i would like an athiest or evolutionist to please explain to me their standpoint on this issue:

Why do you believe in evolutionism, how is the thoery of evolution (in your opinion), scientific?

Easy. Through the use of carbon dating and because of all the fossils and shit we've found in the dirt it has been proven that living things on earth have changed over billions of years. One species dies out, another takes its place. Often enough, one species is similar to another, and that species is in turn similar to one that comes about later. It makes sense that genetic mutations occured that caused one to become the other over time.

Of course, nothing can be proven to be totally, beyond a shadow of a doubt true. There's always room for doubt. However, when you compare the theory of evolution to the alternative that exists, that some "invisible man in the sky" decided one day on a whim to put a bunch of organic matter on a dirtball in the middle of nowhere that orbitted a giant ball of plasma and grant some of it sentience, and then make a bunch of other non-sentient creatures to serve it, the theory of evolution looks pretty damn good.

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"God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

no, that has not proven evolution.

and are you saying that it can be proven as well that 2 + 2 does not equal 4?

[This message has been edited by lostmind (edited 12-03-2001).]

oh, and an explanation of how parents with one kind of dna can give birth to one with a different kind of dna would be really interesting.

Evolution being the gradual change in species through mutation and recombination.

I see evolution in the fossil record. Selective breeding is evolution. I see it as it's meant to be, theory, and as the most plausible explaination.

EVolution vs Creationism:

evolution is a bottom up process. It builds off of certain 'advances' to become more complex. creationism says that everything was created at once (or maybe 7 days, but this lenght of time is much different than the billions of years estimated by science.) I have heard arguments of to how everything works so perfectly together, therefore it must be placed here by god. I on the other hand tend to believe that the only things that are here to this day are the things that work well together.

"oh, and an explanation of how parents with one kind of dna can give birth to one with a different kind of dna would be really interesting."

What are you talking about here?

Main Thread Topic:
"Why do you believe in evolutionism, how is the thoery of evolution (in your opinion), scientific?"

I believe in evolution because it makes the most sense to me given the alternative; creationism.

Evolution as you say is a theory so by that definition it hasn't been proven like netwon's laws. Therefore the only scientific part about it is that is goes through the 5 steps of the scientific process. Since it is not a law it's techincally not scientific. ITs just a theory which i feel is closer to the truth than the 7 day tale.

www.talkorigins.org

That place covers it.

i've always thought it was interesting that when you break it down, creationism os MORE based upon science than evolutionism.

before you begin to pelt me with books on Darwin and Galapagos, i would like you to consider the following:

upon what basic laws of science is 'science' based on?

of course, newtons laws, and that which was found by j.j. thompson, dalton, bernoulli (sp?), and the like.

and above all, these laws have to in some way lie under one huge fat honker of a scientific law. The second law of thermodynamics, more commonly known as entropy.

it states that all natural processes lead to an increase of the randomness of the system being scrutinized. Things left to themselves to be operated on by chance do not become more orderly, right? it becomes more chaotic and disorganized. it never says that things get more and more organized and eventually less so.

in this sence, evolution calls and depends on two things: chance happenings, and a movement from the simple to the complex.

for example: horses went from the multi toed eohippus (28 inches tall), to the ones we have today, or 'evolved' if you will.
this horse went from a more complex, four toed mammal (3 toes on hind legs), went to a less efficient one toe.
second, the strong, arched backed eohippus 'evolved' into the much weaker, straight-back (swayback) horse.
third, the eohippus had more teeth than do the moder horses.

this is not a progression from simple to complex. this is the other way around. i would say that this is more of deterioration than evolution.

its a basic idea that as things get more complex due to entrophy, available energy in the universe is lessened (like a guyser: the first blast of water is strong, and then fades). meaning, if we go 'back in the energy usage timeline' there must have been a point wherein every niggle of universal energy was available for use. that points a big finger toward creation.


a couple other things i would like to touch on, is the principle of universal causation.
this states that a cause can have many effects, but no effect can be greater qualitatively and quantitatively greater than its cause.
meaning:
1. the initial cause of limitless space must me infinite.
2. the initial cause of endless time must be eternal
3. the initial cause of unlimited energy must be omnipotent
4. the first cause of infinite complexity must be omnicient
and 5. the first cause of life must be living.

therefore, the first cause of the universe must be infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omnicient, and living.

the first law of thermodynamics basically speaks of the amount of energy in the universe staying at the same amount. the amount of energy in the universe is a constant. the amount of energy the universe has today, is the same amount that there was 1,000,000 years ago. this doesn't sound like gradual development, but rather a point of creation.

this is just something that i was thinking and reading about lately. anyone care to elaborate, or explain their point of view?

you may now pelt me with darwin/evolution books.

*curls up into a little ball*

Incorrect. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html

The adaptations a species undergoes through generations for the purpose of survival or dominance. I think the general vitality of a species determines its ability to evolve, it cant all be random. Just numerically, unless mutations occured in more than one patriarch or matriarch, the superior mutants would just be overwhelmed by cruder blood. I think theres some kinda will to life involved. I think some species can be defeated and just not will evolution any longer. Were on our way.

Why cant the two go together god creates it then evolves.

It can...

but that page says nothing of the principle of universal causation.

and i never said that the world was a closed system. i never said 'world'

i said universe. the engergy that lies in the universe stays the same. and that is where my point lies. not in that the world isn't a closed system and therefore is acted uon by the sun.

perhaps the statement and that which follows it is more of a strict interpretation of the scientific law.

'The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics'

perhaps not. do not liberals call for flexible interpretation of the law? therefore, can't something scientific be applied to something like this? i would say yes.

i suppose its all up for interpretation.

a BIOLOGIST will tell you that man is 98% genetically similar to monkeys.

a GENETICIST will tell you that you're lucky if you 85% genetically similar to your parents.

let's assume for one minute the biologist is right, and the geneticist who actually specializes in the field is wrong.

how did two monkeys mating, produce another 2% of dna which never even existed in their genetic makeup?

They didn't. The 2% change in the species occurred over many thousands of years. A lot of us are probably slightly more evolved than our great grandparents. The change isn't noticeable at all. But then again, its only been like 100 years. In another, 2 or 3 thousand years, humanity, if we're still around will probably be noticably different.

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"God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

somewhere along the line something had to be written to the dna to make the change permanent.

i've said it many times, evolution was more easily believed before the discovery of dna.

dna is the dictator of how you will turn out.

from bacteria to man, genetic code had to be written that wasn't there before.

how did it get there?

how does bacteria evolve when all it does is split in half?

if it does evolve, one time when it split in half it needed to search out a mate.

now there is a new genetic code that didn't exist in the parent.

how did it get there.

quit generalizing about over millions and millions of years carl sagan, and answer the question directly.

your grandparents example is feeble, evolution within a species is fact or we would all look the same.

if you show me a fossil and say this is evolution.

then i want to know what it's parents were, and their parents were, and what their parents were, back until we reach the bacteria that started the line.

in the late sixties they started an experiment to prove evolution using fruitflies, becaue of their life span.

the last i heard after 25 years and millions of generations of fruit flies.

the offspring were still fruitflies.

they'd even throw in elements to influence evolution.

they had fruit flies with no wings, fruitflies with no legs, assorted colors of fruitflies, really large fruitflies, and really small fruitflies.

but they were all genetically fruitflies.

i'm not a creationist either, being deist i don't think god would create something he'd have to come back and tend to either.

now they get the ignorant to silence in the voice of their god science, by saying life on earth probably came from a comet.

oh that's where it came from.

how did it get there.

like they said for eveything else they won't delve into.

has no bearing on life on earth so it is not important.

now you can take bacteria and genetically show it to be bacteria, you can take man and genetically show it to be man, you can take a monkey and genetically show it be monkey.

how did these different kinds of genetic code get written in the short amount of time it has taken to get the vast amounts of life we currently have on the planet, and the even vaster forms of life now extinct.

when even on a primitive cave painting we can see a horse as it is today 10,000 years later, we can see man as it is today 10,000 years later.

the only thing i've seen evolved in the last 10,000 years on anything is our artwork.

another reason your grandparents example is feeble,

washington looks pretty fucking human on the dollar bill.

the egyptian mummies look pretty fucking human as well.

Yeah thats just wrong about evolving past out great-grandparents...I look like mine. Most people I know look just like their great grandparents or a combination of them. Id be worried about a species that mutated that fast and consistently.

The Egyptian's were a lot shorter than we are. Something like 4-5 ft on average if I remember correctly. King Tut was thought to have been a child when he was discovered. In reality, he was 20.

I'm not sure, but I remember reading that the thing that allows us to change is the radiation in the air. Even though most of us don't pay it any attention, there is a substantial amount of radiation coming through the atmosphere. The radiation is enough to alter our DNA over many thousands of years. The reasons the fruitflies didn't change is because they weren't given the time or environment to evolve properly. They had nothing to evolve towards in a lab.

The fossils parents probably looked like the fossil. It's grandparents probably did too. It's great grandparents probably looked similar as well. But... as you go back more and more thousands of years, you'll start to notice difference.

However, since your obviously very skeptical of evolution, then I'd just like to ask you. Where did we come from if not from a more primitive creature? Where did the creatures we got those fossils from come from? Why are they so many thousands, or so many millions, or so many billions of years old? Where did they go if they didn't evolve?



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"God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

Ok. Bad example. But can you argue that our DNA has probably changed ever so slightly? Even if its just one or two protenin strands out of place here or there?

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"God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

Our genetic code is a sequence of molecules that are collectivly called DNA. We all know our DNA is used to make RNA which makes amino acids which in turn are linked together to make proteins. Proteins are a major building blocks for life.

RNA is transcribed from our DNA, and is used to make amino acids for example an RNA sequence split up into pairs of 3.

...UGG CGA AGA CUU GCA AAU UGA UCA GAC...

This encodes these amino acid sequences:

..tryptophan-arginine-arginine-phenylalanine-alanine-asparagine-stop. serine-tyrosine...

Now lets say one stray neutron hits the DNA of an egg cell and damages UGA(the G part is destoryed) part of this sequence to yeild: UGG CGA AGA CUU GCA AAU UAU CAG AC... The will now yeild a whole new protein by knocking just one molecule out of line.

..tryptophan-arginine-arginine-phenylalanine-alanine-asparagine-tyrosine-stop. This not only lengethens the first protien chain it shortens the next ones after it. This is how mutation happens.

This mutation can be preserved in both ways cells reproduce. If a cell makes a copy of itself it replicates the DNA, and hence the change. If through sexual reproduction the change is passed on through meiosis. This is how mutations can be preserved through a genetic line. This is the whole importance of our DNA to tell our cells how to make everything we need to live.

This is how 2% or more DNA change can occur just by a simple shifting in DNA. Taking a laid back position of 0.001% DNA changes over hundreds of years would result in major DNA changes over millions of years.

The point is one minor change like this could dramitically change a key protein, for better or for worse. This mutation will survive if benefical for the indivudal. Maybe even spread of the animal is able to mate. If advantagous, more members of the species with the mutation will be able to mate and spread the gene more.

As a side note bacteria do have something intresting called plasmids. They are a loop of DNA which are seperate from the bactria's own DNA. These plasmids can be given to other bacteria; either when a bacteria dies or they will actually extend an arm to grab the plasmid. Either way the plasmid can be incorperated into the other bacteria's DNA. This is how bacteria can gain benfical mutations that they themselfs didn't mutate into.

On the contrary DNA provides the means in which genetic change can be stored and supports the idea of evolution.

People who eat less are shorter. Stature is largely nutritional.

Oppps forgot to address BarRoomHero.

Well in the billions apon billions of years it might take, the universe will entropy and go into a heat death. Now do you think the slice of time life has existed on this planet is going to change this fact? In our system(earth) we have more than enough energy(from the sun) to make complex atomic structures. This small slice in time isn't going to override this rule, it is but a mear sparkle in the scale of time of the universe. We are NOT the universe and we are NOT a closed system. so hence forth life may grow to be complex.

Let me try a simpler way of explaining evolution. On its most basic level, it's based on simple common sense.

For instance, certain populations of birds used to all be fairly dull-colored. But the more brightly colored the males are, the more sexually attractive they are to the females. So, the more brightly-colored ones managed to have a lot more children than the dull ones, since they got more action with the labybirds. Generation after generation, the number of bright-colored birds increases due to the females selecting their bright-colored fathers, and this leads to the evolution of brightly colored birds.

Also, on another note, you brought up a few examples of evolution that went from complex to simple as rebuttals. The notion that things always move from simple to complex is a false one. If creatures were always becoming more complex, then why would bacteria still exist now, 2 billion years after they came into being? They are obviously better adapted to this world than are humans, who are already foreseeing difficulties after only a few million years. This is a testament to the usefulness of their simplicity.

"People who eat less are shorter. Stature is largely nutritional."

You are so full of shit defiant. So people who eat more are taller, i laugh at that. People who eat more generally get fatter not taller.

There is a glimmer of truth in your statement though. If someone doesn't get enough food regularly they don't have the materials to grow larger. But eating more than normal doesn't help you grow taller.

YEah it does. People with vitamin deficiencies have stunted growth. LoL, I love when people disagree with my idea that up is up just because they hate me.

soullace,

i would like to point out that you used the word 'entropy' inncorrectly. i believe it is a noun.

i never said that 'we' (being earth i assume)are a closed system nor did i say that 'we' are the universe. its obvious that you didn't quite understand what i was talking about in my last post.

while this 'slice' in time is small, a law must produce a fractal image of itself on even the smallest segment of its boundaries. meaning that a nanosecond from now, the ***UNIVERSE*** is more chaotic.

understanding this (which i already had, you needn't have pointed that out), i must ask you a question:

when you speak of life growing more 'complex', do you mean to say, physically or mentally.
by complex, do you mean physically, or mentally.

Defiant,

"YEah it does. People with vitamin deficiencies have stunted growth. LoL, I love when people disagree with my idea that up is up just because they hate me."

Yes, stunted growth. If you read my post you would have seen that i said that. But you were implying, in your previous post, that growth was a function of nutrition. Which is not the case. Nutrition can stun growth but not make you grow any bigger than your DNA says so. Which is all that i was saying. If all you were saying is that nutrition stunts your growth i am sorry for thinking you have implied more than you meant. If this is the case in the future be more concise in which you say things.

And also I don't hate you, i just disagree with you on a regular basis :] I was pissed off about what i thought you implied.

BarRoomHero,

You are correct it is a noun, i appoligize for the miss use.

"when you speak of life growing more 'complex', do you mean to say, physically or mentally.
by complex, do you mean physically, or mentally."

Mental complexity is more of a run-time like situtation. Our biology controlls how we are physically put together, while our life time experiences controls how we grow mentally. There is a physical aspect to mental grow as well. You must be physically able to have certain mental capacity. I.e. a dog doesn't have the mental capacity of a human, and will never have one becuase it's biology doesn't allow it. So the only way to get a higher mental complexity is through a higher physical complexity.

To answer you question. In the strictest sense of the word im saying physical complexity, which in turn affects the mental complexity. The above paragraph are the reasons why.

soullace, that's very interesting and theoretically very possible.

but how do you explain the exact same change in many different creatures that allows for the change to take place.

how also do you explain the dna change in every molecule of the body, and not just a change, but the exact same change.

jack,

i don't know how life happened. like i said being deist, i don't believe the creation theory,

evolution does make the most sense since everything started off as a hydrogen gas cloud after the big bang, but to me it's incomplete to the point of being wrong.

and jack don't you think creatures sometimes go extinct.

maybe that's what's happened to all the whales, they haven't been hunted to extinction, they've evolved to a point where their former self is no longer needed.

there are what millions and millions of different life forms on earth,

does it really surprise that some of them resemble each other?

i think back to the bones they found in france and claimed to have found the missing link and paraded him around as the rosetta stone until his bones were analysed with modern science and the hunch to his walk was actually caused by a bone marrow deficiency.

and one more thing jack,

20 might be really old to you,

but remember it's not even old enough to drink today.

"soullace, that's very interesting and theoretically very possible.
but how do you explain the exact same change in many different creatures that allows for the change to take place.

how also do you explain the dna change in every molecule of the body, and not just a change, but the exact same change."

Im not exactly sure what your asking but i will try to answer as best as possible.

If it's just bacteria, the change is easiest carried over do to the fact most bacteria just clone themselves. If the change is benefical they will survive and reproduce better, if not they will die out.

Now for sexual reproduction or meiosis.First and formost a change has to happen to an egg cell's DNA which is going to be used in reproduction. Once the egg is fertalized and it starts splitting, from the DNA with the mutation in it, the DNA is copied from cell to cell. Now DNA as i said before controls protein construction. Proteins for instance make up muscle, skin, enzymes, blood cells, binding sites, and other organelle machinery. This dictates other construction bodies in our system. So a change in our DNA will reflect how our bodies are put together.

The mutated cell once splits and becomes a new lifeform, if that mutation is benefical the lifefrom will be able to have sex and be able to spread its DNA to the next generation. Therefore providing it's 'mutated' DNA for it's child.

Since DNA controls our form to pinpoint accuracy, it is easy to see how given the same DNA changes, the same change will be seen uniformly across the spectrum.


[This message has been edited by soullace (edited 12-06-2001).]

I'll agree with you that the theory is incomplete and that we lack a lot of data on the subject, but we do have the foundations built already and so far it makes a lot of sense and until something comes along that makes more sense, I'm going to say that theory is the correct one.

Species don't just go extinct. Something happens. Their environment changes. Their food supply is wiped out. A comet comes out of the sky darkening the skies and poisoning the water supply. They evolve. All of these are explanations as to why a species might go extinct. If It sounded like I was saying something different, then I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, which after reading what I wrote was obviously my fault.

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"God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

i don't buy it soullace, you're still asking for the same mutation to happen to quite a few species, or it would never last two generations.

and back to the bacteria,

if how did it mutate to need a mate?

if it's other part also needed a mate, you'd have a lot of inbreds which any biologist will tell you is detrimental to any colony.

and it doesn't make sense for the bacteria to gain this trait,

you'd think that splitting yourself in half would be the most efficient form of reproduction,

why would a bunch of them suddenly develop the ability to produce offspring, with the need of another mate.

like i said it had to be a bunch of them that all have the exact same mutation, i mean the EXACT same mutation.

how is that random chance? a million bacteria all of a sudden having a mutation that takes away their self sufficiency, and their survival now becomes dependant on one another.

i just don't think the time line fits for the amount of living organisms that we have here.

say life did originate in the water,

how did animals first leave the water, wouldn't the first fish who had lungs instead of gills die?

let's say the egglayers made it first, and some deposited their eggs on land,

wouldn't being born with gills on land be kind of harmful?

how did a million or so fish develop the exact same genetic mutation,

here you're talking about developing lungs and turning fins into appendages, even if this took a long time you're looking at a creature not very adept at moving on land yet fucking enough to develop hundreds of thousands of more species.

and yet evolution was still knowledgeable enough to develop plants before animal life forms in order for them to breath on the surface,


which meant that while one form of life had to evolve while other forms of life evolution would remain dormant just long enough for this to occur,

and where's the fossil record of all these inbetween creatures?

lostmind,

Im unsure of how creatures evolved to become sexual. I asked my biology teacher once and he gave me a pretty good answer which I don't recall at this time.

quote:

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how did animals first leave the water, wouldn't the first fish who had lungs instead of gills die?

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Do you know how amphibians work? They were the first creatures with lungs. Born in the water with gills then spent some of there life using their lungs on land.

quote:

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wouldn't being born with gills on land be kind of harmful?

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Amphibians.

quote:

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how did a million or so fish develop the exact same genetic mutation

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They didn't, there are variations in a population that won't affect the ability to mate.

quote:

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here you're talking about developing lungs and turning fins into appendages, even if this took a long time you're looking at a creature not very adept at moving on land yet fucking enough to develop hundreds of thousands of more species.

and yet evolution was still knowledgeable enough to develop plants before animal life forms in order for them to breath on the surface,

which meant that while one form of life had to evolve while other forms of life evolution would remain dormant just long enough for this to occur,

and where's the fossil record of all these inbetween creatures?

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It's unlikely that an animal that has the ability to breath oxygen will retain that ability if it has no use for it. Lungs don't suddenly appear.

lostmind, your arguements against evolution are poorly thought out. I suggest you find a book about natural selection and evolution and read up on the subject to find out how it works before these 'opinions' of yours continue to embaress you further.

quote:

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this is not a progression from simple to complex. this is the other way around. i would say that this is more of deterioration than evolution.

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Evolution doesn't mean more complex, it means traits that are beneficial to survival. I believe that when you when you are looking at the 2nd law of thermo-dynamics you're seeing far to big of a picture.

quote:

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a BIOLOGIST will tell you that man is 98% genetically similar to monkeys.
a GENETICIST will tell you that you're lucky if you 85% genetically similar to your parents.

let's assume for one minute the biologist is right, and the geneticist who actually specializes in the field is wrong.

how did two monkeys mating, produce another 2% of dna which never even existed in their genetic makeup?

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Seriously, get a book on the subject. Chances are that the biologist is speaking of the way the protien strands are created and such. Biologicly monkeys probably are 98% similiar. The geneticist will tell you you're 85% similiar is probably talking about traits, red hair, blue eys, etc...
Apple and oranges lostmind.

jack's missing mind, we are no more evolved from our grandparents. People don't evolve. Natural selection takes place causing the population to change/evolve.

Defiant Exile is correct, the variations in height a usually caused by diet. The have been races where for some reason it was benficial to be taller (some african tribes) and some where it was good to be smaller (pygmes) but diet plays a major part in height. I believe that the accepted reason for short Egyptians was that there poor diets caused them to be stunted.

An attempted explanation for how creatures became sexual that I'm misremembering from my biology student days:

Mutations often have numerous effects. The evolution of sexual mating had among its effects the following 2:

Yes, it is far less efficient, and would normally be a detriment rather than a help.

But, it allows for far greater variation in genetic materials. So if something happened that threatened the lives of certain kinds of bacteria, the non-sexual ones were stuck with identical responses to that threat, while the sexual ones had a much greater variety of offspring, leading to a much greater chance of some of them surviving such a threat.

I'm probably skipping a few steps in the logic, but I think that makes a whole lot of common sense.

bongman, my arguments might be poor, but yours do little to enlighten.

amphibians seems to be your whole answer.

my question is how did it know it needed lungs to live on land.

how would a creature whose parents lived in water, know it could go to the surface?

and still we're talking about a millions of creatures with the exact same mutation.

the 'answers' i get is more like the reasoning for why the earth is flat, or the center of the universe.

and if you bought the answer you biology teacher gave you why don't you remember it?

or was the question unimportant to you?

and call me crazy but i think a geneticist would better understand genetic similarity than a biologist.

so are you talking apples and oranges or monkey and man?

"Lungs don't suddenly appear."

so how did they appear, and in the number of creatures to allow it to survive?

where was the point when a frog could no longer fuck a fish?

and scott, you're giving me the why's not the how's.

i'm still convinced evolution is incomplete, the best idea we have at the moment but extremely incomplete, like i said, to the point of being wrong, or misguided, evolution from species to species seems to be more based on faith than fact, and yet accepted as fact,

because people like bongman buy the answers they are given and don't really care enough about the issue to remember the answer because hey sounds good, i'll accept that.

when asked about though.

what did i accept?

"my question is how did it know it needed lungs to live on land."

Simply put they didn't know, they don't need to know.

"and call me crazy [your nuts!] but i think a geneticist would better understand genetic similarity than a biologist."

It all depends on what characteritisics your talking about. Saying that the DNA is %2 different between humans and chimps, is different than comparing their physical appearance. If we are %2 different in our DNA that difference as we can see has a dramatic affect on appearance. So all that im saying is you can't compare apples and oranges and expect them to be the same.

"where was the point when a frog could no longer fuck a fish?"

At the point where its penis couldn't fit.
To be blunt about it.

I'm reading up on my biology right now to show you an example, i'm trying to make it as accurate as possible.

quote:

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Originally posted by lostmind:

and still we're talking about a millions of creatures with the exact same mutation.

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No, we're absolutely not doing that. If one single solitary creature ends up with some freak mutation that helps it to survive while others die, and if that creature manages to have babies (thus passing on those genes), then that creature's descendents will have better chances of surviving and so on and so forth, leading to a huge proliferation of creatures with that mutation.

For instance, when (fairly suddenly) Earth became covered with oxygen, if only one bacterium out of trillions and trillions happened to have some mutation that allowed it to not be killed by the abundance of oxygen, that would change the whole species. All the others would die out from oxygen poisoning, and that one bacterium would be the proverbial adam and eve all wrapped into one.

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Originally posted by Bar room hero:
upon what basic laws of science is 'science' based on?

of course, newtons laws, and that which was found by j.j. thompson, dalton, bernoulli (sp?), and the like.

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Not so. Those are relatively recent discoveries in science.

Science in its simplest form is based on common sense and observation above all, and the laws you cite came much later as frosting on the cake.

I see that when I throw a ball up into the air, it comes back down. Therefore, there must be some force pulling it towards the Earth, or is would just keep going up. I then test that theory hundreds of times, and after coming up with the same conclusion every time, decide that this is a truth. A bunch of other scientists decide that they want to challenge my ideas, so they come up with multiple ways of trying to prove me wrong, but they fail, and my theory is strengthened because of this. Eventually, after a really long period of time, other scientists decide it's a waste of time to keep testing my idea over and over if it always comes out the same way, so they accept it as fact.

This is science, and it works the same way as any other common sense thing: You touch a spike, it hurts. You touch a spike again, it hurts. You do it a few hundred times, every time it hurts. So, you decide that spikes coming into contact with your hand causes pain in your hand. That conclusion was arrived at via the science of testing and hypothesis, and is as logical as theories come.

i loved that person's by-line that said common sense will tell you the earth is flat.

and scott, you're speaking of course this trait becoming dominant.

so one generation has two of them,

two generations have four of them,

3 generations have eight of them,

4 generations have 16 of them.

supposing that every one of these creatures survives.

and no there is no force pulling it back towards earth.

this from barbours the end of time

"Einstein assumed that the world line of a body subject to inertia and gravity would be a geodesic. in this way he could achieve his dream of showing that inertia and gravity were simply different manifestations of the same thing-an innate tendency to follow a shortest path. This will be a straight line if no gravity is present, so that space-time has no curvature, but in general it will be a curved (but 'straightest') line in a genuinely curved space-time. Since matter causes gravity, Einstein assumed that matter must curve space-time in accordance with some law, for which he immediately started to look. Bodies moving in such a space-time would follow the geodesics corresponding to the curvature produced by the matter, so the gravitational effect of the matter would be expressed through the curvature it produces. Another important insight was that in small regions the effect of curvature would be barely noticeable, just as the earth seems flat in a small region, so that in those small regions physical phenomena would appear to unfold just as in special relativity WITHOUT gravity. This gave full expression to the equivalence principle."

a distant observer of your gravity trick would not see something going up and coming down, it would see an arch.

living in a rural setting i see mutations happen quite frequently, two headed calves, and the like,

of all the mutations i've seen, i've yet to see one that turns out beneficial and allows the offspring to survive more than a couple weeks.

so "common sense" and "visualizations of the theory" don't mesh for me.

and soullace my dick can fit in a goats vagina does that mean we can produce offspring?

again it's the most plausible idea at the moment, but with tons of shit missing,

tons of shit to the point its incompleteness makes it wrong.

in the same newtonian gravity is good enough for freshman science and those who won't delve into it, but extremely incomplete to the point einstein just made it practical for those who don't really need to know.

ev�o�lu�tion
n.

• Gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.
  
  
• The process of developing.
  
• Gradual development.
  Biology.
  
• Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
  
  

So basically, so far we have established that evolution, in its simplest form, can happen, and, common sense tells us it should. (As was very nicely described in ScottG's post)

• Animal has genetic defect
  
• Genetic defect makes it stronger
  
• Animal�s children also have defect
  
• Stronger animals (with defect) live whilst weaker animals die
  
• Defect becomes commonplace
  
• Species has evolved
  

But� this all covers evolution once life exists, what about spontaneous evolution, at what point (and is it even possible) does a very complex protein become alive, and moreover is it possible for, once it has become alive (Single cell organisms etc), it to become self aware.

Anyone have any ideas?

http://www.2ndlaw.com/evolution.html

"...
Most disquieting to chemists who are interested in thermodynamics are the misleading statements about the second law and chemistry that creationist spokespeople have made. A few emphases from previous pages in the present Web site and from www.secondlaw.com that bear on this unfortunate situation are developed below. At the end of this page are superior links to presentations of the second law of thermodynamics and its irrelevance to creationists� arguments against evolution.

"A watch must have required a watchmaker; a car could not have formed itself from parts."

The above statements in italics from creationists are certainly true, but they have nothing to do with the behavior of atoms and molecules. Car parts in a junkyard don�t speed inside the yard at a thousand miles an hour, constantly colliding with each other, fusing together with a similar part (or different ones) so violently that enormous quantities of energy are given out � enough to make them white hot.

Why give a silly illustration like that? Anyone knows that it is not an inherent quality of metal parts to spontaneously join with similar or quite different parts to form complex new arrangements. Yet, this IS precisely the normal behavior of most of the chemical elements that constitute the world and the universe. The value of the second law of thermodynamics is that it quantitatively describes the energetic aspects of the chemical elements and the compounds they form. The chemical potential energy bound in most of the 20,000,000 known kinds of molecules is LESS than that in their elements. Thus, energetically, the second law says that the majority of compounds now known could spontaneously form from the corresponding elements. Watches or cars are not lower in thermodynamic energy than the total energy of their individual components. Therefore, the second law says that it is completely inappropriate to compare them with chemical compounds and elements.

...

There are millions of compounds that have less energy in them than the elements of which they are composed. That sentence is a quiet bombshell. It means that the second law energetically FAVORS -- yes, predicts firmly -- the spontaneous formation of complex, geometrically ordered molecules from utterly simple atoms of elements. Popular statements such as "the second law says that all systems fundamentally tend toward disorder and randomness" are wrong when they refer to chemistry, and chemistry deals with the structure of all types of matter.

...

"The Law of Disorder"

As part of their attempts to challenge evolution, some religious writers have included comments to the effect that the second law � what they have called "the law of disorder" � strictly prohibits the chance formation of complicated stuctures from simple parts, including complex molecules from simple ones. This site, and especially http://www.secondlaw.com, have shown repeatedly that it is fallacious to view the second law as a predictor of disorder. The second law concerns energy, not patterns of objects. The second law states that energy tends not to be restricted to one or a few energy levels in atoms and molecules, but to be dispersed to as many such levels as possible � rephrased in homely terms involving molecules, "Intense or concentrated energy tends to spread out and diffuse".

In that spreading-out process, macro objects sometimes are displaced and moved to random arrangements that humans subjectively define as "disorder". A violent wind not only can break a window in a building and blow the papers in an office all over a square mile, but also destroy the building itself. However, this is an incidental consequence of dispersing and spreading out of the energy in a tornado, not an event that is due to the innate nature or behavior of inanimate objects in the absence of such an energy flow. Moving common objects around so they fall in disorder is a singular and accidental aspect of the universal tendency of energy to diffuse, not the general thrust or meaning or requirement of the second law that applies to objects.

..."

For anyone who dosn't belive in evolution, or thinks the 2nd law of thermodynamics forbids it (lostmind, Bar Room Hero etc) This page is well worth a read...

[This message has been edited by j0662 (edited 12-08-2001).]

j0662,

The second link has a typo on it. There is a comma at the end of the '.com'.

lostmind,

I will do powers of 2's to give an idea of how many organisms you can expect every generation:

code:

---

00: 1      11: 2,048       22: 4,194,304
01: 2      12: 4,096       23: 8,388,608
02: 4      13: 8,192       24: 16,777,216
03: 8      14: 16,384      25: 33,554,432
04: 16     15: 32,768      26: 67,108,864
05: 32     16: 65,536      27: 134,217,728
06: 64     17: 131,072     28: 268,435,456
07: 128    18: 262,144     29: 536,870,912
08: 256    19: 524,288     30: 1,073,741,824
09: 512    20: 1,048,576   31: 2,147,483,648
10: 1,024  21: 2,097,152   32: 4,294,967,296

---

As you can see just after 32 generations you have 4,294,967,296 ~ 4 billion (assuming no loss of course) creatures. As you can see it is very easy to fit 32 into billions of years of evolution.

So given that a mutation is benefical and doesn't get the oraganism killed it will spawn. Passing the test of every day life. Now assuming benefical mutation, it will take 32 generations to get ~4 billion creatures with the same mutation. Now say even for a human whom has a generation cycle that is pretty damn long, it's about 20 years. Lets just assume a generation is 20 years. It will take 6,400 years for a single mutation to affect billions of people.

Now i was going to give you an example of resperation with and without air. My example was way too complex, which cause the reader to focus more on the mechanics that the point. The basics are this ATP is a molecule that carries energy, our bodies break down suger and form ATP. Resperation is the way in which this is done. There are two types: anareobic and areobic. One that uses oxygen and one that doesn't. The kind that doesn't use oxygen produces 2 ATP molecules, while on the other hand the one that requires oxygen produces 23-25 ATP molecules. So it can be seen that the orgranism who was able to resperate with air gained a great energy advatage.

Evolution through mutation (it doesn't know whats benefical or not) changes the organism for better or for worst. If the creature is able to live and spread its DNA, the mutation gets to live on. By the same token, to evolution, any mutation that survives the test of time is considered to be benefical. Now consider that your an organism that 'discovered' how to move in a liquid enviroment. You are free to romp around without any competion. For sure your DNA will survive because of the many advantages of this mutation. 32 generations later billions of creatures can now move.

And finally,
"and soullace my dick can fit in a goats vagina does that mean we can produce offspring?"

No, i was just stating that physicalities prevent a fish and a frog from mating. And yes the same applies to you and a goat. Your sperm isn't physically compatable with a goat's egg cell.

[This message has been edited by soullace (edited 12-08-2001).]

ahh,

but soullace that's one mutation.

how many mutations must there have been from bacteria to man?

and this is still assuming that EVERY mutation was beneficial.

why did some creatures like reptiles, seem to just stop evolution?

by your own math there should've been plenty of time for even the development of modest shelters, hell even a changing of blood to make their bodies more suitable to their rapidly shrinking environment.

yet nothing.

bacteria are still the same as well.

you ever think a bacteria in your stomach is telling another one,

why did his bacteria get to evolve, was my ancestry so lazy.

do you think the bacteria had prophets.

"you should be proud, your descendants will learn how to fuck each other instead of itself(this will lead to the creation of businesses), your cousin on the other hand, all he'll ever achieve is the ability to lick his ass and sniff out your stash."

i'd like to see the fossilized bacterium that would grow on to become osama bin laden,

so i can justify calling these people parasites.

you know,

knowing that everything started out as a ball of hydrogen gas, i was starting to lean towards a kind of evolution.

you guys are talking me out of it.

ok, lostmind, this ones for you...

Imagine we are back at the beginning of life, just a few bacteria on the Earth.

Btw still no ones replied to my question about whether spontaneous evolution is possible... come on people, not even a no?

Take one bacteria. It divides every two hours. Given 7 days there would be a total of 19,342,813,113,834,100,000,000,000 new bacteria... now I think bacteria live only about 2 hours, so if we take away all the dead bacteria (bye bye...) we will have 14,507,109,835,375,600,000,000,000 living bacteria. Assuming there are no limiting factors and no death by other means.

Now, that�s in 7 god damn days... as was previously explained the possess of evolution is something like this:

1. Animal has genetic defect
   
2. Genetic defect makes it stronger
   
3. Animal�s children also have defect
   
4. Stronger animals (with defect) live
   
5. Weaker animals (without defect) die
   
6. Defect becomes commonplace
   
7. Species has evolved
   

So... times moved on... were at about 2 million years ago... and loads of new species have 'evolved'

Bacteria (in their non-evolved form) reached a maximum level, not enough food or light or space etc, means that as many die as come into existence.

The same thing has happened to many other species, they have levelled off in their birth/death rates, which is why there are so many different numbers of animals, and species.

quote:

---

but soullace that's one mutation.

how many mutations must there have been from bacteria to man?

---

There would need to be millions, but we have millions of years... with millions of attempts at each generation.

At generation 10 of the bacteria there would have been 1024 bacteria, each of which may have a genetic mutation, as you work down the chain, there are more and more chances for mutation, and its more likely that the mutations previously will have been useful, as many there will be many more of them (survival of the fittest).

quote:

---

Why did some creatures like reptiles, seem to just stop evolution?

---

Not every bacteria will mutate when it divides, say at the second generation of bacteria, one of the bacteria mutated, that would mean in the next generation, there would be 6 of the original bacteria, and 2 of the new bacteria. Evolution will never make a species die out, because it works on multiplication, but the less evolved (or mutated) are more likely to die out assuming the mutation is beneficial.

quote:

---

by your own math there should've been plenty of time for even the development of modest shelters, hell even a changing of blood to make their bodies more suitable to their rapidly shrinking environment.

yet nothing.

---

The above answer explained this. Evolution does not end a chain creatures, it mealy multiplies them, the weaker ones die out, this usually means only the newer (stronger) species is left, but not always, that�s why there are still creatures that appear to be 'less evolved'

Hope that helped...


[This message has been edited by j0662 (edited 12-09-2001).]

lostmind,

Or look at it this way
You have a piece of bacteria that you allowed to split 16 times

65,536 bacteria now exist in this pool. Now by being struct by some UV radiation (sun raditation), a bacteria's DNA is struct knocking out a cytosine molecule. This bacteria is considered mutated. Thats 1 out of 65,536 bacteria. now the rest of the bacteria split as usual. The one with the defect splits as well carrying the defect. So assuming the mutation is benefical they will grow/spread better/faster, or find a way to prevent death better. In any case the mutation is benefical. You still have the non-mutated bacteria, and the mutated bacteria. The non-mutated bacteria isn't snuffed out of existance, its still there. If over time the mutated bacteria overwhelms the other bacteria and they go exstint, so be it. But if they are able to maintain a hold, they wont. Also you must realize that the mutation might allow them to use another food resource and hence both forms of bacteria can co-exist becuase they feed on different food.

Also certain bacteria have generation cycles in the measure of hours. So many generations can happen in a day. Think about getting sick. Those bacteria grow really fast in order to infect your body.


Lets take a number like 2 h0urs for a bacterial generation cycle.

Thats:
12 cycles a day.
51264 cycles a year.

In just a year(assuming no death) this many bacteria will exist:
1.0039167915806429134393432674896e+15432
or
~1.0e15432

thats 1 and 15,432 zeros.

This shows growth in a year. With oppurinity for certain bacteria to mutate. Most of this mutatuations will either do nothing or be unbenefical. But as you can see their is ample oppurinty for mutation and accumulation for mutation (evolution). Now look at the sheer amount of time 4 billion years, and you can see the amount of time bacteria had to evolve into other organisms. And the reason why unevolved forms of life are still on the planet is they don't directly compete with the most advanced forms of life. They have form relationships, like our cells house a form of bacteria that are responsible for energy. This is a mutually benefical relationship.

"you know,
knowing that everything started out as a ball of hydrogen gas, i was starting to lean towards a kind of evolution.

you guys are talking me out of it."

Come on you've been hostile towards evolution form at least last year.

j0662,

"Btw still no ones replied to my question about whether spontaneous evolution is possible... come on people, not even a no?"

YOu mean like suddenly having a wing for instance instead of an arm?

I think its possible in less complex life forms due to the fact that little DNA is in them. More complex life has DNA seperated into chorosomes, and redundacy that protects them from dramatic mutation. To get a human to grow a wing would probally take more genetic manipulation than getting a frog to grow wings.

No, i dont mean suddenly having a wing, i mean way back before life existed. There was a pool of highly complex protiens or whatever, when did(and is it posible for) that jelly of atoms suddenly become alive?

This is what i mean by spontanious evolution.

The sudden creation of life from non-life.

Do you think its posible?

This is where you either belive in god or you dont. Not even science has an answer for this one.

yes that makes sense for bacteria,

now let's get to mammals,

how did elephants evolve a 2 year gestation period?

why is a cat's a few weeks?

a human's nine months?

from bacteria to man, we are talking about billions, and billions, and billions of mutations.

some failed, some worked,

some had to go through generations for the mutation to take hold of the entire species.

globally.

on a rock that's 4.5 billion years old?

jo, that's an interesting question i must have missed it.

or made reference to it in my question where did dna come from a ball of hydrogen gas.

on earth, life cannot be without it, and dna cannot be without life.

it's a what came first the chicken or the egg question.

lostmind,

I believe there are 2 major factors involved in gestation periods:

1) How complex/big the orgainism is
2) How developed the organism is when they come out.

The explaination of this is easy. The more complex something is the more time it takes to make it due to its sturcture, and/or usage of more molecules. Also if your big it will take lots of molecules to make your form. This sets the base line.

Then how developed the organism is when they come out, is a certain percentage of the base line that is developed.

"some had to go through generations for the mutation to take hold of the entire species.

globally."

You are using humanity as a basis for comparison. Which is good and bad. Most species don't exist at a global level. In fact most are tied to their specfic enviroment. There are of course organisms that can survive in a multitude of enviroments. My point is for evolution to exist, a species does not need to dominate the planet globally. Think about niches in biology. This is when an organism has evolved to a certain point where its really good at what it does. It fills up a particular niche in its enviroment.

I do think as a species gets more and more complex, meaning its DNA gets more and more complex, its much harder for a species to mutate.

"from bacteria to man, we are talking about billions, and billions, and billions of mutations."

Im not sure its THAT many. But i really don't have a clue of how much DNA we have. Or in this case how much DNA bacteria have. So i can't make a comparison.

"This is what i mean by spontanious evolution.

The sudden creation of life from non-life.

Do you think its posible?"

Yes, The basic jist of it is this. Life is a property of matter.

In a lab it has been proven if you have the ingredients for some amino acids mix them together and give them a little bit of energy (like a zap of electricity) they will from amino acid chains. It has proven that both the ingredients exist, and that lightining existed billions of years ago. All that it would take is a formation of an amino-acid chain that could self-replicate. Or perhaps a precursor molecule.

first off, goddamn i love debating shit with you soullace.

i don't think you quite understood what i was getting at with gestation periods,

what did elephants evolve from, is their gestation period the same as elephants, if not did the first elephant being born need a two year gestation period.

ahh, but most species do exist on a global level.

the flies in my house in the summer look the same as the flies on the starving children's faces a half a world away.

"I do think as a species gets more and more complex, meaning its DNA gets more and more complex, its much harder for a species to mutate"

now that makes logical sense, but still doesn't explain why reptiles evolution seems to have stopped 65 million years ago.

"Im not sure its THAT many. But i really don't have a clue of how much DNA we have. Or in this case how much DNA bacteria have. So i can't make a comparison."

i can't either, but i was going off what we are compared to what they are, you'd have to think that everything we have as humans is a mutation from bacteria though not?

which means not only our eyes, but the pupil and iris as well, the nerve connecting it to the brain, and the way we see, the development of not just one bone, but all bones, the development of appendages that are easily manipulated, not just hair but the color of hair, a mouth, teeth, fingernails, ears, the cartilage molded around our ears allowing us to hear like we do, sex organs,

now here's divergent evolution from a
creature who only needed itself to reproduce,

now here's the kicker i think, and it just occurred to me, although i've known it all along.

not only did bacteria who only need itself to reproduce have to do something miraculous in itself by "giving birth" to something that needed a mate,

now here's the vegas longshot nobody would even put one dollar on,

but another bacteria had to mutate and "give birth" to its fully compatible mate,

how did this happen?

did the bacteria get together and say, i'll make the male you make the female?

i've heard of that exact same experiment you mention, but i was going to use it for my argument in my response to his question, but thought i'd wait for the perfect seguay,

thank you,

the experiment you speak of is the one where they created the conditions of earth billions of years ago, they induced a spark and amino acid chains were created.

the building blocks of life?

apparently not, they did not create life, they created a chain of amino acids IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT.

are you insinuating that the earth billions of years ago was a controlled environment?

aren't you atheistic? i'm a deist and don't believe it was a controlled environment.

also the amino acid chains were created in what would have been the atmosphere.

when every credible biologist will tell you life originated in the oceans.

and in all their lab experiments they never created "life", all they could ever produce was a chain of amino acids.

no dna, no life.

no life, no dna.

"or perhaps a precursor molecule"

seems evolution is the only branch of science which involves a lot of speculation.

science will tout the mathematical formulas for the speed of light, velocity, gravity,

they will also tout the mathematical probabilities of how many planets have life, and how many planets have intelligent life.

they never ever tout the mathematical probabilities of the creation of life, or the evolution of life from a single celled organism to man,

because the numbers they've found turn out to be a scientifically accepted impossibility.

they just say it must have happened that way or we wouldn't be here.

like i said i believe in evolution,

just not the one we've been given, everything you, me, this planet, the sun, this galaxy, this galaxial cluster and everything in this universe started out as a hydrogen gas cloud.

so evolution must be true, a form of it anyway.

and i don't think this is the form.

as you may have noticed i got into trouble in biology class for being "disruptive".

i guess it happened when i told the teacher the book was full of crap, how for 27 weeks they tell us how life went through all these mutations to get to man,

then the last nine weeks when we learned about man, they then tell us about that one little detail they never ever mentioned the previous 27 weeks, in how man and all life have this thing called dna which is designed to prevent interspecial mating, and mutations.

i was one of the many kids in trouble for "acting smart".

or should i say asking questions the teacher couldn't answer, and depending on the pride of the teacher can really affect your school record.

evolution is incomplete soullace, darwin himself admitted that, and the theory of evolution was around about 100 years BEFORE the discovery of dna, and about 50 years BEFORE proving the existance of atoms.

yet it remains unchanged despite these two new and surprisingly pivotal discoveries which directly affect it.

yet the only answer is, it must be that way or we wouldn't be here.

there's a lot of faith involved in the theory of evolution, you can't deny that.

and didn't somebody on here say that faith is another word for hope? you hope there is a god,

well i think that some people hope this version of evolution is true, or in other words hope there isn't a god.

where would we be if galileo didn't get in trouble for "acting smart" and kept asking questions instead of blindly accepting the moon, sun and all the stars and planets revolved around the earth because that's what common sense and his eyes tells him.

without breaking it down just a little more.

when the true nature of evolution is discovered(and no i'm not a creationist who believes god came along and seeded life after creation, being omniscient he'd have provided the ability beforehand) it's going to be like the big bang and black holes,

einstein had the theory of wave function but discarded it because he couldn't believe god would play dice, yet it was his very own theory which proved the wave function of particles.

the big bang was ridiculed for years by scientists and i remember it being just a paragraph in my science book, ridiculous because it gave religious clerics what they wanted all along a moment to creation.

true evolution will be an astounding scientific discovery that SHOULD'VE BEEN EXPECTED LONG BEFORE.

but people quit asking questions and just speculated about the chance of precursor molecules and self-replicating amino acid chains from a failed labratory controlled experiment whose very purpose was to "create life from lifelessness" which is why it was a failure.

and like galileo i'm not going to blindly accept something that "common sense" tells me must be or i wouldn't be here, when looking deeper into it always tell me, i shouldn't be here.

and like galileo,

i get mocked for it.


ahh, well.

It's good that you question things, i like that attitude. The thing is you now have to be like galieo and debunk the system by coming up with a better theory, or proof to the contrary.

The idea, the concept of evolution makes perfect sense to me. It seems like the only probable method of creation. We as humans can't ever know what really happened in the past, becuase we were not there. Evidence and theory provide certainity.

I would like to hear your _deviant_ ideas on evolution.

lol, also lostmind, the only way I can think of you ever believing in evolution. is to start with the basics, and wait for 4 billion or so years. Which as of now wouldn't be quite possible for us to observe.

but i do believe in evolution, a form of it anyway.

i don't have any deviant views because i have no background at all in biology or genetics.

my biggest beef with evolution as it is, is that it is touted as fact.

no other science in recent times has ever forced a theory to be true.

superstring theory is just that a theory.

big bang theory was just that a theory, until it was proven.

the theory of black holes, was just that a theory, until they were proven.

the theory of relativity, was just that theory, until it was proven.

the now theory, is just that a theory.

evolution, regardless of ALL evidence to the contrary is held as fact.

instead of what it is a theory.

i would like to see the biologists and geneticists who disagree with evolution get as much air time as those who do support it.

like i said, biology, seems to be the only branch of science that has added speculation to scientific method.

Big bang theory is still just a theory

What makes you think it is anything more?

I hardly see evolution touted as a fact. It's by far still the theory of evolution althought the current 'accepted' theory of this time. Meaning most scientists see it as the most plausible explaination and use it to explain their observations.

I agree with bongman.

Brace yourselves, because evolution is coming around again.

We are encapsulated in a time-frame which ensures continued evolution, but our time-frame/structure is threatened by those who want to halt both time and evolutionary progress because they are afraid to die and face the consequences of their actions [which will hardly ensure their progress]. Another time-frame/configuration exists alongside of ours, it is called "split-time". Don't go there unless you want to stagnate.

What are you talking about?

Give some theory here instead of spitting out conclusions.

jo662 the big bang theory was proven in the early 90's to be a fact.

as a result of the doppler effect red-shift of all objects in the universe in relation to us.

that in other words means that everything is moving away from us, and away from a central point.

which using a little deductive reasoning and math conclude that about 10-12 billion years the big bang occurred.

ummmm i took bio in high school... and as a as far as the scientific definition of evolution... it works out to basically being the change of the frequency of genes in a population over time. that's it.

basiaclly, if a population's gene frequency is changing and showing trends, it's evolving. i don't think people can seriously dispute microevolution (minor changes in a population).

as far as macroevolution... like going from small rodents to whales... (or for that matter from prokaryotes to eukaryotes) ya i can see skepticism directed twoards that. the way someone explained it to me was that genetcally all earth life if pretty modular and very minor genetic changes can drastically reshape and alter plants, animals, and all the rest.

anyway, the meat of this post is the bold print, hope i added something to the discussion.

umm lost mind...

black holes, relativity, and the big bang are still theories... see... after something has been proven a million times as a theory it becomes a law, and the the best of my knowledge there isn't a law of relavity yet...

this leads me to an important point about hypothesis vs. theory vs. law

hypothesis is basically the guess or conclusion of a person or few

theory is a hypothesis generally accepted by the scientific community, like evolution, big bang, relativity etc.

law is a theory that has undergone a GREAT deal of testing and all that sort of stuff... as far as i kno the realm of laws is pretty much just stuff like newtonian physics and areodynamics and stuff.

WOW ur trusting sumthin high school taught u w/o question unlike you man!


Basically I feel if you dont believe in evolution you are a naive fool.... Just because you believe in evolution dosnt necessarily mean you cant feel that "God" created everything just that rules that are in place have and continue to guide how things develope hell you can believe "God" controlls these things too.

Personally I feel the idea of "God" is a crutch most people put in place to comfort there feeble mind that is not truely capable of comprehending wtf is going on... do I pretend to understand whats going on? HELL NO but thats a whole new issue entirely...

[This message has been edited by Frey Grimrod (edited 01-09-2002).]

actually dark solar lunacy,

the big bang remains a theory because we have not been able witness it.

it has been proven though.

from hypserspace by michiu kaku, and my number above was wrong it was 15-20 billion years ago.

"Every year, we find more experimental evidence that the Big Bang occurred roughly 15 to 20 billion years ago. Let us review some of those experimental results.

First, the fact that the stars are receding from us a at fantastic velocities has been repeatedly verified"(and was the very first form of proof in the early 90's)"by measuring the distortion of their starlight(called the red shift). (The starlight of a receding star is shifted to longer wavelengths-that is, toward the red end of the spectrum-in the same way that the whistle of a receding train sounds higher than normal when approaching and lower when receding. This is called the Doppler effect. Also, Hubble's Law states that the farther from us the star or galaxy, the faster it is receding from us. This fact, first announced by astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1929, has been experimentally verified over the past 50 years.) We do not see any blue shift of distant galaxies, which would mean a collapsing universe.

Second, we know that the distribution of the chemical elements in our galaxy are in almost exact agreement with the prediction of heavy-element production in the big bang and in the stars. In the origianl Big Bang, because of the enormous heat, elemental hydrogen nuclei banged into one another at large enough velocities to fuse them, forming a new element helium. The Big Bang predicts that the ratio of helium to hydrogen in the universe should be approximately 25% helium to 75% hydrogen. Theis agrees with the observational result for the abundance of helium in the universe.

Third, the earliest objects in the universe date back 10 to f15 billion years, in agreement with the rough estimate for the Big Bang. We do not see any evidence for objects older thatn the Big Bang. Since radioactive materials decay (for example, via the weak interractions)....."won't go into radio carbon dating.

"Fourth, and most important, the Big Bang produced a cosmic echo reverberating throughout the universe."

the discovery of this echo dates back to the 1970's but wasn't realized what it was til the mid 90's.

when the official release of the background microwave radiation hit the press it caused quite a stir actually.

i believe it newsweek who took the scientists quote to a literal headline with "I Heard the Voice of God".

realitivity remains a theory because at very high energies like those of the big bang the theory falls apart and it's predictions fail.

the big bang remains a theory because it was not withnessed and there's no possibility of ever seeing one.

relativity remains a theory, because for all practical purposes that matter in the least it is very accurate.

and if you do a little searching on nasa's site i'm sure you'll see a photo of the black hole cygnus x-1.

frey grimrod, i do have a scientifically accepted understanding of "what is going on",

and i believe.

and i never said i didn't believe in evolution.

if everything started from hydrogen, it evolved somehow,

i just don't agree with the currently held version.

but i've said all this already.

sorry lostmind, i misinterpreted u.

i throught u were saying that since it had been proven it was no longer a theory and was now a fact.

but it seems u were just emphasizing the overwhelming scientific evidence that it exists and i agree with u there... as far as popular modern science can discern the big bang happened.

and frey...

i was the biggest pain in the a$$ in that entire bio class (especailly jr year in AP) i would hardly say i accepted it w/out question... besides.. you get lots of useful facts out of high school... you just also get about 50x more indoctrination and social sterilization than you do info... it's great that im able to take derivitaves of sh!t and find determinants of matricies and analyze poetry and stuff... i just wish it hadn't been forced upon me along with tons of capitalist social agenda. im working as hard as i can to forget all this damn math i learned...

never forget the math that's the only absolute truth you do get in school.

math is the closest thing you get to complete unadulterated truth in high school. of course they couch it...

Its amazing how math is the only absolute truth in school, but its truth about numbers. And numbers by themselves mean nothing. Like wtf does 4 mean? 4 apples means something but not just the number 4.

Anyways there is both a lot of speculation about the creation of the universe and the creation of life on earth. None of these things are proven enough to be a law, but they are proven enough for them to make sense and be the best explainations.

well said.

*feels the ground*

Hmmm, hell hasn't frozen over?

And the amazing thing is lost agrees with me!

*shocked*

i just wanted to resurrect this for brent,

so i don't have to repeat myself.

kids get diff dna from parents due to "crossing over" when u have 2 homogenus chromosomes the combine....then cross over with another pair of chromosomes...making a new genetic make up...determinening height...weight...eye color...etc

then when the child has another child meosis creates more sperms and they combine with eggs that have even different dna...over a period of millions of years you get evlolution, and adaptation.

at least that what i remember from school =p
if im wrong about something someone correct me.

MR.SMITH, did you even read the topic so far?

also, wy do people have thier whole name in caps. It bugs the hell outa me. :\