Slashdot Mirror
50 Years of Domesticating Foxes For Science
gamebittk writes "In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs."
Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment continued (PDF) in his absence, and to this day provides strong evidence to parts of evolutionary theory. The experiment eventually branched out to involve other species as well.
"Intelligent Evolutionary Design"
That reminds me of the russian two-headed dog. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/top/experiments// One wonders if science really has to go there to prove itself.
There's nothing scaring about humans playing "god". Sure, bad things can sometimes be created like the atomic weapon, for instance, but many of those god games result in great advances for the science. Sure, it's easy to cry armageddon for every little investigation we do in science, but, if we don't play god, who will do it then? God?
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
"Most sad thing about it was that they had camps where they trained 5-6 year old boys to exercise physically and to mentally think without fear of enemy, while learning military tactics and strategies."
[citation needed]
USSR was not nice. But creating zombies? It's just a fantasy. This video might have been taken in Afghanistan or Chechnya, if it's real at all.
Sooo...when gods play gods it isn't scary? ;p
Besides, something always happens eventually; at least until we are long way off the heat death of the universe.
One that hath name thou can not otter
"Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it."
We are talking about breeding foxes here. Just like breeding dogs/cats/horses/plants, which is done by tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people the world over, and has been for thousands of years.
joke
(YOU ARE HERE)
Just look at how we humans are being domesticated. over the last couple of hundred years.
All our science and technology is based on the idea that we can understand, control, and improve nature.
Playing God, in the Xn tradition, is creatio ex nihilo. Tweaking nature - even with catastrophic results - is not playing God.
I can't wait for a team to show whether the same can be made to politicians.
Humankind would necessarily undergo the same sort of evolutionary changes. We can expect differences in behavior among the different races and ethnic groups. Evolution changed both the color of the skin and the type of behavior. Intelligence is one form of behavior.
The belief that all races and all ethnic groups have identical intelligence and identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior is simply an assumption -- without proof.
Selective breeding is evolution but not by natural selection. Exactly same process - i.e. only some survive to pass their genes on to the next generation based on traits. Not sure where you are going with this existing information crap - also no such thing as devolution - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_devolution.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I'm glad I'd dodged that one :)
If you are in a white area, white people are viewed as part of the family, whereas black people are "different". I'm pretty sure people in the African jungles view white people as they scary ones, especially the ones who want to chop the jungle down.
If nothing else, this is relevant in so far as illustrating how much behavior and physiology can change by the modification of a single simple and seemingly unrelated hereditary trait.
The long and arduous road of chance modifications to the organisms genome isn't necessary to explain these expressed traits specifically, when these simple modifications can cause entire systems to behave differently. It's whole other way of looking at natural selection.
It's not as though we haven't heard Creationists' arguments hinging upon the expectation that every step in evolution depends on a perfect storm of genetic error...
How soon was it before they decided to graft another head on the foxes? I hear Russian scientists were all into that sort of thing.
The Marine replied, "God was busy, so He sent me.
That's it? Come on. I take all this time to read this *compelling story* hoping for something profound and you give me the same quote again. Please. For once I am going to burn karma and answer a troll. I don't give a shit about whether one believes in God or not, but I do believe in making the story end well. At least one better ending would have the Marine die, go to heaven with God standing there waiting. "What the fuck marine, I got you a seat in a college course even though your dumb as a brick and you blow it on that line? Get the hell out of here", and thus he sends him back to earth. The marine finally understand Miton.
Seriously, if you take up band width of slashdot with a off topic story, at least have a good ending. Now to find good karma again.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
It seems strange to think of the process as evolution when the traits required for breeding are arbitrary, and in this case even subjective.
One fox tamer than the other? Does simply sticking a gloved hand in a cage determine that so readily?
Is that even a genetic predisposition?
Perhaps the changes observed are just behavioral. Each generation being raised by slightly 'nicer' parents, with the accompanying though unexpected chemical changes manifesting as physical characteristics.
Yeah, well, you started it, didn't you? Of course, like all master race discussions, yours appears to start with a couple of false assumptions and goes from there.
"As I read through the article, blue eyes, fair skin and hair were as indicated as behavior."
No, they weren't. Even the short article notes that Belyaev selected foxes based on which ones snapped at him when he offered his hand. Changes in coat colour (similar to those observed in dogs vs. wolves) were noted as a surprising incidental result. The more recent actual paper also linked mentions that those changes are likely a side effect of general changes in the timing of development, and are similar to mechanisms seen in dogs.
"And in the articles, it was by selective breeding with these patterns in mind, that these new foxes and rats were created."
No, it wasn't.
"I am trying to avoid presenting this as an argument for racism, but I think it is almost instinctive that darker skinned people are more feared than lighter skinned people."
All your arguments for this belief are heavily based on what is likely your society of origin, the US, which has and continues to have a very uneven relationship with people who have dark skin.
It's called adaptation.
Septic evangelicals are truly pieces of shit.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
Evolution - Has new genetic information been added? Or has existing information, already within the genome been lost through selective breeding. The latter I think! Foxes still produce after their kind and their offspring are still foxes (albeit with less genetic material than their progenitors)
Information is a rather abstract concept.
The digit "1" ... how much information does that contain? Is it an "on" state? Does it symbolize a single object? Is it being used instead of an "i"? What if we stick a "0" digit beside it... "10" - is that ten? Or just two? Or maybe an "on" state and an "off" state? How much information is contained in those digits? If I move from a binary system to a decimal system, have I created more information? Lost information?
Just because somebody is born with webbed toes doesn't mean they have "more" information in their DNA. It's just being processed and expressed differently.
People really need to learn the difference between Evolution (which is adding new material, through unintelligent, uncontrolled random accidental chance process) and Selective Breeding (which is not evolution, but rather devolution).
Evolution is the process by which various traits and mutations are selected to be passed on to future generations. Typically we talk about "survival of the fittest" where the most beneficial mutations and traits are most likely to be passed on... But that isn't necessarily the case. Plenty of non-negative traits and mutations can be passed on as well.
Selective breeding is simply intelligently-driven evolution. Instead of letting environmental pressures and blind luck select the traits or mutations we want to pass along, human beings do it, by only allowing the right animals to breed.
If you want proof that evolution happens you need look no further than your nearest dog show.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
What's wrong with a little spartan training? In all likelihood, the subjects made up 0.01% of the country's orphans, and I highly doubt the other 99.99% had much superior lives.
Frankly, the only reason USA didn't do the same, or more likely, on a much smaller scale, is the CIA stole the USSR's findings and decided it wasn't cost effective, or government might catch too much heat from population, or some outlandish reason in which the Spartans® were only loyal to themselves, or the group, and never to the state.
Anybody who has seen Grizzly Man, the film about Timothy Treadwell's tragic life with the Grizzly bears, knows that foxes can be domesticated. He befriended several wild foxes and can be seen in the film stroking one of them while it sits contented on his tent.
He wasn't so successful with befriending the bears themselves, obviously, but he certainly did well with the foxes.
I wish someone would fund my research into owning a cat or my cousin's cutting edge investigation into petting a hamster. Only another forty years or so and we might reach a vaguely plausible conclusion.
... nor any scientific evidence of course.
In evolution there isn't necessarily addition of genes, in most case there is a mutation of existing genes.
In Selective Breeding there is *certainly* no loss of "genetic material", there is simply an artificial selection of genes.
It's guided evolution.
Evolution is not about "getting better", it is just about adapting to the environment around you and breeding better. The individuals that survive and breed the most have more chances of passing down their genes, If the conditions requires it some species may even evolve naturally in being *less* intelligent.
Pick a book that explain evolution for dummies, it's not blasfemy to know how things work in nature, it is blasfemoy not to know how things work, because you commit a sin of arrogance in pretending to know how things work best than nature.
The pursuit of truth is sometimes ruff, uh, rough, I say.
rewriting history since 2109
From the wiki article on evolution "In biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms through successive generations". We tend to automatically associate evolution with natural selection and this causes issues in cases like this. I suspect if the scientists in charge of the experiments where even half competent they would have thought up some effective measure and breed based on this. Learned behaviour vs innate also can be isolated with proper experiment controls (i.e. separate them from their parents or use control population for parents - given more time and expertise you can usually solve most of these kinds of issues).
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Selective breeding is evolution but not by natural selection. Exactly same process - i.e. only some survive to pass their genes on to the next generation based on traits. Not sure where you are going with this existing information crap - also no such thing as devolution - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_devolution.
Why is there this arbitrary labelling of human actions as "unnatural"? It's as if human actions are automatically thought of as inferior to "natural" actions.
Will someone explain why a poison ivy plant is inherently superior to a mailbox?
Adaptation (when referring to a process) is a process that selects from variation based on some measure of success which over time causes the system to become more successful. Evolution by natural selection (or selective breeding) is an instantiation of this generic adaptation process - so is learning and the scientific method. Evolution by itself is not necessarily adaptive.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
They should've started selling foxes as pets. They probably would be swimming in cash by now if the prices of wild cat-domestic cat hybrids is any indication of how much people are willing to pay for "unusual" pets.
Because its a convenient label to separate human intervening processes from those that are not and not a conspiracy to sleight the rest of the biosphere.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Vikings.
You know.. those blue-eyed, fair-skinned, fair-haired sissies that have found time to discover America during their break of looting and pillaging across Europe.
Anecdotal evidence such as that might point us to a crazy idea that human beings are not foxes.
That they don't eat like foxes, breed like foxes, live as long as foxes, socialize like foxes or THINK like foxes.
And therein lies the proverbial pudding* - we didn't really evolve that much since we got ourselves these big brainy things that we use for thinking.
You know... that central junction box that does most of our nerve-signal routing, which can control the production and use of hormones in our bodies, besides being used for learning skills and thinking shit up.
In other words - we are a hell of a lot more complex animals then foxes. We have much greater control (and tolerance) over our hormones AND our life circumstances.
Also, we stopped fiddling with evolving our pigmentation back when we discovered clothing. Gave it up completely once we came up with makeup and hair-coloring.
*I know how the phrase goes. I've misused it intentionally to piss off grammar-Nazis and culture-trolls.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I once had a Philosophy professor who said someday we will realize we are gods. We're just doing a very bad job of it right now. I will add that the cultural construct of an omnipotent being is useful to kings to keep the population subjugated. Contain their anger until you need an army, then let them vent on the "enemy."
Human beings are animals. No matter how smart they think they are, they are still governed by their biology. This can been observed throughout nature. Racism is nothing more than a natural biological response to something different.... If humans were truly intelligent, they would have mastered such "feelings" a long time ago but most humans can't see past themselves to make that change. Most humans, despite what you people think, still live like animals, unable to grasp what being a human means. I personally hate humans for what they are and represent. Those of us with intelligence stand apart from the human race, unhindered but such trivial shit as trying to justify racism.... humans are a bunch of dumb fucking animals that will never learn.
Yeah, this is pretty much nothing. We've been doing this sort of thing for something like 20,000 years.
This may be evolution, but it is a type of evolution that even intelligent design people would agree occurs. The idea that comes into my head when I hear the word "evolution" is a process by which life as we know it developed from very, very simple organisms.
The process mentioned in the article is not this. No new genetic information has been added to the gene pool. All that has occurred is that existing genes have been rearranged. You cannot continue the same process and get a cow or an elephant. The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
Also, now I really want a pet fox.
I love those coats! This is research for the greater good.
Home of The Suki Series
the atomic bomb is only a bad thing if used on a massive global scale, say full on global thermo nuclear war. just having them has done great things for mankind. before its invention the number of deaths in war was steadily increasing into the multi-millions of deaths per war. after the invention of nuclear weapons war deaths have dropped dramatically and do not go into the millions let alone multi-millions like they once did. for the most part they stay pretty local and don't escalate into the blood baths of old. i think the best you can do is some of the African Jihads of the 90's and even those didn't hit pre WWII numbers.
look at how the American press freaked out when the death toll hit 3000 in the Iraq war YEARS after the war started. granted that was politically motivated by their hatred of all things Bush, but still the initial planning expected 10,000 death just to take Baghdad. major battles in the pacific during WWII could easily lose 3000 in hours. the Iraq war death total has a lot to do with asymmetrical warfare and not the threat of nukes. however, look at the korean war where there were two near equal opponents with LARGE armies and almost identical battlefield capabilities. that was kept in check by the threat of nukes.
i for one love nukes and the fruits of our scientists efforts.
Some days I would agree with you... We are basically a species evolved to survive challenges that are completely different to the kinds of situations we find ourselves in today - in a word we are somewhat maladapted to the world we have created. In movies and the like you always see a bad outcome to toying with human genes and a purely rational people are seen as almost evil - but I think that we can do a lot better than we are now if we head in that direction.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
The key with domesticated animals is that they don't typically do as well in the wild. If you look at something like American Mustangs that are the runaways they went "native" and are their own unique breed now. You do have some ecology issues, but in the case of the Mustangs, we killed off all the Buffalo all by ourselves.. the horses fill much of the same niche roaming the plains. The biggest problem with domesticated animals is that we people put up fences and displace wild animals over vast areas so the ones we like can live safely. Again, with the wild horses ranchers don't like them even on federal land where they are wildlife because they compete with steers for range.
The idea that comes into my head when I hear the word "evolution" is a process by which life as we know it developed from very, very simple organisms.
Well, yes... And then those very, very simple organisms became less simple... And then those less simple organisms became just simple... And then those simple organisms became kind of complex...
Just because an organism is currently fairly complex, doesn't mean evolution has somehow magically stopped. Evolution is happening everywhere, 24/7.
The process mentioned in the article is not this.
Yes it is.
It's being guided by human beings, instead of natural forces... And it's been taking place over a short timeframe... But it's still evolution. The exact same kind of stuff that created all the biodiversity on this planet.
No new genetic information has been added to the gene pool.
Again the "information" word.
If I breed a new kind of fox with black fur, instead of red... Is that new information? Is that more information, or less? What if some fox randomly mutates and is born with neon green fur? Is that new information? More information? Less?
All that has occurred is that existing genes have been rearranged.
Well, but that's kind of the point.
I mean, we've only got the four bases... They can only combine in so many different ways... It's all about the order of the base pairs.
Just like binary - you've only got two digits, it's the order that matters.
You cannot continue the same process and get a cow or an elephant.
Probably not. Not because this isn't evolution, but because those are two very specific and unique species. It would take a hell of a lot of work, and more understanding than we currently have, to turn a fox into an elephant.
But, if we were to keep this up long enough we could very well wind up with an entirely new non-fox species.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
Mutations are essential to biodiversity. They're what introduce new and different things.
Which is specifically why they're avoided and weeded out in selective breeding. With selective breeding you have a specific trait that you are intentionally trying to emphasize. You want to avoid random mutation as much as possible and, to the best of your ability, produce a predictable result.
Also, now I really want a pet fox.
Agreed.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I accidently moderated this offtopic, and cannot undo it. Sorry
Fur sucks. The animals spend their entire lives in cages and are then killed in very pain full ways. Nobody needs fur.
I saw a documentary years ago. After the British pulled out of India they abandoned many pedigreed, pure bred dogs to fend for themselves. After a few generations the dogs started to look like dingos or wolves.
Breeding animals sucks.
I have met so many wonderful animals who have so many health problems as the result of breeding.
Just leave the animals alone.
GP may be a troll, but is more off topic than anything else. This experiment didn't modify genes or dna. It was simple breeding (in this case domestication through human selection). The results of this study show how quickly animal species can be domesticated and show a potential path for wolves to have been domesticated while living on the fringes of human settlements.
Sopssa said, "Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it."
I say "It's always scary when certain humans twist scientific results to push religious agenda. Something is going to happen eventually, so you should really think about it."
I think it is almost instinctive that darker skinned people are more feared than lighter skinned people.
Yup, you're racist alright.
You can't take the sky from me...
Evolution is neither random nor does it "add new material". Evolution is the process by which the genetic makeup of a population changes. Pressure to change can come from selective breeding (with humans guiding which genes are passed along to successive generations) or natural selection (with genes for a preferable trait are passed along more than others). You seem to be mixing up "evolution" with some of those things, as well as mutation.
If you are in a white area, white people are viewed as part of the family, whereas black people are "different". I'm pretty sure people in the African jungles view white people as they scary ones, especially the ones who want to chop the jungle down.
YOU are the one who thinks 'black people are "different"'. Why the hell do you presume it's "white people" who go to Africa to "chop down the jungle"? Why do you have this utterly ignorant view of Africans as "people in the African jungles"?
Your post drips of condescension: "If the white people would just leave Africa and the (black) Africans alone, the Africans would be so much happier. They'd get to live in their jungles, and the jungles would remain in a pristine state."
Yeah, right.
You're giving Nathan Bedford Forrest a run for the money over which one of you is the most ignorant rascist. Forrest only killed some blacks. You, on the other hand, elevate an entire continent of people as superior because of nothing more than skin color, and denigrate "white people as they scary ones, especially the ones who want to chop the jungle down." Once again, all because of skin color. I presume Forrest's rascist actions were at least behavoir-based, as in he only killed waht he'd call "uppity" blacks and was presumably content with blacks who he would have said "knew their place". Yeah, that's pretty vile and disgusting. But you, on the other hand, have taken rascism even further and dropped individual behavoir completely out of the picture and base your posted rascist views on nothing more than skin color, so in that sense you are MORE rascist than than the founder of the KKK.
Well, except you post that "the [whites] who want to chop the jungle down" are worse.
I've been all over this world, and I can tell you one thing: people are PEOPLE no matter what the color of their skin. And I can tell you the people "chop[ping] down the jungle" are the local Africans or Brazilians of Venezuelan farmers and workers who are just trying to make a living and improve the lot of their families by trhing to give their kids the amenities sheltered twits like you take for granted.
It's YOU who's a RACIST.
I thought it was a witty ending - but your ending is actually better
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I want one! Foxes are cute and smaller than dogs but clever like cats.
If they have bred them to be more behaved they would probably be good house pets for urban dwellers. Foxes are pretty adaptable anyway, living off the scraps of society for a few hundred years already. It's mostly people that keep them out of populated places. That's how man started taming dogs and cats.
It's not that simple either: One man that look real different from yourself: "Oooh, look, fresh genetic material for to help our tribe surivive!" Ten men that look different from you "Aaaaah, they're going to wipe out our tribe!"
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Reminds me of the Cold War Dog Fight joke: The Americans and Russians at the height of the arms race realized that if they continued in the usual manner they were going to blow up the whole world. One day they sat down and decided to settle the whole dispute with one dog fight. They'd have five years to breed the best fighting dog in the world and which ever side's dog won would be entitled to dominate the world. The losing side would have to lay down its arms. The Russians found the biggest meanest Doberman and Rottweiler dogs in the world and bred them with the biggest meanest Siberian wolves. They selected only the biggest and strongest puppy from each litter, killed his siblings, and gave him all the milk. They used steroids and trainers and after five years came up with the biggest meanest dog the world had ever seen. Its cage needed steel bars that were five inches thick and nobody could get near it. When the day came for the dog fight, the Americans showed up with a strange animal. It was a nine foot long Dachshund. Everyone felt sorry for the Americans because they knew there was no way that this dog could possibly last ten seconds with the Russian dog.
When the cages were opened up, the Dachshund came out of it's cage and slowly waddled over towards the Russian dog. The Russian dog snarled and leaped out of it's cage and charged the American dachshund. But, when it got close enough to bite the Dachshund's neck, the Dachshund opened it's mouth and consumed the Russian dog in one bite. There was nothing left at all of the Russian dog.
The Russians came up to the Americans shaking their heads in disbelief. 'We don't understand how this could have happened. We had our best people working for five years with the meanest Doberman and Rottweiler in the world and the biggest meanest Siberian wolves." That's nothing", an American replied."We had our best plastic surgeons working for five years to make an alligator look like a Dachshund."
I recall a Stanford talk back in the mid 90s in which Dawkins asserted in no uncertain terms that there has never been any significant impact on human evolution by human breeding of humans.
Seems a little religious, of him.
You'll notice that down-thread there is the inevitable remark that Man is playing God with these foxes; turning them into something they're not, as if it was evil to do so with a fox but not with a dog or cow or cat. Science = Evil. I was suddenly struck by the memory of my Sunday School classes (Catholic) where there were always pictures of Jesus sitting with a group of children of various races-and different animals as well. Not just all people in love, but all things. I suppose if man makes real strides towards such an idyllic world it's very bad. Its portrayal was there in the church only to advertise the belief structure being sold to we children: Peace and Love. But only if you do as we say.
We cats have tamed man for 5000 years and haven't seen any useful changes since then.
Learned behaviour vs innate also can be isolated with proper experiment controls (i.e. separate them from their parents or use control population for parents - given more time and expertise you can usually solve most of these kinds of issues).
Has anything like that been done?
Not just all people in love, but all things. I suppose if man makes real strides towards such an idyllic world it's very bad.
I think it's a good thing to strive for a peaceful world and a bad thing to create people who can only live in a peaceful world.
Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it.
I hate to break this to you, but there's no one left to play god if we don't do it.
You cannot continue the same process and get a cow or an elephant.
Are you sure? I'd be willing to wager that over a couple of thousand generations or so, with the correct breeding practices, one could create something very Elephant or Cow-like.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
...you commit a sin of arrogance in pretending to know how things work...
I like to call it "Malicious Ignorance". It is a disease that about 80% of people are afflicted with
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Am I the only one who noticed that when lighter skinned people are frightened they squeal like little girls while darker skinned people tend to lash out often striking whatever it is that caused a fearful reaction? Are there exceptions to these patterns?
This is what is called "observation bias". Observations that confirm your expectations and biases are remembered while the observations that don't confirm your expectations and biases are discounted as "exceptions to these patterns". Simply put, another explanation for these differences in reactions (assuming they exist in the first place) is cultural. And even a century ago, the "lighter skinned people" behaved more physically aggressive than they do now.
As an aside, there's nothing about humans that is fundamentally different from foxes in terms of how genetics or biology works. So yes, you probably can breed a variety of behaviors including "tameness" into humans.
I don't know - that is just something I thought up in 2 mins - I know that a lot of human behavioural studies use genetic twins separated at birth (some of this research is quite interesting - some really specific behavioural quirks appear despite often vastly different upbringing) to distinguish innate vs learned behaviour. I can recommend Steven Pinker - "the blank slate" for an general reader overview of this kind of research in humans. As for animals I can't say I have looked into it much.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I didn't know Chechnya wasn't part of the USSR /sarcasm
WNYC's Radiolab recently did a story on this subject too. The program is split into 3 parts, and the last one is about these foxes. To get a better sense of what the program is about, I would suggest listening to the whole episode. An hour well spent.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/10/02
The major problem with your argument is that it only holds until nuclear bombs start being used. Saving multi-millions in the short term to in the long term kill billions isn't a good investment. The one key argument that has been made about weapons technology as it has progressed has always seemed to be that no one would be crazy enough to use it. Yet, in the end, to start a war in which you know the opponent has mass killing equipment strongly hints that your opponent is crazy and you must use your own mass killing equipment for your protection. With nuclear weapons, self-preservation has translated that into proxy, local wars, so the opponent is never directly a nuclear power. The biggest mistake made so far in this cold war was giving a proxy, Cuba, nuclear weapons and having it in direct conflict with the opponent.
No, this was motivated by "if it bleeds, it leads", a very American-centric view of the death count (a lot more than 3000 people died), and a general desire by most humans to not fight in wars for years.
"initial planning" also considered the threat of chemical weapons. In short, initial planning had a very unrealistic idea of what Iraq had to offer militarily and chose to act when there was still a significant asymmetrical advantage.
At one level, you're right, in that both sides chose to fight a proxy war. But, if they had chosen differently, do you really think we'd still be here today? Every single conflict that arises now that involves directly or indirectly a nuclear power could be the end of most of humanity. If you were a billionaire, would you risk nearly all of your fortune to play a single throw of craps? Would you feel proud or happy to have repeatedly played and never lost but not really gained either?
Perhaps I will judge things differently when a nuclear weapon is finally used on a major city. Only if a nuclear war doesn't start then will I really consider nuclear weapons as humanity's bogeyman, not their self-created downfall.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Frankly, the only reason USA didn't do the same
Men who Stare at Goats!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Because its a convenient label to separate human intervening processes from those that are not and not a conspiracy to sleight the rest of the biosphere.
Whoosh!
WHY separate human actions in the first place?
I want one
the atomic bomb is only a bad thing if used on a massive global scale
I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
look at how the American press freaked out when the death toll hit 3000 in the Iraq war YEARS after the war started.
Documented body count of civilians: Around a hundred thousand.
But you, you only count enlisted US military personnel. You don't even count the contractors... you disgust me.
You can't take the sky from me...
What are you an idiot? Why? Because its fucking convenient. As in to describe shit. You know like when you are talking to someone and you want to indicate that something is a process that is not human intervened. You say its natural. You certainly can be a philosopher and claim (for instance) that all colours are a continuum and labels are misleading but at the end of the day you want to tell someone the colour of something you give them a discrete label and philosophy be damned.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Certain ideas about them being seperate species are about to shatter some of the ideas of evolutionary theory,
How is that an argument against evolution? One of the points of evolution is that there are no clear cut boundaries between species. Sometimes you have animals that are close enough related that they can bread and produce offsprings and sometimes they are not and thus can't. And well, sometimes they are somewhere in the middle and they can only produce infertile offsprings (tiger+lion, mule+horse, etc.).
Secondly, it is not clear even from a biological point of view how a new complex system can arise by random chance
Its not random chance, its the selection process that does the work.
Third and finally, there are certain things about the theory that the laws of thermodynamics seem to be in violation, particularly entropy which states systems move from complexity to simplicity, not the other way around.
Thats only true for closed systems, earth is not a closed system (hint: big glowing day-star is shining plenty of energy on us).
If they could make smaller, playful koalas and pandas they would make a fortune.
See this 2005 story from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4240000/newsid_4245900/4245983.stm or this rehash of the story from 2008: http://jguk.org/2008/02/domestic-tame-pet-fox.html or the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox.
Not News, Not Necessarily for Nerds, Nothing We Need.
Move along, nothing to see here.
I think that the statement it proves evolutionary theory is a bit, strong.
Indeed, it's just another tick in the very crowded check box of proven. No need to over hype it.
Rest of your post: tl;dr
You can't take the sky from me...
>>I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
You probably haven't been to Nanking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
That the borders between species are a little fuzzy is hardly novel.
Try drawing the boundaries of the system in the right place. Hint: that hot yellow thing in the sky during the day counts as "in".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They spend their lives trying to make everyone else miserable.
And this shows the poor understanding of biology as taught today. EVERY generation that comes about via sexual reproduction (probably not applicable to most on slashdot :-) is the product of modified genes and dna. You're not a clone of your great-grand-parents. You don't have the exact same genes.
What are you an idiot? Why? Because its fucking convenient. As in to describe shit. You know like when you are talking to someone and you want to indicate that something is a process that is not human intervened. You say its natural. You certainly can be a philosopher and claim (for instance) that all colours are a continuum and labels are misleading but at the end of the day you want to tell someone the colour of something you give them a discrete label and philosophy be damned.
Wow, ask you to think and you start tossing insults and curse words. You probably think you're smart, too. But when you're asked to explain WHY you do something, you descend into a temper tantrum.
That's not smart, that's childish.
Let's look at your explanation:
Because its fucking convenient. As in to describe shit.
Wow. "We describe it that way, umm, BECAUSE."
You don't even know the basis of your beliefs.
...since foxes and dogs are canines, the canine race itself tends to be more docile or easier to tame by humans, that could be an explanation for their playfulness. Their instincts are very similar. Face with good treatment, good food, they tend to become more trusting...
If you don't think it's a valid method, why don't you try it with an UN-gloved hand and report back to us? :-)
If you've worked with big dogs (not those little under-100-pound "pretend-dogs"), you'll *know* when you've been bit.
I see you're point, and I don't consider you to be a troll, but there are some problems with your claim. The difference between white/black people is due to our proximity to the equator. It's how our bodies deal with extreme heat/cold. It's more like the difference between a long haired and short haired dog. If white people turned white as a result of civilization you may have a point, but that's just not true. In the western world Mesopotamia and Egypt developed civilizations much before the white Celts or Germans, and to the best of my knowledge it didn't drastically change their physical appearances. Civilized or not, they still lived closer to the equator so dark features and curly hair were necessary for survival. (look at the Jews - dark skinned while living in Israel, light skinned while living in Europe)
I also don't think there's any merit to your claim that white people squeal like little girls when frightened while dark skinned people "lash out." This is probably why you were labeled troll, that's pretty racist because, to the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence to support that claim. Even if you could support it, I'm sure a sociological explanation would be better suited than a biological one.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
> And we didn't become immune to plague or tuberculosis
Not immune, but very resistant. To see just how much crowd disease resistance we have gained, look at what happened to native Americans once us Eurasians came over.
All primitive medicine was moving the live/die border a little bit - some might live that would otherwise die, but still innate resistance to disease or better adaption to diet (such as the ability to digest milk efficiently) would help your survival chances a lot.
> "Regular" flu still takes around 500.000 lives each year globally - that is quite a bit for such a common disease.
First, mostly mature people die from regular flu - people who've had their kids. Second, flu in humans depends on very high population densities, so it's pretty new as diseases go. Third, flu adapts as well. (Fourth, where did you get that number from anyway?)
> We are not limited to a single location, way of life or a food source - as a species. That is why there is no such thing as a "pure" human.
Who said we were? Who said there was?
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I fhuman migration were to stop, the death toll from flu would be in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. The places that escaped the "Great Influenza Pandemic" had effective blockades - nobody was allowed to land on shore.
One of the passers-by took out a gun and shot the marine dead. As the marine lay dying, his la gasp was a question - "How dare you defy God?"
The passer-by said "Darwin was busy, so he sent me!"
>>I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
You probably haven't been to Nanking.
You win that bet, but massacres by nuclear, industrial or traditional means (such as that example of rape and pillage) are all very, very bad.
You can't take the sky from me...
...this is the fox we end up with.
That's fine by me.
Have gnu, will travel.
First, it was a wild fox, quick and smart.
After a few years, it became playful, domesticated, slow, stupid, and unstable. I'm on Chrome now. ;)
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
"In movies and the like you always see a bad outcome to toying with human genes and a purely rational people are seen as almost evil - but I think that we can do a lot better than we are now if we head in that direction."
Popular entertainment (including religion) succeeds because it is directed at people who are not intelligent, and plays on fears they find delectable.
The people who openly despise bright children in the schoolyard grow into adults who feel the same way but express it differently.
What's amusing is that the studios who make movies must use intelligent people to create marketable, popular propaganda.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Does simply sticking a gloved hand in a cage determine that [the fox is tame] so readily?
To evaluate the foxes for tameness, we give them a series of tests. . . . they are scored for tameness and assigned to one of three classes. The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. (Even Class III foxes are tamer than the calmest farm-bred foxes. Among other things, they allow themselves to be hand fed.) Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the “domesticated elite,” are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.
Is that even a genetic predisposition? Perhaps the changes observed are just behavioral.
We cross-bred foxes of different behavior, cross-fostered newborns and even transplanted embryos between donor and host mothers known to react differently to human beings. Our studies showed that about 35 percent of the variations in the foxes’ defense response to the experimenter are genetically determined. . . . To ensure that their tameness results from genetic selection, we do not train the foxes.
Foxes domesticates dogs
We created God, so we can play him/her if we want to.
photosMy Photostream
. i think the best you can do is some of the African Jihads of the 90's and even those didn't hit pre WWII numbers.
African Jihads? The largest conflict was/is the Congolese war over resources and power which is also called "The African world war". Though religion has played its part in many regional rebellions and civil wars, it has been a sidekick of the more pressing issues like border disputes, tribe relations and natural resources. The consequences of colonialism and illegal arms trade will last in Africa for many generations to come.
Highly selective inbreeding tends to lower genetic diversity and cause many bad recessive diseases to appear. And while these foxes may survive in the artificially created environment we create, they're certainly "devolving" in their ability to survive in the wild. Not very different from the other animals we've domesticated, but I certainly understand the use of the word even if it doesn't agree with a biologist's definition. In their definition both are genes adapting to the environment, so to them it's the same process. But I think in practise you'd notice a big difference if we humans failed to maintain that environment and left our farm animals and pets to survive on their own.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I personally hate humans for what they are and represent. Those of us with intelligence stand apart from the human race, unhindered but such trivial shit as trying to justify racism.... humans are a bunch of dumb fucking animals that will never learn.
Yeah, that doesn't sound like racism at all.
Mindless hate is not a mark of intelligence, buddy. But then neither is posting anonymously, so what are ya gonna do?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Go vegan. Till then go away and play with your cultural bias.
Deleted
I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
Let's look at the facts: people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day. Not only that, you can have a picnic at Ground Zero. So you're completely full of shit and have probably never been to Hiroshima in the first place.
Secondly, the point the OP was making was that war deaths today are a fraction of the deaths in WW2. You want to compare civilian deaths? The numbers at IraqBodyCount.org are quite suspect, but let's say there were 500,000 civilian deaths just for argument's sake. There were over 100,000,000 civilian deaths in WW2 and almost 3,000,000 deaths in Korea. The numbers in Iraq just don't compare to previous wars.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Not only that, but if someone is going to complain about us "playing God", they probably have a religious mindset so they have even less reason to complain. After all, didn't God give Adam dominion over the animals of the world after Adam named them all? So if you believe the myth, we're just doing God's work for him.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
On the contrary, rather than making wholesale changes to the functioning of the adult body, one of the common ways for mutations to successfully work into the gene pool is to make small changes that affect the way the embryo develops. This study will help us understand those processes.
Oh you creationists are so determinedly ignorant.
It's perfectly clear how organs can result from evolution in a gradual series of steps. Here Richard Dawkins explains exactly for the evolution of the eyeball in so simple a way a way a child could understand. You'd benefit from watching the whole thing, but if you want to cut to the chase, the eye section starts at about 23 minutes in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak
What species something is a completely made up human invention. Polar bears can breed with grizzly bears because they are both bears. People breed different 'species' of snakes to make interesting looking pets too. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with evolutionary theory, just that it is very difficult to name and categorize all living things.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution
Really...
What was the simplest organism? What was it? What did it do?
Basically, it was a chemical, which copied itself (a replicator), somehow.
And the increasing complexity, what purpose did it serve? Surely the sole purpose of the modifications were to allow that chemical to copy itself better... Those that didn't replicate better were replaced by those that did.
And the less simple organisms? The purpose they serve? To allow the chemicals to copy themselves further, in more environments.
And, the purpose of complex organisms? No different. Organisms (all life) exist to create copies of the chemical replicators.
You think you are a human being? In fact, you are a gene copying machine.
Deleted
He is saying humans didnt go in and specifically modify the animals genes, selective breeding for certain traits, isnt modifing genes, its encouraging already present traits to be dominant. The animals already had those traits, ergo no gene modification.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
So if anyone destroys the Japs who did horrible things, it's ok because they deserve it, do I understand your point?
Now, the US did pretty much evil things in a lot of places (killing thousands in seconds is not ok, mmkay?) -- so, in your view, what is coming to them?
I for one propose we stop the cycle now -- because frankly I cannot stomach more; OTOH, there's no law forcing me to forget.
No one can make me like a nation that murders with pleasure (and lots do... even their own citizens!)
So? All the human blood parasites would also find it hard if humans simply ceased to be. There are many instances of animals supremely adapted for leeching off the hard work of another animal, some as parasites and others as commensal species, or even mutualists. For these foxes, humans now are their natural environment, and the wild may be as alien to them as the bottom of the ocean.
Two other notes. Belyaev used a large founding stock, and hasn't been many deleterious recessives popping up. There are some traits that have been expressed, that were undesirable (esp. coat traits, since they were hoping to sell these to the fur industry), but they're linked to the lower standing epinephrine levels. In fact, that's where much of the argument for `much of what we se as domestication is spandrals` comes from.
And There is no such thing is devolving. And evolution has no peak. Everything is changing, all the time. The idea that evolution can stop, or even reverse, is patently absurd.
> Let's look at the facts: people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day.
No, they don't. They died, some quickly and some suffered a lot.
Other people, from other places came and now live at these cities.
The fact is that you try to create confusion, but it's not very good at it. Quit and do something else.
> Not only that, you can have a picnic at Ground Zero [wikipedia.org].
You can because you're alive. Dead can't picnic.
> So you're completely full of shit
No, you are. Whatever you do, you cannot change history. No matter how hard you try.
But you can change the future -- and that starts with changing you.
We've bred Aurochs, and Dogs, and Guinea Pigs. When I read about these a few years ago, I thought maybe I would adopt one, as they seem a little cooler than Felix domesticus.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I think that the statement it proves evolutionary theory is a bit, strong
Right, it would be more precise to say that it's evidence in support of some aspects of evolutionary theory.
people get confused about certain things like, a species ability to adapt to its environment, is that it fails to explain how a completely different species evolves
When things adapt in enough different ways they become something completely different.
Certain ideas about them being seperate species are about to shatter some of the ideas of evolutionary theory
No, that's exactly what evolutionary theory predicts - a spectrum of reproductive relationships between populations ranging from "easily interbreeds" through "can interbreed" to "can't interbreed".
it doesn't support the idea species change can only happen in a said species, not by interbreeding between "species".
No evolutionary biologists are saying that hybridization can't happen, or that it doesn't affect evolution. Period.
Secondly, it is not clear even from a biological point of view how a new complex system can arise by random chance
Yes it is - things start simple, and get more complex over time. And it isn't "by random chance", but by non-random selection between randomly generated alternatives.
How all 1 billion of those proteins arose by chance over time is a huge problem for evolutionary proponents.
No, it isn't. And you should know there are only about 23,000 proteins in humans.
Third and finally, there are certain things about the theory that the laws of thermodynamics seem to be in violation
The only way someone could believe something so completely wrong is to be utterly ignorant of thermodynamics.
I don't believe in the "religion" of evolutionary theory
That's because there is no "religion" involved, and because someone's been feeding you bad information.
Do not confuse adaption to evolution. The genetic make up for these traits existed in the DNA long before the traits started to show up.
Modifying the genes in the offspring is what EVERY act of sxual reproduction does. No animal or plant that uses sexual reproduction ends up with offspring with genes identical to the parents. That's one of the benefits of sexual reproduction - mixing of genes in new combinations. Sometimes this gives rise to new traits, new behaviours; given long enough time spans and large enough populations with less-than-100% homogenity, entirely new species are not only possible, but inevitable.
Problem is a great deal more died than the documented level. its over 1 million. I've heard doctors from Iraq say that they don't see all that many people in hospitals; they can only guess as to how many never get into "the system" which doesn't do a whole lot to document them.
In Vietnam, the US wanted high body counts and it backfired. This time they wanted low and inexact counts so they didn't want to keep track and it has worked out much better.
As far as the invading side:
About half the group is "contractors" (mercenaries) and there is a large number of actual contractors as well.
The military counts goofy to lower their official death count as well. They can save people better, faster, and much much easier in this war (not being a jungle helps a ton) but that doesn't mean they don't die LATER when it doesn't count in the official tally (or they off themselves as a direct result of their experiences - and what if they flip out and kill other people?) We don't get good official numbers for a reason.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Even though the use of nukes on japan ended the war and made a land invasion, which would have led to more deaths, even on the Jap side, necessary? Sometimes you have to choose between the lesser of 2 evils.
He provides citations of what he says, you do not, so please, unless you can corroborate what you are saying, stfu.
They are not suitable pets unless they live outside when older and have a lot of space for territory, so are unsuited to urban areas, but the whole point of the Russian breeding program is to overcome this.
It's perhaps worth pointing out that there are similar breeding programs for "super-domesticated" dogs, like the cockapoo.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Move along, nothing to see here.
It's FOX News - what did you expect?
Are you aware that WW2 was humanity's biggest war ever? Claiming that the casualties of a war are a fraction of humanity's biggest war ever is idiotic and doesn't prove anything.
Secondly, the point the OP was making was that war deaths today are a fraction of the deaths in WW2. You want to compare civilian deaths? The numbers at IraqBodyCount.org are quite suspect, but let's say there were 500,000 civilian deaths just for argument's sake. There were over 100,000,000 civilian deaths in WW2 and almost 3,000,000 deaths in Korea. The numbers in Iraq just don't compare to previous wars.
The Iraq 'war' is confined to a single nation, it hardly even leaks into the region as a whole.
The second world war had 100M civilian deaths over the whole Earth.
If you take the 'suspect' 500K civilian deaths in Iraq and scale that up to a world war it might come out pretty harsh.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
(killing thousands in seconds is not ok, mmkay?)
It's no worse than killing thousands slowly, and certainly much better than killing hundreds of thousands, or millions. Given that lots of people needed to be, and were going to be, killed, the nuclear option was no worse than any other. Better that we firebomb them for weeks prior to a land invasion?
No one can make me like a nation that murders with pleasure (and lots do... even their own citizens!)
That's nuts. Nations murdering for pleasure? For profit and resources, perhaps... or even out of hate. But pleasure? That's very rare.
I think it has more to do with sun exposure.Fair people burn. I imagine there may even be some upside to fair complexions in cold weather, I am just unaware of any.
They're not left to inbreed amongst themselves indefinitely, or even apparently to any significant degree.
It's silly to argue that they've been given significantly lower genetic diversity, given that they don't mate them significantly to each other, and that they effectively remove the least desirable (those that bite and show extreme fear from human contact) from the experiment. It's not a static and growing population of thousands of foxes, but a maintained breeding population of a largely fixed number (1996 had 700, 1999 only 100), from which only successive generations come, and numbers kept in careful control according to standard guidelines that cover this variety of experiment.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Although I never played "God", I onced played with "God" and let me tell you, it was the first and last time I would do that as that mother-fucker cheats....
Hey mods, the OP was a joke for cryin' out loud and I found it pretty dang funny.
me> (killing thousands in seconds is not ok, mmkay?)
Toonol> It's no worse than killing thousands slowly
It is worse, as there's no surrender option. It's "I want to kill thousands to prove my power" attitude. If that is not wrong, what might be?
> Nations murdering for pleasure? For profit and resources, perhaps... or even out of hate. But pleasure? That's very rare.
I compliment you on your innocence. Wish I were that pure of heart, too. Though it's just my opinion -- and I'm probably the least qualified to do any judging -- well, just see the movies. Just very few don't have that "Ride of the Walkyries" climate... it's selling the war as a high-endorphine thing. In my grandma wise words, that's revolting.
100 million civilian deaths in WW2? Citation please???
Ben Stein.
It's vitamin D production in the skin during exposure to sunlight. In climates with relatively little sun during the winter, a dark skin could lead to vitamin D deficiency.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
"Most sad thing about it was that they had camps where they trained 5-6 year old boys to exercise physically and to mentally think without fear of enemy, while learning military tactics and strategies."
That’s an invention of the Prussian era. It’s called “school”! ^^ (Seriously! That’s the point and how school started. And you wondered why it’s so dull, just trains people to follow without thinking and also to do automate tasks.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Disclaimer, I am an atheist.
That out of the way, one might be able to say that, for any religion where we are inferior to God, animals are to us as we are to God. From that, one might be able to make the argument that being given dominion over the animals might be a sort of "test" and that we should practice restraint on some activities.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
You probably haven't been to kindergarten, or you might have learned that two wrongs don't make a right.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Evolution is change in the genital material of a population of orgasms through successive protuberations.
> He provides citations of what he says, you do not, so please, unless you can corroborate what you are saying, stfu.
I do not provide citations of what?
Do you want to prove there was a nuclear bombing there? (Just so that you know, I also believe there was a Holocaust and it's fairly documented everywhere, in case you doubt that, too).
The fact that you use a "bureaucratic" argument (lack of citations, which are pretty easy to find) actually shows a lot about your lack of any real point: having nothing to talk about, you resort to nitpicking. Or using filthy words -- that is also quite showing...
Just so that you know, the OP posted a very weak "citation" which is not very illustrative. This one is way better. It is provided here, since you didn't do us all the favor of correct the lack of supporting evidence in my previous post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
It was poor wording on my part. I've read pretty extensively on this study. My true meaning was that there was no genetic manipulation other than a human observation (with their very own eyes in a purely physical sense) for determining breeding stock. There was no DNA analysis or gene splicing or anything of the sort. In short, the scientists merely said "that one has acted in a less hostile manner, use that one for breeding stock". On a side note I actually come from a large family. While we don't share the same genes, we definitely shared many of the same jeans...including a wicked pair of 1980's Brittania bellbottoms which I still have in my closet. I should try them on, I bet they still fit. Luckily I don't have to worry about passing on my genes, since I already have 2 children. Maybe their genes will let them appreciate the jeans too?
I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
Let's look at the facts: people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day.
I know, I've been there. At the anniversary of the bomb: There's a huge peace rally, I signed petitions against the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons, I stand by that signature..
So you're completely full of shit
I never claimed nobody lived there anymore, I don't know where you got that from, you moron.
and have probably never been to Hiroshima in the first place.
I'm rubber and you're glue, you call me a liar, it bounces back to you.
Secondly, the point the OP was making was that war deaths today are a fraction of the deaths in WW2.
Yes, and he was grossly misinformed about the number of deaths in today's war, his opinion was uninformed and calling me names doesn't make him less ignorant.
You can't take the sky from me...
Documented body count of civilians [iraqbodycount.org]: Around a hundred thousand.
Why is that a problem? I mean, the world is overpopulated, right? This is just cutting down on the excess.
And, unless we're not presuming the existence of a moral deity, the death of a human is fairly inconsequential. It's all about saving the planet (for future generations and the preservation of biodiversity/species), right?
Killing people outright just gets it done more quickly than the economic and environmental sanctions and laws we want to resort to.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yes but what is meant is you drive the change through the phenotype as opposed to directly changing the genotype.
So basically - and simplistically, you are acting like nature in which you say who's the fittest and therefore the one who reproduces the most hence the one who's traits are to be preserved. You are not acting as a genetic engineer manipulating the bits of nucleic acid directly with their hands or with whatever tools.
But you knew this anyway right?
Where is the "-1 Fashion Crime" mod when you need it? (or enough Southern Comfort to pickle our brains like when we originally thought bell-bottoms were "cool" :-).
Evolution - Has new genetic information been added?
I'm not sure what definition of "genetic information" you're using, but are you aware that the biblical creationist definition of genetic information is "information in genes that does not increase". By this definition, if it gets added to DNA, it's not real genetic information.
Of course I'm just guessing that you're thinking of the creationist genetic information... Apologies if you're not.
...that was kept in check by the threat of nukes....
The doctrine of MAD only works if both sides have an about equal value on human life. A terrorist enemy that promises 72 virgins or whatever to somebody willing to kill themselves while they kill others, MAD loses its deterrent value. Despite the communist atheistic doctrines, both sides in the Cold War had a deep Christian tradition going back many centuries. Part of that tradition is the sanctity of life. If, or rather when a radical doctrinaire government, such as Iran gets a hold of nukes, the doctrine of MAD will no longer work, if these terrible weapons make it possible to totally destroy a hated enemy. People willing to fly airliners into buildings, will have no second thoughts about using nuclear weapons on their enemies. When the terrorists get control over weapons of mass destruction, the prophecies Jesus Christ about the most terrible time to ever be on planet Earth will be fulfilled.
All theory is gray
WHY separate human actions in the first place?
Because we are human, and human actions are of greater interest and special to us, and we're able to distinguish stuff that happens only by humans from stuff that happens without human intervention, and need labels for them.
100,000,000 deaths total
192 countires in the world
100,000,000/192 = 520 833.333
520,833.33 > 500,000
seems like ww2 is still more deadly than iraq even though not every single country in the world was involved in ww2
But, if we were to keep this up long enough we could very well wind up with an entirely new non-fox species.
To be pendantic, we would end up with an entirely new non-foxy species of fox.
Same way nature has for example ended up with entierly non-four-legged species of tetrapods (like snakes and whales)
...when a nuclear weapon is finally used on a major city....
Do you really think that the kind of people that fly airplanes into buildings, to kill themselves and thousands of others, would hesitate for one second to use nukes if they have them? It is inevitable that they WILL have them someday, maybe sooner than anybody thinks.
All theory is gray
That is breeding - and a rather simple and limited form of it.
If we are to call that evolving, then we may just as well start talking how Australians have evolved to be more resilient to heat and hardship than their British ancestors.
After all, weaker ones have all died out. Right?
They might have, but it's been awfully few generations, so the effects are probably miniscule.
But to the point, yes, that's evolution in the timescale of a few generations. Not really noticeable, lost in the noise mostly, but if the same selection pressures keep up for thousands of generations, it'll start to show. Just witness how quickly humans adapt to different amounts of sunlight, in both directions (very dark skinned people of southern India are an example of evolving dark skin back after losing it, but I'm not sure if this is true).
....entirely new species are not only possible, but inevitable....
That is totally false, because only the opposite has ever been demonstrated. Scientists have produced millions of generations of E. coli, but all that ever happened is more E. coli. They have produced thousands of generations of fruit flies, but all that came out of it is always more fruit flies.
All theory is gray
the atomic bomb is only a bad thing if used on a massive global scale
I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
I've been to Pearl Harbor: You're full of shit.
Your turn.
You act like its use in Hiroshima was a bad thing. That's entirely a matter of perspective.
From the perspective of a US serviceman facing death at the hands of the Japanese, it ended the war and saved countless lives.
I am really surprised that no-one has picked up on the nature v/s nurture angle to this story.
let's look at it.. Some foxes are "naturally" agressive (read: NATURE).
By taking the foxes that were curious and more passive and pairing them, their offspring were less aggressive (read: NATURE).
I grew up in a family of three children. My siblings were adopted - although I didn't know for quite a few years. Not only did I look like my parents, but my behaviour was/is like my parents. Regardless, I have always had a very strong bond with one of my siblings - my other sibling is just plain unpleasant (as strongly agreed by the rest of the family).
When my sister was 25, she heard from her biological mother for the first time (read: through a private detective). I took my sister to met her biological mother for the first time - it was like looking at a clone. They had never seen each other, not even photos. They dressed the same, same hair-styles, social past-times, smokers, music tastes, mannerisms - it was uncanny, particularly given that my sister was the only one in the family who had these interests!! I can assure you that the similarities ran alot deeper than "appearances" - their personalities were VERY similar, as were their interests. Again, I believe NATURE.
Note: If you happen to be a social worker for children... ask yourself: nature v/s nurture ... particularly before you cast aspersions about bad parents - particularly when there are adopted children in the equation. From experience, I can say that some callous social workers nearly destroyed my parents emotionally. These "so called experts" never justified why only one of the three of us was constantly in trouble with the law - and the other two of us were NEVER in trouble with the law. again, I believe NATURE.
I could discuss this topic in a lot of detail (biologically related siblings who differ, effect of nurture in extreme conditions, etc). However, I'll spare you the details :) In summary, I am a strong believer that the clear majority of a person's behaviour is a result of their genetics (NATURE) rather than NURTURE if the environment is benign. The story of these foxes re-inforces my long-held belief.
AC
520,833.33 > 500,000
Thats probably within the margin of error anyway.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
--Greg :-)
....Are you sure? I'd be willing to wager that over a couple of thousand generations or so, with the correct breeding practices, one could create something very Elephant or Cow-like.....
Scientists have experimented for decades now with simpler species, such as E. coli and fruit flies. All they have ever managed to do up until now is to produce more E. coli and fruit flies respectively. So far at least, experimental science says you would lose that bet.
All theory is gray
Perhaps I totally misunderstood in biology class, but I was led to believe that standard, non-mutating genetic replication is not rearranging of the four bases, it's rearranging of strings of bases, aka genes. Genes are the "information". These foxes cannot evolve into a cow without mutations, because it does not have the appropriate genes in it's gene pool. If I am mistaken, and it is possible to rearrange DNA in arbitrarily sized pieces through breeding, then my whole previous post is pointless. (except for the part about wanting a pet fox.)
I haven't seen WW3. You're full of shit.
We're letting them do that because we don't see it coming and/or don't have the balls to wipe them out first.
Everybody thinks that human are not part of Nature! :)
Everything we do or invent is as natural as the loge of a dog. We only think we are better and somehow, outsiders.
Ridiculous beeings, these humans...
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Not immune, but very resistant. To see just how much crowd disease resistance we have gained, look at what happened to native Americans once us Eurasians came over.
Not true.
Plague or TBC will kill you if untreated with antibiotics. Granted... you will walk around for a lot longer with TBC than with plague, but both will kill you.
Also, Indians didn't die because they lacked the immunity. They died because they lacked the treatment. They have never before seen the diseases "white man" brought over.
Just like hundreds and thousands of "palefaces" have died from those same diseases.
All primitive medicine was moving the live/die border a little bit - some might live that would otherwise die, but still innate resistance to disease or better adaption to diet (such as the ability to digest milk efficiently) would help your survival chances a lot.
Really? There are no proven herbal extracts, teas or sources of vitamins and minerals?
And the ability to digest milk is not "an adaptation" buy "a race" - it is an enzyme.
An enzyme naturally produced in the human body - we use it to digest mother's milk. It is just that we stop producing it if we don't use it.
Who gets to keep the enzyme in the system? People who eat dairy products.
How did that happen historically? Someone switched to dairy direct from mother's milk - and then raised his/her kids the same way.
That is why you can wean people back to dairy, unless they can't produce the enzyme in the first place.
We still have about 5% of that kind of humans on the planet, despite the fact that they used to die as babies before lactose-free baby formula was invented.
And we will keep having at least as much, unless we start doing some active and systematic genetic engineering on humans. Recessive genes are still genes.
Fourth, where did you get that number from anyway?
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs211/en/
Seasonal epidemics
Influenza epidemics occur yearly during autumn and winter in temperate regions. Illnesses result in hospitalizations and deaths mainly among high-risk groups (the very young, elderly or chronically ill). Worldwide, these annual epidemics result in about three to five million cases of severe illness, and about 250 000 to 500 000 deaths. Most deaths associated with influenza in industrialized countries occur among people age 65 or older. In some tropical countries, influenza viruses circulate throughout the year with one or two peaks during rainy seasons.
Who said we were? Who said there was?
Well gee... I would just LOVE to have a who.int link for that, it would make for a great joke.
But I was actually replying to your statement of the flu being dependent on high population densities. Cause it isn't.
Just the same as a dirty shirt and a couple of ears of wheat won't turn into mice if left in a warm and damp place for a while.
Diseases are not created by packing people closely together - it helps to spread the disease faster but that is it.
What I am, and what I WAS trying to say is - people die from influenza regardless if they are all alone in the middle of nowhere, or if they are in the middle of New York.
There is no permanent immunity. It is not like chicken pox or mumps. That is why you need to get your flu shot again each year.
We don't have the time to mutate our way since we came up with the idea that we can use a club to get what we want.
Natural resistance to say... cancer, means nothing if the cancer-susceptible club-wielding tribe decides to steal your food or that you are an abomination.
Or their crazy, baby-eating god tells them that they too can be cured from cancer if they eat your flesh.
You know... kinda the way they use virgins to treat AIDS in parts of Africa today.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
we didn't really evolve that much since we got ourselves these big brainy things that we use for thinking.
We seem to have lost most of our body hair since then. What were you expecting, wings and stingers?
We're evolving faster than ever before because our environment is changing faster than ever before. The creation of modern human civilization is a massive environmental change, and that's an understatement because there just aren't words to fully express such a level of environmental change.
Evolutionary changes need not be physically obvious. They can involve digestion (lactose tolerance), the immune system (the 1% who are immune to HIV), or the mind (behavior that defeats birth control).
If you want to know what future humans will be like, simply look at the selection pressure. The biggest reason why people fail to have surviving offspring is birth control. This can be overcome by increased desire to have kids, or by a tendency to fail in the use of birth control.
In other words - we are a hell of a lot more complex animals then foxes.
I wouldn't bet on that. We're less complex than our Christmas trees; they have way more DNA than we do, probably because defending a non-mobile organism requires extreme chemical complexity.
Also, we stopped fiddling with evolving our pigmentation back when we discovered clothing.
You forget sexual selection, particularly mate choice and ornaments. (more)
Scientific experiments have shown that many animals killed for food, leather and fur are as intelligent as some of the smarter dogs we love. The next time you see a news piece about what the Chinese and Asians do to dogs and get disgusted remember that. We do the same to animals who have just as much intelligence and capacity to suffer.
Therefore, eating dogs is not wrong.
For sure it's environmentally friendly to eat unwanted dogs instead of injecting them with toxic chemicals and burning fuel to cremate them. They probably taste pretty good; it's too bad I'd have to fly overseas to get one without legal trouble.
...The are issues with evolutionary theory... /. all that will do is get you modded down to the lowest numbers possible. I don't believe in the religion of evolution either, but we are in the minority here.
Shhh, don't point out that the faith of evolution violates well established laws of nature. On
All theory is gray
It would look like it but it would be quite different. Eg, Dolphins and Porpoises are distinct species despite looking superficially similar.
So I suppose it depends on what the original person meant by "cow" or "elephant" ... they probably meant exactly a cow or exactly an elephant.
"Most sad thing about it was that they had camps where they trained 5-6 year old boys to exercise physically and to mentally think without fear of enemy, while learning military tactics and strategies."
you ever read Ender's game by Orson Scott Card?
....One of the points of evolution is that there are no clear cut boundaries between species. ...
So then let me see you or anyone produce cats from dogs or birds from alligators. What a crock of shit!
All theory is gray
...Here Richard Dawkins explains exactly for the evolution of the eyeball...
Anybody can explain anything on paper, but that does not make it so. Science is about observation and experimentation, neither of which have ever been done by him or anyone else to show that this explanation is even remotely close to being correct. All it is is a big imaginative conjecture.
All theory is gray
Just look at the word "humanely". It's something that has to do with humans. Concepts like "torture" and "cruelty" are human concepts. These concepts should not apply to non-humans.
People who enjoy the "torture" of animals are very similar to people who get upset about it: both are personifying animals. That's a mental weakness.
Animals don't give a damn about animals. The worm eating a dog's brain doesn't feel remorse. The aligator eating a kitten doesn't contemplate any ethical issues. Food is food.
There isn't any reason for us to see things differently, and many of us don't. Most people have no problem setting out a mouse trap or cutting up a tasty fish.
You're having trouble because you've gotten some sort of mental disconnect from nature (yes indeed, critters eat other critters) or because you really have some difficulty with the distinction between your own species and the rest.
....things start simple, and get more complex over time...
There are two things that have to be put into a system, in order for that to take place. First there has to be an input of energy. That's the easy part, because systems can get plenty of that from the sun. But, besides energy, you also have to supply additional information if you want something simple to turn into something more complex. Where does that information come from?
When you tidy up the chaos of your room or apartment, you supply muscle energy, but you also supply information as to where to put stuff.
All theory is gray
Then there was that carnival with the famed three headed horse, but the third head turned out to be a fake!
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
Soviets actually had long history in experimenting modifying genes and DNA of animals, and in late years this was even minorly expanded to humans. They were really cautious about that, but did experience on things like changing human behavior in brains and trying to give them 'better' abilities (as in from military point of view). Most sad thing about it was that they had camps where they trained 5-6 year old boys to exercise physically and to mentally think without fear of enemy, while learning military tactics and strategies. The most interesting part is that via some limited lobotomy, they managed to remove some feeling of fear and feelings from the subjects. There's a few videos out of those experiences, this one is taken near Black Sea in 1986 in area whats currently Ukraine.
Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it.
Well you never know. Maybe one of these days they'll be able to produce a domesticated nigger. Or at least one that isn't a menace to civilized society.
an animal who wants to live
No. "an animal that instinctively behaves in a way that tends to cause survival"
You're personifying. I may as well say that a tomato wants to live. If personifying is reasonable, then you'd better not kill her. ("her" meaning the tomato)
A strawman doesn't make a good argument. As mentioned, species that are far enough apart on the evolutionary tree can't interbreed and with dogs and birds that is obviously the case and so you get a rather clear cut between species there. That doesn't change the fact that dogs and wolfs for example are still quite close together and can interbred, as is the case with quite a few other animals that would normally be considered separate species.
(hint: big glowing day-star is shining plenty of energy on us).
You'd think that they would have come up with a better name for that by now.
It's a bitch having to write today's name as "Big Glowing Day-Star Day" all the time.
I am anarch of all I survey.
I don't even know where to begin with this... I'm just going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are a troll and not actually someone seriously saying that...
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
This is the sort fuckheaded comment and thought process which perpetuates the racism in the USA.
No scientist has been doing this for millions of years, on the scale of a planet. Do the math ... it IS inevitable.
Whoever said I was a creationist?
Which is my point.
No alternative theory can exist because you "priests of Darwinism" won't allow anything other than Darwinism to explain your view of the world.
If it is different than yours you immediately bring God into the picture and claim I am a religious nut cake.
Just remember though, you assumed I was a creationist and I am not, a creationist.
I simply observed all you people desperately, want to kill "God". Why you people always respond to any critique of the evolutionary BIBLE of Darwin as a attack by an imaginary being is beyond me.
You see, my position I don't care which is which, I want the facts.
Until biochemistry can solve all of these riddles and we begin to produce species out of the lab all the "quaint" little You Tube videos in the world are not going to convince me that Darwin is correct.
You change ONE freakin protein in the eye and it all comes falling apart.
One guy on here even thinks the whole thing is deterministic and doesn't work by chance and that "somehow natural selection" makes it work, ywet won't explain what the difference is between random probability and natural selection!
What a bunch of bull. If natural selection makes it work, then if it is that well understood, make a new species from a frog then. I want four eyes on the frog, and I want it purple with speckled poka dots.
Since it is very well understood "theory" then it shouldn't be too hard to do.
You Darwinists are so full of yourselves and you point at creationists that can't provide proof of God, yet turn around and endorse a theory of how life works, yet can't produce one freakin new species.
Your all hypocrites and THAT is one thing you have in common with creationists.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
So when does someone start trying this with chimps or monkeys? Are they already doing it? Seems like that could really open some doors, you had chimps who were as easy and (relatively) safe to work with as dogs.
...(Thats only true for closed systems, earth is not a closed system (hint: big glowing day-star is shining plenty of energy on us).
-
Guy, you have to be kidding me.
You are telling me that entropy doesn't apply outside of the Earth in the known universe, simply because we have a Sun?
You need a serious science lesson.
Unfortunately, you probably have been hanging around with the guy in here who thinks I am a creationist.
He needs a science lesson to, because what he is practicing is religion.
Oh, and say Hi to your fellow research buddies over there in England for me would ya? You know, who are researching the "climate change ""science"" ".
I hear they recently leaked a few Emails....and I hear he had to step down.
That is too bad.
-Hack
PS: Really it is. No worry though, Luthor broke away from Rome and formed his own Church. Maybe you Darwinists and the Climate Change guys could get together and form your own Church too?
Sorry if you don't hang around with the guy in England, what is his name???? Oh well, can't remember...probably like a lot of his "research".
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
New evolutionary paths can arise from new combinations of existing "information".
That's one way of looking at it, but: .99 offspring while the fitter competitor has 1.01. Yes, sometimes an exceptionally fit creature hogs reproductive success and has 20 offspring while none of the competitors have any, but that's actually quite rare, and for the majority of species, makes little difference to the aggregate results.
Nature doesn't really do the survival of the fittest, but of the adequately fit. On average. you see a lot more creatures gradually selected around a pretty broad average type, than you do intensely hyper-fit competitors playing an all or nothing game. Nature lets plenty of moderately fit members of a species survive most of the time, and being less fit than average often only means an organism has, on average
Look at bighorn sheep. The males duel, prove their fitness exaustively, though rarely lethally, then the females just as often choose to mate with the losers instead. A bighorn male can win a lot of duels and still achieve only average reproductive success, and conversely, choosing to back down and let the bigger ram show off for the ladies often results in them watching the show, then picking the ram smart enough to know his limitations. Nature seems to allow just about anything to pass as fitness there, but the sheep have been naturally selected for an aggressive mating ritual anyway. For years, scientists assumed there was a lot of selection pressure there, and it was even the common textbook example of how sexual selection could probably modify a species more powerfully than other forms of natural selection, then they finally noticed the ewes weren't really exerting that pressure at all.
Nature also throws out environmental mods nothing can survive. Close enough to an asteroid strike or a shield volcano eruption, no creature proves to have the bit of extra fitness to cope.
Artificial selection is different here. Normally, we deliberately don't wipe out an entire animal population as part of a breeding program, without saving at least some percentage each generation. We also don't let a species just mosey along. If we want really big horns on sheep, we don't let the ewes pick, we choose for them, It's 100% enforcement of the rule that only the absolutely fittest survive, with us setting the definition of fittest as we arbitrarily choose. When we decide that fittest means, for example, the blue ones, we just don't let any of the orange ones breed.
Even if we don't do direct modification of the genotype, we set the selection pressure dial on 11, we aim for goals no natural environment without us being in control would ever produce, and we work hard, although not always successfully in the longer run, to keep that level of pressure from shutting down the operation before we get to our goal.
Who is John Cabal?
You totally lost me. Can you translate that into a car analogy?
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
You are telling me that entropy doesn't apply outside of the Earth in the known universe, simply because we have a Sun?
You missed the point. Entrophy applies to closed systems, earth is not a closed system, not even close, as you have shitloads of energie coming from the sun. And guess what, that energie can be used to counteract entrophy buildup and thats what is happening with evolution.
I hear they recently leaked a few Emails....and I hear he had to step down.
You should watch less Fox News. The whole email thing is so far a total a non-issue as far as actual science is concerned, as so far there has been no sign of fraud. But hey, a few quotes out of context and you can steer up a big fat controversy where there really is none.
Please see what I already posted to this thread. Human artifical selection is significantly different from natural selection in at least the two respects I cited. If human forethought is capable of mattering, we also can aim at a goal that isn't immediately optimum but might be better in some larger sense, and natural selection is always aiming solely at a local optimum, so that's a possible third difference. Natural selection tends towards the immediate good enough even if this closes off paths that might later lead to a long term best. (Some people would argue with human purposefullness making any difference in the world. I'm admittedly assuming that point here).
Who is John Cabal?
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
You're just whining. Don't confuse evolution supporters with scientists. Theory of evolution by natural selection is the BEST explanation that we have right now to explain many aspects of life. Do you have an alternate theory that is better but still manages to agree with all the scientific tests, results and subsequent discoveries that validate the existing theory?
The average person who has no understanding of science has an implicit trust in science, because it has built around itself a credibility bubble. And for good reason. Every now and then revolutions happen and existing theories fall in the light of better theories. This is not accidental. Its because scientists are not dogmatic or 'faith' based. This is not true in all cases ofcource. *Sometimes* when large amounts of money are involved a bad scientist might defend his theory more aggressively. But even then, they fall eventually. The new theory is accepted and the process continues.
He's only a human after all.
Play Command HQ online
Or at least one that isn't a menace to civilized society.
You are clearly not a member of any civilized society. Go jump off a cliff.
After all, I am strangely colored.
You are aware that life systems are mostly stochastic and would not work if entropy didn't increase, right?
Play Command HQ online
Plague or TBC will kill you if untreated with antibiotics. Granted... you will walk around for a lot longer with TBC than with plague, but both will kill you.
Yersinia pestis isn't as dangerous as you make it out to be. The rate of death is something like 20%, even without antibiotics. And yes, Europeans have a significant immunity to plague. On the other hand, if you get a few waves of plague going over a town, each killing 20% at a time, you'll lose more.
TB does not kill very often either. In fact, a third of all humans (two billion) have TB cells inside them. Only a few hundred million are "infected" in the sense of having a disease or symptoms. The human immune system is very good at fighting off low grade infections.
"Anybody can explain anything on paper"
That's a fairly bold statement.
Dawkins may not demonstrate how an eyeball was evolved, but showing plausible steps does counter the argument that it could not have arisen by chance, or that scientists don't understand how it could have arisen by chance.
Play Command HQ online
Or view the videos of the foxes bred for tameness, vs those bred for aggression... BIG difference.
Amazing how whenever something like this comes up, all the one-pet-wonders come out of the woodwork. There's so much uninformed opinion posted this time around, that I don't even know where to start.
[And this IS in my field of expertise; I am a professional dog breeder/trainer, with 40 years experience.]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Agreed.
Being a passionate for genetic algorithms I understand what you say perfectly. And I agree. Evolution is far more complex than simple survival of the fittest! Or maybe it's the fittest that's more complicated than we understand. Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll agree there is a difference between manipulating the genes - whatever they actually are, nucleic acids seems more accurate... - themselves than applying whatever pressure we want on the phenotype. In a way, the pressure we apply on the genotypes by our artificial selection, could be an extended phenotype of our own genes, making way for their own endeavor....! - therefore not artificial at all! :)
Anyway, here's to you for complementing what I say and shedding yet another bit of light on the ever complex matter of evolution, natural or not - if that makes any sense! :)
Let's hit you up with some truth and I challenge you to deny it:
1. There are biologically linked components to animal behavior.
2. We are animals
3. Animals of different breeds behave in different ways largely based on their breed, though with variances.
I'm all for wishing that people were all the same but they aren't some people do very stupid and inexplicable things. For example, knowing that smoking is bad, some will continue to do it while others will quit. There are many contributing factors to the results of human behavior and biology is most definitely one of them. No one chooses to be gay. No one chooses their sex. No one chooses their breed/race/species (call it what you want but let's just say race). It is all well and good that we should attempt to rise above certain things, but ignoring facts of our natural world is and always has been a big mistake. I understand that most of us are mentally conditioned to "fight racism" every time you think you see it. Get over yourself and get over your social programming and conditioning.
I find it fascinating that people will accept that some behavior is biologically based but that races in humans are immune to having their own predispositions. We can BARELY talk about specific diseases and conditions associated with white/black/other people and we know they exist. We know that mentality, mental capacity and behavior can be inherited from family. Is it really such a stretch that aspects of behavior could ALSO be related to lineage on a much larger scale? Why do we insist on figuratively "cutting the heads" off of people when studying them? Is the brain separate from the body or is it all a part of a whole? The mind, the brain, the body -- all the same.
I understand that many people can accept the facts of the natural world as we learn more about them. We accept that certain species of animals behave as they do because they are programmed. Dogs bark. Snakes bite. We are interested and amazed to learn that selective breeding practices can breed specific behavior traits while at the same time breeding changes in appearance as a side-effect. We have known for hundreds of years that genius and insanity can be inheritable traits. We know that certain groups (races/sexes) of people are more vulnerable or resistant to particular diseases or conditions. We know that some personality traits in individuals can have biological roots.
BUT when it comes to behavior traits, we somehow isolate race as a contributing factor. Among all the flows of knowledge and understanding we continue to develop over time, we have to interrupt certain conclusions because they are politically incorrect? We used to avoid certain conclusions because they were decidedly incorrect for religious reasons. As a society of people, we are almost evolved beyond that... almost but not quite. Today we are avoiding certain conclusions because of yet another "religion" -- political correctness.
We often make generalizations about age and most of them are quite true. We often make generalizations about sex and we are quite comfortable believing that women are less aggressive, more nurturing and all that and that it's "biology." We are quite comfortable believing that men are more aggressive and more prone to dangerous behavior and that too is linked to biological predispositions. But when it comes to other distinctions based in biology, we have to put up walls and barriers and make exceptions. If it isn't political correctness that prevents people from discussion certain things without being branded a racist, then what is it? You need to go back and watch the original "Planet of the Apes" some time.
sounds like football to me
There's nothing scaring
You fucking retarded faggot. The word is "scary".
Sorry, that was unfair to creationists. I notice you have previously argued that the H1N1 virus was created by the healthcare sector and released in order that they could sell the vaccine, and other equally cranky stuff. I suspect that this is actually a simple case of you not keeping up with your medication.
No one said that *IS* how the eye evolved. It simply disproves the creationist claim that there is no way that evolution can produce a complex structure such as an organ. There is a way - Dawkins presents it. It may not be the specific way that the eye actually evolved, but it proves that there is at least one set of steps by which evolution could have produced a complex organ such as an eye.
Great phrase.
Our family has always had dogs (and a few dog-wolf mixes), and the range of personality traits, and what you can learn about "people behaviour" just by applying your observations from dogs, is amazing. At what point do we stop saying "it's instinct" (in dogs OR humans) when the objective behaviour and outcome are the same?
....scientists don't understand how it could have arisen by chance....
Could have, might have, maybe by chance, are all speculations of believing minds, but they are not science. Real science, not pseudoscience, is observation and experimentation, not idle mental exercise or mathematical gymnastics. If it cannot be shown by repeated experiment and observation, it is idle speculation akin to religion.
Nobody has ever observed or even made anything evolve, involving entirely new structures. Hundreds of millions of generations of E. coli have still only produced more E. coli and not even some other kind of bacteria, let alone a more complex multi-celled organism. Countless generations of fruit flies have similarly produced nothing but fruit flies. Dogs have made nothing but dogs, cats have made nothing but cats and birds produce only more birds. This is observed and experimental FACT, not religious or evolutionary dogma. Living things reproduce after their kind, just as it is written in Scripture. This is not speculation, but what we observe and experience every day.
Evolutionists generally get around experimentally and observationally verified facts by putting forth the mechanism of vast ages of time. Time and chance are the magic ingredients, that are both used to foist the evolutionary fairytale on scientifically ignorant people.
The Christian doctrine that an intelligent, transcendent God is behind all of creation also cannot be proven or refuted by the scientific method. The assertion that Mount Rushmore or Stonehenge are intelligent human creations rather than a natural rock formations cannot be refuted or corroborated by the scientific method either.
All theory is gray
...at least one set of steps by which evolution could have produced a complex organ such as an eye....
Speculation about how something could be or could not be is not science. Science is and always has been about observation, measurement and experimentation. If it cannot be observed, it is not science, but doctrinaire belief.
It is OK to speculate, but such speculation should not be foisted off as scientific truth. Hollywood creations such as Star Trek and Star Wars are a lot of fun, but everybody knows that these things are made up stories, not scientific truth.
Evolutionary religion has hijacked the label "science" or scientific by which it tries to foist itself off as truth on scientifically ignorant people. It is the belief in the magic of time and chance held by the high priests of the evolutionary religion, who are unwilling to be humbly submitted to an all powerful, intelligent, eternal, transcendent Creator God.
All theory is gray
The reason we dropped "the bomb" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was because estimates of American deaths to finish the war in a traditional assault on Japan were in the millions.
We (of course, I mean our military leaders) decided that the only way to weaken Japan's resolve and end the war was to kill several hundred thousand Japanese civilians. By showing the willingness to use the weapon, we made it clear to Japan that if they did not surrender, we would drop the bomb on more cities until they did. It was a terrible thing, yes, but it saved millions of lives in the long run - both American and Japanese.
You should also note that the target cities, while not tiny, were definitely not among Japan's largest cities. This was to kill as few people as possible and still break Japan's will to continue the war.
"The Bomb" has never been used callously, as evidenced by the fact that it has never been used since then, and you must consider the terrible position the American leaders were in. Do you kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and end the war? Or do you send millions of soldiers to their deaths killing millions more Japanese soldiers to end the war? The Japanese culture at the time was a culture of victory or death. Soldiers did not yield when it was only their lives on the line - they would kill themselves trying to kill the enemy.
So don't bemoan the use of the atomic bomb while ignoring the consequences of not using it. Would it be better if the bomb never existed? Perhaps, but we must face reality, not live in fantasy. The bomb would have been invented by someone else eventually, better to use it to prevent more deaths than cause more destruction with it.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Hundreds of millions of generations of E. coli have still only produced more E. coli
That has been done in a lab and it has lead to the evolution of abilities not present in the original E.coli strand. That is actual observed evolution in a lab right there.
Entropy exists in all systems, on earth, in space, with our without a sun, and it has the same effect.
It makes no difference what energy is applied to a system, the end result is the same. order->disorder.
I would also like to point out, simply having energy in a system, does not mean it will create life. I think you need to study Biochemistry a bit more, energy input has an entirely different meaning of course to sustain life once it has arose, but for it to arise in the first place is just one of a large list of problems, that cannot be solved...yet.
So, no, I don't believe you.
For my own opinion, I believe Entropy prevents life from organizing. Until I see new life forms all kinds coming out of a lab some place, I am going to stick with entropy.
But unlike your fellow climate "researchers" I don't drink Kool-Aid. I want evidence, and I want proof.
As for your other idea that any of the communications leaked are a non issue, well of COURSE they are. Everyone knows the Emails were planted by the creationists and religious extremists!
I mean these communications that were leaked were such a non issue that is why Phil Jones had to step down, because it was all faked!!
-Hack
PS: You sir are a NON ISSUE. Why don't you go and trade some carbon credits with your Wall Street friends, Bankers and Oil Industrialists and the majority of the worlds Billionaires at the Copenhagan Conference.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
You wouldn't know what science was if it poked you in the eye with a stick. Observation, measurement and experimentation follow on from hypothesis. "Speculation" is very much part of the scientific method. It is exactly what a hypothesis is.
Nor indeed do you understand logic. Once again, the OP claimed "it is not clear even from a biological point of view how a new complex system can arise by random chance, such as developing an entirely different organ for example in a very gradual way."
Again it *IS* completely clear, and explained in the programme excerpt in a way a child can understand how how a new complex system *CAN* arise by means of evolution. Not that the method explained WAS how that particular system was evolved.
All you do by repeating your half baked ideas of how science works is to underline the ignorance you have that leads you to believe in imaginary friends who created everything. You are too stupid to get your head around anything more.
Entropy exists in all systems, on earth, in space, with our without a sun, and it has the same effect.
The whole point is that the sun supplies energy that can be used to do work. If you would live on an empty unlit and unheated rock in the depths of black space there wouldn't be much chance for life, but thats not the case on earth and thats why the whole entrophy argument is quite frankly nonsense.
As for your other idea that any of the communications leaked are a non issue, well of COURSE they are. Everyone knows the Emails were planted by the creationists and religious extremists!
How about you watch the video that I linked earlier instead of repeating your nonsense? That video nicely shows that the quotes where completly out of context and that there so far as been no sign of fraud. Nobody is claiming that the emails where faked.
From observing dogs, I've concluded that what we call the limits of animal intelligence not a *difference* from human intelligence, but is in fact the point at which they *stopped maturing* intellectually. With dogs that's about the same point where a 2 to 5 year old human child is at, depending on the breed and individual. They behave, think, learn, and react very similarly, and have approximately the same instincts -- to the point that I tell my puppy people they are getting a perpetual toddler. :)
So, no, not a difference at all, but rather, a different range from the same continuum.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Could have, might have, maybe by chance, are all speculations of believing minds, but they are not science. Real science, not pseudoscience, is observation and experimentation, not idle mental exercise or mathematical gymnastics. If it cannot be shown by repeated experiment and observation, it is idle speculation akin to religion."
This kind of explanation addresses a specific criticism of the theory. The criticism is that the eye is too complex to have evolved. It's a fair and logical suggestion, yet a logical demonstration that an eye could evolve is adequate to counter it.
Really, if you want to exile logic and math from science, you'll have to explain yourself better than just an assertion on slashdot.
"Dogs have made nothing but dogs, cats have made nothing but cats and birds produce only more birds. This is observed and experimental FACT, not religious or evolutionary dogma."
It's religious dogma, because it isn't true. For instance, Humans and dogs have both been observed to evolve into single-celled organisms, among many other direct observations.
Your insistence on laboratory observation seems to be an extension of your devaluing of math and logic. Using logic, it's possible to deduce or infer something about remote or one-off phenomena through indirect evidence.
"Evolutionists generally get around experimentally and observationally verified facts by putting forth the mechanism of vast ages of time."
Time, chance, a huge planet, a mountain of evidence so imposing you apparently can't look at it, and solid logic support the theory of evolution.
"The Christian doctrine that an intelligent, transcendent God is behind all of creation also cannot be proven or refuted by the scientific method."
It can and has been refuted. It was the dominant scientific theory for millenia, but it was never able to explain very much, and never did well when subjected to close scrutiny.
True, the modern "god did it" can't be falsified, but then it fails immediately by explaining absolutely nothing. Not only is it not falsifiable, it's not even a theory.
"The assertion that Mount Rushmore or Stonehenge are intelligent human creations rather than a natural rock formations cannot be refuted or corroborated by the scientific method either."
Yes, they can. One merely has to look and think. That's all science is, really. You'd like throw the "think" part out, apparently. If you did not see humans make Mt. Rushmore with your own eyes from beginning to end, then you don't know that they did. But how do you trust your eyes, how do you know those are really humans and not an illusion? How do you know Mt. Rushmore wasn't there all along and humans just uncovered it?
Even with direct observation, you still have to use your head.
Play Command HQ online
Wikipedia says 62 to 78 million including the Holocaust. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (1986) vol 27 page 448 says 55 million.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The laws of thermodynamics have strict mathematical meanings which do not always translate well to and from conversational English. If I were to say that entropy demands that systems go from order to disorder, I would be contradicted by the formation of crystals from an evaporating sugar solution.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
yeah the arguments around rascism are tiring. I wonder, i mean morality aside, what a biologically superior human would look like.
I mean, we could do something like the nazi's attempted (selective breeding) but not use their politically charged agenda/criteria (like skin/hair/eye color) --- the idea is distasteful to many because it brings us around to pointing at whom/what are the better specimens...not something i'd want to be on a board to decide. ...and at some point genetic manipulation will open some doors. will we walk through them? how will that all work out?
will we breed a new human? should we work towards breeding a better human?
wow... what? ...way to throw out a controversial statement that is incredibly vague and back it up with nothing. Not even a position to argue. Its like you NEED to be heard but have nothing of value to say.
Your statement is also insulting because it suggests that most the educated biologist and anthropologists et al are fools with out any kind of reasoning. Thusly the mainstream population are all fools for listening to thier drivel.
And, just to top it off, gives absolutely nothing to the conversation at hand. You've in essence said nothing of value for either your views or the views of the 'modern science-believing fools'. AND it's off topic to boot. We are talking about selectively breeding foxes.
And what do you mean by "established laws of nature"? Does eveolution violate the laws of gravity? If I evolve will I fall off the earth?
Geez, man... say something of value or nothing at all.
And yes, I'm Anon. C. because I fear your keen intellect and harsh rebuttle. Either that or i can't log in from where I'm posting from, you choose.
...For instance, Humans and dogs have both been observed to evolve into single-celled organisms,...
Oh really, where do you get this off the wall information? If that were true I would call that devolution.
(...of your devaluing of math and logic...)
Math and logic must be the servants of science, not its master. Whatever is inferred through their services must eventually be corroborated by observation and experiment. By and unto themselves they are not science.
(...solid logic support the theory of evolution...)
Yes they do, but not a shred of observational or experimental evidence. Nobody has ever seen it happen or made it happen.
(...but it was never able to explain very much...)
Science is not about conjectural explanations or speculations, but about solid experimentation and observation. Nobody has ever, in any shape or form proved evolution in the laboratory or in the field.
(...One merely has to look and think...)
Exactly right, one has to merely look at a human eyeball or a 747 airplane and come to the correct LOGICAL conclusion that neither one is a product of chance, but of intelligent design.
All theory is gray
....it has lead to the evolution of abilities not present in the original E.coli strand....
That is absolutely true, but the bacteria were still E. coli and always will be. I call that adaptation. Never, has any the laboratory experimentation produced a coccus or spirochete bacteria from an E. coli bacteria. A dachshund can do things a German Shepherd can't, but they are still both dogs.
Living things are very adaptable, but that does not prove evolution. The evolution I am thinking of is the nonsense that teaches that birds were once reptiles or that men come from monkeys or apes. That simply does not happen and has never been demonstrated or observed to happen. Such teaching is pure rubbish, not worthy of the label of science.
All theory is gray
... in the case of the Mustangs, we killed off all the Buffalo all by ourselves.. the horses fill much of the same niche roaming the plains.
That's fairly accurate, but it's common for zoologists to phrase it somewhat differently. Horses evolved in North America, and moved west across the Bering land bridge about the same time that humans were moving east. Horses died out in North America soon thereafter, and this is generally attributed to the humans, who considered them food. Then some time later, a new bunch of invading humans reintroduced horses, some of whom escaped and simply filled their original niche in the North American ecosystem. They were helped by the fact that those new humans also wiped out most of the bison, producing a deficit of large grazers, which the horses were able to partly fill.
Of course, this is really just a more detailed explanation, and the two-line summary is good enough for non-technical language such as the media and lower-level school books. The main extra point the more long-winded explanation makes is that horses aren't an alien species in North America; they were merely reintroduced to their native range. Of course, they were escapees from domestication, so they probably aren't quite as good at it as were their earlier relatives. But they have successfully maintained a wild population in North America, despite the efforts of ranchers who consider them competition for our cattle.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
That is absolutely true, but the bacteria were still E. coli and always will be.
E. coli is a man made term. Species in general are man made classification. Nature doesn't really care about species. Look at the tiger and lion, are they two species? How come that you can have a tigeon or a liger? What about a donkey and a horse? Is mule even a "species" and is it a horse or a donkey? How come the mule species in infertile? What about a Zebra?
Small changes over millions or even billions of years lead to big changes, I don't really see what is so hard about that concept.
The evolution I am thinking of is the nonsense that teaches that birds were once reptiles or that men come from monkeys or apes.
Thats not nonsense, but scientific research backed up by fossile evidence and sometimes DNA evidence.
If Evolution where so completly wrong, it would be quite easy to disprove: Just find a fossible which doesn't fit into the fossil record. Like a real horse back in the time of the dinosaurs or something like that.
Which alternative theory do you suggest that explains all the observations?
...Species in general are man made classification...
That of course is true, but they are still limits to what is generally called evolution. You may be able to mate the lion and a tiger, but not a horse and a hippopotamus to get a horsapottamous or whatever.
(...Small changes over millions or even billions of years lead to big changes..)
That is part of Evolutionary Theory that has never and can never be observationally or experimentally verified. Time, lots of time, immense quantities of time is what evolutionists always resort to when their theories cannot be verified by observation.
Scientists have desperately tried for decades now already to experimentally make evolution happen. They do this by raising thousands or even millions of generations of rapidly multiplying organisms. Experiment and observations with bacteria and fruit flies show that evolution into new kinds of creatures just does not happen. A given kind of bacteria always remain bacteria of that kind and fruit flies have always remained fruit flies.
That is the fact. Experimental, real science, does give and always has given evidence that evolution of one kind of creature into another does not happen today.
(...fossile evidence...)
Have you ever heard of something called The Cambrian Explosion? How the fossil record shows a SUDDEN explosive increase in the number and diversity of fossilized organisms? Is that evidence for creation done quickly or slow evolution over millions of years?
(...If Evolution where so completly wrong...)
Some aspects of evolution are not wrong at all, but the teaching that birds come from reptiles and men come from monkeys is absurd. Such evolution does not happen today and it cannot be shown to have happened in the past either.
However, Darwin was right when he observed the beaks of finches changing according to what kind of seeds were available. You can call that evolution if you want to, but I prefer to call it adaptation.
(...Which alternative theory do you suggest that explains all the observations?...)
I believe in an intelligent Creator God, all powerful and all knowing, who designed the universe and the laws by which it operates. Just as human laws which govern our lives all the came from intelligent (well sometimes at least) minds, so too did the natural laws come from the mind of God. My faith is small, but it is big enough to believe in such a God. My faith is however not big enough to believe something like the human brain or a 747 airplane can come into existence without careful thought and planning.
All theory is gray
On the other hand, "Old Testament God" slaughtered humans like it was going out of style and made us do all sorts of silly things. If we want to view it as a set of Russian dolls, then perhaps we're just experiencing the same steps towards maturation?
You may be able to mate the lion and a tiger, but not a horse and a hippopotamus to get a horsapottamous or whatever.
Yes, but what is that an argument for? Thats exactly what you would expect from evolution. The point is that a tiger is not a lion and yet they can mate and produce offsprings. How do you explain that if not with evolution?
immense quantities of time is what evolutionists always resort to when their theories cannot be verified by observation.
It *is* observation. Sure it would be nice to have a video tape of three billion years of evolution, but we don't. We have to work with what we got and that is fossile evidence, currently living species and DNA. And so far, all of that is explained or even predicted just fine by evolution.
Scientists have desperately tried for decades now already to experimentally make evolution happen.
And they have succeeded in the lab, see my earlier E.coli link. I mean what do you actually expect? Crocoduck?
Have you ever heard of something called The Cambrian Explosion? How the fossil record shows a SUDDEN explosive increase in the number and diversity of fossilized organisms?
Yes, and there are plenty of theories around that try to explain it. The most basic one is of course that before the Cambrian Explosion you simply didn't have enough hard parts in the animals to get fossils. It might of course not be the right explanation or a complete explanation, but Cambrian Explosion really doesn't go against evolution, its for large part basically just a lack of data. Not that unexpected given that it happened hundred of million years ago.
Anyway, even if we accept that we just don't know enough of the Cambrian Explosion to make an conclusion (hey, could have been space aliens seeding the earth with life). There are still millions of years following that for which we *do* have a decent fossil record and for which evolution is currently the by far best theory to explain it.
but the teaching that birds come from reptiles and men come from monkeys is absurd.
Thats not absurd, thats what the fossil and DNA evidence shows. Where do you think birds and men come from?
Such evolution does not happen today
Evolution takes millions of years. What is so hard to understand about that? Do you also observe a human for a day and then conclude that there is no way that a child can grow into an adult? After all no real change happen in the day you observed.
I believe in an intelligent Creator God, all powerful and all knowing, who designed the universe and the laws by which it operates.
If you think God did it, care to elaborate on a few questions? When did he do it (6000 years ago, 3.5 billion years ago, etc) and what is your evidence for that? What exactly did he do? Did he create the Tiger and the Lion? Why are offsprings of those to infertile? Why did God hate the dinosaurs and all the other exting animals so much that he had to kill them all? How do you explain that an all knowing creator has managed to let so many bugs slip into his construction, such as wisdom teeth which we have to fix so that they don't cause trouble? Or the blind spot in the eye, which could have been easily avoided. Did God create the whole universe? Why did you create so much empty space for no reason?
My faith is however not big enough to believe something like the human brain or a 747 airplane can come into existence without careful thought and planning.
When you actually observe how a brain and a 747 is build, you will quickly find out that their process of construction is completly different. The 747 for example, like most other intelligent designed things in the world, doesn't feature a way to reproduce itself. So in turn it doesn't have a direct way to submit changes to its offsprings. The brain or
...The point is that a tiger is not a lion ..
But they are both large cats, the cat kind. The biblical "kind" does not necessarily correspond to what humans have called species or other scientific classifications. It does however represent a distinct category of lifeforms which does not interbreed with other categories.
(...It *is* observation...)
This is not true! Nobody was there to observe it, except for God. The fossil record shows no transitions between the various lifeforms, but instead shows the sudden appearance of new kinds of creatures. The theory of evolution does not predict the sudden appearance of entirely new kinds of life.
(...they have succeeded in the lab...)
in making more bacteria of the same kind. These may have new capabilities, just as dachshunds have capabilities that German shepherds don't have, but they were still basically the same kind of bacteria, just as German shepherds and dachshunds are still only dogs.
(....simply didn't have enough hard parts ...)
Which are not at all necessary to form fossils. There are fossils of snails , worms and jellyfish and all kinds of other creatures that are totally soft. These showed up suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, a geological microsecond of time. Exactly how does the fossil record show that men came from monkeys and birds came from reptiles?
(...Evolution takes millions of years...)
Like I have said many times before, time is the magic and last refuge of any evolutionist. Because evolution cannot be demonstrated or observed today, that "millions of years" excuse is always, without fail, used to defend evolution.
(...The 747 for example, like most other intelligent designed things in the world, doesn't feature a way to reproduce itself...)
That is because the human brain, in fact life itself, even a single cell, is orders of magnitude more complex than any 747 airplane. Human designers have yet to come up with a self reproducing machine, especially one using very elementary parts.
(... When did he do it (6000 years ago, 3.5 billion years ago, etc)...) What difference does it make whether it was 6000 years ago or billions of years? The God I believe in is eternal, outside of time. He created time itself. His Word, the Bible, was not given to us by him to give us a science lesson. He left that for us to figure out on our own. However, I will give you a clue. To measure time, you need a clock. The clocks available to us tick at different rates, depending on which force controls its motion. Gravity and the electric force are the only two forces or interactions which are available to us for timekeeping. We assume, we believe by faith, that neither of these forces have ever changed, thus affecting clocks based on it.
(...Why did you create so much empty space for no reason?...)
Aren't you making at least two assumptions here? First of all, how do you know there is no reason for having all the so-called empty space? Second, we know today that there is no such thing as what you call empty space. Space is filled with unbelievable amounts of energy that has been given the name of zero point energy. If you want to know more about it, just go to the ever so friendly Google.
(...How do you explain that an all knowing creator has managed to let so many bugs slip into his construction...)
Humans tend to believe, because of our extremely short existence here, that things were always pretty much the way they are today. In his manual for living, the Bible, he gives us a few indications that this is not the case. There have been at least two stark discontinuities he tells us about. In the biblical creation account, we find the repeated phrase: "it was very good". That is obviously no longer the case. Scientists can certainly tell that things are no longer ideal or perfect.
(...If you think God did it, care to elaborate on a few questions?...)
Man was originally given complete dominion over the earth. We are given a hint of the scope of this dominion in
All theory is gray
http://www.sibfox.com/
Someone got $6,000 to loan me? I want one...
Fucking hell you're a retard. Please don't breed.
Basic reading comprehension lesson one:
YOU are the one who thinks 'black people are "different"'.
Let's examine that sentence again:
IF you are in a white area, white people are viewed as part of the family, whereas black people are "different".
Lesson two, basic logic:
Why the hell do you presume it's "white people" who go to Africa to "chop down the jungle"? Why do you have this utterly ignorant view of Africans as "people in the African jungles"?
Let's compare:
I'm pretty sure people in the African jungles view white people as they scary ones, especially the ones who want to chop the jungle down.
Making a reference to "[those] People [who are] in the African jungles" != "All Africans are in the jungle".
Likewise, making reference to "[those] white people who want to chop the jungle down" != "all white people want to chop the jungle down.
Really, unbelievable simplistic blunders of reading comprehension and logic there. You can't just invert things at will and rephrase "some A are B" as "all B are A" and use that a basis to go off on a wild rant.
Well, you can, obviously, being as that's what you just did. It does however mean that the rest of your wild rant is completely spurious and only going to get completely ignored as the barely literate ramblings of someone who evidently never made it TO high school, let alone THROUGH high school.
And no, I'm not the original poster, I just know an illiterate cretin when I see one.
Nice username you have for commenting on this story.
Where does that information come from?
From the surrounding environment. Putting complexity aside for a moment, when rabbits become white in an arctic environment, where does the information that "being dark colors is bad" come from? From the fact that their background is often snowy and that they're often hunted visually. So from an information-centric standpoint, the fit between a critter's genes and their environment (as in their fitness) acts as a signal to the critter's gene pool about how to change the frequency of various alleles (that's evolution).
To make something more complex, we then have to add some variation. Imagine that a fish gets a duplicate of the gene for a blood clotting protein (this is rather common). Later on in one of its descendants, one of those copies mutates into a form that inhibits the formation of ice crystals. In many environments, this gene would get lost rather easily because there's no evolutionary pressure to keep it, but in very cold environments it might make the difference between life and death. The fish now is more complex (it has an extra part), and the information that "that extra protein is useful" came from its environment (freezing temps).
This can also happen when a protein happens to do two different jobs, gets duplicated, and each copy specializes - eventually neither can do both jobs, but each does one job better than the original.
But they are both large cats, the cat kind.
If they are both 100% cats I would expect that they can perfectly interbreed, but they can't. Only some combination produce offsprings and often the offsprings are infertile. How do you explain that? Evolution can plain that quite easily.
And anyway, where do you draw the line? Are all cat-like animals "cats"? Can I interbreed a domesticated house cat with a Tiger?
Nobody was there to observe it,
If somebody would have been there to observe it that would merely be anecdotal evidence, better then nothing, but rather useless in the scientific world. With fossils you have actual evidence that you can analyze today and even better, you don't even have to trust the scientist, you can go digging for yourself. Its not that hard to find fossils. And if you would find something that evolution can't explain, you certainly would have some good evidence to doubt evolution, but so far, even with all the creationists around, nobody as found something that crushes evolution, quite the opposite, the finding confirm it.
And anyway, how can you argue with the Cambrian Explosion on one side and on the other side doubt the very science that uncovered it?
but they were still basically the same kind of bacteria,
Wrong, the whole point of the thing is that they weren't. They had new abilties not presented in the original bacteria. It wasn't recombination of existing abilites, but the creation of completly new ones.
If you think there is such a clear separation between species, somebody of all the creationist "scientist" surely must have put a list of them together that can be tested? Right? Where can I find that?
Humans tend to believe, because of our extremely short existence here...
What has anything of that to do with things like the blind spot just being fuck-ups in the design of human beings? If God is perfect, how could he screw up so badly that even a child would notice how obviously bad the design is. A design mistake by the way that isn't repeated in the very similar Octopus eye.
What difference does it make whether it was 6000 years ago or billions of years?
Everything, the later is explained and observed by science. The former falls into the land of ferry tales. If you could find proof for the 6000 years, you might be a pretty damn good step closer to proving God.
His tomb is empty.
There isn't really much evidence for the tomb being real, could as well just be part of a fictional story. And anyway, even if it would be true, an empty tomb doesn't really proof anything beside that the tomb is empty, for all we know somebody could have stolen the body through the backdoor.
Or to put it another way: How come that the location where people live is so closely related with the religion they have? If God would be real wouldn't you expect a much more random distribution? Instead we see what we would expect when religion is merly a culture thing, carried over from generation to generation, thus never getting much traction in parts of the world that weren't indoctrinated with it as childs.
....From the surrounding environment....
If you were right, then a new automobile should self assemble from the parts in the junkyard. Among the many myths that evolution propagates is the idea that birds come from reptiles. That is totally preposterous. The requirements of flight are very exacting. That is why we still don't have flying cars or roadable airplanes. The information and requirements to build an airplane are very much different than that of building an automobile. In the same way, the information content in birds is very different than that of reptiles. The same holds true for the totally foolish idea that monkeys or apes are the ancestors of humans. Maybe your ancestors were monkeys, but certainly not mine.
Living things are very adaptable and this adaptation is taken to be evidence for evolution. All that Darwin or any other evolutionist ever has observed is adaptation. Within that framework it is true that information gets shuffled around, but no new information is generated. Your examples, without exception, fit into the adaptation category. Shuffling information around does not create anything new, any more than shuffling marbles in a bag of marbles creates new totally different marbles.
When you organize your room you supply the energy to move stuff around, but you also supply information as to where to move it. In our human experience, information only comes from a mind. All information both in the hardware and software of that computer you are using came from human minds.
Living things, are many orders of magnitude more complex than any human device or creation. They are self repairing and self reproducing. No human designer has ever come up with a machine of even small complexity that will do this. Anybody that propagates a theory that says that all this information and complexity came from anything other than a great mind exercises a large amount of faith. I have chosen to believe in God being responsible for creation, especially life. Apparently, you have chosen to believe in time and chance instead.
All theory is gray
It makes no difference what energy is applied to a system, the end result is the same. order->disorder.
Thermodynamics 101:
For any activity to be possible thermodynamically, its delta(H)-T*delta(S) should be negative.
delta(H) is the energy absorbed by the activity.
T is the absolute temperature (kelvin)
delta(S) is the increase in entropy as a result of the activity.
For a closed system, delta(H) is zero. There, your assertion of order->disorder holds good.
But energy absorbing activities can be possible even though they decrease entropy. Now, major portion of energy for activities that we are discussing (i.e. life) is being supplied by the Sun. Let us include the Sun also in our "system". Let us assume that absolutely no other energy is being supplied to "life" other than Sun's radiation. Now, the system as a whole is no more energy absorbing. Sun releases energy, "life" absorbs the same energy. Hence, for "Sun+Earth", given our assumptions, entropy will always increase. I.e. order -> disorder. But not for "life" alone.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
After they left the Ark, I mean...
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
For a guy in cold temperature, surviving nights is more difficult. If he can survive night, he can surely survive the day (at least as far as body heat retention goes).
At night, there is not much radiation to absorb and heat oneself. But body is at a non-zero kelvin temperature (quite a bit above it, in fact around 310 kelvin). So, like any object, it radiates its heat as electromagnetic radiation (proportional to sigma*(T**4)). White objects radiate less than black objects. So fair skinned people find it easier to maintain body heat during cold nights.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
According to thermodynamics, a system can go from disorder to order if it makes sure to absorb some heat. For details and the equation, see my other comment in this article: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1490090&cid=30582804/
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
...And anyway, where do you draw the line?...
Neither I nor anybody else draws these lines. There are certain categories within which living creatures can interbreed, but these categories are fixed and completely outside of our control.
(...it that would merely be anecdotal evidence...)
You seem to disparage this. How many times do such anecdotal observations have to be made before you consider them valid?
(....With fossils you have actual evidence...)
The only evidence we have is that fossils exist. Nobody has ever made a fossil, nor has anybody ever seen the fossil being made. No fossils are being made today, because normally organic matter such as dead animals and plants are broken down into elementary parts by microorganisms. Explain to me how you would make the fossil.
(...doubt the very science...)
I don't doubt the fossil record, only its evolutionary interpretation. There are scientific facts, observations and experiments. That is real science, but the evolutionary conjecture is a belief and interpretation. I believe that fossils came about by a sudden worldwide catastrophe involving water -- the flood of Noah. However, that is a belief, just as evolution is a belief.
(...They had new abilities not presented in the original bacteria...)
So what? They are still bacteria of the same kind, in this case E. coli. If I teach my dog new tricks and abilities, does that mean he's no longer a dog? I have trained my cat to follow me around all over like a dog would. Does that make him no longer the same cat? New capabilities and abilities do not make a new organism, but it's the same old one with, well, new abilities and characteristics.
(...a clear separation between species...)
What we have classified and labeled as species is entirely arbitrary. The Bible uses a similar arbitrary word, the word "kind". Living things multiply after their kind. To me, that simply means that living things are confined into breeding categories which cannot be crossed. That is exactly what we find in nature.
(...like the blind spot...)
How do you know that this is a design mistake? For the longest time people have thought there were vestigial organs, apparently useless, such as your appendix. Medical science has since learned that the appendix is part of the immune system and is not at all useless. The same thing was thought of our tonsils which once upon a time were routinely removed by surgery
I am able to see this computer screen just fine even with the so-called blind spot. The human eye is capable of registering a single photon, but is not destroyed by a sunny day at the beach or in the snowy mountains. There is no human made light sensor that is able to operate over such a wide dynamic range.
(....If you could find proof for the 6000 years...)
The 6000 years and billions of years are both based on belief. To measure time, you need a clock. The clocks available to us tick at different independent rates, depending on which force controls its motion. Gravity and the electric force are the only two forces or interactions which are available to us for timekeeping. We assume, we believe by faith, that neither of these forces have ever changed, thus affecting clocks based on it. There is evidence from astronomy and other measurements that this assumption of constancy is wrong in the case of the clock based upon the electric behavior of atoms.
(...for all we know somebody could have stolen the body through the backdoor...)
The accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ have been minutely examined by many scholars and critics. What you assert is nothing new. The enemies of Christ, those who had him crucified, would have loved nothing more than to produce the body, squelching once and for all those pesky resurrection rumors. It was the fact of the Resurrection, with those early disciples seeing, touching, and eating with the risen Christ, that enabled them to turn the Roman world upside down. Critics and skeptics have tried unsuccessfully to find fault in the re
All theory is gray
If you were right, then a new automobile should self assemble from the parts in the junkyard.
Why? Cars are built from very different materials and organized in very different ways than living things, and thus behave very differently.
In the same way, the information content in birds is very different than that of reptiles. ... what? That same information shows many similarities, and the fossil record shows the general path that led to a single group of animals giving rise to both modern reptiles and birds.
Yes, so
Maybe your ancestors were monkeys, but certainly not mine.
Yes, some of them were, several million years ago. It's pretty obvious that you don't like the idea, and I think that's your only reason for dismissing the clear evidence of common ancestry.
Shuffling information around does not create anything new, any more than shuffling marbles in a bag of marbles creates new totally different marbles.
I don't get the point of this analogy any more than I got the one about the magic cars.
In our human experience, information only comes from a mind.
Right, because the ideas that it's a cloudy day here, that wood burns, and that falling of a cliff can hurt are all ideas that were generated solely by a mind, with no connection to the outside world.
I have chosen to believe in God being responsible for creation, especially life.
You can believe anything you want, but if you want me to believe it's anything more substantial than your personal preference you're going to need evidence.
Apparently, you have chosen to believe in time and chance instead.
No, I believe that the variety of life we see today developed over a long period from one or more much simpler forms, and that they developed because of a process that lets random events that turn out to be useful accumulate. And I didn't choose to believe this any more than I chose to believe in gravity - it's so overwhelmingly obvious that it's inescapable.
I'd distinguish between at least three major human indicator traits, just to start with: cleverness, brightness and smartness (and that's before you start specifying other traits like artistic ability, ability to make inspired "leaps", aesthetic sense, creativity, empathic ability, and so on).
The rule of thumb is: if you think that "intelligence" is important, but you don't know the difference between "clever" and "bright", then you're probably not that bright (although you may well be clever).
"Clever but not bright" people tend to fixate on rigid systems of measurable quantities, rigid official definitions and correct solutions. They're the intellectual equivalent of racehorses - put them on a track with a defined goal and they'll beat all-comers, but put them out in the wider world to problem-solve, and they're liable to starve to death when something unexpected happens.
The subject of IQ tends to attract people who are quite driven, and perhaps quite clever, but often not all that bright. Bright people would tend to query the basic validity of the IQ metrics, realise the problems, and decide that since the field was so dodgy they'd rather go into some other, more respectable branch of science. So as a result, a disproportionate amount of work on intelligence is junk science, because by default, it's usually done by people who are just that little bit dim, and either don't see the problems or don't care.
Eric Baird
Where can I buy one?
There is a difference between the reason a nation may kill in a war and the reason an individual will do it. You might condition your soldiers to enjoy killing the enemy, but the motivations of your soldiers needn't be the same as your own. Wars are expensive, I imagine it would be hard to justify going to war for pleasure and most people, even the ones in power, aren't that fucked up.
And how can you judge wars and the motivations of wars from movies, they are for entertainment and generally try to make people feel good, but for the most part they are bad at reflecting reality.
You may have been being ironic, but I'd vote for that.
I think the CIA should go back to performing assassinations immediately - but only kill really bad people.
Ah don't bother. The terminally obtuse will never change.
You can lead a believer to facts but you can't make them think - or come up with good arguments either.
Neither I nor anybody else draws these lines. There are certain categories within which living creatures can interbreed, but these categories are fixed and completely outside of our control.
You are dodging the question. If there are God-made animals that fall into distinct categories, it should be possible to clearly classify those categories by observation. If there is no such list of classification I have to assume that your theory of how God created the earth void of all evidence and like just wrong. See ring species for an example of how the clean seperation into kinds of animals just doesn't work in nature.
How many times do such anecdotal observations have to be made before you consider them valid?
The number of anecdotal observation doesn't count, the important part is that they are repeatable. If I find a fossil, somebody else can look at it and analyse it. It is even possible for somebody else to go digging for his own evidence, completly independed of mine. Which is why fossils are pretty good evidence.
No fossils are being made today, because normally organic matter such as dead animals and plants are broken down into elementary parts by microorganisms.
Well, yeah, thats the reason why fossils are extremely rare (i.e. only a few dozens fossils of a species which might have had millions or even billions of creatures). They only form in rare circumstances where the normal decomposition doesn't take place.
For a recent example of fossil formation see Pompeii, where the humans where covered in vulcanic asshes and thus preserved, see Wikipedia for an overview of other ways fossils can form.
How do you know that this is a design mistake?
Because it would be trivial to fix and because it servers exactly no purpose. It is simply an area in your eye that doesn't work.
The 6000 years and billions of years are both based on belief.
The 6000 years are believe, the billions of years are *observation*, big difference there. And its not just one observation pointing at the number, but lots of it. The life of stars, the microwave background, geology, atomic decay, all that stuff points to that 13.7 billion years number.
That is patently false. There are Christians in every part of the world today.
Aehm, no. Religion is quite strictly coupled with location, see this nice map.
Christians took their faith to every continent
That just further proofs my point, unless you indoctrinate people with it, there is not much that they will switch to Christianity on their own.
Evolution supposedly is driven by the mechanism of the survival of the fittest. How does the expending of vital life resources on religious shrines, cathedrals or offerings help survival?
Resources wasted on religion aren't that big of a deal when it comes to survival and quite a few of them would be spend on social interactions anyway, no matter if those interactions are religious in nature or not. And of course ideas spread independed of reproduction and survival, so even harmful ideas could spread quite far, just likes germs do. Time of course also plays a role, you won't change brain patterns with just a 100 generations.
....classify those categories by observation....
There is, but it's not always what we call species. Basically, there are distinct groupings or as the Bible labels them, kinds, that are observed distinct. Their genetic lines cannot be crossed. That is a fact that has never been altered by countless human attempts to do so.
(...Well, yeah, thats the reason why fossils are extremely rare...)
I am not sure about whether you are facetious here. There is practically no place on earth where fossils and fossil fuel do NOT exist. You dodged the question of how you would make a fossil.
(...For a recent example of fossil formation see Pompeii...)
That was a sudden catastrophe, where in this case volcanic heat prevented decay. Most fossils however are found in sedimentary rock which was laid down by water, in some cases scaldingly hot water suddenly bursting forth from the depths of the earth. All fossils, are the result of sudden catastrophe, not gradual deposition over large amounts of time. To make a fossil requires that they dead bodies of plants and animals be prevented from decaying. The article you cite does not mention how that could take place by any gradual mechanism. The oxygen in the atmosphere would also prevent fossilization, implying sudden burial of the dead bodies even of marine animals. A sudden worldwide water catastrophe, such as described in the Bible in the flood of Noah, is much more plausible, given the evidence we have.
(...because it servers exactly no purpose...)
You assume that in the same way that the medical establishment assumed that the tonsils and appendix have exactly no purpose. Just because ignorant humans cannot discern God's purposes, doesn't mean there isn't any purpose.
(...all that stuff points to that 13.7 billion years number....)
Which is all based on the assumption (belief by faith) that the clock by which we measure this has never changed in all of time. Scientists base this on pure belief in the fallacy that you can extrapolate the present linearly into the past. If reality were only that simple! Many things in nature are highly nonlinear.
(...see this nice map....)
That interesting map shows that Christianity is both the biggest and the widest dispersed faith on the planet. The other faiths are mostly regional, but there is no continent that Christianity has not touched. Also the some of the map is false, because there are many Christians in India. I happen to know some of them.
(...unless you indoctrinate people with it...)
I suppose the others, such as the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc. don't indoctrinate their children? Religion has always been very important and still is to most human beings. Even atheists and evolutionists have a religion in a negative sort of way. Every person on this earth has a worldview.
(...Resources wasted on religion aren't that big of a deal...)
The fact that *any* resources are wasted, at least according to the evolutionary doctrine, shows that there is more going on than what evolution can explain.
(...And of course ideas spread ..)
The spread of germs could be explained in evolutionary terms by the survival mechanism built into germs. What survival mechanism for humans drives the spread of ideas, good or bad, especially ideas not directly involved with the ability to survive and reproduce? How do, especially non-Christian ideas, help in the survival of mankind or an individual human being? How does flying airplanes into buildings or blowing themselves and others up, help the survival of the human species? How does the unreasoning hatred of Iran and the Arab nations for the tiny nation of Israel fit into evolutionary doctrine? How does the Christian moral teaching of selflessness and helping others fit into evolutionary theory founded upon the survival of the fittest?
The Biblical teaching of God, human sin and rebellion with resultant selfishness, but also the idea of helping others, are much better and to me much more satisfying and holistic explanation of reality than evolutionary theory.
All theory is gray
There is, but it's not always what we call species.
I know. What I want from you is a list of those distinct groups that where created by God without a chance of intermixing.
You dodged the question of how you would make a fossil.
I already gave you an example, want more, just google a bit.
That was a sudden catastrophe,
Thats the point, you need a sudden event that covers the body and protects it from regular decay. The processes that follow the covering can take a long time, the covering itself can't or the body would decompose before anything can get done. Thats why we find so few fossils of a given species, most of them aren't covered up and those never fossilize as already mentioned.
A sudden worldwide water catastrophe, such as described in the Bible in the flood of Noah, is much more plausible, given the evidence we have.
There is no evidence that a single big flood ever happened. In fact we have evidence for quite the opposite, its all gradualism buildup of geologic formations with a few mud slides, volcanic eruptions and all that other sudden stuff to give you the fossils.
Just because ignorant humans cannot discern God's purposes, doesn't mean there isn't any purpose.
Yeah, but if you want me to believe your claims you better should have good evidence to support it. Just claiming the flying spaggeti monster did it isn't evidence. A good explanation why the he did it or at least what the benefit of that way of doing it is would be a start, but the blind spot still just looks like a big fucking in the design of humans.
Which is all based on the assumption (belief by faith) that the clock by which we measure this has never changed in all of time.
It is a theory, not absolute truth, yes, thats how the scientific method works. That doesn't change the fact that science has build up a pretty damn good and detailed explanation of how things work in nature, which can be used to predict things, explain things, engineer technologies, etc. Do you have an alternative theory that works on clock changing and earth being suddenly 6000 years old that is anywhere near as good as what science has? Or an experiment that shows that science got is wrong?
Even if you assume that science didn't get every detail right, which might very well be the case in some edge cases, that doesn't change the fact that science so far as provide us with by far the best explanation we have.
I happen to know some of them.
The point isn't how widespread Christianity is, which is easily explained by how information and people travel around the world, but that Christianity doesn't spontaneously arise in areas where it wasn't brought by mass indoctrination. If the Native American or African people believed in Jesus and God before missionaries came there and indoctrinated them, that would be a pretty solid point for the stories having some truth, but that has never happened. Scientific theories on the other side have often been form by multiple people completly independently in the past.
I suppose the others, such as the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc. don't indoctrinate their children?
Of course they do, thats how culture spreads.
How does flying airplanes into buildings or blowing themselves and others up, help the survival of the human species?
The point with spreading ideas is not the survival of the human carrier, but the "survival" of the ideas themselves. Flying planes into buildings has killed the pilots, it however had an enormous impact in spreading the ideas behind it.
The Biblical teaching of God, human sin and rebellion with resultant selfishness, but also the idea of helping others, are much b
...What I want from you is a list of those distinct groups....
How about dogs vs cats, elephants vs giraffes, Falcons vs crocodiles and on and on and on? You can make your own list. None of these creatures are able to breed together.
(... from the article you referenced...)
[...It frequently includes the following conditions: rapid and permanent burial/entombment; protecting the specimen from environmental or biological disturbance; oxygen deprivation - limiting the extent of decay and also biological activity/scavenging;....]
Isn't that what I said, a rapid, not ages long process is involved? Nothing at all is said in the article how the decay process is prevented. Burying something in mud and water does not kill microbes. Neither does high-pressure. There are microbes living at the bottom of the oceans. The fact is that we find not only vertebrates fossilized, but millions of snails and worms and other such softbodied lifeforms. You just cannot get around it, but you have to sterilize the dead body very quickly and then bury it in a sterile environment.
(....There is no evidence that a single big flood ever happened....)
The existence of fossils, millions of them, all over the earth, even in polar regions is evidence for a universal water catastrophe. The biblical account tells us that the fountains of the deep broke open. The interior of the Earth is hot and thus superheated water gushed forth, killing and sterilizing masses of land and sea creatures in seconds.
(....volcanic eruptions and all that other sudden stuff to give you the fossils...)
By seismic studies of the Eurasian landmass (Russia mostly) evidence has come forth that the mantle of the Earth contains several times as much water as the oceans. Look at a cross-section diagram of the Earth sometime to note how thick the mantle is compared to the thickness of the crust of our planet. If you are interested in learning more about this, you can start here:
http://www.physorg.com/news90171847.html
Scientists do not know what forced all or a significant portion of this superheated water to the surface, but there is enough water down there to cover the surface of the earth including all continents several times over. However next time, God promises to cleanse the earth by fire, not water.
(....It is a theory, not absolute truth,...)
But of course the theory of evolution is absolute truth.
(...That doesn't change the fact that science has build up a pretty damn good and detailed explanation...)
Observed experimental facts is what science is all about, not necessarily the explanation of them. All explanations have gone through the worldview filter of whoever is making the explanation.
(...Do you have an alternative theory that works on clock changing....)
Not one that I have come up with, but others have. There is evidence from the quantized red shift and the speed of light measurements, that the clocks based on the electrical force, basically the atom, has changed dramatically since time began, in relation to the clocks based on gravity. The Earth's rotation around the sun is governed by gravity. One such rotation is defined as a year. Radioactivity and other atomic phenomena is the clock that the billions and billions of years of atomic time are measured by. In the beginning, atomic time and gravity time, or as it is sometimes called, dynamical time, were vastly different. Now they are the same, and because they are, the assumption is made that this was always so.
Red shift data from the most distant, and therefore most ancient objects give evidence that certain "constants", such as for example the speed of light and its inverse, Planck's constant h which governs atomic processes, was as much as 100 million times bigger than it is today. Scientists have slowed the speed of light to a crawl in the laboratory. Lenses work by the fact that the speed of light through them slows down. Basically, what it amounts to is that the speed
All theory is gray
How about dogs vs cats, elephants vs giraffes, Falcons vs crocodiles and on and on and on? You can make your own list. None of these creatures are able to breed together.
I want a complete list of all known species and the way you classify them, not just some stuff made up on the spot. Science has created such a long list. If evolution is so wrong, creationist "scientist" surly have created one of their own to prove their point and explain all the hard things like ring species or the hypbrids mentioned earlier.
alligator becoming an eagle.
Finally, Crocoduck *facepalm*, thats not how evolution works.
How about you visit this nice page or the hundreds of others that explain evolution, before making such bullshit claims.
> And how can you judge wars and the motivations of wars from movies, they are for entertainment and generally try to make people feel good, but for the most part they are bad at reflecting reality.
Since you comment on that, IMHO movies are the modern version of the "Delenda est Carthago".
Curious thing to differentiate between soldier and commander motivations... aren't commander former soldiers?
Well, I must agree one can hope that a general, having seen so many senseless destruction, might himself become a better and saner person.
OTOH... he can become ruthless or mad.
Yerf... well, since we were given this planet to thrive, and care for everything, as long as nothing gets hurt, I don't see anything wrong with it...