Ah, but the mother had to donate the genes...Originally Posted by AimusSage
I could see Southpark going for that!
I always wonder whether animals animorphosise humans to each other. Sitting in their tree watching the tourists, "Wouldn't you like to have those fingernails picking your fleas?!"
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
I think you are mixing The Bible with Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, because in the Bible we are not descended of any King, but dirty, clay and mud. And You have to agree, even a sludge may be an improvement from dirty.
Yes, and furthermore it just pushes the question of how that life form evolved on another planet (or in space or anywhere else). So it's really a non-solution.
Nick
This is admittedly off topic, but since earlier posters treferred to primordial slime, I will quote this poem by Yvor Winters:
BY THE ROAD TO THE AIR BASE
The calloused grass lies hard
Against the cracking plain;
Life is a grayish stain;
The salt-marsh hems my yard.
Dry dykes rise hill on hill:
In sloughs of tidal slime
Shell-fish deposit lime,
Wild sea-fowl creep at will.
The highway, like a beach
Turns whiter, shadowy, dry:
Loud, pale against the sky,
The bombing planes hold speech.
Yet fruit grows on the trees:
Here scolars pause to speak;
Through gardens bare and Greek,
I hear my neighbor's bees.
Nick
In point of fact it is very hard to say that evolutionary theories are flawless. It is not necessary that all scientific ideas are correct. Many of them are simply hypothetical and baseless.
Recently I have read an article in Newsweek about the Big Bang. The theory of the Big Bang is baseless in someways, only imagined or assumed ideas, and there could be no strand of truth in that theory.
Scientists at times theorize ideas but those ideas not necessarily can be correct, and some scientists just to earn immense popularity keep on publishing one article after another.
We should not take all theories propounded by scientists to be true or for granted. And to this end I feel all that is said about the theory of evolution may not be flawless.
Scientists too give dogmatic views at times.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Regardless of whether the huge theories of Evolution are true, there are many proven examples of social evolution and cultural evolution everywhere. Its not as much a theory as it is just something that happens, and is measurable, on a small scale. However, the larger and grander "beginning of the world" theories are far from proven as of yet. Though the fact that there is at least a shred evidence compared to all non existent evidence of the contrary, it's easy to see why it's the most accepted theory.
Last edited by Mathor; 08-20-2009 at 05:21 PM.
I'm losing all those stupid games
That I swore I'd never play
I just finished reading Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in evolutionary theory. Dawkins can be irritating. He has a lot of biases, which anyone who is sensitive to language will be able to discern, despite his trying to project a tone of pure commonsense scientific objectivity, but I was really impressed with Chapter 6, Origins and miracles. This chapter presents the real intellectual challenge for those who wish to explain a "natural" (as opposed to "divine") origin of "life." This is something that Darwin himself never really addressed. The main problem is how a "replicating" mechanism could plausibly have evolved. The problem is that the current relpicative system (nucleic acid chains like RNA and DNA are apparently too complex to have arisen, in "one step" or de novo or as "intermediate" stable physical entities, however improbable... Dawkins doesn't deal with other things, like the hard to explain origin of complex flagellar "motor," in this book.
Dawkins however takes you to the point that you can imagine a non-creationist explanation of the origin of life. He cites the Scottish Chemist, Graham Cairns-Smith's "mineral-crystal" theory of the origin of proto-life replication, and that theory is quite compelling.
In fact ideas we weave out of reading or hearing or inheriting are not necessarily realistic..
Darwin's many theories can be right but not necessarily all.
Of course the idea of Struggle for existence seems realistic but there are others he said or he assumed based on their scientific researches that man descended from animals could be right or wrong.
Today there were questions raised against the idea that whether really man has landed on the moon or not.
Let us not take every idea for granted and this is unscientific
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
No, that's a really bad conspiracy fallacy which has stuck around for many years, solely due to many people not understanding scientific facts.
It's not a valid question.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
If this is not a valid question, I have a series of valid questions. Can you answer?
Was the big bang true? Do you beleive in black holes? By the same token can we prove to all that Darwinism has no fallacy?
Atheist, we are in the vortex of confusion.
If this is not a valid question, I have a series of valid questions. Can you answer?
Was the big bang true? Do you beleive in black holes? By the same token can we prove to all that Darwinism has no fallacy?
Atheist, we are in the vortex of confusion.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Darwin had one theory that I have heard evolution through natural selection. What other theories do you think he had?
Foolish people have been throwing that idea around since 1969. Men did walk on the Moon. That is fact.Today there were questions raised against the idea that whether really man has landed on the moon or not.
Of course!
We don't know.
Given that it happened ~15 billion years ago, I'm not too bothered that we can't model it for certain. It was a singular event in the universe's history, and if it happens again, it sure won't be in my lifetime. The CERN collider may give more insight.
The way I look at it simply that the big bang is the best theory we have right now, but regardless of what caused the universe, we live in it and it exists, so it's there to study in its present form at least.
I don't think "believe" is the right word, because it's certain they exist. What we know them is also quite indistinct because we can only study the effect they have on their surroundings since light can't escape from them. I believe we are starting to understand them, but an amount of matter exceeding that of the entire solar system the size of a golf ball takes some adjusting to.
Not at all. Darwin shouldn't be seen as the messiah of evolution/natural selection, but should be seen as the discoverer of natural selection whose theories have been changed and refined as we study things Darwin couldn't - DNA being the obvious example. Darwin made lots of mistakes, which is one reason why I laugh at creationists who deny evolution - as a science, it is unrecognisable from Darwin's days and while it isn't yet perfect, it's extremely accurate.
Nah; a picture of clarity.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
No Atheist, there is no picture of clarity.
We know little about the universe we are in. Science knows very little. We study phenomena and cannot say what caused them. Of course science uses logic, methods of experiments and observations.
I too subscribe to the idea of science while studying observable phenomena and yet all phenomena are not observable.
Everything is not crystal clear. I do not beleive in mythological gods. I do not beleive in anecdotal descriptions as we come across in religious texts.
I cannot subscribe to the idea that there is God and who created everything we have.
Yet I cannot conclude at all. For I do not know natural phenomena totally.
We do not know a little of the construction of this universe.
You seem to conclude everything. You assert your scientific ideas to make conclusions. We all are in a vortex.
We do not know how long we live and nothing is under our control
Atheism interests many, and this is an obsession and has almost been a religion the way communism has been one.
When we have a fixation we become blind to the rest of disciplines.
I am not obsessed with theism or atheism.
I am open to ideas, with no fixation. I am open to your ideas of atheism and to those with theism€.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Well, all I can say is, I seriously cannot believe the amount of people who continue to beat at rubber walls. Believers in Evolution are not gonna change, nor are believers in Creationism. And those of us in the middle of the road beat beat upon from both sides, one for going too far and one for not going far enough!
Some of us laugh
Some of us cry
Some of us smoke
Some of us lie
But it's all just the way
that we cope with our lives...
Evolution is a scientific theory that seems to partially explain and predict more natural phenomena than competing theories, past and present. Likewise the Big Bang and Black Holes. In this sense the theories are valuable.
History has shown that few scientific theories survive intact over the centuries. Evolution too has changed much since Darwin. We are but babes in our understanding of the universe and its physics.
No scientific theory can claim to be 'true' in the way that, maybe, God can.
I think that's incorrect.
Almost all mathematical theories and laws have remained unchanged, as have most physical laws. I find it hard to find more than fine-tuning.
Some of the more esoteric theories and biological notions have been subject to change, but the circumference of a circle has been pi*d forever. Hard science changes surprisingly little.
I'd argue that we actually understand the vast majority of the universe and its physics. Dark energy/matter might be quite exciting, but unless we discover a new dimension, there isn't much left of this one to find.
Again with evolution, I said earlier that it's changed, but it really is more of that fine-tuning than a wholesale "Darwin was wrong".
That's an interesting concept.
In what way does say the Theory of Pythagoras have less truth than an unsubstantiated fairytale?
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
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