I think I didn't make myself clear. I have no beef with people having faith - I just lost mine. I study buddhism at the moment, having studied christianity before. And I'm not rejecting the faith over the people; I've just lost my faith over seeing other explanations for things, explanations that fit with more pieces of knowledge that I have.
What I do have a beef with is rejecting evolution without having studied and understood it. Evolution is accepted by most of the people that know most in this area, and when I personally have taken the time to study it, I've found that it has very good backing. I feel that before resorting to "God created life on earth and he did not do it through the use of evolution", one has to understand evolution, and understand it WELL. Especially before starting to put up webpages and arguing for the position.
And, in general, understanding evolution properly (including deep time) is the same as accepting it, because the evidence is so universal.
All respect for taking the time to study how to live your life and getting support for it from the bible; I generally find that admirable, as long as it stays as guidance for life, instead of "I won't accept that the world is as it is.":-)
I agree that to be science, hypotheses need smoe sort of experiment to test them. And they're done in evolutionary biology, too. For the eye hypothesis, the experiments are done in this form: "If we have evolution, what would we expect to see?" and then the biologists go out and check how nature is - do these peculiar features we'd expect show up in nature? And they do.
Experimentally duplication has been done, in a fashion. We've observed what kind of variation we see from generation to generation in nature, and then people have run simulations of evolution using that type and amount of variation. Eyes evolve surprisingly quickly.
Read the Enlightenment chapter of Richard Dawkin's "Climbing Mount Improbable" for a popularized summary of things, with references to the original papers.
I easily see how you can think this way, as you've got some wrong presuppositions. This also led you to apparently misunderstand my comment.
Let me try to phrase it differently: There has been successful eyes evolved, separately, at least 40 times. There are MANY steps in each case of an eye evolving. In one simulation, 7000 generations, 50000 in another (very conservative, assuming no parallell evolution of different parts of the eye, max 1% change in one kind of tissue per generation).
This is easily accomplishable in less than half a million years. Evolutionary, that's a blink of an eye - to keep an eye metaphor. We wouldn't even expect a single fossil inside such a short period.
And we've seen mutations causing the MINIMAL changes we're talking about. I think maybe you're missing the sheer depth of evolutionary time, the size of populations, and how small changes can be picked up. The variation is there. The selection is there.
Please, read the books, instead of arguing from arrogant ignorance. I've spent the time to read both the pro- and counterarguments to evolution, and done my best to evaluate them. The counterarguments are generally misunderstandings, like your misunderstanding above. You're attacking a straw man - an idea of how evolution would work that's in your own head, and that doesn't match how scientists actually see evolution work.
Read "Uncommon sense" by John Cramer for an answer to your question of "Why should we believe we know more than those before us. Read "Connected Knowledge" by the same author for some background on how well we know what we know.
It is reasonable to believe that you'd need a designer for something as complex as a human eye. Unfortunately, it is also wrong. There's a ton of evidence showing that this reasonable notion is wrong, and that it's actually turned up through evolution - that is, natural selection (with mutations for natural selection to work on). It's happened over 40 times, starting from a light sensitive patch, and giving different types of eyes. We also see various intermediates, and simulations show it's easy to get the kind of eye we have by gradual improvement.
You are missing a very very important point: Evolution is NOT about mutation. Mutation is a relatively small part. The important part is natural selection; mutation only gives natural selection something to work on.
There's also a bunch of other details for how the process of evolution works. As for the eye, eyes have evolved from light sensitive spots over 40 times in nature - Dawkins gives an entire chapter to this in one of his books, I believe it was "Climbing Mount Improbable".
Note that Dawkins can become annoyingly anti-religion, even for me as an agnostic atheist. Apart from that, he's a brilliant writer - very readable, and with lots of interesting examples and lucid explanations. And it's hard science - he's very very good at what he does.
From what you write, you seem like an honest and upstanding person with some scientific, so I'll throw in a challenge based on that: Isn't there, in addition to "thinking it through", a requirement for actually trying to investigate the different sides?
After investigating evolution and investigating the counterargument that's available from creationists, I've found that evolution has thousands of arguments and points of evidence on its side (more, really, but I've only read thousands), and that the points that I see from the creationists have been refuted - time and time again - and the creationists *still* come with the refuted arguments.
I am an agnostic atheist - that is, I believe there is no way to prove that there isn't a god, yet my personal faith is on the level of there not being one. I used to be a christian, and more investigation into how the world works made me believe I've fooled myself. I do, however, see believing in God as a perfectly legitimate faith-based belief.
What I do have a beef with is not believing in evolution. From the evidence, and assuming there is a God, there are to my mind only two reasonable conclusions: Either the present life on earth was (in the main part) created through evolution, or God has set out to fool us.
Just to give you a term: The origin of life from non-living matter is called abiogenesis. And I'd agree that it is a separate issue. I know evolution as a fact; I believe in abiogenesis through some simple replicator occuring randomly and then being subject to evolution, but that's a much more fuzzy belief (and could at this point be classified as "faith", though I tend to consider it the null hypothesis.)
We've been able to explain more or less everything by small steps that bring benefit. We've found evidence of these small steps being used. In addition to the evidence we find in nature, our simulations match up.
Be a scientist: Investigate the existing evidence before coming with statments.
There is plenty of evidence. You call yourself christian: Thou shalt not bear false witness, I have read. You haven't even bothered to TRY to find evidence, and this is obvious from what you write: You're including 19th century presuppositions that those that have actually read a bit about evolution wouldn't have. You're bearing false witness.
Evolution is one of those rules we discover via science. It is a cold, hard fact. Assuming God exists, there only two alternatives: Either evolution (including humans evolving from a common ancestor with most everything else) is true, or God has specifically tried to fool us.
The question is if I enjoy Lord of the Rings more than I would enjoy the benefits of not having copyright laws, including the amount of freedom that gives to people to develop new stuff based on the old stuff already made. The answer to THAT isn't quite as obvious.
(Note that I am not in favour of abolishment of copyright, though I'm in favour of very significant reform.)
I am a software developer and noticable parts of (about half? I've not calculated) my lifetime income has come from sales of software, and I say you're still missing the point. Try to list out all the different cases involved - and understand that copying can INCREASE sales. That's even common.
Until you separate "theft" and "copyright infringment" in your mind, you cannot think clearly about this area. There is a host of cases, and a host of issues, making for an almost unlimited number of shades of grey, with reasonably economic incentive for (author|consumer|society) varying depending on perspective.
This is completely ridiculous. So you say a working-class kid from the suburbs of Paris has the same social behavior as a rich kid living in Jakarta? Dream on.
No. I don't say that at all. I say that he to a large degree has the same social behaviour.
While this may seem ridicilous at first glance, when you look closer it's fairly obvious - it's just that we tend to discount all the common parts, only seeing the differences.
Social behaviour is NOT certainly a cultural thing. That's an american myth. Social behaviour is to a large degree conditioned by evolution. See e.g. Homicide - Foundations of Human Behaviour by Martin Daly (which does much deeper analyses than pure homicide.)
"Dates" is an american chastity device. I meet girls, I hang out with them, I make out with them, and I have sex with them. One such meetup is tomorrow.
You're saying women still shun you; if you want me to give you pointers towards how to deal with that (learn how to get women), just follow up here. There's a bunch of material out there, and some of it works well.
I take it you have never been at the receiving end of harrassment, nor have you tried to help the people that have. Kids naturally do this - or, in other words, people are naturally cruel. They need socializing to learn how to function. Punishing those that bully (following their natural instincts) is one of the few tools we have to change this. (Threats, in the form of bullied kids killing their tormentors, is another.)
Of course, you may choose to personally shoot the bullied instead. That's kinder than leaving the situation "natural" (which it isn't - our society is very far from natural.)
My experience is that Ruby's programming model avoid most of the security issues fairly simply. I've not seen any example of the kind of problem you claim; can you provide any references to exploits?
Accumulated fixes may or may not result in baroque code; that depends on the culture of the project, and the skill level of the maintainers. Both high skill levels and a good culture are necessary to avoid the creation of baroque code while doing those fixes.
There is very little correspondence between software age and number of security holes. If anything, the correspondence is that newer software has less security issues. I think that's because it hasn't had the time to acquire baroque code.
The power cord goes to a piece of equipment that's mostly stationary. The mouse (or at least my mouse) isn't anywhere near as stationary. So, in my setup at work, my mouse is cordless and the rest uses cables - as the mouse is the only part of the setup where the cables has gotten in my way.
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What I do have a beef with is rejecting evolution without having studied and understood it. Evolution is accepted by most of the people that know most in this area, and when I personally have taken the time to study it, I've found that it has very good backing. I feel that before resorting to "God created life on earth and he did not do it through the use of evolution", one has to understand evolution, and understand it WELL. Especially before starting to put up webpages and arguing for the position.
And, in general, understanding evolution properly (including deep time) is the same as accepting it, because the evidence is so universal.
All respect for taking the time to study how to live your life and getting support for it from the bible; I generally find that admirable, as long as it stays as guidance for life, instead of "I won't accept that the world is as it is." :-)
Eivind.
Experimentally duplication has been done, in a fashion. We've observed what kind of variation we see from generation to generation in nature, and then people have run simulations of evolution using that type and amount of variation. Eyes evolve surprisingly quickly.
Read the Enlightenment chapter of Richard Dawkin's "Climbing Mount Improbable" for a popularized summary of things, with references to the original papers.
Eivind.
This is easily accomplishable in less than half a million years. Evolutionary, that's a blink of an eye - to keep an eye metaphor. We wouldn't even expect a single fossil inside such a short period.
And we've seen mutations causing the MINIMAL changes we're talking about. I think maybe you're missing the sheer depth of evolutionary time, the size of populations, and how small changes can be picked up. The variation is there. The selection is there.
Please, read the books, instead of arguing from arrogant ignorance. I've spent the time to read both the pro- and counterarguments to evolution, and done my best to evaluate them. The counterarguments are generally misunderstandings, like your misunderstanding above. You're attacking a straw man - an idea of how evolution would work that's in your own head, and that doesn't match how scientists actually see evolution work.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Eivind.
There's also a bunch of other details for how the process of evolution works. As for the eye, eyes have evolved from light sensitive spots over 40 times in nature - Dawkins gives an entire chapter to this in one of his books, I believe it was "Climbing Mount Improbable".
Note that Dawkins can become annoyingly anti-religion, even for me as an agnostic atheist. Apart from that, he's a brilliant writer - very readable, and with lots of interesting examples and lucid explanations. And it's hard science - he's very very good at what he does.
Eivind.
After investigating evolution and investigating the counterargument that's available from creationists, I've found that evolution has thousands of arguments and points of evidence on its side (more, really, but I've only read thousands), and that the points that I see from the creationists have been refuted - time and time again - and the creationists *still* come with the refuted arguments.
I am an agnostic atheist - that is, I believe there is no way to prove that there isn't a god, yet my personal faith is on the level of there not being one. I used to be a christian, and more investigation into how the world works made me believe I've fooled myself. I do, however, see believing in God as a perfectly legitimate faith-based belief.
What I do have a beef with is not believing in evolution. From the evidence, and assuming there is a God, there are to my mind only two reasonable conclusions: Either the present life on earth was (in the main part) created through evolution, or God has set out to fool us.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Be a scientist: Investigate the existing evidence before coming with statments.
Eivind.
Evolution is one of those rules we discover via science. It is a cold, hard fact. Assuming God exists, there only two alternatives: Either evolution (including humans evolving from a common ancestor with most everything else) is true, or God has specifically tried to fool us.
Eivind.
(Note that I am not in favour of abolishment of copyright, though I'm in favour of very significant reform.)
Eivind.
Oh, and I tend to avoid illegal copying, and regularly earn money from sales of software, just to put THAT part in place.
Eivind.
Eivind.
And until you split your concepts, you are blind.
Eivind.
While this may seem ridicilous at first glance, when you look closer it's fairly obvious - it's just that we tend to discount all the common parts, only seeing the differences.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Of course, you may choose to personally shoot the bullied instead. That's kinder than leaving the situation "natural" (which it isn't - our society is very far from natural.)
Eivind.
Eivind.
Eivind.
It contains VERY important details that should have been in the summary.
Eivind.
Eivind.