Ophiolite

I don't feel that you have stated that viewpoint clearly. That may simply be poor reading/interpretation on my part. I accept that you felt you were making this viewpoint clear, but you may wish to review how you present ideas in future. Others may make the same mistake as I.

Only that subset of humans who don't.

Thank you. Your prompt response is appreciated.

Well at least you have now openly stated that you have a teleological agenda. Perhaps you declared that in some thread somewhere. I think it would have been more honest to have stated your position clearly in threads where you were exploring it. As it is you have come across as devious and untrusworthy. Perhaps that's what you were aiming for.

I would urge you to edit the stated reason for the banning. He did not request to be banned. You know he did not request to be banned. You stated that he did request to be banned. Regardless of extenuating circumstances, etc this is quite simply a lie. You cannot in good conscious make demands of YEC's, conspiracy theorists and creator's of spurious Theories of Everything, when you are practicing such sloppy ethics. It does not meet the standards we should expect on this forum.

That's good to know. I think I'll avoid the evolutionists on EVC forum. Let's look at the thesis. It's actually in two parts. First part - our genes are programmed to be more efficient in youth and are less efficient as you age. Sort of true in a warped sort of way. Somewhere along the line natural selection stumbled on the fact that death was a real benefit to survival. If that seems contrary you just haven't thought it through yet. Nature (let's personify the non-teleological process) is not interested in the individual, but in the population. Natural selection acts on populations and the variability withint them. If organisms show a reluctance to die off there is a limit to the what nature can achieve. But if she can get a nice life-death cycle going the number of possibilities expands considerably. Therefore, it not so much that our genes were programmed to get less efficient as we get older, its just that there is little point, or benefit in maintaining their efficiency. (I trust you realise that efficiency is really just a metaphor in this context for a complex suite of processes and their progressive demise, most of which are well above my pay grade.) The scone part is this: species are made "just good enough" is to reduce the amount of energy needed for predation to be successful? Again, it's sort of true, but really ass backwards. Any mutation that confers an advantage has to be only marginally better - just slightly better than what was good enough yesterday - in order to be positively selected for. So, many predators are large because size confers an advantage - too a point, at which time you have to bring many other factors and it gets deliciously complex.

You are only saying that because you are a human. If you were a bird you would consider us and chimps pretty well identical. Actually, when you consider penguins, birds of paradise, eagles, woodpeckers, seagulls, emus, etc I don't see how you can say they lool more like each other than humans and chimps.

Hold on guys. Do I understand this correctly: 1) Truth be Known is a sockpuppet of Aristarchus in Exile? 2) His actions were those of a person who knew they were infringing the rules and expected to be banned. 3) He did not actually send a pm explicitly asking to be banned? 4) The reason given for banning him included the reason that he had made a personal request to be banned. Please confirm, clarify or amend these points, if you don't mind?

OK, I'll bite. Where is it said that nature made species 'just good enough'? This sounds like a distortion or misunderstanding to me. Care to elaborate?

Christopher, I am likely to be censured for what comes next - and rightly so, but I simply will not tolerate any more mind numbing stupidity from you. You have been shown that your idea has all the scientific rigour of a used condom just above the tide mark. You have the arrogance to claim that tens of thousands of intelligent, dedicated, experienced obervers have made exactly the same basic mistakes and failed to notice what you have noted. You have refused to take a look at any of the contrary evidence. You have not understood or attempted to understand the counter arguments. Your writing is turgid, your logic as structured as a kangaroo's fart and you appear to have the intellectual capacity of a brain damaged armadillo overdosed on heroin. Sadly, these are your strong points. The sight of intransigent ignorance at my age is bad for my health. Enjoy your delusions - I'm out of here.

I do not know of any practicing biologist, or any individual with a basic knowledge of evolution who believes that the characteristics of bacteria, humans, or any other lifeform are a result of chance and lucky accidents. If you think that is what evolution says then you have rather missed the entire point of Darwin's seminal work and the Modern Synthesis that was derived from it. The central tenet of Darwin's thesis is that traits are selected for. Traits that promote survival and reproduction in a given environment are favoured. More individuals with these traits survive and reproduce than without. The fate of the individuall may be influenced by fate, but the population is directed by the unconscious hand of natural selection: no chance or luck are involved. Where chance and luck do come into play are in providing the variability on which natural selection can work. A mutation might be of immense value to a particular population, but it will be a matter of chance whether or not that mutation, or a similar one, arises. So, I am afraid you are arguing against a position that evolutionary biology does not adopt. Once you understand and accept that, then the reason for the tensions between science and some fundamentalist religions will become apparent. And every one of these 'defences' has been selected for from the variability present in the population. We can stand in awe at the diversity of solutions to living and reproducing that can evolve in this way, but there is no deep mystery to that evolution. So? Your statement here is ambiguous. You seem to be saying exactly what I have been saying: new traits arise through mutations; beneficial mutations are selected for; we call the resultant traits survival mechanisms; life is developing survival mechanisms in preference to self-destruction mechanisms through the medium of natural selection. However, while your words can mean precisely that I sense you are implying something quite different. Perhaps you will take the time to clarify this point. You will find several people at both extremes of the argument who will agree with that statement. Personally, I think it is nonsense. My own view is that religion and science are wholly compatible in the same way that the fish course and the entree are wholly compatible within a meal. They are quite different; they fulfill different functions; they both provide sustenance, but of different kinds, but both are quite in place within the structure of a meal. The difficulty arises because many religions use dogma, and fear and superstition to corrupt what should be a mechanism for enhancing the spiritual side of life. And some scientists take an equally dogmatic view, setting out for example to disprove the existence of God. As far as extremists on both sides go, Shakespeare said it for me, "A pox on both your houses".

You are the one proposing a non-standard idea. The burden of proof, or at least of counter evidence, lies with you. If you do not wish to provide that evidence, or a more comprehensive reasoned argument, I for one an quite happy to let you wallow in an ignorance of your own choosing.

Then how do you account for the thousands of studies I referred to that show your argument is faulty? I have spoken repeatedly to you in another place about the complexity of individual pebbles and the variety of pebbles types to be found on a typical beach. (Brighton beach is not typical.) These are clear proof that your idea is faulty, yet you continue to ignore this contrary evidence and hammer away with your self indulgent assertion. That is not science. That is not how you will convince anyone of anything, other than the possibility that you are a fool. You jmust take the questions head on, not bury your head in the sand (or pebbles, as the case may be).

Good morning exploration, you did not read a single word I wrote, or if you did, you did not pause to actually think about them. I have taken the time to understand what you have written, to think about your ideas and to respond to them. It would be polite if you were to do the same thing. You are making an assertion - a statement - that since a robot has a designer, so too must a scientist. You therefore argue that the credit for the scientist's discovery should go to God, not to the scientist. This is the old argument first presented by William Paley - If we find a watch on the heath, we reasonably infer that it was produced by an intelligent watchmaker. Did you know that one of Darwin's most treasured books was a copy of William Paley's Natural Theology. He admired the logical manner in which Paley presented the argument for the existence and nature of God. It is probable that he structured On the Origin of Species in an analagous manner. A copy of Natural Theology, along with Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, went with him on the Beagle, as he voyaged around the world. Despite Darwin's admiration for Paley and Paley's arguments, what he saw on that voyage and what his subsequent investigations demonstrated, was that there was no need to invoke a watchmaker to explain the diversity of life. The mechanism of natural selection, acting upon variation in populations, was sufficient to do the job. If you wish to continue to argue this point you must either bring new evidence to the discussion, or admit that you make an unfounded assertion, that you act from faith without an iota of evidential support. You then make a further assertion: "WE HUMAN usually claiming the possession of something BASE ON THE WITNESSES of our SENSE." This is a true statement for many humans, most of the time and probably all humans some of the time. However, the findings of science are only incidentally the findings of humans. By this I mean that it is the scientific method that reveals the wonders of the universe. The senses of an individual human, the thought of an individual human, are not to be trusted. Every idea and every observation must be questioned and duplicated, every hypothesis must be tested (repeatedly) and validated. It is the scientific method, in the hands of the scientist, that brings clarity to our understanding. I recommend, exploration, before you criticise something that you learn more about what you are criticising. Boldy repeating tired, discredited arguments is of no value. You made an impassioned plea for free thinking. If there is a God I trust she will give you the wisdom to think freely on this matter, rather than spouting dogma. If there is no God, then the matter is for you alone. Either way the next step to enlightenment lies in your own hands.

Which specific resonance are you talking about?

As baric has said, science does not enslave our thinking, rather it sets us free. Perhaps you have been misled by reports of science in the media, or the ideas presented in science documentaries, or the declarations of sincere, but unimaginative thinkers with an interest in science, but little understanding of it. These can often be misguided, sensational and sometimes just plain wrong. I agreed earlier with baric that science does not enslave our thinking, but it's more than that. Science, to be properly conducted and therefore to be called science, requires and demands that we be free in our thinking. This freedom is present at all stages of the scientific process. Restriction of freedom may occur from time to time, because scientists are also humans, but the great strength of the scientific method is that these restrictions will be identified and removed. Spend some time on this board listening, asking questions, challenging people's assertions and you will find that science both demands and sustains a climate fo freedom. Pure science has, arguably, no goal other than the joy that comes from acquiring knowledge. The benefit to humanity is both direct, in providing insights into the wonders of the universe and indirect, by leading to technical developments. You don't have to wait for good reasoning. It is all around you - you just have to reach out with an open mind.

My reading of his (her) words was exactly the same and there is, I understand, research to back up that viewpoint.

For a layperson you have an unusually large number of opinions on matters of science. I believe you would do yourself a great service if you would read some of those books, again, and this time try to understand them. That is an admirable sentiment. It is a shame you have extended that disparagement to individuals on this forum who do understand and who would be more than ready to help you understand, if you lost the adversarial, in-your-face attitude and listened for a change. The arguments you use to counter current theory reveal that you don't understand current theory. I urge you to stop and think. Note: this post contains no science, no evidence and no logical argument, since I am responding to a suite of posts with the same characteristics.

You need to distinguish between cure and control.

You don't feel that may be an unfortunate choice of words? In the strict context of the sentence this has echoes of ID, which I am reasonably sure you did not intend. Are you proposing that the dinosaurs were pretty well on there way out already? You say many other species survived the event, but many more did not. Moreover, some dinosaurs did survive and evolved into one of the most succesful branches of vertebrate life on the planet today.

Source please. You are clearly more up to date than I, as of Fridy the state of play was that the research group would repeat the experiment with changes sugested to them, including much shorter proton bursts. In addition a Japanese team would also carry out tests. Why would these things proceed if it was already established that the source of the anomaly was measurement?

I have explained to you, in some considerable detail, on another forum, why your ideas are wrong. When we approach something with an open mind then we do with the view that the concept may be valid. How do we assess its validity? We seek to determine whether or not the facts support the hypothesis. We gather the observations objectively and measure the hypothesis against those observations. Let's look at your hypothesis in that way. You claim that pebbles build up in size rather than diminishing in size, over time. What do observations tell us? Well, you have observed that in some instances, on the tidal stretch of a beach, material can build up on the surface of pebbles. This is a good observation. Wholly valid. Does this mean that all pebbles grow in this way? If they do so then we would expect to see a series of rings, like growth rings on a tree, when we broke open a pebble. We don't see this. It doesn't happen. You live on the south coast of England and many of the pebbles there are chert with an outer layer of adhering chalk. I think you may have been misled by this appearance to think the pebbles have accreted that extra layer. I recommend you take your head out of the pebbles and go look at the cliffs. Remove some chert pebbles from there and you will see the same layering. You have also failed utterly to deal with this rather detailed consideration. We have tens of thousands of studies covering the weathering, erosion, transportation, deposition and diagenesis of rocks and rock fragments. We know, through detailed observation by thousands of researchers over a century or more how these processes vary with topography, climate, mineralogy,etc. From this we know with a certainty as great as can be humanly achieved in any sphere, that rock fragments get smaller not larger, bar some specific exceptions. Carbonate fragments can accrete more carbonate material to them - oolites are a good example. And you have noted another minor incidence of this kind where a thin layer of 'crud' adheres to the surface of the pebble. But you have taken this single minor exception and build a palace of insanity upon it. The closed mind here is yours. I know you will not open it, since you have invested a significant part of your life in developing this hypothesis. That is your loss and it saddens me to say it, but it is a monumental one. You are throwing your life away on close minded nonsense. Wake up! Open your mind! Use your brain productively for once. Please!

You may wish to note that mooeypoo is a moderator. His remarks may have been made entirely as a regular member, or he might have been giving you a polite heads-up to what is and is not tolerated on the forum. You could always check that out by making further provocative and ridiculing statements at an appropriate (or inappropriate) time. I agree with you that nonsense should be ridiculed, but that should be done elegantly and with humour. In my opinion your effort lacked both of these qualities. Better luck next time.

Non africans are descended from a small sub-set of the continent's inhabitants - that is they are descended from the ones who left Africa. The smaller the sub-set the less diversity we would expect to find.

Have chimps landed on the moon yet?