Evolution

[The Atheist]

Things fall apart; things do not fall together.

Even my eight-year old knows this is not true.

We do a very simple scientific experiment where we boil a cup of water, then add and dissolve sugar until no more can be dissolved. This makes a really cool syrupy mixture which is called a "saturated solution". It is so saturated with sugar that not even another grain will dissolve in it.

We then pour that into a glass jug and hang a piece of string from a pencil into the mixture.

We leave it for a few days and lo and behold, things not only fall together, they join together, just as OP's snowflakes did.

Beautiful cyrstals of sugar form on the string. These are, of course, 100% edible, being pure sugar.

Science you can eat.

That's the point: Scientism is a belief system wherein scientists are the priests (wisdom givers) and the laboratory is the temple.

Isn't that excellent how science mirrors religion in that?

The big difference, of course, is that instead of a preacher standing at the front and talking, anyone and everyone can conduct their own experiments to confirm what the preachers [scientists] say!

If humankind could find its own way via its science, how come in the 21st Century the world is in such a gawd-awful mess?

Two things:

One is that there are 6 billion theists and a couple of million scientists on the planet.

The second is, what mess? Compared to what time in earth's history is the present earth more of a mess then?

All of human history prior to the last 100 years was a lot more of a mess than now - no medicine, constant war, enormous poverty. Right now, we an amazing array of medicine that can cure or at least aid almost any disease; wars are still around, but appear to be being fought by a few volunteers from each side and poverty, while not fixed, is a much lower percentage of human existence than it's ever been.

During the past 100 years, most of it was taken up by Depression, World Wars and the Cold War, so I can't really consider those times better than these?

Please do explain!

--and certain to get worse?--indeed, devolving from civility into neoprimitivism?

What?

Please read the above and get back to me. When was the last witch executed? When did the last polio epidemic occur? Are you living in the same world as the rest of us? I wouldn't claim the world is perfect by any means, but it's a hell of a lot "better" than it's ever been before.

Surely science will lead us...

Yeah, right.

As opposed to where religion led us? (nice segue back into the thread, though!)

[hoope]

I agree with The Atheist in this.. i mean i never thought i could agree with him in anything.. But it seems i do now. !

Yes ! Science has don't alot .. and how you Sbas .. compare between before and now.. Yes there is a little wars.. but nothing compared to before where there was no rules and world wars. !!!
Besides as The Atheist mentioned MEDICINE for God sake .. being a nurse.. trust me when you go to the hosptial .. you will know how it changed alot.. how many people are saved because new technicians of surgeries , treatments.. and so on...
Sceince has enlighted many dark ages .. And no doubt that things are BETTER .

As opposed to where religion led us? (nice segue back into the thread, though!)

However .. there always has to be a point where i would find to disagree with the Atheit?

AS OPPOSED YO WHERE RELIGION LED US ????????
I mean .. i don't know if you know this but ISLAM AND SCIENCE stands hand in hand ....
In the Holy Quran .. it always insists on learning and inventing and creating new technologies.
I mean who was the man who put the first concepts of Chemistry .. a muslim scholar named Jaber Bin Hayyan ..
The use of lenses and all that about how light travels and mirror law.. all was done Ibn Al Haithem ..
The first man who tried flying .. wasn't the Wright Brothers.. hundered years before they comeinto being - a muslim Scientist; Abbas Bin Firnas .. did it.

Europeans and Ameircan Scholars .. know all that.. and they had put their principals based on their results and they had added to that and invented alot of inventions - Many books in arabic were translated to Spanish and Italian .. to spread the knowledge back then ...

However, nowadays we don't hear much about Arab scientist or muslims scholars.. they are way back as compared to the technologies of nowadays that are made by the western.
http://www.ummah.net/history/scholars/

Anyway that is not the subject... what i want to say is that.. I don't know about Christianity or Buddhisim - but Islam advices and emphasizes on the importance of science and that its the way of pride and success.

[Heteronym]

Yes, Arabic civilisation was at one point the most developed in history when Europe was still in the dark ages and we owe much to it for perserving many classic works of science. Europe moved away from religious fundamentalism, whereas tha Arabs were sadly engulfed by it. People like Melmoth apparently would like for us to go back to those times, though, when mental illness was explained by witchcraft, bubonic plagues were cured with prayers, and women didn't have rights.

[altheskeptic]

These evolution discussions always go the same way. Lets bring in religion. Well...I have had that stuff shoved down my throat all my life. In my country it is Christianity. If I don't believe it...I go to hell. The Muslim tells me the same thing...if I am not a Muslim...I go to hell.

The creation "scientist" comes in and states that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and a worldwide flood took place about 4,000 years ago. They also come up with "evidence" to support this.

A Muslim will let you believe all the science you want...as long as you believe in their Holy Book.

All religions (practically) claim to be religions of peace. The whole time they are hell bent on killing the infidel, punishing the sinner, and making the rules. The infidel being someone that doesn't believe the same way they do.
Die for me...and live forever!!!

Lets keep it about evolution shall we?

I used to be a creationist...But I took a look at the science, and came up with one question.

What about Australia?

[hoope]

These evolution discussions always go the same way. Lets bring in religion. Well...I have had that stuff shoved down my throat all my life. In my country it is Christianity. If I don't believe it...I go to hell. The Muslim tells me the same thing...if I am not a Muslim...I go to hell.

The creation "scientist" comes in and states that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and a worldwide flood took place about 4,000 years ago. They also come up with "evidence" to support this.

A Muslim will let you believe all the science you want...as long as you believe in their Holy Book.

All religions (practically) claim to be religions of peace. The whole time they are hell bent on killing the infidel, punishing the sinner, and making the rules. The infidel being someone that doesn't believe the same way they do.
Die for me...and live forever!!!

Lets keep it about evolution shall we?

I used to be a creationist...But I took a look at the science, and came up with one question.

What about Australia?

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 !

[Dodo25]

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

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

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.

[The Atheist]

What about Australia?

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

[altheskeptic]

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

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?

[altheskeptic]

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 !

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

[OrphanPip]

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.

[The Atheist]

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.

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.



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.

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

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.

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?

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.

[altheskeptic]

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.

[Thomas Lucero]

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?

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.

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

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.

[The Atheist]

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.

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.

[Thomas Lucero]

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

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).