Slashdot Mirror


User: arminw

arminw's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
5,099
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 5,099

  1. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1, Insightful

    .....Over millions of generations.......

    Viruses certainly and bacteria go though millions of generation is a reasonable amount of time. Experiments with these have NEVER, even once made a different kind of virus or bacteria through huge numbers of generations.

    If your premise were correct, at some point we should have seen by now at least one "arbitrarily large" change from say an HIV virus to some other type, such as maybe ebola or any of the other known or even unknown viruses. Viruses and bacteria, as all life forms, can evolve to cope with environmental stresses, but so far have been demonstrated to remain essentially as they are, even though innumerable generations.

    My alternate theory is that all life forms were created by God similarly to the fact that all automobiles, airplanes, bicycles, horse drawn buggies and other transportation machinery were invented by people. Motorcycles don't evolve into automobiles and apes don't evolve into humans.

    We can and do how learn these life forms work and put them to use for our benefit. However, figuring out how all life got here is not provable scientifically. I think that scientists have enough to do, trying to figure out how things work today, without conjecturing how it all came to be, since that is merely belief, not science.

  2. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .....Over a long enough period of time,.......

    You, like all the others who believe in the "Once upon a time, millions or billions of years ago" fairy tales have come up with that same tired argument of lots and lots of time. Not ONE of these so called "incremental changes" has ever been observed in our day. Even a much smaller change, such as the transformation of say a strepto-coccus type bacteria into a spirochete or HIV virus into Herpes Simplex has never been observed or even duplicated by intelligent researchers working hard at it in a laboratory. These things go though BILLIONS of generations in a short time. If your fairy tale were real science then we should observe and duplicate at least one of these postulated changes.

    All scientific actual facts, such as the fact that we do find fossils are INTERPRETED through the "There is no God" world view. You merely substitute the belief in lots and lots of time for a belief in a transcendent God. Both world views are beliefs however, religion if you will, but definitely NOT science.

    Science is about observations of what is happening today or doing experiments, not conjecturing about what may have taken place million of years ago by processes we do not see anywhere today nor even by best effort are able duplicate.

    Neither God nor evolution are proven or provable, but they are beliefs how everything came to be as we see it.

  3. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .....No one has ever witnessed a mountain being built.......

    Not so! With modern laser and satellite techniques we can measure the movements of mountains and continents. We can verify that this is still happening TODAY.

    This cannot be said of the large scale evolution as presently taught. Untold generations of fruit flies have been bred, but all anyone ever has produced is more fruit flies. No other kind of flies even, such as house flies, horse flies. Certainly no other sort of insect has ever been made from fruit flies.

    Science is about what can be shown by experiment or observed in nature TODAY. What might have happened millions of years ago is conjecture and cannot be tested by the scientific method.

  4. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .....they can diverge into different species of fruit fly.........

    They are still fruit flies however and not some other kind of flies. Horses and donkeys can breed to make mules. Are mules a new species? Mules, horses and donkeys are of the same kind of animals, but not of the same species, are they?

    There is a large, unbridgeable jump between apes and people. Same with say reptiles and birds. There are genetic groupings that have never been and cannot be crossed.

    This sort of crossing is theorized to have occurred in the past, but has NEVER been shown to happen in the present, despite the best efforts of intelligent scientists. That makes it an unproven conjecture, no matter what the textbooks blather about it.

  5. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ....obviously from domestic animal/plant breeding and parasites becoming resistant to drugs.........

    No matter what you do though, dogs remain dogs, horse are still horses. Pesticide resistant fleas are and forever remain fleas and even the toughest to kill cockroaches are still ALWAYS cockroaches. Nobody has ever observed anything else in any creatures.

    After trillions of generations, cold viruses are still cold viruses. Influenza viruses, as almost any virus, may evolve to evade your immune system, but it never evolves into an HIV virus. Next year, this years flu viruses will still be flu viruses, but they will have evolved just enough to get you sick again if you happen to get infected.

    The same sort of things are true of bacteria and on up the entire chain of life.

  6. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .......We do not see the tectonic plates move continents across the ocean......

    Yes we do still observe such motion today. Modern laser and satellite GPS techniques let us measure movements of fault line very accurately. In a few million years, we are told, parts of California will be somewhere up in the neighborhood of Alaska.

    (....We can observe that evolution has occurred,.......)

    BS. How can anyone observe the past?

    (....We have models of evolution.......)

    What assumptions do these models make? One assumptions in many of these models is that present processes and rates can be extrapolated into the distant past. That is based on the assumption of uniformitarianism, that is things go along smoothly for long periods of time. They may, but there is no way we can know that. There is lots of evidence for sudden, sometimes catastrophic changes in nature. The fanciest computer models are garbage, if the underlying assumptions are wrong.

    (......fossil evidence matches our predictions.....)

    Maybe its the other way round. We base predictions on the fossil evidence. All that fossils tell us is that certain things existed, but nothing of how they got here. Today, when living things die, they don't make fossils, but decay.

  7. Re:theory vs tautology on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ......constitute predictions about the physical world that can be tested to evaluate whether or not the premises are correct......

    So what predictions does the theory of evolution make than can be or have been verified by an experiment or observation in todays physical world?

  8. Re:29+ evidences for macro-evolution on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .......Perhaps you ought to have a glance at......

    Neither in that article nor any other do they cite an actual experiment or observation done since Darwin lived, that shows one kind creature evolving into another kind. Even the simplest viruses have never been observed doing this, even after trillions of generations. The writers of these articles make a lot of words that say that certain people believe such things, but nowhere do they give actual real experiments or observations.

    Flu viruses may evolve to evade your immune system, but they are and always remain flu viruses. None has ever turned into an HIV, herpes, polio or any other type of virus. It just doesn't happen. Same with bacteria and on up the scale of life. Good thing too that is that way. Imagine an ordinary cold virus mutating into an ebola or polio virus!

    Nowhere do we read that Dr. Smartass in Biglab changed an e-coli into a spirochete or a fruit fly into a mosquito. Such a feat would not be hidden in some obscure journal. Evolutionist believers would ensure that such a marvel would make world headlines.

  9. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ........reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations.........

    So all that proves is that after messing around with fruit flies for a number of generation, they screwed them up enough so they could no longer reproduce.

    However NEVER did anyone manage to make anything OTHER than more fruit flies. No house other kinds of flies. No sort of other insect, nothing but fruit flies, fruit flies, fruit flies, and more fruit flies. They made fruit flies with extra, missing of misplaced parts, but all of them were still nothing but more damn fruit flies. Disgusting!

    All this was done, not by random selection, but by the INTELLIGENT effort of many scientists!

  10. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ........The most convincing evidence to support theories is if they make predictions which we can then test .......

    So what testable predictions does the theory of evolution make?

    What will horses, cats, dogs and people evolve into next? Will a frog turn into a prince?

    Evolutionists seem to believe that even a rock turned into a prince. They tell us that minerals (from rocks) washed into the primordial soup of the warm primitive oceans, became alive and eventually after a loooooong time became human. Of course some humans do become princes.

  11. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 2, Insightful

    .........anymore than Newton is the last word on gravity.........

    Well I have news for you. Newton STILL is the last word on gravity for our our frame of existence. Now if you can get near the speed of light, then some of the additional effects that Einstein theorized may come into effect. Nobody has been able to test that part of Einstein's theory yet. So for now, Newton's apple still falls as he said it does.

    (......fish and humans have a common ancestor..........)

    All we can say from what we observe TODAY is that all fish ancestors are always only fish. All humans come only from humans also. Nobody has ever seen anything else. We can observe what happens today, but we can only guess and conjecture about what happened in the past. Observation and experiment is science. Conjecture and guesswork is philosophy and/or religion.

  12. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 0

    ......Want to see evolution in action, look at dogs.....

    Yes, and every one of them without exception are still ALWAYS only dogs!

    Genetic researchers have tried hard to breed thousands of generations of fruit flies. They have come up with all sorts of weird forms, some with missing or extra parts. But guess what? ALL of them are STILL fruit flies. Never, even once, not by random chance, but by directed, INTELLIGENT effort, have they succeeded in making anything other than more fruit flies.

    Does that tell you that something might be wrong with the evolutionary idea that birds can evolve from reptiles or humans from apes?

  13. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ....But look at the differences between Newton's view and Einstein's.......

    There really is no difference. Einstein only extended the point of view into a realm we ordinarily don't experience. Nobody that I know, routinely approaches the speed of light.

    If you doubt the working of gravity, let one of your friends, or better yet, one of your enemies, drop a large rock on your right big toe. Maybe that will convince you.

  14. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ....except there are fish that have both gills and lungs....

    So how does that prove that breathing creatures DESCENDED for creatures with gills? Maybe the designer wanted to make a creature that could operate both in water and on land?

    That's like saying that cars descended from the horse drawn buggy. In a sense they did, because the were both designed as a wheeled transportation device.

  15. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .....It has yet to be adopted by the scientific community as a proven theory because there are no accepted methods of testing it......

    So how do you test if in the past a reptile at some point turned into a bird or an ape became a human?

  16. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .... So what class of crimes have those to be aborted been accused/found guilty .......

    Mostly these babies have been found guilty by their mothers of the crime of inconveniencing them or their fathers. The state is guilty of the crime of letting these parents get away with the murder of innocents.

  17. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ....look at the evolution of the flu virus.....

    Yes, it does "evolve" to make you sick with the flu again next year. However, it will not evolve into HIV, Herpes or any other kind of virus. There should be different word for a flu or other virus evading your immune system and some virus becoming an entirely different pathogen. Applying the word "evolve" to both gives rise to confusion. This confusion is at the root of much of this debate.

  18. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    .......let's not forget the different shapes of the beaks of the birds that Darwin studied.......

    A big problem in this whole debate is the exact definition of the word "Evolution". If it is applied to the shapes of beaks, the color of moths, the immunity of bacteria to antibiotics etc., the term "evolution" is certainly an observed fact.

    The extension of this definition to the needed big leaps from reptiles to birds or from apes to humans has never been observed and is therefore an unverified theory. It is theorized that over immense periods of time it may have happened, but no scientists were around to actually observe it happen. Fossils record that many life forms did exist in the past, but tell us nothing about how one kind of creature turned into some other, higher kind.

    The idea that Someone designed reptiles, birds, apes and humans is also an unverified theory. What's wrong with presenting both concepts as unproven and unprovable theories, until someone invents time travel into the past?

  19. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on New Science Standards Approved in Florida · · Score: 1

    ......there is a theory of Gravity......

    Except that I can demonstrate gravity to you as an immediate FACT by dropping 20lb weight on your big toe TODAY. Nobody can demonstrate evolution of a human from an ape or a bird from a reptile happening today.

    There are certain underlying assumptions in every human endeavor. Science is no exception. Evolutionists assume (believe) in an ever increasing complexity of life from simple beginnings to the present. Nobody sees this principle at work today. We observe daily, both in our own experience and in the observations of nature, as well as our own technological devices, that complex systems tend to break down into simpler components, if left to themselves.

    This breakdown is an indisputable fact, not a theory. The path from the simple to the complex always involves two things: Energy and thought. Neither one alone will suffice to reverse the natural tendency of the complex toward the simple.

    Evolutionists THEORIZE that there was a progression in the past, from the simple to the complex. Today, we only observe the opposite. That is not a theory, but an every day unfortunate FACT.

  20. Re:Energy is the issue on 'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way · · Score: 1

    .....the timing between the brain and extremities......

    All the guy did is measure the speed of nerve impulse transmission. Thoughts are not physical. Therefore, they are not necessarily limited to physical limitations.

    Einstein tells us that nothing belonging to the matter/energy realm can exceed the speed of light. Of course we know from experiments, that the speed of light depends on what it is going through. That's how lenses work.

    Since thoughts or information are not physical, they in themselves are not by affected by the speed of light through any medium. Even in the physical realm, we don't know if the speed of gravity is affected by any medium traversed by it. We assume, by extension, that gravity also is limited to the speed of light. However, nobody has ever verified or refuted this experimentally. Both thoughts, (non-physical) and gravity (physical) may be instantaneous, independent of time.

  21. Re:sweet on 'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way · · Score: 1

    .....The Oort cloud was proposed based on calculating.......

    Well calculating is a fine exercise and may even useful too, if in the end the calculations are corroborated by real, actual physical observations and experiments. That's what makes Einstein's calculations valuable, they are borne out, sometimes spectacularly, by numerous experiments. The best calculation based theories make predictions that can be verified by experiment or observations. That is science. In the absence of such verification, such theories are logical, sometimes even beautiful math, appreciated by mathematicians. Mathematics is NOT science.

    Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia concerning the Oort cloud.

    "Although no confirmed direct observations of the Oort cloud have been made, astronomers believe it to be the source of all long period and Halley-type comets entering the inner solar system"

    Since there is no observation, but only something that astronomers believe. is that science? I'd call what I believe religion or philosophy, but not science. A belief based on fancy math is still only a belief.

    Much of today's cosmology is based on mathematically founded beliefs, with no observations or experiments to back up the math.

  22. Re:Energy is the issue on 'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way · · Score: 1

    .....and since it presumably is made of matter......

    Hey, isn't it fun sometimes, just to let the imagination run wild? :-) !

    So why does matter have to be transmitted? Presumably, there is matter at the destination. Have you never heard of mind over matter? Just use information to make the DNA assembly machine first and then the machine makes people again using the DNA data. Since the DNA assembler is able to make everything out of the elements, it re-assembles whole, complete adult humans, not babies. These humans have all the knowledge and characteristics they had when their DNA was encoded on the other side of the universe.

  23. Re:sweet on 'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way · · Score: 1

    .....Current cosmology (e.g. big bang theory)......

    Back in 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered the red shift. This is a real observed measurement. However then Hubble , and he was actually cautious, INTERPRETED the cause thereof to be motion and distance. Most of today's cosmology , including the logical inference from this, of the big bang is based on this assumption (belief). To fit many current observations into this interpretation it is necessary to postulate dark matter/energy, black holes, Oort cloud and other things we do not physically observe. We may CALCULATE things, logically and correctly, but we do not OBSERVE them.

    All these constructs are logical, mathematical conjectures needed to fit the often puzzling data coming from modern space probes, into the theories built upon this assumption. Another basic assumption is that things in the universe and in nature as a whole, change slowly, predictably, over unimaginably long periods of time. Sudden, unpredictable events in nature, whether here on Earth or billions of light years distant, make us very uneasy. Yet we see past evidence of massive, sudden paradigm changing events, both out in the distant universe and sometimes, to our consternation, right here at home.

    It is generally assumed (believed) that stars such as our sun are energized by thermonuclear fusion. From fusion experiments and calculations, we know that such fusion produces copious numbers of neutrinos. Particle physicists have built sophisticate detectors for these in deep underground cavern. The problem is that the number of these neutrinos from the sun is far too small if the sun really gets its energy from fusion. Also, we know that heat always flows from a hotter to a cooler area. Since fusion needs about 20 million deg. C to work, the interior of the sun must be at least that hot. Scientists have observed that the surface of the sun is about 6000 deg. Now here is the puzzler: If heat flows from hotter to colder, why is the corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun at about 3 million degrees? Either the laws of thermodynamics are being violated somehow, or the source of the sun's energy does NOT come from fusion deep inside.

    When assumptions are made, it is imperative to re-examine these assumptions, if conflicting and puzzling data comes our way. If the red shift is NOT due to the doppler effect, then the whole big bang theory, with all of its mathematical beauty, collapses. That is not a palatable option that many are willing to consider.

  24. Re:Energy is the issue on 'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way · · Score: 1

    .......in flask of frozen embryos.....

    How primitive! Why not just encode the total DNA information onto a suitable carrier and transmit that at the speed of thought, instantaneously across the entire universe? Nobody knows whether thought is instantaneous at any distance or not. At the destination, a thought receiver demodulates the DNA information and reconstructs a fully functional life form, including humans. Be sure to copyright and encrypt the DNA information, so there won't be multiple copies of the same flawed humans all over the universe.

    As long as you're dreaming, you might as well dream BIG!

  25. Re:Energy is the issue on 'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way · · Score: 1

    ....The speed of light seems like a comparatively simple issue.......

    Indeed it is, because someday we may travel at the speed of thought. Information can travel at the speed of its carrier. Light speed is an abysmally slow way to go, given the scale of the universe, even as we presently observe it.

    Has anyone measures the speed of thought? I don't mean the speed of nerve impulses in your body.