"...I couldn't stop laughing at her and kept making fun of her...and will continue to make fun of her."
Hmm....I'm guessing you did not get laid by her though?
While I agree with your thoughts on this...dude, you gotta remember you say what they want to hear to get laid!! You don't have to mean it.....
I'm guessing you don't get laid much?
(Making fun of girls usually works, inside a small set of caveats.)
Eivind.
Well, thinking about it, I have no experience in attacking evolution, so I can't really speak about who defends it in general. I know that those that I know that I also know defend evolution knows it fairly well and from a factual base.
This entire thing is mostly moot where I live, anyway: Apart from Jehova's Witnesses, I have met exactly one adult that disbelieved evolution.
I'll add one more meme for your consideration:
There's some reasons beyond "pure chance" for people to choose to believe in evolution on pure authority, and having that as a hard belief. Science/scientists is very very good at coming up with correct answers that people can see work. They see it work in the form of all the technological marvels that we produce, and it's generally known that these marvels are based on science rather than religion. I believe they also know that those people that do take the time to look carefully into a scientific claim will generally find it to be well backed. So when religion (which only claim miracles) choose to be in conflict with science (which provide reliable, testable miracles on a day to day basis) it is reasonable that "people in the street" believe science as authority first, based on past performance.
I personally am an agnostic atheist (ie, I see the issue as unprovable first and foremost, secondarily I don't specifically believe there is a God). However, I have no conflict with religion as long as it stays on its own turf: Outside the provable. When religion tries to claim reality as being different than I observe it, on the other hand, I see it as picking a fight and will shove observations of reality back at whoever is coming with the claims;)
I'll perfectly agree that there's a lot of people that believe in evolution on an authoritarian basis. What I tried to convey (and obviously failed in) is whether the main group of people trying to convey evolution believe in it as "faith". I believe they don't - the information around evolution is fairly easily available and fairly easy to test.
Other part:
(about evolution) It seems nearly a fact, but it could be disproved in some unknown way.
Having read widely on evolution, I'll disagree with this: Aspects of evolution may possibly need to be refined, yet the framework isn't "nearly" fact - it is fact. The neo-Darwinian synthesis has been tested very many times, and it's unassailable.
What's presently vague (and may move around) are:
Aspects of specication. We know this happen, we know of a number of forces going towards it - increased differentiation and sexual selection between distinct subpopulations that can hybridize but are distinct enough that the hybrids don't survive as good, for instance.
Abiogenesis. We have a few ideas of how this may have happened, and none of them really dominate the field, nor have we reproduced the effect yet.
Historical details of particular species; there will certainly be more changes here, and it may take a hundred years (or more) before "everything" settle. There's continual improvement, though.
How DNA/RNA is interpreted. We have all this "junk DNA" that doesn't seem to be junk after all - it's getting reproduced much more exactly than junk should be - so there's almost certainly some secrets hidden. This could cause some serious upheavals.
We don't know exactly how much is inherited in the form of core cell DNA and how much is inherited in other forms. There may be some significant details here.
Overall, the picture will change - yet there's one thing that I'm confident will stay constant, as it's been tested so much: Refinement through reproduction with variants and natural selection.
I didn't say anything about preachers. I have no idea what 'this' you are talking about.
No, you didn't I came with a hypothesis to explain the mechanism behind your observed effect. My mechanism includes problems in what techniques your preachers use.
Over to next topic: "Single strain" means that the DNA of the mice is equal in all the mice, so the size difference is an example of introducing variation that has survival value through point mutation. The immedate difference provide a data increase, the data increase is culled to an information increase by the process of natural selection.
As for DNA/RNA genesis: The information is available by point mutation (as described above). Ending up with coding for proteins is reasonable, given the flexibility of proteins as catalysts. This would give a large advantage for anything that code for proteins. Anyway: This is a discussion of abiogenesis, not evolution per se. Abiogenesis is hypothetical, with several different hypotheses competing. It is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT for evolution per se, and it is much more of a faith based area than the theory of evolution. I happen to believe we will find a method of abiogenesis and will find proof for that - however, that's a belief based on prior experience, not something that's found yet.
So, let's stick to the discussion of the theory of evolution, rather than mixing it with abiogenesis, shall we?
Well, Darwin didn't know anything about it. In fact, he was sure that missing links in the fossil record would eventually be found ("The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on earth, [must] be truly enormous" -- The Origin of Species).
The chapter that that comes from says nothing about these forms being found later. Instead, it goes on to discuss the way variation wouldn't ever have existed between presently living creatures, and how the intermediate forms would disappear. He specifically states "I endeavoured, also, to show that intermediate varieties, from existing in lesser numbers than the forms which they connect, will generally be beaten out and exterminated during the course of further modification and improvement." (My emphasis.)
Please, stop repeating misrepresentations from the anti-evolution websites. They are inaccurate, and have given up on the "Thou shalt not bear false witness" in favour of "Thou shalt break any commandment in the hope of convincing the people that don't bother to really learn this."
And certainly, we have not seen the types of speciation that is required by long-term macro-evolution.
Can you please state your claim more exactly? I feel we have seen more than enough to be convinced of this. Please state what kind of speciation you would need to see to be convinced.
As far as I know, almost all religious people that learn evolution also end up believing in it.
Well, most people believe what they are taught in school. Even when its wrong.
I am not talking of people that "learn it in school". I'm talking about people that learn the science. There is a very significant difference.
Take Haeckel's embryos, for example. These were disproven long ago but are still present in modern text books. Just because you learned it in school doesn't mean its true. It just means that it is acceptable to the guardians of the paradigm.
This is from an anti-evolution website again, right? Haeckel's drawings of embryos have exaggerations of certain commonalities (in effect being caricatures), and are useful for showing these similarities. Haeckel's conclusion (that the embryonic development accurately recapture the evolutionary history) is, to the best of my knowledge, not taught - the drawings are used for illustrative purposes.
I don't think science has yet gone far enough to explore possible "natural" explanations for evolution.
Please elaborate - what "natural" explanations are you thin
(1) Migration costs; we've got significant codebases that are somewhat tied to MySQL, without automated tests for most of them, making a migration risky. We've also got some fairly large sites running on it; different performance characteristics could create a lot of issues.
(2) Emotional investment by my coworker.
(3) It's supposedly slightly easier to do various production hacks (copying tables etc) with MySQL than with PostgreSQL, and my coworker insist these are important. I've never ever ended up using these, instead of using dumps and hot copies and logging etc, so I personally can't see the need for these.
For my own evaluation, (1) is important, though (2) and (3) are what's really blocked the migration - if I'd been able to do all the choices without fighting over them, I'd have started a slow migration a year ago and been over on PostgreSQL now.
I want the database to
(A) return the same data on SELECT as I inserted in INSERT, unless I got an error
(B) return updated data after an UPDATE, unless I got an error.
MySQL doesn't fit either of these requirements - the first by design, the second due to bugs. I'm ashamed of the use at work. We just haven't had time to migrate away:-(
MySQL does not provide the feature of "When I insert data into the database the same data comes back" (due to various "helping" features of the frontend.)
Due to a combination of the number of bugs and misdesign, MySQL does not (to any reasonable degree) provide the feature "When I do an update to the database and do not get an error, that update is guaranteed to be there". It happens regularly that it isn't there.
These are really core features for the kind of developer I want to be. I'm really, really sad to be working with MySQL day to day - it makes me feel dirty.
MySQL doesn't work. It is up and running five minutes; significant difference.
Yes, I work day to day with MySQL, due to the cost of migration. No, I don't feel good about routinely having to deal with corruption in production databases. It's not acceptable. Yes, it also happens with InnoDB.
MySQL isn't suited to anything where you need a database that actually works. No, not with InnoDB either - it e.g. corrupts data when you change the record in the primary key index. Yes, I work with MySQL, and I've worked with PostgreSQL (the reason I don't do so now is perceived migration cost.)
Try this one on, testing out yourself in a situation: You've just received a message. A totally convincing message, one with irrefutable proof that you accept. OK, do you have the state in mind, understanding how you feel about this message? The message is a description of a hoax: Your God was a hoax.
How's your ethics?
Take a minute or five to think about that, feel the feeling of "My God was a lie - what do I do now, how do I behave towards others, what are my underlying values?"
... OK, have you spent the five minutes?
Hopefully, you learned from that exercise: The values are there anyway. The tribalism is a natural part of being human, coming straight from evolution. With a bit of introspection, these extend to the entire gene pool, with humans above other animals due to intelligence and personal devotion.
These values are shared by almost all thinking atheists. We have to think through and evaluate what our values are, what's important. This has some bad sides - it's a lot of work, and not everybody does it, or does it well. For a slightly different tack on the same, you can read Ayn Rand - more individualistic.
I can go through arguments from game theory etc to base most of these things on - yet, overall, it just feel right, and that's enough. That's the same reason you're using to believe in the big invisible papa in the sky - also subjective and totally arbitrary (except for your parental, societal and genetic influence - which is the same as influence my ethics.)
I'll address your point one by one:
1. This is a result of the tendency of preachers to use the existence of natural complexity as "created" as their way of bringing Awe and converting people to / keeping people in their religion (basically, extending Paley's theological point from the late 18th century.) People that have studied evolution carefully know that it is true, and that the preacher saying it was hand-crafted by God is lying (intentionally or not). Also, the belief in God seems to mostly be a psychological urge for making the world safer by explaning it - when we have other explanations we know are true (from observation), the other explanations (religion) lose much of their seductiveness.
2. doesn't say anything, I think. Sure, natural selection only "remove less fit". The examples are quite extreme, though: Most of the competition is for food niches, and mostly with the same species.
3. Having a hypothesis for an effect without a mechanism is common. This is a case of good science (observing effect, provide hypothesis for how it happens, test prediction, find mechanism that explains hypothesis.)
4. This contains two parts, one about the origin of DNA, one just wrong. Let's start with the latter: If we start with single-strain mice, it takes three generations of breeding to produce mice with noticable size differences - inheritable such. This can be survival-enhancing (depending on circumstances, of course.) So yes, we have observed such mutations. Next, we various hypotheses for how DNA originated. The one I see as most likely is the "clay hypothesis" - clay can form crystals which self-replicate, various organic chemicals including RNA can enhance this replication, and RNA could then have "taken off on its own". Do a search for more details.
5. Punctuated equilibirum seems to more or less have been accepted all along; read Dawkin's quotes from Darwin. We've got evidence of specication happening today, as I've posted about repeatedly. (See e.g. "ring species"). The fossil record is naturally spotty; specication are seen to happen quickly; and we've got fairly good coverage.
6. As far as I know, almost all religious people that learn evolution also end up believing in it. For most scientists, there is no particular wish to disprove God - there's just a wish to find out and explain how the world works, and if you are using "God" as an explanation of how the parts of the world that you don't understand works ("The God of the gaps" approach), then you'll be shot down repeatedly and it will feel as an attack on God.
7. We know that evolution works (creates and modulates variation, including species). This is a fact. As for the origin, we do not yet know whether this is evolutionary or "breath of God". Due to previous experience (the God hypothesis has been wrong so many times), we believe it most likely that this is a result of some self replicating, mutating process having occurred "randomly". At this time, however, we do not have any clear hypothesis up as the winner for "first mover".
Fossils: You already covered this, and so did I.
Morphology: This is generally considered evidence in favour of evolution.
Cambrian explosion: As far as I've understood, the most likely hypothesis here is a general size increase (due to better food availability, I seem to remember.) There's a minimal size limit on what fossilizes, and what appeared at the cambiran explosion was just that size. Also, the number of body plans was (according to recent review) overrated - several were counted more than once.
I have to ask, because I find it curious: Do those of you who are atheists really believe that when you die, that's the end of it all for you? That really seems depressing to me,
Yes, we do. And I'm sure you'll agree that whether something is depressing or not isn't a test of truth.
Apart from that, I find it quite OK. I personally find the thought of a God that's as evil as the one in the bible more depressing than the thought that I have to get things done while I live, rather than just "saving up for afterwards". The world is beautiful and fun and I'm happy to get a chance to be here.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species. If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?
How about living "half-mutated", quarter-mutated, full-mutated, etc species?
Decent books on evolution will cover these among other forms of specication. We have plenty of evidence in various forms. You may also want to learn about "punctuated equilibrium" (note that the contententiousness of this doctrine is if the mainstream has always believed it or it was introduced by Stephen Jay Gould - SJG believed he created it, the mainstream says this has been mainstream since Darwin, using quotes), and various other aspects of specication and mutation/selection around it. There's examples of increased visual differentiation for hybridizable subspecies (as predicted: hybridization will, when the genepools are distinct enough, be worse than either parent), and there's examples of genetically almost identical groups that don't interbreed, considered species "in the process of happening".
We don't need the fossil record to show specication: We can show all the various stages existing today.
Evolution explains adaptation; it totally fails to explain speciation.
There is a ton of examples of speciation, and there are good explanations for numerous forms of this happening.
"Ring species" are the most glaring example: These happen where there's creatures that breed a bit left and right in a ring around an unsuitable habitat (often east-west around the entire world). At one end, there will be two "species" of birds (non-interbreeding populations), yet these are genetically connected through the ring. If the "middle" of the ring died (the other side of the earth), the genetic connection would disappear and they would be two species.
Ring species have often initially been classified as two species, BTW, as the populations were not interbreeding.
Let me ask something. If you are an evolutionist (and presumably an atheist or agnostic, but I could be wrong on this point and apologize up front if this assumption is going too far) then why does truth and fact matter to you anyway? What, and this is an honest question and not a degrading sardonic question, is the point?
First, let me start with saying that the entire label "evolutionist" is (in my opinion) wrong. The label implies that there is a faith based belief in evolution, and that that's the core.
The core belief of most that believe in evolution is one of two: Authoritarian belief in "scientific fact", or true belief in the existance of the world and verified knowledge of evolution.
I'm of the latter persuation. We "believe" in evolution because it provide clear predictions and we have tested those predictions hundreds or (more often, if we've looked at biology) thousands of times, and they've always fit.
We understand the mechanisms of evolution, some of us have tested evolution by running simulations on computers (I have), some of us have tested by playing with cultures of microbes (I've discussed this part with my father who has), we've looked at various aspects of present day biology (including DNA systems), and found that it all perfectly match.
Effectively everybody that looks at the evidence carefully end up believing in evolution. Evolution is also compatible with religion - it's accepted as truth by both the catholic and the protestant church - and it's quite simply a fact.
So, the real question is "why do we care about truth"?
Those of us that are religious generally care about it based on religious sayings - basically on authority. Those that aren't religious may care about it on societal training grounds, or for plain evolutionary feedback reasons. I personally care about it as a personal ideal: Truth is a core value to me, it's my "religion" so to speak. I also believe that truth makes a better world for mankind, and making a better world for mankind is another of my ideals.
That side of the system has mostly broken down a long time ago - the patents are not written in a form that's useful for research, so nobody use it to find out what to do.
Or at least nobody I've been able to find. I've talked about this to people the do research (including taking out patents) in computer software, in food process engineering, and for physical engineering for consumer devices. All find the patent database basically useless except for finding out if something they know how to do anyway is patented.
It's pretty obvious that scientific curiosity is built into the very fiber of humanity, or how else could still be advancing despite our incredibly expensive social efforts to prevent it?
Actually, this seems to be counter to evidence - we've lived for about 200,000 years (counting mitochondrial DNA) without developing science. Instead, everything has been based on magical thinking. Science comes from the debate, originating in Greece about 2000 years ago, and just barely surviving through hardship from there. "Uncommon Sense" by John Cramer does a very good job of tracing/arguing this.
The cultural meme of debate seems to be fairly well entrenched in our present society - and I hope that it will keep that way. Whenever I see people talking about "energies" and overriding science for their "feelings", I feel scared for it, though.
I'm really not trying to post flamebait here, but GAH, the people who work on that thing [OpenSSH] should hang their heads in embarrassment. Spaghetti code, no comments -- I'm talking a total mess. I was actually just looking for the code that clears the screen when you log out of a session (because I actually hate the automatic clear screen, and was hoping there was an option for it). I finally gave up in disgust.
I've found the code reasonably easy navigate. Not as good as it could be, yet reasonably easy. And at least a LOT better than the commercial SSH code, which I have worked with before.
Oh, and as mentioned: The problem you are seeking is not in that code, it is a configuration error.
I agree. In end, we should do both the craft and the science. And the process around them, interacting with the users and the other people. Combining all of this is probably going to remain tricky (especially so when one is not in control of the process...)
This is, to state it plainly, totally bogus. Sure, being able to think in algorithms is important. However, it is far from being everything. Different languages allow you to express algorithms more and less directly, with more and less chances of error.
In my experience, programmers (including myself) often to go through three phases. First, for the first few years, they think that languages are supremely important, and know quite few languages. Then, they learn to think in algorithms, and for the next few years think languages are of no consequence whatsoever. Later in their careers, they think that both languages and algorithms are important.
OK, I'm in Norway, and I actually got into the site, no countdown or anything.
There was a tree with a bunch of flags on, clicking on one of the flags switched to a tree with some fruit on, and two rabbits in front. The rabbits talked a bunch back and forth, indicating that various fruit will become "ripe" at various times. One piece of fruit was "ripe" now, could be clicked on, the smaller of the rabits went over to eat that piece of fruit, and it was possible to enter into a guessing game about XBox360 (what's true and what's rumours). If you answer three questions correctly you can enter into some kind of sweepstakes. You can enter into the sweepstakes several times (up to 9) by referring friends to enter the contest (you get an extra chance for each friend.)
All of the above was done with flash and fancy graphical effects.
The question that intrigues me is how come languages get simpler grammer over time--if this always happened, how were the earlier languages with complex grammar created?
There are some documented cases of languages "spontaneously forming" in very small populations. There was one case with a population of deaf children somewhere in africa, for instance. This was formed with a complete, complex grammar (in the second generation of children, I seem to remember, with the first generation having some weird anomalities.)
Sorry for the vague references - this is really not my field.
Slashdot Mirror
This entire thing is mostly moot where I live, anyway: Apart from Jehova's Witnesses, I have met exactly one adult that disbelieved evolution.
I'll add one more meme for your consideration:
I personally am an agnostic atheist (ie, I see the issue as unprovable first and foremost, secondarily I don't specifically believe there is a God). However, I have no conflict with religion as long as it stays on its own turf: Outside the provable. When religion tries to claim reality as being different than I observe it, on the other hand, I see it as picking a fight and will shove observations of reality back at whoever is coming with the claims ;)
Eivind.
Eivind.
Other part:
(about evolution) It seems nearly a fact, but it could be disproved in some unknown way.
Having read widely on evolution, I'll disagree with this: Aspects of evolution may possibly need to be refined, yet the framework isn't "nearly" fact - it is fact. The neo-Darwinian synthesis has been tested very many times, and it's unassailable.
What's presently vague (and may move around) are:
- Aspects of specication. We know this happen, we know of a number of forces going towards it - increased differentiation and sexual selection between distinct subpopulations that can hybridize but are distinct enough that the hybrids don't survive as good, for instance.
- Abiogenesis. We have a few ideas of how this may have happened, and none of them really dominate the field, nor have we reproduced the effect yet.
- Historical details of particular species; there will certainly be more changes here, and it may take a hundred years (or more) before "everything" settle. There's continual improvement, though.
- How DNA/RNA is interpreted. We have all this "junk DNA" that doesn't seem to be junk after all - it's getting reproduced much more exactly than junk should be - so there's almost certainly some secrets hidden. This could cause some serious upheavals.
- We don't know exactly how much is inherited in the form of core cell DNA and how much is inherited in other forms. There may be some significant details here.
Overall, the picture will change - yet there's one thing that I'm confident will stay constant, as it's been tested so much: Refinement through reproduction with variants and natural selection.Eivind.
No, you didn't I came with a hypothesis to explain the mechanism behind your observed effect. My mechanism includes problems in what techniques your preachers use.
Over to next topic: "Single strain" means that the DNA of the mice is equal in all the mice, so the size difference is an example of introducing variation that has survival value through point mutation. The immedate difference provide a data increase, the data increase is culled to an information increase by the process of natural selection.
As for DNA/RNA genesis: The information is available by point mutation (as described above). Ending up with coding for proteins is reasonable, given the flexibility of proteins as catalysts. This would give a large advantage for anything that code for proteins. Anyway: This is a discussion of abiogenesis, not evolution per se. Abiogenesis is hypothetical, with several different hypotheses competing. It is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT for evolution per se, and it is much more of a faith based area than the theory of evolution. I happen to believe we will find a method of abiogenesis and will find proof for that - however, that's a belief based on prior experience, not something that's found yet.
So, let's stick to the discussion of the theory of evolution, rather than mixing it with abiogenesis, shall we?
Well, Darwin didn't know anything about it. In fact, he was sure that missing links in the fossil record would eventually be found ("The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on earth, [must] be truly enormous" -- The Origin of Species).
The chapter that that comes from says nothing about these forms being found later. Instead, it goes on to discuss the way variation wouldn't ever have existed between presently living creatures, and how the intermediate forms would disappear. He specifically states "I endeavoured, also, to show that intermediate varieties, from existing in lesser numbers than the forms which they connect, will generally be beaten out and exterminated during the course of further modification and improvement." (My emphasis.)
Please, stop repeating misrepresentations from the anti-evolution websites. They are inaccurate, and have given up on the "Thou shalt not bear false witness" in favour of "Thou shalt break any commandment in the hope of convincing the people that don't bother to really learn this."
And certainly, we have not seen the types of speciation that is required by long-term macro-evolution.
Can you please state your claim more exactly? I feel we have seen more than enough to be convinced of this. Please state what kind of speciation you would need to see to be convinced.
Well, most people believe what they are taught in school. Even when its wrong.
I am not talking of people that "learn it in school". I'm talking about people that learn the science. There is a very significant difference.
Take Haeckel's embryos, for example. These were disproven long ago but are still present in modern text books. Just because you learned it in school doesn't mean its true. It just means that it is acceptable to the guardians of the paradigm.
This is from an anti-evolution website again, right? Haeckel's drawings of embryos have exaggerations of certain commonalities (in effect being caricatures), and are useful for showing these similarities. Haeckel's conclusion (that the embryonic development accurately recapture the evolutionary history) is, to the best of my knowledge, not taught - the drawings are used for illustrative purposes.
I don't think science has yet gone far enough to explore possible "natural" explanations for evolution.
Please elaborate - what "natural" explanations are you thin
There's a few reasons we use MySQL:
(1) Migration costs; we've got significant codebases that are somewhat tied to MySQL, without automated tests for most of them, making a migration risky. We've also got some fairly large sites running on it; different performance characteristics could create a lot of issues.
(2) Emotional investment by my coworker.
(3) It's supposedly slightly easier to do various production hacks (copying tables etc) with MySQL than with PostgreSQL, and my coworker insist these are important. I've never ever ended up using these, instead of using dumps and hot copies and logging etc, so I personally can't see the need for these.
For my own evaluation, (1) is important, though (2) and (3) are what's really blocked the migration - if I'd been able to do all the choices without fighting over them, I'd have started a slow migration a year ago and been over on PostgreSQL now.
Eivind.
(A) return the same data on SELECT as I inserted in INSERT, unless I got an error
(B) return updated data after an UPDATE, unless I got an error.
MySQL doesn't fit either of these requirements - the first by design, the second due to bugs. I'm ashamed of the use at work. We just haven't had time to migrate away :-(
Eivind.
Due to a combination of the number of bugs and misdesign, MySQL does not (to any reasonable degree) provide the feature "When I do an update to the database and do not get an error, that update is guaranteed to be there". It happens regularly that it isn't there.
These are really core features for the kind of developer I want to be. I'm really, really sad to be working with MySQL day to day - it makes me feel dirty.
Eivind.
Yes, I work day to day with MySQL, due to the cost of migration. No, I don't feel good about routinely having to deal with corruption in production databases. It's not acceptable. Yes, it also happens with InnoDB.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Try this one on, testing out yourself in a situation: You've just received a message. A totally convincing message, one with irrefutable proof that you accept. OK, do you have the state in mind, understanding how you feel about this message? The message is a description of a hoax: Your God was a hoax.
How's your ethics?
Take a minute or five to think about that, feel the feeling of "My God was a lie - what do I do now, how do I behave towards others, what are my underlying values?"
... OK, have you spent the five minutes?
Hopefully, you learned from that exercise: The values are there anyway. The tribalism is a natural part of being human, coming straight from evolution. With a bit of introspection, these extend to the entire gene pool, with humans above other animals due to intelligence and personal devotion.
These values are shared by almost all thinking atheists. We have to think through and evaluate what our values are, what's important. This has some bad sides - it's a lot of work, and not everybody does it, or does it well. For a slightly different tack on the same, you can read Ayn Rand - more individualistic.
I can go through arguments from game theory etc to base most of these things on - yet, overall, it just feel right, and that's enough. That's the same reason you're using to believe in the big invisible papa in the sky - also subjective and totally arbitrary (except for your parental, societal and genetic influence - which is the same as influence my ethics.)
Eivind.
2. doesn't say anything, I think. Sure, natural selection only "remove less fit". The examples are quite extreme, though: Most of the competition is for food niches, and mostly with the same species.
3. Having a hypothesis for an effect without a mechanism is common. This is a case of good science (observing effect, provide hypothesis for how it happens, test prediction, find mechanism that explains hypothesis.)
4. This contains two parts, one about the origin of DNA, one just wrong. Let's start with the latter: If we start with single-strain mice, it takes three generations of breeding to produce mice with noticable size differences - inheritable such. This can be survival-enhancing (depending on circumstances, of course.) So yes, we have observed such mutations. Next, we various hypotheses for how DNA originated. The one I see as most likely is the "clay hypothesis" - clay can form crystals which self-replicate, various organic chemicals including RNA can enhance this replication, and RNA could then have "taken off on its own". Do a search for more details.
5. Punctuated equilibirum seems to more or less have been accepted all along; read Dawkin's quotes from Darwin. We've got evidence of specication happening today, as I've posted about repeatedly. (See e.g. "ring species"). The fossil record is naturally spotty; specication are seen to happen quickly; and we've got fairly good coverage.
6. As far as I know, almost all religious people that learn evolution also end up believing in it. For most scientists, there is no particular wish to disprove God - there's just a wish to find out and explain how the world works, and if you are using "God" as an explanation of how the parts of the world that you don't understand works ("The God of the gaps" approach), then you'll be shot down repeatedly and it will feel as an attack on God.
7. We know that evolution works (creates and modulates variation, including species). This is a fact. As for the origin, we do not yet know whether this is evolutionary or "breath of God". Due to previous experience (the God hypothesis has been wrong so many times), we believe it most likely that this is a result of some self replicating, mutating process having occurred "randomly". At this time, however, we do not have any clear hypothesis up as the winner for "first mover".
Fossils: You already covered this, and so did I.
Morphology: This is generally considered evidence in favour of evolution.
Cambrian explosion: As far as I've understood, the most likely hypothesis here is a general size increase (due to better food availability, I seem to remember.) There's a minimal size limit on what fossilizes, and what appeared at the cambiran explosion was just that size. Also, the number of body plans was (according to recent review) overrated - several were counted more than once.
Eivind.
Yes, we do. And I'm sure you'll agree that whether something is depressing or not isn't a test of truth.
Apart from that, I find it quite OK. I personally find the thought of a God that's as evil as the one in the bible more depressing than the thought that I have to get things done while I live, rather than just "saving up for afterwards". The world is beautiful and fun and I'm happy to get a chance to be here.
Eivind.
How about living "half-mutated", quarter-mutated, full-mutated, etc species?
Look up "ring species". Here is a place to start.
Decent books on evolution will cover these among other forms of specication. We have plenty of evidence in various forms. You may also want to learn about "punctuated equilibrium" (note that the contententiousness of this doctrine is if the mainstream has always believed it or it was introduced by Stephen Jay Gould - SJG believed he created it, the mainstream says this has been mainstream since Darwin, using quotes), and various other aspects of specication and mutation/selection around it. There's examples of increased visual differentiation for hybridizable subspecies (as predicted: hybridization will, when the genepools are distinct enough, be worse than either parent), and there's examples of genetically almost identical groups that don't interbreed, considered species "in the process of happening".
We don't need the fossil record to show specication: We can show all the various stages existing today.
Eivind.
There is a ton of examples of speciation, and there are good explanations for numerous forms of this happening.
"Ring species" are the most glaring example: These happen where there's creatures that breed a bit left and right in a ring around an unsuitable habitat (often east-west around the entire world). At one end, there will be two "species" of birds (non-interbreeding populations), yet these are genetically connected through the ring. If the "middle" of the ring died (the other side of the earth), the genetic connection would disappear and they would be two species.
Ring species have often initially been classified as two species, BTW, as the populations were not interbreeding.
Examples: Salamanders, greenish warblers.
Eivind.
First, let me start with saying that the entire label "evolutionist" is (in my opinion) wrong. The label implies that there is a faith based belief in evolution, and that that's the core.
The core belief of most that believe in evolution is one of two: Authoritarian belief in "scientific fact", or true belief in the existance of the world and verified knowledge of evolution.
I'm of the latter persuation. We "believe" in evolution because it provide clear predictions and we have tested those predictions hundreds or (more often, if we've looked at biology) thousands of times, and they've always fit.
We understand the mechanisms of evolution, some of us have tested evolution by running simulations on computers (I have), some of us have tested by playing with cultures of microbes (I've discussed this part with my father who has), we've looked at various aspects of present day biology (including DNA systems), and found that it all perfectly match.
Effectively everybody that looks at the evidence carefully end up believing in evolution. Evolution is also compatible with religion - it's accepted as truth by both the catholic and the protestant church - and it's quite simply a fact.
So, the real question is "why do we care about truth"?
Those of us that are religious generally care about it based on religious sayings - basically on authority. Those that aren't religious may care about it on societal training grounds, or for plain evolutionary feedback reasons. I personally care about it as a personal ideal: Truth is a core value to me, it's my "religion" so to speak. I also believe that truth makes a better world for mankind, and making a better world for mankind is another of my ideals.
Eivind.
That side of the system has mostly broken down a long time ago - the patents are not written in a form that's useful for research, so nobody use it to find out what to do.
Or at least nobody I've been able to find. I've talked about this to people the do research (including taking out patents) in computer software, in food process engineering, and for physical engineering for consumer devices. All find the patent database basically useless except for finding out if something they know how to do anyway is patented.
Eivind.
Actually, this seems to be counter to evidence - we've lived for about 200,000 years (counting mitochondrial DNA) without developing science. Instead, everything has been based on magical thinking. Science comes from the debate, originating in Greece about 2000 years ago, and just barely surviving through hardship from there. "Uncommon Sense" by John Cramer does a very good job of tracing/arguing this.
The cultural meme of debate seems to be fairly well entrenched in our present society - and I hope that it will keep that way. Whenever I see people talking about "energies" and overriding science for their "feelings", I feel scared for it, though.
Eivind.
That works really well, though.
Eivind.
I've found the code reasonably easy navigate. Not as good as it could be, yet reasonably easy. And at least a LOT better than the commercial SSH code, which I have worked with before.
Oh, and as mentioned: The problem you are seeking is not in that code, it is a configuration error.
Eivind.
Eivind.
In my experience, programmers (including myself) often to go through three phases. First, for the first few years, they think that languages are supremely important, and know quite few languages. Then, they learn to think in algorithms, and for the next few years think languages are of no consequence whatsoever. Later in their careers, they think that both languages and algorithms are important.
Eivind.
There was a tree with a bunch of flags on, clicking on one of the flags switched to a tree with some fruit on, and two rabbits in front. The rabbits talked a bunch back and forth, indicating that various fruit will become "ripe" at various times. One piece of fruit was "ripe" now, could be clicked on, the smaller of the rabits went over to eat that piece of fruit, and it was possible to enter into a guessing game about XBox360 (what's true and what's rumours). If you answer three questions correctly you can enter into some kind of sweepstakes. You can enter into the sweepstakes several times (up to 9) by referring friends to enter the contest (you get an extra chance for each friend.)
All of the above was done with flash and fancy graphical effects.
Eivind.
That's why I didn't recode as idiomatic Perl, noting that the Ruby code avoided the same idioms. (x is *, print @stuff is print stuff.join, etc).
Eivind.
There are some documented cases of languages "spontaneously forming" in very small populations. There was one case with a population of deaf children somewhere in africa, for instance. This was formed with a complete, complex grammar (in the second generation of children, I seem to remember, with the first generation having some weird anomalities.)
Sorry for the vague references - this is really not my field.
Eivind.