Evoluton Revisited

Thanks, B-Bob. Growing up, my Dad used to tell me that that we used gravity, magnetism, and other things fundamental to technology, particularly that related to electronics, without truly understanding them. He was a department chair for 30 years at "a major Houston university" in technology, and did consulting around the world in his spare time. Quite probably, I didn't really understand what he was saying at the time, although it stuck with me. He's been gone for 25 years, so he's not around to ask. By the way, he was agnostic, as am I.



D&D. Imeach Goofus and His Goof.

 

Jesus wept.

 

Deck, you're welcome.

ArtV, I mean this respectfully. I just don't think we're using the same logic systems, so I can't try to answer those questions. I literally don't understand them, in that evolution doesn't want a chicken to emerge from an amoeba, and it doesn't want changes to happen over the lunch hour. And I guess my posts are similarly misunderstood. So we can agree to just have different outlooks I hope. Cheers.

 

Yeah, it does happen. With regards to evolution, ideas such as Intelligent Design are a throwback to the days of Creationism and strictly enforced Roman Catholic dogma. The idea itself isn't very original or even revolutionary. If it's not a political wedge, then it's being used to revise current evolutionary theory rather than as new model to build upon.

And because of its political nature, you'll meet more entrenchment by the scientists and researchers that they're sure to come off as elitist even with their best intentions. It's hard for many scientists to discuss the ideas of evolution when political forces are attempting (and have been successful to some extent) to improve curricula by watering the fundamentals of biology down. A gauge of these political movement's success lies in what's taught elsewhere in countries who aspire to catch up to our dominance in biotech and genomics.

I think the fact behind that misconception is hard to accept for some religious people who believe humanity has a higher goal. However, I don't think it's mutually exclusive, so I'll explain. Evolution teaches that there is no ultimate state and that species adapt to their environment. Over time, the favorable traits lead to a change in the population. If the favorable traits are still the most favorable, then you'll see little to no change.

The misconception is that because we evolved higher intelligence, then it's assumed that that leap and subsequent "human improvements" would be standard for all animals over time. But many species, like alligators and sharks have existed for hundreds of millions of years and dwarf the existence of our theorized primate and mammalian ancestors.

For all we know, higher intelligence could be unique to humans. After all, where are the aliens? Or maybe it happens a lot but the species are worse off with it (higher energy and developmental requirements) and they don't keep the trait.

Furthermore, complexity is an arbitrary standard. If it's the number of genes an organism has, then humans lose out to organisms like flies and plants. If you were to make an eye to eye comparison between a starfish and a jelly fish, you'd think they were both created at the same time in a more primative earth. Yet starfishes are more related to us and even share similar stages in embryonic development.

So it's hard to tell, we might have the genes and protein codings for a complex brain, but one day heavy thinking might not be necessary. Then that energy intense brain is allowed to shut down and turn to mush even if the DNA codes are still there, albeit in a dormant and junk state.

Human defined complexity is possible, but it shouldn't be assumed.

But even if that's the case, it doesn't disqualify the purpose any Higher Power has for humanity in the here and now. Most religions emphasize our actions in the here and now, so long term theories in evolution shouldn't be too large a conflict for the faithful, in my opinion.

 

Three eh, here are four pics of gravity in action for you (five if you count the dog).






Observe the total lack of anyone floating or flying.

 

With all due respect, by reading your questions, it's easy to see you obviously don't have the slightest clue on how evolution works. I would advise you to read a book or two on the subject.
I have absolutely no idea what you are asking in that first paragraph, I don't understand what your point is and I don't know what the "miracle monkey" is.
As for the chicken who "came around" at the same time the rooster "came around"....Species don't appear like that. There is no "specie before chicken" that all of a sudden magically gave birth to a chicken. That's not how it works.

 

If you go that way, I can find thousands of pictures where gravity is obviously not in action for some people:



If I follow your logic, I just proved the theory of gravity is wrong thanks to T-Mac.

 

Gravity is wrong...


In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person

 

Well, actually the article says that the Casimir effect is real. Very different conclusion, but still *very* cool.

The Casimir effect, unlike most of quantum mechanics, has real and relevant analogies to physics of large objects.

Centuries ago, naval captains noticed that two ships in the open ocean, if they drew near and parallel to one another, would slowly be pushed together by waves. That's because the open ocean supports a greater variety of different waves than the small space between the ships can support.

The same basic idea means that two tiny objects, on small scales, just in a vacuum, will magically be pushed together, (because quantum predicts wavelengths of energy existing even in a complete vacuum). Or, if this report from St. Andrews holds up, objects can apparently be pushed apart. So damned cool! But don't get too excited about levitation -- the Casimir force is incredibly weak. It is the Ostertag of forces.

 

You didn't follow my logic at all. T-Mac jumped. He exerted a force with his legs that was strong enough to overcome the force of gravity that was pulling him toward earth. Once that force was no longer being exerted, he no longer accelerated away from the earth, and his upward velocity was reduced at a constant rate until he landed again (briefly interrupted by his hanging on the rim).

Someone came up with a way to overcome gravitational forces?!?



That was a neat article though. That picture looks more like magnetic levitation than some experimental Casimir levitation.

 

This is very true, and another thing they discovered was how an island with high cliffs, in the open ocean, could "pull in" a ship caught unawares. Patrick O'Brian used this in one of his novels, which were based, as far as the naval stuff goes, on real events. I'm trying to remember the island, which is in the Mid- or South Atlantic. It'll come to me later, darn it.



D&D. Impeach Oval Office Guy and His Mental Orifice.

 

By looking at the picture, you can only see him hanging in the air. How do you know he jumped ? How do you know there was not some special magnet that attracted him to the rim ? Sure, your assumptions are most likely correct (I'm not trying to disprove gravity ) but you can't see all that from that picture.

 

What a bunch of nerds.

 

Definitely, but it's the most civil evolution thread I've ever seen. Maybe all the photos and all the tangents help!

 

It has nothing to do with faith, and I guess this is the problem with why many people of faith have a problem with evolution. If you've never been close to science, perhaps the way things are done on those CSI type TV shows would be a good analogy. A series of pieces of evidence are put together to form a picture sometimes new pieces of evidence in those shows change the details halfway through the show, but the general picture remains.

The faith based approach to CSI would be to look around and find who looks the most guilty and charge them with the crime. I don’t mean this to be insulting. I appreciate and enjoy the power of faith but it should always be tempered with the wisdom and intelligence that God gave you.

BTW its rooster. 'The roster' undeniably is a product of creationism, specifically by Daryl Morey and Caroll Dawson.

Finally, I think the biggest problem in dealing with evolution comes from the 4.4 Billion year time scale. Man turned wolf to dog in 15,000 years. Repeat that period of 15,000 years 30,000 times and you are in the ballpark for the beginning of life. When thinking of that sort of periods people begin to just think really big.

 

It kinda does:

“I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection” – British biologist, Richard Dawkins

But please don't include me too much in this argument. I'm tired. And I don't really care all that much, anyway...at least right now.

 

First off I don't know why people bring up the Big Bang when talking about evolution. The theory of the Big Bang has nothing to do with the theory of evolution as one is a physical theory while the other is a biological theory. The Big Bang deals with the creation of the universe which is considered to have happened about 15 billion years ago while evolution deals with the speciation of life which started about 3.5 billion years ago. For that matter evolution isn't a theory of how life started either but about how different species of life came about. At the moment there isn't a scientific about how life came about.

As for there is some sort of super transformer plasma there is two called DNA and RNA. The ability of chemicals to encode information and replicate themselves is the basis of life which is why every living thing, that we know of, has DNA, RNA or both. If you're wondering about how there could be such a great diversity of species consider how many computer programs there are out there. At the core all of that information is binary but form that you get an unlimited diversity.

The next thing you have to consider is the immense amount of time involved. Speciation isn't a fast thing and we are talking about a scale of billions of years. Even the Cambrian Explosion covered a period of tens of millions of years. For comparison it took us 3 million years to go from Australio Pithecus to Homo Sapien.

As for amoebas as I said in my earlier posts evolution isn't a lineal process and descendent species don't necessarily wipe out their precursor species. It depends on the what the environment is. Ameobas still exist because there are environmental niches that they fill. That said if some ameobas changed the world would be nothing but ameobas. The problem is though ameobas are constantly changing, the ameobas now aren't the same amoebas 3 billion years ago, eventually a few mutate and find they can exploit another ecological niche or create a whole new one, some of those other ones mutate and find that helps them and they move onto another niche and so on and so on.

The next thing you have to consider is that the Earth itself is dynamic. At one point there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere but as more oxygen occured microbes that had a mutation that allowed them to use oxygen took over. That didn't mean that microbes who couldn't use oxygen died out. They still remain in places with little oxygen.

Finally people always try to challenge evolution by bringing up the odds of how things could end up this way. Well if you think about it from the beginining of the Universe what is the odds that anything will happen? What are the odds that it would be Friday night and I am typing this up rather than having a beer? If you are talking about odds if you take the whole history of the Universe then everything is miraculous. Evolution doesn't answer the question of why things occured in such a way only seeking to understand how they did. That is why Evolution is in no way incompatible with a belief in God. Whether God exist or not isn't a question that evolution addresses.

 

So you have faith that the folx on CSI have done things right but not evolutionary scientists? Consider that many of the techniques used by CSI were developed by scientists working on evolution such as anthropology and archeaology.