Hawking, you douche. In your effort to sell your books with your meaningless and empty opinion, you've made the Hangout into a 2nd D&D.
On evolution - We're taught to respect and treasure the evolutionary process. We're to protect all the living organisms, have humility and don't impede on the natural wonders that makes us. We're to consider creation blessed. Yet there's so many branches of science that basically s*its all over natural evolution with wanting to genetically rewire everything. Cuz there's more "efficient", "safe", "advanced" way to do things. God's not allowed to create, but my stem cells are. Its seems as long as you're "epic" with a scientific discovery is what matters more over preserving anything. Who cares what form humanity takes if you can be the next Isaac Newton. Institutions under the science umbrella doubt the existence of God and teaches us instead to respect nature. Though it appears they want to have some of that intelligent design, they want to be the architects of humanity, therefore playing God. God doesnt exist, but scientist can sure flatter God with mild imitations. At least some atheist biologists have world views they think is healthier for our long term good. What I dont like are BITTER militant atheists, people that would rather be right above all else, even above having hope for humanity. Even above being happy themselves. They've destructed everything down to meaningless random chaos and are content with that as reality. Actually I think there's plenty of people like that in the scientific field.
you misunderstood my point, and I fully understand what you are saying. My point was that I believe it is absurd to stretch the process of natural selection to epic proportions solely on the basis of the "long a$$ time" it's been taking place. No matter how many damn mutations a bacteria has experienced over a bazillion gazillion years, it didn't "evolve" into the ridiculously complex beings known as humans. Think of how complex and developed our brains are, think of our ability to reason, think of all the developments and innovations human beings achieved, that didn't come from no damn random mutations and entities with those various mutations being better suited for the environment and thus survived better, and in turn developed more beneficial mutations and repeat x 1000^1000000000 times until that little unicellular bacteria turned into Albert Einstein contemplating the realities of the universe and our very existence and formulating his theory of special relativity.
Because ... it doesn't seem possible to you? You should probably develop that for your microbiology PHD thesis.
Our ability to reason and innovate is a relatively new occurrence. Human civilization started about 10,000 years ago. The human species popped into existence around 1 million years ago, give or take a few hundred thousand years. Life was evolving for billions of years before that. Yes, it seems astonishing to witness the grandeur of life on this planet and to think that it came about through natural processes. But that's just because we have a hard time comprehending time scales on the order of a billion years. Its completely outside our experience. To put it in perspective, suppose January 1st 2010 is when the earth was formed, and we are now at 12 am, January 1st, 2011. Human civilization and recorded history spans back to around 30 seconds ago. When our experience is confined to such a tiny time window, how can we eliminate the possibility that life could have evolved over the preceding year? Scientific theories are a way for us to understand the world around us; to explain why things we observe are the way they are, and to also make predictions on things we've yet to observe. Evolution is the best such theory we have. Here's what it comes down to. You said that "macro-evolution" is mere extrapolation. That's not the case. There is a ton of evidence for it. There is a vast number of things we've observed that can only be made sense from if we take evolution via common descent to be true. Its the best framework we have to explain the distribution of species on our planet, why species have evolved the way they have, where they came from, how long they've been around, how related various species are, etc. There is no other "theory" out there (including Intelligent Design) that can answer these kind of questions.
Actually, a lot of the bad science from old times came from the prejudices of religious leaders. Ancient Greeks knew the world was round, then someone in authority decided it wasn't, but that wasn't based on anything scientific. Ancient Greeks thought up the idea of the atom, then Aristotle decided that everything was made up of only four (?) elements. Because he was a respected authority, that became popular. Again, no science there. The Earth being the center of the universe was based on religious principles as well. I also somewhat disagree with your assertion that science is faith that is willing to be proven wrong. The faith isn't in the results, but rather in the process.
Democritus is the first known thinker to propose a theory of atoms, but his wasn't exactly scientific either. In fact, he thought atoms were completely indivisible, which we now know is not true. Interestingly, Anaxagoras, who came before Democritus, proposed a theory of first principles (basically, what kind of stuff the universe is made of) in which everything is infinitely divisible, which is closer to modern conceptions. Empedocles, writing around the same time as Anaxagoras, described the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water--about 100 years before Aristotle.
Back before electricity was invented. Almost everyone depended on the stars, for agriculture, time and to predict events. Now there are very few who follow the stars. What are your thoughts about 2012? Next Y2k? Doomsday? Me personally think it will be another regular day but of course I'll be getting ****ed up.
What are you talking about? With a few clicks on the keyboard, I can track Lindsay Lohan's ankle bracelet coordinates.
So you use the stars to stalk the craziness fire crotch. That's cool I don't judge. Anyways what I'm talking about obviously didn't get through, the stars and their alignment alone can tell you so much about what's going in the universe.
Others have addressed your points already but I am curious do you apply this thinking to other scientific theories? For instance do you consider the theory of Tectonic Drift to be incorrect since no human has seen the supercontinent of Pangea but have extrapolated from observable evidence of earthquakes showing that the plates do move? In other words do you divide a theory like that into micro-tectonic drift and macro-tectonic drift? What about something like star formation? Do you think it is possible just using the laws of physics for random hydrogen atoms to form something as complex as a star that in turn leads to the creation of all the other atoms?
True and I would consider that an abuse of both science and religion. I think both can coexist but you cannot prove or disprove one using the means of the other.
