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Forums - General Discussion - What is your take on evolution/old age earth?

Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:

I don't believe in current evolution theory.

We've gone through some things before, things i have problems with. Like the lack of evolution in bacteria and even some higher order species (like that fish that hasn't changed in 70 million years or something, forgot the name). The lack of skeletons from humanoids puzzles me.

And I don't trust the guys who reconstruct and interpret these monkey skeletons. Too amateurish. It's too much global warming hoax over it all.

There's the mystery of the conscious mind which evolutionists can't explain.

The mystery of the rapid evolution of human culture and intellect, and it's complexity. How stuff like our interest in art & music etc are explained.

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.

Plus I'm a Christian so obviously I have a problem with Darwinian evolution without divine interference. If I wasn't religious maybe I would have just ate it all up without having done any deeper studies.

You're going down roads that you cannot possibly explain. Bacteria are the order of living organisms that suffer most evolution, due to the incorporation of extra set of genomic chromossomes, the plasmids, that confer them evolution patterns way ahead of Eukaryota cells. 

Also, the fish you're talking about, the Coelocanth, isn't an exclusive case of staggered evolution. Sharks have pretty much stayed the same, with very few minute mutational changes in the species range. Crocodiles as well.

And yet Bacteria's can't talk. They're still stuck at the micro level. (don't try with the "evolution has no goal" or "germs are already successful, they own their niche, they don't need to talk or to play video games").

Sharks and Croqs have the same problem as the Coelocanth, yes.

They are already more successful than any other living being.

Why? Because Bacteria are pretty much the most adaptable living being. They can live in environments ranging from pH 1 to pH 14. They can live in temperatures as low as -80º C to as high as 140º C. They can live in extremely low pressure areas like the top of the Himalayas or as high pressure as the bottom of the Marianna Abyss. They range from all the trophic, chemical and non-chemical, sustainable metabolism and pretty much are the only living being that can non-generational shift to adapt it's own genomic resistances 

High though process that Homo Sapiens are capable of is just a by-product of evolution. While it is important for humanity per se, for the ecological super-power, bacteria, it's pretty much useless.

Anyway, this is a pretty useless debate. Me, as a geneticist, have access to a vaster amount of information, knowledge and personal experience in this issue (bacteria evolution and genetic similarities) than you. I'm not saying that you're wrong and that i'm right, i'm just saying that you're debating an issue that you cannot possibly win. And that will only end in fruitless struggle that I won't indulge in this topic. 

You cannot win the debate either.

Yes, you just showed how extreme the environmental pressure is on bacteria, with them being present in all possible environments on earth. That's the point, to address how successful and prevalent bacteria are and show its implications in the context of the rate of evolution that would be expected from them. Despite bacteria being everywhere, in massive numbers, under all sorts of environmental pressures, yet they have remained on the primitive micro level, having only conquered niches on the single-cell micro level.

Because the individual bacteria doesn't care if bacteria as a group of organisms have conquered the earth. Every individual of bacteria tries to survive, and every individual bacteria has potential to evolve into something different, something more complex. But they don't. Why is that? You need to ask yourself why bacterial evolution is so limited, so narrow, compared to the eukaryotic line of life. 

Bacteria is the prime example of (so called) micro-evolution never becoming "macro-evolution".


Bacterial evolution is limited? You sir know nothing about bacterial evolution. 

Eukaryotic life and evolution is but a small speck when compared to the amount of evolution that bacteria have suffered. If you compare the sheer number of species that bacteria and microbial life has managed to successfully create with the amount of evolution and different species that eukaryotic life has created, it would make complex life pretty laughable.

Human though processing is as essential to human evolution as plasmids recombination and transposition are to bacteria evolution. 

As I said, I'm not going dwell further on this topic. You're speaking about things you know nothing about. Come back to me when you have basic genomic knowledge, and comprehension as to how bacterial genomics are the founding steps for understanding our own genomic evolution.



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sapphi_snake said:
Slimebeast said:

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.


What's so mysterious about morals? Us humans are social animals that live in societies based on interdependence. This is actually one of the main reasons for our success as a species.  Morals are nothing more than general socieal rules that need to be respected in order for people to be able to live together. All social animals (ants, bees, chimps etc.) modify their behaviour in order to restrain selfishness and make group living possible. Basically morality has the purpose of restricting excessive individualism and promoting cooperation.

There are hundreds of species that are highly social, interdependent and successful - dolphins, wolves, prairie dogs, ants, bees - so does that mean that ants have morals?

You describe morals as "general social rules" (bolded). Well, a wolf pack has very strict social rules. Rats have social rules too, like most mammals do. So are you saying that rats and wolves have morals?



lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:

I don't believe in current evolution theory.

We've gone through some things before, things i have problems with. Like the lack of evolution in bacteria and even some higher order species (like that fish that hasn't changed in 70 million years or something, forgot the name). The lack of skeletons from humanoids puzzles me.

And I don't trust the guys who reconstruct and interpret these monkey skeletons. Too amateurish. It's too much global warming hoax over it all.

There's the mystery of the conscious mind which evolutionists can't explain.

The mystery of the rapid evolution of human culture and intellect, and it's complexity. How stuff like our interest in art & music etc are explained.

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.

Plus I'm a Christian so obviously I have a problem with Darwinian evolution without divine interference. If I wasn't religious maybe I would have just ate it all up without having done any deeper studies.

You're going down roads that you cannot possibly explain. Bacteria are the order of living organisms that suffer most evolution, due to the incorporation of extra set of genomic chromossomes, the plasmids, that confer them evolution patterns way ahead of Eukaryota cells. 

Also, the fish you're talking about, the Coelocanth, isn't an exclusive case of staggered evolution. Sharks have pretty much stayed the same, with very few minute mutational changes in the species range. Crocodiles as well.

And yet Bacteria's can't talk. They're still stuck at the micro level. (don't try with the "evolution has no goal" or "germs are already successful, they own their niche, they don't need to talk or to play video games").

Sharks and Croqs have the same problem as the Coelocanth, yes.

They are already more successful than any other living being.

Why? Because Bacteria are pretty much the most adaptable living being. They can live in environments ranging from pH 1 to pH 14. They can live in temperatures as low as -80º C to as high as 140º C. They can live in extremely low pressure areas like the top of the Himalayas or as high pressure as the bottom of the Marianna Abyss. They range from all the trophic, chemical and non-chemical, sustainable metabolism and pretty much are the only living being that can non-generational shift to adapt it's own genomic resistances 

High though process that Homo Sapiens are capable of is just a by-product of evolution. While it is important for humanity per se, for the ecological super-power, bacteria, it's pretty much useless.

Anyway, this is a pretty useless debate. Me, as a geneticist, have access to a vaster amount of information, knowledge and personal experience in this issue (bacteria evolution and genetic similarities) than you. I'm not saying that you're wrong and that i'm right, i'm just saying that you're debating an issue that you cannot possibly win. And that will only end in fruitless struggle that I won't indulge in this topic. 

You cannot win the debate either.

Yes, you just showed how extreme the environmental pressure is on bacteria, with them being present in all possible environments on earth. That's the point, to address how successful and prevalent bacteria are and show its implications in the context of the rate of evolution that would be expected from them. Despite bacteria being everywhere, in massive numbers, under all sorts of environmental pressures, yet they have remained on the primitive micro level, having only conquered niches on the single-cell micro level.

Because the individual bacteria doesn't care if bacteria as a group of organisms have conquered the earth. Every individual of bacteria tries to survive, and every individual bacteria has potential to evolve into something different, something more complex. But they don't. Why is that? You need to ask yourself why bacterial evolution is so limited, so narrow, compared to the eukaryotic line of life. 

Bacteria is the prime example of (so called) micro-evolution never becoming "macro-evolution".


Bacterial evolution is limited? You sir know nothing about bacterial evolution. 

Eukaryotic life and evolution is but a small speck when compared to the amount of evolution that bacteria have suffered. If you compare the sheer number of species that bacteria and microbial life has managed to successfully create with the amount of evolution and different species that eukaryotic life has created, it would make complex life pretty laughable.

Human though processing is as essential to human evolution as plasmids recombination and transposition are to bacteria evolution. 

As I said, I'm not going dwell further on this topic. You're speaking about things you know nothing about. Come back to me when you have basic genomic knowledge, and comprehension as to how bacterial genomics are the founding steps for understanding our own genomic evolution.

I don't like your arrogance. You're not as intelligent as you imagine.

You don't understand your own field of study. I am not the best man to explain things, but I am amazed that you fail to see my point.

One one hand you are perfectly fine with the diversity of life on our planet. If someone would ask you, "how come all this variation, all these species and organs and genes and proteins from a single ancestor?" your reply would be, "mutations and natural selection over a long period of time".

But on the other hand, amazingly, despite working in the field in question, you fail to see the mystery of why bacteria haven't evolved into anything like that diversity described above, despite trillions of chances, despite an absolutely massive gene pool being present in all possible living conditions, having a high replication & mutational rate and being affected by extreme environmental & selective pressures during a very long time.

 



spdk1 said:

Wait, how exactly does a six legged baby prove that Macroevolution is true?  I'm not doubting evolution as I believe it is true, but surely I've missed the reason why folks aren't poking fun at that?  If anything it proves mutants.


Ya, 6 legged people does not prove evolution. The fossil record, genetic similarities, retroviral DNA markers, observed speciation are all proofs of evolution.



Slimebeast said:
sapphi_snake said:
Slimebeast said:

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.


What's so mysterious about morals? Us humans are social animals that live in societies based on interdependence. This is actually one of the main reasons for our success as a species.  Morals are nothing more than general socieal rules that need to be respected in order for people to be able to live together. All social animals (ants, bees, chimps etc.) modify their behaviour in order to restrain selfishness and make group living possible. Basically morality has the purpose of restricting excessive individualism and promoting cooperation.

There are hundreds of species that are highly social, interdependent and successful - dolphins, wolves, prairie dogs, ants, bees - so does that mean that ants have morals?

You describe morals as "general social rules" (bolded). Well, a wolf pack has very strict social rules. Rats have social rules too, like most mammals do. So are you saying that rats and wolves have morals?

Thunderf00t explains things well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyd6om8IC4M&feature=related



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Evolution is not random, it is written in our DNA the ability to evolve, scientists don't know how more than 90% of our DNA works, it's there where our capacity to evolve is written...

Also, DNA is a code, and there is no code known to man to be developed randomly by nature, all codes known come from intelligent beings, so DNA must have come from an intelligent being...



highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:

I don't believe in current evolution theory.

We've gone through some things before, things i have problems with. Like the lack of evolution in bacteria and even some higher order species (like that fish that hasn't changed in 70 million years or something, forgot the name). The lack of skeletons from humanoids puzzles me.

And I don't trust the guys who reconstruct and interpret these monkey skeletons and postulate human evolutionary trees. Too amateurish. It's too much global warming hoax over it all.

There's the mystery of the conscious mind which evolutionists can't explain.

The mystery of the rapid evolution of human culture and intellect, and it's complexity. How stuff like our interest in art & music etc are explained.

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.

Plus I'm a Christian so obviously I have a problem with Darwinian evolution without divine interference. If I wasn't religious maybe I would have just ate it all up without having done any deeper studies.

I'm sorry but your logic doesn't work. By your reasoning an theory can't be valid unless it answers 100% of the questions posed to it.

Well I've got news for you, the world doesn't work like that, and if that were the case you would have dismiss pretty much all science.

Science is the search for an answer, and something like most fields of science evolution doesn't have a simple answer for everything; so we have to research, find and interpret evidence, and discover the answer; this has been an ongoing process for the last 150 years. No one is going to say the current model of evolution is 100% complete, and I'm sure everyone will happily admit that there are things we just don't know about.

What we do know is that a lot of evidence supports the theory of evolution, we know it has happened and we know it is happening. We can't explain all the details, but more than enough evidence exists to show that it does happen.

Applying your logic to another situation could be done with gravity. We know gravity exists, but don't know everything about it (not by a long shot). Does this mean that gravity doesn't exist because we don't know everything about it, despite enough evidence existing to prove its existence? No. Of course not.

Yet you've applied this same logic to evolution.

In my opinion you have a restricted view on reality.

So just because science is limited because of technological reasons, time, physical reality and whatever, you just resign and stop to ponder about our existense?

I don't work like that.

I have reasons to believe in a God, based on stuff we've gone through before and other stuff I haven't told you.

A human individual makes up his or her world view through experience, knowledge, observation and by logically putting it all together in your intellect, okay?

I can't wait for the 1000th monkey skeleton to be found which would prove beyond reasonable doubt that we in fact evolved from slime, through chimps to humans without any unnatural events or divine intervention, and meanwhile just "trust" the palenthological community based on a few fracture skulls and rely on their human error and bias. I'll be long dead by then.

Same with these what I choose to call "mysteries", unanswered phenomenons of reality that are very important in existential thinking and your world view. (big bang, something-out-of-nothing, the concept of the conscious mind, abiogenesis, absolute morals, etc etc all these questions that science has no answers to).

I simply can't wait for "hard" evidence for the above important phenomenons, I have to make up my world view now, based on the knowledge I have, the knowledge that we have today. And my conclusions are that God exists, he is reveled through Jesus and the current evolution theory doesn't fit very well with that. And without hard proof I have no strong reasons to believe in something that contradicts the rest of my world view.



While it does have some faults I believe in Irreducible complexity. Which states that many biological systems are too complex to have evolved on their own.



highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:
sapphi_snake said:
Slimebeast said:

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.


What's so mysterious about morals? Us humans are social animals that live in societies based on interdependence. This is actually one of the main reasons for our success as a species.  Morals are nothing more than general socieal rules that need to be respected in order for people to be able to live together. All social animals (ants, bees, chimps etc.) modify their behaviour in order to restrain selfishness and make group living possible. Basically morality has the purpose of restricting excessive individualism and promoting cooperation.

There are hundreds of species that are highly social, interdependent and successful - dolphins, wolves, prairie dogs, ants, bees - so does that mean that ants have morals?

You describe morals as "general social rules" (bolded). Well, a wolf pack has very strict social rules. Rats have social rules too, like most mammals do. So are you saying that rats and wolves have morals?

Thunderf00t explains things well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyd6om8IC4M&feature=related

I've seen it before. Thunderfoot, I kinda like him, he is intelligent. But he can't explain human morals better than any other evolutionist.

I strongly believe in absolute morals. And the concept of absolute morals contradicts with the evolution of morals á la Thunderfoot's model.

(btw, a note to you Highwaystar: just because I ask something it doesn't mean that I don't know the answer. By now you should have noticed my style of discussion, my method to argue)



Slimebeast said:
ManusJustus said:

Concerning the mystery of human morals, other animals like monkeys and lions live in groups and don't kill or harm each other (atleast not anymore than moral man).  If large groups of monkeys can live peacefully while sharing food, grooming each other, and having recreational sex, then it doesn't seem like rational man has much to brag about.

My short objection on your reply:  morals =/= behaviour based on instinct.

Please explain.  Even in vastly different cultural groups, humans have similar group behaivors.  Its wrong to kill for Aborigine Australians just as it is for Western Europeans (with some differening justifications each make ofcourse).  How can you consider this behaivor an instinct for humans but not for monkeys?

In fact, monkeys and humans have a lot of 'morals' in common.  They share resources (food and tools) and do not kill others in their group, but they go to war with other groups for land and resources.  Not much different than what humans do.