Evolution

I know it's a little off topic, but I gotta respond to that comment:

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Originally Posted by hoope

A muslim don't force others to believe in their Holy Book .. and if u hear other than that.. then its wrong...

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Are you sure about this? I don't think you know your holy books that well..
You might want to research the qu'ranic concept 'lesser jihad'.

I wish moderate believers would stop calling themselves 'Christians' or 'Muslims', they're simply giving cover to those who actually do take the texts literally, and then we have problems like illustrated in i.e. Saudi Arabia.

(If anyone wants to respond to this, I suggest to post in the new thread 'Biblical Literalism' in order to get back to the topic here, which is EVOLUTION)

@Topic,
There's actually a huge creationism movement in Islam too, not just Christianity. The one thing that differs significantly is that few Muslims are Young Earth Creationists. There's nothing in the qu'ran that stresses a particular timescale, and Muslims find it easy to reconcile their account of creation with the big bang.

However, evolution does pose a threat of course, because it shows that man is not as unique as one would like it. Furthermore, it shows how intelligence arises spontaneously from simplicity, what a dangerous idea!

In Turkey, there's this guy called Harun Yahya. He single-handedly set up a huge creationism movement, borrowing a lot of material from Evangelical Christians in the US. Around half the people of Turkey reject evolution, given the fact that Turkey actually has separation of church and state, is quite modern and even applying for EU membership, this is a catastrophe (US ain't much better though, 40% evoluiton deniers).

Many Islamic creationists, going back to Yahya's books and lectures, have this obsession with evolution = atheism, communism, abortion, fascism and, I'm not joking, TERRORISM.

It would be entertaining if it wasn't scary.

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Originally Posted by altheskeptic

What about Australia?

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As long as you don't hold Australians as any part of proof of evolution, that'll work out ok.

;)

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

As long as you don't hold Australians as any part of proof of evolution, that'll work out ok.

;)

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I haven't met anyone from Australia personally, but the ones I have talked to on the net seem to be real friendly people. I would love to visit there some day.

I was thinking more about the kangaroo, and the koala bear. I know of no fossils of "roos" found anywhere besides Australia. And if there were a "flood" how did they get there...hopping on water?

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Originally Posted by hoope

A muslim don't force others to believe in their Holy Book .. and if u hear other than that.. then its wrong...
I hell don't care of you agree with me or not.. and i don't expect you to believe in what i believe in .. .. but respect it Yes !
There are many Christians and Hindu and people who believe in all sort of things that live in all the Arab Gulf countries.. no one was ever forced on anything.. and no one ever recieved and racism in any kind.. and no one ever fought then or hurt them.. In fact they live in equality and they have great jobs and high positions and doing well..
Muslims don't say that you Mike should go to hell.. While Jane goes to heaven .. but as for Jack he goes to hell.. !!!!
If you are having this silly idea .. then i guess you don't know anything.. and all you go is just judge people without knowing them.. or withouth finding out the truth ..
And for your knowledge .. there are many great Arab inventors NOWADAYS who don't know anything about their holy book- and they may hardly pray .. Yet they are muslims and they are inventor..

Our Holy book may giude us to the right path .. but i don't deny that science is science.. But it don't mean that everyone has to believe in it by force.. its up to u .. if u accept ir or not.. !


You know what !!!
Just lets stick to evolution part !

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I think all religions are nonsense. If I offended you ...sorry.

Geographical distribution of related species is such a strong supporter of evolution, it's such a clear contradiction to the Noah story that it boggles the mind that people still believe in the Arch. In Australia's case, more than 90% of species found on the continent are endemic, they are found no where else in the world. Why? Because of evolution. Marsupials are the largest group of mammals native to Australia, whereas the marsupial is incredibly rare outside of Australia, the opossums being pretty much the only one. Likewise, one major groups of placental mammals are almost entirely absent from Australia, (before European arrival), the carnivora (bears, dogs, cats, weasels, etc.), the only one found naturally in Australia being seals. This has allowed the relatively vulnerable large marsupials to thrive, where they were out-competed nearly everywhere else by placentals. Australia also happens to be the only place where carnivorous (in the sense of meat eating not the order of mammals) marsupials evolved.

If you want to know why there are no carnivores in Australia, besides the aquatic seal, well carnivores only evolved 42 million years ago in North America, by that time Australia had moved away from Antarctica! 50 million years ago, marsupials travelled through South America, across Antarctica, and into Australia. Unfortunately for carnivores, Australia separated from Antarctica, severing the land bridge, 45 million years ago, carnivores never had the opportunity to reach Australia, instead they crossed from North America into Asia, moving westward eventually colonizing every other continent, a very successful order.

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Originally Posted by altheskeptic

I haven't met anyone from Australia personally, but the ones I have talked to on the net seem to be real friendly people. I would love to visit there some day.

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Don't bother - you can replicate a trip to Australia by going into your nearest desert with a wild rat. Although rats are quite a bit less offensive than koalas, so you might want to take some extra fleas to be sure.

:D

Don't mind me, I'm just a Kiwi taking every shot at Aussie I can. The Lucky Country is dead right, but they lift us up along the way, so it's ok.

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Originally Posted by altheskeptic

I was thinking more about the kangaroo, and the koala bear.

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You'd better get out of that habit before you go - they are not koala bears, just koalas.

The punishment for calling them koala bears is two nights with Dame Edna Everage. All night.

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Originally Posted by altheskeptic

I know of no fossils of "roos" found anywhere besides Australia. And if there were a "flood" how did they get there...hopping on water?

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Funnily enough, as Pip notes, it's because of the water that the marsupials exist.

Between us, NZ and Australia offer extensive proof of evolution. Alongside Aussie's marsupials, we managed to evolve a country entirely populated by birds, reptiles and insects*, where various species of bird occupy places usually occupied by mammals. Most of 'em are extinct now, unfortunately - birds make good eating and had no defence against rats and weasels that settlers kindly brought with them.

*there is one native species of herbivorous bat.

When I was talking about kangaroos walking on water I was talking about the flood story.

I work with a young earth person and sometimes I get the conversations mixed.

The other day I was trying to have a discussion of how life may have originated on earth.

I was trying to explain carbon bonding to other atoms in an attempt to show him that there are rules that govern chemistry. And chemical reactions are not random.

So he retorts, "Where did the carbon come from huh?" "Someone had to make the carbon."

He will only accept a creationist point of view. He rejects everything else.

If I told him that carbon was made in stars he would ask something like..."What about radiometric dating?"

So I just tell him he is right, the kangaroo hopped to Australia, and the God pushed the continent away from Asia after they got there (about what? 3,000 years ago?).

But then again...there is the penguin.

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Originally Posted by Nightshade

In the beginning it takes a fair bit of tweaking to get the conditions right for optimum baking, then its all hands go and everything is going smoothly the cake is both rising ad setting and its all good. But take it out too soon and it is underdone, but if its left in too long, it spoils. so what makes evolution stop when something is 'just fine'. What turns the oven off? :D

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The term evolutionists use is punctuated equilibrium. If the environment is relatively constant, then there is no pressure for a species to change - the equilibrium part. When things do change drastically, say in an ice age, 99%+ of life in the iced-over area dies. That doesn't mean that species x dies, although if their entire habitat is destroyed, they probably will. The survivors, on the ice and at the edge of the ice, may need to adapt rapidly - or they may be perfectly suited to live in these conditions.

We don't know for sure what caused the mass extinctions in North America about 10,000 years ago - could be the Younger Dryad (1,000 year ice age about 11,000 years ago) or the flood that happened at the end of the Younger Dryad, or humans could have hunted several large mammals to extinction. Lots of data - but not enough to draw definite conclusions - yet.

Origin of life is especially difficult. Anyone who has seriously looked at the numbers will consider the possibility that we are the only hominoids in the galaxy. There isn't enough data to estimate the number of planets with life. It could equal the number of planets with hominoids (as in one), or we could have millions/billions of planets with life. There is a small non-zero possibility that life was carried to Earth from somewhere else.

I believe that most talkers on the subject are innumerate to the extent that they couldn't give any idea on how fast the universe changes, or the physical constraints - one proton can have at most 44 bits of data, while one hydrogen atom (proton plus electron) an have - I forget, but it's a lot.

The math of evolution is quite challenging - but trying to imagine how life began, twice - mitochondria is also inherited, but the mechanism is different, and the origin also - well, scientists aren't even close on that. Of course, both creationists and evolutionists tend to wave hands on this point. Me, I want to get into it. I just don't know how to pursue it.

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

That's it! The last sentence.
Given enough time and computing power, literally any physical problem can be reduced to maths.

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Scientists used to believe that. Then came quantum physics, statistical models. Universe is not like a clock. We can recover an astonishing amount of information from fossils, telescopes, etc. but there are fundamental limits to what is knowable, as quantum theory and Godel's theorem show, on what appears to be completely different levels.

Is there an algorithm for what makes a good poem? Not yet. Is it possible? I'm not foolish enough to say it is impossible. Is there an algorithm for good public policy? Might be; no evidence I can see that we are actually using one. Or Churchill could be right when he said "You can always count on America to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." Of course, trying everything might count as an algorithm - there's just no evidence that it will approach truth in P or even in NP time.

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Originally Posted by Thomas Lucero

The math of evolution is quite challenging - but trying to imagine how life began, twice - mitochondria is also inherited, but the mechanism is different, and the origin also - well, scientists aren't even close on that. Of course, both creationists and evolutionists tend to wave hands on this point. Me, I want to get into it. I just don't know how to pursue it.

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Bravo!

It's not so much that people wave their hands, it's more a case of it being so specialised and technical that most people just don't have a grasp on it. I can point you at a couple of people who are at the level you want to talk to:

Skeptic Wiki has a section on evolution written by a PhD mathematician who has worked extensively with evolutionary algorithms. I only know his screen name of Dr Adequate, although he may use a different one there. If you go to SW and check out the evolution pages or contact the admin, you may get some directions.

Another is at JREF forum - a poster with the screen name Paul C Anagostopoulous [I think that's right!] has done a lot of the same kind of work. He is another doctor of maths with lots of work in evolutionary algorithms.

For a completely new look at abiogenesis, you could try www.sexandphilosophy.co.uk "Experts" think he's on the wrong track, but I find his ideas interesting, especially as an adjunct to what we know for sure.

Other than that, the level of knowledge and discussion at FRDB should give you some food for thought - several evolutionary biologists post there. Good science board that.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

I forget who it was who said "The Universe may not be stranger
than we think; it may be stranger than we can think." I don't
believe it was Einstein, but another cosmologist.

Nick

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J.B.S Haldane expressed that first. Exact quote: "The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." - Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927).

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

Yes. Abiogenesis is a logical point to begin explaining the origin of life, unless you want to assume that "life" existed from the beginning of the material universe, which to me is an unscientific approach.

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The beginning of life is such an improbable occurrence that extraordinary theories are, in this case, justified. The one that I buy involves the math of Hugh Everett who argued in his doctoral thesis that everything that can happen does happen, just in realities that are orthogonal to our own, and which can coincide later, although it is unlikely that they will.

Hawking looked at Everett's thesis and concluded that it is true and trivial. I agree with the true, but not the trivial. I think Hawking overlooked some aspect of this. Eddington captured some of what I believe in scientific poetry.

"We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own."

I believe that what we call "G-d" is our future selves communicating with us backwards in time to create the present. I've taken Frank Tipler's math (in my opinion, he has made one understandable error and compounded it horrendously; universe is observably everywhere locally hyperbolic) and applied it with Feynman's and Everett's and Shannon, Kelly and Thorp (he's the guy who beat blackjack and roulette in Vegas using math).

Our future computational skills, when summed over multiple histories, is immense. Is it enough for life or wisdom to leak over from one reality to another? My best guess is yes. Could that be perceived as G-d? Easily.

Now, if our future selves are communicating with us, then we have survived into the future. Unless it's also communicating from a different future universe, one that we did not spawn. It doesn't prove that our survival is guaranteed; only that it is likely. So I would get extremely worried if the voice of G-d were shut down. Of course, both some but not all atheists and some but not all religionists get annoyed at this kind of argument.

As for signal-to-noise ratio, J.L. Kelly gave the definitive answer to that, back in the 1950s. Interestingly, if the signal-to-noise ratio gets to less than zero, we get imaginary results (or complex) which should give us faster than light travel. Unfortunately, no such animal as negative signal; just signals not properly interpreted.