itt: evolution and trolling

[Fluffz]

thank you

[milosh]

thank you

Pat yourself on the back and go get a cookie from mom. She thinks you're her brilliant little sugar booger.

[Kolar]

I still believe ID as a "theory" requires you to take everything on faith, not just most or some things. We will never deconstruct God or the supernatural and purposefully subverting one idea which has taken the human race so far with one which is completely untestable is wrong.

[milosh]

I still believe ID as a "theory" requires you to take everything on faith, not just most or some things. We will never deconstruct God or the supernatural and purposefully subverting one idea which has taken the human race so far with one which is completely untestable is wrong.

Progress down the wrong road isn't progress though; this is true for both of us.

[Kolar]

Depends on how you measure it. I consider advanced technology, new math and new scientific breakthroughs all progress vital to our survival.

[DankNuggets]

Should have read past 1st page..

Well i take it back (I said I would). It seems that ID is a clear cut theory, that has answers for everything. I misunderstood. I thought that ID was an open theory that stated that something purposely created life or a precursor to it. I didn't understand that it was way more in depth. I feel this misunderstanding stems from the fact that I believe in God and in Science. I don't discredit the theory of evolution, althouth i think it should be supplemented, but we haven't yet discovered the means to which it has been directed.

I can buy forced evolution of bacteria over 50 generations or whatever, but given the sparsity of any initial organic material, I don't see how it's a good arguement for the random advent of life. They have created amino acids, RNA, and DNA in a laboratory setting, giving some evidence to random creation of biological material. However, they still don't understand how proteins bend and fold together. As far as I know, they haven't been able to randomly recreate proteins.

I still don't buy the probability arguments that epi and fluffz are saying, for the same reasons that milosh isn't buying them. They aren't appropriate analogies. Your whole desk analogy about the probabilities relies just as heavily on the desk being the endpoint. Not saying that humans are the end point, simply saying that they are a point. go back every single evolutionary step back to the first form of life. Now that's what I don't buy. If it's all random that we're here, please give us examples of how it could have gone differently, ie life not evolving with aspects like DNA or photosynthesis?. All life revolves around dna and rna, why? "because it is?" that's equivalent to saying "i don't know" or "God did it". I appreciate that you admit you don't know, but you're saying it in a manner that explains it as reasoning, when it's the exact opposite. If life is so random, then why if you swich out MOST genes, you end up with nothing, no life at all, instead of a mutation? Obviously there's a set # of ways that life will work for each species.

This is coming down to a judgement on how probable the complexity of life is. There isn't an infinte number of ways to create life, as there are to walk from point A to point B. There simply hasn't been enough time for all this randomness to work out. Things just don't change that fast as observed in nature or otherwise. Maybe in 100,000 years, when we've had enough time to look at physical evidence of the speed of non-human caused evolution, we'll be better able to judge how probable it was.

[Kolar]

Again lacking information and understanding using probability to explain things isn't going to work. 'it just is' is comparable to 'god did it' as you said Nugget, but the former doesn't assume something happened in the past, it only states what currently is. Neither explains the processes of which brought about life and eventually humans. I don't think we can know absolutely everything but again I would rather attempt to then give up with the latter (not ladder).

[DankNuggets]

stick with ladders, they're useful for getting to things you can't reach :P

and yeah, that's why i like to stick to the "i don't know option" out of the three choices. But i see no harm in saying "god did it" or "it just is" ; they both show a lack of understanding, just with opposite connotations.

I'm sure it got covered up in all the mess i wrote earlier, but my main beef is that if you're gonna judge these theories on their merit for mankind, you should look into one that effects our future. Our future evolutionwise is nonexistant, and when I'm on my deathbed, i'm not gonna be thinking about whether or not cyanobacteria developed chloroplasts on their own or not. I'll be thinking about what's next, and wondering if I'll ever even realize when I die. (A way more intersting and speculative topic)

[Kolar]

You forgot to quote me, owned.

The 3rd is always the position of science, the two others are not. Questions of our existence I think are best left up to religion and personal spirituality and those who choose to follow it. Trying to piece together theories to explain how everything came to its present state would be ridiculously hard and far off from reality (Evolution doesn't and never intended to explain the origin of life), but if you wanted to explain how for example a single object came into existence say the universe we can take pieces of evidence like background radiation, WMAP and use it to prove our hypothesis about the beginning of the universe. It may be right or wrong but it's better then guessing, believing or having proclamations by some supposedly holy office.

Explaining it beyond a point you can discount divine intervention is never going to happen, explaining it beyond a reasonable doubt of intervention will take the better part of the existence of the human race. I think we should always follow the evidence where ever it leads us even to our destruction or 'salvation', regardless of the wishes of man kind. It isn't democratic.

[Singularity]

This thread is now about Hippos!



They are awesome amirite?

[milosh]

[DoTheFandango]

fuck this noise
MY BLOODY VALENTINE DISAGREES WITH YOU.
THAT IS ALL

[riske]

Where are the odds of a being that came from nowhere, that knows the future, is omnipotent, at?

Just because something isnt probable, that makes something even less probable, more probable?

[Squeezer]

My Bloody Valentine sucks.

Weezer's new album is better than that Beverly Hills crap.

[DoTheFandango]

My Bloody Valentine sucks.

Weezer's new album is better than that Beverly Hills crap.

HOW DARE YOU

HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT TO KEVIN SHIELDS.
Loveless is probably one of the greatest albums of the 20th century