Gnieus

Sorry I can't agree, maybe my concept of evolution is different. Evolution has selected "us" or our genes to maybe gain some insight, but we are a living organism that change things like weather changes things, we are just another environmental influence. One has to be really careful of the repeating misconception that we understand everything enough. Life/genes/DNA have just found another way to try to maintain themselves. I really can't see the difference .. You are essentially stating we are above natural laws, evolution being one of them. If evolution allows some intelligent adaption than that's evolution too. It still has to survive and the creatures made from it too. I am not a Darwin Mantra follower it HAS to be random .. What is random anyway? Mostly it's understood as uniform random. Well I don't think so, if it's gaussian then there is structure, so why not an "intelligent" structure .. mutations have to follow physical and chemical laws so that's uniform random out of the window anyway .. Some apes have culture and afaik they found birds with culture .. maybe there is a natural law that says cognitive limited "intelligence" leads to insulin producing bacterias with a 95% likelihood.

In my opinion humans claiming to have sussed it and be God has never worked ..

Please make yourself clear what you are claiming, you sit somewhere in a vast universe on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy as a recently evolved ape species and you want to be able to change the universe ?? I would be extremely careful with these claims. If you can change evolution then any idea about a fixed state evolution is wrong ... and it is in itself adaptable.

You can't change the law of gravity, yet you can use it. Like a bola bola spider .. So you might be able to use genetics to gain an advantage but you still gonna die .. You have no idea if what you perceive as free will ain't an illusion? A certain knowledge has a set of logical implications/possibilities, given a probability of 6 billion people, someone will build a clone or do an atom bomb, will have that and that idea ..

nope you still gonna die.

And if they disable the cell suicide, you still gonna die if a car smashs into you. And if you get yourself a nice atom bunker, when a meterorite hits the planet you gonna a die. And as long as there is some possibility that your subatomic particle collection entity gonna bite the dust in any shape or form [even if you are made of a pice of junk metal] the only option is adaption, reproduction and a new try.

The introduction of intelligence has made possible an entirely new form of evolution that is as different from the evolution of life as that was from the 'evolution' of matter. These three steps, tied as they are to this cultural [/i']evolution, have everything to do with it.

Nope our phenotype is evolution, came from evolution, hence what we do IS evolution .. ... .... What can you change about evolution? Nothing ... The communality of interest of you genes gonna bite the dust sooner or later .. should you have produced the right offspring and your genes make it into the future then good, maybe someone else lives longer through cryogenics and shags when he is awakened, then gets kid, then these genes make it a bit longer ..

Should you upload yourself into a computer it's a new evolution game, if the energy runs out your entity is history and your strategy has been deselected.

Firstly: you or an alternative life form. But even the support machine might come into problems. If you ain't have a mechanism to adapt to changing conditions, ie. death and resampling of gene material program code or new hardware you are fcuked.

Changing environments necessitate change and adaption in all that is, unless it's some end particle wave.. I don't know if that exists. Suns go extinct, mountains fade.

Unless you freeze the universe, adaption is necessary, adaption necessitates some form of adaption to changing environments, whatever way it is. Hence we won't be outside evolution ever...

The next step in human evolution is a human decision. Since we are currently controling our enviorment we also have the key to evoultion.

This is wrong .... Evolution made us giving some control over some parts of the environment, as ants/wasps make nests to control temperature. It is fatal to make the old anthropocentric mistake to declare us some kind of God ... We are an experiment in consciousness nothing else ... If evolution makes a species able to pop DNA together than thats the next step in our evolutionary time line. Should we make a killer virus and we die and that's us evolutionary settled as a mistake .. should we make new species then evolution found a new way to creat e life...

OMG we ain't God/Evolution and we never will be ...

We are the evolution into space! Don't think for space though.

One thing I find interesting about Neanderthals is that their culture was so similar, perhaps even more advanced, than ours was at the time. Neanderthals ritually buried their dead and they played on flutes with the first four notes of do ray mi fa. But I cannot speak of their social culture. I suppose none of this evidence means anything significant though...

I remember seeing a film showing their jewellry which was less sophisticated and seemed to be a copy of H s. s. jewelry. The guess was they were less sophisticated. They make it up as they go ..

Man that Horizon [british Science Telly] program about NT was lame ... All that idiotic music .... It's getting worse ...

Re Neanderthal I thought the child skeleton found in Portugal afaik was some evidence for interbreeding. Re Basques: Neanderthal - there is a connection from the Basques to the celts, some of them short and stocky. But that's all conjecture. One should always have in mind that we don't really know what went on.

I just listened to the first 3 Feynman audios. the audio was very weak on the third and hard to hear in places. please let me know if you had the same difficulty

I haven't heard all of it yet, but I noticed in the first RM Stream that there are severe pitch problems. Obviously the analogue microphone being blocked sometimes.. No digital remastering..

Thanks for the link, that's great

In the quantum mechanical model nothing ever happens! The particle never has to decay. The probability just keeps getting closer and closer to one. There is nothing to force a real event to happen. This is very confusing because what we observe is always real events. We see the particle decay at some particular time.

Maybe maths breaks down here as a model of the world. If one is two and somewhere else at the same time... maybe people have to chuck it. Maybe they already did?

Maybe real probabilities are like springs under pressure, at 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 probability

it just happens ... cause it's a real event, not a mathematical construct.

Whatever, I don't like cats anyway...

You're right. Seeing all[/i'] creationalists as unreasonable would be a little bit short sighted, agreed?

Depends on the definition of creationist. As for Bible Bashers [aka God 7 days types]... all of them.

I don't like him either ... I have to respect his work in a way .. but he has so much an agenda that I wonder if someone like this can be objective in his work.

Although i scanned the site' date='i still couldnt find a solid reason why an upright tree in situe could be fossilised through different strata though[/quote']

 

Sand clay coal

 

Just needs localised flood that swamps the tree, then the whole forest the tree was in, becomes coal.

 

An underclay is technically the bed of clay which underlies a coal-seam; but it has now become a general term for a fossil soil [Dawson's emphasis], or a bed which once formed a terrestrial surface, and supported trees and other plants; because we generally find these coal underclays, like the subsoils of many modern peat-bogs, to contain roots and trunks of trees which aided in the accumulation of the vegetable matter of the coal. The underclays in question are accordingly penetrated by innumerable long rootlets, now in a coaly state, but retaining enough of their form to enable us to recognize them as belonging to a peculiar root, the Stigmaria, of very frequent occurrence in the coal measures, and at one time supposed to have been a swamp plant of anomalous form, but now known to have belonged to an equally singular tree, the Sigillaria, found in the same deposits (Fig. 30).

 

 

in a manner which shows that these must have been soft sand and mud at the time these roots and rootlets spread through them.

 

 

It is evident that when we find a bed of clay now hardened into stone, and containing the roots and rootlets of these plants in their natural position, we can infer, 1st, that such beds must once have been in a very soft condition; 2ndly, that the roots found in them were not drifted, but grew in their present positions; in short, that these ancient roots are in similar circumstances with those of the recent trees that underlie the Amherst marshes [these are local tidal marshes, some with recently-buried forest layers in the peat and sediment].

 

I can't really see why a tree should not die and be fossilised in some marshy anaerobic environment and it's upper bits out of the Marsh then became coal with all the rest of the organic material.

Ok, Dawkins is big and moreorless the deity of Evol Ecol

Did anybody spot something questionable in his hypothesis?

Anybody found anything?

What creationism are we talking about. Are we talking about God creating everything AS IT EXISTS TODAY WITHOUT CHANGE

That's the one' date=' which is the REALLY BAD one..

or are we talking about modified creationism where God created the universe and it changed to what it is now. A "theory" (I should rather say something like idea) which is more fitting to the evidence as we have it.

That's the BAD one for the "creationist" who think that evolution disproves even that .... who knows ... I think one of the creationist book linked above makes a big point of that ... Just pop a God before everything we don't know yet ... kinda DOH ..

I believe some prominent theologians thought it would be a terrible idea to have a proof of God.

No sh|t LOL

Not directed at you btw

Sure. I you want to read one book that has influenced more people across a larger portion of the Earth over more years than any other, you'd have to read the Bible.

hmm, kinda of a Naked Emperor thing imo. Like the whole dreadful Shakespeare, Schiller thing, where masses of people are forced to read some boring drivel and pretend it's good.

I think the Bible's good message could be summarised in 2 pages flat.

When I heard about the "Gnostic Gospels", that gave it the coup the grace .... holy moly 2 millenia of male dominated churches and then Mary was the closest to Jesus ... honestly ..

http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm

or use google ..

4) He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?

5) Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?

6) Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered.

7) Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries.

8) But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.

9) That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.

Ergo the Bible as published millions of time is an edited version in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and does not reflect exactly the teachings of Mr Christ ...

I think Nazis had their own wee thing going on (Pseudo Science), Eugenics (not as thought of by Galton I might add, more the Pearson perversion of it), anthropometrics etc. Pervesrion of "science" ...

Well Galton was the master of pseudo science ... Measured the beuty of woman by making ticks or classifications ... Counting all tiles in Westminster abbey ... He was an OK mathematician ... Galton actually wanted to improve on human nature based on intelligence NOT on race and not "fit" were supposed to be treated nice, just an arrogant Victorian. I think Pearson was the agressive one...

Ok I am starting to ramble.. I better stop ...

Helbender' date='

Religion served humanity perfectly well for the bulk of it’s history.

It helped the primitives feel as though they had at least some say in the climatic events that frequently upturned their world. [/quote']

 

Nobody said that delusionary traits in adverse conditions aren't adaptive.

 

Better to sit in that foxhole, believing that her holiness guards you, having a clear head and making therefore survivable decisions, than cr@ping your pants cause you are so afraid, making rush decisions and die.

 

Nevertheless religion as proposed by man has still a very much higher probability to be severly wrong than hypotheses and theories derived by reason...

We are astounded by some European behavior, too.

Lol bet you do! Anything based on rational wrong doings, like the Evolution thing?

They feel evolution will make them satan's children and they want their faith in schools because people tell them they can't have it in schools.

In every bavarian class room a cruxifix or cross was hanging on the wall, when I grew up. We got religion or ethics as a choice of subject. We nevertheless got taught evolution. If the crosses were removed now, I don't live there anymore, it would have been cause muslims felt discriminated against. I wouldn't wonder if nevertheless muslims have now the choice between religious classes and ethics too. It's all about choice, really.

I can only say news that some American schools forbid evolution being taught at school just adds in Europe to a growing feeling that "Americans are weird". I think the larger thinking part of America should be aware of that and take action.

We should care. If we just completely ignore them (like it's tempting to do), we are being just as closed-minded as them. Knowledge can't be gained through closed-mindedness. I don't think it is just Evolution, or just Creation. They don't have to be separate. I believe God Created us through Evolution.

Creationism as I see it has NOTHING to do with God per se. It's about the literal interpretation of the Bible/Koran/Talmud/etc. If even the Vatican can make concession why not some wild willy wooly bible bashers. Christianity is about good social interactions and love. Not about that somewhere in the old testament some old homophobe wrote you shouldn't lie with a man. I have NO respect for people who claim to be Christians and don't even understand the basics of their own religion. And if they then "preach" in Telly churches, while using hysterics to show they have healing power ... and sack in a shitload of money ... . That's what we are talking about not real Christians. They interpreting exactly translated words likely to have been written in hebrew or arameic. No thanks. Most of them pseudo Christians haven't even realised that the New Testament is obviously a revised version of the old one ... Well they chased the pilgrims/puritans away from Europe because they even then realised they were a bit pathological anal in their practice of what they thought was Christianity. No wonder then that most creationists are in the USA.

Luther someone who saw the faults of Catholicism and tried to improve on it.

Puritans lame excuse to cover up their own fear and sexual awkwardness and just generally make life hell for everybody around them. Hence they were kicked out.

Controversial ..

Then, by your arguments Evolution (organisms from common ancestory) cannot be proven either. I can use my senses to see a common ancestor, there are no fossils of one, so therefore evolution doesn't exist.

In a way yes, scientist have a lot of faith.. You basically have to believe all the papers, unless you are able to recreate them all etc. Difference is: there is some logic behind it and more people have checked if it's correct. So you have a higher likelihood that it is true what you believe. Unlike pure faith, which just believes without logic.

(I'm not antireligion' date=' although not religious myself, not trying to offend anyone)

 

 

The same can be said about religion: some (not all, no flaming, please) people think acting pious once a week at church services is enough, and then they lie, cheat, etc etc once they're out of sight of the steeple.[/quote']

 

I am NOT anti-religion, I am anti literal word bible interpreting [aka bible bashers]. I have repeatedly stated that I believe in higher powers.

You repeatedly use the same "tactic" that you blaim creationists for using' date=' I laugh at you, I laugh at you all . It's not creationalist that have flaw in their arguments, its unintelligent people irreguardless of which side they argue. It's just that [b']most[/b] unintelligent people are the same people that argue for creationalism in this way.

Well you have just done it yourself there, so welcome to the club.

Which pretty well sums up the attitudes and actions of most geologists and pretty well all geophysicists when they rejected Wegener's theory of Continental Drift. Blind obstinacy is not limited to creationists, nor outwith the behaviour of scientists.

But there is always the difference between the theory of science and science as it's practised.