Creation, apes and evolution

[SallyAnne]

<mod note: A whole lot of posts split from here (http://secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=1207).>


Firstly, get it right: we have an ancestor in common with our ape cousins. We are not directly descended from modern apes. That said, we are primates, and therefore animals. We evolved. There is no special creation.



Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.

[SallyAnne]

Secondly, evolution is not an ideology, it is science.


It's a scientific THEORY until you figure out something better and have to chuck that one out of the window like many scientists who have done with dawinism already.

And yes, atheists VERY much turn evolution into an ideology, anyone who has read Dawkins can see that palinly enough. He uses the evolution theory to forward his militant atheistic agenda and that definitely IS an ideology.

[SallyAnne]

Secondly, evolution is not an ideology, it is science. It has more empirical support than gravity, which no-one seems to question. I wonder why that is. Could it be that we humans are so self-regarding that we think we are entirely separate from the rest of the animal kingdom? Well, I have news for you, we're not. We are gentle and cruel; intelligent and dumb; rational and emotional; moral, amoral and immoral. This is how we are. Whether or not any of our behaviour is justified is an entirely different question.



But it's not an entirely different question. We have laws and are held accountable, animals do not have moral codes of conduct and don't have to justify their behaviour to anything because they're exactly that, animals and not humans.

Would anyone consider putting an animal on trial for killing another animal? Nope. Because they don't have morals or laws. So we are very different to the animal kingdom and trying to state that we aren't entirely separate from the animal kingdom in a moral and judicial sense is plain moronic. Unless you have chimp and gorilla trials going on somewhere near you that I am unaware of?

[lpetrich]

Secondly, evolution is not an ideology, it is science.
It's a scientific THEORY until you figure out something better and have to chuck that one out of the window like many scientists who have done with dawinism already.
Which ones, SallyAnne?

I read the primary literature on evolutionary biology, and I've yet to see such a mass rejection of "Darwinism".

And yes, atheists VERY much turn evolution into an ideology, anyone who has read Dawkins can see that palinly enough. He uses the evolution theory to forward his militant atheistic agenda and that definitely IS an ideology.
How is that supposed to be the case -- turning evolution into an ideology?

And how has Richard Dawkins supposedly done that? And what makes him such a big villain?

Also, how is Richard Dawkins "militant" about atheism? And what is his "agenda"?

[SallyAnne]

Secondly, evolution is not an ideology, it is science.
It's a scientific THEORY until you figure out something better and have to chuck that one out of the window like many scientists who have done with dawinism already.
Which ones, SallyAnne?

I read the primary literature on evolutionary biology, and I've yet to see such a mass rejection of "Darwinism".



It was actually an atheist scientist on another site I used to post at that said the theory has moved on since with more information and scientists don't hold onto a purely darwinian theory as was once believed. I'll have to go back and ask him for their names which is tricky because I left 4 months ago.

[lpetrich]

(Richard Dawkins...)
He has an agenda against religion as his writing attest to. And he is a militant atheist because he is dedicated to proselytising about atheism using evolution as his "evidence" that God doesn't exist.
What gives you that idea? He never claimed that.

And anyone who doesn't agree with him he regards as deluded.
What gives you that idea?

He has an agenda when he sends atheistic buses around London stating that God "probably" doesn't exist, specifically aimed at the Christian God because if he attempted to say "Allah probably doesn't exist" he'd have a fatwa on his head and Muslims would be torching London in protest. But it's only the Christian God he's dissing, so no biggie but I'd love to see him sending a bus around the streets of London declaring "Allah probably doesn't exist.' Somehow, I'm thinking he doesn't have the guts to do that considering how Muslims are known to react against anyone who dares insult their god.....
"Allah" is the Muslim name for God, so those ads apply to Muslims also.

And SallyAnne, why be so itchy? Whatever happened to loving your enemies and turning the other cheek?

And did you ever find copies of the orders that he allegedly gave to his underlings to buy space for atheist ads on buses?

It was actually an atheist scientist on another site I used to post at that said the theory has moved on since with more information and scientists don't hold onto a purely darwinian theory as was once believed. I'll have to go back and ask him for their names which is tricky because I left 4 months ago.
Why don't you hunt down what he posted?

That way, I can see what he said and evaluate it.

And he was likely not rejecting descent with modification, but claiming that our understanding of the mechanisms behind it is somewhat different from Charles Darwin's.

SallyAnne, this may be difficult for you to understand, but evolutionary biologists don't treat Charles Darwin's works as sacred books.

[Ray Moscow]

Firstly, get it right: we have an ancestor in common with our ape cousins. We are not directly descended from modern apes. That said, we are primates, and therefore animals. We evolved. There is no special creation.



Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.

Evidence, please: where did you come from, if not a common ancestor with the rest of us?

Also, where is the evidence for this "Creation" stuff?

Ray (former Christian)

[SallyAnne]

That way, I can see what he said and evaluate it.

And he was likely not rejecting descent with modification, but claiming that our understanding of the mechanisms behind it is somewhat different from Charles Darwin's.




Yes, that is possibly what he was saying, but I do remember that he mentioned that no scientist worth his salt believes the original darwinian thinking and that the theory has been expanded upon, maybe it is as you say and it's the "mechanisms" that are different.

[SallyAnne]

Firstly, get it right: we have an ancestor in common with our ape cousins. We are not directly descended from modern apes. That said, we are primates, and therefore animals. We evolved. There is no special creation.



Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.

Evidence, please: where did you come from, if not a common ancestor with the rest of us?

Also, where is the evidence for this "Creation" stuff?

Ray (former Christian)


I do share a common ancestor with the rest of you and he was a man created by God. But you don't believe that so we naturally disagree. I regard the Creation itself as the evidence.

[Ray Moscow]

Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.

Evidence, please: where did you come from, if not a common ancestor with the rest of us?

Also, where is the evidence for this "Creation" stuff?

Ray (former Christian)

I do share a common ancestor with the rest of you and he was a man created by God. But you don't believe that so we naturally disagree. I regard the Creation itself as the evidence.

No, I don't believe it, because the evidence says that the "creation of Adam" stories are just myths.

Why do you believe them?

[SallyAnne]

Evidence, please: where did you come from, if not a common ancestor with the rest of us?

Also, where is the evidence for this "Creation" stuff?

Ray (former Christian)

I do share a common ancestor with the rest of you and he was a man created by God. But you don't believe that so we naturally disagree. I regard the Creation itself as the evidence.

No, I don't believe it, because the evidence says that the "creation of Adam" stories are just myths.

Why do you believe them?


Because I believe in the Christian God. I believe He is the Creator as written about in the books collectively known to Christians as the Bible. Therefore I believe He created mankind as it is written.

[SallyAnne]

I'm just saying that religion doesn't have them, since it's basically just one falsehood after another. Apparently you've been happy to grasp at false answers, which means you're deluded (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:deluded&ei=cV3kSfK6CoLG-Abo2aj9CA&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title).

You'll have to look elsewhere for reliable answers. Fortunately for us, there are actual answers to be had, from science and other reality-based investigative disciplines.



I spent the majority of my life believing I had reliable answers according to science, unbelief and secularism. Fortunately for me, Jesus answered when all of those failed.

[SallyAnne]

Firstly, get it right: we have an ancestor in common with our ape cousins. We are not directly descended from modern apes. That said, we are primates, and therefore animals. We evolved. There is no special creation.



Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.
It isn't a question of belief, SallyAnne, it's a question of scientific evidence. You know, that thing scientists use to form parsimonious theories about the world we inhabit. I'm sorry to have to burst your bubble, but DNA evidence alone strongly supports the view that you, me, and everyone else are primates. We share much of our genetic code with modern apes; to all intents and purposes, we are simply sophisticated apes. I suggest you get used to the idea. It really can be quite a glorious thing to share so much in common with the rest of the natural world.



Ok, say I accept your theory that we are mere apes.

My question now is, who created the ape?

[SallyAnne]

Only because this bullshit gets tiresome...

Just what does the fact that Eighth grade science is beyond Sally Ann have to do with a question on Islam driving a retreat from faith?


And why do you have to be obnoxious? Or is that your normal style when someone doesn't agree with you that we evolved from apes?

I've known Christians with masters degrees in science and Christians who are Science Professors at the local University. They believe we were created. So what would you say to them because your obnoxious assumption wont wash with them.

[David B]

Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.
It isn't a question of belief, SallyAnne, it's a question of scientific evidence. You know, that thing scientists use to form parsimonious theories about the world we inhabit. I'm sorry to have to burst your bubble, but DNA evidence alone strongly supports the view that you, me, and everyone else are primates. We share much of our genetic code with modern apes; to all intents and purposes, we are simply sophisticated apes. I suggest you get used to the idea. It really can be quite a glorious thing to share so much in common with the rest of the natural world.



Ok, say I accept your theory that we are mere apes.

My question now is, who created the ape?

Nothing mere about apes, Sally. They can do all sorts of things that rocks or bacteria or jellyfish can't do.

Among them some attributes considered until recently to be exclusively to be solely human. using tools, making and modifying tools, employing deliberate deception among them.

OK, I'll give you a very brief history of life, the universe and everything, as it is best understood at the moment, and pick me up about anything you want to challenge.

Human beings are animals who have an unprecedented, as far as we know in the whole universe, facilities for sophisticated language, technological aptitude, and curiosity about our origins, and what the whole shebang is about.

Human beings are primates, and mammals, and vertebrates, among other attributes, and the evidence suggests that the 'modern human' - people with similar abilities to us, emerged as a species somewhere in the 50,000 years ago to 200,000 years ago range.

All living primate species are descended from an earlier proto primate, descended in its turn from a proto mammal......back to a chemical which arose from the complex chemistry which the early solar system allowed, in places with the right sort of conditions, that could self replicate with modification.

Which takes us back 3-4 billion years.

The solar system 'condensed' out of a load of stardust, which contained some heavy element like carbon and iron which only get built out of the constituents of the early universe in very extreme conditions, like within stars that run out of hydrogen, and then go bang.

That was about 4.5 billion years ago, giving enough time for lots of stars to go bang and make heavy elements since the big bang, which was over 10 billion years ago, but probably less than 15 billion years ago.

What kicked off the big bang, why are the laws of physics what they are?

No-one knows, which allows scope for people to postulate a god of the gaps.

But I don't buy that, myself, because I don't see how a creator who existed before the big bang could be part of our universe, among other reasons.

We are 'mere' apes. We are descended from apes and proto apes, and our descendents, if we don't render the planet uninhabitable for apes, will be apes for a long time.

We are different from other apes, though, insofar as we can find out about such questions as 'does the sun go around the earth?', 'What shape is the earth?' 'How old is the earth?' 'How old are the oldest traces we've found of primates who walked on two legs, and had big brains?', 'How far away are the stars'? and all sorts of other cool stuff to know about.

And we can realise that the Argument from Design is a busted flush, not only by looking at evolution, but by looking at snowflakes.

Anything you want to challenge, or question, and I will answer it to the best of my ability, and in many areas no doubt there will be others who will know more than I, and want to chime in.

But everything I've said above is defensible. Much more defensible, I think, than 'Some spirit, whose origins and nature are uncertain, made it by an act of will, and this spirit's wishes for his creation are contained by one, among many, mythical traditions from pre-scientific man'.

If you have any doubts concerning the evidence for my datings and very broad summing up above, let's have the biggest one first.

And if you think my characterisation of Christianity/Judaism/Islam above is at fault, please point to the fault.

David

[SallyAnne]

It isn't a question of belief, SallyAnne, it's a question of scientific evidence. You know, that thing scientists use to form parsimonious theories about the world we inhabit. I'm sorry to have to burst your bubble, but DNA evidence alone strongly supports the view that you, me, and everyone else are primates. We share much of our genetic code with modern apes; to all intents and purposes, we are simply sophisticated apes. I suggest you get used to the idea. It really can be quite a glorious thing to share so much in common with the rest of the natural world.



Ok, say I accept your theory that we are mere apes.

My question now is, who created the ape?

Nothing mere about apes, Sally. They can do all sorts of things that rocks or bacteria or jellyfish can't do.

Among them some attributes considered until recently to be exclusively to be solely human. using tools, making and modifying tools, employing deliberate deception among them.

OK, I'll give you a very brief history of life, the universe and everything, as it is best understood at the moment, and pick me up about anything you want to challenge.

Human beings are animals who have an unprecedented, as far as we know in the whole universe, facilities for sophisticated language, technological aptitude, and curiosity about our origins, and what the whole shebang is about.

Human beings are primates, and mammals, and vertebrates, among other attributes, and the evidence suggests that the 'modern human' - people with similar abilities to us, emerged as a species somewhere in the 50,000 years ago to 200,000 years ago range.

All living primate species are descended from an earlier proto primate, descended in its turn from a proto mammal......back to a chemical which arose from the complex chemistry which the early solar system allowed, in places with the right sort of conditions, that could self replicate with modification.

Which takes us back 3-4 billion years.

The solar system 'condensed' out of a load of stardust, which contained some heavy element like carbon and iron which only get built out of the constituents of the early universe in very extreme conditions, like within stars that run out of hydrogen, and then go bang.

That was about 4.5 billion years ago, giving enough time for lots of stars to go bang and make heavy elements since the big bang, which was over 10 billion years ago, but probably less than 15 billion years ago.

What kicked off the big bang, why are the laws of physics what they are?

No-one knows, which allows scope for people to postulate a god of the gaps.

But I don't buy that, myself, because I don't see how a creator who existed before the big bang could be part of our universe, among other reasons.

We are 'mere' apes. We are descended from apes and proto apes, and our descendents, if we don't render the planet uninhabitable for apes, will be apes for a long time.

We are different from other apes, though, insofar as we can find out about such questions as 'does the sun go around the earth?', 'What shape is the earth?' 'How old is the earth?' 'How old are the oldest traces we've found of primates who walked on two legs, and had big brains?', 'How far away are the stars'? and all sorts of other cool stuff to know about.

And we can realise that the Argument from Design is a busted flush, not only by looking at evolution, but by looking at snowflakes.

Anything you want to challenge, or question, and I will answer it to the best of my ability, and in many areas no doubt there will be others who will know more than I, and want to chime in.

But everything I've said above is defensible. Much more defensible, I think, than 'Some spirit, whose origins and nature are uncertain, made it by an act of will, and this spirit's wishes for his creation are contained by one, among many, mythical traditions from pre-scientific man'.

If you have any doubts concerning the evidence for my datings and very broad summing up above, let's have the biggest one first.

And if you think my characterisation of Christianity/Judaism/Islam above is at fault, please point to the fault.

David




Thanks. I'm still scratching my head wondering who created the ape.

So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape? What created the big bang? Where did that come from?

[VoxRat]

...
Thanks. I'm still scratching my head wondering who created the ape.

So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape? No one created "The Ape". And by that, I'm guessing you mean "the original ape"? Because - I don't mean to alarm you, but - biologists consider humans to be one of five surviving species of Great Ape (together with chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans).

[SallyAnne]

[QUOTE=SallyAnne;24662] ...
No one created "The Ape".



So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D

[SallyAnne]

No-one knows, which allows scope for people to postulate a god of the gaps.

But I don't buy that, myself, because I don't see how a creator who existed before the big bang could be part of our universe, among other reasons.




Why?

Well, in short, because everything we can be reasonably be said to know about the universe points to any entity being able to observe things, do things, to judge things being very complex, as is, for instance, a brain.

And what we see points to things being less complex in the past.

And also points to conditions in the early universe where nothing very structured could exist.

David



Forgive me, but I don't understand this. What points to what? Because you don't know anything scientifically before the "big bang" so why do you assume that there was nothing structured when you can't measure that with science?

[VoxRat]

[QUOTE=SallyAnne;24662] ...
No one created "The Ape".



So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D:confused:

No. You don't really think the only alternative to being magically created by God is to be magically created out of thin air do you?

Do you know anything about evolution? Other than you don't believe it? Do you really know what this thing is, that you don't believe?

[SallyAnne]

[QUOTE=VoxRat;24688]



So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D:confused:

No. You don't really think the only alternative to being magically created by God is to be magically created out of thin air do you?

Do you know anything about evolution? Other than you don't believe it? Do you really know what this thing is, that you don't believe?



I understand that evolution has a starting point, is that correct? We're talking about that first ape, yes? So I'm asking you what happened before that because from what you're saying it seems that the ape appeared or evolved from something else. Or is that outside the scope of science to be able to determine and therefore has a big question mark hanging over it?

Because seriously, you said "no-one created the ape" -- but how do you know that? That's what I'm asking you. So does that mean it has to go right back to all the molecules? What created life?

[VoxRat]

:confused:

No. You don't really think the only alternative to being magically created by God is to be magically created out of thin air do you?

Do you know anything about evolution? Other than you don't believe it? Do you really know what this thing is, that you don't believe?

I understand that evolution has a starting point, is that correct? Well, the only "starting point" that makes any sense is the original life-form. If you can even call it that. We're talking about that first ape, yes? So I'm asking you what happened before that because from what you're saying it seems that the ape appeared or evolved from something else.No, we're not talking about The First Ape. Because species evolve from pre-existing species, and you generally don't have a single founder. The more typical pattern would be subpopulations gradually diverging from one another. More complex species have arisen from less complex ones (like multicell animals from single celled creatures). Whales, and humans, and hippos, and bats and kangaroos all descended from an ancestral population of mammals that were not specialized for those particular environmental niches, and did not have those creatures' specialized traits.

Or is that outside the scope of science to be able to determine and therefore has a big question mark hanging over it?The ancestry of apes is certainly not outside the scope of science, and there's a lot we do know about it. Though there's plenty left to learn. The origin of the first life form is also "not outside the scope of science" - i.e. it's a perfectly legitimate subject of scientific inquiry. But there's very little we know in detail, because it's pretty much lost in the mists of time, and I'm not at all confident we'll ever know exactly what happened.

Because seriously, you said "no-one created the ape" -- but how do you know that? That's what I'm asking you. So does that mean it has to go right back to all the molecules? Yes.What created life?I don't see any evidence, or reason to believe, that anything "created life", any more than anyone created a particular snowflake, or a particular hurricane. Snowflakes and hurricanes are phenomena that emerge from the properties of the mass and energy that constitute them.

[lpetrich]

[QUOTE=SallyAnne;24662] ...
No one created "The Ape".
So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D
No, ancestral apes are descended from earlier simians. And so on down the line. Consider it a long chain of begots.

SallyAnne, you have a LOT to learn about how evolution works.

[SallyAnne]

[QUOTE=VoxRat;24688]
So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D
No, ancestral apes are descended from earlier simians. And so on down the line. Consider it a long chain of begots.

SallyAnne, you have a LOT to learn about how evolution works.


Yeah. That's probably correct. But I disagree with the premise from the get-go so what's the point?

[TheBear]

So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"?
I don't think any sane person believes that. Actually, the only ones I'm aware of who believe that way, are religious people. 'Magic Man dun it all.', they'll tell you. 'Just look at Genesis 1 and 2 for confirmation and verification. It's all the proof you need!'

[SallyAnne]

So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"?
I don't think any sane person believes that. Actually, the only ones I'm aware of who believe that way, are religious people. 'Magic Man dun it all.', they'll tell you. 'Just look at Genesis 1 and 2 for confirmation and verification. It's all the proof you need!'



As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang but we believe it anyway because science says so even though it can't go back in time and measure what was before the big bang or why it happened. That kind of proof?

[TheBear]

So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"?
I don't think any sane person believes that. Actually, the only ones I'm aware of who believe that way, are religious people. 'Magic Man dun it all.', they'll tell you. 'Just look at Genesis 1 and 2 for confirmation and verification. It's all the proof you need!'



As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang but we believe it anyway because science says so even though it can't go back in time and measure what was before the big bang or why it happened. That kind of proof?
Hardly.

The difference between the two is that one is evidence driven, open to scrutiny, corrections and revisions, and the other is faith driven, unwilling to correct or revise one iota.

[SallyAnne]

I don't think any sane person believes that. Actually, the only ones I'm aware of who believe that way, are religious people. 'Magic Man dun it all.', they'll tell you. 'Just look at Genesis 1 and 2 for confirmation and verification. It's all the proof you need!'



As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang but we believe it anyway because science says so even though it can't go back in time and measure what was before the big bang or why it happened. That kind of proof?
Hardly.

The difference between the two is that one is evidence driven, open to scrutiny, corrections and revisions, and the other is faith driven, unwilling to correct or revise one iota.


Oh. So there's evidence that God didn't create the Creation? The Big Bang did it instead?

[TheBear]

As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang but we believe it anyway because science says so even though it can't go back in time and measure what was before the big bang or why it happened. That kind of proof?
Hardly.

The difference between the two is that one is evidence driven, open to scrutiny, corrections and revisions, and the other is faith driven, unwilling to correct or revise one iota.


Oh. So there's evidence that God didn't create the Creation? The Big Bang did it instead?
Demanding proof for a negative is a logic fallacy. You're the one who believes in a god who magically poofed all things into existence. What is your evidence for that?

[JamesBannon]

So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"?
I don't think any sane person believes that. Actually, the only ones I'm aware of who believe that way, are religious people. 'Magic Man dun it all.', they'll tell you. 'Just look at Genesis 1 and 2 for confirmation and verification. It's all the proof you need!'

As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang but we believe it anyway because science says so even though it can't go back in time and measure what was before the big bang or why it happened. That kind of proof?

There is no "before the Big Bang", that doesn't make any sense. (Actually, it wasn't a "bang" as such, more an "inflation"). We have scientists called cosmologists who spend their working lives studying this stuff. They can tell you what happened a few millionths of a second after the inflation started (I'll give you a clue - it was rather hot). And this, although not certain, nothing involving observation is ever certain, is backed by large amounts of empirical data cosmologists have gathered by studying stars, galaxies, and so forth.

As for what caused the inflation in the first place, see HNA's cheese sandwich! In other words, we simply do not know. There are ideas floating around (M-theory is one such) based on quantum observations and theoretical mechanics, but these are only ideas as yet, not mainstream science. They may become mainstream, but they have to be able to generate testable predictions first.

[David B]

Why?

Well, in short, because everything we can be reasonably be said to know about the universe points to any entity being able to observe things, do things, to judge things being very complex, as is, for instance, a brain.

And what we see points to things being less complex in the past.

And also points to conditions in the early universe where nothing very structured could exist.

David



Forgive me, but I don't understand this. What points to what?

I think we are trying to cover too much too fast, but what can be inferred from a variety of sources, including from observations from the Hubble telescope, the physics of the forming of heavy elements, the physics of elementary particles at very high temperatures, and observations from COBE and other space telescopes tell us that the early universe was very hot, and made only of simple things like the constituents of atoms.

Because you don't know anything scientifically before the "big bang" so why do you assume that there was nothing structured when you can't measure that with science?

This brings us back to a discussion of what constitutes time, and I'd suggest that it is a problem that faces theist and atheist alike. In what sense would it make sense to talk about 'before' either a big bang or a special act of creation? Is not time a feature of the universe?

But I'd rather focus on your questions about where apes came from.

David

[4321lynx]

Sorry, but I disgaree with you on our origins just as you disagree with me regarding Creation. I didn't evolve from an ape. But feel free to believe that for yourself, just don't expect me to.

Evidence, please: where did you come from, if not a common ancestor with the rest of us?

Also, where is the evidence for this "Creation" stuff?

Ray (former Christian)


I do share a common ancestor with the rest of you and he was a man created by God. But you don't believe that so we naturally disagree. I regard the Creation itself as the evidence.


But SallyAnne yours is only a belief until you die and find---Nada, Zilch, Nothing. Just as you found before you were born to your mother.

In meantime , ENJOY...

[Worldtraveller]

No one created "The Ape".



So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D
And you called tjakey rude? :bang:

[Asha'man]

Hiya Sally, and welcome. :wave:

Yeah. That's probably correct. But I disagree with the premise from the get-go so what's the point?

Sally, I won't become a Christian because Jesus wasn't a Badger. Eh, what's that? You think my objection is silly, that perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about, and have no real basis for making such a statement?

That's how most scientist see Creationists, they refuse to even try to understand the science, so they reject something that makes perfect sense, but for stupid reasons.

If you want to understand the history of the universe, including all life on earth, there are plenty of people here who can explain it to you, and your understanding won't even require you to agree with it. But I do suggest you try to focus on one of two areas. The history of life, and the theory of evolution that explains it, is a topic within the realm of biology. The origins of life is a complex area where chemistry and biology intersect. The history of the early universe is a topic of astronomy and physics, and generally has a completely different set of experts. I'm more of an astronomy guy with some knowledge of chemistry and biology, others here are the opposite.

As to the origins of 'Apes', let's try this: Suppose your family name is 'Smith'. Who created that name? Well, you got your name from your father, who got it from his father, and so on. But if you go back a few generations, you'll find that your family name was spelled 'Smyth'. It's still your family, but the name looks different. If you go back a few more generations, it's 'Smythe'. Before that, the name was 'Smity', but it sounded like 'Smit'. And if you go further back, people didn't really think about having family names, but the family business, apprenticed father to son, was forging tools from iron. And if you track that family back even further, they made tools from wood, not iron.

So, who was the first 'Smith'? When did the Smith family get created? There really wasn't a first one, there was just a whole series of names that get closer and closer to what we see today. Figuring out who was the first Smith depends more on exactly how you define the question, rather than knowing how the family history works out.

Even more interesting is that we have Smiths and Smyths living together today. One part of the family adopted a new spelling when they immigrated to America, but their cousins who stayed in England kept the old spelling. Then one of the English Smyths moved over, and discovered the American Smith family, that they never knew about, as distant cousins.

That's how evolution works, to some extent. We never see a 'first' ape, we just see something that is the ancestor of all apes today. And before that, we see something that is the ancestor of all simians today. And before that, the ancestor of all mammals. We can tell that they are obviously related, just like we know that the 'Smith' family is obviously related to the 'Smyth' family, and even know roughly when the families split apart.

We can find gravestones with Smith (and variants) carved in them, and a year they died. We may not be able to identify which Smith was a parent to which other Smith, but two graves in the same graveyard, with the same name, and similar dates, make it pretty easy to build a rough family history.

And we can find fossils of creatures that lived ages ago, and see how similar and how different they are, and in what order they lived. With that, we can also build a rough family history, but one that extends about 3 billion years.

The evidence is there, and it's been gathered and examined for over 150 years. It's rock solid about the overall picture, and awfully strong about billions of tiny details. Before you dismiss it all just because you know that Jesus wasn't really a Badger, why not take a longer look?

[nygreenguy]

It's a scientific THEORY until you figure out something better and have to chuck that one out of the window like many scientists who have done with dawinism already. Evolution is a fact. Natural selection is theory. Also, are you aware than in science, theories hold way more weight than facts? Theories are what explain these fact. Without explanations, facts are simply useless trivia! Think of this like gravity. The fact that gravity exists is a fact, now, how exactly it happens and manifests itself is still being somewhat debated.

And yes, atheists VERY much turn evolution into an ideology, anyone who has read Dawkins can see that palinly enough. He uses the evolution theory to forward his militant atheistic agenda and that definitely IS an ideology.
Arguing science if far from having an ideology or agenda. If we were having a debate about the color of the sky, would I have an agenda or ideology for arguing my point?

Ok, perhaps he does have an agenda. He job is, after all, public understanding of science.

But it's not an entirely different question. We have laws and are held accountable, animals do not have moral codes of conduct and don't have to justify their behaviour to anything because they're exactly that, animals and not humans.

Would anyone consider putting an animal on trial for killing another animal? Nope. Because they don't have morals or laws. So we are very different to the animal kingdom and trying to state that we aren't entirely separate from the animal kingdom in a moral and judicial sense is plain moronic. Unless you have chimp and gorilla trials going on somewhere near you that I am unaware of? We dont put animals on trial because they dont understand the consequences of their actions. The same thing we do to children and the mentally handicapped. Does this mean they are "animals" and not people? Is the ability to make laws what defines a person as opposed to a animal?

Thanks. I'm still scratching my head wondering who created the ape.

So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape? What created the big bang? Where did that come from? You talk about how great people are but then make one of our biggest blunders (which have an evolutionary origin). You are finding a pattern, and you are assuming that everything needs to follow that pattern. Someone explained the whole ape thing better, so ill skip that. As for the big bang, you ask where it came from. Well, it was always here. The energy and mass that grew out of that has always existed.

Now, what about your god? Who made him? If no one, how is that any more possible than my statement that everything has always existed?

Forgive me, but I don't understand this. What points to what? Because you don't know anything scientifically before the "big bang" so why do you assume that there was nothing structured when you can't measure that with science? Notice he didnt say "nothing" he said nothing very complicated. Also, based upon evidence, we can theorize what happened/existed at the moment of the event. (its said thats where time bagan, so to say "before" really doesnt make sense) And we can make predictions based upon these theories. (If the big bang happened, then we should see x) And guess what, all our predictions are coming true! We find the background radiation, we see the galaxies flying away from each other, etc...

Yeah. That's probably correct. But I disagree with the premise from the get-go so what's the point? Then why would you debate it? Right here you are pretty much admitting you dont know much about it but you automatically dismiss it. If your only goal is to push your point w/o listening to others, then perhaps this isnt the right place for you. Now, Im not saying "listen to me or gtfo" rather im saying you disrespect us in creating the illusion that you are here for an honest debate when you are not. I took the time out to type all this out because I choose to treat you as an intellectual equal and that you would do the same, however you are showing us that you think you have nothing to learn from us, and you wont even bother to take the time to listen to anything we say because you already have the answers. But alas, ill move one....

Oh. So there's evidence that God didn't create the Creation? The Big Bang did it instead?
There isnt evidence disproving it, but there is an utter lack of evidence FOR it. Look back at what I said about the big bang, we said that if the big bang happened, we should expect certain things to happen. It makes predictions. You simply cant do that for god.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Yeah. That's probably correct. But I disagree with the premise from the get-go so what's the point?
Depends on whether you care if you're talking bollocks or not, I guess.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Right then. From the top, as it were.
I didn't evolve from an ape.
Depends on what you mean.

We -- you, assuming you are human -- share a common ancestor with the other extant apes. That means that you -- we -- did not evolve from any present species, any more than your cousin is descended from you.

However, that ancestral species, if it were alive today, would itself be called an ape.

Furthermore, apes -- superfamily Hominoidea -- are monophyletic. That means they are all derived from a single common ancestor species:

http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp108/Oolon/Apecladogram.gif

As you can see, Homo sapiens is deeply nested within the clade. That means that we are both descended from an ape species (now extinct), and we are apes.

I expect there'll be reason to go into evidential details further down here... ;)

[Oolon Colluphid]

Secondly, evolution is not an ideology, it is science.


It's a scientific THEORY
Evolution, as I believe others have already pointed out to you, is both a scientific fact and a scientific theory.

Facts are the world's data.

Theories are explanatory models: the bundled group of hypotheses -- some very very well tested and supported, some quite well supported, and a few more speculative ones at the edges -- that, taken together, explain some big fundamental thing about the world.

The fact of evolution is common ancestry and descent with modification.

The theory of evolution is the explanation for that fact: natural selection, genetic drift and the like...
until you figure out something better and have to chuck that one out of the window
... so as you can see, even if the explanations were wrong, the fact would remain, and just be unexplained.
like many scientists who have done with dawinism already.
How many of them are called Steve (http://ncseweb.org/taking-action/project-steve)?
And yes, atheists VERY much turn evolution into an ideology, anyone who has read Dawkins can see that palinly enough.
I don't recall seeing such an apposite typo before.

Other than that, you're spouting complete drivel. And a tenner says you've never read any Dawkins anyway.
He uses the evolution theory to forward his militant atheistic agenda
Consider me his spokesman.
and that definitely IS an ideology.
Maybe, maybe not. But even if so, it would be no more different than using facts of, say, economics, to forward one's political ideology.

[Oolon Colluphid]

But it's not an entirely different question. We have laws and are held accountable, animals do not have moral codes of conduct and don't have to justify their behaviour to anything because they're exactly that, animals and not humans.

Would anyone consider putting an animal on trial for killing another animal? Nope. Because they don't have morals or laws.
More twaddle. For example, twenty seconds with Google:

Zygon Volume 32 Issue 1, Pages 29 - 40 (Jan 2003)

Psychological Realism, Morality, and Chimpanzees (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119156993/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

David Harnden-Warwick
The parsimonious consideration of research into food sharing among chimpanzees suggests that the type of social regulation found among our closest genetic relatives can best be understood as a form of morality. Morality is here defined from a naturalistic perspective as a system in which self-aware individuals interact through socially prescribed, psychologically realistic rules of conduct which provide these individuals with an awareness of how one ought to behave. The empirical markers of morality within chimpanzee communities and the traditional moral traits to which they correspond are (1) self-awareness/agency; (2) calculated reciprocity/obligation; (3) moralistic aggression/blame; and (4) consolation/empathy.
I'll dig up some more if I have to -- there's plenty.
So we are very different to the animal kingdom and trying to state that we aren't entirely separate from the animal kingdom in a moral and judicial sense is plain moronic.
Sez the lass without the foggiest idea :rolleyes:
Unless you have chimp and gorilla trials going on somewhere near you that I am unaware of?
There are horse trials, I gather. The palomino was found 'not guilty'.

[dancer_rnb]

Oolon,

How many great apes have the same defective vitamin C gene that we have?

[Oolon Colluphid]

Oolon,

How many great apes have the same defective vitamin C gene that we have?
All of them, iirc. And it's broken in the exact same way in each of those species too.

But don't jump the gun. I've only barely started playing with my food. ;)

[BWE]

Oolon,

How many great apes have the same defective vitamin C gene that we have?

is that supposed to be a trick question? ??
all of them

eta: damg. that was fast oolon. Yep. It's all of them. You are talking about GULO, right?

[Oolon Colluphid]

I'll dig up some more if I have to -- there's plenty.
As I still had that window open:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html

[dancer_rnb]

Oolon,

How many great apes have the same defective vitamin C gene that we have?

is that supposed to be a trick question? ??
all of them

eta: damg. that was fast oolon. Yep. It's all of them. You are talking about GULO, right?

Thanks guys. I thought that was the case, but a quick search only turned up a discussion of that being the case with chimpanzees.

[Oolon Colluphid]

eta: damg. that was fast oolon. Yep. It's all of them. You are talking about GULO, right?
correct. But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves :D

[Oolon Colluphid]

I do share a common ancestor with the rest of you and he was a man created by God.If you say so. So, which species was it this 'ere man belonged to? Homo ergaster? H habilis? Australopithecus africanus or A afarensis? Ardipithecus, Orrorin, Sahelanthropus?
But you don't believe that so we naturally disagree. I regard the Creation itself as the evidence.
And your concept for today is circular reasoning.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Because I believe in the Christian God. I believe He is the Creator as written about in the books collectively known to Christians as the Bible. Therefore I believe He created mankind as it is written.

As I say, circular reasoning.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Ok, say I accept your theory that we are mere apes.

There's nothing 'mere' about apes. Damned fine organisms. Nothing to be ashamed of being one. Indeed, the whole concept of 'mere' anything is meaningless. Each organism comes from a long -- a very, very long -- line of success stories. Not one of its ancestors died young or without issue, while countless millions of their contemporaries did.

And don't forget that, even though we're apes, we're pretty damned impressive ones.

Take a different example. Cetaceans -- whales and dolphins -- are, in fact, artiodactyls: even-toed ungulates. Their closest relatives are the hippos. That means that, just as H sapiens is deeply nested within the Hominoid clade, a blue whale (Balaenoptera) is deeply nested within hoofed mammals. Worse (or better), a blue whale is more closely related to a hippo than a hippo is to other hoofed mammals.

If that doesn't make your head spin, you're not thinking about it right.

But the point is, it would be daft for a blue whale to be upset at being a 'mere ungluate'. It's a bloody amazing creature in its own right! So what if it's also an artiodactyl -- it can piss all over a giraffe in the open ocean.

And I may as well note that humans are also primates, Euarchontoglires, mammals (hair, milk, diaphragm etc), therapsids, synapsids, amniotes, tetrapods (four-legged things), Sarcopterygians, craniates (with a bony skull), vertebrates (with a backbone), chordates (with a notochord), deuterostomes ('two-mouths', ie with a tube through the middle) bilaterians (with a left and right side), metazoans (made of lots of cells) and eukaryotes (with a nucleus in our cells)... and at the bottom, are based on DNA.

I don't see anything 'mere' about our ancestors achieving all that.
My question now is, who created the ape?
God, using evolution (which falls foul of Ockham's Razor, but hey ho), or 'nobody'. Apes are derived from earlier primates. Which, incidentally, like most mammals, had tails.

There's a reason the coccyx is called your tailbone, you know.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Only because this bullshit gets tiresome...

Just what does the fact that Eighth grade science is beyond Sally Ann have to do with a question on Islam driving a retreat from faith?


And why do you have to be obnoxious? Or is that your normal style when someone doesn't agree with you that we evolved from apes?
Well it is bullshit, and having to explain it over and over individually, rather than people getting a fucking education and not talking from a position of idiotic ignorance, is indeed pretty tiresome.

But, if you're willing to listen and think (which I say because so many before you have stuck their fingers in their ears and gone "LA LA-LA LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" that you'll need to rule out that possibility)... if you're willing to listen and think, I'm happy to go through it with you, in as much detail as you like.
I've known Christians with masters degrees in science and Christians who are Science Professors at the local University. They believe we were created.
Uh-huh. How many of them are called Steve? How many are biological scientists? And more pertinently, if they're that well educated, I'll bet a lot of them are using 'created' metaphorically: for instance that God's chosen method of creation was via evolution.
So what would you say to them because your obnoxious assumption wont wash with them.
Depends what they're actually claiming. If they believe in Adam and Eve and all that folk-myth stuff, then they're ignorant, lying or insane, and I'd happily tell them that, and explain why. :dunno:

[Oolon Colluphid]

So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape?
No. Are you, um, taking the piss?

The sequence, very roughly, is:

Big bang (which was neither big at the time nor a bang)

Expansion

Formation of light elements (hydrogen, helium, maybe some lithium)

First stars

Stars go supernova and spray heavier elements (including things like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen) into the universe

This stuff condenses under gravity to form new stars, including our Sun

Some of the surrounding material that isn't caught up in making the Sun condenses into the planets

Chemistry kicks in on the planets, including the one we now call Earth, which happens to be the planet that's at the right distance from the sun to have liquid water

Simple self-replicating molecules form, by one of a variety of possible models

Once you've got replication, you automatically get variation (since no replication is perfect), and competition (because resources for replication are finite). And once you've got that, you get natural selection, naturally and inevitably.

Then you get membranes around the replicators, prokaryotic type cells, eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic ones engulfing each other (eg our mitochondria, the nearest relative of which is the intracellular parasite Rickettsia prowazekii, the thing that causes epidemic typhus), multicellularity...

... then on up the list of things that I gave you about what humans are.

Which is why
So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape?
...makes you look a little foolish.
What created the big bang? Where did that come from?
A quantum vacuum fluctuation, most likely.

[Oolon Colluphid]

So "The Ape" just suddenly appeared out of thin air and all the parts magically pieced together and hey presto it was an "Ape"? Wow, that's even harder to believe than the idea of a Creator who made it.:D
You're perfectly correct. That would be harder to believe.

The question then is, just how fucking stupid do you think scientists are?

I'm beginning to think you are taking the piss.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Forgive me, but I don't understand this. What points to what? Because you don't know anything scientifically before the "big bang"
Ever heard of 'spacetime'? Have you ever wondered what it means?

The thing is, SallyAnne, that time and space are inextricably linked. When space began, so did time. There is no 'before' before the big bang, because there was no time for it to be around in.

[ETA: forgot this bit] To nick Stephen Hawking's metaphor, asking 'what was before the big bang?' is like asking 'what is north of the North Pole?' Nothing, because the question is meaningless. [/edit]

It's a tough concept to get our brains -- evolved as they are to cope with medium sized things moving at medium speeds on African savannahs -- to cope with. But all indications are that it's true, whether it's easy for us to conceptualise or not. It's not exactly intuitively obvious that the Earth moves around the Sun, and that we're standing on the surface of a giant ball, either. As Douglas Adams said, "The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball ninety million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
so why do you assume that there was nothing structured when you can't measure that with science?
It's not an assumption, it's a conclusion that flows from observation.

[JamesBannon]

Oolon's on a roll! I was wondering when you'd pop up! :D

[Oolon Colluphid]

I understand that evolution has a starting point, is that correct?
Yes.
We're talking about that first ape, yes?
No.
So I'm asking you what happened before that
See above.
because from what you're saying it seems that the ape appeared or evolved from something else.
Correct. An earlier form of primate. With, as I say, a tail.
Or is that outside the scope of science to be able to determine and therefore has a big question mark hanging over it?
Nope.
Because seriously, you said "no-one created the ape" -- but how do you know that?
Well as I've already noted, God could have used evolution. It's a remarkably wasteful and inefficient way to make something -- at least, if you're aiming for something in particular, but he does move in mysterious ways after all...

The one thing that is certain is that apes evolved from earlier primates, which in turn evolved from shrew-like mammals, which in turn evolved from a therapsid... synapsid... amniote... tetrapod-ish thing along the lines of (but not specifically, it's a cousin not an ancestor) Acanthostega, a sarcopterygian fish, etc etc...
That's what I'm asking you. So does that mean it has to go right back to all the molecules?
Yes. There's hope for you yet.
What created life?
Chemistry. Or God, if you like: the good old blue touchpaper lighter and the gap he lives in.

[Oolon Colluphid]

As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang but we believe it anyway because science says so even though it can't go back in time and measure what was before the big bang or why it happened. That kind of proof?
Only those with a clue can afford sarcasm.

As opposed to the "mysterious big bang and hairy evolving ape man" didn't do it because it was all just a chance encounter
Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, you're a walking talking bunch of creationist clichés, aren't you? What next, the second law of thermodynamics? Why are there still monkeys? Sheesh.

Evolution by natural selection is not a theory of chance. Write that out a hundred times till it sinks in.
which no-one really has a clue about before the big bang
We've plenty of clues about what happened after the big bang, and there is no before for us to know about.
but we believe it anyway because science says so
Because the evidence says so. Your being unacquainted with the evidence isn't our fault, it's your own.
even though it can't go back in time
Irrelevant (not to mention pretty dumb). Sure, we can't go back in time. But things that happened in the past often leave traces that can be studied in the present. We can, for instance, tell that the Second World War happened without hopping in a time machine to go watch Hitler invading Poland and asking him why he did it. And we can tell that humans evolved from an earlier form of primate by the traces that have been left: genes (eg the GULO mentioned above), anatomy and physiology, fossils, little things like that. You know, evidence.
and measure what was before the big bang
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, as you've not seen my above posts yet. Mention it again, however, and you'll get a slap round the chops with a wet Tiktaalik.
or why it happened.
Cosmologists are working on that, but you can have your god of the gaps if you wish.
That kind of proof?
No.

[JamesBannon]

Sure, we can't go back in time.

Point of order, Madame Chairperson. Since light takes a fixed time to travel a given distance, when we look out to the stars, we see them as they were, not as they currently are. So, in a sense, our cosmological observations are actually observations of past events, so we could say we are "going back in time". :p

[Oolon Colluphid]

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/inlines/03_denni.jpg

"Bloody pedants!"

[Redshirt]

SallyAnne, if you'd like to know more about evolution but from a Christian's perspective, I'd recommend Findng Darwin's God by Kenneth Miiler. Miller is a biologist and committed Catholic.

As for Big Bang Cosmology, there are many creationists who accept it. They even use it as argument for the existence of God! (e.g. the Kalam cosmological argument). Hugh Ross is one prominent name in the "progressive" creationist school (I think he mostly gets it right in cosmology and geology, but I think he gets it wrong in biology).

[VoxRat]

SallyAnne, if you'd like to know more about evolution but from a Christian's perspective, I'd recommend Findng Darwin's God by Kenneth Miiler. Miller is a biologist and committed Catholic.

As for Big Bang Cosmology, there are many creationists who accept it. They even use it as argument for the existence of God! (e.g. the Kalam cosmological argument). Hugh Ross is one prominent name in the "progressive" creationist school (I think he mostly gets it right in cosmology and geology, but I think he gets it wrong in biology).Actually, wasn't it a catholic priest, Georges LeMaitre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre), who actually came up with the Big Bang model? (in his role as a theoretician, not a theologian.)

I wonder how many Christians who wax sarcastic about the notion are aware of that?

[Oolon Colluphid]

Actually, wasn't it a catholic priest, Georges LeMaitre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre), who actually came up with the Big Bang model? (in his role as a theoretician, not a theologian.)
And Mendel was a monk; and Darwin was destined for a country parsonage...

[Steviepinhead]

SallyAnne seems to have gone missing, but I've enjoyed reading the responses to her questions and assertions, and I'm sure there are other lurkers out there whose enjoyment and/or knowledge have been enhanced as well.

[Amber Robot]

Is this the whole "Because you can't summarize the entirety of centuries-long scientific discovery into a one sentence soundbite it must all be false so I'd rather believe what my preacher told me" argument we are witness to?

[miss djax]

i think i have a crush on oolon


:evil:

[His Noodly Appendage]

Hey Lisa, if you're reading this - it seems you're perhaps the best-qualified among us to translate. What do we need to get across, here?

Sally-Anne, it seems to me that you understanding of evolution is really quite limited, is misinformed in several areas, and that you rate your own understanding far better than it actually is. That's nothing personal; public education on the subject is really quite shockingly bad, and it's all too easy to come away with 'a little learning', and that inaccurate.

So, where to begin?

First up: the word 'theory'. It has a specific meaning in scientific parlance, very different from the common idiom.

The common usage of the word means "hunch/guess/estimate regarding the facts". I don't know whodunnit, but I have a theory that it was the butler.

The scientific usage is completely unrelated. It means "explanatory model that fits known facts". It's a testable idea about how and why the facts are as they are. We have video of the butler celebrating with the corpse's head and congratulating himself for a job well done, and we've put together a theory of his means, motive and opportunity.

Perhaps the best synonym for 'theory' in the scientific sense would be 'understanding'. To have a theory of X is to have an understanding of X. A formal, codified understanding.

Big difference, there. So to crow that evolution is 'only a theory' is a category error.

Now, regarding the actual mechanics of evolution - I'd say that you could do far, far worse than to check out http://evolution.berkeley.edu/ - a very nice site that lays out exactly what people are talking about.

Not that anyone here is adverse to explaining, but trying to defend an idea when we're all talking at cross purposes is very frustrating. It's rather as though you're speaking a subtly different language; arguments are somewhat pointless until you can establish some common ground.

See if I can get some of the main points across, though.

First up, evolution itself is nothing more than the fact that the exact genetic makeup of organisms varies across both time and space; in itself it asserts nothing more controversial than the concept of traits (such as big noses, blue eyes, etc) and bloodlines.

The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain exactly how and why those variations exist. And the core concepts of that theory are inheritance, mutation and selection.

Mutation is the big bogeyman; we'll leave it til last. We don't even need it to illustrate the principles at work.

Inheritance is easy: children resemble their parents. Specifically, they have some combination of their parents' traits. Before we go any further, though: recessive genes.

We have two 'slots' for each gene, and we receive the contents of one randomly-selected slot from each parent. Some traits are dominant - if they're present in either slot, the trait gets expressed. Other traits are recessive - they only get expressed if they're present in both slots.

For instance, blue eyes are recessive. If just one parent passes on the gene for dark eyes, the child will have dark eyes. But they will have one copy of the blue-eyed gene to pass on to their own children. And if those children are by someone else with a copy of the blue-eye gene, then there's a one-in-four chance of them getting both copies, and having blue eyes themselves.

Now, we've got all these people trading half-bundles of traits, and making new children with new, statistically-unique combinations of traits each time. (The actual number of unique combinations is finite, but extremely large - repeats surely happen, but they're incredibly rare.)

That's inheritance, the great big melting-pot.

Now for selection. Again, a ridiculously simple concept: dead things don't breed; live ones do. If an organism exists, then by definition, all its direct ancestors survived long enough to breed. If a trait tends to lead to an early death, then though individuals may well survive, in the long run the trait will get bred out.

If you genetically engineered and released into the wild deer with lousy hearing, great big bullseyes on their sides and a tendency to tapdance in large open spaces... it'd be really really surprising if there were any in the gene pool a handful of generations later.

Conversely, create cats with genes for wings, and they'd spread like wildfire to every corner of the population. On average, they'd get far more prey, and escape from far more sticky situations - and so when it came to finding a mate, any cat would far more likely find a winged one than a plain one. As a result, most of the offspring would also have wings - reducing the chances of wingless ones breeding even further in the next generation.

So what happens if you get a trait that's good in some circumstances, and bad in others?

A lovely real-world example, and the reason I mentioned recessive traits, is sickle-cell anaemia. It's an inherited condition that makes blood cells twist up (into sickle shapes) and die, under certain circumstances. If you get two copies of the gene, you get the full-blown disease, and die in infancy (or possibly in utero, I forget). If you only get one copy... you have a tendency to certain health problems, and a somewhat lower life expectancy, but it doesn't invariably kill you.

If that were as far as it went, you'd expect it to be bred out of the population. All else being equal, the sick ones (a quarter of whose offspring never make it) should get out-competed on average, and the healthier genes you'd expect to win out.

But there's a wrinkle: one of the circumstances under which the cells twist up and die is when they get invaded by the malaria parasite. The instant the parasite gets in, its blood-cell home self-destructs around it, and it dies.

As such, carriers of the sickle-cell gene are almost completely immune to malarial infection. It just can't take hold in them.

If you're living in an area where there's a lot of malaria forever doing the rounds, then the benefits far outweigh the risks. Far from being a liability that's sure to doom your bloodline to oblivion, it's a major asset. Your sickle-celled descendants will outnumber the 'healthy' ones by a comfortable margin, and you'd expect that soon enough, damn near everyone around will be descended from a carrier of the gene.

And that's exactly, precisely what happens. In certain corners of the globe (around the Mediterranean, mostly), in areas chronically affected by malaria, the great majority of the population carries the gene for sickle-cell anaemia. Despite migration, conquest, trade, despite all the influx of new bloodlines into the region, only the ones that mix with sickle-cell bloodlines ever really take hold.

In other parts of the world, though, where malaria isn't a major risk, we see precisely the opposite. Sickle-cell bloodlines enter, but on average they die out, and never really take hold in the population at large.

That's evolution in its most primal form. Populations as a whole adopt the genetic traits most suited to their survival, and discard the ones least suited. If just one better-adapted group shows up, the entire population gradually incorporates their goodies. Given enough variety in the gene pool, the trait-set in the population will drift towards an optimal form.

Now, as promised, mutation. Mutation is again very simple: each new cell that grows in your body gets a copy of its parent cell's genes. And sometimes, the copy process makes a typo or two. Some of the time the typo will break things, and the cell will die. Sometimes, it will have no effect at all. And sometimes, it will make for a new and different trait. If the cell in question is a sperm, ovum, or an embryonic/foetal cell destined to be the ancestor of sperm or ovum, then that trait will be passed on to future generations.

Mutation, therefore, is nothing more or less than a wellspring of genetic variety - providing new raw material for genetic drift in the population.

Add to this the fact that everything is a trait, and you're pretty much done. Not just surface details, like the eye colour and cup size, but high-level structural stuff, like number of legs, whether you have a spine, fur, scales, leaves, more than one cell... *every* difference between every possible living organism.

And this is where we get to the controversial stuff: given the simplest possible form of life that could possibly exist - just an RNA molecule with a protein coating - plus a decent chance of mutation, a range of environments and a whole LOT of time... you have everything you need to end up with all the vast diversity of life that exists today, and more.

And the cool part is, the simplest possible form of life is so simple that given the right background chemistry, it could very easily self-assemble by blind chance.


There's more to cover, and I've grossly oversimplified in a bunch of places, but that's the bones of it.

Now perhaps we can have enough common ground to actually start arguing about the same things, when we use the same words.

[VoxRat]

i think i have a crush on oolon
:evil:So do I. But in my case it's sort of a pedophilia thing.

[JamesBannon]

In some defence here, we ought to point out that part of the difficulty in grasping these kinds of concepts is that they are outside our normal experience. Human evolutionary clocks are so slow, and our bodies so complex, that we don't notice the tiny variations on which so much of evolutionary theory depends - unless they happen to be catastrophic. It is only when we get down to very tiny organisms with very simple structures that we have any chance of observing evolution happening in real time. That sort of thing really only happens in specialised laboratories and the results are not that widely disseminated.

[hecaterin]

First up: the word 'theory'. It has a specific meaning in scientific parlance, very different from the common idiom.

The common usage of the word means "hunch/guess/estimate regarding the facts". I don't know whodunnit, but I have a theory that it was the butler. Just as an aside, I have a hypothesis that it was Bugs Bunny. Bugs is responsible for "Nimrod" now meaning fool, because he used it sarcastically on Elmer Fudd. "What a Nimrod!" refers to Nimrod, the mythological mighty hunter. Which Elmer clearly is not. I think that "theory" went the same way. From sarcasm, deprecating someone with a silly idea, it evolved into straight usage as more or less its opposite.

As further evidence: bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes. They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses, and what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway? It must be bunnies.

[4321lynx]

[
I'm beginning to think you are taking the piss.

I think you're right. Just as in court some witnesses are said to be acting "mute through malice", SA here is, I suspect, acting "dumb through design", a method of argument perhaps encouraged or designed by the Intelligent Design crowd, because I have repeatedly heard almost identical arguments conducted in this general "innocent ingenue" way. :dunno:

[Norrin Radd]

...
As further evidence: bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes. They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses, and what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway? It must be bunnies.

I miss Anya.

[Norrin Radd]

...
Which is why
So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape?
...makes you look a little foolish.
What created the big bang? Where did that come from?
A quantum vacuum fluctuation, most likely.

So... "God did it" is crazy talk, but "Everything that 'is' ultimately traces back to a hypothetical unobservable untestable unverifiable 'blip' suggested by a bizarre complex mathematical construct" is the epitome of sane erudition.

Ok.

:irony:

[Notta]

"it can piss all over a giraffe in the open ocean. "

I want this as my sig, Oolon!

[Notta]

SallyAnne seems to have gone missing, but I've enjoyed reading the responses to her questions and assertions, and I'm sure there are other lurkers out there whose enjoyment and/or knowledge have been enhanced as well.I like having the opportunity to play with someone else besides Dave Hawkins. He's too predictable.

[JamesBannon]

...
Which is why
So according to science, the "big bang" created the Ape?
...makes you look a little foolish.
What created the big bang? Where did that come from?
A quantum vacuum fluctuation, most likely.

So... "God did it" is crazy talk, but "Everything that 'is' ultimately traces back to a hypothetical unobservable untestable unverifiable 'blip' suggested by a bizarre complex mathematical construct" is the epitome of sane erudition.

Ok.

:irony:

The difference being is that there is lot of empirical support for that same "bizarre mathematical construct" and none at all for god or gods.

[TheBear]

So... "God did it" is crazy talk ...
Indeed.

At best, its accepting any answer at all, even if there's not a shred of evidence for it. "I don't know.", is considered as totally unacceptable.

That mindset stifles any inclination for investigation and learning about the reality of our natural world.

[Oolon Colluphid]

i think i have a crush on oolon
:evil:So do I. But in my case it's sort of a pedophilia thing.
:tmi: :hide: :D

[Oolon Colluphid]

It is only when we get down to very tiny organisms with very simple structures that we have any chance of observing evolution happening in real time. That sort of thing really only happens in specialised laboratories and the results are not that widely disseminated.

To get pedanty right back at ya: not entirely true.

Four words: Peter and Rosemary Grant.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_01.html

Best 'popular' book in it: Weiner's The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067973337X)

[Oolon Colluphid]

So... "God did it" is crazy talk,
Yup.
but "Everything that 'is' ultimately traces back to a hypothetical
Yup. Obviously. That's how science works :rolleyes:
unobservable
In the same way that, say, the interior of a star is unobservable... and therefore we can tell nothing about it. :rolleyes:
untestable
Nope. It's what we've got particle accelerators for.
unverifiable
... is redundant, just a weasle 'boo' word thrown in in duplication of 'untestable'.
'blip' suggested by a bizarre complex mathematical construct" is the epitome of sane erudition.
In comparison to the Goddidit non-explanation, yup. Even a holey explanation, with a bunch of as yet unknowns, that fits the facts, is a better explanation than a holy one that simply replaces the problem with a bigger one.

Meanwhile: Paul Davies: What Happened Before the Big Bang? (http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html)
If the big bang was the beginning of time itself, then any discussion about what happened before the big bang, or what caused it-in the usual sense of physical causation-is simply meaningless. Unfortunately, many children, and adults, too, regard this answer as disingenuous. There must be more to it than that, they object.

Indeed there is. After all, why should time suddenly "switch on"? What explanation can be given for such a singular event? Until recently, it seemed that any explanation of the initial "singularity" that marked the origin of time would have to lie beyond the scope of science. However, it all depends on what is meant by "explanation." As I remarked, all children have a good idea of the notion of cause and effect, and usually an explanation of an event entails finding something that caused it. It turns out, however, that there are physical events which do not have well-defined causes in the manner of the everyday world. These events belong to a weird branch of scientific inquiry called quantum physics.

Mostly, quantum events occur at the atomic level; we don't experience them in daily life. On the scale of atoms and molecules, the usual commonsense rules of cause and effect are suspended. The rule of law is replaced by a sort of anarchy or chaos, and things happen spontaneously-for no particular reason. Particles of matter may simply pop into existence without warning, and then equally abruptly disappear again. Or a particle in one place may suddenly materialize in another place, or reverse its direction of motion. Again, these are real effects occurring on an atomic scale, and they can be demonstrated experimentally.

A typical quantum process is the decay of a radioactive nucleus. If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event "just happened" at that moment, that's all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.

The lesson of quantum physics is this: Something that "just happens" need not actually violate the laws of physics. The abrupt and uncaused appearance of something can occur within the scope of scientific law, once quantum laws have been taken into account. Nature apparently has the capacity for genuine spontaneity.

It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as astronomers believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.
Did the Big Bang Have a Cause? (http://www.qsmithwmu.com/did_the_big_bang_have_a_cause.htm)

Quentin Smith, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45 (1994), 669-668. (I have the pdf if anyone's interested.)
If Friedmann’s solutions are supplemented by the Hawking—Penrose singularity theorems, and the theorems are satisfied, it follows that our Friedmann universe began to exist with a big bang singularity. The theorems state that a singularity is inevitable given the following five conditions:

(a) GTR [general relativity] holds true of the universe.

(b) There are no closed timelike curves (the principle of causality is not violated).

(c) Gravity is always attractive; that is, for any timelike vector Va, the energy momentum tensor of matter satisfies the inequality
(Tab— ½gabT)VaVb ≥ 0.

(d) The spacetime manifold is not too symmetric, such that every space- time path of a particle or light ray encounters some matter or randomly oriented curvature. That is, any timelike or null geodesic contains some point at which V[aRb]cd[eVƒ]VcVd = 0.

(e) There is some point p such that all the past directed spacetime paths from p start converging again. This condition implies that there is enough matter present in the universe to focus every past directed spacetime path from some point p, such that the matter causes a time-reversed closed trapped surface.

If these conditions hold in our universe, it follows that there is a big bang singularity which constitutes the beginning of the universe and the earliest time. (Actually, as Weingard ([1979] p. 199) emphasizes, the theorems merely tell us that there is a nonspacelike geodesic that is only finitely extendible into the past, which is consistent with the singularity being a timelike singularity from which only some world lines originate. However, as Hawking argues, these are special cases and are unstable; in the general case there will be a curvature singularity that will intersect every world line. Thus general relativity predicts a beginning of time’. (Hawking [1980] p. 149).)

The above-mentioned four sets of equations (the field equations, the Robertson—Walker line element, the Freidmann solutions and the singularity theorems) entail that the universe began without a cause. This is true in a threefold sense. (1) Since there is nothing earlier than the big bang singularity, nothing earlier than the singularity can cause it. (2) Since nothing different than the singularity exists simultaneously with the singularity, nothing simultaneous with the singularity can cause it. (3) Since (by condition (b) of the singularity theorems) there are no closed timelike curves, there is nothing later than the singularity that can cause it.

Distinct from big bang cosmology are philosophies of big bang cosmology, which interpret the theses of big bang cosmology in the light of certain philosophical theories or principles. Now it is prima facie possible that there is a sound philosophy of big bang cosmology that entails or renders it probable that the big bang singularity has a cause. [...]

In this paper I discuss whether there are sound philosophical arguments for the thesis that the singularity has a cause.

[...]

The considerations advanced in this section suggest that there is no sound Kantian-style argument that the big bang singularity has a cause. I am not aware of any other even remotely plausible a priori argument that the big bang has a cause, and so I think it is reasonable to conclude that the prospects for such arguments are poor. If we combine this result with the results of Sections 2 and 3, we may conclude that there is no good reason to believe that there is a sound a posteriori or a priori argument for a cause of the big bang. Thus we reach a general conclusion: there is no philosophy of big bang cosmology that makes it reasonable to reject the fundamental thesis of big bang cosmology: that the universe began to exist without a cause.

Ok.

:irony:
As I say, only those with a clue can afford to throw around irony and sarcasm.

[JamesBannon]

It is only when we get down to very tiny organisms with very simple structures that we have any chance of observing evolution happening in real time. That sort of thing really only happens in specialised laboratories and the results are not that widely disseminated.

To get pedanty right back at ya: not entirely true.

Four words: Peter and Rosemary Grant.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_01.html

Best 'popular' book in it: Weiner's The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067973337X)

Hah! :evil:

Thanks for the summary, Oolon. It emphasises one thing: once we are at quantum levels, we need to forget any experience we have of "normal causality", since the rules are entirely different.

[BWE]

Utu calls this the DCI, Daisy Chain of Implausibility.

[His Noodly Appendage]

As I've said before, the model of Weird Quantum Stuff that makes the most sense to me involves a semantic shift.

Particles don't teleport capriciously between points of highest probability. Particles are the points of highest probability. Quantum randomness doesn't fortuitously even out to classical physics at the macro level; what we call reality is the vector sum.

[BWE]

Particles are what we measure.

[DMB]

I think the what was before the BB question displays the horror of a singularity. It's like asking "what is the value of 1/x if x = 0?" As a former maths teacher, I well remember the difficulty of eradicating the idea that infinity is a humungously big number.

[BWE]

I think the what was before the BB question displays the horror of a singularity. It's like asking "what is the value of 1/x if x = 0?" As a former maths teacher, I well remember the difficulty of eradicating the idea that infinity is a humungously big number.

that is a tough one even for math(s)amaticians. :)

[SallyAnne]

SallyAnne seems to have gone missing,


I only just found out about this thread.

[SallyAnne]

Sally-Anne, it seems to me that you understanding of evolution is really quite limited, is misinformed in several areas, and that you rate your own understanding far better than it actually is.



Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

[MadMez]

...Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

I agree with you. Why bother learning anything about it. Not like you're going to join a discussion group and deny evolution's validity and claim many (un-named) scientists agree with you, eh?

[SallyAnne]

...Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

I agree with you. Why bother learning anything about it. Not like you're going to join a discussion group and deny evolution's validity and claim many (un-named) scientists agree with you, eh?


I guess not. I'll just shut up now and let all you Intellectual Giants discuss it amongst yourselves and impress each other with your knowledge.

[nygreenguy]

Sally-Anne, it seems to me that you understanding of evolution is really quite limited, is misinformed in several areas, and that you rate your own understanding far better than it actually is.



Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

You have enough interest to come in here, claim its wrong and then run away when you are challenged.

[BWE]

...Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

I agree with you. Why bother learning anything about it. Not like you're going to join a discussion group and deny evolution's validity and claim many (un-named) scientists agree with you, eh?


I guess not. I'll just shut up now and let all you Intellectual Giants discuss it amongst yourselves and impress each other with your knowledge.

sarcasm is not the plural form of evidence.

[DMB]

SallyAnne, this thread was started with posts you made elsewhere. It's a shame if you won't engage with the replies here.

[SallyAnne]

SallyAnne, this thread was started with posts you made elsewhere. It's a shame if you won't engage with the replies here.


What's the point? I made a quick scan and from what I can see I am being derided for being so idiotic.

Sure, ok, I can accept that I was a stupid ass to start making assertions about something I don't know anything about. So now I'll just shut up now and concede that all of you are right and I am wrong.

[SallyAnne]

Sally-Anne, it seems to me that you understanding of evolution is really quite limited, is misinformed in several areas, and that you rate your own understanding far better than it actually is.



Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

You have enough interest to come in here, claim its wrong and then run away when you are challenged.



No, I just don't care about it, challenged or not.

And actually, I didn't start this thread in this section. I never would have started this thread in here because I am out of my depth. A moderator has moved some of my comments from elsewhere and I was invited to come here.

[BWE]

Here's the thing from my POV SallyAnne. I read these kinds of forums because I am interested in learning and I investigate ideas I develop outside in the real world.

A lot of people probably come here for other reasons, but, still, it's discussion, not soliloquy. (maybe a few people but it's a limitation in those cases:)) I can provide enough evidence that evolution happened that the only alternative is that our senses are not accurate - that what we see doesn't reflect what is there. So too can a lot of people here. Actually, a high school biology book has enough info for that.

If the senses are faulty, we can't be assured of anything, not even a religious claim. Either way, it's best to assume that the evidence is accurate because if it is, we can make better decisions in the real world and if it is not, we don't know anything at all about evolution or whether toothbrushes exist.

[SallyAnne]

Here's the thing from my POV SallyAnne. I read these kinds of forums because I am interested in learning and I investigate ideas I develop outside in the real world.

A lot of people probably come here for other reasons, but, still, it's discussion, not soliloquy. (maybe a few people but it's a limitation in those cases:)) I can provide enough evidence that evolution happened that the only alternative is that our senses are not accurate - that what we see doesn't reflect what is there. So too can a lot of people here. Actually, a high school biology book has enough info for that.

If the senses are faulty, we can't be assured of anything, not even a religious claim.


Sure, that much I can agree with.....

[David B]

Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

You have enough interest to come in here, claim its wrong and then run away when you are challenged.



No, I just don't care about it, challenged or not.

And actually, I didn't start this thread in this section. I never would have started this thread in here because I am out of my depth. A moderator has moved some of my comments from elsewhere and I was invited to come here.

Sally Anne, no-one here is going to blame you for being out of your depth about issues you've never looked into.

However, everyone here is prepared to show you the arguments for evolution.

If you learn something about evolutionary theory, so that when you disagree with it, at least you know what you are disagreeing with, then that would be something.

No-one wants to belittle you.

And if you retain a belief in Christianity, as lots of the people who actually worked out that the world was old, animals evolved, and the accounts of creation in the Bible cannot be taken literally did, then that would be good.

If you feel out of your depth about evolution, or anything else scientific - ask questions! We'll do our best to answer clearly.

Then you can at least reject it , if reject it you must, from an informed position.

David

[BWE]

Here's the thing from my POV SallyAnne. I read these kinds of forums because I am interested in learning and I investigate ideas I develop outside in the real world.

A lot of people probably come here for other reasons, but, still, it's discussion, not soliloquy. (maybe a few people but it's a limitation in those cases:)) I can provide enough evidence that evolution happened that the only alternative is that our senses are not accurate - that what we see doesn't reflect what is there. So too can a lot of people here. Actually, a high school biology book has enough info for that.

If the senses are faulty, we can't be assured of anything, not even a religious claim.


Sure, that much I can agree with.....

Hmmm. Tell me more. Do you think the senses pick up wrong data?

[SallyAnne]

You have enough interest to come in here, claim its wrong and then run away when you are challenged.



No, I just don't care about it, challenged or not.

And actually, I didn't start this thread in this section. I never would have started this thread in here because I am out of my depth. A moderator has moved some of my comments from elsewhere and I was invited to come here.

Sally Anne, no-one here is going to blame you for being out of your depth about issues you've never looked into.

However, everyone here is prepared to show you the arguments for evolution.

If you learn something about evolutionary theory, so that when you disagree with it, at least you know what you are disagreeing with, then that would be something.

No-one wants to belittle you.

And if you retain a belief in Christianity, as lots of the people who actually worked out that the world was old, animals evolved, and the accounts of creation in the Bible cannot be taken literally did, then that would be good.

If you feel out of your depth about evolution, or anything else scientific - ask questions! We'll do our best to answer clearly.

Then you can at least reject it , if reject it you must, from an informed position.

David



Yes, thank you David. If I can explain this from my POV, I lived most of my life as an atheist, as an unbeliever because I wasn't raised in religion. I took evolution for granted and just believed it, I didn't question it because I just thought it was a fact of life, it seemed totally and perfectly plausible to me. Science has never been a subject of interest for me even though I think it's really cool. I was always more in to the Arts, that's what I enjoy.

But anyway back to the point, I never really had any issue with evolution or that we came from a common ape ancestor, I was totally fine with it and thought it was cool and from my armchair interest I went to the Museum of Natural History in New York to have a look at things and some exhibit they had about that creature "Lucy". I enjoyed that.

But then I started to question everything, my whole life and what I believed about it in general. That's when I started to have doubts about what I had taken for granted just because the "scientists" said so. So it's not like I am doggedly saying science is wrong (even though it appears that I am), just that I don't entirely believe that evolution is the answer and I don't take for granted that science has the answer to everthing because there's too many doubts I have about it...

[SallyAnne]

Here's the thing from my POV SallyAnne. I read these kinds of forums because I am interested in learning and I investigate ideas I develop outside in the real world.

A lot of people probably come here for other reasons, but, still, it's discussion, not soliloquy. (maybe a few people but it's a limitation in those cases:)) I can provide enough evidence that evolution happened that the only alternative is that our senses are not accurate - that what we see doesn't reflect what is there. So too can a lot of people here. Actually, a high school biology book has enough info for that.

If the senses are faulty, we can't be assured of anything, not even a religious claim.


Sure, that much I can agree with.....

Hmmm. Tell me more. Do you think the senses pick up wrong data?


Not entirely, but I do think we need to question our perceptions from time to time....

[David B]

No, I just don't care about it, challenged or not.

And actually, I didn't start this thread in this section. I never would have started this thread in here because I am out of my depth. A moderator has moved some of my comments from elsewhere and I was invited to come here.

Sally Anne, no-one here is going to blame you for being out of your depth about issues you've never looked into.

However, everyone here is prepared to show you the arguments for evolution.

If you learn something about evolutionary theory, so that when you disagree with it, at least you know what you are disagreeing with, then that would be something.

No-one wants to belittle you.

And if you retain a belief in Christianity, as lots of the people who actually worked out that the world was old, animals evolved, and the accounts of creation in the Bible cannot be taken literally did, then that would be good.

If you feel out of your depth about evolution, or anything else scientific - ask questions! We'll do our best to answer clearly.

Then you can at least reject it , if reject it you must, from an informed position.

David



Yes, thank you David. If I can explain this from my POV, I lived most of my life as an atheist, as an unbeliever because I wasn't raised in religion. I took evolution for granted and just believed it, I didn't question it because I just thought it was a fact of life, it seemed totally and perfectly plausible to me. Science has never been a subject of interest for me even though I think it's really cool. I was always more in to the Arts, that's what I enjoy.

But anyway back to the point, I never really had any issue with evolution or that we came from a common ape ancestor, I was totally fine with it and thought it was cool and from my armchair interest I went to the Museum of Natural History in New York to have a look at things and some exhibit they had about that creature "Lucy". I enjoyed that.

But then I started to question everything, my whole life and what I believed about it in general. That's when I started to have doubts about what I had taken for granted just because the "scientists" said so. So it's not like I am doggedly saying science is wrong (even though it appears that I am), just that I don't entirely believe that evolution is the answer and I don't take for granted that science has the answer to everthing because there's too many doubts I have about it...

My bold.

Science does not have the answer to everything, and perhaps never will. And there is a lot of bad science about.

But it provides some things that are pretty solid.

The Earth revolves around the sun, rather than vice versa (round mutual centre of gravity is a better approximation, but the sun having much more mass than the earth, revolving round the sun is close enough).

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old - too much consilient evidence points to that for it to be far out.

Life goes back billions of years - solid.

No Noah's flood as literally described in the Bible - solid.

People being a species of ape - solid.

The evidence for all that, and much more, is clear, if you look at it.

David

[BWE]

Sure, that much I can agree with.....

Hmmm. Tell me more. Do you think the senses pick up wrong data?


Not entirely, but I do think we need to question our perceptions from time to time....

Hmmm. Do you mean something along the lines of verifying them?

[His Noodly Appendage]

Well, it's certainly good that someone's say-so - whether a scientist or anyone else - isn't enough for you. It damn well shouldn't be.

And indeed, science doesn't have all the answers. It doesn't claim to. All it claims to be is a way of finding answers. A way that, if used carefully, is guaranteed to get you closer to the truth than you were before.

As for believing that evolution is/isn't the answer - before you can have an opinion either way, you really need to know what it is. After all, suppose I suggest that Kansas is very mooglyfromp. Without knowing what the hell I mean by 'mooglyfromp', you've got no basis for believing or disbelieving. It could mean 'flat', or it could mean 'purple' - and your opinion would surely differ accordingly.

Dip a toe. The water's fine. It's only knowledge, and like chicken soup, at the very worst it can't do you any harm.

[SallyAnne]

Sally Anne, no-one here is going to blame you for being out of your depth about issues you've never looked into.

However, everyone here is prepared to show you the arguments for evolution.

If you learn something about evolutionary theory, so that when you disagree with it, at least you know what you are disagreeing with, then that would be something.

No-one wants to belittle you.

And if you retain a belief in Christianity, as lots of the people who actually worked out that the world was old, animals evolved, and the accounts of creation in the Bible cannot be taken literally did, then that would be good.

If you feel out of your depth about evolution, or anything else scientific - ask questions! We'll do our best to answer clearly.

Then you can at least reject it , if reject it you must, from an informed position.

David



Yes, thank you David. If I can explain this from my POV, I lived most of my life as an atheist, as an unbeliever because I wasn't raised in religion. I took evolution for granted and just believed it, I didn't question it because I just thought it was a fact of life, it seemed totally and perfectly plausible to me. Science has never been a subject of interest for me even though I think it's really cool. I was always more in to the Arts, that's what I enjoy.

But anyway back to the point, I never really had any issue with evolution or that we came from a common ape ancestor, I was totally fine with it and thought it was cool and from my armchair interest I went to the Museum of Natural History in New York to have a look at things and some exhibit they had about that creature "Lucy". I enjoyed that.

But then I started to question everything, my whole life and what I believed about it in general. That's when I started to have doubts about what I had taken for granted just because the "scientists" said so. So it's not like I am doggedly saying science is wrong (even though it appears that I am), just that I don't entirely believe that evolution is the answer and I don't take for granted that science has the answer to everthing because there's too many doubts I have about it...

My bold.

Science does not have the answer to everything, and perhaps never will. And there is a lot of bad science about.

But it provides some things that are pretty solid.

The Earth revolves around the sun, rather than vice versa (round mutual centre of gravity is a better approximation, but the sun having much more mass than the earth, revolving round the sun is close enough).

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old - too much consilient evidence points to that for it to be far out.

Life goes back billions of years - solid.

No Noah's flood as literally described in the Bible - solid.

People being a species of ape - solid.

The evidence for all that, and much more, is clear, if you look at it.

David




Ok.

[lpetrich]

(having taken evolution for granted...)
But then I started to question everything, my whole life and what I believed about it in general. That's when I started to have doubts about what I had taken for granted just because the "scientists" said so. So it's not like I am doggedly saying science is wrong (even though it appears that I am), just that I don't entirely believe that evolution is the answer and I don't take for granted that science has the answer to everthing because there's too many doubts I have about it...
This seems so convenient. Why evolution and not something else?

SallyAnne, I think that it is because of your religion that you "doubt" evolution. There are numerous other theories that you aren't "doubting", like the chemical elements or atomic theory or the approximate sphericity of the Earth or mainstream genetics or that the heart pumps blood in loops through the body or ...

[SallyAnne]

Hmmm. Tell me more. Do you think the senses pick up wrong data?


Not entirely, but I do think we need to question our perceptions from time to time....

Hmmm. Do you mean something along the lines of verifying them?



Yes I think so....at least making the attempt to try and verify them anyway....

[SallyAnne]

SallyAnne, I think that it is because of your religion that you "doubt" evolution.


No it isn't. I started to have doubts about it before I had any "religion."

[David B]

SallyAnne, I think that it is because of your religion that you "doubt" evolution.


No it isn't. I started to have doubts before I had any "religion."

So what do you doubt about evolution?

I'd make a guess that it is a doubt about something that hasn't been made clear to you, but let's see.

Let's get those doubts sorted out as justified, or not, insofar as we can.


David

[SallyAnne]

As for believing that evolution is/isn't the answer - before you can have an opinion either way, you really need to know what it is. After all, suppose I suggest that Kansas is very mooglyfromp. Without knowing what the hell I mean by 'mooglyfromp', you've got no basis for believing or disbelieving. It could mean 'flat', or it could mean 'purple' - and your opinion would surely differ accordingly.



Well what do you believe when all you've known is a secular POV? I didn't grow up in religion so I just took evolution for granted. The worldly consensus is that evolution explains mans origins and that's what I accepted. What else would I have thought and why? At that time, religion seemed utterly ridiculous to me, a fairytale.

[SallyAnne]

SallyAnne, I think that it is because of your religion that you "doubt" evolution.


No it isn't. I started to have doubts before I had any "religion."

So what do you doubt about evolution?

I'd make a guess that it is a doubt about something that hasn't been made clear to you, but let's see.

Let's get those doubts sorted out as justified, or not, insofar as we can.


David


That it explains mans origins with no reference to God, that's my biggest doubt.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Right - and which, when pressed, was able to substantiate their claims?

[SallyAnne]

Right - and which, when pressed, was able to substantiate their claims?


God.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Howso - and did you actually press for substantiation of evolution?

How did you do that without even knowing what it is?

[SallyAnne]

Howso - and did you actually press for substantiation of evolution?

How did you do that without even knowing what it is?


Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....

[David B]

No it isn't. I started to have doubts before I had any "religion."

So what do you doubt about evolution?

I'd make a guess that it is a doubt about something that hasn't been made clear to you, but let's see.

Let's get those doubts sorted out as justified, or not, insofar as we can.


David


That it explains mans origins with no reference to God, that's my biggest doubt.

Well, many Christians who accept evolution seem to see room for a creator god who made the laws that run the universe, like gravity and evolution, and perhaps tweaked a bit here and there by a bit of direct interference. I don't buy that myself, but many Christians do.

Actually, evolutionary theory does not explain mans origins, in the sense that mans origins can be predicted from the theory of evolution.

Any more than it could predict a dodo or an elephant.

All of them are consistent with the theory of evolution, though.

So where does this God idea come from, then?

Some experience, that could be called a spiritual, or religious experience?

Some sort of idea that there couldn't be anything uncreated? Without explaining how the putative God is created?

A bit of both?

Something else?

For myself, I don't have a problem with seeing man, in common with other forms of life, as emergent phenomena of the universe, requiring no supernatural intervention.

The origin of the universe is not yet clear, but then the origin of a God who could create the universe is not clear either.

David

[SallyAnne]

So what do you doubt about evolution?

I'd make a guess that it is a doubt about something that hasn't been made clear to you, but let's see.

Let's get those doubts sorted out as justified, or not, insofar as we can.


David


That it explains mans origins with no reference to God, that's my biggest doubt.

Well, many Christians who accept evolution seem to see room for a creator god who made the laws that run the universe, like gravity and evolution, and perhaps tweaked a bit here and there by a bit of direct interference. I don't buy that myself, but many Christians do.




I'm with you, I don't buy it either....

[SallyAnne]

The origin of the universe is not yet clear, but then the origin of a God who could create the universe is not clear either.

David


well, that's the cross roads isn't it, and I agree with Richard Dawkins when it comes to this, it's either one or the other.

[BWE]

Not entirely, but I do think we need to question our perceptions from time to time....

Hmmm. Do you mean something along the lines of verifying them?



Yes I think so....at least making the attempt to try and verify them anyway....
There must be some kind of method we could use to try and see if our senses were giving us good data. Do you have ideas about ways to go about it?

[SallyAnne]

Hmmm. Do you mean something along the lines of verifying them?



Yes I think so....at least making the attempt to try and verify them anyway....
There must be some kind of method we could use to try and see if our senses were giving us good data. Do you have ideas about ways to go about it?


There's many ways to go about it, knowledge, third party perspective, questioning internal motives, etc...

[His Noodly Appendage]

Howso - and did you actually press for substantiation of evolution?

How did you do that without even knowing what it is?


Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....

But see, that's not the same thing at all. Things happening to you are not the same as claims holding up to investigation.

That's like saying "I didn't bother investigating the male suspect; I was going through a bad divorce at the time so I just got the woman behind bars".

Investigate the claim on its own merits. It deserves that much.

[BWE]

Yes I think so....at least making the attempt to try and verify them anyway....
There must be some kind of method we could use to try and see if our senses were giving us good data. Do you have ideas about ways to go about it?


There's many ways to go about it, knowledge, third party perspective, questioning internal motives, etc...
But how would we judge the accuracy of those? I bet we could find a way if we thought about it. I remember once reading a story by a dead English guy, francis Bacon, called The New Atlantis where a ship gets blown off course and the crew discover a lost civilization. This civilization has developed an institution called Solomon's House where they had figured out ways to do it. It's a good book actually.

Here's a link to an online copy:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2434/2434-h/2434-h.htm

[SallyAnne]

There must be some kind of method we could use to try and see if our senses were giving us good data. Do you have ideas about ways to go about it?


There's many ways to go about it, knowledge, third party perspective, questioning internal motives, etc...


But how would we judge the accuracy of those?


How can we judge the accuracy of anything? You have to leap into the unknown and take your chances...

[SallyAnne]

It's a good book actually.

Here's a link to an online copy:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2434/2434-h/2434-h.htm


ok, thanks.

[SallyAnne]

Howso - and did you actually press for substantiation of evolution?

How did you do that without even knowing what it is?


Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....

But see, that's not the same thing at all. Things happening to you are not the same as claims holding up to investigation.



I did investigate them, and upon investigating the path was leading away from science and into a direction that I was scared to go in but decided to anyway.....

[BWE]

It's a good book actually.

Here's a link to an online copy:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2434/2434-h/2434-h.htm


ok, thanks.

No problem. I've often wondered what would happen if we could make Solomon's Houses in our world today. It's an interesting way of looking at the world.

ETA: I hope you enjoy it. I did. I always like book recommendations.

[David B]

The origin of the universe is not yet clear, but then the origin of a God who could create the universe is not clear either.

David


well, that's the cross roads isn't it, and I agree with Richard Dawkins when it comes to this, it's either one or the other.

Well there are all sorts of creator gods one could postulate who have nothing to do with Christianity.

There are putative deistic creators who have no interest in, or knowledge of, people.

There are putative deistic creators who lit the blue touch paper, so to speak, but did not retire to a safe distance, and were killed in the bang.

There again, one could take the parsimonious view, as exemplified by Jobar's famous GIF, and just accept that the universe exists - it seems to exist to me, anyway - and not invoke superfluous entities to explain it.

But facts remain - and they point to what I said before.

An Earth that is about 4.5 billion years old, life starting (for whatever reason) over 3 billion years ago, and evolving into the ecology we see now, and still evolving.

And the evidence against a literal Genesis creation account, and the evidence against the literal Noah's flood, being overwhelming.

I've had an idea for a thread, which I didn't start today, because it was raining.

A thread about the evidence against Noah's flood that can be found locally.

Going out and taking pictures of the local rocks, and asking how they could be explained within a literal biblical account (I don't think they can). And how they can be explained within a naturalistic world view. (I do think they can)

I have a few pics in mind. A project in hand.

I hope you'll participate in it, as devil's advocate, so to speak:evil:

David

[BWE]

Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....

But see, that's not the same thing at all. Things happening to you are not the same as claims holding up to investigation.



I did investigate them, and upon investigating the path was leading away from science and into a direction that I was scared to go in but decided to anyway.....

Everyone, please resist the urge to lampoon this statement.

[SallyAnne]

The origin of the universe is not yet clear, but then the origin of a God who could create the universe is not clear either.

David


well, that's the cross roads isn't it, and I agree with Richard Dawkins when it comes to this, it's either one or the other.

Well there are all sorts of creator gods one could postulate who have nothing to do with Christianity.

David



well yeah, of course, and I looked into most of it. You don't think I just went eenie-meeni-miney-moe and picked Christianity do you? LOL. Actually, that was the least one I wanted to believe in....omg, I tried to run away from it and prove it wrong....

[SallyAnne]

It's a good book actually.

Here's a link to an online copy:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2434/2434-h/2434-h.htm


ok, thanks.

No problem. I've often wondered what would happen if we could make Solomon's Houses in our world today. It's an interesting way of looking at the world.

ETA: I hope you enjoy it. I did. I always like book recommendations.


I do too, so cheers again.:)

[SallyAnne]

But see, that's not the same thing at all. Things happening to you are not the same as claims holding up to investigation.



I did investigate them, and upon investigating the path was leading away from science and into a direction that I was scared to go in but decided to anyway.....

Everyone, please resist the urge to lampoon this statement.

Why? What's funny about it?

[His Noodly Appendage]

What did you try - and how did it prove itself right?

Ferinstance, I formally challenge you to prove Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (http://venganza.org/) wrong.

I'm deadly serious.

[SallyAnne]

What did you try - and how did it prove itself right?



I tried to prove to myself that Jesus isn't real. He proved to me that He is.

[BWE]

I did investigate them, and upon investigating the path was leading away from science and into a direction that I was scared to go in but decided to anyway.....

Everyone, please resist the urge to lampoon this statement.

Why? What's funny about it?

I know this crowd and you sound like you are being sincere. The path that leads away from science is called ignorance and I just wanted to nip it in the bud because it's pretty obvious that isn't what you meant.

[David B]

well, that's the cross roads isn't it, and I agree with Richard Dawkins when it comes to this, it's either one or the other.

Well there are all sorts of creator gods one could postulate who have nothing to do with Christianity.

David



well yeah, of course, and I looked into most of it. You don't think I just went eenie-meeni-miney-moe and picked Christianity do you? LOL. Actually, that was the least one I wanted to believe in....omg, I tried to run away from it and prove it wrong....

Bed calls urgently - work tomorrow:eek:

So what led you to think Christianity right? My best guess is some sort of experience, rather like the one that led me into my non-Christian cult.

Goodnight.

David

[BWE]

BTW, science isn't a place or thing exactly, it's a method.

[SallyAnne]

Everyone, please resist the urge to lampoon this statement.

Why? What's funny about it?

I know this crowd and you sound like you are being sincere. The path that leads away from science is called ignorance and I just wanted to nip it in the bud because it's pretty obvious that isn't what you meant.



So what do you think I meant?

[SallyAnne]

BTW, science isn't a place or thing exactly, it's a method.


Yes.

[BWE]

Well, you are implicitly claiming to have a different method. I dunno. It's up to you what to say I guess but somehow I think you are going to have a tough time judging its results and defining how to know if you are actually using it.

[SallyAnne]

Well, you are implicitly claiming to have a different method. I dunno. It's up to you what to say I guess but somehow I think you are going to have a tough time judging its results and defining how to know if you are actually using it.

So you live your life entirely by scientific method? You don't have any other measure or method of questioning your perceptions?

[lpetrich]

Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....
Do you recall anything about your thoughts back then? Do you have any notes that you took from that time? Any webpages or messageboard postings or other online statements from that time?

Did you ever study the question of the evolution of species other than our species? Judging from your recent comments, you seem unfamiliar with that -- most of the work I've seen on evolution is on the evolution of other species.

And what made you conclude that evolution is much more doubtful than (say) the approximate sphericity of the Earth and the existence of antipodes?
How is it with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to our footsteps? Do they say anything to the purpose? Or is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? or that the things which with us are in a recumbent position, with them hang in an inverted direction? that the crops and trees grow downwards? that the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth? And does any one wonder that hanging gardens are mentioned among the seven wonders of the world, when philosophers make hanging fields, and seas, and cities, and mountains?

Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 3.24

[SallyAnne]

Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....
Do you recall anything about your thoughts back then?


Yes I do, and my questions couldn't be answered by science because they weren't even scientific, hence, leading me away from it rather than to it....Science is only a method to study what is observable, not what isn't, it doesn't have all the answers so wasn't even the correct method to apply to what my heart was seeking.

[BWE]

Well, you are implicitly claiming to have a different method. I dunno. It's up to you what to say I guess but somehow I think you are going to have a tough time judging its results and defining how to know if you are actually using it.

So you live your life entirely by scientific method? You don't have any other measure or method of questioning your perceptions?

questioning? Double checking perhaps. I am deeply religious if that's what you mean. But I don't find conflict. I figure that what the senses discern is the only thing I have access to that I could judge on any kind of accuracy.

Read the new atlantis. Bacon was a devout christian and wrote from that perspective. Though I'm not christian, I see the beauty in his point of view.

[SallyAnne]

Well, you are implicitly claiming to have a different method. I dunno. It's up to you what to say I guess but somehow I think you are going to have a tough time judging its results and defining how to know if you are actually using it.

So you live your life entirely by scientific method? You don't have any other measure or method of questioning your perceptions?

questioning? Double checking perhaps. I am deeply religious if that's what you mean. But I don't find conflict. I figure that what the senses discern is the only thing I have access to that I could judge on any kind of accuracy.

Read the new atlantis. Bacon was a devout christian and wrote from that perspective. Though I'm not christian, I see the beauty in his point of view.


You're deeply religious? I don't understand, could you clarify please?

[BWE]

So you live your life entirely by scientific method? You don't have any other measure or method of questioning your perceptions?

questioning? Double checking perhaps. I am deeply religious if that's what you mean. But I don't find conflict. I figure that what the senses discern is the only thing I have access to that I could judge on any kind of accuracy.

Read the new atlantis. Bacon was a devout christian and wrote from that perspective. Though I'm not christian, I see the beauty in his point of view.


You're deeply religious? I don't understand, could you clarify please?
what's to clarify?

[SallyAnne]

questioning? Double checking perhaps. I am deeply religious if that's what you mean. But I don't find conflict. I figure that what the senses discern is the only thing I have access to that I could judge on any kind of accuracy.

Read the new atlantis. Bacon was a devout christian and wrote from that perspective. Though I'm not christian, I see the beauty in his point of view.


You're deeply religious? I don't understand, could you clarify please?
what's to clarify?


That I don't know what you mean and I think I'm losing the plot completely, lol.:D

You said earlier that the senses give faulty information (or something like that) and then we started discussing how to question perceptions, by what method. But above you seem to be saying that all you have are those senses:

I figure that what the senses discern is the only thing I have access to that I could judge on any kind of accuracy

So you appear to now be saying that they are the only thing you can judge with any kind of accuracy. Then you say you are deeply religious as well, so you also use other methods apart from science? That seems to be in conflict with what you were saying a couple of posts ago, so I'm confused.:confused:


ETA: Oh hang on, I just went back and re-read. So you use science as a double-check for your perceptions but are deeply religious as well, do I understand that correctly now?

[SallyAnne]

Ferinstance, I formally challenge you to prove Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (http://venganza.org/) wrong.

I'm deadly serious.

Why? That looked like a blog from a teenager having a laugh.

[lpetrich]

Because I came to a cross roads and some things that were happening to me were leading me in a direction further away from evolution rather than to it....
Do you recall anything about your thoughts back then?
Yes I do, and my questions couldn't be answered by science because they weren't even scientific, hence, leading me away from it rather than to it....
What were your questions?

And why did you think that they had any connection with evolutionary biology?

Science is only a method to study what is observable, not what isn't, it doesn't have all the answers so wasn't even the correct method to apply to what my heart was seeking.
What were you trying to discover?

[BWE]

You're deeply religious? I don't understand, could you clarify please?
what's to clarify?


That I don't know what you mean and I think I'm losing the plot completely, lol.:D

You said earlier that the senses give faulty information (or something like that) and then we started discussing how to question perceptions, by what method. But above you seem to be saying that all you have are those senses:

I figure that what the senses discern is the only thing I have access to that I could judge on any kind of accuracy
So you appear to now be saying that they are the only thing you can judge with any kind of accuracy. Then you say you are deeply religious as well, so you also use other methods apart from science? That seems to be in conflict with what you were saying a couple of posts ago, so I'm confused.:confused:
Hmmm. I can test that my senses determine the same results when presented with the same procedure at a later time. I can check my senses by building instruments to record the same phenomena in some fashion. Then I can look at the instrument.

If I think I can throw a ball 100 yards, I could put 2 marks 100y apart and try to throw the ball past the second one. My senses might not be accurate though so I paint the ball red and throw it while it's still wet and go look to see if it made its first mark past the 100y line.

If I believe heavy things fall faster than light things, I could test it by dropping a cannonball and a round fishing weight from a very tall building and seeing which one hits the ground first and by how much.

If I believe that my son borrowed my car without asking, I could check the mileage indicator, the gas gauge, the tire wear, or lots of thing if I had precision instruments. I could look at the phone records from the house to see if he didn't make calls for a certain amount of time. I could do lots of things to check, any one of which could make my belief appear incorrect.

But what if he turned back the odometer, cleverly used a different set of tires and put just the same amount of gas in the car and had his girlfriend make a phone4 call from the house at that time?

I would falsely think he was innocent.

When we look for a flood layer or a disturbance in layered features of the planet, we find none. When we look for evidence of evolution every single bit fits. Nothing doesn't fit.

So, did god use different tires?

I assume my senses are the best I've got and I don't limit god to making weather and puppets. It's easy to say I don't know when I really have no way of knowing something. For example, what is the e3xchange rate today between any 2 currencies? I don't know. Not a single rate. But I could find out.

How many planets does the galaxy hold? I don't know. While it's knowable, I certainly have no means of knowing.

Did God create life as it is? The evidence, all the evidence, every single shred of it suggest life evolved from non life through some reasonably well-understood chemical processes.

Why should I assume god filled the tank again?

All scientific investigation can tell me is how things work. But it's the best system for that limited enterprise that I've discovered.

Religion is reverence and compassion. What does science tell me about that?

Nothing as far as I can tell.

Hope that helps explain.

[His Noodly Appendage]

I'm deadly serious because the point is vital: christianity, along with conspiracy theories, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, the Men in Black and Russel's Teapot (alon with an infinite number of others) is an unfalsifiable claim.

There's no test that, if it were confirmed, could even in theory disprove any of them. No matter how much evidence against the Flying Spaghetti Monster you bring me, I can discount it all ad hoc, on the basis that every time you make a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there, changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.

As such, the fact that you can't disprove it means jack shit.

The failure to disprove an unfalsifiable claim is no reason whatsoever to conclude that it must therefore be true.

But don't take my word for it, ask the invisible weightless monkey sitting on your shoulder that hides whenever you try to search for him.

Yes there is.

[SallyAnne]

Do you recall anything about your thoughts back then?
Yes I do, and my questions couldn't be answered by science because they weren't even scientific, hence, leading me away from it rather than to it....
What were your questions?

And why did you think that they had any connection with evolutionary biology?

Science is only a method to study what is observable, not what isn't, it doesn't have all the answers so wasn't even the correct method to apply to what my heart was seeking.
What were you trying to discover?


It was questions about good and evil, and conscience. I don't know what I was trying to discover, per se, but at that time it certainly wasn't the Christian God, that's for sure.

[SallyAnne]

And why did you think that they had any connection with evolutionary biology?



Because I don't think philisophical questions can be answered with evolutionary biology.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Yes I do, and my questions couldn't be answered by science because they weren't even scientific, hence, leading me away from it rather than to it....Science is only a method to study what is observable, not what isn't, it doesn't have all the answers so wasn't even the correct method to apply to what my heart was seeking.

Completely untrue.

We are utterly unable to observe the core of a star.

However, we can study it in a thousand different ways.

[SallyAnne]

Yes I do, and my questions couldn't be answered by science because they weren't even scientific, hence, leading me away from it rather than to it....Science is only a method to study what is observable, not what isn't, it doesn't have all the answers so wasn't even the correct method to apply to what my heart was seeking.

Completely untrue.

We are utterly unable to observe the core of a star.

However, we can study it in a thousand different ways.

Well ok, I don't tend to believe that science is the be all and end all of being able to answer everything that man is trying to discover. It doesn't have all the answers as far as I am concerned, and not the most important ones.

If you believe that studying something scientifically a thousand different ways gives you satisfactory answers, then fine.

[SallyAnne]

If I believe that my son borrowed my car without asking, I could check the mileage indicator, the gas gauge, the tire wear, or lots of thing if I had precision instruments. I could look at the phone records from the house to see if he didn't make calls for a certain amount of time. I could do lots of things to check, any one of which could make my belief appear incorrect.

But what if he turned back the odometer, cleverly used a different set of tires and put just the same amount of gas in the car and had his girlfriend make a phone4 call from the house at that time?

I would falsely think he was innocent.



Or you could just ask him "did you take my car out?" That would be probably be the most direct route, lol.:D

[BWE]

If I believe that my son borrowed my car without asking, I could check the mileage indicator, the gas gauge, the tire wear, or lots of thing if I had precision instruments. I could look at the phone records from the house to see if he didn't make calls for a certain amount of time. I could do lots of things to check, any one of which could make my belief appear incorrect.

But what if he turned back the odometer, cleverly used a different set of tires and put just the same amount of gas in the car and had his girlfriend make a phone4 call from the house at that time?

I would falsely think he was innocent.





Or you could just ask him "did you take my car out?" That would be probably be the most direct route, lol.:D

Unless I had reason to expect he might be untruthful for some reason. ;)

[SallyAnne]

If I believe that my son borrowed my car without asking, I could check the mileage indicator, the gas gauge, the tire wear, or lots of thing if I had precision instruments. I could look at the phone records from the house to see if he didn't make calls for a certain amount of time. I could do lots of things to check, any one of which could make my belief appear incorrect.

But what if he turned back the odometer, cleverly used a different set of tires and put just the same amount of gas in the car and had his girlfriend make a phone4 call from the house at that time?

I would falsely think he was innocent.





Or you could just ask him "did you take my car out?" That would be probably be the most direct route, lol.:D

Unless I had reason to expect he might be untruthful for some reason. ;)


Then you could just go through his pockets.:D

[BWE]

Or you could just ask him "did you take my car out?" That would be probably be the most direct route, lol.:D

Unless I had reason to expect he might be untruthful for some reason. ;)


Then you could just go through his pockets.:D

exactly. I could think of other ways to test my hypothesis too.

[BWE]

did my earlier post answer your question though?

[SallyAnne]

Religion is reverence and compassion. What does science tell me about that?

Nothing as far as I can tell.

Hope that helps explain.


It does actually, tis quite a profound statement too...thanks.

[SallyAnne]

did my earlier post answer your question though?

Yes, I think you answered everything I was wanting to know in the last three lines of your post, (I just responded up above in my post preceeding this one)

[VoxRat]

Right - and which, when pressed, was able to substantiate their claims?


God.If your God is incompatible with demonstrable facts; If this God of yours tells you that evolution is wrong - i.e. that humans aren't apes, with common ancestry with all the other apes, and all the other animals, for that matter - you've signed up with a false god.

[BWE]

did my earlier post answer your question though?

Yes, I think you answered everything I was wanting to know in the last three lines of your post, (I just responded up above in my post preceeding this one)

The rest of the post was pretty relevant too IMO. Just sayin.:dunno:

[SallyAnne]

did my earlier post answer your question though?

Yes, I think you answered everything I was wanting to know in the last three lines of your post, (I just responded up above in my post preceeding this one)

The rest of the post was pretty relevant too IMO. Just sayin.:dunno:


Yes, but your last three lines said it all, imo, I loved it. :)

[SallyAnne]

If this God of yours tells you that evolution is wrong -


It's not something we discuss.

[SallyAnne]

Right - and which, when pressed, was able to substantiate their claims?


God.If your God is incompatible with demonstrable facts;


He is with your facts because He rose from the dead.

[VoxRat]

... He is with your facts because He rose from the dead.Facts are not personal.

[SallyAnne]

... He is with your facts because He rose from the dead.Facts are not personal.

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.

[dancer_rnb]

Right - and which, when pressed, was able to substantiate their claims?


God.If your God is incompatible with demonstrable facts; If this God of yours tells you that evolution is wrong - i.e. that humans aren't apes, with common ancestry with all the other apes, and all the other animals, for that matter - you've signed up with a false god.

Or she's a horrible joker, planting all that false evidence......

[His Noodly Appendage]

Sally-Anne: philosophy and ethics are matters of opinion, not fact.

Science makes no claim to opinion. It is silent on the best flavour of ice-cream, the most beautiful painting, and the ethical value of an action.

Of course, it can tell you which opinions people are likely to have and why - but it doesn't provide the opinions itself, nor is it in any way meant to.

Science is a method for determining factual assertions - and as such, is unmatched. No other method can come close.

Religion can provide you with opinions by the bucket-load. It's full of it them. Not necessarily good opinions, except by its own recognisance, but opinions nonetheless.

What religion sucks great purple donkey balls at, though, is providing facts. It's given us firmanents, djinn, flat earths, dragons, witches, monsters, talking snakes, demons, Mount Olympus, zombies, floods... all kind of ludicrous shit.

Just because science can't give you an opinion, doesn't mean you should turn to religion for facts.

After all, a brain surgeon might not be able to build you a swimming pool, but that doesn't mean you should invite a builder to root around in your cranium.

Use the tools available to you for what they're good at, and not for what they're not. It may well be that religion can give you a philosophy and ethics that does what you want, and fair enough (I'll cross that bridge when we come to it). But seriously, if itries to tell you specific facts about the world... take it with a HUGE grain of salt, and use science to sanity check.

[dancer_rnb]

... He is with your facts because He rose from the dead.Facts are not personal.

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.

So, is it a fact that Mohammed ascended to heaven in Jerusalem?
(assuming I'm remembering correctly)

[SallyAnne]

Facts are not personal.

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.

So, is it a fact that Mohammed ascended to heaven in Jerusalem?
(assuming I'm remembering correctly)



According to the Islamic religion, they believe it to be so, yes, it is one of the facts of that religion according to them.

If you're asking if I believe it, then obviously my answer is no.

[SallyAnne]

Sally-Anne: philosophy and ethics are matters of opinion, not fact.

Science makes no claim to opinion. It is silent on the best flavour of ice-cream, the most beautiful painting, and the ethical value of an action.

Of course, it can tell you which opinions people are likely to have and why - but it doesn't provide the opinions itself, nor is it in any way meant to.

Science is a method for determining factual assertions - and as such, is unmatched. No other method can come close.

Religion can provide you with opinions by the bucket-load. It's full of it them. Not necessarily good opinions, except by its own recognisance, but opinions nonetheless.

What religion sucks great purple donkey balls at, though, is providing facts. It's given us firmanents, djinn, flat earths, dragons, witches, monsters, talking snakes, demons, Mount Olympus, zombies, floods... all kind of ludicrous shit.

Just because science can't give you an opinion, doesn't mean you should turn to religion for facts.

After all, a brain surgeon might not be able to build you a swimming pool, but that doesn't mean you should invite a builder to root around in your cranium.

Use the tools available to you for what they're good at, and not for what they're not. It may well be that religion can give you a philosophy and ethics that does what you want, and fair enough (I'll cross that bridge when we come to it). But seriously, if itries to tell you specific facts about the world... take it with a HUGE grain of salt, and use science to sanity check.



Right, and I'll ask a plumber to fix my headache while I'm at it.

[SallyAnne]

Religion can provide you with opinions by the bucket-load. It's full of it them. Not necessarily good opinions, except by its own recognisance, but opinions nonetheless.



And that's your "opinion." Not everyone agrees with you but thanks for chiming in with your own "opinion" on the matter.

[VoxRat]

... He is with your facts because He rose from the dead.Facts are not personal.

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.If it "belongs to Christianity", it's not a fact. None of "my" facts originated with me, either. Either humans are descended from other apes, or we're not. Either there was a Global Flood, or there wasn't.

If you mean this resurrection as a literal, physical event (as opposed to some sort of mystical metaphorical thing) it either happened or it didn't; it's either a fact or not.

[SallyAnne]

Facts are not personal.

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.If it "belongs to Christianity", it's not a fact.


Yes it is a fact. If one is going to investigate the claims of Christianity then one must have the facts about Christianity and the Resurrection is the cornerstone fact.

It doesn't matter if you believe it or not, but to say that the Resurrection is not one of the claims of Christianity and what Christianity regards as a fact, is preposterous.

[VoxRat]

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.If it "belongs to Christianity", it's not a fact.


Yes it is a fact. If one is going to investigate the claims of Christianity then one must have the facts about Christianity and the Resurrection is the cornerstone fact.How does one investigate that "candidate fact"?
... It doesn't matter if you believe it or not, but to say that the Resurrection is not one of the claims of Christianity and what Christianity regards as a fact, is preposterous.
I agree. So that "fact" should stand up to the kind of scrutiny that we subject other "facts" to, no?

[SallyAnne]

If it "belongs to Christianity", it's not a fact.


Yes it is a fact. If one is going to investigate the claims of Christianity then one must have the facts about Christianity and the Resurrection is the cornerstone fact.How does one investigate that "candidate fact"?
... It doesn't matter if you believe it or not, but to say that the Resurrection is not one of the claims of Christianity and what Christianity regards as a fact, is preposterous.
I agree. So that "fact" should stand up to the kind of scrutiny that we subject other "facts" to, no?


Not necessarily, no. How do you prove that the Resurrection happened? I can't go back in a time capsule and see Jesus coming out of the tomb just as you can't go back and witness the big bang.

It depends on faith which is another fact of religious or spiritual belief. You can investigate the source material which makes the claims, speak with scholars on the subject, read all the opposing arguments, and speak with Christians about why they believe. But ultimately for yourself, after you have done all of this, you have to take your own step of faith or not, whichever the case may be.

[BWE]

No they're not. The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.

So, is it a fact that Mohammed ascended to heaven in Jerusalem?
(assuming I'm remembering correctly)



According to the Islamic religion, they believe it to be so, yes, it is one of the facts of that religion according to them.

If you're asking if I believe it, then obviously my answer is no.
does it matter whether you believe it for it to be fact? This is an interesting conversation.

[Worldtraveller]

Not really, I haven't got a clue about it because I don't really have any interest in it to tell ya the truth.

You have enough interest to come in here, claim its wrong and then run away when you are challenged.



No, I just don't care about it, challenged or not.

And actually, I didn't start this thread in this section. I never would have started this thread in here because I am out of my depth. A moderator has moved some of my comments from elsewhere and I was invited to come here.
Based on this 'logic', you won't mind if any of us fling some turds around one of the intro threads about how stupid xianity is, then? If anyone wants to argue, we could just claim we don't really want to discuss it. :bang:

[SallyAnne]

So, is it a fact that Mohammed ascended to heaven in Jerusalem?
(assuming I'm remembering correctly)



According to the Islamic religion, they believe it to be so, yes, it is one of the facts of that religion according to them.

If you're asking if I believe it, then obviously my answer is no.
does it matter whether you believe it for it to be fact? This is an interesting conversation.


No. It just exists as a fact according to Islam whether I believe it or not.

But it personally matters to me that I don't believe it because Mohammad makes antichrist claims against my God.

[Amber Robot]

It is true that scientific inquiry may not provide answers to matters of the "heart" but that doesn't mean that science is wrong in the realms for which the scientific method is valid. The true dilemma arises when the matters of the heart conflict with science. If your heart tells you that evolution is wrong, but scientific study tells you it is a valid theory, how do you determine which to believe? If science is not valid in spiritual matters, why should spiritual investigation be valid in scientific matters.

I'm not sure why science has to be incompatible with religion. Can it not simply be man's investigation into how God made and works his Creation?

I like what Galileo had to say about it: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed me with sense, reason and intellect intended me to forgo their use." If scientific study leads us down a road of discovery and something like evolution is the best theory we've come up with, why should we try to undermine it because it seems to be contradictory with what our 'heart' tells us (or what our preacher tells us, as the case may be)?

If I had to choose what to believe based on either a book written by men a few thousand years ago or the scientific inquiry of the universe itself, I would imagine that God's creation would be a more reliable place for answers than man's creation. If He created the universe, he also gave us the means to explore it. We should do so, gleefully...

[BWE]

According to the Islamic religion, they believe it to be so, yes, it is one of the facts of that religion according to them.

If you're asking if I believe it, then obviously my answer is no.
does it matter whether you believe it for it to be fact? This is an interesting conversation.


No. It just exists as a fact of Islam.

But it personally matters to me that I don't believe it because Mohammad makes antichrist claims against my God and I don't think Mohammad represents God or that Gabrielle spoke to him.

Ok. I see what you're saying but I just use the words differently. I would say, "it is a fact that Islam makes that assertion" rather than "it is a fact in islam."

The reason is that I have a science background and I have been conditioned to use the word fact only in specific circumstances to refer to things that have been observed and can be demonstrated given a few caveats.

:) I bet my profs would have hit me with a ruler for using fact and assertion of fact interchangeably.

[SallyAnne]

does it matter whether you believe it for it to be fact? This is an interesting conversation.


No. It just exists as a fact of Islam.

But it personally matters to me that I don't believe it because Mohammad makes antichrist claims against my God and I don't think Mohammad represents God or that Gabrielle spoke to him.

Ok. I see what you're saying but I just use the words differently. I would say, "it is a fact that Islam makes that assertion" rather than "it is a fact in islam."

The reason is that I have a science background and I have been conditioned to use the word fact only in specific circumstances to refer to things that have been observed and can be demonstrated given a few caveats.

:) I bet my profs would have hit me with a ruler for using fact and assertion of fact interchangeably.



Ok. Maybe I'm wrong then.

[BWE]

No. It just exists as a fact of Islam.

But it personally matters to me that I don't believe it because Mohammad makes antichrist claims against my God and I don't think Mohammad represents God or that Gabrielle spoke to him.

Ok. I see what you're saying but I just use the words differently. I would say, "it is a fact that Islam makes that assertion" rather than "it is a fact in islam."

The reason is that I have a science background and I have been conditioned to use the word fact only in specific circumstances to refer to things that have been observed and can be demonstrated given a few caveats.

:) I bet my profs would have hit me with a ruler for using fact and assertion of fact interchangeably.



Ok. Maybe I'm wrong then.

It was just a misunderstanding I think. Like I said, I have biases I don't always notice. As long as you don't use the ideas interchangeably you haven't committed any sins. :D

[JamesBannon]

I'm deadly serious because the point is vital: christianity, along with conspiracy theories, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, the Men in Black and Russel's Teapot (alon with an infinite number of others) is an unfalsifiable claim.

There's no test that, if it were confirmed, could even in theory disprove any of them. No matter how much evidence against the Flying Spaghetti Monster you bring me, I can discount it all ad hoc, on the basis that every time you make a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there, changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.

As such, the fact that you can't disprove it means jack shit.

The failure to disprove an unfalsifiable claim is no reason whatsoever to conclude that it must therefore be true.

But don't take my word for it, ask the invisible weightless monkey sitting on your shoulder that hides whenever you try to search for him.

Yes there is.
My favourite is my invisible, pink bunny rabbit friend called Harvey. Rather a nice fellow!

[David M]

My favourite is my invisible, pink bunny rabbit friend called Harvey. Rather a nice fellow!

That sentence alone demonstrates that you are hallucinating. It is established fact that Harvey is a white rabbit.


Wilson: Who's Harvey?
Miss Kelly: A white rabbit, six feet tall.
Wilson: Six feet?
Elwood P. Dowd: Six feet three and a half inches. Now let's stick to the facts.

[JamesBannon]

My favourite is my invisible, pink bunny rabbit friend called Harvey. Rather a nice fellow!

That sentence alone demonstrates that you are hallucinating. It is established fact that Harvey is a white rabbit.


Wilson: Who's Harvey?
Miss Kelly: A white rabbit, six feet tall.
Wilson: Six feet?
Elwood P. Dowd: Six feet three and a half inches. Now let's stick to the facts.

:p If I say he's pink, then he's pink, dammit!

[BigEvil]

Harvey is not a rabbit. Harvey is a pooka that appears in the form of a rabbit.

And he is very fond of rum-pots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

[Mung Dynasty]

Well at least you guys are making more sense than the creationists. Carry on. :)

[lpetrich]

SallyAnne, have you ever studied comparative anatomy or paleontology in any detail? Even in a very informal and amateur sort of way?

If you don't understand what I mean, would you wish for me to do some simple comparative anatomy for you?

At the very least, you might get an idea of how scientists do their work.

[Asha'man]

The Resurrection of Christ is a fact belonging to Christianity and I believe it. It's not my personal "fact" because it didn't originate with me.

You appear to be confused about what a fact is.

Fact: Christians claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Non-fact: Jesus actually rose from the dead.

Do you see the difference? A fact is not subject to dispute. Non-facts can be disputed. There are plenty of serious historians who believe Jesus to be a character in a play, and the events of his life to be events in that play. There is no historical evidence for the existence of an actual Jesus, but there is tons of historical evidence for the Christan claims about Jesus.

Now you may disagree with those people, but it's a fact that they exist. So Jesus' resurrection clearly can't be considered a fact, since it's disputable. You are welcome to have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.

Science is only a method to study what is observable, not what isn't, ...

Actually, science is a method to study things that exist, not things that don't exist. Being observable only makes the job easier.

One of the most interesting fields of study right now is Dark Matter in Astronomy, which is essentially defined by our inability to observe it in any way. The trick, of course, is the pragmatic definition of existence: to have a measurable effect on the universe. Dark Matter creates a small effect on the rotation of galaxies, and that effect is measurable, so we know that it exists.

Anytime people start talking about something that cannot be detected by science, I instantly know that they are talking about something that is purely imaginary, something that simply doesn't exist.

And yes, if God can't be detected via scientific methods, then I'm pretty confident in claiming that God simply doesn't exist (outside the imagination of his followers).

[Amber Robot]

One of the most interesting fields of study right now is Dark Matter in Astronomy, which is essentially defined by our inability to observe it in any way. The trick, of course, is the pragmatic definition of existence: to have a measurable effect on the universe. Dark Matter creates a small effect on the rotation of galaxies, and that effect is measurable, so we know that it exists.

Your explanation isn't strictly correct. What is observed is a discrepancy with our current understanding of gravitation. Dark matter is a hypothesis to explain it. We don't *know* that it exists, we surmise that it might exist.

Sorry.. I guess we shouldn't derail the thread here. Perhaps there is a dark matter thread in the science forum. I'll go look.

[BWE]

SallyAnne, have you ever studied comparative anatomy or paleontology in any detail? Even in a very informal and amateur sort of way?

If you don't understand what I mean, would you wish for me to do some simple comparative anatomy for you?

At the very least, you might get an idea of how scientists do their work.

lpetrich, somehow I don't think that came out quite the way you meant it.
I'm still cringing just a bit.

[BWE]

Actually, science is a method to study things that exist, not things that don't exist. Being observable only makes the job easier.

One of the most interesting fields of study right now is Dark Matter in Astronomy, which is essentially defined by our inability to observe it in any way. The trick, of course, is the pragmatic definition of existence: to have a measurable effect on the universe. Dark Matter creates a small effect on the rotation of galaxies, and that effect is measurable, so we know that it exists.

Anytime people start talking about something that cannot be detected by science, I instantly know that they are talking about something that is purely imaginary, something that simply doesn't exist.
2 things.
1. We cannot say that dark matter exists. All we can say is that measurement differs from expectations in a consistent way. Something must account for it. The reason that dark matter/energy is the best candidate at the moment is because it turns out to fit neatly into our current model.

2. However, the way the current model became the current model is by doing the best job explaining. So, while it is appropriate to speculate that a different model may come a long and do a better job of explaining, it is inappropriate or unwarranted at any rate to say that an older model with established flaws will come along and do a better job of explaining.
/nitpick

This will actually mean something totally different to people with science training than to people without and that's too bad. :(

And yes, if God can't be detected via scientific methods, then I'm pretty confident in claiming that God simply doesn't exist (outside the imagination of his followers).

It's easy to define a word as something that doesn't exist. If i claim God intervenes in our universe and suspends physical laws, I can show it to be false. If I say that god is the universe and existence and that we can feel differently if we interact reverently with the universe than if we do not, then God exists. It's all in the baggage you want to saddle the word with.

There are some good reasons IMO for keeping the word around.

[Goodchild]

I just thought everyone might enjoy seeing one of our 'cousins' minus his hair. Like it or not, we're related :)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/3196188065_3025768ab9.jpg?v=0

[MrFungus420]

No. It just exists as a fact of Islam.

But it personally matters to me that I don't believe it because Mohammad makes antichrist claims against my God and I don't think Mohammad represents God or that Gabrielle spoke to him.

Ok. I see what you're saying but I just use the words differently. I would say, "it is a fact that Islam makes that assertion" rather than "it is a fact in islam."

The reason is that I have a science background and I have been conditioned to use the word fact only in specific circumstances to refer to things that have been observed and can be demonstrated given a few caveats.

:) I bet my profs would have hit me with a ruler for using fact and assertion of fact interchangeably.



Ok. Maybe I'm wrong then.

Looking through this thread, there is no "maybe".

[Jobar]

I just thought everyone might enjoy seeing one of our 'cousins' minus his hair. Like it or not, we're related :)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/3196188065_3025768ab9.jpg?v=0
:eek: :(
"Enjoy" is DEFINITELY not the right word! Poor old bugger- do you know what's wrong with him?

[Goodchild]

The article didn't state why he lost his hair. But it really struck me, as it's the first time I've ever seen a hairless chimp, exactly how much alike our two species really do look. For that effect alone, I felt the picture was well worth sharing.

Here's a Pharyngula link talking about the chimp http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/theyre_pink_under_all_that_hai.php

[Goodchild]

Here's another good pic. A baby Chimpanzee. Imagine this wee one without the hair.

http://www.gmilburn.ca/wp-content/media/naef_fig4_baby.jpg

[Goodchild]

I did a little reading around, and there was another chimp that lost all her hair and was diagnosed with alopecia areata ... a disease that humans can contract as well. Her name was Cinder (she has since died), here's a few pics:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f202/dancan2003/October%202008/IMG_2870.jpg

http://www.odditycentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/bald_monkey5.jpg

[premjan]

Here's another good pic. A baby Chimpanzee. Imagine this wee one without the hair.http://www.gmilburn.ca/wp-content/media/naef_fig4_baby.jpgThe baby chimp has the same head:body proportion as a human. In comparison the adult looks retarded.

[Goodchild]

The baby chimp has the same head:body proportion as a human. In comparison the adult looks retarded.

I believe it was Stephen Jay Gould who suggested that humans might be neotenous chimpanzees for that very reason. We do have much the same proportions as a juvenile chimp.

[Oolon Colluphid]

The baby chimp has the same head:body proportion as a human. In comparison the adult looks retarded.

I believe it was Stephen Jay Gould who suggested that humans might be neotenous chimpanzees for that very reason. We do have much the same proportions as a juvenile chimp.
Desmond Morris used the idea extensively back in 1967 in The Naked Ape, but I expect it was earlier than that even.