Here is what I think. Gazillions of years ago, there was this creature, kind of like Bigfoot, but much smaller. He/She/It was almost like a human, but more like an ape. Its offspring branched off, some becoming intelligent and the others just staying primitave and only evolving a little in the brain department. The other guys, are what we call cavemen, and they began to walk upright and use more tools than their ansecestors. They also started to use art, which differs them from the apes. No ape has ever created art, or designed anything. They just use tools and can go through mazes which makes them “intellegent”. In that case, cuddlefish are our relitives. Do we look like cuddlefish????
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We evolved. What more is there to know? Besides the fact that we have already peaked, IMO, and now we’re de-evolving.
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Evolution. Interesting topic.
3- When did we peak?
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So humans are NOT apes, we are supirior to ALL animals. Not to say we’re more important, but we are more creative and have a better chance of survival, no matter how many nucler wars and global warming problems (which is a hoax, but thats a different thread) come our way.
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3- DE EVOLVING??????? In case you havent noticed, there are more inventions coming out than ever before, we are always getting smarter, and WE CONTROL A PLANET! again I ask you, DE EVOLVING???? Please explain.
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But there is much more to know, evolution is a VERY interesting topic, and if we can learn that, maybe we can even CREATE life, but I doubt it.
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5- We are not superior to all animals. Could you survive own your own in the woods for the rest of your life? With predators? Animals in the wild can do that. Apes can do that. Humans can survive in the habitats we’ve created.
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Yes, and you could survive in the woods for the rest of your life, there are people who have. Ever heard of Africa? People in the poorer parts live mostly in the wild. There is no protection, and if a lion wanted to carry someone off, he could. But humans have invented a way to prevent that, with nets and animal control and stuff like that. Any problem thrown our way, (exept women ) can be solved if we put our heads to the task. And remember, WE created our habitats and animals did not create the habitat they live in, they just adapt.
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And name an animal that can do everything a human can. Monkeys cant do algebra, so that rules them out.
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The only reason humans evolved smarter than other animals is because we had to be. We don’t have claws, sharp teeth, good eyesight or hearing, we’re not really that strong (even the cavemen could’t wreatle mammoths by themselves), and we arn’t fast runners. In our case, it wasn’t the strongest or swiftest, but the smartest that survived.
As you may see, I believe in evolution. We get into interesting debates about it in Bio. There’s a DVD J brought in that supposedly disproves evolution and proves creationism, but I havn’t watched it yet. Other person in the debateing still has it.
Or teacher allways tells us we have to find another time to discuss this, because aparently we’re not supposed to in class. Yelling “I plead the first!!” Didn’t seem to help. Oh well.
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Why does everybody seem to think that evolution is just about humans? Charles Darwin didn’t call his book The Origin of Humans; he called it The Origin of Species–all species. Yet when non-scientists discuss it, all you hear is humans and apes, humans and apes. That’s awfully self-centered, if you ask me.
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Beavo, I think apes have painted. And just because we can draw and invent all the things that we have doesn’t mean we’re better. The only difference is we can show our work. How do you know animals aren’t thinking? Can you read their minds?
Sometimes I think people just can’t stand to be an animal. Compared to all of the dumb things people do, I find it a compliment.
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11-We could have evolved to GET sharp teeth or be a fast runner. I dont think the ancestors of the cheetah were all THAT fast. It EVOLVED to be fast. See Robert? I included an ANIMAL. Anyway, I think Darwin was awfully smart, but if you put his belifes up next to what Kings and Queens said, it kind of matches. Not like animals, but more like that rich people (the fast/strong/etc. animals) were better than the poor people (the weak/slow/etc. animals) and its kind of like racism in code.
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12- It’s not. And it is self centered, now that I think about it. All species have gone through evolution, why just focus on us?
What I don’t get is when people try to deny that evolution is real. I mean, think about it: If there is a group of animals, and they get exposed to a disease that kills all but a few of them, the animals immune would reproduce and create offspring immune to the disease. That’s a part of evolution. You can’t deny that it happens.
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13-The point is, not that we can paint, but we have the ability to actually think of what we are going to do, and we are able to view the painting and kinda see what the artist was thinking. And not that animals arent thinking, but that they cant actually be creative. They dont fall in love, they dont sing or dance (exept to attract mates, which is not love but survival) and they dont make poetry, which is like art.
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15-Yes I hate that too, and Im not denying that it happens. Im simply saying that it happens much differently than we think it does.
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I think it would be helpful to backtrack and make sure we’re all on the same page here. Let’s see what Musers’ collective wisdom says about these two questions:
(1) What were Darwin and other evolutionary thinkers trying to explain with their theory?
(2) What did the theory say?
Beavo–I’ll tip my hand a little here. It’s not about who’s better than whom; it’s about who can survive and reproduce under different conditions. Our abilities to do algebra and make art are wonderful, but they wouldn’t help us survive if somebody suddenly plunged us to the bottom of the sea. Gills and fins are much more helpful down there.
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4- Not sure. The seventies, maybe. Or maybe Y2K. Or maybe we haven’t peaked yet, and it’ll happen on 2012. Or maybe we peaked in the middle ages. Gosh, I’m not sure. But it’s either already happened or it’ll happen soon.
5- Superior? Well, maybe. Other animals know what they need to know to survive and humans know a whole lot more than that. However, we aren’t superior until we can use our knowledge wisely, which hasn’t happened yet, unless it was a long time ago.
I know! We peaked at the dawn of Homo Sapiens!
Know what’s interesting? Firefox doesn’t know that Sapiens is a word.
12- It’s very self-centered. Let’s talk about blind cavefish now!
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16- Have you been an animal? Do you know what they think?
9-Yes, animals adapted. They adapted and evolved over time to survive. They didn’t create a habitat where we are so protected(I’m talking about America) that religious hypocites think the biggest problem is what people see on TV, or whether a woman has control over her own body. We are not superior to all animals.
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18-But thats just the point, they ARE helpfull. We did not evolve with fins and gills, but we did invent the divers mask and all kinds of submarines, which algebra does help. Which means we can adapt. What Im trying to say with art is that not only can we adapt and learn basic skills, we CAN be creative, which differs us from animals.
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20-We can control what we see on TV, and a woman can control her own body. But will we? We have already made big improvements. 400 years ago, people asked the same questions about the Kings. Could we ever break out of the cycle of tyrany? But we went and did it. Then after that, there was the issue on slavery, and after that, womens rights. Not every problem can be solved, and no one can be perfect, but we can certainly make our conditions better. If we put our minds to it, that is
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13- Not true. I read/saw on animal planet (or something, can’t remember) about a gorilla who would paint a lot, and then through sign launguage tell what it was. She made a picture of when she saw her parents killed or something, all red and described it using the word ‘fear’ and a few others, I believe. And many animals show emotions. Elephants morun over their dead, and other animals too.
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12-Yea! Evolution is just a fancy name for the fact that the smarter individuals survive because they avoid death. Then the smarter individuals of their offspring survive, and it goes on and on like that… It just makes sense. Why wouldn’t the “better” individuals survive and the weak die?
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14- There is a phenomenon known as “social darwinism.”
15- People deny evolution because it goes against a lot of what is taught in religion and others simply don’t like to think it is true that humans evolved from a common ancestor of apes. But just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And yes, Robert, we are awfully selfish just to talk about humans.
Here’s an interesting question: What differentiates humans from the other apes? Or, in other words, what makes us human?
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20- No, but do you? We can also infer what they think by their actions (running around in circles screaming means thier mad) or something like that. Humans on the other hand can TELL someone thier mad. Animals cannot, theyre kind of like babies, because you dont know what a baby thinks. But when a baby screams, you get the impression something is wrong. So you feed them or change their diper. Speaking of dipers, I have to go change my cuzzins diper. Wish me stinky luck.
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Wow, this thread is growing really fast.
Beavo, heres an idea that might interest you. How about the statement that humans are superior to all animals because while all animals have the ability to procreate, humans can also create. Monkeys can build simple tools, but can they swim with fish via SCUBA, or build a plane to fly? Humans not only adapt biologically, they adapt by building.
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OK, I think there is some confusion about the whole art thing. The reason we make art is we created a safe environment to live in, so we didn’t have to worry about predators. Help?
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23-I was trying to say exactly that. Maybe I said it in a confusing way, but I agree entirely.
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Julieb- your idea sounds much more plausible than Beavo’s. I can agree with that.
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27-Juleb, thank you. ONE PERSON who understands me.Thats kind of what Im trying to say, but Im also throwing lots of other stuff in there.
28-We didnt create art because we created a safe habitat. Yes, we wouldnt have as much time to create if we were worried about predators, but we create art because we have the ability to express ourselves in ways animals cant. I think Julieb got it exactly right. Just needs a little adding on to, but otherwise, its right.
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30-Julieb is exactly right, I aggree with that. But I still think that we are superior to animals. Here’s a thought, maybe we ARENT ANIMALS AT ALL!!! Not saying that I belive that, but I heard someone at my school say that. Any ideas?
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(21),
Every type of organism is different from other types of organisms. That’s why we call them different. The theory of evolution says nothing about which organisms are better than others; just which are better at surviving and reproducing in different environments. Rats, cockroaches, and weeds aren’t as smart as humans are, but evolutionarily they’re very successful.
Again, the theory of evolution isn’t about which animal is the best. It doesn’t talk about that at all.
(32),
Well, for what it’s worth, we taste like animals. I’ve heard that cannibals say we taste like pork.
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Beavo, will you PLEASE stop double posting? We’re all guilty of it, but this is becoming a habit. Here’s a tip: try reading through the latest posts, and when you get to something you want to respond to, scroll down and type it in so you don’t forget. But then DON’T hit submit yet! scroll back up and continue reading and typing until you’ve compiled what you want to say, THEN submit it. Personally i highlight the post number I’m on so it’s easy to get back to. This way you can collect all your thoughts into one post and it’s much easier for everyone to read. There’s a delay anyway (since every post has to be moderated), so it’s not likely you’ll miss much in the time it takes to type. And whatever you type in will stay there even if you’re scrolling around.
28: You’re on track. In human history, whenever there’s a lot of technological advancements in a period of time, it’s normally followed by a major art movement because people have more free time.
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26- But they CAn tell each other when they are mad. In wolves, flatened and drawn back ears means just that. They can communicate emotions, to a degre. I do admit they can’t say something like “I feel rather discouraged today,” but they don’t need to, either. Simple things like ad, happy, hungry, will do.
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I’ve been wanting to find a copy of The Origin of Species for while. They don’t teach us everything Darwin thought in school, and it interests me. I don’t think our library has it though. Oh well.
33- Yes. “Better” has nothing to do with it.
O.o Pork? Really? *licks writst* Hmm. Can’t tell. I’ll just take their word for it, though.
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33-Yes. It dosnt talk about that. But there is a difference between best and superior. Best is just something that is better. Superior is better AND can control everything (almost) under it. How can you be superior if you DIE as soon as youre born? You arent very stupid if you survive either. And in the instance of the weed and cockroach, they are very sucsessfull but thats because of their reproductive skills.
33-You have talked to cannibals!! Eww. Just kidding.
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Why can’t some people stand to be animals? What kind of an ego makes you think you are somehow special or different than other animals? And part of why you may think animals are dumb is you don’t understand their language. They probably think we’re dumb. Who releases tons of polution into the air, cuts trees down by the acre every minute, and get into traffic jams going in both directions on a highway? Animals build things. What do you call a bird nest? Or apes rowing a boat with an oar? Animals are plenty smart, and you are one too.
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33- thank you, I was confused with everyone talking about how humans are better. I don’t think humans better than other animals because we have done all sorts of stuff to our planet, our home, while other animals have pretty much left it alone, as far as I know.
I just finished doing evolution in science.
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I choose to remain neutral on the whole subject of how we came to be…no one can effectively prove their theory, as yet, so what’s the point?
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Okay maybe I shouldn’t belong here cause I don’t really belive in evolution but whatever.
Evolution makes sense, sort of, but there’s not enough evidence to support it yet.
You need all 20 amino acids to produce proteins. To say that they all just happened to mutate at once after some obscure flash of chance is so improbable it’s not even funny. Even viruses are so complex it’s beyond comprehension to say that the right chemicals just happened to be there and put themselves together in just the right way.
It’s like throwing a deck of cards in the air, and they all land to form a card pyramid. TWICE IN A ROW.
Micro evolution makes sense and is real, as humans have had skin color changes because of more sun. But macro-evolution is just too big. All right, look at a bacterium. About 500 of them could fit on this period. And then you look at yourself, trillions of times bigger working in the exact way with hundreds of billions of feet of DNA instructing vacuoles, necleodes, ribonucleic acids and mitochondria, while muscle cells contracting to lift a glass of H20 and carry it down where the epiglottis slips shut, and the H20 is picked up to the aveoli which dispense and pick up CO2 and carry it off while the centromeres pull chromosomes apart, carefully making copies of cells and on and on and on.
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I don’t think humans are superior. Why do you think humans are superior? I would be glad to know. It makes no sense when you just start ranting and saying “humans are superior” with no explanation. I can’t believe anything until it has been explained. Nothing should be an unquestionable.
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erp, I meant to say Nothing should be unquestionable. GAPAs, can you zap that “an”?
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42 – Are you talking to me?
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Beavo, you say that humans are superior because they can communicate and think abstractly. Gorillas have been taught to use sign language. Now, I understand that some creatures would just use language to signal a direct need, and that doesn’t count as intelligence. However, these gorillas (Koko in particular- no, NOT Koko the muse, Koko the gorilla, who is more intelligent than Koko the muse anyway) told lies, remembered past events, looked forward to future events (or dreaded them) and even rhymed. With all due respect, if that’s not abstract thinking and imagination, then what in the name of Diana Lutz is?
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Koko may be an acception. Ive heard of gorillas that start fires, comb hair, and siphon water. And this IS intelligence. But its not creative. Humans are creative. Im amazed at the Koko story, yes that would make him creative. Maybe that type of gorilla is special. Maybe just Koko is special! I aggree with you though. That is cool.
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Beavo the Great, have you read Grim Tuesday, by Garth Nix?
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No I havent, whats it about? Ive heard the name Garth Nix though
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(40, 41),
Evolution isn’t about whether human beings are special and wonderful (which, of course, they are). It isn’t about the origin of life, either. If people are going to argue about it, I’d wish they’d argue about it (instead of around or past it) or argue about it (instead of about all the other things they vaguely, and mistakenly, think it is).
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46- I agree that there’s a difference between creativity and intelligence. However, your claim that Koko is unique… The few other apes (I’ve only heard of three) that have been taught to use sign language displayed the same characteristics. And there are very few of them. Who knows if this intelligence is confined to three gorillas in the entire world, or one gorilla in a thousand, or ten, or every gorilla on the planet?
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And, to start a new, non-human-ape discussion:
What do you think of monotremes*? How did they evolve and survive?
*Egg-laying mammals like platypus and echidna.
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49- See, I started a discussion about evolution, the evolution of monotremes.
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50-Yup. Anyone can learn sign language. Creativity cant be learned. Ive heard of many apes learning sign language, but not all of them can lie or do all that stuff Koko supposedly does. It sure would be cool if all gorillas could do all that. But this is off the subject of evoluiton. If we want to start a Superior Power thread, ask. I really dont care. Im just trying to make a point. Thank you. Now lets talk about EVOLUTION and not superior forces like Robert suggested. I would like to hear some different opinions on evolution. davidude, you say you dont belive in evolution. Please elaborate further than your previous post.
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Just something I’ve noticed, Beavo, please use an apostrophe where necessary.
Anyway, davidude, I wasn’t talking about you, but now I am: Evolution didn’t just happen, but developed. I’m going to create a pretend world to demonstrate, so please don’t post about any inaccuracy there may be.
Say there is a world with a herd of deer. Some fawns have a strong scent, while some others, through differences in their genes, did not have that strong of a scent. The ones that had a strong scent were almost all killed by predators. The other ones survived (most of them), and their offspring had a lighter scent. Make sense? It really isn’t that big when you break it down. It’s like saying our government is just a big glob that must have been created by a god. When you break it down, you realize it is made up of different parts that all (ideally) work together to get all of the work done.
Was that helpful?
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(51, 52),
Monotremes are a good example. I’d start with a more manageable question, though: Where do you think they came from? Geographically, I mean.
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55- Australia. At least lots of them. A more famous type of animals that lives in Australia is marsupials. Sorry if I spelled that wrong. There are a good many of them, but I’m always amazed at their differences. Who would think a kangaroo and a koala bear have ANYTHING in common? Not me.
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Yay for monotremes! I love weird animals.
55- Australia?
I heard an interesting theory once that humans were in fact evolved from manatees. I, personally, like manatees better than primates. Yeah, weird.
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57- Thats really weird. But I like manatees better than monkeys too. A monkey stole my watch at the zoo.
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58- My dad has a friend who went somewhere far away where monkeys are and they stole his camera so that he’d give him food.
41- I understand what your saying, that every organism is so amazingly complex it is next to impossible that life exists at all. Yet take this knowledge, and realize that life on earth is the only life in the known universe, which just lets you realize how improbable it is that it only happened, to the best of our knowledge, once. And then assume that Earth is not the only planet that life could have evolved on, but through a series of improbable events and a little abiogenesis it did. And then wait an enormous amount of time, most of it just waiting for single celled life forms. And then you begin to see how it all works.
Monotremes? Now there are some weird animals. Did you know that platypuses (platypi?) don’t have nipples, they sweat milk for their young? I have no idea where they would have come from or how they evolved to be the way they are. They really are amazing animals.
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(61) Either “platypus” or “platypuses” would be acceptable as the plural. See comment #199 on April Showers thread.
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Don’t platypuses lay eggs? Are they mammals?
Australia is weird in the animal dept.
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61-Thats kind of cool, but REALLY diskusting. Yuck Yuck.
62-TOLD YALL!!! *opens arms to hug Rebecca then thinks twice and puts hands in pockets and looks sheepish*
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Um, i believe that the plural of platapus, like hippopotamus, is platami. Hippopotamus= hippoptami.
i’m confident on this, allthough not on the spelling.
Compared to other animals, humans are not very… interesting. Most other creatures have features that we don’t, like wings or gills.
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65- Humans aren’t very interesting! Or, for that matter, very pretty, if you get into the right mind frame.
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All right, platypus fans. Australia is undeniably the winner when it comes to weird mammals. Now, suppose I were to offer you a million dollars to look for platypuses* somewhere other than Australia. I’m not sure they actually do exist anywhere else, but it’s worth a million dollars to me to find them if they do. Where would you take your expedition? Alaska? Hawaii?
*(I say “platypuses” instead of “platypus” because it sounds funnier. That seems to me a perfectly valid reason. If you find a word funnier than “platypus,” I think you have a positive duty to say it.)
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67- New Zealand! Ha!
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Well, I’m pretty sure platypuses only live in Australia and Tasmania. And I agree with you on the funny words, I find any excuse I can to use words like “absquatulate” or “phlegmatic,” though this probably belongs on the Words and Names thread.
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67-I might look in Hawaii, but not really. Probably New Zealand or…. I KNOW!!! The Washington DC ZOO!!!!!!! Now hand over that million dollars. And eight pounds of Virtual Choklit
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Why not Hawaii? It’s a pretty place. Why shouldn’t platypuses live there?
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69-I like using words that arent really words, but you know what they mean. Like cowinkidink instead of coincedence
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71-Too far away. Although I might because they could be found on New Zeland, and the Maories are found in Hawaii. And the Phillipines. Yea! The Phillipines!!!
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Why should distance matter? And what kinds of animals would you expect to have found in Hawaii, before people started bringing them there?
That’s enough Socratic questions. I’m going to bed now. Tomorrow I’ll explain what I’m getting at.
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Evolution. Hmm. Touchy subject. If anyone in my homeschool group knew I was posting this, I’d be out for sure. I guess I tend to side with science over religion. Science backs up its statements with hard evidence. Religion always seems to say “Oh, see, it’s all in this book here.”
500+million years is a long time. People opposed to evolution seem to have the same basic principle. “It’s so unlikely, there’s no way it could have happened by chance.” That amount of time is incomprehensible to anyone. Given enough time, all of the variables will come into line.
Another argument I heard was about the cellular flagellum. I watched a documentary about it. It was a while ago, so I don’t remember the specifics, but the argument went something like this. “The flagellum is an incredibly complex organelle, it requires some-odd thousand proteins to be in line to work. It couldn’t possibly have evolved by chance.
“True, the flagellum is incredibly complex, but if stripped down into is components, it forms multiple other structures, like a waste ejection system and a few random proteins”
If you manage to dig it up you should watch it
On a final note, on many of the evolution debates that I see, it is real debate for about four sentences (or paragraphs, if we’re on the internet), and then deteriorates into a shouting match about God and belief and who is morally better nd why humans are better than everything else because the were created because the Bible says so and…. I was impressed that it didn’t happen here. That is all.
PS. I’m going to go with “Platypi” because it’s easier to say. They are so cool! Has Muse done an article on weird animals?
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Oh, plenty. Remember the tenrecs? And the star-nosed mole? Then there were the naked mole-rats back in December 1997, and I’m sure meerkats must have come along somewhere along the line. Not to mention any number of oddball insects…
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74-Yea, I know. I changed my mind. They might have been taken by the polynesians in thier boats to the Philipines and New Zeland and Hawaii. So look in those three places!! Now can I have my million dollars?
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ANother rant on evolution:There is proof that evolution occured in the world. If you had to live in the Ice Age, you would probably start evolving/adapting and growing fur, so you could better survive. But the part of evolution that doesn’t make sense is this:Why would an organism want to go from a single eukaryotic cell to a fish to an ape to a human? What reason would there be(and how is it possible) for a fish to grow lungs and be able to live on land. That is like changing your gender. Without plastic surgeons and dermatologists and all sorts of other doctors, it isn’t possible! Why would it want to? If all fish wanted to become apes, and all apes wanted to become humans, then we probably wouldn’t have any fish or apes! Check out the videos: “Creatures That Defy Evolution” for more info. And GAPAs-please post this! I know it should probably be going on the Evolution thread, but Evolution and Darwinism is also part of many major world religions, because Christians believe that all creatures were made how they already were and that homo sapiens were never apes, they were made by God as who we are today!
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Also, read the book Reclaiming Science From Darwinism. It holds a lot of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that disproves Darwinism. You don’t have to read the whole book-just parts of it, because all of it is SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, none of it is just “see, evolution isn’t real because the Bible says so.”
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Donaldo, it’s not that fish WANT to turn into breathing creatures, but when it got too crowded down there, it was beneficial to adapt to come onto land.
Right GAPAs?
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Evolution’s true. Everyone who doesn’t think so is wrong and Catholic.
You are either with me or against me.
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81: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m sure there are plenty of Catholic people who believe in evolution.
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(82),
Including Pope John Paul II — though not, apparently, the current Pope.
(79, 80),
It’s easy to imagine why it would be handy for a fish to leave its pond and breathe air for a while. In fact, we don’t have to imagine it: several kinds of fish do just that. Ever hear about walking catfish? Natives of Asia transplanted to Florida, they can wriggle from pond to pond and spend days on land breathing oxygen in the atmosphere. A few years ago, so many of them were crossing roads that they created traffic hazards. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_catfish .
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(81, 82) The Catholic church has not opposed evolution since 1950, and in 1996 John Paul II made the fullest endorsement to date, accepting evolution while making an exception for the human soul.
Many other Christian groups and individuals also see no conflict between their religious beliefs and evolutionary theory, so please let’s take a little care with how we use labels. This includes those who claim to speak on behalf of Christians in general.
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83- Hey, Robert, remember the snakehead scare a few years back?
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81- what’s that supposed to mean? I’m not catholic but I know lots of catholics, and I bet (not to stereotype) there are more evangelicals (who are protestant) that don’t believe in evolution than catholics.
76- may agriculture teacher has some 70-year-old preserved star-nosed moles. they are pretty cool looking, he also has bats, mice, shrews, etc. it’s soooooo cool
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This might not be the best place to mention this, but could we please have a thread about cryptids?
I love cryptids.
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I also love cryptids! I second the request. Muchi wa Kongamato!
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81-Not only do I know catholics, I am one. I belive in evolution, just not Darwinism.
54-Sorry about that, I’m so used to typing in internet lingo when I’m on the computor. Happy now??
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Ok, I’m confused…what exactly are we talking about? And, Robert, if evolution isn’t about how we came to be (as humans), what’s it about?
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Right, here’s the scoop. The Victorians (English people who lived during the long reign of Queen Victoria) were clever, energetic, curious people. They were also great travelers and explorers. One thing they noticed was that plants and animals were not randomly distributed throughout the world. Instead, there were definite patterns. Large continents had lots of different species. Small islands off the coasts of continents had species similar to those on the mainland, but fewer of them. Large islands farther off the mainland, such as Madagascar, sometimes had very odd species bearing less resemblance to the mainland creatures. Islands out in the middle of the ocean, such as Hawaii, had very few native species, and almost all were things that could have flown, swum, or rafted in from somewhere else: birds, bugs, sea turtles, and a few stray lizards. Being curious and confident in their abilities to figure things out, the Victorians naturally wondered why species were distributed around the world the way they were.
That’s what Darwin was trying to explain. He wasn’t concerned much about fossils — fewer of them had been found and studied back then, though Victorian scientists had discovered enough to realize that the world was at least millions of years old.
Darwin didn’t know anything at all about genes, but he did know about family resemblance. And that’s how he explained why animals lived where they did. If animals were similar, it was often because they were related — descended from a common ancestor. Similar animals that lived far apart must have traveled there somehow, either under their own power or carried there by people. (That’s why there were pigs in Hawaii when the Europeans arrived: Polynesians had brought them along from Asia on their canoes. They didn’t bring platypuses because [1] they didn’t stop by Australia on the way and anyway [2] platypuses aren’t good to eat.)
That’s what the theory of evolution was originally intended to explain. It was a shocking idea to many people, but scientists accepted it because no other idea explained biogeography (where plants and animals live) as well as it did. A century and a half later, it’s still the best explanation anyone has come up with, and scientists know a lot more about biogeography and genetics than they did back then.
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91-But it could still be wrong. Not saying it is, but still.
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Ah…thank you. Well, in that case, Darwin’s theory does seem to be the most plausible explanation.
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Cryptid thread, please?
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76- Yeah. My school subscribed for a while, but the issues always seemed to get destroyed after a few days. Then they canceled the subscription. Gah. Gotta find back issues.
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Evolution and adaptation is true. Darwinism, however, is false. I am Presbyterian and am deeply opposed to Darwinism. The thing is, and yes I am talking to you HAWK(post 80), there would ahve to be a reason for the creature to go on land, besides that it got too crowded. If you study earth history, the first aquatic creatures were not around until about 500 million years ago. I doubt that, seeing as over half of the Earth is covered in water, enough species could have “evolved” in that time to make it too crowded! Compared to how old the Earth is, 500 million years agois not that old. Plus, if it was too crowded, the first aquatic creatures were vicious meat-eaters, so they should have been eating enough fish to make it so it was so crowded. And also, if it was too crowded, then how come the bigger fish and aquatic mammals(like whales) evolve into smaller fish? That would have solved all of the problems. PLEASE watch the “Creatures That Defy Evolution” or read some of “Reclaiming Science From Darwinism” by Kenneth Poppe. Robert Coontz, I think that at least you should read it, or just parts of it. You are a GAPA, and I think you should have an equal view of the matter over Evolution and Darwinism. Right now, however, it seems like you support Darwinism more than you oppose it.
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Also, I had another thought. If evolution and Darwin’s theory is true, then why is everyone scared over global warming? If we have evolved, then that means we can now, and we can in the future. So if all of the ice caps melt, and the world becomes flooded with water, so there is barely any land, then can’t humans adapt and evolve to be able to live in water and grow gills and scales? Can anyone answer that for me?
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97- Um, yeah! Let’s grow gills! I’m all for it! Except it’ll probably take ages and ages, so I’ll never be able to breathe underwater. : (
Why is underwater one word instead of two? Does that make any sense? I mean, out of water isn’t one word.
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There is no such thing as global warming. 1% of the earth’s atmosphere is gasses other than nitrogen and oxygen, and 0.01% of that is co2 (the pollution). If the ice caps melted, they would simply fill in the space they took up, as there is no land under them. Furthermore, there is air in the ice, so the sea levels might actually GO DOWN.
[External link deleted — Rosanne]
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Robert, can we start a global warming thread?? pwease??
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This’ll probably tag me as an idiot for ever and ever, but what’s Darwinism again? Is it the idea that animals can evolve just because they want to? I’m confused and I’m getting this mixed up with someone else I read about in a Muse.
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Beavo, don’t tell anyone. I don’t beleve in global warming either, but don’t tell anyone else that! I just said it as an analogy, OK? Oh rats! This is going to be posted on the web! Oh well. Also, I like that idea of starting a global warming thread. Can we, Robert?
67- zugzwang- pronounced tsuk-tswang-its a situation in chess where neither player can make a move.
I really have no clue what people are talking about here. I thought Darwin created the theory of evolution. Can someone clarify?
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104-Darwin created darwinism (duh) which is the main theory of evolution accepted around the world. Im opposed.
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(104),
You’re thinking about stalemate. Zugzwang is a situation in which one player is forced to make a bad move.
I’m confused, too. “Darwinism” isn’t a term that scientists use. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean or what the alternative would be.
(96),
I don’t think my opinion of Darwin’s theories matters very much. I’m not a scientist myself — just a person who reports what scientists say and do. From my experience, I’d guess that at least 99 percent of biologists and paleontologists (probably closer to 99.99 percent) think in evolutionary terms, using ideas that can be traced back to Darwin. They do it because it’s useful in their work. Maybe someday someone will come up with a theory of non-Darwinian evolution — or non-Darwinian non-evolution — that does a better job of explaining why plants and animals look the way they do and live where they do, helps geneticists get a better idea of what makes them tick, and enables petroleum geologists trained in invertebrate paleontology to do a better job of finding underground oil. If that happens, then medical research labs and oil companies will be eager to hire scientists trained in the new theory, universities will start teaching it to their students, and people your age will study it in science class. All of that is possible, but it hasn’t happened yet.
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45: I actually researched this on Wikipedia, and, although I’m glad it was brought to my attention, I was suprised by the following points:
“Other [scientists] contend [Koko] does not understand the meaning behind what she is doing, but learns to complete the signs simply because the researchers reward her for doing so (i.e. that her actions are the product of operant conditioning). Another concern that has been raised about Koko’s ability to express coherent thoughts through the use of signs is that interpretation of the gorilla’s conversation is left to the handler, who may see improbable concatenations of signs as meaningful.”
“Such debate requires careful consideration of what it means to ‘learn’ or ‘use’ a language.”
“Criticism from the scientific community centers around the fact that while publications often appear in the popular press about Koko, very few scientific publications exist.”
96: How are evolution and adaptation any different from Darwinism?
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99- Newsflash. Water expands when it freezes. Therefore, ice takes up more space then water. It also floats ON TOP of water. Beavo, I’m interested in your explanation (and that of others who oppose these topics) for the way species are spread throughout the world with such a definite pattern and how so many different species came to be. And why the earth’s temperature is rising, for that matter, though this doesn’t belong on the evolution thread.
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108-Not all of the North Pole is on top of the water. If you have ever seen a picture of an iceburg, you can tell MUCH MORE is on the bottem than on the top. With all that weight most of it is pushed down, even with the air. (Which is part of the reason why the Titanic sunk.) Species can be spread any way. Birds fly, fish swim, and for the most part, humans do all of the above (with boats and trains and the like). Spicies simply evolved to adapt to their situation, kind of like Native American myths but less magical and much slower. The Earth’s temperature has to do with the theory of Global Warming (which I am also opposed to). If you want to discuss global warming go to that thread. I am on there frequently too.
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106- can we have a thread for favorite or interesting words?
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78- Actually, several species of frog can change their gender by themselves when the need arises.
O.o Wow. This is becomeing a bigger issue than I would have thought.
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110: There already is one. Words and Phrases, I think it’s called. It’s on Don’t Forget These Threads.
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Julieb (85),
Yes, I remember snakeheads. People called them “Frankenfish.” Last I heard, they were still around and still scary.
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if evolution IS real, where did the FIRST little tiny speck of life come from?
can anyone explain language?
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(114),
Those are different questions — interesting and worth looking into. Darwin himself hadn’t a clue how life started. A scientific theory doesn’t have to explain everything. Newton’s theory of gravitation does an excellent job of describing how the planets orbit the sun, but it doesn’t explain what makes the sun shine.
Scientists don’t pretend to have all the answers. There are many things that nobody knows. In fact, that’s why people become scientists in the first place: to investigate unanswered questions.
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What are snakeheads?
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The problem is that people just aren’t informed. Everyone thinks that evolution is about monkeys when it’s about common ancestry and vestigial structures and all that.
(99) Wow. You are so uninformed. I’m sorry to be blunt.
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111-So what? That is just frogs! What about humans and lions and alligators and lizards and sharks, etc.?
114-You are absolutely right! Where did that first speck of life come from? And what reason did it have for multiplying?
117-No, you are uninformed! Do me a favor and don’t ever watch Al Gore’s “An Inconvienient Truth” ever again! It is full of lies.
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I’ve made my thoughts on th Global Warming thread. \:D/ I’m sorry if I came off as rude there, though. ^^;;;
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97-I’m all for humans being able to breath underwater (just think of the amazing scuba diving possibilities!), but that would take an EXTREMELY long period of time (at least in relation to how long humans normally live). Meanwhile, many of those gorgeous scuba diving spots are being destroyed by a massive climate change (this is all assuming that the change would be as dramatic as some people say)…so after how ever long it takes us to evolve those gills, the Great Barrier Reef would cease to be so great.
117-YES. Thanks for saying that.
96-I think we should all have access to evidence supporting either point of view, and be allowed to support any we think makes sense. I don’t see why any of the GAPA’s should be an exception. I mean, they’re not censoring anybody who disagrees with them.
Actually…isn’t this supposed to be an Evolution thread? Not Global Warming?
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120-I’m not saying that the GAPAs can’t have an opinion. I am just saying that they should help us non-evolutionists out every once in a while instead of always oposing our views. Also, thank you for seeing my point in post 97! It would be great if we could grow gills, but it would take so long for us to(if we even could, which I highly doubt), that by the time we got them, it would be, like, 5 billion yeas from now and most humans would be dead by then, if there were any left on Earth. So I am just saying that that is the same way with fish going from gills to lungs. It would take so long for them to, it wouldn’t be worth it!
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Has anybody here already pointed out that Darwin never said that we evolved from monkeys in his theory of evolution? Sorry, I don’t have the patience to look back through this thread.
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We try not to oppose anyone’s views, but we do try to correct misconceptions. For example, many people seem to think that evolution is supposed to explain the origin of life. It isn’t, and it doesn’t. When people say things that are simply untrue, I’ll sometimes (but not always) step in to correct them.
As for critics of evolution, I’m fairly familiar with what they are saying. (They send me all of their press releases.) Most of the arguments I’ve seen boil down to statements of the form “I can’t imagine how X could possibly be true; therefore, X can’t possibly be true” (where X = things like “the gradual development of a complex organ like the eye” and “the emergence of life from random chemical reactions on early Earth”). That doesn’t impress me very much. After all, I can’t imagine the size of the universe that astronomers have discovered, but I don’t go jumping all over astronomers and calling them incompetents and frauds and demanding that they discover a more comprehensible universe for me. I let them be astronomers.
The same goes for evolution. As I’ve said, 99+% of biologists and paleontologists think in evolutionary terms. Anyone planning to work in those branches of science needs to understand evolutionary theory, and anyone who wants to understand what scientists do needs at least a passing familiarity with it. That’s why I think it needs to be taught in school–and, judging by the evidence I’ve seen both on this blog and elsewhere, taught better than it’s being taught today. As for teaching the other side: as I explained above, there isn’t an alternative theory to teach–just a hodgepodge of “I can’t imagine” criticisms that aren’t much help to people trying to understand the world. Maybe one will come along someday, but no one has proposed it yet.
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For the last time, it’s APES, not monkeys! APES! APES APES APES! There’s a difference. Go on and debate as much as you want, but it’s apes, and not monkeys. Would you call a dog a cat?
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121-The atmosphere, climate, environment and types of things that would effect the fish would be changing at an equally slow and gradual rate, though. Nothing happens overnight.
Thanks. ^^ I find it’s better to try and understand people than to just call them idiots for disagreeing with you.
And, well, you see, whenever I hear someone who doesn’t believe in evolution talking about it, it’s “non-” whatever. Just “not that”. There’s a difference between saying “I don’t believe in that” and saying “I don’t believe in that; I do believe in THIS…”.
122- I heard that, but people just give me weird looks when I mention it. O.o
Sort of relevant: It’s not true that you can’t observe evolution. Let’s say you have a petri dish with some infection-causing bacteria in it, a microscope, and an antibiotic. When you introduce the antibiotic, most of the bacteria will be killed, but some will have a mutated gene or something that makes them resistant to it. Those bacteria reproduce and pass on the mutant gene to the second generation, and so on. Tadaa.
Not exactly relevant: I’m not convinced that in a few years climate change will cause some cataclysmic event that will render the earth an uninhabitable wasteland. But, on the other hand, it’ll take a while to compensate for whatever damage we’ve caused.
My mom says that Beak of the Finch is a very good book that has to do with evolution. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds neat.
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119-You better be. That was rude. You could have asked me why I thought what I thought.
123-Evolution is true. Im not saying its not. But most of Darwinism is.
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Sorry for the double post, I clicked submit by accedent.
125-I think the Beak of the Finch has something to do with how the finch evolved to suit what it eats. There are four (or five or six) kinds of finches on this island and they all have different beaks (fat or thin, long or short) because some eat bugs and some eat plants. I think.
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Darwinism, Beavo, is not true. Read a book called “Reclaiming Science From Darwinism” by Kenneth Poppe PLEASE! If you have not read my earlier posts, I will summarize what they are saying: For what reason would there be for an organism to go from gills to lungs, from scales to feathers? It just doesn’t make sense! Also, you don’t have to read the whole book. It gives scientific evidence that darwinism is false.
123-If you believe that what most anti-evolution scientists say about this debate boils down to “Well, I don’t see how this could happen, so it can’t be true,” which I admit is what many scientist debates turn into, then PLEASE read “Reclaiming Science From Darwinism” by Kenneth Poppe! I beg of you!
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(122) Yes, I said something to that effect. XD but it’s good to make sure people know that; it’s such a common misconception.
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i definitely am pro-evolution , but growing gills would be fairly useless.
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What, may I ask, do you mean by Darwinism? Evolution by natural selection? I am slightly confused, as Robert said, it’s not a true scientific term.
116- Snakeheads are ugly fish that eat basically everything (I mean, you’ll find lifeless ponds after these things) and can live on land for up to three days while “walking” to another body of water. Huge problem in the Potomac over here. Now that’s and interesting way to evolve. Useful, though, to be able to go from one body of water to another without having a direct connection.
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(128),
– what reason would there be for an organism to go from gills to lungs,
I don’t know, but frogs do it.
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131- To be able to live in water while young, and go on land when an adult. Right? Hmmm…
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128-I know Darwinism is not true. What have I been saying for the last like… gazillion posts? I was not saying that all that stuff about the beak was true, but that’s what the book was about. I’ll check that other book out, thanks! I’m sure there is a reason, though I dont know what it is. Maybe their food supply was getting thin? Not sure.
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The Finches’ food supply was getting thin, and there was also the factor of flying to other islands.
What is the difference between Darwinism and Evolution? I’m still confused, even after reading the whole thread over again. If you survive by growing feathers instead of scales, you do. Enviromental/organism change leads to new niches/dangers.
Daviddude’s view on evolution is interesting, but I’d like to point out the emormity (? ) of the Universe. If you can throw them enough, the cards will fall in order.
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134-Oh sorry, Beavo! I read it and it said that evolution is true. Reread your post because you might have made a typo.
135-However, getting the cards in order would take such a long time, would it really matter in the end? That is what I am saying with the gills to lungs. If humans had a reason for going from lungs to gills, and so they started swimming in water to try to grow gills, in the end would it really be worth it? No. So why would a fish want to grow legs and walk on land, and why would a reptile want to turn into a bird? They were happy as they were.
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136-ACK! My bad, I meant in post 126 to say that Darwinism is NOT TRUE. Thank you donaldo the saw!
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Donaldo the SAN. Just thought I would point that out. I really haven’t been following the story here, but I have been looking at the Global Warming thread. Use the link to get there, if it works.
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136- How do you know? Were you there hundreds of millions of years ago? Look at the example of the snakehead. There’s a fish that has adapted to be able to survive on land for up to3 days, and it’s an extremely useful skill.
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Beavo- At some point you asked if there is anything that other animals can do better than humans. An article published in Science this week was about a study with chimpanzees memorizing number sequence and tapping the spaces in the correct order (1, 2, 3) on the screen where the numbers were presented in a random order. Particularly interesting was that when the image of the numbers was displayed for a very short period of time and then the chimp told to point the order on a blank screen, they were very good at it, better than most people (including the grad students helping out the scientist). And just to clarify, they were taught the sequence of numbers (1,2,3) and that they should tap the numbers in that order, but they were not taught the order for a particular arrangement of numbers. The scientist thought that this loss of ability in humans may be corresponded with the increased emphasis on complex language skills (which I have heard is related to a number of sacrifices in certain cognitive abilities). Anyway, I bet Robert can sort out any errors I made since it is from Science magazine, but this is how my bio teacher explained it to us.
All species that are contemporary with each other are equally evolved to fit their environmental niche. Humans could not live at the bottom of the ocean, or in the ocean at all, or in most undeveloped locations of the world without the infrastructure that we have developed to allow us to adapt to more varied environments than we are truly suited biologically. If the infrastructure, which is not a biological element of a human, were wiped out, humans would probably die in massive amounts in the industrialized world. Just because we can make an artificial breathing apparatus doesn’t mean that we are “superior” to animals that have them naturally. No human system has been designed that is as efficient as the cellular mechanisms of cell respiration or photosynthesis. And furthermore, all of the rest of the community of life lives in perfect balance, maintaining itself, while humans inevitably mess things up because of our collective overconfidence and supremacy complexes. There are more bacteria on the planet than the rest of life, and a bacteria can still kill a human, even with the best antibiotics in some cases. Your ideas are more similar to Social Darwinism, which is a very destructive way of thinking and a gross misunderstanding of evolution (not an uncommon one, though). No offense intended.
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136- Animals don’t just “want” to evolve, random mutations happen.
Say that we have a lizard named Ned. Ned lives on trees, eating bugs. Him and some members of his family have some extra skin on their sides due to a random genetic mutation. When any of the lizards in the woods are attacked by, say, foxes, they jump to other trees.The extra skin on his sides makes Ned and group A able to glide for a second longer while jumping, improving their chances of surviving a fox attack. Group B will die more often, and mate less. Because of genes being passed on by more members of Group A, there will be more lizards that have extra skin. Ned’s ancestors will be safer in the air, and may evolve over millions of years into flying lizard things.
Things can also be sped up if your habitat changes. Look at the dinosaurs- they didn’t survive something, so the mammals filled the niche. Legs don’t just grow either, many small changes have to happen to get to that point. Usually things change so slowly though, that there is time.
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125-I saw it in an issue of National Geographic. (Don’t ask why I happened to be reading it)
141-Yeah, and in cases like the tenrec (was that in Muse or another magazine? I think it was Muse, but I forget) it might not have competition so it adapts to fit that role.
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141 and 142-OK maybe you guys are right about that(especially with the whole lizard thing), but check out the videos “Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution.” THey show many creatures that could not have evolved to be the way they are because it is just too complex, or too large, or too something. Take the T-Rex for example. How could it get as large as it was, with such tiny arms, with the use of evolution. Charles Darwin believed evolution would end up evolving a creature to fit all its needs. However, the T-Rex never got longer arms so it could just reach down and scoop up its prey. It always had short arms, whether it wanted them or not!
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A classic example of the “I can’t imagine how it could have happened, therefore it didn’t happen” argument.
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Also in response to 141- Why did the mammals grow fur during the dinosaurs? The first mammals appeared during the time of the dinosaurs, so why did they grow fur and hatch live young. It was too dangerous to have live young, even more so than having eggs. Also, the climate was warm enough, until the Ice Age, which happened quite a while after the dinosaurs, so why did they need fur? Many scientists believe some dinosaurs evolved into mammals, but why would they if it was not needed in their habitat? It could not have been a random change, because the theory of evolution states that animals evolved to fit their needs in the habitat they lived in, but if they did not need to grow fur and hatch live young, why did they? If it was a random change as you say some are, then that would go against the whole theory of evolution. They could not have evolved to hatch young and grow fur, especially not with the way Charles Darwin describes it-from a common ancestor(which could have been an ape, a fish, a eukaryotic cell. He never said it was an ape) to having live young! That would only be possible if it was an ape, and then, where did the fish come from? I doubt that the common ancestor, if it was an ape-like creature, evolved into a fish! And where did that first common ancestor come from anyways? Answer that question!
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144-No, that is not an example. You are just looking at my post a different way. The theory of evolution states that an animal evolves, whether it wants to or not, to adapt to its environment. So how come it didn’t evolve and get long arms?
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143- T. Rex was a scavenger.
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No, only a few scientists believe he was only a scavenger. Most believe he was a scavenger, but that he was also usually a carnivorous predator. You can search it up on Wikipedia
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145- There are several reasons I can think of off the top of my head for why the T-rex had such small arms:
1. The cost of having larger arms outweighed the benefits because they didn’t usually use them, perhaps, and having bigger ones made it harder to move around
2. The T-rex species may have been evolving significantly when it went extinct due to a meteor collision, and thus did not reach its optimal status for its niche. However, this would depend upon the T-rex evolving from an ancestor with small arms, which I doubt is the case.
3. Having smaller arms could have been preferred by the females of the species, for not necessarily a practical reason, and smaller arms did not significantly inhibit its survival.
Okay, can’t think of any more for now. I would recommend researching it in non-ID sources, I am sure it has at least been considered. A good way I think to think about evolution is that for the most part, any trait that is the standard within a species is an evolutionary advantage (there is genetic drift and limited population size to consider, too, for instance if a small population of a species remains, ex. cheetahs, or a small/single individual colonizes a new area) and it is then the process of finding out why it is advantageous instead of its alternatives. Sometimes there is a compromise between different selection pressures, such as seals being very poorly equipped for land but very good for water, where they spend most of their time.
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115: Why does the sun shine, you ask?
*head banging*
!The sun is a mass of incandescent gas!
!A gigantic nuclear furnace!
!Where hydrogen is built into helium!
!At a temperature of millions of degrees!
teehee. trying to lighten things up here, plus I couldn’t resist.
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144-hey, no taking sides!!
hmm. i think this says very well what i think. AND I ALLREADY POSTED IT BEFORE!! its been deemed mostly harmless.
[Well, I’m feeling snippy today. So the link is gone. But you can find the article with this search term: john rennie 15 answers — Rosanne ]
hmm. *tries not to be insulting*
so, what do people think about evolution and schools. (creationism taught side by side with evolution etc.)
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151- Creationism shouldn’t be taught in science class in schools simply because it isn’t science. People say it should be covered as an alternative theory, obviously representative of the religious point of view, but even this argument falls flat because they would not be covering every religious view that exists, which would be practically impossible, and therefore a breach of the church-state religion in schools boundary. If families have an individual religious standpoint, they can teach their children what they believe. But the point of science class is to teach you what the current understanding of the world is from the perspective of science.
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I wrote a rantish-thing on evolution on the back of a packet today… it was in responce to a rant C wrote due to debates durring bio. Basicly summerizing what several people have said on this thread.
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41- But it wasn’t necessarily just this one chance. For all we know, it hapened a ton of times all over the universe, and this is where it finally happened.
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I am a devout Christian, but when I went to Sunday school we were taught that the whole “and on the Xth day God created man” was just a symbolism thing. I beleive in this, and it allows me to be both someone who beleives in God and someoe who beleives in the theory of Evolution.
And about the theory of “intelligent desiegn”? I beleive that god DID design the world: He designed the process of evolution, and now He just watches it, tweaking things every now and then.
The evolution into Homo sapiens was done by God, slowly, over millions of years. The seven days of creation are just a symbol for the billions of years during which earth evolved. During those years, god was perfecting Homo sapiens to His image.
Darwinism and Christianity aren’t on two different sides of an argument; Darwinism simply explains the way that Creationism works. According to me, anyway.
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I don’t think that Creationalism should be taught in schools. There just isn’t enough proof, only lack of proof of evolution. Good job to FSM for seeing that.
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155- That makes sense. I’m not at all religious in any way, but that makes sense.
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155-That makes sense. I don’t really believe in God, but I think that he could have created the first life and set the wheels in motion.
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151-You have a good point! I am a devoted Christian, and I believe in Creationism, but, however much the subject bugs me, believe that evolution should be taught in schools simply because it is science! I believe Creationism is real, and that evolution is false, but it makes sense that to keep questions from coming up, Creationism should be kept out of public schools, for the most part. As for intelligent design, it sounds alright, but there is something fishy about the whole matter. I just can’t put my finger on it.
155-That makes sense, but I am not sure. I have been thinking and as me and someone else(I don’t remember who) have said before, it is a possibility that God used evolution to make some creatures, but humans, I believe, since I am Christian, were made just the way they were!! Like dinosaurs, I think they could have evolved from something else, but not from like a fish or ape. It had to have been from another extremely large reptile, if they did evolve at all.
Also, one more interesting fact about Charles Darwin:
He was a devout Christian and was actually training and going to school to become a pastor before that fateful trip to the Galapagos Islands, which completely obliterated his faith in God.
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Also, when I said that thing about the seven days being just symbols for millions/billions of years, everyone rejected the idea. How come you are all agreeing about it now?
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No one ever answered my mammals question in post 145!
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161- that’s because it’s a good point!
I think it really sucks that so much evolution is taught in school, with so little creationism. Everyone says that it’s just taught as a theory but it’s taught more like fact! Anyway. Think about it. Sure, animals adapt. They evolve. BUT. How did that handy little phenomenon get started? How is it that there is LIFE that can repair and improve itself?
Personally, I think Creationism should be taught in schools. There’s plenty of evidence for God, and therefor, creation. Its just that… a great deal of it is quantom physics, or whatever, and well… Yeah.
Just the fact that evolution tends to be the sole “theory” taught in school makes it more of a “fact” in my mind.
The point is, I don’t think evolution as the sole contributing factor to, well, basically life as we know it NOW makes sense. There’s just to many holes.
And didn’t Charles Darwin decide that his theory was false, towards the end of his life? Or am I mistaken?
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Nope, Charles Darwin never changed his mind about evolution. He kept making new observations and thinking about it all his life, and he still thought it was the right idea.
Again, he never tried to explain the origin of life; just the origin of species.
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163-Good point.
Here’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to mix creationism with science: Creationism is not science, and evolution is not religion. Therefore, if creationism is to be taught as an alternative, evolution should be taught as an alternative in religions studies. They should either both be taught both places, or only in their normal places. One shouldn’t get more attention.
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160- I don’t remember reading that, but at any rate I didn’t disagree. Also, I’m not saying I believe that, but it does make sense. I’m really not sure what I believe, actually.
I think that Creationism shouldn’t be taught in schools, because not everyone wants to hear about God and religion, etc., etc.
On the other hand, their are probably lots of people who don’t want to hear about evolution, so I don’t know.
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161- Random changes happen all the time, and if they don’t kill you, they stay. Mammals aren’t always completely covered in fur or hair. Do lions live in an ice age? Mammals are also built to move quickly with a fast metabolism, giving them an edge over the slower dinosaurs. I don’t know how live young helps a species survive, but an article in Nature proves that Triassic marine reptiles did. Finally, when the Earth was created, (please don’t argue about that bit) underwater clays and amino acids were mixed up in a large “soup”. They eventually, after a long time formed a type of RNA, a molecule that can build itself from surrounding molecules and reproduce. Then things take off. As improbable as this sounds, I’d like to remind you that the universe is at least 24 gigaparsecs in size.
Please restate your view on this, I don’t understand.
“They could not have evolved to hatch young and grow fur, especially not with the way Charles Darwin describes it-from a common ancestor”
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166 wow
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Couldn’t the first speck of life that everything else evolved from just been there? Or did it need something to come from? This is what religious people say, that it needed to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is God. But then God also needs to come from somewhere. Doesn’t work, people.
Btw, I ordered the Satanic Bible today.
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I count evolution as fact because it makes the most sense. It is impos— ferociously unlikely that whatever is up in the sky just dropped us. We all evolved from something else, all the way back down to nothing. I have no idea how one thing sprang from nothing, and I doubt I ever will, simply because I am a human. I have an above average IQ, but te fact remains that no one on this blog has a brain that can comprehend the idea of something from absolutely nothing, or even te idea of absolutel nothingness itself. Even when we imagine emptiness, we still imagine the emptiness having a color or a limit or at least matter.
168: what’s a Satanic Bible?
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Why do creationists not want evolution taught in schools? because they feel threatened. Why, if they are so certain that they have the right idea, do they feel threatened by new ones?
That is what I am trying to figure out.
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168 – God created everything, including time and space, so maybe God just created himself.
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Once again, I urge everyone to watch the videos “Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution” with Dr. Jobe Martin. Here are some examples of what he talks abput on the video:
How can certain seabirds navigate over thousands of miles of ocean and never get lost?
How can some creatures, like lizards, lose body parts, like lizards’ tails, and then regenerate themselves, even grow a new head?
How do cockroaches survive nuclear blasts and can live for three days without their head?
How can great whales dive to the bottom of the ocean without the pressure causing them to implode? The water pressure forces for them are the same for us, yet our heads would implode if we could dive to the bottom of the ocean.
How can fireflies and glowworms create pure light that generates no heat?
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172- Just because we don’t know how yet, doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason.
As for the origin of life, I suggest you wiki abiogenesis. It’s an extremely interesting idea.
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173-NO! You are wrong! There is a good reason for them to do it and that is because it helps them survive! But it has already been scientifically proven that they should not be able to do that! Since it has been proven that they should not be able to do that without imploding or bursting into flames, you can’t prove scientifically that there is a way they could have evolved to do that!!!! You can not prove something that has already been disproven!
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Ahhg… I just tried looking online at possible beginings to the universe. My brain hurts.
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ewwwwwww yeah your right. tylenol time!
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I’ve watched clips of that video, Donaldo, and those animals don’t defy evolution at all. They are just creatures with unbelievable abilities. It’s amazing that God created them that way. And the current, most plausible theory out there today is that they were made through evolution. What’s wrong with that? Just because the animals are amazing doesn’t mean they didn’t evolve, unless you have preconceived creationist views.
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Yes they do! How could seabirds navigate thousands of miles of ocean without ever getting lost? If they had to have evolved that way, then that means their ancestors in the past must have gotten lost for centuries before they finally figured it all out! Think about it. If they keep getting lost in the middle of the ocean, it is most likely they died out there. But that would mean they would most likely become extinct! Also, even after they had figured out how to navigate it, it would take even more centuries for it to get imprinted into their children’s and children’s children’s brains! That means after they had navigated it, they would have to memorize it and so would their kids and their kids’ kids’ and their kids’ kids’ kids’ and so on, which is impossible with the brain power of a bird!
Also, for a whale to dive to the bottom of the ocean without exploding by the water pressure, they would have to be made that way! If you say that that doesn’t defy evolution, you are wrong! The way you see it, that means hundreds, no, thousands of generations of whales would kill themselves by trying to evolve and go down as far as they could in the ocean, but then the whales would be extinct too! Oh! And how can the fireflies and glow worms not burst into flames when they create their light? They can’t evolve that way because they make pure light, and pure light generates heat, like the sun or a lightbulb! And how did they even evolve to get that light! They would have to completely change their body to do that! And since evolution is supposed to take place over hundreds of thousands of years, yet the atomic bomb isn’t even 100 years old, so how can cockroaches survive the blasts? And how can cockroaches live for three days without their heads? Their brain is in their head! They eat with the mouth on their face! They see with the eyes on their face! There is no way they should be able to last even thirty seconds without their head, yet they do!!! How is that possible?God made them that way, without evolution!!!!! That’s how! And how can lizards regrow body parts? There is no way they could have evolved to grow more body parts without evolution! Darwin’s theory goes against that!!! It’s impossible! God made everything on Earth the way they were at the beginning of the world!!!
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178- But, the birds that DID make it, wouldn’t be likely to forget. It’d be imprinted in their brains (I think-correct me here if I’m wrong. I’m not compleatly sure, but I do think so). Then, they’d fly the same way back with the next generation and then THAT generation would remember. And so on.
Or, as Darwinism suggests, the ones who could go farther and farth down got more food and could live longer. Then their children would be able to, and son on.
And glowworms and fireflies don’t use fire to make their light. It’s a combination of shemicals that create light but not heat.
Cockroaches have a back up for almost every organ-including their heart (or heartish thing…). Their body continues to live and they probably just wander around or sit till they die of thirst/hunger.
(and, did you mean “…more body parts without evolution?” If so I’ll respond to that later… you probably did though)
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i think u are correct but im not an expert
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178- You have nothing to back up your arguments. First of all, you know nothing about the animals you are talking about. Pigeons are thought to be able to navigate due to small amounts of magnetic particles in their brains, which provides a natural compass. Other birds have been tested for memory of landmarks. Birds could conceivably have evolved to navigate in these ways. And I quote from PBS: “Because atmospheric pressure doubles every 10 meters, a whale at a depth of 500 meters experiences a pressure about fifty times greater than atmospheric pressure at the surface. Once it has dived to about 200 meters – the whale has far exceeded the depth at which humans can breathe air and still function properly. The air the whale dove with has been compressed to 25% of its original volume and the lungs and jointed rib cage have collapsed completely. The heart rate has dropped dramatically and non-essential processes have been much diminished because freshly oxygenated blood supply to peripheral regions has been cut off. Because of the compression and collapse of the cavities where gas-exchange takes place, air is excluded from most of the respiratory surface of the lungs, meaning that no gas exchange can occur between the blood and air in the lungs. This prevents absorption of the nitrogen that might otherwise pass into the blood and lead to the bends when the whale surfaces for its next breath.†Also, may I point out that whales do not dive to the bottom of the ocean, far from it. And evenly distributed pressure does not cause things to explode. As Jadestone said in 179, fireflies and glow worms create their light through chemical reactions, not a pure electrical current as you are suggesting. They’re not lightbulbs. Cockroaches, in defiance of popular superstition, cannot survive a nuclear blast. They are, however, less prone to the adverse affects of small doses of radiation like many insects. And radiation comes from more sources than just nuclear blasts. Cockroach’s don’t have a single brain that controls all of it’s actions like a human does, rather, it has separate ganglia spread throughout it’s body to perform separate tasks. The ability to drop tails and regrow them is a very good escape measure for lizards. Since tails are usually brighter than the rest of the body, as a last resort a lizard will “shed†its tail to provide a more obvious target for the predator. Lizards born with more fragile skin and further spaced vertebrae in their tales could drop their tales more readily, thus not be as likely to be eaten by predators and able to pass on their genes to the next generation. And the ability to regrow skin is obvious. Your wounds heal, don’t they? Embryos grow their entire bodies. Even as an adult, with the help of some substances people have been shown to be able to regrow fingertips and such. And Darwin never said anything about any of these animals.
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Bingo. Anti-evolution theories are a heap of factless, unscientific bull. Because evolution is THE correct scientific explanation.
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179-No you are wrong, once again. It would not be imprinted in their brain the first time. Also, I never said it was fire that made fireflies glow, because fire does not make lightbulbs glow. And by the way, fire is also a chemical reaction. So far, humans have not discovered any chemical that can create light but not heat. The things that make fireflies glow,however, humans have discovered through labs and dissections, and they cannot figure out how they do not die of the heat.
180-Whales can dive to the ocean, and their heads do not implode, like you said. But how could they have possibly ahve evolved to do that? Scientists have not been able to figure that out, because, even though what you said is true, it would take hundreds of billions of years, according to some of the most genius evolutionist scientists for them to evolve that way?
Cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast. They have tested it in many labs. They can also survive mass radioactivity, which should be impossible for them, as no other living thing can survive that.
And last, lizards can regrow skin, as scabs heal, but regrow a whole body part? They do not regrow the bones, but they grow cartilage to replace where the bones were. How can they do that? How can cells be replicated and replaced when there are no former tail cells to replicate it from? And no one has answered my question yet on where the first speck of life came from.
And 141-mammals did not fill the niche in replace of the dinosaurs because the first mammals appeared before the dinosaurs!!!!!
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And 182-don’t cuss! No one likes it even if you aren’t actually saying the cuss word, just coming close to it!
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184: no one likes it? Oh, grow up and leave your shell of ignorance.
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183- Haven’t you ever had a glow-in-the dark toy? There are plenty of ways of giving off light and not heat. They are two seperate releases of energy. Whales never get close to the “bottom” of the ocean, they stay in relatively shallow waters. Where are you getting your time estimates? It took humans less than 200,000 years to evolve different skin colors. Evolution is slow, but not that slow. Heres an explanation from howstuffworks.com: “Another problem with ocean life is water pressure. Because of the pull of gravity, water exerts greater pressure at lower depths than it does at higher depths; essentially, you feel the extreme weight of all the water above you. Humans and other land mammals can only swim down to a relatively shallow depth before the increased pressure crushes their bodies. This is because the air that mammals carry in their lungs exerts only a certain amount of outward pressure (pressure from the inside of your body). As the difference between the outward pressure in the lungs and the inward pressure of the water increases, there is a greater force pushing in on the sides of the body. At a certain point, this force exceeds the structural integrity of the rib cage, and the rib cage collapses. Obviously, this would kill a human being. Whales can withstand this pressure because their bodies are more flexible. Their ribs are bound by loose, bendable cartilage, which allows the rib cage to collapse to some degree under high pressure that would easily snap our bones. A whale’s lungs can also collapse safely under pressure, which keeps them from rupturing. When the lungs collapse, the air inside them is compressed, maintaining a balance between inward and outward pressure. ” Cockroaches have never been shown to be able to survive a nuclear blast, I would like you to find one published scientific report that says they can. Insects are less susceptible to radiation because cells are most vulnerable to radioactivity when they are dividing. Human cells divide constantly, insects cells only divide at most once a week, when they molt. Fruitflies are much more resistant to radiation than cockroaches, by the way. As for lizard tails, search pubmed for “Plastic changes and nitric oxide synthase induction in neurons that innervate the regenerated tail of the lizard Gekko gecko: I. Response of spinal motoneurons to tail amputation and regeneration.” It explains all. And as for the “first speck of life” the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that amino-acids, often reffered to as the building blocks of life, could be created from non living substances.
Mammals could be said to “fill the niche” of the dinosaurs because after dinosaurs were wiped out, mammals were left with many many less predators, and could therefore become predators themselves.
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183-First of all, glow in the dark toys aren’t living, and they get their light by taking in light when the lights are on and letting it out when the lights are off. Glow worms live in the dark and therefore can not take in the light from outside! Where do they get their light from? Also, how could that first speck of life, if it is as you say, evolve into something as complex as a human, or as large as a whale? If you explain all of that to me, from first speck of life to humans, whales, dinosaurs, birds, lizards, maybe I will become an evolutionist-maybe!
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Also, I forgot to say that no MBer likes cussing! You are told not to cuss in the HG2MB and the Rules, so don’t do it! It is vulgar behavior and you only make yourself look more idiotic!
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yeah (nods head and pretends she gets it)
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187- Wiki “bioluminescence.” As for “that first speck of life” give anything 4 billion (other theories that state that life did not originate on earth would say up to 13 billion) years and you’ll see something change. The reigning theory currently is that waayy back the earth was covered in a sort of primoridial sludge or soup. A large bolt of electricity or something activated a series of chemical reactions that created amino acids, or possibly lipids, or maybe even RNA& ribosomes (that sounds like a band). We don’t know, we weren’t there. These basics could have taken any number of routes to form simple cells. From there, darwinian evolution kicks in and the organisms become more complex. Lots and lots of time pases, and the descendents of those plucky molecules sit at computers typing at each other. Happy?
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Okay, approaching this broadly didn’t work. On to the specifics.
Let’s take those seabirds that can fly a very long way. Now that’s pretty cool. And it could have evolved. The thing you have to understand is that the birds might have gained this ability before they became what we know them as today. Say there’s a bunch of seabird ancestors. They’ve run out of food in their area, so the flock flies across a lake in seach of sustenance. Tragically, not all the birds make it across. They just don’t have the capabilities for long-distance flying. But the ones who do survive find food on the other side of the lake, and then they have baby birdies and live happily ever after. When the babies mature, they have inherited some necessary traits for long-distance flying, since the ones without these traits died. This continues for thousands of years, and boom! Eventually these birds are able to traverse the whole ocean.
These little mock-situations are kinda fun to write. And they make things easier to understand.
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191- Good idea. I’ll eplain the glow worms in simple terms. When they eat some foods, they make special enzymes. Enzymes break down molecules. Their bodies also produce a certian pigment that reacts with the enzyme. When the two are mixed, the enzyme does its job and breaks down the pigment, in a process called oxidation, like rust. A side effect of the reaction is light, minus the heat usually associated with it.
187- OK, if you’re confused on how to get from “speck” to whale, here it is. We have one speck, that can reproduce. It makes a ton of copys of itself, but some mistakes are made, killing some and making a few a litte faster to reproduce than the others. Who will “win” in the end? Apply this to any evolutionary change, and it will make sense. Just say that instead of reproducing quicker, one is able to disassemble others in the same area, or swim faster. These changes build up to create new organisms.
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Wow, Donaldo:
“Darwin’s theory goes against that!!! It’s impossible! God made everything on Earth the way they were at the beginning of the world!!!”
First of all, how much do you know about the Origin of Species? Not a lot, I’m guessing.
Second of all, explain dinosaurs.
The ice ages.
Species extinction.
Neanderthals.
Continental drift.
Human Migration.
Do you wish to deny that everything we know about life before recorded history is plausible? zdo you wish to deny that you share most of your genes with a banana? a fruit fly? a monkey? Evolution is just a theory. Like gravity.
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193-Heh, gravity! Good example.
171-Please stay on the religions thread. This is not public school, so I would prefer to talk about evolution, not give such indisputable, wild, and improbable reasons. It seems like people say such things to avoid having to think about the immensity of time and the complexities of the evolution of species.
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194: You can’t have an argument over evolution and not talk about God, as religious “theories” are the only thing contrary to evolution. Bloody bible-thumping nutjobs.
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yup
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193-Otzi, thank you! I can’t tell if you are for evolution or against it, but either way, I thank you! Evolution is just a theory! Get it all you guys out there who are for evolution! Evolution is just a theory, which means scientists have no overwhelming proof that says it is true, yet all you evolutionists out there are saying it is!
I am officially leaving this thread because all of you are stubborn idiots who refuse to see things my way. At least I respect your opinions, even though I don’t necessarily agree with them. So I am leaving this thread and never will return to it or read one of the posts ever again.
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193 – I can explain the neanderthals.
A while ago, a scientist did a study measuring how people’s faces changed as they aged. He plugged in the results to a computer, got the results for a what a human would look like aged 700 years, and found that it looked almost exactly like a neanderthal! This explains all the super-old people in the bible.
195 – That’s not very nice you know, FS.
197- *is sorry for Donaldo the supercoolio awesome nerd because he is correct but is outgunned on this thread*
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There seems to be some confusion here about the meaning of the word “theory.” When scientists use it, it doesn’t mean “something we’re unsure about.” It’s meaning is closer to “a detailed description of how something works.” Ever heard of music theory? It doesn’t mean that scientists doubt the existence of music.
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Yes, but the music theory is how music works, not if it exists.
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That’s right. And when scientists speak of the “theory of evolution,” they use the word in exactly the same way. The same goes for Newton’s and Einstein’s theories of gravitation and for the theory of probability, perturbations, and invariants in mathematics. String theory in physics looks like an exception–nobody is sure whether strings exist–but the phenomena it tries to explain are real enough.
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My science teachers for the past 5 or so years have explained it this way:
A scientific law tells WHAT happens. It can be proven or disproven.
A scientific theory tells WHY something happens. It can be disproven but not proven.
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187- But it does not go from ‘speck to whale.’ It goes from small speck, to slightly larger speck, to a little larger one, to a larger one, and then archeabacteria then eventually to eubacteria and animal-like protists to small animals, then larger ones. It takes a long time. It’s not instantaneous. How does a single cluster of cells inside a womb turn into a baby?
197- “I am officially leaving this thread because all of you are stubborn idiots who refuse to see things my way.” How do you know your way is right? And, I did try to see things as you were, and where I found flaws I pointed them out. If you find flaws in the way I try to explain something, I would expect you to do the same so I could correct them. That’s why I’m here, to widen my area of knowledge on this subject. And I have, quite a bit.
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(202),
That’s a good capsule summary. In any case, when scientists use the word, a theory does not mean either the opposite of a fact or some sort of low-grade or not-quite fact. A theory is what explains facts/data/observations.
Scientists don’t belittle ideas by saying that they are “just a theory.” Only non-scientists and anti-scientists do that. Theories are important, and creating a good one takes a lot of work.
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THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to explain this on the global warming thread with little success. Hopefully, more people will understand the definition of a scientific theory.
And may I point out, Donaldo, if you decide to come back, that everything you have said has been shot down with concise evidence. I would conclude from this that you’re decision to leave this thread is a result of frustration at having everything you’ve ever taught to you been proven wrong, and that’s perfectly understandable. But I would ask that, in light of this, you might consider that you might be the one who is wrong.
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198: Human ears grow as they age. Neanderthals, as far as we know, did not have giant ears, or else they would have very strange skulls from the weight, methinks.
Also, the super old people in the bible lived in the Holy Land, IE Judea, Israel, Palestine, Iraq. Most definitely not Europe. And I believe I am correct in saying that Neanderthal remains have only been found in Europe so far.
Does this scientist say that as we age, the fundamental shape of our skulls change- jaw, brow ridge, brain capacity, etc?
Neanderthals were a totally different species.
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*backreads*
Whoa, I did not expect Donaldo to thank me. Um, have you been reading my posts? It should be pretty obvious what my position on evolution is: IT HAPPENS.
Fine, you want to leave, go ahead. I evolved, you didn’t.
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I feel sorry for you, Donaldo, as you seem completely unable to accept any theory other than your own. Anyway, if Creationism is true, how did the so called “God” come to be? And can you at least explain why the name of the Christian all-powerful person is the word “dog”, which is one of the animals that humans keep as pets, backwards? You need to learn to accept other theories, and that you can be wrong.
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198: People in the Bible did not live to be extremely old; time was measured differently then.
208: The “God”-is-“dog”-backwards assertation is unoriginal and a very weak argument. I hope you’re kidding. Anyway, to answer your other question, Christians believe God has always existed and was not created. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from Genesis and 13+ years of Sunday school. If anyone knows that Christian theology endorses a different idea please tell me.
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Yeah, I didn’t really mean to use the “dog” argument seriously.
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May I ask why Creationism is somehow more probable than Evolution? If I write a book saying Evolution is correct, will people believe me hundreds or thousands of years from now? What is wrong with Evolution?
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211-it sounds more real. people dont want to believe that they came from apes.
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If something needed to come out of something, and couldn’t come out of nothing, and the Christians say that something is God… then God also needs to be created. You can’t have it both ways. As for scientific theories, they are ideas scientists have that are held for fact until disproven. Gravity is a theory that is held for fact until someone disproves it.
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213- exactly. God can’t exist.
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184-I actually have to aggree with Frigid. Cussing dosent really matter as long as it isnt to impress someone.
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215-then, you just sound stupid.
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In italian, cussing is an integrated and colorful part of the language. We have 50 different ways to tell someone to ‘:idea: off’.
And according to logical thought, God in the Christian sense cannot exist. Only problem is that blind faith has no place for reason.
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Well, it’s hard to explain how anything came about, isn’t it? I mean, if God wasn’t first, what was? i don’t think anything explains that
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218- But, nothing explains where God came from either. Where did he come from?
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219-I dont understand anything about God, but I’m not really an athiest. Shouldnt this be on the Religion thread??
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220- Probably. cHill just asked where it all coul dhave come from, and that was just my rebutal. No one has actual proof the there is/is not any kind of god. (Texts don’t count. Those were all writen by followers)
Ahhg, and I’m turing this into more religion now. If you want to respond to this post do it on the religions thread, I read it even if I lurk.
Hey, what about that article on Lamark in the March 2007 muse? What do you all think about that? I found it very interesting.
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221-Huh? *goes into room to get March 2007 issue*
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Eh, I’ll just type it up. It’ short.
“LAMARCH VINDICATED?
An 18th-century French biologist named Jean-Baptiste Lamarck has become a figure of fun because he believed that “aquired traits” could be passed on. The example of “Lamarckism” textbooks always give is long-necked giraffes: Lamarck suggested that giraffes that stretched their necks to reach high leaves would have offspring with slightly longer necks.
On scientist claimed to have disproved Lamarck’s ideas by chopping off the tails of hundreds of mice. The tailess mice had offspring with tails, which the scientist said proved aquired traits were not passed down.
But Lamarck may have the last laugh. He may have been right, at least sme of the time. Those long-necked giraffes are probably a figment of his imagination, but other cases arn’t so clear. For example, several old experiments showed that if generations of mice learned to navigate a maze, he third generation learned it faster than the second, which learned it faster than the first. Could there be some kind of epignetic change that makes it easier for each generation to learn the maze?
We still don’t know the answer. To find out, scientists will have to go back and repeat the experiment. It will no longer do to laugh haughtily and chop tails off mice.”
I don’t know who wrote it, it was a side-article. Diana Lutz wrote the main one, though, so maybe she did that one too. When I find the responce I wrote on it for extra credit in bio, I’ll type it up and post it.
I’d like to know what you all think, though.
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no such thing as evolutionnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Oh, no. Don’t start this again! We just had to close down Religions because of that type of thing. You’ll get FrigidSymphony on you, and then this thread will be gone, too.
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Ahhhhg, I speeled the title wrong in my post. I am pathetic. Anyway, it should be “LAMARCK VINDICATED”
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224: Wrong. No such thing as RELIGION TAUGHT STIFLING UNRATIONAL IGNORANT DOGMATIC BOLLOCKS. Namely the patheticaly named “intelligent design”, which is the equivalent of teaching the stork theory in sex ed. Honestly, this is just sad.
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See? What did I tell you?
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224: Oh, please. Take your blinders off and read the thread. If you don’t believe it, fine. But I retain my right to learn and understand SCIENCE as well as RELIGION.
I consider myself an agnostic; Frankly, I don’t know what is controlling things and I don’t particularly care.
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I am back only to post this one comment. It is from a book called “Gemini Summer” by Iain Lawrence. In this part, Gus Grissom is telling the protagonist, Danny River, what it is like up in space.
‘Gus pulled the helmet from Danny’s head. “You see the whole world as a miracle. That’s what I’m saying. You see there’s more to it all than any one person can understand.”
Goodbye once again. And I am still praying for you, FS.
May God open your eyes,
Donaldo
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230: May science and the knowledge of man open your eyes. Centuries ago the Christians believed the Earth was flat and made in 6 days. Religious theory is constantly being disproved. Grow up, really.
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Oh, honestly, you guys. This is getting ridiculous. Donaldo, I highly doubt Fridgy is going to some kind of hell because he’s an evolutionist, and Fridge, Donaldo can believe whatever he wants to, as can the rest of us.
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130- Donaldo, you sound a lot like a guy at my school. He’s from Virginia, and crosses himself every chance he gets. In fact, he got in trouble for saying “jesus” too much. (we go to a catholic school, they teach evolution there) He is being evaluated for OCD as we speak, and he is crazy about Jesus. I mean, when we asked him to announce the student council candy drive, he got up onstage and said:
“To celebrate the crucifixion and ressurrection of Jesus Christ, we are having a candy drive. Give candy so poor Christians might eat. Thank you and amen.” (at this point he crosses himself)
Garrett, if that’s you, or you blog on here, I will KICK YOUR ASS AT MOBBITQQ NEXT TIME!! MY SUPERTANK WILL KILL YOUR “ROYAL COW AIRFORCE” !!!! MOOHAHAHAHAHAA!!!! (i’m NOT crazy, it’s a game we play at lunch)
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Why did GAPAs take off my reconciliation post? i will say it again:
[Lawrence of A: I wasn’t the GAPA who zapped your post. But if the post in question was like the one you posted here (before I just zapped it) I have a hunch why. We’re trying to limit curse words and other profanity on MuseBlog. That includes curse words that use asterisks in place of some of the letters. — Rosanne ]
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224- Please see posts 15, 54, 123, and, actually, just read this whole thread before making coments like that. What you are thinking of probably has nothing to do with it. Evolution does not disprove creationism or anything of that sort, and the inverse of that sentence is also true. I suggest you read or research on this topic before making posts like that one, with out background knowladge/support.
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224-um…Maybe less pointless posting?
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…did any of you read the Brewster’s Rocket comic strip ayesterday? It’s sort of more a topic for the religions thread, but that’s closed, and i don’t want to start debating religion on Hot Topics (there’s plenty of other material). It went something like this:
1st Panel
Dr. something or other from the governtment- Ancient cave paintings have been discovered that show alien contact with humans 10,000 years ago.
2nd Panel
caption above cave painting of people bowing- The cave men thought the alien was some kind of god! Here, the alien explains that he’s not a god, but mereley a visitor from space.
caption above painting of alien runing away- Here, the cave men ae pelting the alien with stones for not believing in their god.
I thought it was rather amusing, anyway. Thought this would be a… not quite safer, but better place to post it than the random thread.
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232: He can believe whatever delusion he wants to, wether it’s the existence of God or the firm conviction that he’s Napoleon. As long as he doesn’t go campaigning for abolishing teaching evolution, or give money to organizations that dumb down the US by feeding them lies… You know, the US is the most religious country in the advanced world. However, it is also the country with the least religious knowledge.
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And I believe Fridgy here can believe in evolution. It is a complete lie, even if it is a clever one, but it is a lie, nonetheless. I never said he will go to hell because he is an evolutionist. I said unless he turns to Jesus, he will not go to heaven.
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I am leaving again. God bless you all-ESPECIALLY YOU FRIDGY! And once again, I will state this part of Charles Darwin’s life: He was going to be a pastor and was hghly religious, until his trip to the Galapagos Islands shattered his faith, unfortunately.
Wishing FS a wonderful day(of course, given to him by God)
DONALD
HAHA!
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237 – LOL!!!
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238- Actually, I think that Europeans are more likely to lie about being religious, whereas Americans are more likely to lie about being not as religious.
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Please. Keep religion out of here! It’s got nothing to do with evolution! Nothing at all! Well, maybe a little, but we’re not talking about where the world came from or anything like that! What is with people? How can you deny it? No, wait, where is the proof you have that there is no such thing? I mean concrete evidence. Is there even any?!
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243-No. You are exactly right. No one has concrete evidence that Creationism is false, just like no one has concrete proof the Evolution is true.
Now I am definitely done again. I may post, but not very often.
PRAYING FOR FS(again),
Donaldo the supercoolio awesome CREATIONIST CHRISTIAN
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ergh. I hate the fact that evolution is the only thing taught in schools. It’s not fact, guys! It’s a theory! A theory, I say!
I myself am a creationist. And I am doing an english essay on aforementioned issue. :).
Really though, I can’t stand it! The science teachers always go on about how real science is about disproving your hypothesis, and yet… there are the evolutionists clinging desperatly to their scientifically shredded theory with more fervid belief than scientific conviction- to me, evolution has lost all credibility because the believers refuse to come up with intellectually challenging arguements, and refuse to face hard, scientific fact. And also because a defender of evolution said, and I quote:
“The ideal would be to emulate Monty Python, and nail creationism to its perch. I apologize for falling short.”
for his closing statement after an e-mail debate over the teaching of creationism along with evolution in schools. I mean, GAH! (goto http://www.slate.com/id/33241/entry/33442/ and read the last paragraph. Or read the whole debate.)
Now, on the subject of evolution itself:
Darwin’s theory of evolution basically stated that, given enough time, an organism could evolve into an entirely different species, by way of natural selection and mutations. Right?
Well, considering the fact that most mutations are neutral, with no effect on appearance or function, very unlikely at the least. Also, mutations=DNA copying errors. Do you think it’s very likely that DNA copying errors = new organisms? I don’t.
Next point: complex organisms, like humans, require several chemical (??? I think it’s chemical…) processes ALL in place AT THE SAME TIME in order to function. Without one or more of these various processes, it is impossible to have complex organisms such as humans. Now, I ask you: did these various chemical processes all evolve in one humongous leap, as they would have to to achieve complex organisms, such as humans? Hm?
(On the other side of the same e-mail debate (first 2 paragraphs on #4, if you’re interested)):”To me Darwinian evolution (including chemical evolution) is today’s alchemy. The alchemists knew they could achieve some chemical transformations, and so they saw no reason to set limits. If you told an alchemist he could not change lead into gold, no doubt he would brush your objections aside as unhelpful, and ask why you weren’t proposing an alternative method of transformation. Alchemists were trying to solve a problem that wasn’t solvable with the knowledge available at the time. The right way to proceed was to abandon their fruitless research program and learn more about the difference between elements and compounds.
Similarly, the questions “how did life originate” and “how did a hypothetical replicating molecule become a cell” are unsolvable at present, which is why research into these subjects gets no further than speculation and hand-waving. The interesting agenda today is to discover what life is, especially to understand how the genetic information works in the cell and how much of it there has to be. Perhaps after a great deal more is learned about these subjects it will be possible to formulate better questions about origins.”
That about sums it up.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
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if the GAPA will let that link by, anyway…
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THANK YOU SO MUCH T.N.O! I might come back if you stay on this thread.
Today we had to watch the most idiotic video on how evolution affected animal body coverings and legs and arms. My friend and I were like, “WTF? BS!” Sorry for the cussing, GAPAs, but it is true.
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The real problem is this:
We have two contending theories, Evolution and Creationism.
Evolution is a scientific theory that is constantly gathering proof and has yet to be disproved (see the actual meaning of the term “scientific theory”).
Creationism is nothing more than religious belief saddled with a scientific sounding name in order to get it into schools to be taught to kids at an early age. It isn’t teaching, it’s indoctrinating. Should religion be taught in science class? The way the world works is based on laws of physics. Gravity, for example, is a ‘scientific theory’ until it is disproved, at which point the theory will have to be altered.
And if evolution is only a theory, then what is creationism? Religious dogma indoctrinated, forced into people’s minds for 2000 years, often at very young ages. There is no reason to back it up, no rationale, no logic. Only blind faith. Which has no place in school.
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244- JYou’re stating two extremes here. Basicly, you’re saying that: ‘If evolution is true, then there is no God. And if Creationism is true, then there is no such thing as evolution.’ All I’m saying is that evolution is true, and there is evidence. See post 141 for a quick example. Also see post 163.
Alright, moving on from religion, here’s a new mini-topic: What do you all think about how some people say evolution is basicly racism? We read an excerpt on it today in class, about how Darwin was basicly saying that ‘there shouldn’t be any handicaped people in the world and wnted only the best humans to live.’ It was completely off!! He wasn’t saying that at all, just explaining how animals became the way they are. He didn’t ever say that the strongest were the ones who should survive, just that they did!
Grr, I have to get of the computer now. Be back later.
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Richard Dawkins begins The Blind Watchmaker by acknowledging that “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
However, the question is: Have biologists found a natural process to do the designing? They claim that they have, in the Darwinian model of accumulation of random mutations and natural selection. But have these biologists considered that things look designed because, well, they were designed?
FS, you said that Creationism is merely a religious dogma that kids are indoctrinated with at early ages. I myself a creationist, I have never had anybody indoctrinating me (or attempting to) with anything except evolution. And there is scientific evidence for creationism, and plenty of logic. Let’s take a closer look, shall we:
Firstly, evolutionists claim that we all evolved from a common ancestor. But how likely is it, really, that life just naturally started and got busy turning bacteria into butterflies through random mutations and natural selection when most mutations are neutral! With no discernable effects! Not very likely, really, when you think about it.
Second, natural selection has never been caught in the act of actually creating a whole new type of organism. The closest example we have is currently a species of finch in the Galapagos. In 1977, I believe, a drought nearly wiped out the species, and survivers had larger beaks. The explanation usually stated is that the larger beaks gave the survivers the advantage in eating the last tough seeds. What the text books never mention, however, is the fact that there was a flood and the beak size shrank again. There wasn’t any way that the finches were gonna evolve into another species.
More later. Have to go.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
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250- Beak mutation was a result of different food sources, not a flood. An micro-evolution is extremely easy to see.
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651- yes, that’s true. But it’s used as evidence for evolution in general- that’s what I’m getting at.
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250- But you’re also cutting out several million years in your reasons. Bacteria did not just start ‘turning into butterfies,’ Skipping over the where life came from bit, there was something like archabacteria, then something like bacteria, then some plant-like organisms, and then plants and animal-like organisms and then very primitive organisms that were what we consider to be animals. This happed over thousands of years. As these organisms started growing, some would be different. These different ones would reproduce and they would grow farther and frther apart untill one day they were nothing alike. But this also took thousands of years. The reason we don’t see any new species today is because we havn’t been observing them for long enough. But in a millennia (if we even survie that long) there would probably be many different species, branched off from the ones we see today. Unless we blow everything up or mess up nature some how.
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Longer than that. There is evidence for life about 3.7 billion years ago, I believe. Evolutionary biologists usually speak about changes that took place over hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens of millions of years.
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I once found an error in a random book about evolution. It said humans had been around for 3.5 billion years! I think they meant “million”, but whatever cause I don’t really follow that anyway……….blahblahblah……bye
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253- I know that! Yes, there is variation among species. Variation happens every time a baby is born! What I’m saying is that these variations cannot possibly, no matter how many years you put in between, cause one organism to evolve into a whole new type of organism. I’m just saying that millions (or billions, or whatever) of years of mutations and natural selection couldn’t possibly make bacteria evolve into butterflies.
:idea:TNO:idea:
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256- For the last time: Bacteria did not evolve into butterlies. Bacteria evolved into things like protist, then animal-like protists, then possibly insects. I agree that a mutation couldn’t suddenly cause a butterfly out of a single speck, but it didn’t so that doesn’t matter. And it wouldn’t just have to be mutations, it could be traits. If someone is a little bigger than someone else that’s not a mutation, thats genetics. And if the bigger animals survived and the smaller ones didn’t, the bigger ones would soon outnumber the smaller ones untill the whole population was bigger. This might only take a few generations to happen.
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257- yeah, yeah! Butterflies, protists, insects, whatever. Same basic idea. Which is wrong, by the way.
Now, I never said variations were impossible within species. A slightly larger version of humans does not mean a new species. It’s like saying: “oh, look, people in China basically all have slanted eyes. We’ve found a new species of hominids!” I mean, really! as I said, variations occur every time someone reproduces, because the babies aren’t clones of their parents. What you’re talking about with the bigger-people anology is recessive/dominant alleles. Not evolution.
See, here’s how one would get a shorter population, despite short being a recessive trait:
Say two short people with tt alleles have four children, who are all, by default, short (tt). These four children grow up, and all marry short (tt) people. This goes on for each generation until T alleles are so rare that hardly anyone is tall.
In the previous situation, you don’t have a new, shorter species of human. You have a population with more t alleles in the gene pool than T. That is not evolution. That is a genetics thing. Evolving= mutations that cause a new species to arise. New dominant traits= a side affect of, for lack of a better phrase, selective breeding.
That’s why the finch beak thing is such a pale senario for evolutionists to use- it’s more of an allele thing than actual evolution.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
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How can people be so blinded? Yes, I am pro-evolution, and think that this “god” person is junk, but still, that is not why I’m complaining. People are saying that there is no way that they’re wrong, especially Donaldo, without looking at the other point of view. I deliberately left “god” uncapitalized. Also, while Donaldo may be praying for FS, he doesn’t have to say it in every one of his posts. Also, as FrigidSymphony doesn’t want to be prayed for, the same as me, you should not pray for either of us.
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258- But thats exactly what evolution is! Except in the wild, the traits that become common are those useful for survival. Eventually, you have a slightly different animal. Several more of these mutations and you have a new species. True, humans aren’t classified into different species because we didn’t have the time in isolation from one another to evolve into different species, but that doesn’t mean the other animals who had millions of years to evolve didn’t seperate into their respective species. Had humans spent millions of years in isolation from each other, who knows whether those short people, the pygmies of Africa for instance, would have evolved to be so radically different from other humans to become a seperate species. Your disregarding the timefactor. A new species doesn’t crop of every few generations. A new species crops up every few hundred generations.
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259- So. Here we have the arguement for evolution: “mutations typically modify DNA by deletion, insertion, or base change. Those modifications may result in an altered form of a protein. The altered form may make different reactions possible. The different reactions may make a developmental process go slower or faster. And that may result in a new trait–occasionally even a beneficial trait.”
IF there is a DNA modification. IF that modification alters a protein. IF that altered form makes different reactions possible. IF those different reactions slow down or speed up developemental processes. IF that results in a new trait, and IF that new trait is even beneficial! There are simply to many “ifs” for my liking.
On the creationist’s side:
“Sure, molecules are continually varying, mostly with neutral mutations that have no effect on visible features or fitness. Then there are those peppered moth populations, which vary in the percentage of dark and light moths that are present at any given time. For that matter, variation occurs every time a baby is born, because the child is not identical to the parents… these uncontroversial facts give us no reason to believe that a similar process turned bacteria into butterflies, or produced moths, predator birds, trees, and scientific observers in the first place. They may or may not have some religious objection to the wild extrapolation involved, but in any case they know that all the biologists are actually observing is a process of minor, back-and-forth variation within a population that is fundamentally stable. Bacteria have been doing this as long as there have been bacteria, and they remain bacteria.
“The root of the confusion is that evolutionary scientists think that the issue is whether “evolution has occurred.” Since any variation counts in their minds as evolution, the inevitable answer is “yes, of course.” But evolution also means universal common ancestry, so the existence of variation proves that you and I have a single-celled organism that is our “ancestor” in the same sense that our great-grandfather is our ancestor–except with a whole lot more intermediate descendants in between. This process of ancestral descent requires some natural mechanism to do the designing along the way (eyes, wings, immune systems, photosynthesis, etc.), and natural selection is the only halfway plausible designer-substitute that anyone has ever suggested. So the whole system is virtually proved by the choice of terminology, and from that point on it is merely a matter of searching the world for things that can be construed as confirming examples.”
I can’t put it any more simply than that.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
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*260, I mean… 261 was a response to 260.
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According to a 2006 Gallup poll,[29] about 46% of Americans believe in strict creationism, concurring with the statement that “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,” and 36% believe that God guided the process of evolution. Only 13% believe that humans evolved over millions of years, without any supernatural intervention.
According to a study published in Science, between 1985 and 2005 the number of adult Americans who accept evolution declined from 45% to 40%, the number of adults who reject evolution declined from 48% to 39% and the number of people who were unsure increased from 7% to 21%. Besides the United States the study also compared data from 32 European countries, Turkey ,and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%)
Less-direct anecdotal evidence of the popularity of creationism is reflected in the response of IMAX theaters to the availability of Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, an IMAX film which makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes. The film’s distributor reported that the only U.S. states with theaters which chose not to show the film were Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina:
“We’ve got to pick a film that’s going to sell in our area. If it’s not going to sell, we’re not going to take it,” said the director of an IMAX theater in Charleston that is not showing the movie. “Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution.”
According to a PBS documentary on evolution, Australian Young Earth Creationists claimed that “five percent of the Australian population now believe that Earth is thousands, rather than billions, of years old.†The documentary further states that “Australia is a particular stronghold of the creationist movement.”
This stuff was all cited off of Wikipedia. HOPE YOU ENJOYED READING IT!
259-And I can pray for you and FS if I want. You can’t control me. I will keep on praying for you as long as I want.
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(261) Lilbro,
From your earlier posts, I thought you believed that since species can’t change into other species, the types of animals and plants we see on Earth nowadays must have been around since life began. Now I’m not sure that’s what you were saying. Evolutionary biologists, of course, think that today’s animals and plants descended from ones that looked very different and that the changes took place over many millions of years. As creationists seem to doing most of the posting right now, I think it would help the discussion if they explained what they believe about the history of life.
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258- But, this wouldn’t necessarily happen to all of the animals. Only a group. Okay, say there is a herd of primitive deer. eventually it gets to big and they split off and travel to different places
So now there are several herds of the deer. In one forest, something attacks and eats all the deer of a certain color, but can’t see the other deer as well because they’re a different color. So gradually the herd becomes all of the less-sightable color and grows more adapted to forest life, faster and harder to see, maybe brown colored. Another group of the origanal herd finds itself on a mountain or somethins, where a better color for them would be grey. Here the deer that could jump farther and have better balance would be the most likely to survive, and over time become more agile and such. Eventually, these two groups become so distant of cousins that they are considered a different species.
[have to go. More later. Again. Grr…]
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263- That’s because Americans are mostly idiots, or at least the ones who do surveys.
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263- You’re not really proving your point, you’re just demonstrating how pathetic science education is in this country. I don’t believe Americans are idiots, I believe they are undereducated and indoctrinated early with strict interpretations of the world around them. Example: My cermics class is taught by a very nice woman who we will call Ms. B. Ms. B explained that she believes people who drive SUVs and similar vehicals while only one or two people are in the car are supporting terrorism. Without asking her to expatiate, some members of the class started to protest. Even after explaining how foreign oil generates money for governments who in turn support terrorist groups, she still had students who refused to believe her. Why? Because they or their parents drove SUVs and had never considered the consequences, and disliked the belief they might be wrong. I live in a community with one of the best school systems in the country and also the highest ratio of those with graduate degrees to those who didn’t, and you still get very ignorant views. America is a very religious country, and also a sadly a very ignorant one. The average american is not cosmopilitan, and hasn’t seen any other views other than those inside a very small community. No wonder scientific advancement in this country is falling far behind that of the rest of the world. But this is getting seriously off topic.
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266-Lamest excuse ever. Just because you can’t handle the fact that less and less Americans are believing in evolution doesn’t mean that you can say they are wrong.
264-I believe that God created the world with all of the animals and humans just the way they are now. Of course there was a little tweaking here and there-it’s called ADAPTATION. But, me being a Christian, believes that God created the world over not just 6 days, but that those days represent millenia. And since no one seems to answer my question correctly, where did the first speck of life come from? Don’t say archaebacteria because then where did the archaebacteria come from?
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264- Basically, I support the theory that all species were pretty much the same as they are now at the beginning of the world (which, incidentally, was not 4.6 billion years ago. It was in the thousands, not anywhere near billions.) with maybe a few minor differences. I know animals adapt- that’s a fact, and adaption doesn’t mean evolution- and one must accomidate for climate change and such. I believe that humans still looked like humans when the world began. So did cats, dogs, ect, ect. Does this help at all?
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
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268- No-one’s saying that they know where life comes from, but they are saying that evolution is completely possible. Also, that wasn’t an excuse, and I said it wrong anyway.
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(269),
I see. Yes, that does clarify things.
Recently a publisher sent Science a huge, lavishly illustrated book by someone named Harun Yahya. He thinks that geologists are right about how old rocks are and paleontologists are right about the order in which fossils of different creatures appear in the rocks; he just doesn’t think those creatures evolved. His conclusion is that different types of plants and animals were created at different times, over hundreds of millions of years. That’s not what the creationist MBers are saying, though. You think that geologists and paleontologists are wrong, too.
Just one more question before I recede into GAPA-space: it’s just biological evolution that bothers you all, right? I assume no one has problems with the idea that French and Spanish evolved from Latin or that English evolved from a kind of German. You can always discuss linguistic evolution if you get tired of arguing about the biological kind (not that there’s any sign of that).
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263: What does that prove? That americans are blindly religious and uneducated? Polls don’t prove anything. 500 years ago, general consensus world wide was that the earth was flat. So?
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Ahhhhhhg, I started watching that DVD from bio that supposedly ‘disproves’ evolution. The guy is off on so many points! HE compleatly skips over all religions besides christianity, and is so closed minded it makes me mad!! I’m only 44 minutes into it and I already have 4 pages of notes on things I want to respond to. The whole things is basically, as Robert said earlier, “I can’t imagine how it could have happened, therefore it didn’t happen.”
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“3- DE EVOLVING??????? In case you havent noticed, there are more inventions coming out than ever before, we are always getting smarter, and WE CONTROL A PLANET! again I ask you, DE EVOLVING???? Please explain. ”
In my completely ignorant state of mind, we ‘peaked’ in the late 19th century. Specifically, after the United States Civil War. Then we promptly started de-evolving. We had the Second United States Civil War (a little known ‘mini’ war between the New York gangs during thefirst united States Civil War. Gangs and factory workers, tired of being treated as filth and victim to wage slavery merged into a GIANT mob, attacked Landlords, Business Owners, rich people, etc. until being controlled by police. seriously, at least five hundred people died, but I know it was definately a lot more than five hundred. For more information, please read Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States”. ). Then we got involved in TWO World wars within thirty years and promptly destroyed our ‘great and vast’ western civilization. We dropped two atmic bombs on civilians (the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, supposedly to end the war. The second on Nagasaki, because scientists and the United States Government wanted to test a different type of atomic bomb. Sad, but true.) Then we got involved in tons of of other wars, millions of people died in numerous genecides, we ignored AIDS (“It can’t happen here!”), we come up with giant SUV’s and Hummers to show how cool we are and to destroy our home at the same time, we told women that we would give them there rights and then frown at them when women said it wasn’t happening (seventy-five cents to a man’s dollar), millions of people are homeless, etc, etc, etc, etc. Sop what if we make some cool gadjets, if Einsteins right about the bees, then in four to six years, we are going to satart to die off. We have de-evolved to become the most destructive and the most apathetic species in the history of time.
“263- That’s because Americans are mostly idiots, or at least the ones who do surveys. ”
Thank You. I mean, we voted Bush in TWICE.
Look, go believe in God, but don’t snarl and get mad at teachers for teaching evolution. Evelution is real, it’s fact. We evolved from tiny organisms. Read Darwin, because I don’t feel like explaining how it happened. He made some mistakes, but he has the general picture. If you don’t want to believe that, that’s not my problem. Just don’t try to get me to believe that God is going to punish me and that he created the world in six days. Fundamentalism, in religion, is often the cause of problems, but it doesn’t have to be as long as CHURCH AND STATE REMAIN, FOR NOW AND ALWAYS, COMPLETELY SEPERATE. I mean, come on. The Pope shouldn’t influence the Supreme Court. That’s not justice.
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Oh I found some really awesome news that supports evolution. Mustangs, in the wild, are beginning to form stripes. What’s happenng is that they’re out-breeding. Humans picked certain horses for their looks or temperment and then bred them to get the decendents of the Mustangs. Now, the horses are enlarging the gene pool by reproducing without having humans interfere. This means that they’re evolving into what a wild horse really is: zebra-striped, small (compared to domestic horses) and fast, small heads and large bodies, and completely wild (you can’t get a zebra to pull a carrige. It just won’t work.). They’re really pretty.
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(274),
Careful: social progress (as in the development of a country) is a completely different concept from biological evolution. And the definitions of “devolve” and “devolution” have nothing to do with evolution of any sort.
The second half of the 19th Century was a fascinating time in both America and Britain, though. I’d be happy to start a Victorian History thread any time there’s a demand for it.
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i hate hot topics. everyone is trying to prove they are right and that everyone else is wrong. not very productive. why don’t you all talk about what you think humans can do to progress? evolution v. creation will never be solved because they both require a certain amount of faith. evolutionists must have faith that information today is unbiased and corect and scientifically capable. creationists must beleive that there was a God and that he created everything. i doubt the two ideas will ever compromise, and why would they want to? i will definetely stay out of this thread just because i will not accomplish anything by posting.
i just need to say one thing: historically, many people have been led astray. as fridgey in the religions thread pointed out, many people in the dark ages blindly followed an institution, the catholic church, w/o any correct info. just remember that things that happened in the past may very well repeat themselves today. make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that everything the scientific and popular community think is absolutley right. thats all.
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But when one “faith” is backed by scientific evidence and rationale, it should command more respect than something based on blind faith and dogma.
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271-That is what I am saying. Everything was created the way they are today, but at different times(thus the 7 “days” in the Bible-which could have been longer periods than just days)
278-The thing about faith is that you ahve to have belief that you are right and what you believe is true, just like you have faith in your friends and trust them(if you have friends) And Creationists have just as much evidence that we are right as you evolutionists do. You just won’t admit it and do not even read our posts and give our side some thought, like we do to you. We are not just based on blind faith and dogma.
277-THANK YOU! YOU ARE RIGHT!
And Fridgy, I have a dare for you. For one week, no one school week(five days), I want you to be on our side and take our side. I just want to see what happens if you do. If you don’t, then fine, I don’t care. I was just curious what it would be like since you have so much intelligence up in that brain of yours. I bet, if you took our side, then we would be winning this battle right now. It is ok that you don’t. I respect your beliefs, for the most part. I don’t care that you do not even come close to respecting mine, because I know I am right, no matter what you and most other MBers on this thread think. So if you take my dare, you will win fame and fortune(ok, maybe just fame) among us Creationist MBers, which I know there are many out there, but they just don’t post here. Plus I will throw in 800 pieces of virtual choklit. If you don’t, fine, I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me. Just think about it. That is all I want you to do. If you agree, thank you.
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279-you actually think he’ll accept??!!! i highly doubt it.
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279- Wait- you want him to fight for something he doesn’t believe in and likely never will? Why? That has always seemed an idiotic practice to me. And the point of this thread is not about who ‘wins’ or not, it’s about, as I said before, discussion and if at all possible learning something you didn’t know before.
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279- As I said before, I do read all your posts. I have read every post on this thread. And if there is something in any post I wish to respond to using scientific evidence, I do.
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I just am curious. I doubt that he will accept it(he’s probably too chicken). And if he does accept it, but even after those five days are over, still believes in evolution(which I bet he will), but I just want to see what it is like. So let’s see his response first before we jump to conclusions.
And I know these threads are about learning things you might not have known before, but (no offense meant to Fridgy here) as long as HE is on this thread, I cannot discuss my beliefs, nor can I learn about your beliefs, without him either shooting down my evidence, or cheering ‘WE WIN! EVOLUTION IS RIGHT!’ or saying, ‘I pity you, Donaldo, because you seem unable to accept any theory besides yours.’ Even though he never tried to accept mine, and I did try to accept his but found it false and inplausable. I think some other people have done that before *cough cough Jadestone cough Julieb cough cough*
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271-Great idea! Now that is the kind of evolution I believe in.
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283- I find yours false and implausible. Why should I accept your arguments if you won’t accept mine for exactly the same reasons? You put religion before science. I put science before religion. Here is where we differ. I challenge you to come up with some scientific evidence that backs up your beliefs that cannot be shot down by FS or Jadestone or me. Because if your arguments consists entirely of “my faith says so so” then I’m afraid you will always find conflict with the people who put science before faith.
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279- The comment in the second paragraph was just plain rude. Isn’t there something in your long, supposedly “holy”, book thing about resepecting people? I haven’t read it, but I assume that there is.
283- It’s me that feels sorry for you, not FS.
I feel exactly the same as JS, FS, and Julieb. (Well, maybe not as drastic as FS, but still…) I would give evidence against you, but I’m not too good at that on this topic, so I just agree with people.
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Why should I accept? If, as you say, I have so much intelligence in that brain of mine, I am able to see that the correct, right stance to take is that of evolution. Creationism is based on tradition and faith forwarded dogma, evolution on scientific research, logic, rationale and thought. The so-called ‘evidence’ you have to back up creationism is no more than fables and myth written long ago. If I were to fight for creationism, the only thing I would have to back up my position (besides my debating and oratory skills) would be religion, which is NOT a reliable basis for scientific explanations.
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evolutionists: can you explain to me how humans developed their reproductive systems? if this hasn’t already been discussed, the system we have currently would have taken a looooooooong time to form and would have been vestigal until full ready. not to mention that the opposite sex’s same system must have been develping at the same time and that they both would have had to be ready to reproduce at the same time…..somehow all this dosen’t quite make sense to me. can anyone help me out?
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What I’m wondering is how carnivorous plants had this “mutation” one day that gave them the ability to eat plants. Explain?
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I mean insects.
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Jeez, everytime you ask these questions we have to go out and look this stuff up on the web (I’m sure there is an explanation, but I’m not an expert). It would save a lot of time and bother if you would just look up whatever you wanted to know yourselves.
288- What you need to understand is that sexual reproduction was around long before humans evolved.
Quoted from The Journal of Evolutionary Philosophy:
The most popular theory among respectable evolutionists is that sexual reproduction allows ‘genetic recombination’. In other words …
• beneficial mutations from separate ancestries can be combined
• beneficial mutations can be separated from harmful mutations
• unsuccessful genetic traits can easily disappear from an existing population
Without sexual reproduction, natural selection acts upon the entire genetic makeup of an organism, but with sexual reproduction, natural selection acts upon individual genetic traits.
With sexual reproduction, less than one in four offspring will receive the best genetic traits from both parents. However, natural selection seems to be very effective at eliminating the least successful variations, especially in the harsh conditions of the wild, where only a fraction of all newly conceived offspring survive until breeding age.
The evolution of sex
Although bacteria simply multiply by dividing into two, they also often exchange genetic material, usually by releasing small fragments called plasmids which can be absorbed by nearby bacteria. In this way, beneficial mutations are shared. This might arguably be considered to be the earliest form of sex.
After the appearance of plants and animals in the oceans around 600 million years ago, the only practical way for these new multi-celled sea-creatures to reproduce was by releasing seeds or eggs, whose cells would then begin dividing, sticking together, and changing each time they divided, until finally forming a new adult.
The only practical time to accept potentially beneficial foreign genetic material was before the seed or egg began growing. Many sea plants and animals today release pollen or sperm into the water to be absorbed by nearby seeds or eggs, which will not begin growing until they have been fertilized.
As plants moved onto the land, their pollen was either carried by the wind or delivered directly to seeds by insects. For almost all land animals and many sea animals, sperm was more effectively delivered by injecting it into an enclosed body cavity containing eggs.
289- Search PubMed for “evolution of carnivorous plants.” I think you’ll find that the 19 studies that will subsequently appear on your screen will adequately adress your question.
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Sex is not a phenomenon attributed only to humans.
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And I quote St. Augestine, “If you understand it, then it is not God”.
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I just got ‘The Origin of Species” from the library. I decided I really should learn more about what Darwin thought, since I’m interested. Will post later.I thought it was funny that it wasn’t as thick as I would have thought till it turned out to be in size 9 font. This might take longer then previously thought.
I give up trying to not talk about religion here. Every time I come up with something else to talk about with evolutin people don’t respond.
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Guys/Girls I have yet to see any real evidence of evolution-
as to Jadestones 15th post THAT IS ADEPTATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT EVEN CLOSE TO EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Charles Darwin himself said if no fossil evidence was found within a 100 years or so he himself wouldnt believe in evolution!!!
Darwin studied a bunch of finches and noticed that they were all different sizes and colors according to the climate of the island they lived on. He then concluded that animals might over extremely long periods of time evolve into new species. As to post # 277 ONCE AGAIN I HAVE YET TO SEE ANY REAL EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION!!!! IN FACT THERE IS MORE EVIDENCE FOR CREATION THAN THERE IS FOR EVOLUTION!!!!!
try this one… if the universe has always been here THEN THERE IS NO WAY WE COULD BE AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME!
you would have to go so far back in time that YOU COULD NEVER GET HERE!!! if you dont understand that heres a metaphor for ya, if your gonna start a race and the end of the race is say 1 million miles straight ahead. CAN YOU EVEN START THE RACE IF THE STARTIS AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MILES IN THE OTHER DIRECTION?????!!!!! NO!!! you cant.
So how about this- ever heard of the cell theory?? guess what part of it is, ALL CELLS COME FROM CELLS. oh wait, then where did the first cells come from? From an explosion??
No that cant be right because the 2nd law of thermodynamics says that matter is never created or destroyed. IT ONLY CHANGES FORMS!! Plus theres this thing called Irreducibly Complex. Basically that means something is so complex it is impossible to reduce. OUT OF THE MANY KINDS OF THE CELLS IN YOUR BODY ABOUT 200-500 DIFFERENT COMPONENTS ARE NEEDED TO MAKE UP ONE CELL!!! ONE CELL!!! AND YET WE”RE TO BELIEVE THAT US, WITH THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF THESE CELLS JUST MAGICALLY APPEARED???????? Hey guess what, ya know how bees can just hover there? Well guess what, ITS AGAINS THE LAWS OF PHYSICS!!! (yes LOOK IT UP!!) it is completely against the laws of physics for a bee with wings that small and a body that big and heavy, again I say IMPOSSIBLE for it to flap its tiny wings fast enough to create lift and be able to get off the ground! For creationism- i say just go outside, IS IT JUST SOME “MAGICAL” accident that we “HAPPEN” to breathe air and breathe out carbon dioxide?and all these plants on the Earth just “HAPPEN” to take in carbon dioxide and put out oxygen??? Does the Earth just “HAPPEN” to have been at the perfect distance from the sun to allow seasons, water and ice??? I think not.
P.S. I will debate anyone on here who believes evolution if u wish to do so.
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sorry about the double post but i waz readin some of the comments and stuff like “the smarter animals live and the dumb die out” and “the animals will produce offspring resistant to a disease” THEY ARE ALL TALKING ABOUT ADEPTATION!!! NO WHERE EVEN NEAR EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE!!!! and yet again THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO FOSSIL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT EVOLUTION!!!!!!
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See 260 re speciation. And the capitals,extraneous punctuation, and incomplete words are not going to make people take you seriously. BTW, it’s “adaptation.”
And there is tons of fossil evidence; I quote from “Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences.”
The Fossil Record
Although it was Darwin, above all others, who first marshaled convincing evidence for biological evolution, earlier scholars had recognized that organisms on Earth had changed systematically over long periods of time. For example, in 1799 an engineer named William Smith reported that, in undisrupted layers of rock, fossils occurred in a definite sequential order, with more modern-appearing ones closer to the top. Because bottom layers of rock logically were laid down earlier and thus are older than top layers, the sequence of fossils also could be given a chronology from oldest to youngest. His findings were confirmed and extended in the 1830s by the paleontologist William Lonsdale, who recognized that fossil remains of organisms from lower strata were more primitive than the ones above. Today, many thousands of ancient rock deposits have been identified that show corresponding successions of fossil organisms.
Thus, the general sequence of fossils had already been recognized before Darwin conceived of descent with modification. But the paleontologists and geologists before Darwin used the sequence of fossils in rocks not as proof of biological evolution, but as a basis for working out the original sequence of rock strata that had been structurally disturbed by earthquakes and other forces.
In Darwin’s time, paleontology was still a rudimentary science. Large parts of the geological succession of stratified rocks were unknown or inadequately studied.
Darwin, therefore, worried about the rarity of intermediate forms between some major groups of organisms.
Today, many of the gaps in the paleontological record have been filled by the research of paleontologists. Hundreds of thousands of fossil organisms, found in well-dated rock sequences, represent successions of forms through time and manifest many evolutionary transitions. As mentioned earlier, microbial life of the simplest type was already in existence 3.5 billion years ago. The oldest evidence of more complex organisms (that is, eucaryotic cells, which are more complex than bacteria) has been discovered in fossils sealed in rocks approximately 2 billion years old. Multicellular organisms, which are the familiar fungi, plants, and animals, have been found only in younger geological strata. The following list presents the order in which increasingly complex forms of life appeared:
——————————————————————————–
Life Form
—————————————————————————
Millions of Years Since
First Known Appearance
(Approximate)
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So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species. Actually, nearly all fossils can be regarded as intermediates in some sense; they are life forms that come between the forms that preceded them and those that followed.
The fossil record thus provides consistent evidence of systematic change through time–of descent with modification. From this huge body of evidence, it can be predicted that no reversals will be found in future paleontological studies. That is, amphibians will not appear before fishes, nor mammals before reptiles, and no complex life will occur in the geological record before the oldest eucaryotic cells. This prediction has been upheld by the evidence that has accumulated until now: no reversals have been found.
And for “all cells come from cells,” that just means that all existing cells, as far as we know, are created by other cells multiplying. We don’t know how the first cell formed yet, but we have a pretty good idea. A couple hundred years ago we didn’t have the germ theory and look where we are know. Just because we don’t know yet what causes something doesn’t mean there isn’t a logical explanation.
And as for all those “magicals,” the answer is no, of course not. The planet we live on has water because water is necessary to support life (in all forms we know of) and we wouldn’t have evolved if it didn’t. That’s Douglas Adam’s puddle theory, the puddle was created to fit the hole, not the other way around.
And for bees flying, that is according to the conventional laws of aerodynamics not adapted for insect anatomy. Bees don’t fly the way birds do, and their wings are radically different. That story is completely bunk.
And your “we couldn’t be at this moment in time” rant makes absolutely no sense.
And where are you getting “irreducible complexity” from? It’s apparently an intelligent design term, I had to look it up because it certainly isn’t used in science.
Again, please give some evidence that cannot be disproven.
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I’m sick of arguing, this is moronic.
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298 – I agree. We’re at 300 posts, so let’s just stop this stupid flamewar.
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Okay, fine by me. One thing I just read in some magazine though: they found some sort of almost-organic material on a commet recently somewhere. At the rate commets crashed into earth in its early stages, it’s likely some of this may have helped start life.
Okay, done.
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Yep, I really don’t think there is anything more to say. We just have to agree to disagree.
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*starts reciting poetry*
This evolution thread,
is tearing us apart.
This really stupid flamewar
could break out into a PIEWAR!
and for the race metaphore, if you are in the middle of a race that you have always been running and the start was an infinate number of miles away, it is impossible for you to have been able to reach your point in time, thus the universe must have had a starting point and will have an ending point.
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Oh, no. We might not get the second evolution thread, or we might get it, and after a few posts have it closed because of the flaming. I would say the words that get you pied, but I don’t want to have that happen. Therefore, I will say every other word. Remember, all here. There, I wasn’t pied, but people know what I was saying.
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quite a battlefield…sheesh…
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302- What? I just don’t understand. The Big bang began the universe, and it’s been going on ever since. Are you debating the orgin of the universe, or life? They both have specific starting points.
293- Well, perhaps he was right.
What about the evolution of English? I heard that it actually came from French.
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305- We’re supposed to be discussing evolution, possibly of animals, but we seem to have gotten into a debate about religion. All things like this do.
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first of all- 302 and 305- thank you. you seem to understand my metaphor.
Now as for Julieb, you didnt say anything about the 1st law of thermodynamics. (yes I made a mistake earlier. Its the 1st, not second law) Guess what? Its not a theory like the cell theory its a LAW. That means it has been proven to be true in all cases.
It states that matter is NEVER created nor destroyed. It can change from liquid to gas to plasma to solid and then back again but the total amount of energy remains the same. Now since this is true, how could the universe be expanding?? How could this universe have been created by the big bang? all this goes against the 1st LAW of thermodynamics.
As for irreducibly complex, its just a big term for, That thing is so complicated its impossible to simplify it! Basically (if your in Algebra 1 you know what Im talking about) humans are like Prime Trinomials. We cannot be factored or in other terms- reduced to a simpler form. To support this- Apes have about a .3 or maybe .03 % difference in DNA than humans. But then why do humans have Mozart, Einstein, Space Travel??
There is a missing link between humans and apes and there alwayse will be. Sure there is fossils of cavemen but there is no in-between. Also, where is there a half-fish-half-reptile? Why arent there any of those? Another tally for irreducibly complex is like I said earlier. If the Earth’s orbit had even been a quarter mile closer to the sun than it is now life would probably not be possible. And your saying that happened just by accident?? Oh wait a minute, you said Douglas Adam’s theory was the puddle was created to fill the hole, not the other way around. Oh wait, what was that word you used? Oh yeah, CREATED. Not spontaneously exploded into being, but CREATED.
And as for my race metaphor try this, Say if you are in a game show where you must get 1000 points to win and you are at 200 points already. If you started at negative-infinite points you could never have gotten to 200 points, because you would have to start and infinite number of points ago. Therefor, this universe must have been created by something outside the natural laws we know.
I have a question for you Julieb, do you believe Jesus existed? Not as the son of God but do you believe he at least walked the Earth?
please refrain from saying I need to have evidence that cant be disproven before you disprove all my evidence. It just doesnt make sense.
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Yep. Maybe we should have a flame war thread, where people can post things like this. The GAPAs could put “DANGER, FLAMING!” on it, so that people would know to stay away.
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that would be good, it would make the rest of the site safe
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and umm…should they make a new thread now? it’s past 300 posts…
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Maybe we should, but will we? That’s the question.
Speaking of questions, here’s a Q&A for you:
Q. How many GAPAs does it take to make a new thread?
A. Four: one to click the mouse, and three to sit around talking about how good the old thread was.
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307- Ok, before getting into dark matter and all that, because I’m not exactly an expert on that front, how do you think gas expands? It doesn’t gain more particles, it just spreads out. We don’t know much about dark matter and dark energy yet, so this phenomena is not really explained (at least not in terms that I can understand). Consult an astrophysicist or look it up yourself, but the science is there. I’m in A2A, thanks, and that’s just completely unjustified. We are more advanced than other animals because we have larger and more complex brains, a result of having to survive on the ground with few biological skills (no claws, small teeth, can’t run fast, face it, brains are the only things humans have) Brain size and bipedal-ness are the major differences between humans and other primates. And I’m sorry that the word created has gotten such a distorted meaning. I merely used it to illustrate coming into being. You missed the point of the metaphor.
No link? What do you call Lucy?
And yes, the universe does have a fixed starting and ending point. The real question is how did it begin, how will it end, and what is there when it is nonexistant. Most mysteries of the universe have yet to be explained, but I dismiss the thought as lack of an explanation to be found in the future rather than substituting an explanation that was based on no scientific evidence whatsoever before we knew anything about the universe at all.
As for Jesus, if he existed (and I say if) he was just a nice jewish boy who’s story got extremely inflated after his death. To me, there’s really no more proof than that of any one else living during that period. They didn’t keep accurate birth records or anything, all your going on is the writing of a small group. Does it matter if he lived or not? Well, I guess it does to you, but it doesn’t to me.
I know, I know, I promised to stop but the jab was to hard to resist.
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Jesus did exist. He might not have been the son of god, but he was born and he died. That much is certain.
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You know what? I’m really ticked right now. I’ve been reading some of the other posts and I feel like we should take this outside. of this thread. seriously. A FLAMING PIE WAR TO END ALL WARS! Great and Powerful administrators, if you please will, just create a pie war thread that is created for the sole purpose to let us duke it out over evolution. please. That last jab has sent me over the edge. I am in full rant mode now. You know what Hindus believe about evolution? Huh? They believe that the universe was created in a way that we will never understand. You understand it when you are a baby, but then your brain shrinks. AH! I feel so angery. Man, I hope this doesn’t get deleted. please.
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That is all
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if you do make the thread, be sure to label it”DANGER FLAME WAR” as stated above
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There’s a quotation I heard recently — “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” It was by Robert Frost. (I just looked it up.) I would add that it doesn’t mean you never change your mind.
Anyway, wars to end war haven’t done much good as far as I can tell, and flame wars have never changed anyone’s mind or proved anything. (Oddly enough, proving things doesn’t seem to change many people’s minds, either.) So, however gratifying it might be for you to have an unrestricted opportunity to vent your wrath and indignation, I’m afraid the Administrators will not allow it.
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oh well…
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316- I like that. Though personally, I may have to work on my patience and self control.
I really don’t think a pie war would do anything to vindicate either side’s arguement. Either you have a civilized discussion or you don’t.
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312- so your basically saying that the whole universe came from one incredibly dense little speck that just expanded? Ps – guess what? matter is not gas. gas is matter. can you make your hand start to infinitely expand?
by the way Jesus is mentioned by at least 4 other historically accurate writers who were not followers of Jesus- so really your jab did nothing.
unjustified?? thats not my point. my point is there are so many variables contained in 1 ameoba the chances of one appearing without intervention is about 1-100000000000
lucy??
you still havnt explainned the 1st law of thermodynamics and what about the 2nd law? matter is constently in a state of decline. people die, stuff breaks. So then how did this tiny speck of matter suddenly explode and increase?
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318- i agree
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316- Yes, no flame wars please. Total wars never will be compleatly solved because people will always think differently from one another, which is a good thing. Personally, I think I have been very self-controlled on this thread, no matter how I end up feeling after reading something. Many other people have to, the problem is that our viewpoints all differ slightly. As Julieb said, we just have to agree to disagree.
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319-I don’t think either the first or the second law of thermodynamics says things can’t increase in size.
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322- yes i know but once again,, can u make your hand start to infinitely expand like the universe is doing?
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Now you’re talking about cosmology, not evolution. I could start a Cosmology thread, but it would help if some of you had graduate degrees in physics.
As an observer of this thread, I’ve noticed three new arguments to add the one I noted a few weeks ago. Here are all four:
1. I can’t imagine how X could happen. Therefore, nobody can imagine how X could happen. Therefore, X doesn’t happen.
2. I don’t understand X. If you can’t explain X to me right now, then nobody understands X, and X is nonsense.
3. Experts don’t know everything about X. Therefore, experts don’t know anything about X. Therefore, a non-expert opinion about X is just as good as an expert one.
4. Scientists sometimes change their minds about things as new evidence becomes available. Therefore, their opinions are less reliable than the opinions of people who never change their minds.
It’s good to be skeptical and to want to know the evidence that supports people’s beliefs. Where scientists are concerned, though, the evidence is on the record, where other scientists (or anybody else) can look it up. They put the evidence in their papers. They have to, or their papers won’t be published. That’s one of the rules they play by. So if you want to know why physicists think the universe is expanding, it’s easy to find out.
Hm… there may be a Q&A column in this.
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I dont want to know why the universe is expanding. I know gas can expand. What I want to know is (the big bang) how there could be such an INCREDIBLY dense speck that it could still be expanding today. If the universe was created from the big bang, for it to be still expanding and for all of everything to have been created it would have to have been many many many times denser than a black hole.
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Maybe it was. I’ll ask a physicist. It’s possible that the answer involves advanced math, so be warned.
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Blind faith in jesus is moronic. Doubt will allow you to think for yourself.
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I think that I’ve been reasonable, haven’t I? But please, remember that we’re all Musers *is interrupted by a pie**cleans self off* here. Please, no flaming. That includes you, FS.
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lf this thread doesn’t get back on topic pretty soon, I’ll be strongly tempted to close it down without starting another one.
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327-That was both mean and off-topic.
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alright- to get back on topic robert I would like to ask all who believe in evolution what ther beliefs as to the origins of the universe.
either
A- the universe was created from nothing
B- the universe was created from a speck one-billionth the size of a proton that exploded/combusted into the universe
C-The universe has always been here
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p.s., Frigid Symphony as I will get to later there is actually more blind faith involved in evolution than creationism.
For one- the majority of the books of the bible (including Matthew,Mark,Luke,John) were published about 45 years after Jesus’s death. People who saw and met Jesus were still around at this time. Therefore unless somehow the majority of the Roman world went along with this, everything said about Jesus in the Bible is true. If the Bible was false why would people have kept quiet about it? The Government was the only ones who had the power to keep so many people quiet and yet they wouldnt have because they despised Jesus.
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I thought we had said earler that the beginings of the universe wern’t the same subject as evolution. I don’t know where the universe came from, and personally, I can’t make myself believe anything other than science no matter how hard I try, which likely is why I am not religious. So, none of those. Perhaps if I research it more I will go wth the most likely one to hae happened.
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so sorry about the triple post but I just remembered,
SCIENTISTS, not creationists but SCIENTISTS calculated the chances of one bacterium coming into being by accident, assuming they can come into being by accident of course and the number was 10^40000 power. Thats a big number. and of course the chances of that bacterium surviving and “evolving” into something else is even greater. and then on up the line until you get to humans. by that time the chance is so small it is literally impossible.
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(332),
I’ll be glad to start a New Testament thread or a Jesus thread for anyone who wants to discuss those topics. But I don’t see why either this comment or the one that provoked it belongs on an Evolution thread.
(331),
The origin of the universe isn’t relevant, either. Evolution is about different kinds of plants, animals, and other creatures — their similarities and differences, and where they live. It’s biology and paleontology. The Big Bang and other models of the origin of the universe are physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. If scientists are right, life on Earth appeared when the universe was about 10 billion years old — two-thirds as old as it is now. Until that time, life, and evolution, didn’t exist.
Again, I’ll be happy to start an “origin of the universe” thread if you want to discuss it, but the Evolution thread is the wrong place.
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Do you really think that it was more likely that the universe was created by a divine being? We can only speculate on the origins of the universe, but if you really want to get into statistics I think the god explanation would be just as unlikely as any other. This has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. But just to point something out, there a plenty of people who believe in both evolution and god. You act as though all evolutionists must be atheists. Most atheists are probably evolutionists, but I doubt most evolutionists would call themselves atheists.
326- That would be awesome!
327- Calm down, Fridgy. Don’t get the thread shut down. In the future, at least try to include something relevant, instead of just making people angry? I agree with you on most topics but you of all people should know that nobody who has been brought up since birth being told something is going to accept criticism against it passively.
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298-For once, I agree with you. This topic is getting old. WHy can’t we agree on something, FS? We need to find somethig we can agree on. And sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I have been taking a break from MuseBlog.
335-Those threads would be great, but I am afraid someone might come up and start debating, which would bug me. I am done arguing.
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ill stop talking about creationism now but the origin of the universe directly relates to evolution. if there was this matter and there was no life, then, this matter from the beginning of the universe must have some how organized itself into organic premicrobial life. THAT is what cant be explained. thats like saying can you make some dirt into a living microbe.
335- This is what Im talking about. how matter on the Earth 15 billion years ago suddenly form life? it directly relates to evolution because without this matter creating life than there can be no evolution.
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While I think that everything about the god thing that christians and jews believe in in a load of junk, I still think that we should respect people’s opinions. I’m sure that everyone who doesn’t believe in god has friends that do, I definitely do, and that people who do believe have friends that don’t. This includes FS and Donaldo, who I think of as the greatest opposites. At least, Donaldo was until JohnnyVern came, now I’m not sure which is most resistant. JUST STOP ARGUING! I think that this topic should be closed for a bit, same as Religions. It’s just gotten too bad, with all of the flaming. I say it again, and no-one dare pie me, REMEMBER, WE’RE ALL MUSERS HERE!!! Please, either come to a peace, and continue discussing it, or have the GAPAs close the topic. I am going to keep posting things to this meaning, unless the stupid flaming is stopped. I still have my strong opinion that there is no such thing as god, but I’m not going to press it on anyone else. Please, just stop and have a civilized conversation.
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The universe is at least 24 gigaparsecs big. 78 billion light years. In something that big, odds are evolution/life will happen.
“dirt into a living microbe” go look up the urey miller experiments.
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337-Here’s something I think we can all agree on: muse is the best magazine in the world.
I think threads like this debating things are fine, as long as it remains civil conversation. However, recently musers seem unable to debate anything controversial without reverting back to insults and ineffective arguing (which is to say, just saying that something is wrong rather than actually discussing it). I think that until we can all be nicer, we should give up on all threads about religion, evolution, and anything particularly controversial.
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340- Thanks. I’ve mentioned the Urey-Miller experiment before and nobody ever seems to actually bother to look it up. And for reiterating that life is much more probable than everyone seems to think.
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Thank you, emmatheduck. Now, if only people would listen…
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Now for evidence that there are links between different species. Take dinosaurs and chickens, they’re related, but how? Have you ever seen pictures of fossils of feathered dinosaurs? here’s a link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1081677.stm
If that doesn’t work, look up Confuciusornis, or Microraptor.
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Also worth a look is the Wikipedia article on Devonian tetrapods:
338- No it doesn’t. Evolution is about how one species of plant or animal turns into another, not how life started. That’s got nothing to do with evolution.
I havn’t made much progress with the book. The introdution and first few pages were very hard to get into, but it’s getting better. Not really the kind of book you can sink your teeth into and read in one go, but I think I’m getting used to the way Darwin wrote. I’ve learned a lot about pidgins and flowers so far.
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My dad says the Song of the dodo and the Flight of the iguana were good books too, but really hard to get into. Reading science isn’t too exciting for me, I do better with pictures. Coloured pictures.
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I’m inclined to give another thread a chance. What do the rest of you think? Any feelings pro or con?
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348: I really don’t know. Creationism is a scientific term for religious dogma, that cannot be believed unless you have absolute faith in religion. As faith cannot be argued with, it seems pointless to me to continue. Evolution is less of a hot topic than what goes in the religions threads, and more people will find themselves against the christian dogma. When I argue with a religionist about religion and moral ethics, even if I have no impact on who I’m arguing with, I may still have an impact on the neutral onlookers. But with evolution, I feel there are no neutral onlookers.
On a final note, it really sickens me to see how the religious leaders have managed to make myth and fable seem scientific, and how they seek to brainwash children by giving them confusing ideas.
Evolutionists, hear me: Consider yourselves enlightened indivuals, and waste no time striking at a small aspect of the problem. Or, if you enjoy yourselves, do so, but always remember that creationism will fall with religion.
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332- I am on your side, but here is a correction. The majority of books in the Bible are in the Old Testament, not the New Testament. They were written during the time it happened. Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers, I am pretty sure. Jonah wrote the book of Jonah(no, really?) Song of Songs(or SOng of SOlomon) was written by Solomon(gee, who woulda guessed?)
And just so you know, I believe in the 7 days theory, in which God made everything, but if that is wrong, I have to say the most plausible is the Big Bang theory, because who but God could make such a huge explosion?
339-I TOTALLY AGREE. This thread used to be about discussing and sharing beliefs. It now feels like everyone is just trying to prove the other person wrong and they are trying to “win” the argument, but SERIOUSLY, who will ever know. Until we meet our Maker, we won’t know. FS and me are the greatest rivals probably, but if you look through this thread and Religion, you would find that we did agree with each other on some topics. Arguing and insulting everyone LIKE THIS goes against the basis of Christianity, and since it seems like most everyone who is a Creationist is a Christian, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Same with you Evolutionists too. I can’t believe the arguing and insulting. No one is learning anything anymore. ALL THE COMMENTS ARE LIKE,” No. You are wrong. That can’t be. BLAHBLAHBLAH.” or “Stupid #*&%@! That is impossible. I am right. You are wrong. Deal with it!” or my personal favorite: “If you say this works, then why does this happen?” (I ADMIT TO USING ALL OF THOSE, AND FS HAS TOO, WHETHER OR NOT HE ADMITS IT. NOT TO OFFEND FS. I HAVE TO SAY FS IS A GENIUS. BUT SOME THINGS IN THIS WORLD CAN’T BE EXPLAINED BY FACTS ALONE.)
WE NEED A BREAK FROM THIS THREAD.
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IF ANYONE WANTS TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS THREAD, LOOK HERE.
It started out as a place of learning and sharing. Then one insult came. ANd another and another. And then it became all about proving others wrong and laughing at them.
KNOW WHY NO ONE CHANGES THEIR MIND ANY MORE ON THIS THREAD?
It is not because they are stubborn, as some might think. It is because there is no actual information being put forth as evidence of one case or the other.
RESPOND IF YOU AGREE WITH ME.
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Sorry for the triple post but:
349-There is evidence of Creationism. You just ignore it. Wikipedia or Google it.
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It does seem that a lot of people are tired of this subject — though not tired enough to stay away from the thread.
I’m still wavering over whether to start a new one. I think there are some important topics that no one has discussed, such as how evolution came to be accepted during the second half of the 19th century, and why evolution is considered a scientific theory while creationism is not (hint: it’s not just because most scientists think one is true and the other isn’t). Those two topics — the history of the idea, and what makes a theory scientifically useful — are worth finding out about, but probably not many of you have covered them in your science classes yet.
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353- I’M tired of this subject – and I haven’t even been on the thread in forever. If we could have been NICE about evolution, and not argue about whether it was true or not, it would have been a different matter.
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I agree. Sometimes you can learn a lot by exploring an idea without worrying about whether or not it’s true. For example, a few months after the blog started, we had a thread about King Arthur. It wouldn’t have been much fun if people had insisted on arguing about whether King Arthur had ever existed. There are a lot of topics like that.
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Actually, we’ve been rguing since post 8. We’re bound to. There was a nice part were we talked about Monotremes though.
I think if we could talk about evolution instead of debating it’s existance, we’d be fine. And instead of discussing the origin of life, we could talk about the Lamark*(see post 223) article in Muse or what I posested in 249.
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356-I agree, but Creationists would not like talking about evolution when they do not think it is true. We would have to have time to explain why we do not believe in evolution. I think it is time to say goodbye, good riddance to this thread.
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357- But, this is an evolution thread. These are things I want to discuss. If you don’t, then why waste time arguing with the people who do? If there were a Creationist thread, I wouldn’t post on it unless I had a question about what Creationists thought or something, not argue and say they were wrong.
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All right. Suppose I start two threads: a new Evolution thread for people who want to discuss the scientific theory of evolution, and a Creationism thread for people who want to discuss supernatural scenarios of the origin of life, the universe, and everything. Any interest?
I wish I’d thought of that earlier. It might have saved a load of trouble.
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359: Gigantic LOL.
However: I was introduced to the term “creationism” through an article in The Guardian Weekly. It was criticizing the religious right in America attempting to brainwash children by giving religious myth a ‘scientific spin’. It explained how creationism was basically the bible given a different tone, and how “evidence” started showing up, when all it is is an idea you can’t disprove. Just like saying that the universe came from Ginnungagap, the great nothingness, or that the three brothers, Odin, Vili and Ve created the nine worlds by slaying the giant Ymir and carving life out of his body. You can’t disprove it, and it sounds just as ridicolous as the scenario I just described.
350: Finally, someone realizes I’m a genius But honestly, I do admit to having insulted people, and I do admit to being stubborn, however: Saying “if this is so, why does this happen?” is a good, useful thinking and debating tactic.
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359 – Holy darn yes!!!
Ooooooooooh a marathon thread!!! (That’s a thread that keeps going long after 300 posts)
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Im not sure. the evidence points to evolution, but christian faith points to creation. i dunno. what we can see ourselves, vs. what everyone tells us. religion could be the biggest mass-delusion in history, or not. you decide
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This thread should be closed by now! Aargh! Robert-start the two new threads you mentioned in Post 359!
360-Yes, I admit you are a genius, but I don’t care, because I am one too(not to toot my own horn). I don’t care that you say I am stupid, because I know I am intelligent. I always get straight A’s and have one multiple writing contests. And I also have to agree that the “if this is so, why does this happen?” argument is a great debating tactic, and I have used it myself. But it gets rather annoying when NO ONE ANSWERS THOSE QUESTIONS. And FS, please start treating us Creationists with a little more respect. I am treating you with respect, but you won’t give us any of that R-E-S-P-E-C-T! (Sorry couldn’t resist)
NOW GAPAS CLOSE THE THREAD please!
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It might be a useful debating tactic, but it’s a flawed argument, as Aristotle recognized almost 2,500 years ago. You can read about it and other logical fallacies in Wikipedia, among other places:
(“Argument from Ignorance” is a technical term that does not refer to the level of knowledge of the person making the argument — just the tactic used.)
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I think the two-thread idea is great. But it might be a little hard keeping people from posting about how one idea is better that the other on the wrong thread. Maybe THREE threads are needed, the two Robert thought of, and one for arguing. But maybe we should just hope people will try to be civilized.
Red-tailed HAWK
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359 – Please create those two threads.
By the way, I asked my pastor his opinion on evolution versus creationism. He gave me a dynamite response, and it renders all the arguing on this thread sort of pointless. Want to hear it?
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I’ve got a better idea for a follow-up thread, but I think I’ll hold off a little while longer before putting it into effect. Meanwhile, E2MB, let’s hear what your pastor had to say.
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Here’s a thought. The GAPAs could merely snip! any arguments. Then I would come back.
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Oh, and by the way, here’s what seems to make the most sense to me:
God (or whatever you want to call it) created the microbes (wrong word?) that then evolved into us.
There you have it.
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Here is what my pastor said, basically.
Here’s a diagram. We have science on one side and theology on the other.
Now, some people say these are two different ways of saying the same thing, how the earth and everything in it came to be. But they’re really quite different. Take this example.
Let’s say we’re comparing Science and Art. We’re wondering how a plant makes food from the sun. We go and ask Science. It will tell us how photosynthesis works. Now let’s go ask Art.
Art says,
...__...
.._|_|_
.|_|O|_|
...|_|..
....|...
....|...
....|...
________
that’s how.
So you see, you can’t really ask that sort of question to art.
If we ask science how the world came to be, it will explain evolution. If we ask theology, it will say, “God created it, and saw that it was good.â€
So science and theology are answering two different things here.
Charles Darwin was originally a Christian. He developed his theory of Evolution not to trash creationism, but merely as a way to report what he saw aboard the HMS BEAGLE. Other non-Christian scientists took his idea further, and then people started saying that it was proof that Christianity is false. It’s not.
Since evolution and creationism address two different things, creationism cannot prove evolution wrong or right, and evolution cannot prove creationism right or wrong either.
That’s what my pastor said. He also said that anyone is perfectly welcome to disagree with that, but that that was his opinion.
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370- Makes sense. Now lets have that, nice, peaceful thread about the interesting things about evolution, such as why blind cavefish have eyes. Or don’t, I can’t remember which. And whether we evolved from manatees. (Fun! I like manatees better than apes.)
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Manatees are sea cows. Or are cows land manatees?
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372- Some people would tell you that manatees are mermaids.
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Sounds like time to start a new Evolution thread, plus another thread I have in mind. Onward!
Thank You Robert!!!
Here is what I think. Gazillions of years ago, there was this creature, kind of like Bigfoot, but much smaller. He/She/It was almost like a human, but more like an ape. Its offspring branched off, some becoming intelligent and the others just staying primitave and only evolving a little in the brain department. The other guys, are what we call cavemen, and they began to walk upright and use more tools than their ansecestors. They also started to use art, which differs them from the apes. No ape has ever created art, or designed anything. They just use tools and can go through mazes which makes them “intellegent”. In that case, cuddlefish are our relitives. Do we look like cuddlefish????
We evolved. What more is there to know? Besides the fact that we have already peaked, IMO, and now we’re de-evolving.
Evolution. Interesting topic.
3- When did we peak?
So humans are NOT apes, we are supirior to ALL animals. Not to say we’re more important, but we are more creative and have a better chance of survival, no matter how many nucler wars and global warming problems (which is a hoax, but thats a different thread) come our way.
3- DE EVOLVING??????? In case you havent noticed, there are more inventions coming out than ever before, we are always getting smarter, and WE CONTROL A PLANET! again I ask you, DE EVOLVING???? Please explain.
But there is much more to know, evolution is a VERY interesting topic, and if we can learn that, maybe we can even CREATE life, but I doubt it.
5- We are not superior to all animals. Could you survive own your own in the woods for the rest of your life? With predators? Animals in the wild can do that. Apes can do that. Humans can survive in the habitats we’ve created.
Yes, and you could survive in the woods for the rest of your life, there are people who have. Ever heard of Africa? People in the poorer parts live mostly in the wild. There is no protection, and if a lion wanted to carry someone off, he could. But humans have invented a way to prevent that, with nets and animal control and stuff like that. Any problem thrown our way, (exept women
) can be solved if we put our heads to the task. And remember, WE created our habitats and animals did not create the habitat they live in, they just adapt.
And name an animal that can do everything a human can. Monkeys cant do algebra, so that rules them out.
The only reason humans evolved smarter than other animals is because we had to be. We don’t have claws, sharp teeth, good eyesight or hearing, we’re not really that strong (even the cavemen could’t wreatle mammoths by themselves), and we arn’t fast runners. In our case, it wasn’t the strongest or swiftest, but the smartest that survived.
As you may see, I believe in evolution. We get into interesting debates about it in Bio. There’s a DVD J brought in that supposedly disproves evolution and proves creationism, but I havn’t watched it yet. Other person in the debateing still has it.
Or teacher allways tells us we have to find another time to discuss this, because aparently we’re not supposed to in class. Yelling “I plead the first!!” Didn’t seem to help. Oh well.
Why does everybody seem to think that evolution is just about humans? Charles Darwin didn’t call his book The Origin of Humans; he called it The Origin of Species–all species. Yet when non-scientists discuss it, all you hear is humans and apes, humans and apes. That’s awfully self-centered, if you ask me.
Beavo, I think apes have painted. And just because we can draw and invent all the things that we have doesn’t mean we’re better. The only difference is we can show our work. How do you know animals aren’t thinking? Can you read their minds?
Sometimes I think people just can’t stand to be an animal. Compared to all of the dumb things people do, I find it a compliment.
11-We could have evolved to GET sharp teeth or be a fast runner. I dont think the ancestors of the cheetah were all THAT fast. It EVOLVED to be fast. See Robert? I included an ANIMAL. Anyway, I think Darwin was awfully smart, but if you put his belifes up next to what Kings and Queens said, it kind of matches. Not like animals, but more like that rich people (the fast/strong/etc. animals) were better than the poor people (the weak/slow/etc. animals) and its kind of like racism in code.
12- It’s not. And it is self centered, now that I think about it. All species have gone through evolution, why just focus on us?
What I don’t get is when people try to deny that evolution is real. I mean, think about it: If there is a group of animals, and they get exposed to a disease that kills all but a few of them, the animals immune would reproduce and create offspring immune to the disease. That’s a part of evolution. You can’t deny that it happens.
13-The point is, not that we can paint, but we have the ability to actually think of what we are going to do, and we are able to view the painting and kinda see what the artist was thinking. And not that animals arent thinking, but that they cant actually be creative. They dont fall in love, they dont sing or dance (exept to attract mates, which is not love but survival) and they dont make poetry, which is like art.
15-Yes I hate that too, and Im not denying that it happens. Im simply saying that it happens much differently than we think it does.
I think it would be helpful to backtrack and make sure we’re all on the same page here. Let’s see what Musers’ collective wisdom says about these two questions:
(1) What were Darwin and other evolutionary thinkers trying to explain with their theory?
(2) What did the theory say?
Beavo–I’ll tip my hand a little here. It’s not about who’s better than whom; it’s about who can survive and reproduce under different conditions. Our abilities to do algebra and make art are wonderful, but they wouldn’t help us survive if somebody suddenly plunged us to the bottom of the sea. Gills and fins are much more helpful down there.
4- Not sure. The seventies, maybe. Or maybe Y2K. Or maybe we haven’t peaked yet, and it’ll happen on 2012. Or maybe we peaked in the middle ages. Gosh, I’m not sure. But it’s either already happened or it’ll happen soon.
5- Superior? Well, maybe. Other animals know what they need to know to survive and humans know a whole lot more than that. However, we aren’t superior until we can use our knowledge wisely, which hasn’t happened yet, unless it was a long time ago.
I know! We peaked at the dawn of Homo Sapiens!
Know what’s interesting? Firefox doesn’t know that Sapiens is a word.
12- It’s very self-centered. Let’s talk about blind cavefish now!
16- Have you been an animal? Do you know what they think?
9-Yes, animals adapted. They adapted and evolved over time to survive. They didn’t create a habitat where we are so protected(I’m talking about America) that religious hypocites think the biggest problem is what people see on TV, or whether a woman has control over her own body. We are not superior to all animals.
18-But thats just the point, they ARE helpfull. We did not evolve with fins and gills, but we did invent the divers mask and all kinds of submarines, which algebra does help. Which means we can adapt. What Im trying to say with art is that not only can we adapt and learn basic skills, we CAN be creative, which differs us from animals.
20-We can control what we see on TV, and a woman can control her own body. But will we? We have already made big improvements. 400 years ago, people asked the same questions about the Kings. Could we ever break out of the cycle of tyrany? But we went and did it. Then after that, there was the issue on slavery, and after that, womens rights. Not every problem can be solved, and no one can be perfect, but we can certainly make our conditions better. If we put our minds to it, that is
13- Not true. I read/saw on animal planet (or something, can’t remember) about a gorilla who would paint a lot, and then through sign launguage tell what it was. She made a picture of when she saw her parents killed or something, all red and described it using the word ‘fear’ and a few others, I believe. And many animals show emotions. Elephants morun over their dead, and other animals too.
12-Yea! Evolution is just a fancy name for the fact that the smarter individuals survive because they avoid death. Then the smarter individuals of their offspring survive, and it goes on and on like that… It just makes sense. Why wouldn’t the “better” individuals survive and the weak die?
14- There is a phenomenon known as “social darwinism.”
15- People deny evolution because it goes against a lot of what is taught in religion and others simply don’t like to think it is true that humans evolved from a common ancestor of apes. But just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And yes, Robert, we are awfully selfish just to talk about humans.
Here’s an interesting question: What differentiates humans from the other apes? Or, in other words, what makes us human?
20- No, but do you? We can also infer what they think by their actions (running around in circles screaming means thier mad) or something like that. Humans on the other hand can TELL someone thier mad. Animals cannot, theyre kind of like babies, because you dont know what a baby thinks. But when a baby screams, you get the impression something is wrong. So you feed them or change their diper. Speaking of dipers, I have to go change my cuzzins diper. Wish me stinky luck.
Wow, this thread is growing really fast.
Beavo, heres an idea that might interest you. How about the statement that humans are superior to all animals because while all animals have the ability to procreate, humans can also create. Monkeys can build simple tools, but can they swim with fish via SCUBA, or build a plane to fly? Humans not only adapt biologically, they adapt by building.
OK, I think there is some confusion about the whole art thing. The reason we make art is we created a safe environment to live in, so we didn’t have to worry about predators. Help?
23-I was trying to say exactly that. Maybe I said it in a confusing way, but I agree entirely.
Julieb- your idea sounds much more plausible than Beavo’s. I can agree with that.
27-Juleb, thank you. ONE PERSON who understands me.Thats kind of what Im trying to say, but Im also throwing lots of other stuff in there.
28-We didnt create art because we created a safe habitat. Yes, we wouldnt have as much time to create if we were worried about predators, but we create art because we have the ability to express ourselves in ways animals cant. I think Julieb got it exactly right. Just needs a little adding on to, but otherwise, its right.
30-Julieb is exactly right, I aggree with that. But I still think that we are superior to animals. Here’s a thought, maybe we ARENT ANIMALS AT ALL!!! Not saying that I belive that, but I heard someone at my school say that. Any ideas?
(21),
Every type of organism is different from other types of organisms. That’s why we call them different. The theory of evolution says nothing about which organisms are better than others; just which are better at surviving and reproducing in different environments. Rats, cockroaches, and weeds aren’t as smart as humans are, but evolutionarily they’re very successful.
Again, the theory of evolution isn’t about which animal is the best. It doesn’t talk about that at all.
(32),
Well, for what it’s worth, we taste like animals. I’ve heard that cannibals say we taste like pork.
Beavo, will you PLEASE stop double posting? We’re all guilty of it, but this is becoming a habit. Here’s a tip: try reading through the latest posts, and when you get to something you want to respond to, scroll down and type it in so you don’t forget. But then DON’T hit submit yet! scroll back up and continue reading and typing until you’ve compiled what you want to say, THEN submit it. Personally i highlight the post number I’m on so it’s easy to get back to. This way you can collect all your thoughts into one post and it’s much easier for everyone to read. There’s a delay anyway (since every post has to be moderated), so it’s not likely you’ll miss much in the time it takes to type. And whatever you type in will stay there even if you’re scrolling around.
28: You’re on track. In human history, whenever there’s a lot of technological advancements in a period of time, it’s normally followed by a major art movement because people have more free time.
26- But they CAn tell each other when they are mad. In wolves, flatened and drawn back ears means just that. They can communicate emotions, to a degre. I do admit they can’t say something like “I feel rather discouraged today,” but they don’t need to, either. Simple things like ad, happy, hungry, will do.
I’ve been wanting to find a copy of The Origin of Species for while. They don’t teach us everything Darwin thought in school, and it interests me. I don’t think our library has it though. Oh well.
33- Yes. “Better” has nothing to do with it.
O.o Pork? Really? *licks writst* Hmm. Can’t tell. I’ll just take their word for it, though.
33-Yes. It dosnt talk about that. But there is a difference between best and superior. Best is just something that is better. Superior is better AND can control everything (almost) under it. How can you be superior if you DIE as soon as youre born? You arent very stupid if you survive either. And in the instance of the weed and cockroach, they are very sucsessfull but thats because of their reproductive skills.
33-You have talked to cannibals!! Eww. Just kidding.
Why can’t some people stand to be animals? What kind of an ego makes you think you are somehow special or different than other animals? And part of why you may think animals are dumb is you don’t understand their language. They probably think we’re dumb. Who releases tons of polution into the air, cuts trees down by the acre every minute, and get into traffic jams going in both directions on a highway? Animals build things. What do you call a bird nest? Or apes rowing a boat with an oar? Animals are plenty smart, and you are one too.
33- thank you, I was confused with everyone talking about how humans are better. I don’t think humans better than other animals because we have done all sorts of stuff to our planet, our home, while other animals have pretty much left it alone, as far as I know.
I just finished doing evolution in science.
I choose to remain neutral on the whole subject of how we came to be…no one can effectively prove their theory, as yet, so what’s the point?
Okay maybe I shouldn’t belong here cause I don’t really belive in evolution but whatever.
Evolution makes sense, sort of, but there’s not enough evidence to support it yet.
You need all 20 amino acids to produce proteins. To say that they all just happened to mutate at once after some obscure flash of chance is so improbable it’s not even funny. Even viruses are so complex it’s beyond comprehension to say that the right chemicals just happened to be there and put themselves together in just the right way.
It’s like throwing a deck of cards in the air, and they all land to form a card pyramid. TWICE IN A ROW.
Micro evolution makes sense and is real, as humans have had skin color changes because of more sun. But macro-evolution is just too big. All right, look at a bacterium. About 500 of them could fit on this period. And then you look at yourself, trillions of times bigger working in the exact way with hundreds of billions of feet of DNA instructing vacuoles, necleodes, ribonucleic acids and mitochondria, while muscle cells contracting to lift a glass of H20 and carry it down where the epiglottis slips shut, and the H20 is picked up to the aveoli which dispense and pick up CO2 and carry it off while the centromeres pull chromosomes apart, carefully making copies of cells and on and on and on.
I don’t think humans are superior. Why do you think humans are superior? I would be glad to know. It makes no sense when you just start ranting and saying “humans are superior” with no explanation. I can’t believe anything until it has been explained. Nothing should be an unquestionable.
erp, I meant to say Nothing should be unquestionable. GAPAs, can you zap that “an”?
42 – Are you talking to me?
Beavo, you say that humans are superior because they can communicate and think abstractly. Gorillas have been taught to use sign language. Now, I understand that some creatures would just use language to signal a direct need, and that doesn’t count as intelligence. However, these gorillas (Koko in particular- no, NOT Koko the muse, Koko the gorilla, who is more intelligent than Koko the muse anyway) told lies, remembered past events, looked forward to future events (or dreaded them) and even rhymed. With all due respect, if that’s not abstract thinking and imagination, then what in the name of Diana Lutz is?
Koko may be an acception. Ive heard of gorillas that start fires, comb hair, and siphon water. And this IS intelligence. But its not creative. Humans are creative. Im amazed at the Koko story, yes that would make him creative. Maybe that type of gorilla is special. Maybe just Koko is special! I aggree with you though. That is cool.
Beavo the Great, have you read Grim Tuesday, by Garth Nix?
No I havent, whats it about? Ive heard the name Garth Nix though
(40, 41),
Evolution isn’t about whether human beings are special and wonderful (which, of course, they are). It isn’t about the origin of life, either. If people are going to argue about it, I’d wish they’d argue about it (instead of around or past it) or argue about it (instead of about all the other things they vaguely, and mistakenly, think it is).
46- I agree that there’s a difference between creativity and intelligence. However, your claim that Koko is unique… The few other apes (I’ve only heard of three) that have been taught to use sign language displayed the same characteristics. And there are very few of them. Who knows if this intelligence is confined to three gorillas in the entire world, or one gorilla in a thousand, or ten, or every gorilla on the planet?
And, to start a new, non-human-ape discussion:
What do you think of monotremes*? How did they evolve and survive?
*Egg-laying mammals like platypus and echidna.
49- See, I started a discussion about evolution, the evolution of monotremes.
50-Yup. Anyone can learn sign language. Creativity cant be learned. Ive heard of many apes learning sign language, but not all of them can lie or do all that stuff Koko supposedly does. It sure would be cool if all gorillas could do all that. But this is off the subject of evoluiton. If we want to start a Superior Power thread, ask. I really dont care. Im just trying to make a point. Thank you. Now lets talk about EVOLUTION and not superior forces like Robert suggested. I would like to hear some different opinions on evolution. davidude, you say you dont belive in evolution. Please elaborate further than your previous post.
Just something I’ve noticed, Beavo, please use an apostrophe where necessary.
Anyway, davidude, I wasn’t talking about you, but now I am: Evolution didn’t just happen, but developed. I’m going to create a pretend world to demonstrate, so please don’t post about any inaccuracy there may be.
Say there is a world with a herd of deer. Some fawns have a strong scent, while some others, through differences in their genes, did not have that strong of a scent. The ones that had a strong scent were almost all killed by predators. The other ones survived (most of them), and their offspring had a lighter scent. Make sense? It really isn’t that big when you break it down. It’s like saying our government is just a big glob that must have been created by a god. When you break it down, you realize it is made up of different parts that all (ideally) work together to get all of the work done.
Was that helpful?
(51, 52),
Monotremes are a good example. I’d start with a more manageable question, though: Where do you think they came from? Geographically, I mean.
55- Australia. At least lots of them. A more famous type of animals that lives in Australia is marsupials. Sorry if I spelled that wrong. There are a good many of them, but I’m always amazed at their differences. Who would think a kangaroo and a koala bear have ANYTHING in common? Not me.
Yay for monotremes! I love weird animals.
55- Australia?
I heard an interesting theory once that humans were in fact evolved from manatees. I, personally, like manatees better than primates. Yeah, weird.
57- Thats really weird. But I like manatees better than monkeys too. A monkey stole my watch at the zoo.
58- My dad has a friend who went somewhere far away where monkeys are and they stole his camera so that he’d give him food.
59-OHHH BLACKMAIL!!! THATS ILLIGAL!!!! *puts handcuffs on monkeys* *monkey flings poo*
41- I understand what your saying, that every organism is so amazingly complex it is next to impossible that life exists at all. Yet take this knowledge, and realize that life on earth is the only life in the known universe, which just lets you realize how improbable it is that it only happened, to the best of our knowledge, once. And then assume that Earth is not the only planet that life could have evolved on, but through a series of improbable events and a little abiogenesis it did. And then wait an enormous amount of time, most of it just waiting for single celled life forms. And then you begin to see how it all works.
Monotremes? Now there are some weird animals. Did you know that platypuses (platypi?) don’t have nipples, they sweat milk for their young? I have no idea where they would have come from or how they evolved to be the way they are. They really are amazing animals.
(61) Either “platypus” or “platypuses” would be acceptable as the plural. See comment #199 on April Showers thread.
Don’t platypuses lay eggs? Are they mammals?
Australia is weird in the animal dept.
61-Thats kind of cool, but REALLY diskusting. Yuck Yuck.
62-TOLD YALL!!! *opens arms to hug Rebecca then thinks twice and puts hands in pockets and looks sheepish*
Um, i believe that the plural of platapus, like hippopotamus, is platami. Hippopotamus= hippoptami.
i’m confident on this, allthough not on the spelling.
Compared to other animals, humans are not very… interesting. Most other creatures have features that we don’t, like wings or gills.
65- Humans aren’t very interesting! Or, for that matter, very pretty, if you get into the right mind frame.
All right, platypus fans. Australia is undeniably the winner when it comes to weird mammals. Now, suppose I were to offer you a million dollars to look for platypuses* somewhere other than Australia. I’m not sure they actually do exist anywhere else, but it’s worth a million dollars to me to find them if they do. Where would you take your expedition? Alaska? Hawaii?
*(I say “platypuses” instead of “platypus” because it sounds funnier. That seems to me a perfectly valid reason. If you find a word funnier than “platypus,” I think you have a positive duty to say it.)
67- New Zealand! Ha!
Well, I’m pretty sure platypuses only live in Australia and Tasmania. And I agree with you on the funny words, I find any excuse I can to use words like “absquatulate” or “phlegmatic,” though this probably belongs on the Words and Names thread.
67-I might look in Hawaii, but not really. Probably New Zealand or…. I KNOW!!! The Washington DC ZOO!!!!!!! Now hand over that million dollars. And eight pounds of Virtual Choklit
Why not Hawaii? It’s a pretty place. Why shouldn’t platypuses live there?
69-I like using words that arent really words, but you know what they mean. Like cowinkidink instead of coincedence
71-Too far away. Although I might because they could be found on New Zeland, and the Maories are found in Hawaii. And the Phillipines. Yea! The Phillipines!!!
Why should distance matter? And what kinds of animals would you expect to have found in Hawaii, before people started bringing them there?
That’s enough Socratic questions. I’m going to bed now. Tomorrow I’ll explain what I’m getting at.
Evolution. Hmm. Touchy subject. If anyone in my homeschool group knew I was posting this, I’d be out for sure. I guess I tend to side with science over religion. Science backs up its statements with hard evidence. Religion always seems to say “Oh, see, it’s all in this book here.”
500+million years is a long time. People opposed to evolution seem to have the same basic principle. “It’s so unlikely, there’s no way it could have happened by chance.” That amount of time is incomprehensible to anyone. Given enough time, all of the variables will come into line.
Another argument I heard was about the cellular flagellum. I watched a documentary about it. It was a while ago, so I don’t remember the specifics, but the argument went something like this. “The flagellum is an incredibly complex organelle, it requires some-odd thousand proteins to be in line to work. It couldn’t possibly have evolved by chance.
“True, the flagellum is incredibly complex, but if stripped down into is components, it forms multiple other structures, like a waste ejection system and a few random proteins”
If you manage to dig it up you should watch it
On a final note, on many of the evolution debates that I see, it is real debate for about four sentences (or paragraphs, if we’re on the internet), and then deteriorates into a shouting match about God and belief and who is morally better nd why humans are better than everything else because the were created because the Bible says so and…. I was impressed that it didn’t happen here. That is all.
PS. I’m going to go with “Platypi” because it’s easier to say. They are so cool! Has Muse done an article on weird animals?
Oh, plenty. Remember the tenrecs? And the star-nosed mole? Then there were the naked mole-rats back in December 1997, and I’m sure meerkats must have come along somewhere along the line. Not to mention any number of oddball insects…
74-Yea, I know. I changed my mind. They might have been taken by the polynesians in thier boats to the Philipines and New Zeland and Hawaii. So look in those three places!! Now can I have my million dollars?
ANother rant on evolution:There is proof that evolution occured in the world. If you had to live in the Ice Age, you would probably start evolving/adapting and growing fur, so you could better survive. But the part of evolution that doesn’t make sense is this:Why would an organism want to go from a single eukaryotic cell to a fish to an ape to a human? What reason would there be(and how is it possible) for a fish to grow lungs and be able to live on land. That is like changing your gender. Without plastic surgeons and dermatologists and all sorts of other doctors, it isn’t possible! Why would it want to? If all fish wanted to become apes, and all apes wanted to become humans, then we probably wouldn’t have any fish or apes! Check out the videos: “Creatures That Defy Evolution” for more info. And GAPAs-please post this! I know it should probably be going on the Evolution thread, but Evolution and Darwinism is also part of many major world religions, because Christians believe that all creatures were made how they already were and that homo sapiens were never apes, they were made by God as who we are today!
Also, read the book Reclaiming Science From Darwinism. It holds a lot of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that disproves Darwinism. You don’t have to read the whole book-just parts of it, because all of it is SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, none of it is just “see, evolution isn’t real because the Bible says so.”
Donaldo, it’s not that fish WANT to turn into breathing creatures, but when it got too crowded down there, it was beneficial to adapt to come onto land.
Right GAPAs?
Evolution’s true. Everyone who doesn’t think so is wrong and Catholic.
You are either with me or against me.
81: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m sure there are plenty of Catholic people who believe in evolution.
(82),
Including Pope John Paul II — though not, apparently, the current Pope.
(79, 80),
It’s easy to imagine why it would be handy for a fish to leave its pond and breathe air for a while. In fact, we don’t have to imagine it: several kinds of fish do just that. Ever hear about walking catfish? Natives of Asia transplanted to Florida, they can wriggle from pond to pond and spend days on land breathing oxygen in the atmosphere. A few years ago, so many of them were crossing roads that they created traffic hazards. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_catfish .
(81, 82) The Catholic church has not opposed evolution since 1950, and in 1996 John Paul II made the fullest endorsement to date, accepting evolution while making an exception for the human soul.
Many other Christian groups and individuals also see no conflict between their religious beliefs and evolutionary theory, so please let’s take a little care with how we use labels. This includes those who claim to speak on behalf of Christians in general.
83- Hey, Robert, remember the snakehead scare a few years back?
81- what’s that supposed to mean? I’m not catholic but I know lots of catholics, and I bet (not to stereotype) there are more evangelicals (who are protestant) that don’t believe in evolution than catholics.
76- may agriculture teacher has some 70-year-old preserved star-nosed moles. they are pretty cool looking, he also has bats, mice, shrews, etc. it’s soooooo cool
This might not be the best place to mention this, but could we please have a thread about cryptids?
I love cryptids.
I also love cryptids! I second the request. Muchi wa Kongamato!
81-Not only do I know catholics, I am one. I belive in evolution, just not Darwinism.
54-Sorry about that, I’m so used to typing in internet lingo when I’m on the computor. Happy now??
Ok, I’m confused…what exactly are we talking about? And, Robert, if evolution isn’t about how we came to be (as humans), what’s it about?
Right, here’s the scoop. The Victorians (English people who lived during the long reign of Queen Victoria) were clever, energetic, curious people. They were also great travelers and explorers. One thing they noticed was that plants and animals were not randomly distributed throughout the world. Instead, there were definite patterns. Large continents had lots of different species. Small islands off the coasts of continents had species similar to those on the mainland, but fewer of them. Large islands farther off the mainland, such as Madagascar, sometimes had very odd species bearing less resemblance to the mainland creatures. Islands out in the middle of the ocean, such as Hawaii, had very few native species, and almost all were things that could have flown, swum, or rafted in from somewhere else: birds, bugs, sea turtles, and a few stray lizards. Being curious and confident in their abilities to figure things out, the Victorians naturally wondered why species were distributed around the world the way they were.
That’s what Darwin was trying to explain. He wasn’t concerned much about fossils — fewer of them had been found and studied back then, though Victorian scientists had discovered enough to realize that the world was at least millions of years old.
Darwin didn’t know anything at all about genes, but he did know about family resemblance. And that’s how he explained why animals lived where they did. If animals were similar, it was often because they were related — descended from a common ancestor. Similar animals that lived far apart must have traveled there somehow, either under their own power or carried there by people. (That’s why there were pigs in Hawaii when the Europeans arrived: Polynesians had brought them along from Asia on their canoes. They didn’t bring platypuses because [1] they didn’t stop by Australia on the way and anyway [2] platypuses aren’t good to eat.)
That’s what the theory of evolution was originally intended to explain. It was a shocking idea to many people, but scientists accepted it because no other idea explained biogeography (where plants and animals live) as well as it did. A century and a half later, it’s still the best explanation anyone has come up with, and scientists know a lot more about biogeography and genetics than they did back then.
91-But it could still be wrong. Not saying it is, but still.
Ah…thank you. Well, in that case, Darwin’s theory does seem to be the most plausible explanation.
Cryptid thread, please?
76- Yeah. My school subscribed for a while, but the issues always seemed to get destroyed after a few days. Then they canceled the subscription. Gah. Gotta find back issues.
Evolution and adaptation is true. Darwinism, however, is false. I am Presbyterian and am deeply opposed to Darwinism. The thing is, and yes I am talking to you HAWK(post 80), there would ahve to be a reason for the creature to go on land, besides that it got too crowded. If you study earth history, the first aquatic creatures were not around until about 500 million years ago. I doubt that, seeing as over half of the Earth is covered in water, enough species could have “evolved” in that time to make it too crowded! Compared to how old the Earth is, 500 million years agois not that old. Plus, if it was too crowded, the first aquatic creatures were vicious meat-eaters, so they should have been eating enough fish to make it so it was so crowded. And also, if it was too crowded, then how come the bigger fish and aquatic mammals(like whales) evolve into smaller fish? That would have solved all of the problems. PLEASE watch the “Creatures That Defy Evolution” or read some of “Reclaiming Science From Darwinism” by Kenneth Poppe. Robert Coontz, I think that at least you should read it, or just parts of it. You are a GAPA, and I think you should have an equal view of the matter over Evolution and Darwinism. Right now, however, it seems like you support Darwinism more than you oppose it.
Also, I had another thought. If evolution and Darwin’s theory is true, then why is everyone scared over global warming? If we have evolved, then that means we can now, and we can in the future. So if all of the ice caps melt, and the world becomes flooded with water, so there is barely any land, then can’t humans adapt and evolve to be able to live in water and grow gills and scales? Can anyone answer that for me?
97- Um, yeah! Let’s grow gills! I’m all for it! Except it’ll probably take ages and ages, so I’ll never be able to breathe underwater. : (
Why is underwater one word instead of two? Does that make any sense? I mean, out of water isn’t one word.
There is no such thing as global warming. 1% of the earth’s atmosphere is gasses other than nitrogen and oxygen, and 0.01% of that is co2 (the pollution). If the ice caps melted, they would simply fill in the space they took up, as there is no land under them. Furthermore, there is air in the ice, so the sea levels might actually GO DOWN.
[External link deleted
— Rosanne]
Robert, can we start a global warming thread?? pwease??
This’ll probably tag me as an idiot for ever and ever, but what’s Darwinism again? Is it the idea that animals can evolve just because they want to? I’m confused and I’m getting this mixed up with someone else I read about in a Muse.
Beavo, don’t tell anyone. I don’t beleve in global warming either, but don’t tell anyone else that! I just said it as an analogy, OK? Oh rats! This is going to be posted on the web! Oh well. Also, I like that idea of starting a global warming thread. Can we, Robert?
(100, 102) There is already a global warming thread with plenty of room left: https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=643
67- zugzwang- pronounced tsuk-tswang-its a situation in chess where neither player can make a move.
I really have no clue what people are talking about here. I thought Darwin created the theory of evolution. Can someone clarify?
104-Darwin created darwinism (duh) which is the main theory of evolution accepted around the world. Im opposed.
(104),
You’re thinking about stalemate. Zugzwang is a situation in which one player is forced to make a bad move.
I’m confused, too. “Darwinism” isn’t a term that scientists use. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean or what the alternative would be.
(96),
I don’t think my opinion of Darwin’s theories matters very much. I’m not a scientist myself — just a person who reports what scientists say and do. From my experience, I’d guess that at least 99 percent of biologists and paleontologists (probably closer to 99.99 percent) think in evolutionary terms, using ideas that can be traced back to Darwin. They do it because it’s useful in their work. Maybe someday someone will come up with a theory of non-Darwinian evolution — or non-Darwinian non-evolution — that does a better job of explaining why plants and animals look the way they do and live where they do, helps geneticists get a better idea of what makes them tick, and enables petroleum geologists trained in invertebrate paleontology to do a better job of finding underground oil. If that happens, then medical research labs and oil companies will be eager to hire scientists trained in the new theory, universities will start teaching it to their students, and people your age will study it in science class. All of that is possible, but it hasn’t happened yet.
45: I actually researched this on Wikipedia, and, although I’m glad it was brought to my attention, I was suprised by the following points:
“Other [scientists] contend [Koko] does not understand the meaning behind what she is doing, but learns to complete the signs simply because the researchers reward her for doing so (i.e. that her actions are the product of operant conditioning). Another concern that has been raised about Koko’s ability to express coherent thoughts through the use of signs is that interpretation of the gorilla’s conversation is left to the handler, who may see improbable concatenations of signs as meaningful.”
“Such debate requires careful consideration of what it means to ‘learn’ or ‘use’ a language.”
“Criticism from the scientific community centers around the fact that while publications often appear in the popular press about Koko, very few scientific publications exist.”
96: How are evolution and adaptation any different from Darwinism?
99- Newsflash. Water expands when it freezes. Therefore, ice takes up more space then water. It also floats ON TOP of water. Beavo, I’m interested in your explanation (and that of others who oppose these topics) for the way species are spread throughout the world with such a definite pattern and how so many different species came to be. And why the earth’s temperature is rising, for that matter, though this doesn’t belong on the evolution thread.
108-Not all of the North Pole is on top of the water. If you have ever seen a picture of an iceburg, you can tell MUCH MORE is on the bottem than on the top. With all that weight most of it is pushed down, even with the air. (Which is part of the reason why the Titanic sunk.) Species can be spread any way. Birds fly, fish swim, and for the most part, humans do all of the above (with boats and trains and the like). Spicies simply evolved to adapt to their situation, kind of like Native American myths but less magical and much slower. The Earth’s temperature has to do with the theory of Global Warming (which I am also opposed to). If you want to discuss global warming go to that thread. I am on there frequently too.
106- can we have a thread for favorite or interesting words?
78- Actually, several species of frog can change their gender by themselves when the need arises.
O.o Wow. This is becomeing a bigger issue than I would have thought.
110: There already is one. Words and Phrases, I think it’s called. It’s on Don’t Forget These Threads.
Julieb (85),
Yes, I remember snakeheads. People called them “Frankenfish.” Last I heard, they were still around and still scary.
if evolution IS real, where did the FIRST little tiny speck of life come from?
can anyone explain language?
(114),
Those are different questions — interesting and worth looking into. Darwin himself hadn’t a clue how life started. A scientific theory doesn’t have to explain everything. Newton’s theory of gravitation does an excellent job of describing how the planets orbit the sun, but it doesn’t explain what makes the sun shine.
Scientists don’t pretend to have all the answers. There are many things that nobody knows. In fact, that’s why people become scientists in the first place: to investigate unanswered questions.
What are snakeheads?
The problem is that people just aren’t informed. Everyone thinks that evolution is about monkeys when it’s about common ancestry and vestigial structures and all that.
(99) Wow. You are so uninformed. I’m sorry to be blunt.
111-So what? That is just frogs! What about humans and lions and alligators and lizards and sharks, etc.?
114-You are absolutely right! Where did that first speck of life come from? And what reason did it have for multiplying?
117-No, you are uninformed! Do me a favor and don’t ever watch Al Gore’s “An Inconvienient Truth” ever again! It is full of lies.
I’ve made my thoughts on th Global Warming thread. \:D/ I’m sorry if I came off as rude there, though. ^^;;;
97-I’m all for humans being able to breath underwater (just think of the amazing scuba diving possibilities!), but that would take an EXTREMELY long period of time (at least in relation to how long humans normally live). Meanwhile, many of those gorgeous scuba diving spots are being destroyed by a massive climate change (this is all assuming that the change would be as dramatic as some people say)…so after how ever long it takes us to evolve those gills, the Great Barrier Reef would cease to be so great.
117-YES. Thanks for saying that.
96-I think we should all have access to evidence supporting either point of view, and be allowed to support any we think makes sense. I don’t see why any of the GAPA’s should be an exception. I mean, they’re not censoring anybody who disagrees with them.
Actually…isn’t this supposed to be an Evolution thread? Not Global Warming?
120-I’m not saying that the GAPAs can’t have an opinion. I am just saying that they should help us non-evolutionists out every once in a while instead of always oposing our views. Also, thank you for seeing my point in post 97! It would be great if we could grow gills, but it would take so long for us to(if we even could, which I highly doubt), that by the time we got them, it would be, like, 5 billion yeas from now and most humans would be dead by then, if there were any left on Earth. So I am just saying that that is the same way with fish going from gills to lungs. It would take so long for them to, it wouldn’t be worth it!
Has anybody here already pointed out that Darwin never said that we evolved from monkeys in his theory of evolution? Sorry, I don’t have the patience to look back through this thread.
We try not to oppose anyone’s views, but we do try to correct misconceptions. For example, many people seem to think that evolution is supposed to explain the origin of life. It isn’t, and it doesn’t. When people say things that are simply untrue, I’ll sometimes (but not always) step in to correct them.
As for critics of evolution, I’m fairly familiar with what they are saying. (They send me all of their press releases.) Most of the arguments I’ve seen boil down to statements of the form “I can’t imagine how X could possibly be true; therefore, X can’t possibly be true” (where X = things like “the gradual development of a complex organ like the eye” and “the emergence of life from random chemical reactions on early Earth”). That doesn’t impress me very much. After all, I can’t imagine the size of the universe that astronomers have discovered, but I don’t go jumping all over astronomers and calling them incompetents and frauds and demanding that they discover a more comprehensible universe for me. I let them be astronomers.
The same goes for evolution. As I’ve said, 99+% of biologists and paleontologists think in evolutionary terms. Anyone planning to work in those branches of science needs to understand evolutionary theory, and anyone who wants to understand what scientists do needs at least a passing familiarity with it. That’s why I think it needs to be taught in school–and, judging by the evidence I’ve seen both on this blog and elsewhere, taught better than it’s being taught today. As for teaching the other side: as I explained above, there isn’t an alternative theory to teach–just a hodgepodge of “I can’t imagine” criticisms that aren’t much help to people trying to understand the world. Maybe one will come along someday, but no one has proposed it yet.
For the last time, it’s APES, not monkeys! APES! APES APES APES! There’s a difference. Go on and debate as much as you want, but it’s apes, and not monkeys. Would you call a dog a cat?
121-The atmosphere, climate, environment and types of things that would effect the fish would be changing at an equally slow and gradual rate, though. Nothing happens overnight.
Thanks. ^^ I find it’s better to try and understand people than to just call them idiots for disagreeing with you.
And, well, you see, whenever I hear someone who doesn’t believe in evolution talking about it, it’s “non-” whatever. Just “not that”. There’s a difference between saying “I don’t believe in that” and saying “I don’t believe in that; I do believe in THIS…”.
122- I heard that, but people just give me weird looks when I mention it. O.o
Sort of relevant: It’s not true that you can’t observe evolution. Let’s say you have a petri dish with some infection-causing bacteria in it, a microscope, and an antibiotic. When you introduce the antibiotic, most of the bacteria will be killed, but some will have a mutated gene or something that makes them resistant to it. Those bacteria reproduce and pass on the mutant gene to the second generation, and so on. Tadaa.
Not exactly relevant: I’m not convinced that in a few years climate change will cause some cataclysmic event that will render the earth an uninhabitable wasteland. But, on the other hand, it’ll take a while to compensate for whatever damage we’ve caused.
My mom says that Beak of the Finch is a very good book that has to do with evolution. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds neat.
119-You better be. That was rude. You could have asked me why I thought what I thought.
123-Evolution is true. Im not saying its not. But most of Darwinism is.
Sorry for the double post, I clicked submit by accedent.
125-I think the Beak of the Finch has something to do with how the finch evolved to suit what it eats. There are four (or five or six) kinds of finches on this island and they all have different beaks (fat or thin, long or short) because some eat bugs and some eat plants. I think.
Darwinism, Beavo, is not true. Read a book called “Reclaiming Science From Darwinism” by Kenneth Poppe PLEASE! If you have not read my earlier posts, I will summarize what they are saying: For what reason would there be for an organism to go from gills to lungs, from scales to feathers? It just doesn’t make sense! Also, you don’t have to read the whole book. It gives scientific evidence that darwinism is false.
123-If you believe that what most anti-evolution scientists say about this debate boils down to “Well, I don’t see how this could happen, so it can’t be true,” which I admit is what many scientist debates turn into, then PLEASE read “Reclaiming Science From Darwinism” by Kenneth Poppe! I beg of you!
(122) Yes, I said something to that effect. XD but it’s good to make sure people know that; it’s such a common misconception.
i definitely am pro-evolution , but growing gills would be fairly useless.
What, may I ask, do you mean by Darwinism? Evolution by natural selection? I am slightly confused, as Robert said, it’s not a true scientific term.
116- Snakeheads are ugly fish that eat basically everything (I mean, you’ll find lifeless ponds after these things) and can live on land for up to three days while “walking” to another body of water. Huge problem in the Potomac over here. Now that’s and interesting way to evolve. Useful, though, to be able to go from one body of water to another without having a direct connection.
(128),
– what reason would there be for an organism to go from gills to lungs,
I don’t know, but frogs do it.
131- To be able to live in water while young, and go on land when an adult. Right? Hmmm…
128-I know Darwinism is not true. What have I been saying for the last like… gazillion posts? I was not saying that all that stuff about the beak was true, but that’s what the book was about. I’ll check that other book out, thanks! I’m sure there is a reason, though I dont know what it is. Maybe their food supply was getting thin? Not sure.
The Finches’ food supply was getting thin, and there was also the factor of flying to other islands.
What is the difference between Darwinism and Evolution? I’m still confused, even after reading the whole thread over again. If you survive by growing feathers instead of scales, you do. Enviromental/organism change leads to new niches/dangers.
Daviddude’s view on evolution is interesting, but I’d like to point out the emormity (?
) of the Universe. If you can throw them enough, the cards will fall in order.
134-Oh sorry, Beavo! I read it and it said that evolution is true. Reread your post because you might have made a typo.
135-However, getting the cards in order would take such a long time, would it really matter in the end? That is what I am saying with the gills to lungs. If humans had a reason for going from lungs to gills, and so they started swimming in water to try to grow gills, in the end would it really be worth it? No. So why would a fish want to grow legs and walk on land, and why would a reptile want to turn into a bird? They were happy as they were.
136-ACK! My bad, I meant in post 126 to say that Darwinism is NOT TRUE. Thank you donaldo the saw!
Donaldo the SAN. Just thought I would point that out. I really haven’t been following the story here, but I have been looking at the Global Warming thread. Use the link to get there, if it works.
136- How do you know? Were you there hundreds of millions of years ago? Look at the example of the snakehead. There’s a fish that has adapted to be able to survive on land for up to3 days, and it’s an extremely useful skill.
Beavo- At some point you asked if there is anything that other animals can do better than humans. An article published in Science this week was about a study with chimpanzees memorizing number sequence and tapping the spaces in the correct order (1, 2, 3) on the screen where the numbers were presented in a random order. Particularly interesting was that when the image of the numbers was displayed for a very short period of time and then the chimp told to point the order on a blank screen, they were very good at it, better than most people (including the grad students helping out the scientist). And just to clarify, they were taught the sequence of numbers (1,2,3) and that they should tap the numbers in that order, but they were not taught the order for a particular arrangement of numbers. The scientist thought that this loss of ability in humans may be corresponded with the increased emphasis on complex language skills (which I have heard is related to a number of sacrifices in certain cognitive abilities). Anyway, I bet Robert can sort out any errors I made since it is from Science magazine, but this is how my bio teacher explained it to us.
All species that are contemporary with each other are equally evolved to fit their environmental niche. Humans could not live at the bottom of the ocean, or in the ocean at all, or in most undeveloped locations of the world without the infrastructure that we have developed to allow us to adapt to more varied environments than we are truly suited biologically. If the infrastructure, which is not a biological element of a human, were wiped out, humans would probably die in massive amounts in the industrialized world. Just because we can make an artificial breathing apparatus doesn’t mean that we are “superior” to animals that have them naturally. No human system has been designed that is as efficient as the cellular mechanisms of cell respiration or photosynthesis. And furthermore, all of the rest of the community of life lives in perfect balance, maintaining itself, while humans inevitably mess things up because of our collective overconfidence and supremacy complexes. There are more bacteria on the planet than the rest of life, and a bacteria can still kill a human, even with the best antibiotics in some cases. Your ideas are more similar to Social Darwinism, which is a very destructive way of thinking and a gross misunderstanding of evolution (not an uncommon one, though). No offense intended.
136- Animals don’t just “want” to evolve, random mutations happen.
Say that we have a lizard named Ned. Ned lives on trees, eating bugs. Him and some members of his family have some extra skin on their sides due to a random genetic mutation. When any of the lizards in the woods are attacked by, say, foxes, they jump to other trees.The extra skin on his sides makes Ned and group A able to glide for a second longer while jumping, improving their chances of surviving a fox attack. Group B will die more often, and mate less. Because of genes being passed on by more members of Group A, there will be more lizards that have extra skin. Ned’s ancestors will be safer in the air, and may evolve over millions of years into flying lizard things.
Things can also be sped up if your habitat changes. Look at the dinosaurs- they didn’t survive something, so the mammals filled the niche. Legs don’t just grow either, many small changes have to happen to get to that point. Usually things change so slowly though, that there is time.
125-I saw it in an issue of National Geographic. (Don’t ask why I happened to be reading it)
141-Yeah, and in cases like the tenrec (was that in Muse or another magazine? I think it was Muse, but I forget) it might not have competition so it adapts to fit that role.
141 and 142-OK maybe you guys are right about that(especially with the whole lizard thing), but check out the videos “Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution.” THey show many creatures that could not have evolved to be the way they are because it is just too complex, or too large, or too something. Take the T-Rex for example. How could it get as large as it was, with such tiny arms, with the use of evolution. Charles Darwin believed evolution would end up evolving a creature to fit all its needs. However, the T-Rex never got longer arms so it could just reach down and scoop up its prey. It always had short arms, whether it wanted them or not!
A classic example of the “I can’t imagine how it could have happened, therefore it didn’t happen” argument.
Also in response to 141- Why did the mammals grow fur during the dinosaurs? The first mammals appeared during the time of the dinosaurs, so why did they grow fur and hatch live young. It was too dangerous to have live young, even more so than having eggs. Also, the climate was warm enough, until the Ice Age, which happened quite a while after the dinosaurs, so why did they need fur? Many scientists believe some dinosaurs evolved into mammals, but why would they if it was not needed in their habitat? It could not have been a random change, because the theory of evolution states that animals evolved to fit their needs in the habitat they lived in, but if they did not need to grow fur and hatch live young, why did they? If it was a random change as you say some are, then that would go against the whole theory of evolution. They could not have evolved to hatch young and grow fur, especially not with the way Charles Darwin describes it-from a common ancestor(which could have been an ape, a fish, a eukaryotic cell. He never said it was an ape) to having live young! That would only be possible if it was an ape, and then, where did the fish come from? I doubt that the common ancestor, if it was an ape-like creature, evolved into a fish! And where did that first common ancestor come from anyways? Answer that question!
144-No, that is not an example. You are just looking at my post a different way. The theory of evolution states that an animal evolves, whether it wants to or not, to adapt to its environment. So how come it didn’t evolve and get long arms?
143- T. Rex was a scavenger.
No, only a few scientists believe he was only a scavenger. Most believe he was a scavenger, but that he was also usually a carnivorous predator. You can search it up on Wikipedia
145- There are several reasons I can think of off the top of my head for why the T-rex had such small arms:
1. The cost of having larger arms outweighed the benefits because they didn’t usually use them, perhaps, and having bigger ones made it harder to move around
2. The T-rex species may have been evolving significantly when it went extinct due to a meteor collision, and thus did not reach its optimal status for its niche. However, this would depend upon the T-rex evolving from an ancestor with small arms, which I doubt is the case.
3. Having smaller arms could have been preferred by the females of the species, for not necessarily a practical reason, and smaller arms did not significantly inhibit its survival.
Okay, can’t think of any more for now. I would recommend researching it in non-ID sources, I am sure it has at least been considered. A good way I think to think about evolution is that for the most part, any trait that is the standard within a species is an evolutionary advantage (there is genetic drift and limited population size to consider, too, for instance if a small population of a species remains, ex. cheetahs, or a small/single individual colonizes a new area) and it is then the process of finding out why it is advantageous instead of its alternatives. Sometimes there is a compromise between different selection pressures, such as seals being very poorly equipped for land but very good for water, where they spend most of their time.
115: Why does the sun shine, you ask?
*head banging*
!The sun is a mass of incandescent gas!
!A gigantic nuclear furnace!
!Where hydrogen is built into helium!
!At a temperature of millions of degrees!
teehee. trying to lighten things up here, plus I couldn’t resist.
144-hey, no taking sides!!
hmm. i think this says very well what i think. AND I ALLREADY POSTED IT BEFORE!! its been deemed mostly harmless.
[Well, I’m feeling snippy today. So the link is gone. But you can find the article with this search term: john rennie 15 answers — Rosanne ]
hmm. *tries not to be insulting*
so, what do people think about evolution and schools. (creationism taught side by side with evolution etc.)
151- Creationism shouldn’t be taught in science class in schools simply because it isn’t science. People say it should be covered as an alternative theory, obviously representative of the religious point of view, but even this argument falls flat because they would not be covering every religious view that exists, which would be practically impossible, and therefore a breach of the church-state religion in schools boundary. If families have an individual religious standpoint, they can teach their children what they believe. But the point of science class is to teach you what the current understanding of the world is from the perspective of science.
I wrote a rantish-thing on evolution on the back of a packet today… it was in responce to a rant C wrote due to debates durring bio. Basicly summerizing what several people have said on this thread.
41- But it wasn’t necessarily just this one chance. For all we know, it hapened a ton of times all over the universe, and this is where it finally happened.
I am a devout Christian, but when I went to Sunday school we were taught that the whole “and on the Xth day God created man” was just a symbolism thing. I beleive in this, and it allows me to be both someone who beleives in God and someoe who beleives in the theory of Evolution.
And about the theory of “intelligent desiegn”? I beleive that god DID design the world: He designed the process of evolution, and now He just watches it, tweaking things every now and then.
The evolution into Homo sapiens was done by God, slowly, over millions of years. The seven days of creation are just a symbol for the billions of years during which earth evolved. During those years, god was perfecting Homo sapiens to His image.
Darwinism and Christianity aren’t on two different sides of an argument; Darwinism simply explains the way that Creationism works. According to me, anyway.
I don’t think that Creationalism should be taught in schools. There just isn’t enough proof, only lack of proof of evolution. Good job to FSM for seeing that.
155- That makes sense. I’m not at all religious in any way, but that makes sense.
155-That makes sense. I don’t really believe in God, but I think that he could have created the first life and set the wheels in motion.
151-You have a good point! I am a devoted Christian, and I believe in Creationism, but, however much the subject bugs me, believe that evolution should be taught in schools simply because it is science! I believe Creationism is real, and that evolution is false, but it makes sense that to keep questions from coming up, Creationism should be kept out of public schools, for the most part. As for intelligent design, it sounds alright, but there is something fishy about the whole matter. I just can’t put my finger on it.
155-That makes sense, but I am not sure. I have been thinking and as me and someone else(I don’t remember who) have said before, it is a possibility that God used evolution to make some creatures, but humans, I believe, since I am Christian, were made just the way they were!! Like dinosaurs, I think they could have evolved from something else, but not from like a fish or ape. It had to have been from another extremely large reptile, if they did evolve at all.
Also, one more interesting fact about Charles Darwin:
He was a devout Christian and was actually training and going to school to become a pastor before that fateful trip to the Galapagos Islands, which completely obliterated his faith in God.
Also, when I said that thing about the seven days being just symbols for millions/billions of years, everyone rejected the idea. How come you are all agreeing about it now?
No one ever answered my mammals question in post 145!
161- that’s because it’s a good point!
I think it really sucks that so much evolution is taught in school, with so little creationism. Everyone says that it’s just taught as a theory but it’s taught more like fact! Anyway. Think about it. Sure, animals adapt. They evolve. BUT. How did that handy little phenomenon get started? How is it that there is LIFE that can repair and improve itself?
Personally, I think Creationism should be taught in schools. There’s plenty of evidence for God, and therefor, creation. Its just that… a great deal of it is quantom physics, or whatever, and well… Yeah.
Just the fact that evolution tends to be the sole “theory” taught in school makes it more of a “fact” in my mind.
The point is, I don’t think evolution as the sole contributing factor to, well, basically life as we know it NOW makes sense. There’s just to many holes.
And didn’t Charles Darwin decide that his theory was false, towards the end of his life? Or am I mistaken?
Nope, Charles Darwin never changed his mind about evolution. He kept making new observations and thinking about it all his life, and he still thought it was the right idea.
Again, he never tried to explain the origin of life; just the origin of species.
163-Good point.
Here’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to mix creationism with science: Creationism is not science, and evolution is not religion. Therefore, if creationism is to be taught as an alternative, evolution should be taught as an alternative in religions studies. They should either both be taught both places, or only in their normal places. One shouldn’t get more attention.
160- I don’t remember reading that, but at any rate I didn’t disagree. Also, I’m not saying I believe that, but it does make sense. I’m really not sure what I believe, actually.
I think that Creationism shouldn’t be taught in schools, because not everyone wants to hear about God and religion, etc., etc.
On the other hand, their are probably lots of people who don’t want to hear about evolution, so I don’t know.
161- Random changes happen all the time, and if they don’t kill you, they stay. Mammals aren’t always completely covered in fur or hair. Do lions live in an ice age? Mammals are also built to move quickly with a fast metabolism, giving them an edge over the slower dinosaurs. I don’t know how live young helps a species survive, but an article in Nature proves that Triassic marine reptiles did. Finally, when the Earth was created, (please don’t argue about that bit) underwater clays and amino acids were mixed up in a large “soup”. They eventually, after a long time formed a type of RNA, a molecule that can build itself from surrounding molecules and reproduce. Then things take off. As improbable as this sounds, I’d like to remind you that the universe is at least 24 gigaparsecs in size.
Please restate your view on this, I don’t understand.
“They could not have evolved to hatch young and grow fur, especially not with the way Charles Darwin describes it-from a common ancestor”
166 wow
Couldn’t the first speck of life that everything else evolved from just been there? Or did it need something to come from? This is what religious people say, that it needed to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is God. But then God also needs to come from somewhere. Doesn’t work, people.
Btw, I ordered the Satanic Bible today.
I count evolution as fact because it makes the most sense. It is impos— ferociously unlikely that whatever is up in the sky just dropped us. We all evolved from something else, all the way back down to nothing. I have no idea how one thing sprang from nothing, and I doubt I ever will, simply because I am a human. I have an above average IQ, but te fact remains that no one on this blog has a brain that can comprehend the idea of something from absolutely nothing, or even te idea of absolutel nothingness itself. Even when we imagine emptiness, we still imagine the emptiness having a color or a limit or at least matter.
168: what’s a Satanic Bible?
Why do creationists not want evolution taught in schools? because they feel threatened. Why, if they are so certain that they have the right idea, do they feel threatened by new ones?
That is what I am trying to figure out.
168 – God created everything, including time and space, so maybe God just created himself.
Once again, I urge everyone to watch the videos “Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution” with Dr. Jobe Martin. Here are some examples of what he talks abput on the video:
How can certain seabirds navigate over thousands of miles of ocean and never get lost?
How can some creatures, like lizards, lose body parts, like lizards’ tails, and then regenerate themselves, even grow a new head?
How do cockroaches survive nuclear blasts and can live for three days without their head?
How can great whales dive to the bottom of the ocean without the pressure causing them to implode? The water pressure forces for them are the same for us, yet our heads would implode if we could dive to the bottom of the ocean.
How can fireflies and glowworms create pure light that generates no heat?
172- Just because we don’t know how yet, doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason.
As for the origin of life, I suggest you wiki abiogenesis. It’s an extremely interesting idea.
173-NO! You are wrong! There is a good reason for them to do it and that is because it helps them survive! But it has already been scientifically proven that they should not be able to do that! Since it has been proven that they should not be able to do that without imploding or bursting into flames, you can’t prove scientifically that there is a way they could have evolved to do that!!!! You can not prove something that has already been disproven!
Ahhg… I just tried looking online at possible beginings to the universe. My brain hurts.
ewwwwwww yeah your right. tylenol time!
I’ve watched clips of that video, Donaldo, and those animals don’t defy evolution at all. They are just creatures with unbelievable abilities. It’s amazing that God created them that way. And the current, most plausible theory out there today is that they were made through evolution. What’s wrong with that? Just because the animals are amazing doesn’t mean they didn’t evolve, unless you have preconceived creationist views.
Yes they do! How could seabirds navigate thousands of miles of ocean without ever getting lost? If they had to have evolved that way, then that means their ancestors in the past must have gotten lost for centuries before they finally figured it all out! Think about it. If they keep getting lost in the middle of the ocean, it is most likely they died out there. But that would mean they would most likely become extinct! Also, even after they had figured out how to navigate it, it would take even more centuries for it to get imprinted into their children’s and children’s children’s brains! That means after they had navigated it, they would have to memorize it and so would their kids and their kids’ kids’ and their kids’ kids’ kids’ and so on, which is impossible with the brain power of a bird!
Also, for a whale to dive to the bottom of the ocean without exploding by the water pressure, they would have to be made that way! If you say that that doesn’t defy evolution, you are wrong! The way you see it, that means hundreds, no, thousands of generations of whales would kill themselves by trying to evolve and go down as far as they could in the ocean, but then the whales would be extinct too! Oh! And how can the fireflies and glow worms not burst into flames when they create their light? They can’t evolve that way because they make pure light, and pure light generates heat, like the sun or a lightbulb! And how did they even evolve to get that light! They would have to completely change their body to do that! And since evolution is supposed to take place over hundreds of thousands of years, yet the atomic bomb isn’t even 100 years old, so how can cockroaches survive the blasts? And how can cockroaches live for three days without their heads? Their brain is in their head! They eat with the mouth on their face! They see with the eyes on their face! There is no way they should be able to last even thirty seconds without their head, yet they do!!! How is that possible?God made them that way, without evolution!!!!! That’s how! And how can lizards regrow body parts? There is no way they could have evolved to grow more body parts without evolution! Darwin’s theory goes against that!!! It’s impossible! God made everything on Earth the way they were at the beginning of the world!!!
178- But, the birds that DID make it, wouldn’t be likely to forget. It’d be imprinted in their brains (I think-correct me here if I’m wrong. I’m not compleatly sure, but I do think so). Then, they’d fly the same way back with the next generation and then THAT generation would remember. And so on.
Or, as Darwinism suggests, the ones who could go farther and farth down got more food and could live longer. Then their children would be able to, and son on.
And glowworms and fireflies don’t use fire to make their light. It’s a combination of shemicals that create light but not heat.
Cockroaches have a back up for almost every organ-including their heart (or heartish thing…). Their body continues to live and they probably just wander around or sit till they die of thirst/hunger.
(and, did you mean “…more body parts with
outevolution?” If so I’ll respond to that later… you probably did though)i think u are correct but im not an expert
178- You have nothing to back up your arguments. First of all, you know nothing about the animals you are talking about. Pigeons are thought to be able to navigate due to small amounts of magnetic particles in their brains, which provides a natural compass. Other birds have been tested for memory of landmarks. Birds could conceivably have evolved to navigate in these ways. And I quote from PBS: “Because atmospheric pressure doubles every 10 meters, a whale at a depth of 500 meters experiences a pressure about fifty times greater than atmospheric pressure at the surface. Once it has dived to about 200 meters – the whale has far exceeded the depth at which humans can breathe air and still function properly. The air the whale dove with has been compressed to 25% of its original volume and the lungs and jointed rib cage have collapsed completely. The heart rate has dropped dramatically and non-essential processes have been much diminished because freshly oxygenated blood supply to peripheral regions has been cut off. Because of the compression and collapse of the cavities where gas-exchange takes place, air is excluded from most of the respiratory surface of the lungs, meaning that no gas exchange can occur between the blood and air in the lungs. This prevents absorption of the nitrogen that might otherwise pass into the blood and lead to the bends when the whale surfaces for its next breath.†Also, may I point out that whales do not dive to the bottom of the ocean, far from it. And evenly distributed pressure does not cause things to explode. As Jadestone said in 179, fireflies and glow worms create their light through chemical reactions, not a pure electrical current as you are suggesting. They’re not lightbulbs. Cockroaches, in defiance of popular superstition, cannot survive a nuclear blast. They are, however, less prone to the adverse affects of small doses of radiation like many insects. And radiation comes from more sources than just nuclear blasts. Cockroach’s don’t have a single brain that controls all of it’s actions like a human does, rather, it has separate ganglia spread throughout it’s body to perform separate tasks. The ability to drop tails and regrow them is a very good escape measure for lizards. Since tails are usually brighter than the rest of the body, as a last resort a lizard will “shed†its tail to provide a more obvious target for the predator. Lizards born with more fragile skin and further spaced vertebrae in their tales could drop their tales more readily, thus not be as likely to be eaten by predators and able to pass on their genes to the next generation. And the ability to regrow skin is obvious. Your wounds heal, don’t they? Embryos grow their entire bodies. Even as an adult, with the help of some substances people have been shown to be able to regrow fingertips and such. And Darwin never said anything about any of these animals.
Bingo. Anti-evolution theories are a heap of factless, unscientific bull. Because evolution is THE correct scientific explanation.
179-No you are wrong, once again. It would not be imprinted in their brain the first time. Also, I never said it was fire that made fireflies glow, because fire does not make lightbulbs glow. And by the way, fire is also a chemical reaction. So far, humans have not discovered any chemical that can create light but not heat. The things that make fireflies glow,however, humans have discovered through labs and dissections, and they cannot figure out how they do not die of the heat.
180-Whales can dive to the ocean, and their heads do not implode, like you said. But how could they have possibly ahve evolved to do that? Scientists have not been able to figure that out, because, even though what you said is true, it would take hundreds of billions of years, according to some of the most genius evolutionist scientists for them to evolve that way?
Cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast. They have tested it in many labs. They can also survive mass radioactivity, which should be impossible for them, as no other living thing can survive that.
And last, lizards can regrow skin, as scabs heal, but regrow a whole body part? They do not regrow the bones, but they grow cartilage to replace where the bones were. How can they do that? How can cells be replicated and replaced when there are no former tail cells to replicate it from? And no one has answered my question yet on where the first speck of life came from.
And 141-mammals did not fill the niche in replace of the dinosaurs because the first mammals appeared before the dinosaurs!!!!!
And 182-don’t cuss! No one likes it even if you aren’t actually saying the cuss word, just coming close to it!
184: no one likes it? Oh, grow up and leave your shell of ignorance.
183- Haven’t you ever had a glow-in-the dark toy? There are plenty of ways of giving off light and not heat. They are two seperate releases of energy. Whales never get close to the “bottom” of the ocean, they stay in relatively shallow waters. Where are you getting your time estimates? It took humans less than 200,000 years to evolve different skin colors. Evolution is slow, but not that slow. Heres an explanation from howstuffworks.com: “Another problem with ocean life is water pressure. Because of the pull of gravity, water exerts greater pressure at lower depths than it does at higher depths; essentially, you feel the extreme weight of all the water above you. Humans and other land mammals can only swim down to a relatively shallow depth before the increased pressure crushes their bodies. This is because the air that mammals carry in their lungs exerts only a certain amount of outward pressure (pressure from the inside of your body). As the difference between the outward pressure in the lungs and the inward pressure of the water increases, there is a greater force pushing in on the sides of the body. At a certain point, this force exceeds the structural integrity of the rib cage, and the rib cage collapses. Obviously, this would kill a human being. Whales can withstand this pressure because their bodies are more flexible. Their ribs are bound by loose, bendable cartilage, which allows the rib cage to collapse to some degree under high pressure that would easily snap our bones. A whale’s lungs can also collapse safely under pressure, which keeps them from rupturing. When the lungs collapse, the air inside them is compressed, maintaining a balance between inward and outward pressure. ” Cockroaches have never been shown to be able to survive a nuclear blast, I would like you to find one published scientific report that says they can. Insects are less susceptible to radiation because cells are most vulnerable to radioactivity when they are dividing. Human cells divide constantly, insects cells only divide at most once a week, when they molt. Fruitflies are much more resistant to radiation than cockroaches, by the way. As for lizard tails, search pubmed for “Plastic changes and nitric oxide synthase induction in neurons that innervate the regenerated tail of the lizard Gekko gecko: I. Response of spinal motoneurons to tail amputation and regeneration.” It explains all. And as for the “first speck of life” the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that amino-acids, often reffered to as the building blocks of life, could be created from non living substances.
Mammals could be said to “fill the niche” of the dinosaurs because after dinosaurs were wiped out, mammals were left with many many less predators, and could therefore become predators themselves.
183-First of all, glow in the dark toys aren’t living, and they get their light by taking in light when the lights are on and letting it out when the lights are off. Glow worms live in the dark and therefore can not take in the light from outside! Where do they get their light from? Also, how could that first speck of life, if it is as you say, evolve into something as complex as a human, or as large as a whale? If you explain all of that to me, from first speck of life to humans, whales, dinosaurs, birds, lizards, maybe I will become an evolutionist-maybe!
Also, I forgot to say that no MBer likes cussing! You are told not to cuss in the HG2MB and the Rules, so don’t do it! It is vulgar behavior and you only make yourself look more idiotic!
yeah (nods head and pretends she gets it)
187- Wiki “bioluminescence.” As for “that first speck of life” give anything 4 billion (other theories that state that life did not originate on earth would say up to 13 billion) years and you’ll see something change. The reigning theory currently is that waayy back the earth was covered in a sort of primoridial sludge or soup. A large bolt of electricity or something activated a series of chemical reactions that created amino acids, or possibly lipids, or maybe even RNA& ribosomes (that sounds like a band). We don’t know, we weren’t there. These basics could have taken any number of routes to form simple cells. From there, darwinian evolution kicks in and the organisms become more complex. Lots and lots of time pases, and the descendents of those plucky molecules sit at computers typing at each other. Happy?
Okay, approaching this broadly didn’t work. On to the specifics.
Let’s take those seabirds that can fly a very long way. Now that’s pretty cool. And it could have evolved. The thing you have to understand is that the birds might have gained this ability before they became what we know them as today. Say there’s a bunch of seabird ancestors. They’ve run out of food in their area, so the flock flies across a lake in seach of sustenance. Tragically, not all the birds make it across. They just don’t have the capabilities for long-distance flying. But the ones who do survive find food on the other side of the lake, and then they have baby birdies and live happily ever after. When the babies mature, they have inherited some necessary traits for long-distance flying, since the ones without these traits died. This continues for thousands of years, and boom! Eventually these birds are able to traverse the whole ocean.
These little mock-situations are kinda fun to write. And they make things easier to understand.
191- Good idea. I’ll eplain the glow worms in simple terms. When they eat some foods, they make special enzymes. Enzymes break down molecules. Their bodies also produce a certian pigment that reacts with the enzyme. When the two are mixed, the enzyme does its job and breaks down the pigment, in a process called oxidation, like rust. A side effect of the reaction is light, minus the heat usually associated with it.
187- OK, if you’re confused on how to get from “speck” to whale, here it is. We have one speck, that can reproduce. It makes a ton of copys of itself, but some mistakes are made, killing some and making a few a litte faster to reproduce than the others. Who will “win” in the end? Apply this to any evolutionary change, and it will make sense. Just say that instead of reproducing quicker, one is able to disassemble others in the same area, or swim faster. These changes build up to create new organisms.
Wow, Donaldo:
“Darwin’s theory goes against that!!! It’s impossible! God made everything on Earth the way they were at the beginning of the world!!!”
First of all, how much do you know about the Origin of Species? Not a lot, I’m guessing.
Second of all, explain dinosaurs.
The ice ages.
Species extinction.
Neanderthals.
Continental drift.
Human Migration.
Do you wish to deny that everything we know about life before recorded history is plausible? zdo you wish to deny that you share most of your genes with a banana? a fruit fly? a monkey? Evolution is just a theory. Like gravity.
193-Heh, gravity! Good example.
171-Please stay on the religions thread. This is not public school, so I would prefer to talk about evolution, not give such indisputable, wild, and improbable reasons. It seems like people say such things to avoid having to think about the immensity of time and the complexities of the evolution of species.
194: You can’t have an argument over evolution and not talk about God, as religious “theories” are the only thing contrary to evolution. Bloody bible-thumping nutjobs.
yup
193-Otzi, thank you! I can’t tell if you are for evolution or against it, but either way, I thank you! Evolution is just a theory! Get it all you guys out there who are for evolution! Evolution is just a theory, which means scientists have no overwhelming proof that says it is true, yet all you evolutionists out there are saying it is!
I am officially leaving this thread because all of you are stubborn idiots who refuse to see things my way. At least I respect your opinions, even though I don’t necessarily agree with them. So I am leaving this thread and never will return to it or read one of the posts ever again.
193 – I can explain the neanderthals.
A while ago, a scientist did a study measuring how people’s faces changed as they aged. He plugged in the results to a computer, got the results for a what a human would look like aged 700 years, and found that it looked almost exactly like a neanderthal! This explains all the super-old people in the bible.
195 – That’s not very nice you know, FS.
197- *is sorry for Donaldo the supercoolio awesome nerd because he is correct but is outgunned on this thread*
There seems to be some confusion here about the meaning of the word “theory.” When scientists use it, it doesn’t mean “something we’re unsure about.” It’s meaning is closer to “a detailed description of how something works.” Ever heard of music theory? It doesn’t mean that scientists doubt the existence of music.
Yes, but the music theory is how music works, not if it exists.
That’s right. And when scientists speak of the “theory of evolution,” they use the word in exactly the same way. The same goes for Newton’s and Einstein’s theories of gravitation and for the theory of probability, perturbations, and invariants in mathematics. String theory in physics looks like an exception–nobody is sure whether strings exist–but the phenomena it tries to explain are real enough.
My science teachers for the past 5 or so years have explained it this way:
A scientific law tells WHAT happens. It can be proven or disproven.
A scientific theory tells WHY something happens. It can be disproven but not proven.
187- But it does not go from ‘speck to whale.’ It goes from small speck, to slightly larger speck, to a little larger one, to a larger one, and then archeabacteria then eventually to eubacteria and animal-like protists to small animals, then larger ones. It takes a long time. It’s not instantaneous. How does a single cluster of cells inside a womb turn into a baby?
197- “I am officially leaving this thread because all of you are stubborn idiots who refuse to see things my way.” How do you know your way is right? And, I did try to see things as you were, and where I found flaws I pointed them out. If you find flaws in the way I try to explain something, I would expect you to do the same so I could correct them. That’s why I’m here, to widen my area of knowledge on this subject. And I have, quite a bit.
(202),
That’s a good capsule summary. In any case, when scientists use the word, a theory does not mean either the opposite of a fact or some sort of low-grade or not-quite fact. A theory is what explains facts/data/observations.
Scientists don’t belittle ideas by saying that they are “just a theory.” Only non-scientists and anti-scientists do that. Theories are important, and creating a good one takes a lot of work.
THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to explain this on the global warming thread with little success. Hopefully, more people will understand the definition of a scientific theory.
And may I point out, Donaldo, if you decide to come back, that everything you have said has been shot down with concise evidence. I would conclude from this that you’re decision to leave this thread is a result of frustration at having everything you’ve ever taught to you been proven wrong, and that’s perfectly understandable. But I would ask that, in light of this, you might consider that you might be the one who is wrong.
198: Human ears grow as they age. Neanderthals, as far as we know, did not have giant ears, or else they would have very strange skulls from the weight, methinks.
Also, the super old people in the bible lived in the Holy Land, IE Judea, Israel, Palestine, Iraq. Most definitely not Europe. And I believe I am correct in saying that Neanderthal remains have only been found in Europe so far.
Does this scientist say that as we age, the fundamental shape of our skulls change- jaw, brow ridge, brain capacity, etc?
Neanderthals were a totally different species.
*backreads*
Whoa, I did not expect Donaldo to thank me. Um, have you been reading my posts? It should be pretty obvious what my position on evolution is: IT HAPPENS.
Fine, you want to leave, go ahead. I evolved, you didn’t.
I feel sorry for you, Donaldo, as you seem completely unable to accept any theory other than your own. Anyway, if Creationism is true, how did the so called “God” come to be? And can you at least explain why the name of the Christian all-powerful person is the word “dog”, which is one of the animals that humans keep as pets, backwards? You need to learn to accept other theories, and that you can be wrong.
198: People in the Bible did not live to be extremely old; time was measured differently then.
208: The “God”-is-“dog”-backwards assertation is unoriginal and a very weak argument. I hope you’re kidding. Anyway, to answer your other question, Christians believe God has always existed and was not created. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from Genesis and 13+ years of Sunday school. If anyone knows that Christian theology endorses a different idea please tell me.
Yeah, I didn’t really mean to use the “dog” argument seriously.
May I ask why Creationism is somehow more probable than Evolution? If I write a book saying Evolution is correct, will people believe me hundreds or thousands of years from now? What is wrong with Evolution?
211-it sounds more real. people dont want to believe that they came from apes.
If something needed to come out of something, and couldn’t come out of nothing, and the Christians say that something is God… then God also needs to be created. You can’t have it both ways. As for scientific theories, they are ideas scientists have that are held for fact until disproven. Gravity is a theory that is held for fact until someone disproves it.
213- exactly. God can’t exist.
184-I actually have to aggree with Frigid. Cussing dosent really matter as long as it isnt to impress someone.
215-then, you just sound stupid.
In italian, cussing is an integrated and colorful part of the language. We have 50 different ways to tell someone to ‘:idea:
off’.
And according to logical thought, God in the Christian sense cannot exist. Only problem is that blind faith has no place for reason.
Well, it’s hard to explain how anything came about, isn’t it? I mean, if God wasn’t first, what was? i don’t think anything explains that
218- But, nothing explains where God came from either. Where did he come from?
219-I dont understand anything about God, but I’m not really an athiest. Shouldnt this be on the Religion thread??
220- Probably. cHill just asked where it all coul dhave come from, and that was just my rebutal. No one has actual proof the there is/is not any kind of god. (Texts don’t count. Those were all writen by followers)
Ahhg, and I’m turing this into more religion now. If you want to respond to this post do it on the religions thread, I read it even if I lurk.
Hey, what about that article on Lamark in the March 2007 muse? What do you all think about that? I found it very interesting.
221-Huh? *goes into room to get March 2007 issue*
Eh, I’ll just type it up. It’ short.
“LAMARCH VINDICATED?
An 18th-century French biologist named Jean-Baptiste Lamarck has become a figure of fun because he believed that “aquired traits” could be passed on. The example of “Lamarckism” textbooks always give is long-necked giraffes: Lamarck suggested that giraffes that stretched their necks to reach high leaves would have offspring with slightly longer necks.
On scientist claimed to have disproved Lamarck’s ideas by chopping off the tails of hundreds of mice. The tailess mice had offspring with tails, which the scientist said proved aquired traits were not passed down.
But Lamarck may have the last laugh. He may have been right, at least sme of the time. Those long-necked giraffes are probably a figment of his imagination, but other cases arn’t so clear. For example, several old experiments showed that if generations of mice learned to navigate a maze, he third generation learned it faster than the second, which learned it faster than the first. Could there be some kind of epignetic change that makes it easier for each generation to learn the maze?
We still don’t know the answer. To find out, scientists will have to go back and repeat the experiment. It will no longer do to laugh haughtily and chop tails off mice.”
I don’t know who wrote it, it was a side-article. Diana Lutz wrote the main one, though, so maybe she did that one too. When I find the responce I wrote on it for extra credit in bio, I’ll type it up and post it.
I’d like to know what you all think, though.
no such thing as evolutionnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, no. Don’t start this again! We just had to close down Religions because of that type of thing. You’ll get FrigidSymphony on you, and then this thread will be gone, too.
Ahhhhg, I speeled the title wrong in my post. I am pathetic. Anyway, it should be “LAMARCK VINDICATED”
224: Wrong. No such thing as RELIGION TAUGHT STIFLING UNRATIONAL IGNORANT DOGMATIC BOLLOCKS. Namely the patheticaly named “intelligent design”, which is the equivalent of teaching the stork theory in sex ed. Honestly, this is just sad.
See? What did I tell you?
224: Oh, please. Take your blinders off and read the thread. If you don’t believe it, fine. But I retain my right to learn and understand SCIENCE as well as RELIGION.
I consider myself an agnostic; Frankly, I don’t know what is controlling things and I don’t particularly care.
I am back only to post this one comment. It is from a book called “Gemini Summer” by Iain Lawrence. In this part, Gus Grissom is telling the protagonist, Danny River, what it is like up in space.
‘Gus pulled the helmet from Danny’s head. “You see the whole world as a miracle. That’s what I’m saying. You see there’s more to it all than any one person can understand.”
Goodbye once again. And I am still praying for you, FS.
May God open your eyes,
Donaldo
230: May science and the knowledge of man open your eyes. Centuries ago the Christians believed the Earth was flat and made in 6 days. Religious theory is constantly being disproved. Grow up, really.
Oh, honestly, you guys. This is getting ridiculous. Donaldo, I highly doubt Fridgy is going to some kind of hell because he’s an evolutionist, and Fridge, Donaldo can believe whatever he wants to, as can the rest of us.
130- Donaldo, you sound a lot like a guy at my school. He’s from Virginia, and crosses himself every chance he gets. In fact, he got in trouble for saying “jesus” too much. (we go to a catholic school, they teach evolution there) He is being evaluated for OCD as we speak, and he is crazy about Jesus. I mean, when we asked him to announce the student council candy drive, he got up onstage and said:
“To celebrate the crucifixion and ressurrection of Jesus Christ, we are having a candy drive. Give candy so poor Christians might eat. Thank you and amen.” (at this point he crosses himself)
Garrett, if that’s you, or you blog on here, I will KICK YOUR ASS AT MOBBITQQ NEXT TIME!! MY SUPERTANK WILL KILL YOUR “ROYAL COW AIRFORCE” !!!! MOOHAHAHAHAHAA!!!! (i’m NOT crazy, it’s a game we play at lunch)
Why did GAPAs take off my reconciliation post? i will say it again:
[Lawrence of A: I wasn’t the GAPA who zapped your post. But if the post in question was like the one you posted here (before I just zapped it) I have a hunch why. We’re trying to limit curse words and other profanity on MuseBlog. That includes curse words that use asterisks in place of some of the letters. — Rosanne ]
224- Please see posts 15, 54, 123, and, actually, just read this whole thread before making coments like that. What you are thinking of probably has nothing to do with it. Evolution does not disprove creationism or anything of that sort, and the inverse of that sentence is also true. I suggest you read or research on this topic before making posts like that one, with out background knowladge/support.
224-um…Maybe less pointless posting?
…did any of you read the Brewster’s Rocket comic strip ayesterday? It’s sort of more a topic for the religions thread, but that’s closed, and i don’t want to start debating religion on Hot Topics (there’s plenty of other material). It went something like this:
1st Panel
Dr. something or other from the governtment- Ancient cave paintings have been discovered that show alien contact with humans 10,000 years ago.
2nd Panel
caption above cave painting of people bowing- The cave men thought the alien was some kind of god! Here, the alien explains that he’s not a god, but mereley a visitor from space.
caption above painting of alien runing away- Here, the cave men ae pelting the alien with stones for not believing in their god.
I thought it was rather amusing, anyway. Thought this would be a… not quite safer, but better place to post it than the random thread.
232: He can believe whatever delusion he wants to, wether it’s the existence of God or the firm conviction that he’s Napoleon. As long as he doesn’t go campaigning for abolishing teaching evolution, or give money to organizations that dumb down the US by feeding them lies… You know, the US is the most religious country in the advanced world. However, it is also the country with the least religious knowledge.
And I believe Fridgy here can believe in evolution. It is a complete lie, even if it is a clever one, but it is a lie, nonetheless. I never said he will go to hell because he is an evolutionist. I said unless he turns to Jesus, he will not go to heaven.
I am leaving again. God bless you all-ESPECIALLY YOU FRIDGY! And once again, I will state this part of Charles Darwin’s life: He was going to be a pastor and was hghly religious, until his trip to the Galapagos Islands shattered his faith, unfortunately.
Wishing FS a wonderful day(of course, given to him by God)
DONALD
HAHA!
237 – LOL!!!
238- Actually, I think that Europeans are more likely to lie about being religious, whereas Americans are more likely to lie about being not as religious.
Please. Keep religion out of here! It’s got nothing to do with evolution! Nothing at all! Well, maybe a little, but we’re not talking about where the world came from or anything like that! What is with people? How can you deny it? No, wait, where is the proof you have that there is no such thing? I mean concrete evidence. Is there even any?!
243-No. You are exactly right. No one has concrete evidence that Creationism is false, just like no one has concrete proof the Evolution is true.
Now I am definitely done again. I may post, but not very often.
PRAYING FOR FS(again),
Donaldo the supercoolio awesome CREATIONIST CHRISTIAN
ergh. I hate the fact that evolution is the only thing taught in schools. It’s not fact, guys! It’s a theory! A theory, I say!
I myself am a creationist. And I am doing an english essay on aforementioned issue. :).
Really though, I can’t stand it! The science teachers always go on about how real science is about disproving your hypothesis, and yet… there are the evolutionists clinging desperatly to their scientifically shredded theory with more fervid belief than scientific conviction- to me, evolution has lost all credibility because the believers refuse to come up with intellectually challenging arguements, and refuse to face hard, scientific fact. And also because a defender of evolution said, and I quote:
“The ideal would be to emulate Monty Python, and nail creationism to its perch. I apologize for falling short.”
for his closing statement after an e-mail debate over the teaching of creationism along with evolution in schools. I mean, GAH! (goto http://www.slate.com/id/33241/entry/33442/ and read the last paragraph. Or read the whole debate.)
Now, on the subject of evolution itself:
Darwin’s theory of evolution basically stated that, given enough time, an organism could evolve into an entirely different species, by way of natural selection and mutations. Right?
Well, considering the fact that most mutations are neutral, with no effect on appearance or function, very unlikely at the least. Also, mutations=DNA copying errors. Do you think it’s very likely that DNA copying errors = new organisms? I don’t.
Next point: complex organisms, like humans, require several chemical (??? I think it’s chemical…) processes ALL in place AT THE SAME TIME in order to function. Without one or more of these various processes, it is impossible to have complex organisms such as humans. Now, I ask you: did these various chemical processes all evolve in one humongous leap, as they would have to to achieve complex organisms, such as humans? Hm?
(On the other side of the same e-mail debate (first 2 paragraphs on #4, if you’re interested)):”To me Darwinian evolution (including chemical evolution) is today’s alchemy. The alchemists knew they could achieve some chemical transformations, and so they saw no reason to set limits. If you told an alchemist he could not change lead into gold, no doubt he would brush your objections aside as unhelpful, and ask why you weren’t proposing an alternative method of transformation. Alchemists were trying to solve a problem that wasn’t solvable with the knowledge available at the time. The right way to proceed was to abandon their fruitless research program and learn more about the difference between elements and compounds.
Similarly, the questions “how did life originate” and “how did a hypothetical replicating molecule become a cell” are unsolvable at present, which is why research into these subjects gets no further than speculation and hand-waving. The interesting agenda today is to discover what life is, especially to understand how the genetic information works in the cell and how much of it there has to be. Perhaps after a great deal more is learned about these subjects it will be possible to formulate better questions about origins.”
That about sums it up.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
if the GAPA will let that link by, anyway…
THANK YOU SO MUCH T.N.O! I might come back if you stay on this thread.
Today we had to watch the most idiotic video on how evolution affected animal body coverings and legs and arms. My friend and I were like, “WTF? BS!” Sorry for the cussing, GAPAs, but it is true.
The real problem is this:
We have two contending theories, Evolution and Creationism.
Evolution is a scientific theory that is constantly gathering proof and has yet to be disproved (see the actual meaning of the term “scientific theory”).
Creationism is nothing more than religious belief saddled with a scientific sounding name in order to get it into schools to be taught to kids at an early age. It isn’t teaching, it’s indoctrinating. Should religion be taught in science class? The way the world works is based on laws of physics. Gravity, for example, is a ‘scientific theory’ until it is disproved, at which point the theory will have to be altered.
And if evolution is only a theory, then what is creationism? Religious dogma indoctrinated, forced into people’s minds for 2000 years, often at very young ages. There is no reason to back it up, no rationale, no logic. Only blind faith. Which has no place in school.
244- JYou’re stating two extremes here. Basicly, you’re saying that: ‘If evolution is true, then there is no God. And if Creationism is true, then there is no such thing as evolution.’ All I’m saying is that evolution is true, and there is evidence. See post 141 for a quick example. Also see post 163.
Alright, moving on from religion, here’s a new mini-topic: What do you all think about how some people say evolution is basicly racism? We read an excerpt on it today in class, about how Darwin was basicly saying that ‘there shouldn’t be any handicaped people in the world and wnted only the best humans to live.’ It was completely off!! He wasn’t saying that at all, just explaining how animals became the way they are. He didn’t ever say that the strongest were the ones who should survive, just that they did!
Grr, I have to get of the computer now. Be back later.
Richard Dawkins begins The Blind Watchmaker by acknowledging that “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
However, the question is: Have biologists found a natural process to do the designing? They claim that they have, in the Darwinian model of accumulation of random mutations and natural selection. But have these biologists considered that things look designed because, well, they were designed?
FS, you said that Creationism is merely a religious dogma that kids are indoctrinated with at early ages. I myself a creationist, I have never had anybody indoctrinating me (or attempting to) with anything except evolution. And there is scientific evidence for creationism, and plenty of logic. Let’s take a closer look, shall we:
Firstly, evolutionists claim that we all evolved from a common ancestor. But how likely is it, really, that life just naturally started and got busy turning bacteria into butterflies through random mutations and natural selection when most mutations are neutral! With no discernable effects! Not very likely, really, when you think about it.
Second, natural selection has never been caught in the act of actually creating a whole new type of organism. The closest example we have is currently a species of finch in the Galapagos. In 1977, I believe, a drought nearly wiped out the species, and survivers had larger beaks. The explanation usually stated is that the larger beaks gave the survivers the advantage in eating the last tough seeds. What the text books never mention, however, is the fact that there was a flood and the beak size shrank again. There wasn’t any way that the finches were gonna evolve into another species.
More later. Have to go.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
250- Beak mutation was a result of different food sources, not a flood. An micro-evolution is extremely easy to see.
651- yes, that’s true. But it’s used as evidence for evolution in general- that’s what I’m getting at.
250- But you’re also cutting out several million years in your reasons. Bacteria did not just start ‘turning into butterfies,’ Skipping over the where life came from bit, there was something like archabacteria, then something like bacteria, then some plant-like organisms, and then plants and animal-like organisms and then very primitive organisms that were what we consider to be animals. This happed over thousands of years. As these organisms started growing, some would be different. These different ones would reproduce and they would grow farther and frther apart untill one day they were nothing alike. But this also took thousands of years. The reason we don’t see any new species today is because we havn’t been observing them for long enough. But in a millennia (if we even survie that long) there would probably be many different species, branched off from the ones we see today. Unless we blow everything up or mess up nature some how.
Longer than that. There is evidence for life about 3.7 billion years ago, I believe. Evolutionary biologists usually speak about changes that took place over hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens of millions of years.
I once found an error in a random book about evolution. It said humans had been around for 3.5 billion years! I think they meant “million”, but whatever cause I don’t really follow that anyway……….blahblahblah……bye
253- I know that! Yes, there is variation among species. Variation happens every time a baby is born! What I’m saying is that these variations cannot possibly, no matter how many years you put in between, cause one organism to evolve into a whole new type of organism. I’m just saying that millions (or billions, or whatever) of years of mutations and natural selection couldn’t possibly make bacteria evolve into butterflies.
:idea:TNO:idea:
256- For the last time: Bacteria did not evolve into butterlies. Bacteria evolved into things like protist, then animal-like protists, then possibly insects. I agree that a mutation couldn’t suddenly cause a butterfly out of a single speck, but it didn’t so that doesn’t matter. And it wouldn’t just have to be mutations, it could be traits. If someone is a little bigger than someone else that’s not a mutation, thats genetics. And if the bigger animals survived and the smaller ones didn’t, the bigger ones would soon outnumber the smaller ones untill the whole population was bigger. This might only take a few generations to happen.
257- yeah, yeah! Butterflies, protists, insects, whatever. Same basic idea. Which is wrong, by the way.
Now, I never said variations were impossible within species. A slightly larger version of humans does not mean a new species. It’s like saying: “oh, look, people in China basically all have slanted eyes. We’ve found a new species of hominids!” I mean, really! as I said, variations occur every time someone reproduces, because the babies aren’t clones of their parents. What you’re talking about with the bigger-people anology is recessive/dominant alleles. Not evolution.
See, here’s how one would get a shorter population, despite short being a recessive trait:
Say two short people with tt alleles have four children, who are all, by default, short (tt). These four children grow up, and all marry short (tt) people. This goes on for each generation until T alleles are so rare that hardly anyone is tall.
In the previous situation, you don’t have a new, shorter species of human. You have a population with more t alleles in the gene pool than T. That is not evolution. That is a genetics thing. Evolving= mutations that cause a new species to arise. New dominant traits= a side affect of, for lack of a better phrase, selective breeding.
That’s why the finch beak thing is such a pale senario for evolutionists to use- it’s more of an allele thing than actual evolution.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
How can people be so blinded? Yes, I am pro-evolution, and think that this “god” person is junk, but still, that is not why I’m complaining. People are saying that there is no way that they’re wrong, especially Donaldo, without looking at the other point of view. I deliberately left “god” uncapitalized. Also, while Donaldo may be praying for FS, he doesn’t have to say it in every one of his posts. Also, as FrigidSymphony doesn’t want to be prayed for, the same as me, you should not pray for either of us.
258- But thats exactly what evolution is! Except in the wild, the traits that become common are those useful for survival. Eventually, you have a slightly different animal. Several more of these mutations and you have a new species. True, humans aren’t classified into different species because we didn’t have the time in isolation from one another to evolve into different species, but that doesn’t mean the other animals who had millions of years to evolve didn’t seperate into their respective species. Had humans spent millions of years in isolation from each other, who knows whether those short people, the pygmies of Africa for instance, would have evolved to be so radically different from other humans to become a seperate species. Your disregarding the timefactor. A new species doesn’t crop of every few generations. A new species crops up every few hundred generations.
259- So. Here we have the arguement for evolution: “mutations typically modify DNA by deletion, insertion, or base change. Those modifications may result in an altered form of a protein. The altered form may make different reactions possible. The different reactions may make a developmental process go slower or faster. And that may result in a new trait–occasionally even a beneficial trait.”
IF there is a DNA modification. IF that modification alters a protein. IF that altered form makes different reactions possible. IF those different reactions slow down or speed up developemental processes. IF that results in a new trait, and IF that new trait is even beneficial! There are simply to many “ifs” for my liking.
On the creationist’s side:
“Sure, molecules are continually varying, mostly with neutral mutations that have no effect on visible features or fitness. Then there are those peppered moth populations, which vary in the percentage of dark and light moths that are present at any given time. For that matter, variation occurs every time a baby is born, because the child is not identical to the parents… these uncontroversial facts give us no reason to believe that a similar process turned bacteria into butterflies, or produced moths, predator birds, trees, and scientific observers in the first place. They may or may not have some religious objection to the wild extrapolation involved, but in any case they know that all the biologists are actually observing is a process of minor, back-and-forth variation within a population that is fundamentally stable. Bacteria have been doing this as long as there have been bacteria, and they remain bacteria.
“The root of the confusion is that evolutionary scientists think that the issue is whether “evolution has occurred.” Since any variation counts in their minds as evolution, the inevitable answer is “yes, of course.” But evolution also means universal common ancestry, so the existence of variation proves that you and I have a single-celled organism that is our “ancestor” in the same sense that our great-grandfather is our ancestor–except with a whole lot more intermediate descendants in between. This process of ancestral descent requires some natural mechanism to do the designing along the way (eyes, wings, immune systems, photosynthesis, etc.), and natural selection is the only halfway plausible designer-substitute that anyone has ever suggested. So the whole system is virtually proved by the choice of terminology, and from that point on it is merely a matter of searching the world for things that can be construed as confirming examples.”
I can’t put it any more simply than that.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
*260, I mean… 261 was a response to 260.
According to a 2006 Gallup poll,[29] about 46% of Americans believe in strict creationism, concurring with the statement that “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,” and 36% believe that God guided the process of evolution. Only 13% believe that humans evolved over millions of years, without any supernatural intervention.
According to a study published in Science, between 1985 and 2005 the number of adult Americans who accept evolution declined from 45% to 40%, the number of adults who reject evolution declined from 48% to 39% and the number of people who were unsure increased from 7% to 21%. Besides the United States the study also compared data from 32 European countries, Turkey ,and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%)
Less-direct anecdotal evidence of the popularity of creationism is reflected in the response of IMAX theaters to the availability of Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, an IMAX film which makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes. The film’s distributor reported that the only U.S. states with theaters which chose not to show the film were Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina:
“We’ve got to pick a film that’s going to sell in our area. If it’s not going to sell, we’re not going to take it,” said the director of an IMAX theater in Charleston that is not showing the movie. “Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution.”
According to a PBS documentary on evolution, Australian Young Earth Creationists claimed that “five percent of the Australian population now believe that Earth is thousands, rather than billions, of years old.†The documentary further states that “Australia is a particular stronghold of the creationist movement.”
This stuff was all cited off of Wikipedia. HOPE YOU ENJOYED READING IT!
259-And I can pray for you and FS if I want. You can’t control me. I will keep on praying for you as long as I want.
(261) Lilbro,
From your earlier posts, I thought you believed that since species can’t change into other species, the types of animals and plants we see on Earth nowadays must have been around since life began. Now I’m not sure that’s what you were saying. Evolutionary biologists, of course, think that today’s animals and plants descended from ones that looked very different and that the changes took place over many millions of years. As creationists seem to doing most of the posting right now, I think it would help the discussion if they explained what they believe about the history of life.
258- But, this wouldn’t necessarily happen to all of the animals. Only a group. Okay, say there is a herd of primitive deer. eventually it gets to big and they split off and travel to different places
So now there are several herds of the deer. In one forest, something attacks and eats all the deer of a certain color, but can’t see the other deer as well because they’re a different color. So gradually the herd becomes all of the less-sightable color and grows more adapted to forest life, faster and harder to see, maybe brown colored. Another group of the origanal herd finds itself on a mountain or somethins, where a better color for them would be grey. Here the deer that could jump farther and have better balance would be the most likely to survive, and over time become more agile and such. Eventually, these two groups become so distant of cousins that they are considered a different species.
[have to go. More later. Again. Grr…]
263- That’s because Americans are mostly idiots, or at least the ones who do surveys.
263- You’re not really proving your point, you’re just demonstrating how pathetic science education is in this country. I don’t believe Americans are idiots, I believe they are undereducated and indoctrinated early with strict interpretations of the world around them. Example: My cermics class is taught by a very nice woman who we will call Ms. B. Ms. B explained that she believes people who drive SUVs and similar vehicals while only one or two people are in the car are supporting terrorism. Without asking her to expatiate, some members of the class started to protest. Even after explaining how foreign oil generates money for governments who in turn support terrorist groups, she still had students who refused to believe her. Why? Because they or their parents drove SUVs and had never considered the consequences, and disliked the belief they might be wrong. I live in a community with one of the best school systems in the country and also the highest ratio of those with graduate degrees to those who didn’t, and you still get very ignorant views. America is a very religious country, and also a sadly a very ignorant one. The average american is not cosmopilitan, and hasn’t seen any other views other than those inside a very small community. No wonder scientific advancement in this country is falling far behind that of the rest of the world. But this is getting seriously off topic.
266-Lamest excuse ever. Just because you can’t handle the fact that less and less Americans are believing in evolution doesn’t mean that you can say they are wrong.
264-I believe that God created the world with all of the animals and humans just the way they are now. Of course there was a little tweaking here and there-it’s called ADAPTATION. But, me being a Christian, believes that God created the world over not just 6 days, but that those days represent millenia. And since no one seems to answer my question correctly, where did the first speck of life come from? Don’t say archaebacteria because then where did the archaebacteria come from?
264- Basically, I support the theory that all species were pretty much the same as they are now at the beginning of the world (which, incidentally, was not 4.6 billion years ago. It was in the thousands, not anywhere near billions.) with maybe a few minor differences. I know animals adapt- that’s a fact, and adaption doesn’t mean evolution- and one must accomidate for climate change and such. I believe that humans still looked like humans when the world began. So did cats, dogs, ect, ect. Does this help at all?
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
268- No-one’s saying that they know where life comes from, but they are saying that evolution is completely possible. Also, that wasn’t an excuse, and I said it wrong anyway.
(269),
I see. Yes, that does clarify things.
Recently a publisher sent Science a huge, lavishly illustrated book by someone named Harun Yahya. He thinks that geologists are right about how old rocks are and paleontologists are right about the order in which fossils of different creatures appear in the rocks; he just doesn’t think those creatures evolved. His conclusion is that different types of plants and animals were created at different times, over hundreds of millions of years. That’s not what the creationist MBers are saying, though. You think that geologists and paleontologists are wrong, too.
Just one more question before I recede into GAPA-space: it’s just biological evolution that bothers you all, right? I assume no one has problems with the idea that French and Spanish evolved from Latin or that English evolved from a kind of German. You can always discuss linguistic evolution if you get tired of arguing about the biological kind (not that there’s any sign of that).
263: What does that prove? That americans are blindly religious and uneducated? Polls don’t prove anything. 500 years ago, general consensus world wide was that the earth was flat. So?
Ahhhhhhg, I started watching that DVD from bio that supposedly ‘disproves’ evolution. The guy is off on so many points! HE compleatly skips over all religions besides christianity, and is so closed minded it makes me mad!! I’m only 44 minutes into it and I already have 4 pages of notes on things I want to respond to. The whole things is basically, as Robert said earlier, “I can’t imagine how it could have happened, therefore it didn’t happen.”
“3- DE EVOLVING??????? In case you havent noticed, there are more inventions coming out than ever before, we are always getting smarter, and WE CONTROL A PLANET! again I ask you, DE EVOLVING???? Please explain. ”
In my completely ignorant state of mind, we ‘peaked’ in the late 19th century. Specifically, after the United States Civil War. Then we promptly started de-evolving. We had the Second United States Civil War (a little known ‘mini’ war between the New York gangs during thefirst united States Civil War. Gangs and factory workers, tired of being treated as filth and victim to wage slavery merged into a GIANT mob, attacked Landlords, Business Owners, rich people, etc. until being controlled by police. seriously, at least five hundred people died, but I know it was definately a lot more than five hundred. For more information, please read Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States”. ). Then we got involved in TWO World wars within thirty years and promptly destroyed our ‘great and vast’ western civilization. We dropped two atmic bombs on civilians (the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, supposedly to end the war. The second on Nagasaki, because scientists and the United States Government wanted to test a different type of atomic bomb. Sad, but true.) Then we got involved in tons of of other wars, millions of people died in numerous genecides, we ignored AIDS (“It can’t happen here!”), we come up with giant SUV’s and Hummers to show how cool we are and to destroy our home at the same time, we told women that we would give them there rights and then frown at them when women said it wasn’t happening (seventy-five cents to a man’s dollar), millions of people are homeless, etc, etc, etc, etc. Sop what if we make some cool gadjets, if Einsteins right about the bees, then in four to six years, we are going to satart to die off. We have de-evolved to become the most destructive and the most apathetic species in the history of time.
“263- That’s because Americans are mostly idiots, or at least the ones who do surveys. ”
Thank You. I mean, we voted Bush in TWICE.
Look, go believe in God, but don’t snarl and get mad at teachers for teaching evolution. Evelution is real, it’s fact. We evolved from tiny organisms. Read Darwin, because I don’t feel like explaining how it happened. He made some mistakes, but he has the general picture. If you don’t want to believe that, that’s not my problem. Just don’t try to get me to believe that God is going to punish me and that he created the world in six days. Fundamentalism, in religion, is often the cause of problems, but it doesn’t have to be as long as CHURCH AND STATE REMAIN, FOR NOW AND ALWAYS, COMPLETELY SEPERATE. I mean, come on. The Pope shouldn’t influence the Supreme Court. That’s not justice.
Oh I found some really awesome news that supports evolution. Mustangs, in the wild, are beginning to form stripes. What’s happenng is that they’re out-breeding. Humans picked certain horses for their looks or temperment and then bred them to get the decendents of the Mustangs. Now, the horses are enlarging the gene pool by reproducing without having humans interfere. This means that they’re evolving into what a wild horse really is: zebra-striped, small (compared to domestic horses) and fast, small heads and large bodies, and completely wild (you can’t get a zebra to pull a carrige. It just won’t work.). They’re really pretty.
(274),
Careful: social progress (as in the development of a country) is a completely different concept from biological evolution. And the definitions of “devolve” and “devolution” have nothing to do with evolution of any sort.
The second half of the 19th Century was a fascinating time in both America and Britain, though. I’d be happy to start a Victorian History thread any time there’s a demand for it.
i hate hot topics. everyone is trying to prove they are right and that everyone else is wrong. not very productive. why don’t you all talk about what you think humans can do to progress? evolution v. creation will never be solved because they both require a certain amount of faith. evolutionists must have faith that information today is unbiased and corect and scientifically capable. creationists must beleive that there was a God and that he created everything. i doubt the two ideas will ever compromise, and why would they want to? i will definetely stay out of this thread just because i will not accomplish anything by posting.
i just need to say one thing: historically, many people have been led astray. as fridgey in the religions thread pointed out, many people in the dark ages blindly followed an institution, the catholic church, w/o any correct info. just remember that things that happened in the past may very well repeat themselves today. make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that everything the scientific and popular community think is absolutley right. thats all.
But when one “faith” is backed by scientific evidence and rationale, it should command more respect than something based on blind faith and dogma.
271-That is what I am saying. Everything was created the way they are today, but at different times(thus the 7 “days” in the Bible-which could have been longer periods than just days)
278-The thing about faith is that you ahve to have belief that you are right and what you believe is true, just like you have faith in your friends and trust them(if you have friends) And Creationists have just as much evidence that we are right as you evolutionists do. You just won’t admit it and do not even read our posts and give our side some thought, like we do to you. We are not just based on blind faith and dogma.
277-THANK YOU! YOU ARE RIGHT!
And Fridgy, I have a dare for you. For one week, no one school week(five days), I want you to be on our side and take our side. I just want to see what happens if you do. If you don’t, then fine, I don’t care. I was just curious what it would be like since you have so much intelligence up in that brain of yours. I bet, if you took our side, then we would be winning this battle right now. It is ok that you don’t. I respect your beliefs, for the most part. I don’t care that you do not even come close to respecting mine, because I know I am right, no matter what you and most other MBers on this thread think. So if you take my dare, you will win fame and fortune(ok, maybe just fame) among us Creationist MBers, which I know there are many out there, but they just don’t post here. Plus I will throw in 800 pieces of virtual choklit. If you don’t, fine, I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me. Just think about it. That is all I want you to do. If you agree, thank you.
279-you actually think he’ll accept??!!! i highly doubt it.
279- Wait- you want him to fight for something he doesn’t believe in and likely never will? Why? That has always seemed an idiotic practice to me. And the point of this thread is not about who ‘wins’ or not, it’s about, as I said before, discussion and if at all possible learning something you didn’t know before.
279- As I said before, I do read all your posts. I have read every post on this thread. And if there is something in any post I wish to respond to using scientific evidence, I do.
I just am curious. I doubt that he will accept it(he’s probably too chicken). And if he does accept it, but even after those five days are over, still believes in evolution(which I bet he will), but I just want to see what it is like. So let’s see his response first before we jump to conclusions.
And I know these threads are about learning things you might not have known before, but (no offense meant to Fridgy here) as long as HE is on this thread, I cannot discuss my beliefs, nor can I learn about your beliefs, without him either shooting down my evidence, or cheering ‘WE WIN! EVOLUTION IS RIGHT!’ or saying, ‘I pity you, Donaldo, because you seem unable to accept any theory besides yours.’ Even though he never tried to accept mine, and I did try to accept his but found it false and inplausable. I think some other people have done that before *cough cough Jadestone cough Julieb cough cough*
271-Great idea! Now that is the kind of evolution I believe in.
283- I find yours false and implausible. Why should I accept your arguments if you won’t accept mine for exactly the same reasons? You put religion before science. I put science before religion. Here is where we differ. I challenge you to come up with some scientific evidence that backs up your beliefs that cannot be shot down by FS or Jadestone or me. Because if your arguments consists entirely of “my faith says so so” then I’m afraid you will always find conflict with the people who put science before faith.
279- The comment in the second paragraph was just plain rude. Isn’t there something in your long, supposedly “holy”, book thing about resepecting people? I haven’t read it, but I assume that there is.
283- It’s me that feels sorry for you, not FS.
I feel exactly the same as JS, FS, and Julieb. (Well, maybe not as drastic as FS, but still…) I would give evidence against you, but I’m not too good at that on this topic, so I just agree with people.
Why should I accept? If, as you say, I have so much intelligence in that brain of mine, I am able to see that the correct, right stance to take is that of evolution. Creationism is based on tradition and faith forwarded dogma, evolution on scientific research, logic, rationale and thought. The so-called ‘evidence’ you have to back up creationism is no more than fables and myth written long ago. If I were to fight for creationism, the only thing I would have to back up my position (besides my debating and oratory skills) would be religion, which is NOT a reliable basis for scientific explanations.
evolutionists: can you explain to me how humans developed their reproductive systems? if this hasn’t already been discussed, the system we have currently would have taken a looooooooong time to form and would have been vestigal until full ready. not to mention that the opposite sex’s same system must have been develping at the same time and that they both would have had to be ready to reproduce at the same time…..somehow all this dosen’t quite make sense to me. can anyone help me out?
What I’m wondering is how carnivorous plants had this “mutation” one day that gave them the ability to eat plants. Explain?
I mean insects.
Jeez, everytime you ask these questions we have to go out and look this stuff up on the web (I’m sure there is an explanation, but I’m not an expert). It would save a lot of time and bother if you would just look up whatever you wanted to know yourselves.
288- What you need to understand is that sexual reproduction was around long before humans evolved.
Quoted from The Journal of Evolutionary Philosophy:
The most popular theory among respectable evolutionists is that sexual reproduction allows ‘genetic recombination’. In other words …
• beneficial mutations from separate ancestries can be combined
• beneficial mutations can be separated from harmful mutations
• unsuccessful genetic traits can easily disappear from an existing population
Without sexual reproduction, natural selection acts upon the entire genetic makeup of an organism, but with sexual reproduction, natural selection acts upon individual genetic traits.
With sexual reproduction, less than one in four offspring will receive the best genetic traits from both parents. However, natural selection seems to be very effective at eliminating the least successful variations, especially in the harsh conditions of the wild, where only a fraction of all newly conceived offspring survive until breeding age.
The evolution of sex
Although bacteria simply multiply by dividing into two, they also often exchange genetic material, usually by releasing small fragments called plasmids which can be absorbed by nearby bacteria. In this way, beneficial mutations are shared. This might arguably be considered to be the earliest form of sex.
After the appearance of plants and animals in the oceans around 600 million years ago, the only practical way for these new multi-celled sea-creatures to reproduce was by releasing seeds or eggs, whose cells would then begin dividing, sticking together, and changing each time they divided, until finally forming a new adult.
The only practical time to accept potentially beneficial foreign genetic material was before the seed or egg began growing. Many sea plants and animals today release pollen or sperm into the water to be absorbed by nearby seeds or eggs, which will not begin growing until they have been fertilized.
As plants moved onto the land, their pollen was either carried by the wind or delivered directly to seeds by insects. For almost all land animals and many sea animals, sperm was more effectively delivered by injecting it into an enclosed body cavity containing eggs.
289- Search PubMed for “evolution of carnivorous plants.” I think you’ll find that the 19 studies that will subsequently appear on your screen will adequately adress your question.
Sex is not a phenomenon attributed only to humans.
And I quote St. Augestine, “If you understand it, then it is not God”.
I just got ‘The Origin of Species” from the library. I decided I really should learn more about what Darwin thought, since I’m interested. Will post later.I thought it was funny that it wasn’t as thick as I would have thought till it turned out to be in size 9 font. This might take longer then previously thought.
I give up trying to not talk about religion here. Every time I come up with something else to talk about with evolutin people don’t respond.
Guys/Girls I have yet to see any real evidence of evolution-
as to Jadestones 15th post THAT IS ADEPTATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT EVEN CLOSE TO EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Charles Darwin himself said if no fossil evidence was found within a 100 years or so he himself wouldnt believe in evolution!!!
Darwin studied a bunch of finches and noticed that they were all different sizes and colors according to the climate of the island they lived on. He then concluded that animals might over extremely long periods of time evolve into new species. As to post # 277 ONCE AGAIN I HAVE YET TO SEE ANY REAL EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION!!!! IN FACT THERE IS MORE EVIDENCE FOR CREATION THAN THERE IS FOR EVOLUTION!!!!!
try this one… if the universe has always been here THEN THERE IS NO WAY WE COULD BE AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME!
you would have to go so far back in time that YOU COULD NEVER GET HERE!!! if you dont understand that heres a metaphor for ya, if your gonna start a race and the end of the race is say 1 million miles straight ahead. CAN YOU EVEN START THE RACE IF THE STARTIS AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MILES IN THE OTHER DIRECTION?????!!!!! NO!!! you cant.
So how about this- ever heard of the cell theory?? guess what part of it is, ALL CELLS COME FROM CELLS. oh wait, then where did the first cells come from? From an explosion??
No that cant be right because the 2nd law of thermodynamics says that matter is never created or destroyed. IT ONLY CHANGES FORMS!! Plus theres this thing called Irreducibly Complex. Basically that means something is so complex it is impossible to reduce. OUT OF THE MANY KINDS OF THE CELLS IN YOUR BODY ABOUT 200-500 DIFFERENT COMPONENTS ARE NEEDED TO MAKE UP ONE CELL!!! ONE CELL!!! AND YET WE”RE TO BELIEVE THAT US, WITH THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF THESE CELLS JUST MAGICALLY APPEARED???????? Hey guess what, ya know how bees can just hover there? Well guess what, ITS AGAINS THE LAWS OF PHYSICS!!! (yes LOOK IT UP!!) it is completely against the laws of physics for a bee with wings that small and a body that big and heavy, again I say IMPOSSIBLE for it to flap its tiny wings fast enough to create lift and be able to get off the ground! For creationism- i say just go outside, IS IT JUST SOME “MAGICAL” accident that we “HAPPEN” to breathe air and breathe out carbon dioxide?and all these plants on the Earth just “HAPPEN” to take in carbon dioxide and put out oxygen??? Does the Earth just “HAPPEN” to have been at the perfect distance from the sun to allow seasons, water and ice??? I think not.
P.S. I will debate anyone on here who believes evolution if u wish to do so.
sorry about the double post but i waz readin some of the comments and stuff like “the smarter animals live and the dumb die out” and “the animals will produce offspring resistant to a disease” THEY ARE ALL TALKING ABOUT ADEPTATION!!! NO WHERE EVEN NEAR EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE!!!! and yet again THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO FOSSIL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT EVOLUTION!!!!!!
See 260 re speciation. And the capitals,extraneous punctuation, and incomplete words are not going to make people take you seriously. BTW, it’s “adaptation.”
And there is tons of fossil evidence; I quote from “Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences.”
The Fossil Record
Although it was Darwin, above all others, who first marshaled convincing evidence for biological evolution, earlier scholars had recognized that organisms on Earth had changed systematically over long periods of time. For example, in 1799 an engineer named William Smith reported that, in undisrupted layers of rock, fossils occurred in a definite sequential order, with more modern-appearing ones closer to the top. Because bottom layers of rock logically were laid down earlier and thus are older than top layers, the sequence of fossils also could be given a chronology from oldest to youngest. His findings were confirmed and extended in the 1830s by the paleontologist William Lonsdale, who recognized that fossil remains of organisms from lower strata were more primitive than the ones above. Today, many thousands of ancient rock deposits have been identified that show corresponding successions of fossil organisms.
Thus, the general sequence of fossils had already been recognized before Darwin conceived of descent with modification. But the paleontologists and geologists before Darwin used the sequence of fossils in rocks not as proof of biological evolution, but as a basis for working out the original sequence of rock strata that had been structurally disturbed by earthquakes and other forces.
In Darwin’s time, paleontology was still a rudimentary science. Large parts of the geological succession of stratified rocks were unknown or inadequately studied.
Darwin, therefore, worried about the rarity of intermediate forms between some major groups of organisms.
Today, many of the gaps in the paleontological record have been filled by the research of paleontologists. Hundreds of thousands of fossil organisms, found in well-dated rock sequences, represent successions of forms through time and manifest many evolutionary transitions. As mentioned earlier, microbial life of the simplest type was already in existence 3.5 billion years ago. The oldest evidence of more complex organisms (that is, eucaryotic cells, which are more complex than bacteria) has been discovered in fossils sealed in rocks approximately 2 billion years old. Multicellular organisms, which are the familiar fungi, plants, and animals, have been found only in younger geological strata. The following list presents the order in which increasingly complex forms of life appeared:
——————————————————————————–
Life Form
—————————————————————————
Millions of Years Since
First Known Appearance
(Approximate)
—————————————————————————
Microbial (procaryotic cells) 3,500
Complex (eucaryotic cells) 2,000
First multicellular animals 670
Shell-bearing animals 540
Vertebrates (simple fishes) 490
Amphibians 350
Reptiles 310
Mammals 200
Nonhuman primates 60
Earliest apes 25
Australopithecine ancestors of humans 4
Modern humans 0 .15 (150,000 years)
——————————————————————————–
So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species. Actually, nearly all fossils can be regarded as intermediates in some sense; they are life forms that come between the forms that preceded them and those that followed.
The fossil record thus provides consistent evidence of systematic change through time–of descent with modification. From this huge body of evidence, it can be predicted that no reversals will be found in future paleontological studies. That is, amphibians will not appear before fishes, nor mammals before reptiles, and no complex life will occur in the geological record before the oldest eucaryotic cells. This prediction has been upheld by the evidence that has accumulated until now: no reversals have been found.
And for “all cells come from cells,” that just means that all existing cells, as far as we know, are created by other cells multiplying. We don’t know how the first cell formed yet, but we have a pretty good idea. A couple hundred years ago we didn’t have the germ theory and look where we are know. Just because we don’t know yet what causes something doesn’t mean there isn’t a logical explanation.
And as for all those “magicals,” the answer is no, of course not. The planet we live on has water because water is necessary to support life (in all forms we know of) and we wouldn’t have evolved if it didn’t. That’s Douglas Adam’s puddle theory, the puddle was created to fit the hole, not the other way around.
And for bees flying, that is according to the conventional laws of aerodynamics not adapted for insect anatomy. Bees don’t fly the way birds do, and their wings are radically different. That story is completely bunk.
And your “we couldn’t be at this moment in time” rant makes absolutely no sense.
And where are you getting “irreducible complexity” from? It’s apparently an intelligent design term, I had to look it up because it certainly isn’t used in science.
Again, please give some evidence that cannot be disproven.
I’m sick of arguing, this is moronic.
298 – I agree. We’re at 300 posts, so let’s just stop this stupid flamewar.
Okay, fine by me. One thing I just read in some magazine though: they found some sort of almost-organic material on a commet recently somewhere. At the rate commets crashed into earth in its early stages, it’s likely some of this may have helped start life.
Okay, done.
Yep, I really don’t think there is anything more to say. We just have to agree to disagree.
*starts reciting poetry*
This evolution thread,
is tearing us apart.
This really stupid flamewar
could break out into a
PIEWAR!
and for the race metaphore, if you are in the middle of a race that you have always been running and the start was an infinate number of miles away, it is impossible for you to have been able to reach your point in time, thus the universe must have had a starting point and will have an ending point.
Oh, no. We might not get the second evolution thread, or we might get it, and after a few posts have it closed because of the flaming. I would say the words that get you pied, but I don’t want to have that happen. Therefore, I will say every other word. Remember, all here. There, I wasn’t pied, but people know what I was saying.
quite a battlefield…sheesh…
302- What? I just don’t understand. The Big bang began the universe, and it’s been going on ever since. Are you debating the orgin of the universe, or life? They both have specific starting points.
293- Well, perhaps he was right.
What about the evolution of English? I heard that it actually came from French.
305- We’re supposed to be discussing evolution, possibly of animals, but we seem to have gotten into a debate about religion. All things like this do.
first of all- 302 and 305- thank you. you seem to understand my metaphor.
Now as for Julieb, you didnt say anything about the 1st law of thermodynamics. (yes I made a mistake earlier. Its the 1st, not second law) Guess what? Its not a theory like the cell theory its a LAW. That means it has been proven to be true in all cases.
It states that matter is NEVER created nor destroyed. It can change from liquid to gas to plasma to solid and then back again but the total amount of energy remains the same. Now since this is true, how could the universe be expanding?? How could this universe have been created by the big bang? all this goes against the 1st LAW of thermodynamics.
As for irreducibly complex, its just a big term for, That thing is so complicated its impossible to simplify it! Basically (if your in Algebra 1 you know what Im talking about) humans are like Prime Trinomials. We cannot be factored or in other terms- reduced to a simpler form. To support this- Apes have about a .3 or maybe .03 % difference in DNA than humans. But then why do humans have Mozart, Einstein, Space Travel??
There is a missing link between humans and apes and there alwayse will be. Sure there is fossils of cavemen but there is no in-between. Also, where is there a half-fish-half-reptile? Why arent there any of those? Another tally for irreducibly complex is like I said earlier. If the Earth’s orbit had even been a quarter mile closer to the sun than it is now life would probably not be possible. And your saying that happened just by accident?? Oh wait a minute, you said Douglas Adam’s theory was the puddle was created to fill the hole, not the other way around. Oh wait, what was that word you used? Oh yeah, CREATED. Not spontaneously exploded into being, but CREATED.
And as for my race metaphor try this, Say if you are in a game show where you must get 1000 points to win and you are at 200 points already. If you started at negative-infinite points you could never have gotten to 200 points, because you would have to start and infinite number of points ago. Therefor, this universe must have been created by something outside the natural laws we know.
I have a question for you Julieb, do you believe Jesus existed? Not as the son of God but do you believe he at least walked the Earth?
please refrain from saying I need to have evidence that cant be disproven before you disprove all my evidence. It just doesnt make sense.
Yep. Maybe we should have a flame war thread, where people can post things like this. The GAPAs could put “DANGER, FLAMING!” on it, so that people would know to stay away.
that would be good, it would make the rest of the site safe
and umm…should they make a new thread now? it’s past 300 posts…
Maybe we should, but will we? That’s the question.
Speaking of questions, here’s a Q&A for you:
Q. How many GAPAs does it take to make a new thread?
A. Four: one to click the mouse, and three to sit around talking about how good the old thread was.
307- Ok, before getting into dark matter and all that, because I’m not exactly an expert on that front, how do you think gas expands? It doesn’t gain more particles, it just spreads out. We don’t know much about dark matter and dark energy yet, so this phenomena is not really explained (at least not in terms that I can understand). Consult an astrophysicist or look it up yourself, but the science is there. I’m in A2A, thanks, and that’s just completely unjustified. We are more advanced than other animals because we have larger and more complex brains, a result of having to survive on the ground with few biological skills (no claws, small teeth, can’t run fast, face it, brains are the only things humans have) Brain size and bipedal-ness are the major differences between humans and other primates. And I’m sorry that the word created has gotten such a distorted meaning. I merely used it to illustrate coming into being. You missed the point of the metaphor.
No link? What do you call Lucy?
And yes, the universe does have a fixed starting and ending point. The real question is how did it begin, how will it end, and what is there when it is nonexistant. Most mysteries of the universe have yet to be explained, but I dismiss the thought as lack of an explanation to be found in the future rather than substituting an explanation that was based on no scientific evidence whatsoever before we knew anything about the universe at all.
As for Jesus, if he existed (and I say if) he was just a nice jewish boy who’s story got extremely inflated after his death. To me, there’s really no more proof than that of any one else living during that period. They didn’t keep accurate birth records or anything, all your going on is the writing of a small group. Does it matter if he lived or not? Well, I guess it does to you, but it doesn’t to me.
I know, I know, I promised to stop but the jab was to hard to resist.
Jesus did exist. He might not have been the son of god, but he was born and he died. That much is certain.
You know what? I’m really ticked right now. I’ve been reading some of the other posts and I feel like we should take this outside. of this thread. seriously. A FLAMING PIE WAR TO END ALL WARS! Great and Powerful administrators, if you please will, just create a pie war thread that is created for the sole purpose to let us duke it out over evolution. please. That last jab has sent me over the edge. I am in full rant mode now. You know what Hindus believe about evolution? Huh? They believe that the universe was created in a way that we will never understand. You understand it when you are a baby, but then your brain shrinks. AH! I feel so angery. Man, I hope this doesn’t get deleted. please.
.
.
That is all
if you do make the thread, be sure to label it”DANGER FLAME WAR” as stated above
There’s a quotation I heard recently — “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” It was by Robert Frost. (I just looked it up.) I would add that it doesn’t mean you never change your mind.
Anyway, wars to end war haven’t done much good as far as I can tell, and flame wars have never changed anyone’s mind or proved anything. (Oddly enough, proving things doesn’t seem to change many people’s minds, either.) So, however gratifying it might be for you to have an unrestricted opportunity to vent your wrath and indignation, I’m afraid the Administrators will not allow it.
oh well…
316- I like that. Though personally, I may have to work on my patience and self control.
I really don’t think a pie war would do anything to vindicate either side’s arguement. Either you have a civilized discussion or you don’t.
312- so your basically saying that the whole universe came from one incredibly dense little speck that just expanded? Ps – guess what? matter is not gas. gas is matter. can you make your hand start to infinitely expand?
by the way Jesus is mentioned by at least 4 other historically accurate writers who were not followers of Jesus- so really your jab did nothing.
unjustified?? thats not my point. my point is there are so many variables contained in 1 ameoba the chances of one appearing without intervention is about 1-100000000000
lucy??
you still havnt explainned the 1st law of thermodynamics and what about the 2nd law? matter is constently in a state of decline. people die, stuff breaks. So then how did this tiny speck of matter suddenly explode and increase?
318- i agree
316- Yes, no flame wars please. Total wars never will be compleatly solved because people will always think differently from one another, which is a good thing. Personally, I think I have been very self-controlled on this thread, no matter how I end up feeling after reading something. Many other people have to, the problem is that our viewpoints all differ slightly. As Julieb said, we just have to agree to disagree.
319-I don’t think either the first or the second law of thermodynamics says things can’t increase in size.
322- yes i know but once again,, can u make your hand start to infinitely expand like the universe is doing?
Now you’re talking about cosmology, not evolution. I could start a Cosmology thread, but it would help if some of you had graduate degrees in physics.
As an observer of this thread, I’ve noticed three new arguments to add the one I noted a few weeks ago. Here are all four:
1. I can’t imagine how X could happen. Therefore, nobody can imagine how X could happen. Therefore, X doesn’t happen.
2. I don’t understand X. If you can’t explain X to me right now, then nobody understands X, and X is nonsense.
3. Experts don’t know everything about X. Therefore, experts don’t know anything about X. Therefore, a non-expert opinion about X is just as good as an expert one.
4. Scientists sometimes change their minds about things as new evidence becomes available. Therefore, their opinions are less reliable than the opinions of people who never change their minds.
It’s good to be skeptical and to want to know the evidence that supports people’s beliefs. Where scientists are concerned, though, the evidence is on the record, where other scientists (or anybody else) can look it up. They put the evidence in their papers. They have to, or their papers won’t be published. That’s one of the rules they play by. So if you want to know why physicists think the universe is expanding, it’s easy to find out.
Hm… there may be a Q&A column in this.
I dont want to know why the universe is expanding. I know gas can expand. What I want to know is (the big bang) how there could be such an INCREDIBLY dense speck that it could still be expanding today. If the universe was created from the big bang, for it to be still expanding and for all of everything to have been created it would have to have been many many many times denser than a black hole.
Maybe it was. I’ll ask a physicist. It’s possible that the answer involves advanced math, so be warned.
Blind faith in jesus is moronic. Doubt will allow you to think for yourself.
I think that I’ve been reasonable, haven’t I? But please, remember that we’re all Musers *is interrupted by a pie**cleans self off* here. Please, no flaming. That includes you, FS.
lf this thread doesn’t get back on topic pretty soon, I’ll be strongly tempted to close it down without starting another one.
327-That was both mean and off-topic.
alright- to get back on topic robert I would like to ask all who believe in evolution what ther beliefs as to the origins of the universe.
either
A- the universe was created from nothing
B- the universe was created from a speck one-billionth the size of a proton that exploded/combusted into the universe
C-The universe has always been here
p.s., Frigid Symphony as I will get to later there is actually more blind faith involved in evolution than creationism.
For one- the majority of the books of the bible (including Matthew,Mark,Luke,John) were published about 45 years after Jesus’s death. People who saw and met Jesus were still around at this time. Therefore unless somehow the majority of the Roman world went along with this, everything said about Jesus in the Bible is true. If the Bible was false why would people have kept quiet about it? The Government was the only ones who had the power to keep so many people quiet and yet they wouldnt have because they despised Jesus.
I thought we had said earler that the beginings of the universe wern’t the same subject as evolution. I don’t know where the universe came from, and personally, I can’t make myself believe anything other than science no matter how hard I try, which likely is why I am not religious. So, none of those. Perhaps if I research it more I will go wth the most likely one to hae happened.
so sorry about the triple post but I just remembered,
SCIENTISTS, not creationists but SCIENTISTS calculated the chances of one bacterium coming into being by accident, assuming they can come into being by accident of course and the number was 10^40000 power. Thats a big number. and of course the chances of that bacterium surviving and “evolving” into something else is even greater. and then on up the line until you get to humans. by that time the chance is so small it is literally impossible.
(332),
I’ll be glad to start a New Testament thread or a Jesus thread for anyone who wants to discuss those topics. But I don’t see why either this comment or the one that provoked it belongs on an Evolution thread.
(331),
The origin of the universe isn’t relevant, either. Evolution is about different kinds of plants, animals, and other creatures — their similarities and differences, and where they live. It’s biology and paleontology. The Big Bang and other models of the origin of the universe are physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. If scientists are right, life on Earth appeared when the universe was about 10 billion years old — two-thirds as old as it is now. Until that time, life, and evolution, didn’t exist.
Again, I’ll be happy to start an “origin of the universe” thread if you want to discuss it, but the Evolution thread is the wrong place.
Do you really think that it was more likely that the universe was created by a divine being? We can only speculate on the origins of the universe, but if you really want to get into statistics I think the god explanation would be just as unlikely as any other. This has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. But just to point something out, there a plenty of people who believe in both evolution and god. You act as though all evolutionists must be atheists. Most atheists are probably evolutionists, but I doubt most evolutionists would call themselves atheists.
326- That would be awesome!
327- Calm down, Fridgy. Don’t get the thread shut down. In the future, at least try to include something relevant, instead of just making people angry? I agree with you on most topics but you of all people should know that nobody who has been brought up since birth being told something is going to accept criticism against it passively.
298-For once, I agree with you. This topic is getting old. WHy can’t we agree on something, FS? We need to find somethig we can agree on. And sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I have been taking a break from MuseBlog.
335-Those threads would be great, but I am afraid someone might come up and start debating, which would bug me. I am done arguing.
ill stop talking about creationism now but the origin of the universe directly relates to evolution. if there was this matter and there was no life, then, this matter from the beginning of the universe must have some how organized itself into organic premicrobial life. THAT is what cant be explained. thats like saying can you make some dirt into a living microbe.
335- This is what Im talking about. how matter on the Earth 15 billion years ago suddenly form life? it directly relates to evolution because without this matter creating life than there can be no evolution.
While I think that everything about the god thing that christians and jews believe in in a load of junk, I still think that we should respect people’s opinions. I’m sure that everyone who doesn’t believe in god has friends that do, I definitely do, and that people who do believe have friends that don’t. This includes FS and Donaldo, who I think of as the greatest opposites. At least, Donaldo was until JohnnyVern came, now I’m not sure which is most resistant. JUST STOP ARGUING! I think that this topic should be closed for a bit, same as Religions. It’s just gotten too bad, with all of the flaming. I say it again, and no-one dare pie me, REMEMBER, WE’RE ALL MUSERS HERE!!! Please, either come to a peace, and continue discussing it, or have the GAPAs close the topic. I am going to keep posting things to this meaning, unless the stupid flaming is stopped. I still have my strong opinion that there is no such thing as god, but I’m not going to press it on anyone else. Please, just stop and have a civilized conversation.
The universe is at least 24 gigaparsecs big. 78 billion light years. In something that big, odds are evolution/life will happen.
“dirt into a living microbe” go look up the urey miller experiments.
337-Here’s something I think we can all agree on: muse is the best magazine in the world.
I think threads like this debating things are fine, as long as it remains civil conversation. However, recently musers seem unable to debate anything controversial without reverting back to insults and ineffective arguing (which is to say, just saying that something is wrong rather than actually discussing it). I think that until we can all be nicer, we should give up on all threads about religion, evolution, and anything particularly controversial.
340- Thanks. I’ve mentioned the Urey-Miller experiment before and nobody ever seems to actually bother to look it up. And for reiterating that life is much more probable than everyone seems to think.
Thank you, emmatheduck. Now, if only people would listen…
Now for evidence that there are links between different species. Take dinosaurs and chickens, they’re related, but how? Have you ever seen pictures of fossils of feathered dinosaurs? here’s a link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1081677.stm
If that doesn’t work, look up Confuciusornis, or Microraptor.
Also worth a look is the Wikipedia article on Devonian tetrapods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapod#Devonian_tetrapods
338- No it doesn’t. Evolution is about how one species of plant or animal turns into another, not how life started. That’s got nothing to do with evolution.
I havn’t made much progress with the book. The introdution and first few pages were very hard to get into, but it’s getting better. Not really the kind of book you can sink your teeth into and read in one go, but I think I’m getting used to the way Darwin wrote. I’ve learned a lot about pidgins and flowers so far.
My dad says the Song of the dodo and the Flight of the iguana were good books too, but really hard to get into. Reading science isn’t too exciting for me, I do better with pictures. Coloured pictures.
I’m inclined to give another thread a chance. What do the rest of you think? Any feelings pro or con?
348: I really don’t know. Creationism is a scientific term for religious dogma, that cannot be believed unless you have absolute faith in religion. As faith cannot be argued with, it seems pointless to me to continue. Evolution is less of a hot topic than what goes in the religions threads, and more people will find themselves against the christian dogma. When I argue with a religionist about religion and moral ethics, even if I have no impact on who I’m arguing with, I may still have an impact on the neutral onlookers. But with evolution, I feel there are no neutral onlookers.
On a final note, it really sickens me to see how the religious leaders have managed to make myth and fable seem scientific, and how they seek to brainwash children by giving them confusing ideas.
Evolutionists, hear me: Consider yourselves enlightened indivuals, and waste no time striking at a small aspect of the problem. Or, if you enjoy yourselves, do so, but always remember that creationism will fall with religion.
332- I am on your side, but here is a correction. The majority of books in the Bible are in the Old Testament, not the New Testament. They were written during the time it happened. Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers, I am pretty sure. Jonah wrote the book of Jonah(no, really?) Song of Songs(or SOng of SOlomon) was written by Solomon(gee, who woulda guessed?)
And just so you know, I believe in the 7 days theory, in which God made everything, but if that is wrong, I have to say the most plausible is the Big Bang theory, because who but God could make such a huge explosion?
339-I TOTALLY AGREE. This thread used to be about discussing and sharing beliefs. It now feels like everyone is just trying to prove the other person wrong and they are trying to “win” the argument, but SERIOUSLY, who will ever know. Until we meet our Maker, we won’t know. FS and me are the greatest rivals probably, but if you look through this thread and Religion, you would find that we did agree with each other on some topics. Arguing and insulting everyone LIKE THIS goes against the basis of Christianity, and since it seems like most everyone who is a Creationist is a Christian, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Same with you Evolutionists too. I can’t believe the arguing and insulting. No one is learning anything anymore. ALL THE COMMENTS ARE LIKE,” No. You are wrong. That can’t be. BLAHBLAHBLAH.” or “Stupid #*&%@! That is impossible. I am right. You are wrong. Deal with it!” or my personal favorite: “If you say this works, then why does this happen?” (I ADMIT TO USING ALL OF THOSE, AND FS HAS TOO, WHETHER OR NOT HE ADMITS IT. NOT TO OFFEND FS. I HAVE TO SAY FS IS A GENIUS. BUT SOME THINGS IN THIS WORLD CAN’T BE EXPLAINED BY FACTS ALONE.)
WE NEED A BREAK FROM THIS THREAD.
IF ANYONE WANTS TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS THREAD, LOOK HERE.
It started out as a place of learning and sharing. Then one insult came. ANd another and another. And then it became all about proving others wrong and laughing at them.
KNOW WHY NO ONE CHANGES THEIR MIND ANY MORE ON THIS THREAD?
It is not because they are stubborn, as some might think. It is because there is no actual information being put forth as evidence of one case or the other.
RESPOND IF YOU AGREE WITH ME.
Sorry for the triple post but:
349-There is evidence of Creationism. You just ignore it. Wikipedia or Google it.
It does seem that a lot of people are tired of this subject — though not tired enough to stay away from the thread.
I’m still wavering over whether to start a new one. I think there are some important topics that no one has discussed, such as how evolution came to be accepted during the second half of the 19th century, and why evolution is considered a scientific theory while creationism is not (hint: it’s not just because most scientists think one is true and the other isn’t). Those two topics — the history of the idea, and what makes a theory scientifically useful — are worth finding out about, but probably not many of you have covered them in your science classes yet.
353- I’M tired of this subject – and I haven’t even been on the thread in forever. If we could have been NICE about evolution, and not argue about whether it was true or not, it would have been a different matter.
I agree. Sometimes you can learn a lot by exploring an idea without worrying about whether or not it’s true. For example, a few months after the blog started, we had a thread about King Arthur. It wouldn’t have been much fun if people had insisted on arguing about whether King Arthur had ever existed. There are a lot of topics like that.
Actually, we’ve been rguing since post 8. We’re bound to. There was a nice part were we talked about Monotremes though.
I think if we could talk about evolution instead of debating it’s existance, we’d be fine. And instead of discussing the origin of life, we could talk about the Lamark*(see post 223) article in Muse or what I posested in 249.
356-I agree, but Creationists would not like talking about evolution when they do not think it is true. We would have to have time to explain why we do not believe in evolution. I think it is time to say goodbye, good riddance to this thread.
357- But, this is an evolution thread. These are things I want to discuss. If you don’t, then why waste time arguing with the people who do? If there were a Creationist thread, I wouldn’t post on it unless I had a question about what Creationists thought or something, not argue and say they were wrong.
All right. Suppose I start two threads: a new Evolution thread for people who want to discuss the scientific theory of evolution, and a Creationism thread for people who want to discuss supernatural scenarios of the origin of life, the universe, and everything. Any interest?
I wish I’d thought of that earlier. It might have saved a load of trouble.
359: Gigantic LOL.
However: I was introduced to the term “creationism” through an article in The Guardian Weekly. It was criticizing the religious right in America attempting to brainwash children by giving religious myth a ‘scientific spin’. It explained how creationism was basically the bible given a different tone, and how “evidence” started showing up, when all it is is an idea you can’t disprove. Just like saying that the universe came from Ginnungagap, the great nothingness, or that the three brothers, Odin, Vili and Ve created the nine worlds by slaying the giant Ymir and carving life out of his body. You can’t disprove it, and it sounds just as ridicolous as the scenario I just described.
350: Finally, someone realizes I’m a genius
But honestly, I do admit to having insulted people, and I do admit to being stubborn, however: Saying “if this is so, why does this happen?” is a good, useful thinking and debating tactic.
359 – Holy darn yes!!!
Ooooooooooh a marathon thread!!! (That’s a thread that keeps going long after 300 posts)
Im not sure. the evidence points to evolution, but christian faith points to creation. i dunno. what we can see ourselves, vs. what everyone tells us. religion could be the biggest mass-delusion in history, or not. you decide
This thread should be closed by now! Aargh! Robert-start the two new threads you mentioned in Post 359!
360-Yes, I admit you are a genius, but I don’t care, because I am one too(not to toot my own horn). I don’t care that you say I am stupid, because I know I am intelligent. I always get straight A’s and have one multiple writing contests. And I also have to agree that the “if this is so, why does this happen?” argument is a great debating tactic, and I have used it myself. But it gets rather annoying when NO ONE ANSWERS THOSE QUESTIONS. And FS, please start treating us Creationists with a little more respect. I am treating you with respect, but you won’t give us any of that R-E-S-P-E-C-T! (Sorry couldn’t resist)
NOW GAPAS CLOSE THE THREAD please!
It might be a useful debating tactic, but it’s a flawed argument, as Aristotle recognized almost 2,500 years ago. You can read about it and other logical fallacies in Wikipedia, among other places:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
(“Argument from Ignorance” is a technical term that does not refer to the level of knowledge of the person making the argument — just the tactic used.)
I think the two-thread idea is great. But it might be a little hard keeping people from posting about how one idea is better that the other on the wrong thread. Maybe THREE threads are needed, the two Robert thought of, and one for arguing. But maybe we should just hope people will try to be civilized.
Red-tailed HAWK
359 – Please create those two threads.
By the way, I asked my pastor his opinion on evolution versus creationism. He gave me a dynamite response, and it renders all the arguing on this thread sort of pointless. Want to hear it?
I’ve got a better idea for a follow-up thread, but I think I’ll hold off a little while longer before putting it into effect. Meanwhile, E2MB, let’s hear what your pastor had to say.
Here’s a thought. The GAPAs could merely snip! any arguments. Then I would come back.
Oh, and by the way, here’s what seems to make the most sense to me:
God (or whatever you want to call it) created the microbes (wrong word?) that then evolved into us.
There you have it.
Here is what my pastor said, basically.
Here’s a diagram. We have science on one side and theology on the other.
Science......|..Theology
_____________|___________
.............|...........
.............|...........
...evolution.|creationism
.............|...........
.............|...........
Now, some people say these are two different ways of saying the same thing, how the earth and everything in it came to be. But they’re really quite different. Take this example.
Let’s say we’re comparing Science and Art. We’re wondering how a plant makes food from the sun. We go and ask Science. It will tell us how photosynthesis works. Now let’s go ask Art.
Art says,
...__...
.._|_|_
.|_|O|_|
...|_|..
....|...
....|...
....|...
________
that’s how.
So you see, you can’t really ask that sort of question to art.
Now let’s go back to our graph.
Science......|..Theology
_____________|___________
.............|...........
.............|...........
...evolution.|creationism
.............|...........
.............|...........
If we ask science how the world came to be, it will explain evolution. If we ask theology, it will say, “God created it, and saw that it was good.â€
So science and theology are answering two different things here.
Science......|..Theology
_____________|___________
.............|...........
.............|...........
...evolution.|creationism
.............|...........
.....how?....|....who?...
.............|....why?...
Charles Darwin was originally a Christian. He developed his theory of Evolution not to trash creationism, but merely as a way to report what he saw aboard the HMS BEAGLE. Other non-Christian scientists took his idea further, and then people started saying that it was proof that Christianity is false. It’s not.
Since evolution and creationism address two different things, creationism cannot prove evolution wrong or right, and evolution cannot prove creationism right or wrong either.
That’s what my pastor said. He also said that anyone is perfectly welcome to disagree with that, but that that was his opinion.
370- Makes sense. Now lets have that, nice, peaceful thread about the interesting things about evolution, such as why blind cavefish have eyes. Or don’t, I can’t remember which.
And whether we evolved from manatees. (Fun! I like manatees better than apes.)
Manatees are sea cows. Or are cows land manatees?
372- Some people would tell you that manatees are mermaids.
Sounds like time to start a new Evolution thread, plus another thread I have in mind. Onward!