to figure out the genetic basis (the functional 'how') for a physical feature let alone try to figure out the evolutionary 'why'. Many a full career can be spent just figuring out the 'how'.
The ridges tilt when there are sideways components of force, resulting in pressure differences between the two sides of each ridge. The skin has only pressure force sensors, no tangential force sensors, so the ridges allow sensing tangential forces without needing some new kind of nerve/sensor system. That is important for gentle gripping, for example, so you can tell when a tighter grip is needed to prevent slipping. So the pressure sums or averages give the total normal force, and the local differences give the tangential components of the force. Useful.
I just took at my body and from head to toe and i see a purpose for every part on me. I'm sure there is a purpose for finger prints. anyways, we do use them for identification, isn't that a purpose? plus imagine if your fingertips were perfectly smooth, you wouldn't be able to feel things in as much detail. I think everything has a reason, we just haven't found out why yet. We act like we know everything yet we can only explain a fraction of the phenomena that goes on in this world not to mention the rest of the universe. others are happy with just saying "oh its random." If everything is random then nothing is random.
Science requires a belief which there is no way to prove, which is that what you sense is reliable.
In your view, does a belief have to be provable to be rational?
In a less philosophical vein, faith in scientific approaches requires a belief that the universe is predictable ("If we do X a bunch of times, and get result Y, it's reasonable to expect that we'll see result Y the next time we do X.").
That's actually a large (and unprovable) assumption, as many philosophers will happily tell you. Of course, by definition, an assumption is unprovable. Call it a postulate or an axiom, if you prefer, but it's still the same thing - something you take for granted, and acknowledge you cannot prove.
In the end, scientific methods are anything but logically rigorous. The whole system of science is predicated on a method of argument that is considered fallacious in formal logical arguments.
Are scientific approaches useful? Definitely. Forming hypotheses based on what you see, then testing them is an extremely pragmatic tool for getting through life, and also for developing technology and building mental models of how things seem to work.
Don't mistake it for a logical tool, though. I guess it's fine to call it rational, if your definition of rational doesn't require logical rigor. Mostly, though, I think the word "reasonable" is used to describe something that seems intuitively correct based on observation, not "rational". Maybe it's just my social circle that uses it that way, though.
All human beings have a strong tendency to explain new observations in a way that it fits into their current worldview. We call it confirmation bias, and in some contexts, it can be a problem.
While confirmation bias is not logically rigorous in the least, it can actually be a pragmatic tool for going through life. I've never met anyone whose life philosophy was completely bulletproof - if you rethought things from first principles every time you learned information that conflicted with how you currently thought the world worked, you would starve to death pretty quickly. Thus do creationists keep their beliefs despite geological dating, and thus do atheists keep their beliefs despite soft tissue in dinosaur bones. For any worldview, there are observations about the universe that have troubling implications, I think. It's my personal belief that the human mind is just too small and simple a thing to fully know and understand the universe, and that no human will ever be able to do it, so I don't worry about having a perfect philosophy. I try to figure out what seems to make the most sense based on what I've experienced to date, and go with that, even if it's not perfect.
As far as Christians not investigating evolution - most people, regardless of their beliefs, refuse to examine other people's beliefs. It's a very common human trait - while I know very few creationists who've read Dawkins, I also know very few atheists who've actually read the Bible, and even fewer who've actually read any serious defenders of Christianity (C.S. Lewis is a decent place to start). It's pretty obvious to me that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, angry jerks, who don't want to actually understand anyone else's perspective (I see this tendency in myself on a daily basis, which is why I believe it).
As a theist who doesn't quite buy macroevolution, I've read chunks of Dawkins, and I don't find his arguments at all persuasive. Terry Eagleton wrote a scathing review of The God Delusion that summarizes the apparent gulf between Dawkins' arguments and what many theists believe pretty well. However, in case I've missed something, I'm planning to do a good careful read of some of Dawkins' books again this summer, to be certain I really do get what he's trying to say. I've had The God Delusion, The Blind Watchmaker, and The Ancestor's Tale recommended to me. Any other additi
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
Sorry, have never read any Dawkins, but this article here on /. came along at a time when I was already starting to have serious doubts about my faith just due to my own experiences and doubts over things like the purpose of prayer (which I now just believe to be a way to sustain your brainwashing). I'd always expected if there were to be any serious demonstration of evolution that it would have to come from something like bacteria, since they go through generations so incredibly quickly.
To claim you've got the whole universe comprehended, or even that you have an airtight argument for the correctness of your own worldview is, to my mind, inexcusably wrong-headed.
Quite right. Even when I was a Christian I knew that there was a chance I may not be right. Unfortunately most other Christians I speak to are so convinced that God is there that even if they were shown a clear and easy demonstration/proof/whatever of macro-evolution then they'd try their hardest to explain it away - never even considering for a second that their idea of what God is isn't true.
The existence of sentient life at all is obviously quite spectacular, and if we can exist then I don't see why some other superior form of life/intelligence in some other form of existence would be impossible, but I now believe the bible and the nature that Christians ascribe to god are just not true. There are a few things I thought of last summer which I think fairly logically show that he cannot be true - but like I said, if people already believe in him, they just discard logic.
which is totally what she said
Science can tell you how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people.
It also tells you how to cure millions of people of fatal diseases. (Alas, science is more likely to tell you why a bomb constructed in such a way has this explosive power. Formulas derived from observation don't do any harm.)
Religion can try to tell you whether or not creating such a bomb is a good idea.
Sorry, that's ethics, not religion. Religion is organized spirituality, which in itself has nothing to do with ethics. If a text says that's bad and this is good because deity X said so, it's a text about ethics. Whether the reason's any good is questionable at best...
I worked in a warehouse for a summer working 70-80 hours a week. I handled cardboard boxes 16-18 hours a day. After the first week my fingertips were worn smooth. I had no fingerprints and I found it more difficult to pick things up. I ended up buying some gloves with little rubber knobs and they helped. My fingerprints grew back and I could pick up boxes again. From them on I wore gloves with some type of gripping aid. They usually only lasted about a week.
The presence of "print" ridges and valleys on the human hand extends to the entire gripping surface and, arguably, a small area just beyond. They clearly have a key role in gripping, touch or both, but I'm not sure how useful it is to show that they don't help much with friction on the sort of overly-smooth surface that rarely occurs naturally.
For what it's worth, mind, my vote is for a "cat's whiskers" sort of sensory function - that having raised ridges increases skin distortion as objects are touched, which in turn increases sensitivity, precision and discrimination in the hand as an organ of touch.
When you hold your hands together and pray, the fingerprints sign the prayer so God knows who it came from. That is why you hold your hands in front of your face in the usual pose. The prayer passes over both hands on it's way to God.
What about my SCROTUM print?
...how does testing fingerprints against fingerprints get us anywhere?
Until they conduct a test comparing the friction of those -with- fingerprints and those -without-, they haven't really tested if fingerprints improve friction or don't.
My fingertips are almost all scarred from eczema as a child, leaving them quite smooth. I would be happy to volunteer in this study. I find I can't seem to hold onto smooth surfaces nearly as easily as others can.
Hmm?
Everyone knows the government made fingerprints to keep tabs on its' citizens.
Something witty.
I didn't read the rest of what you wrote because it's way too long, and I've got a major problem with your very first sentence. In fact, science doesn't require "what you sense" to be reliable, otherwise the existence of magicians would have rendered science invalid. The scientific process exists exactly because we understand that individual perceptions are fallible.
Now, what you probably meant is that science relies on the idea that the combined senses of many individuals working on the same problem through repeated experimentation will generally produce reliable observations. And in some ways, this IS a valid criticism ... but the problem is that we HAVE to make that assumption in order to be able to say anything about our universe. It's the old "brain in a jar" conundrum - sure, it's possible that I'm an isolated entity in a lab somewhere which is being fed invalid sensory information, but I have no way to confirm that hypothesis. As long as we have no data to support it, we have to act as if it's not true, or at the very least suspend belief until more data becomes available. It's the same reason why we can ignore gods, and all other types of superstitious nonsense; there are an infinite number of unprovable hypothesis which can be formulated and the only rational choice is to reject any which aren't supported by evidence.
If you need to re-define religion in order to have it fit better into our modern, secular society, hey, fill your boots. On the other hand, if you actually care about the truth, you'll look back through history (or look at the Texas school board today) and see how often religion and science have come into conflict because they were asking the same questions.
Not only does religion like to stick it's nose into scientific questions - such as how old the universe is, whether the earth spins around the sun, and how life arose - but it often gets even the questions of morality wrong. If religion were a good way to determine morality, we would never have had slavery. We wouldn't be persecuting people because of their sexual preference, or forcing women to cover themselves in black potato sacks, and we certainly wouldn't be waging war over the question of whose god is more righteous. The very fact that all religions seem to come up with completely different ideas of morality should tell you that religion is a HORRIBLE way to answer those questions. We can do better.
So if I say "I believe there is no Easter Bunny", this is also a religious statement? Do you realize how ridiculous your argument sounds to someone who doesn't share your superstition?
You start from the assumption that there is a (particular) god, and that "atheism" is an active disbelief of said god, when in fact debating the existence of (your) god is as silly as debating the existence of Zeus, or unicorns or elves or Santa Claus to a rational person.
Nahhh, they're ribbed for ((y)our) pleasure...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Because humans evolved needing to hold onto acrylic glass? Can anybody name ONE natural substance even remotely like acrylic glass? Come back with a model of how fingerprints affect friction on substances like plant material or rock, then maybe this will be credible...
I didn't read the rest of what you wrote because it's way too long, and I've got a major problem with your very first sentence.
What I wrote was less than eight hundred words. The Wikipedia says that average reading speed for basic comprehension is about 2-400 WPM. If you meet the Wiki's baseline average, it whould have taken you a horrifying four minutes to read my whole post.
Your ability to analyze and think does not impress me if you're that lazy and impatient.
In fact, science doesn't require "what you sense" to be reliable, otherwise the existence of magicians would have rendered science invalid.
My college physics professor was quite adamant that if, in a lab assignment, we got results that weren't expected, we had to carry through with the rest of the lab, and not quit working on it until we had at least some believable explanation for why we got the results we did.
This, I believe, is the core of, and the only valid understanding of, scientific methods. I think it's precisely the opposite of what you're claiming. It's not considered reliable because many observations yield an "average" or "normal" result; it's thought reliable because a scientist will support his theories with detailed outlines of experiments that will let you personally verify them, and will construct a theory that accounts for all the data he collected (or at the very least admit that there may be some flaws in his theories to date, if he can't account for all the information he's gathered). That individual verification of results, and personal/individual eyewitness testimony that they are as expected, is what matters in the scientific method, I believe, not that "lots of people get this result, and we can just ignore the handful who didn't".
Another way of saying this is to assert that the scientific method is not worth much without obsessive rigor, and I personally believe that to be true.
There's a beautiful passage Doug Adams wrote that I think summarizes what being a scientist should actually be like. It's in So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish. Wonko the Sane says:
"I'm not trying to prove anything, by the way. I'm a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that. I'll show you something to demonstrate that later. So, the other reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will think I am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool."
Gosh, that man was brilliant. Anyway.
The scientific process exists exactly because we understand that individual perceptions are fallible.
The scientific method exists, I think, because people are pragmatic and want rules and observations that help them deal with the complexity and incomprehensibility of the universe, even if there's no reason to believe those rules are true, apart from "they've been close enough so far". I think its existence has nothing to do with the unreliability of people's observations. Scientific methods can't do anything to improve the quality of your senses - all they can do is make it easy for you or someone you trust to test a theory someone else has reported, if both parties involved in the communication are highly rigorous.
The scientific method is overrated as a method of knowing, in general. Programmers all think that shotgun debugging is a bad idea - it's generally agreed that combining attempts to understand what softwar
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
When your very fist sentence is right out to lunch, it doesn't give me much incentive to wade through the rest.
Sure. And the first believable explanation that should occur to you is "my observations may be mistaken". That doesn't mean you abandon the experiment, but it does mean that you're going to have to repeat it, and that a double-blind experiment may be in order.
You're misrepresenting what I said. Averages have nothing to do with it, but consensus does.
Make the quality of your senses (and your mind) irrelevant by involving others who may not share your limitations. There have been dozens of cases of highly regarded scientists coming to unjustifiable conclusions due to personal bias or self-delusion. Blondlot is one famous example. Jacques Benveniste was another. The strength of the scientific process is it's ability to expose even the failures of prominent experts by creating a transparent process which is open to examination by anyone. Your personal senses and your thought process become irrelevant to the question of truth, since validity of your results hings on your methodology and the reproducibility of those results rather than your qualifications and reputation.
Well that's a load of crap. If you think that "the scientific method" and "the shotgun approach" are the same thing it's no wonder you seem to be so confused.
So what do you do instead? Hold seances and pray to the Redmond Gods? Take every statement on faith? Take hallucinogenic drugs and meditate on the higher meaning of Code?
I've never met a scientist who didn't. Scientists generally try to incorporate error bars in their results, in order to give an estimate of the accuracy of their findings. Science also encourages the questioning of established beliefs - some of the greatest honours in science have been awarded to those who showed the errors of accepted models. Einstein didn't get famous by constantly proclaiming the infallibility of Newton.
The problem comes down to definitions. If your definition of the word "know" requires me to assign a probability to every aspect of life, then your definition is useless. I KNOW that I'm sitting down right now, typing on a computer. Now, sure, there's a infinitesimal probability that I could be wrong about that, but only a complete pedant would insist on bringing it up. The word "know" allows for a small margin of uncertainty. That's why I can say that we know lots of things, while never being 100% certain of anything.
I think I've failed to get you to understand what I was trying to say at all.
/. for the last year, really... Maybe I'll do that again.
Either I'm pathetically bad at communicating (which seems very likely), or you're not trying to hear what I'm saying.
Of course, no reason to bifurcate - both could be very true.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep this up, nor a whole lot of motivation - it seems like you're being pretty rude on purpose, which does not make me feel inclined to spend time on this discussion.
Not, I suspect, that you care very much about this. Reminds me of why I gave up on
Have a great evening.
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
Obviously God designed them so that we couldn't get away with crimes after 1892.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Oh, I understand you. Essentially, you're trying to tell me that:
1. Science isn't the "only way of knowing".
2. Everyone should be more open-minded.
3. We can't ever really know anything.
Now, leaving aside the fact that points 1 and 3 seem somewhat contradictory, and the fact that I often hear these same complaints from proponents of pseudo-science, I can almost agree with you. However, I'd have to change the list to something like:
1. Science isn't the only way to know things, but it is the single most reliable method for making new discoveries and separating fact from fiction.
2. Everyone should be more open minded, as long as your definition of open-mindedness does not involve believing claims based on poor or insufficient evidence.
3. We can't ever know anything with 100% certainty, but we can still make reliable models of the universe which allow us to not only improve our technology and quality of life, but correct our own mistakes as we go along.
As for your dislike for slashdot ... well, it's not for everyone. Do what you have to do.
Where the fuck is the flamebait you cowardly god fearing suck ass excuse for a human being. Fuck you and your invisible sky wizard who damns you then orders you to love him or off to eternal hell yopu go. Fuckwad piece of shit xians.
Ummm, STOP. Actual atheist viewpoint now being introduced!
"I believe there is no God" IS NOT a statement of faith. It's a statement that I lack faith and I reject anything faith-based. Because I'm, like, a scientist, and a hypothesis is not to be believed without some evidence. Unfortunately for the religious, all the real evidence we have seems to favour science.
You who possess faith do not understand this idea. We scientists don't claim "there is gravity and it does blah blah". That's absolutism and science has none of that. We say only "Based on what we can observe, measure, and reproduce, we think there is a force and it works this way, let's call it the theory of gravity... but we could be wrong or only seeing part of the picture. Stay tuned for updates to the theory."