Again, you're marginalizing this. We have REPEATEDLY stated that we are NOT after Afghanistan's destruction - we're after the guilty one, bin Laden. The strikes today are apparently against Taliban military targets - another guilty party, as a safe harbor for bin Laden, and they have been fairly and sufficiently warned.
Targeting innocent civillians for the simple reason of causing destruction is wrong. Killing some in strikes against military targets is inevitable. It's not a pretty price, but one you have to pay.
There's a bit of a difference between "intimidating into your way of life" and using military counter-force to protect a country. You can go ahead and/x/y/g; whatever you want. This is a matter of protection and self-preservation, not forcing our beliefs on someone else. We are NOT fighting a "holy war" to convert bin Laden to (insert your preferred religion/set of beliefs here) - we're fighting a fight against an enemy that wants to destroy us. It's the nature of war. You are attacked, you fight back, or be annihilated.
Your example of "ask if killing people who try to intimidate you into their way of life" is not appropriate because it's a use of overkill. You're marginalizing the situation. People trying to intimidate you aren't trying to kill you - people waging a war against you are. Bit of a difference there.
So are you saying we simply ignore this? Turn a blind eye? Bin Laden is interested in the destruction of the American government, people, and country, and has used force to attempt to accomplish that goal. Dunno what nationality you are, but when someone attempts to destroy my country unprovoked, it's on.
Wake up the big dogs and you get bitten hard. Bin Laden's about to find that out.
I, too am on a college campus. While there hasn't been a largly visible "anti-war" movement, my dad wrote this up, and sent it to me...
What to do if you happen upon a peace rally by naive hemp-shirt-wearing college idiots, to teach them why force is sometimes needed:
1) Approach dumb rich ignorant student talking about "peace" and saying there should be, "no retaliation."
2) Engage in brief conversation, ask if military force is appropriate.
3) When he says "No," ask, "Why not?"
4) Wait until he says something to the effect of, "Because that would just cause more innocent deaths, which would be awful and we should not cause more violence."
5) When he's in mid sentence, punch him in the face as hard as you can.
6) When he gets back up to up to punch you, point out that it would be a mistake and contrary to his values to strike you, because that would, "be awful and he should not cause more violence."
7) Wait until he agrees that he has pledged not to commit additional violence.
8) Punch him in the face again, harder this time.
Repeat steps 5 through 8 until they understand that sometimes it is necessary to punch back.
And then you get the brilliant idea that, "Hey, if we password protect these screensavers, and tell no one what the password is, the ads will get even MORE run time, and we'll get more money!"
I'm the unofficial tech for my residence hall, and make a lot of "fix my computer" calls. You'd be suprised how many "Absolut" and other such products are featured prominately on my neighbors screens:)
Re:You are going to be scared....
on
Handling the Loads
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Clancey is getting to me.
In Executive Orders, terrorists flew a plane into the White House, killing most of the major gov't officials that were there for a ceremony. Sound famaliar?
Don't remember which book it is (Never finished it), but there's one about a small terrorist group gathering materials and machining a nuclear bomb to set off in a football stadium in Colorado. The possibility of it seemed to be almost zero...but so did the possibility of a hijacked plane being flown into the Pentagon.
What's scary is that it's not as hard as it seems. With bin Laden's resources, he could have procured the materials and gotten people to carry a nuke-in-a-briefcase into the WTC, and taken out all of Manhattan. Not that I'm saying what happened isn't terrible - it is - but the possibilities for terrorists these days are WAY past frightening.
Terrorists don't care about diplomacy, they don't care about the politics, they care about causing pain, terror, death, and destruction. How are we supposed to fight an enemy that is free to use weaspons many times more destructive than our government will dare to use? How can you guarantee safty?
Look at me...I'm turning into a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
I think it'd be kinad fun to take the match, "edit" it so that you have all kinds of camera angles, and get voiceovers done "radio style" of the chat logs. Maybe an announcer voiceover, too.
It's the virtual version of the implementation of the story behind UT.
I'm just gonna reply to the script part, since the office is closing down, and it's time to go home:)
Basically, that given a certain population, if each "round" (loop) of mutation is 99.5% harmful and.5% beneficial, the population's going to be killed off by the harmful mutations before it evolves the beneficial ones that would change it into a different species.
Or did I completely miss what you were trying to say?
Basically, that line that confused you was my "reproduction" simulation - the survivors have offspring - in this case, 50 offspring per survivor, making the total population 50 times as large. The process is then repeated.
Thanks for the link! I've not seen this before. It's going to make for some interesting reading!
Yes, I read your post on the thermodynamics. I'll have to do a little research into it before I can properly reply to it.
THIS is what I've hoped to accomplish by this - get some information I've not yet heard and learn about it. I readily admit that I've been taught a 1-sided view, which I do believe is very valid, and I'll do my best to defend. But I'm perfectly open to learning and thinking on the subject. Possibly the worst thing one can do is refuse to learn.
Best regards to you, Rei, eviloverlordx, and Bobo. It's quite pleasant, albeit different, to debate with people who can not only give logical answers, but back them up.
I'm going to do some reading on speciation and crossbreeding, and see what I come up with.
I do believe I've not only spent the entire day replying to/. posts, but I've managed to get completely offtopic in the process ^_^
Certainly. Given that evolution's fact, there has to be life on other planets. We don't know enough about the universe yet to really say one way or another, but it's mathematically impossible for it to be otherwise.
Do be careful with your usage of the phrases "It's well known" and "it's most likely" and such - more a subscription to belief than fact. If you want most likely, I'll haul out Occam's Razor. But that's beside the point:)
You are right about all reactions not being equal - good point. I tend to think on the mathematics from a more numerically abstract viewpoint. However, there are other things to take into account - such "free floating components" would be highly susceptible to solar radiation, corrosion by oxygen, and corrosive or otherwise harmful chemicals no doubt present in a primordial soup. Not all chemicals would have been beneficial - in fact, most would have been harmful. If you've got concentrations that can form proteins, you're gonna have the primordial equivalent of bug spray in there, too.
As for the Bible quotes, I'm not asking you to believe it. Simply putting out my POV on the matter.
Good thing I have karma to burn. I think I've already earned 2 "Flamebait"s and 3 "Troll"s today!:D
The debunking makes some rather amazing claims in and of itself, and as such, can hardly be billed as debunking. It argues that the first living things are much, much simpler than modern day simple organisms. While I see the logic in this hypothesis, the hole in it lies in that were such the case, these organisms should still be around today, and in great abundance as they would not only have to have the ability to replicate quickly in order to survive, but in time, they would have evolved even faster methods of replication. An argument saying that such organisms will have long dies out is in and of itself just plain silly. If they could spontaneously generate once (Or however many times it took), they could do it again.
To my knowledge (And please let me know if there are counterexamples), there are no self-replicating, living molecules or strands of RNA. If they could survive to evolve, they should still be around.
This is a classic scientific fallacy - take a hypothesis and look for evidence supporting the hypothesis, rather than the opposite method of observing and formulating a hypothesis based on observations. This is a mistake commonly made by both sides, and it is rather frustrating to have people conducting research in such a manner, regardless of which viewpoint you subscribe to.
The debunking talks about "modern" organisms. Does this mean that older organisms have disappeared? If this is so, why is it that there are organisms that are evolutionally inferior to other organisms? Wouldn't they have been wiped out in the same manner that the "ancient" organisms were? To my knowledge, there is no relatively simple organism that has *ever* been classified as "endangered".
Species - I'm not terribly anxious to get in an argument over the definition of a word. It is just a word - but so are all forms of communication. If it's "just a word" with no concrete meaning we're gonna have serious problems communicating.
With that out of the way, here's what I understand you to be saying: over time, organisms, due to circumstance, have developed different traits that differentiate them from each other, hence forming new species.
From an abstract standpoint, it's a very inviting and seemingly solid concept. It applies to a lot that is in our world, but not necessarily to life.
rememebr, a trait only dissapears if there's a disadvantage to having it any more - a fully developed leg is only important if you plan to spent a significant amount of time on land - many semi-legged fish use their legs to walk across dry land to get to new ponds
How will a fish being able to drag itself from one pond to another cause it's offspring to have an enhanced ability to do so? What could cause genetic mutations that would be passed on to later generations?
If a fish could survive in the ocean, there's no reason why it would need to leave the ocean, and therefore, no need to develop such traits. Even if a host body of water were to dry up, the fish would die, lacking the capability to move to another pond because before such circumstances, there was no reason for the mutation - it would have caused drag in the water and been unnecessary - and when the need develops, they don't have the capability to survive it. They die. This mutation relies on the fact that their genes knew that 300 generations down the road their ancestors would have to walk to another pond, even though original didn't need and would never need the legs to survive. I'm not sure that even the foremost evolutionists could argue that successfully.
The crux of the matter is that creatures would have to develop such capabilties to survive, but if they needed to develop them, they wouldn't have them, and therefore, not survive. Like the joke goes, "Chances are, if your parents didn't have children, you probably won't, either."
Your array logic is faulty, because you assume that all "inferior" elements will be replaced by "superior" elements, when in reality, you have only the superiors and their offspring. What needs to happen is you trim the array to be twice the size of the number of superiors, representing each "superior" organism producing 1 child - that is, each male/female pair producing a pair of offspring. Multiply the array by a bigger number if you wish.
As for your array test, try this: Every time you fill the array, go ahead and remove the "inferior" elements, and then multiply the remaining elements by the number of offspring each survivor has.
I wrote a PHP script that will run this for you. Start with a population of 10,000. We'll be generous and say each survivor produces 50 offspring capable of reproducing. Remember, we're talking not only 1-cell organisms - we're talking higher life forms. This does not factor in predators, illness, weather, or other factors that can shrink a population.
Sorry, there's no validation. If you're going to deliberately ignore things, there's no way to validate anything for you. Wait; I'll write it in the next edition of the Bible and you'll agree to it. Right?
There is no validation...? I was asking for a link to something such as a paper written by a qualified scientest explaining this principle. What you're saying is that because it's not part of a closed system, it doesn't follow entropy. Ok, great. Back it up, and I'll concede the point.
There's a load of examples. Again, you're just ignoring selectively what does not fit your world view. Don't worry about it. You're wrong, and you'll just be wrong. Hey. Not everyone can be right.
Again, back it up, and I'll concede the point. In my years of reading countless/. debates, studying this issue, and debating it myself, I've yet to come across solid, physical proof of Macroevolution. You all say it's out there...maybe let me see it?
Again, we've only measured it in such a way that you simply deliberately ignore and refuse to see.
I can just as easily say that I've measured that 2 + 2 == 5. But you're going to want some examples, at the very least. "Measured it in such a way that I refuse to see"?! What is that way? I am quite open to learning about it. But, again, I've yet to be shown it.
It's kinda like saying "Just because" or "it's too hard to explain". Doesn't cut it. If our teachers in the public school system can understand it, and the students learning it can understand it, then I do think that I can. But I'm not going to take ambiguous "just because" answers as fact. It's been my intent and effort to debate in a respectful, factual manner. I guess I shouldn't have expected as much from an AC.
Rei, thanks for your logical, well thought out replies. I'm enjoying this. And just want to say that I'm not trying to tread on anyone's toes - I'm just feeling particularly debateful today:D
A species doesn't just change. Its traits slowly change, and in the absense of interbreeding between certain groups, branches. A bonobo doesn't just suddenly lose all its hair and start making swords (though, to be fair to them, they do make flint knives on occasion). Over the course of several hundred thousand to several million years, their traits change slightly. For example, donkeys are about 1-2 million years apart from horses and zebras. It took 2 million years to have such little changes as coat color and some facial features. Smaller species evolve more rapidly - fruit flies being one of the most common breeding species for such studies, are an easy example. In our lives, we've seen even smaller species, such as bacteria, change almost beyond recognition.
On the contrary, you appear to not entirely understand evolution.
Your claim essentially states that all life on the planet is all the same species with radically different traits. I'd be hard-pressed to say I'm the same species as a humming bird, or a tiger.
Yes, features change. Intra-species evolution. Species do not. I have brown hair, my mom has blond. Different genes. Hardly evolution. Under evolution, yes, those genes would have to become a part of our DNA, but they aren't evolution! Different features != evolution!
Evolving a facial feature is quite different from say, evolving legs instead of fins.
Mutations are very rarely beneficial to adding new alleles to the gene pool. As such, you're gonna have to go through a veritable mountain of mutations before you get even one that advances the species. Mathematically, you would have encountered mutations that would have contributed to the elimination of the species long before you reached that beneficial one.
From your Talk Origins site:
It is estimated that the smallest possible self replicating species would contain 124 separate protein chains. With each made of 400 aa-molecules.
-Probability of forming one protein chain of 400 links (all L-type) from a mixture of 50/50 D- and L-forms is 1 in 10^114.
- Probability for 124 seperate chains being created out of chance, each containing 400 links of L-type molecules from a mixture of D- and L- forms is 1 in 10^14,136.
- Probability for 124 properly sequenced protein chains being formed by chance alone is 1 in 10^64,480.
- Probability for 124 protein chains to have been formed from L-type molecules alone from a 50/50 mixture of D and L types 1 in 10^78,616. To produce these 124-x400 L type chains would require DNA with 148,800 nucleotides. This doesent even reflect the 124 x 6 codons for go/stop punctuation.
- Probability of forming one DNA strand of 148,800 nucleotides is 1 in 10^89,280.
Now....the probability for this one example of DNA amd 124 chains to have formed by chance alone simultaneously is 1 in 10^167,896.
WE HAVE NOT EVEN GOTTON TO A COMPLETE PROBABILITY FOR A WHOLE CELL YET. AND WE HAVENT EVEN TOUCHED UPON THE PROGRAMING FOR DNA TO CARRY ALL THIS OUT.
Even at the high end of 8 billion years, you don't have anywhere near enough time.
By contrast, in 8 billion years, there have been 4.7*10^17 seconds. And that's at 366 days a year.
That means you'd have to try approximately 40,000 combonations every second to achieve one example of those 124 chains by today. And look where life is.
Mathematical impossibility is defined as an event requiring more time to occur than there has been time for it to occur. By such definition, the formation of a cell from a primordial soup of material is mathematically impossible. That's one cell. Repeat that process an innumerable number of times till you get an organism that can survive and reproduce. Throw in a few trillion more years to eventually evolve to man.
If evolution was occuring so quickly, I would be a radically different organism from my parents, and I would look absolutely nothing like my grandparents.
Uncomfortable yet?
Math is one of the few things we know to be absolute. And the odds don't lie.
Perhaps you "get lucky", hit that wild chance, and get an organism to come together. Boom, it's killed by solar radiation.
Game over. Do not pass go, do not collect your parent's alleles. Back to square one.
Now, if you want to recalculate the age of the universe to several quadrillion years, I'll be willing to rethink it. But then you have to back up your claim for the age.
Standard disclaimer: Yeah, this is fundie crap. Go ahead and mod me down. But read it first.
"Violating entropy" is an old saw shot down by physicists time and again. "Overall entropy" says nothing about local entropy. To see another violation of entropy in exactly the same manner as life, take a look at your air conditioner. And no, that an AC unit is "intelligently designed" doesn't make the principal invalid.
Can you point me to anything validating that? And why does intelligent design not invalidate the AC argument?
Thank goodness! Moreover, if God were creating the universe, why make a male and a female? Why not an androgynous, peaceful, asexual society where men won't rage around fighting natural temptation to be the alpha male, leaving trails of orphans everywhere. Good one, God.
Genesis 2:7...the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:18-23
The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adamno suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called `woman,' for she was taken out of man."
We get the "alpha male run around, screw and fight" from original sin. We were made perfect, and given free will, with which we promptly screwed up.
Evolution is so powerful that if God were to create the universe as-is, we know enough that evolution would commence immediately on the then-existing species. God would have to take an active role in stopping evolution (which would then be detectable by science, BTW.)
Really? Then why have we never witnessed inter-species evolution? Intra-species, yes, but there has -never- been an example of one species becoming another.
Ironically, the quote at the bottom of the page today reads "You cannot have a science without measurement." --R. W. Hamming
We have never "measured" evolution. We hypothesize about it. It's as much a religion as Christianity.
A tumor is "living human tissue" yet we have no trouble killing those cells.
You are "living human tissue". Would you have a problem if we killed you?
Tumors don't exactly become other people.
The rest of yor ideas are similarly fucked. Please effect reapir before rejoining society.
The rest of your reasoning has holes large enough to drive a truck through. Please repair your logic (Not to mention spelling ability!) before rejoining society.
And just because lots of people don't believe something doesn't make it not true. Regardless of what you or I believe, truth is truth.
As to your supposed lack of evidence, there's plenty. For example, note that the Universe exhibits intelligent design. Explain how you can get complex life and thought from time + chance. The law of entropy states otherwise. If the law of entropy holds true, order cannot come from disorder. And therefore, everything is random. Including your thoughts. Which completely invalidates any and all argument you may make, because they are naught but random noise. Before you go citing a logic FAQ, consider that a prerequisite to logic is the ability to reason.
Explain how random process managed to create life thousands, if not millions of times over. The scientific fact is that mutations are simply almost never beneficial. The harmful mutations would have eliminated the species before the helpful ones took over. Yes, I know about the moths. Adapting a characteristic is hardly the same as inter-species evolution. Last time I checked, they were still moths.
Explain how scientests have never been able to create life in a laboratory, even with our intricate knowledge of biological systems.
Explain why the earth isn't stuffed full of trans-species fossils. If you've got millions of years of animals evolving, unless you have animals with the lifespan of several hundred millinnea, they're going to be dying and leaving traces. Given that amount of time, such fossils should be everywhere. But they're not.
Explain sexual reproduction. It's irreducibly complex and logically unnecessary. Why do we have it then? Just for pr0n?
Explain humanity. We think, we reason, we talk, we invent. No other animal exhibits these characteristics. Mentally, we're the highest life form on the face of the planet. Why not physically then? Does evolution decide to enhance one characteristic and not another? Remember, it's random. Go roll a die 400 times and tell me with a straight face that you're going to get a certain non-uniform distribution of numbers.
It points to a higher intelligence. But of course, that can't be possible because it means that you might actually have to adopt a little humility and acknowledge that there is a power higher than yourself.
So much easier to just not believe it, huh? Gets rid of a lot of those ugly responsibilities and moral obligations.
Slashdot Mirror
Targeting innocent civillians for the simple reason of causing destruction is wrong. Killing some in strikes against military targets is inevitable. It's not a pretty price, but one you have to pay.
Your example of "ask if killing people who try to intimidate you into their way of life" is not appropriate because it's a use of overkill. You're marginalizing the situation. People trying to intimidate you aren't trying to kill you - people waging a war against you are. Bit of a difference there.
So are you saying we simply ignore this? Turn a blind eye? Bin Laden is interested in the destruction of the American government, people, and country, and has used force to attempt to accomplish that goal. Dunno what nationality you are, but when someone attempts to destroy my country unprovoked, it's on.
Wake up the big dogs and you get bitten hard. Bin Laden's about to find that out.
I, too am on a college campus. While there hasn't been a largly visible "anti-war" movement, my dad wrote this up, and sent it to me...
What to do if you happen upon a peace rally by naive hemp-shirt-wearing college idiots, to teach them why force is sometimes needed:
1) Approach dumb rich ignorant student talking about "peace" and saying there should be, "no retaliation."
2) Engage in brief conversation, ask if military force is appropriate.
3) When he says "No," ask, "Why not?"
4) Wait until he says something to the effect of, "Because that would just cause more innocent deaths, which would be awful and we should not cause more violence."
5) When he's in mid sentence, punch him in the face as hard as you can.
6) When he gets back up to up to punch you, point out that it would be a mistake and contrary to his values to strike you, because that would, "be awful and he should not cause more violence."
7) Wait until he agrees that he has pledged not to commit additional violence.
8) Punch him in the face again, harder this time.
Repeat steps 5 through 8 until they understand that sometimes it is necessary to punch back.
...to something else...
What do you want to bet?
Time to install a little tool known as the Proxomitron. Haven't seen an X10 ad in ages :)
I have computers in my English class. You're SUPPOSED to type your papers on them and such.
I find that emulators run quite nicely over the network off my computer back at the dorm :)
You can't stick me in a class next to a computer and expect me to pay attention. Ain't happening, screensaver or no.
I'm the unofficial tech for my residence hall, and make a lot of "fix my computer" calls. You'd be suprised how many "Absolut" and other such products are featured prominately on my neighbors screens :)
In Executive Orders, terrorists flew a plane into the White House, killing most of the major gov't officials that were there for a ceremony. Sound famaliar?
Don't remember which book it is (Never finished it), but there's one about a small terrorist group gathering materials and machining a nuclear bomb to set off in a football stadium in Colorado. The possibility of it seemed to be almost zero...but so did the possibility of a hijacked plane being flown into the Pentagon. What's scary is that it's not as hard as it seems. With bin Laden's resources, he could have procured the materials and gotten people to carry a nuke-in-a-briefcase into the WTC, and taken out all of Manhattan. Not that I'm saying what happened isn't terrible - it is - but the possibilities for terrorists these days are WAY past frightening.
Terrorists don't care about diplomacy, they don't care about the politics, they care about causing pain, terror, death, and destruction. How are we supposed to fight an enemy that is free to use weaspons many times more destructive than our government will dare to use? How can you guarantee safty?
Look at me...I'm turning into a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
I think it'd be kinad fun to take the match, "edit" it so that you have all kinds of camera angles, and get voiceovers done "radio style" of the chat logs. Maybe an announcer voiceover, too.
It's the virtual version of the implementation of the story behind UT.
I'm just gonna reply to the script part, since the office is closing down, and it's time to go home :)
.5% beneficial, the population's going to be killed off by the harmful mutations before it evolves the beneficial ones that would change it into a different species.
Basically, that given a certain population, if each "round" (loop) of mutation is 99.5% harmful and
Or did I completely miss what you were trying to say?
Basically, that line that confused you was my "reproduction" simulation - the survivors have offspring - in this case, 50 offspring per survivor, making the total population 50 times as large. The process is then repeated.
Thanks for the link! I've not seen this before. It's going to make for some interesting reading!
/. posts, but I've managed to get completely offtopic in the process ^_^
Yes, I read your post on the thermodynamics. I'll have to do a little research into it before I can properly reply to it.
THIS is what I've hoped to accomplish by this - get some information I've not yet heard and learn about it. I readily admit that I've been taught a 1-sided view, which I do believe is very valid, and I'll do my best to defend. But I'm perfectly open to learning and thinking on the subject. Possibly the worst thing one can do is refuse to learn.
Best regards to you, Rei, eviloverlordx, and Bobo. It's quite pleasant, albeit different, to debate with people who can not only give logical answers, but back them up.
I'm going to do some reading on speciation and crossbreeding, and see what I come up with.
I do believe I've not only spent the entire day replying to
Certainly. Given that evolution's fact, there has to be life on other planets. We don't know enough about the universe yet to really say one way or another, but it's mathematically impossible for it to be otherwise.
:)
:D
Do be careful with your usage of the phrases "It's well known" and "it's most likely" and such - more a subscription to belief than fact. If you want most likely, I'll haul out Occam's Razor. But that's beside the point
You are right about all reactions not being equal - good point. I tend to think on the mathematics from a more numerically abstract viewpoint. However, there are other things to take into account - such "free floating components" would be highly susceptible to solar radiation, corrosion by oxygen, and corrosive or otherwise harmful chemicals no doubt present in a primordial soup. Not all chemicals would have been beneficial - in fact, most would have been harmful. If you've got concentrations that can form proteins, you're gonna have the primordial equivalent of bug spray in there, too.
As for the Bible quotes, I'm not asking you to believe it. Simply putting out my POV on the matter.
Good thing I have karma to burn. I think I've already earned 2 "Flamebait"s and 3 "Troll"s today!
The debunking makes some rather amazing claims in and of itself, and as such, can hardly be billed as debunking. It argues that the first living things are much, much simpler than modern day simple organisms. While I see the logic in this hypothesis, the hole in it lies in that were such the case, these organisms should still be around today, and in great abundance as they would not only have to have the ability to replicate quickly in order to survive, but in time, they would have evolved even faster methods of replication. An argument saying that such organisms will have long dies out is in and of itself just plain silly. If they could spontaneously generate once (Or however many times it took), they could do it again.
:D
To my knowledge (And please let me know if there are counterexamples), there are no self-replicating, living molecules or strands of RNA. If they could survive to evolve, they should still be around.
This is a classic scientific fallacy - take a hypothesis and look for evidence supporting the hypothesis, rather than the opposite method of observing and formulating a hypothesis based on observations. This is a mistake commonly made by both sides, and it is rather frustrating to have people conducting research in such a manner, regardless of which viewpoint you subscribe to.
The debunking talks about "modern" organisms. Does this mean that older organisms have disappeared? If this is so, why is it that there are organisms that are evolutionally inferior to other organisms? Wouldn't they have been wiped out in the same manner that the "ancient" organisms were? To my knowledge, there is no relatively simple organism that has *ever* been classified as "endangered".
Species - I'm not terribly anxious to get in an argument over the definition of a word. It is just a word - but so are all forms of communication. If it's "just a word" with no concrete meaning we're gonna have serious problems communicating.
With that out of the way, here's what I understand you to be saying: over time, organisms, due to circumstance, have developed different traits that differentiate them from each other, hence forming new species.
From an abstract standpoint, it's a very inviting and seemingly solid concept. It applies to a lot that is in our world, but not necessarily to life.
rememebr, a trait only dissapears if there's a disadvantage to having it any more - a fully developed leg is only important if you plan to spent a significant amount of time on land - many semi-legged fish use their legs to walk across dry land to get to new ponds
How will a fish being able to drag itself from one pond to another cause it's offspring to have an enhanced ability to do so? What could cause genetic mutations that would be passed on to later generations?
If a fish could survive in the ocean, there's no reason why it would need to leave the ocean, and therefore, no need to develop such traits. Even if a host body of water were to dry up, the fish would die, lacking the capability to move to another pond because before such circumstances, there was no reason for the mutation - it would have caused drag in the water and been unnecessary - and when the need develops, they don't have the capability to survive it. They die. This mutation relies on the fact that their genes knew that 300 generations down the road their ancestors would have to walk to another pond, even though original didn't need and would never need the legs to survive. I'm not sure that even the foremost evolutionists could argue that successfully.
The crux of the matter is that creatures would have to develop such capabilties to survive, but if they needed to develop them, they wouldn't have them, and therefore, not survive. Like the joke goes, "Chances are, if your parents didn't have children, you probably won't, either."
Your array logic is faulty, because you assume that all "inferior" elements will be replaced by "superior" elements, when in reality, you have only the superiors and their offspring. What needs to happen is you trim the array to be twice the size of the number of superiors, representing each "superior" organism producing 1 child - that is, each male/female pair producing a pair of offspring. Multiply the array by a bigger number if you wish.
As for your array test, try this: Every time you fill the array, go ahead and remove the "inferior" elements, and then multiply the remaining elements by the number of offspring each survivor has.
I wrote a PHP script that will run this for you. Start with a population of 10,000. We'll be generous and say each survivor produces 50 offspring capable of reproducing. Remember, we're talking not only 1-cell organisms - we're talking higher life forms. This does not factor in predators, illness, weather, or other factors that can shrink a population.
Script and source at:
http://tachyonsix.com/evo.php - script
http://tachyonsix.com/evo.txt - source
It takes only 4-6 "generations" for the species to become extinct.
I'd go on, but I lost my train of thought writing that script.
But the court...ordered Rambus to pay $7.1 million in Infineon's legal fees.
Oh, to be an Infineon lawyer for a day...
...all three of them.
Yeah, but "viruses" doesn't rhyme with "jedi".
It's called a sense of humor. Try one out some time. Geez, somebody needs a laxative...
(To the AC)
/. debates, studying this issue, and debating it myself, I've yet to come across solid, physical proof of Macroevolution. You all say it's out there...maybe let me see it?
:D
Sorry, there's no validation. If you're going to deliberately ignore things, there's no way to validate anything for you. Wait; I'll write it in the next edition of the Bible and you'll agree to it. Right?
There is no validation...? I was asking for a link to something such as a paper written by a qualified scientest explaining this principle. What you're saying is that because it's not part of a closed system, it doesn't follow entropy. Ok, great. Back it up, and I'll concede the point.
There's a load of examples. Again, you're just ignoring selectively what does not fit your world view. Don't worry about it. You're wrong, and you'll just be wrong. Hey. Not everyone can be right.
Again, back it up, and I'll concede the point. In my years of reading countless
Again, we've only measured it in such a way that you simply deliberately ignore and refuse to see.
I can just as easily say that I've measured that 2 + 2 == 5. But you're going to want some examples, at the very least. "Measured it in such a way that I refuse to see"?! What is that way? I am quite open to learning about it. But, again, I've yet to be shown it.
It's kinda like saying "Just because" or "it's too hard to explain". Doesn't cut it. If our teachers in the public school system can understand it, and the students learning it can understand it, then I do think that I can. But I'm not going to take ambiguous "just because" answers as fact. It's been my intent and effort to debate in a respectful, factual manner. I guess I shouldn't have expected as much from an AC.
Rei, thanks for your logical, well thought out replies. I'm enjoying this. And just want to say that I'm not trying to tread on anyone's toes - I'm just feeling particularly debateful today
On the contrary, you appear to not entirely understand evolution.
Your claim essentially states that all life on the planet is all the same species with radically different traits. I'd be hard-pressed to say I'm the same species as a humming bird, or a tiger.
Yes, features change. Intra-species evolution. Species do not. I have brown hair, my mom has blond. Different genes. Hardly evolution. Under evolution, yes, those genes would have to become a part of our DNA, but they aren't evolution! Different features != evolution!
Evolving a facial feature is quite different from say, evolving legs instead of fins.
Mutations are very rarely beneficial to adding new alleles to the gene pool. As such, you're gonna have to go through a veritable mountain of mutations before you get even one that advances the species. Mathematically, you would have encountered mutations that would have contributed to the elimination of the species long before you reached that beneficial one.
From your Talk Origins site:
Even at the high end of 8 billion years, you don't have anywhere near enough time.
By contrast, in 8 billion years, there have been 4.7*10^17 seconds. And that's at 366 days a year.
That means you'd have to try approximately 40,000 combonations every second to achieve one example of those 124 chains by today. And look where life is.
Mathematical impossibility is defined as an event requiring more time to occur than there has been time for it to occur. By such definition, the formation of a cell from a primordial soup of material is mathematically impossible. That's one cell. Repeat that process an innumerable number of times till you get an organism that can survive and reproduce. Throw in a few trillion more years to eventually evolve to man.
If evolution was occuring so quickly, I would be a radically different organism from my parents, and I would look absolutely nothing like my grandparents.
Uncomfortable yet?
Math is one of the few things we know to be absolute. And the odds don't lie.
Perhaps you "get lucky", hit that wild chance, and get an organism to come together. Boom, it's killed by solar radiation.
Game over. Do not pass go, do not collect your parent's alleles. Back to square one.
Now, if you want to recalculate the age of the universe to several quadrillion years, I'll be willing to rethink it. But then you have to back up your claim for the age.
He knows a girl with a Revenge on the Jedi shirt. Does that not just say "she-geek" to you?
Code Red: A New Worm
Code Red: Microsoft Strikes Back
Code Red: Return of the Virii
Code Red: The Not-so Phantom Menace
And finally...
Code Red: Attack of the Clones
Standard disclaimer: Yeah, this is fundie crap. Go ahead and mod me down. But read it first.
...the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
"Violating entropy" is an old saw shot down by physicists time and again. "Overall entropy" says nothing about local entropy. To see another violation of entropy in exactly the same manner as life, take a look at your air conditioner. And no, that an AC unit is "intelligently designed" doesn't make the principal invalid.
Can you point me to anything validating that? And why does intelligent design not invalidate the AC argument?
Thank goodness! Moreover, if God were creating the universe, why make a male and a female? Why not an androgynous, peaceful, asexual society where men won't rage around fighting natural temptation to be the alpha male, leaving trails of orphans everywhere. Good one, God.
Genesis 2:7
Genesis 2:18-23
The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adamno suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called `woman,' for she was taken out of man."
We get the "alpha male run around, screw and fight" from original sin. We were made perfect, and given free will, with which we promptly screwed up.
Evolution is so powerful that if God were to create the universe as-is, we know enough that evolution would commence immediately on the then-existing species. God would have to take an active role in stopping evolution (which would then be detectable by science, BTW.)
Really? Then why have we never witnessed inter-species evolution? Intra-species, yes, but there has -never- been an example of one species becoming another.
Ironically, the quote at the bottom of the page today reads "You cannot have a science without measurement." --R. W. Hamming
We have never "measured" evolution. We hypothesize about it. It's as much a religion as Christianity.
A tumor is "living human tissue" yet we have no trouble killing those cells.
You are "living human tissue". Would you have a problem if we killed you?
Tumors don't exactly become other people.
The rest of yor ideas are similarly fucked. Please effect reapir before rejoining society.
The rest of your reasoning has holes large enough to drive a truck through. Please repair your logic (Not to mention spelling ability!) before rejoining society.
And just because lots of people don't believe something doesn't make it not true. Regardless of what you or I believe, truth is truth.
As to your supposed lack of evidence, there's plenty. For example, note that the Universe exhibits intelligent design. Explain how you can get complex life and thought from time + chance. The law of entropy states otherwise. If the law of entropy holds true, order cannot come from disorder. And therefore, everything is random. Including your thoughts. Which completely invalidates any and all argument you may make, because they are naught but random noise. Before you go citing a logic FAQ, consider that a prerequisite to logic is the ability to reason.
Explain how random process managed to create life thousands, if not millions of times over. The scientific fact is that mutations are simply almost never beneficial. The harmful mutations would have eliminated the species before the helpful ones took over. Yes, I know about the moths. Adapting a characteristic is hardly the same as inter-species evolution. Last time I checked, they were still moths.
Explain how scientests have never been able to create life in a laboratory, even with our intricate knowledge of biological systems.
Explain why the earth isn't stuffed full of trans-species fossils. If you've got millions of years of animals evolving, unless you have animals with the lifespan of several hundred millinnea, they're going to be dying and leaving traces. Given that amount of time, such fossils should be everywhere. But they're not.
Explain sexual reproduction. It's irreducibly complex and logically unnecessary. Why do we have it then? Just for pr0n?
Explain humanity. We think, we reason, we talk, we invent. No other animal exhibits these characteristics. Mentally, we're the highest life form on the face of the planet. Why not physically then? Does evolution decide to enhance one characteristic and not another? Remember, it's random. Go roll a die 400 times and tell me with a straight face that you're going to get a certain non-uniform distribution of numbers.
It points to a higher intelligence. But of course, that can't be possible because it means that you might actually have to adopt a little humility and acknowledge that there is a power higher than yourself.
So much easier to just not believe it, huh? Gets rid of a lot of those ugly responsibilities and moral obligations.
Just food for thought.
what computers can and can't teach
You forgot anatomy.