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Zag
Unintentionally offensive old coot
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 Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:25 pm Post subject: 441 |
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1. we went through a semi-aquatic phase
-- Oh please. Dumber than dumb. ... Or MAYBE that explains the layer of fat around my middle! I might have to get more open-minded on this one, and eat more pie.
2. we lost it when we lived on the savannah
-- Lots of mammals live on the savannah. They all have fur.
3. parasites (lice, etc)
-- Not buying it. Again, there'd be more bald creature about if that were the case.
I'm pretty darn atheistic myself, but if you're looking for the hand of God in evolution, you've got a pretty compelling argument right there.
(Though I think that Heisenberg has found the best scientific argument for the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent Creator. After all, the only way for an omniscient being to create creatures with free will is to make the core of their intelligence something that is fundamentally unknowable. Otherwise, he'd already know the outcome.) |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:51 pm Post subject: 442 |
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| If parasites were a big problem then the use of clothing should have been selected against since the sharing of clothing would have allowed the parasites to spread from person to person more easily. |
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Zag
Unintentionally offensive old coot
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| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject: 443 |
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I came up with an interesting evolutionary puzzle a few minutes ago.
Name a species which lost its reproductive organs in a mutation. The new sub-species has been very successful, as a result. |
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Zag
Unintentionally offensive old coot
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:40 pm Post subject: 444 |
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| Nobody? The answer is: HERE |
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Poisonium
annoyed by the old
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:40 pm Post subject: 445 |
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Isn't there a tree in New Zealand that's 50.000 years old? And cannot reproduce?
_________________
I tried apt-get install lifebut it only returned E: Couldn't find package life |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:49 am Post subject: 446 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:11 am Post subject: 447 |
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Nsof
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:53 pm Post subject: 448 |
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maybe already posted: The Darwin Awards
| The Darwin Awards wrote: |
A Chronicle of Enterprising Demises
Honoring those who improve the species...by
accidentally removing themselves from it! |
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Will sell this place for beer |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:22 pm Post subject: 449 |
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MTGAP
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:41 pm Post subject: 450 |
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| Zag wrote: |
I came up with an interesting evolutionary puzzle a few minutes ago.
Name a species which lost its reproductive organs in a mutation. The new sub-species has been very successful, as a result. |
That only works because humans play god.
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This statement is false. |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:15 pm Post subject: 451 |
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| Are we really playing God or are they using us as reproductive organs? |
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MTGAP
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 5:36 pm Post subject: 452 |
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| Bicho the Inhaler wrote: |
All right, I'll bite.
Advocates of "Intelligent Design" often point to lack of continuity in the fossil record as evidence against evolution: evolution predicts that there would be all manners of intermediate species between today's organisms and ancient ones we have fossils of, but apparently the fossil evidence for these intermediate organisms is somewhat lacking. What do you think of this?
Intelligent Design Creationists also point to irreducibly complex structures as evidence of "design"; for example, an eye is a complex of many functioning pieces, and removing any piece removes the functionality of the eye. How could such a thing have evolved gradually?
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I know this was asked about a year ago, but I will answer anyway.
Question one: No one knows. I would guess that maybe there was some natural disaster that destroyed fossils of that era.
Question two: An eye started as something more simple, maybe with just one part. Then, more parts developed and each part got more complicated. It's sort of like how at first, there were a bunch of not-quite-living things. There were several types. Then they started sticking together and forming a single cell with multiple parts. Then those cells started sticking together to form more complex creatures.
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This statement is false. |
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MTGAP
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject: 453 |
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| Chuck wrote: |
| Are we really playing God or are they using us as reproductive organs? |
I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I'd guess that there's some way to ensure that the mutation happens. You can only get navel oranges from normal oranges. So people are taking the normal ones and mutating them. I'd say it could be interpreted as either.
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This statement is false. |
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Zag
Unintentionally offensive old coot
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| Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:08 pm Post subject: 454 |
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| MTGAP wrote: |
| You can only get navel oranges from normal oranges. So people are taking the normal ones and mutating them. |
Wrong. That mutation has only happened once -- that anyone noticed, anyway. Every tree that produces navel oranges was made by grafting cuttings into an existing orange tree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navel_orange#Navel_orange |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:47 am Post subject: 456 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:10 am Post subject: 457 |
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Jack_Ian
Big Endian
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| Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 11:17 pm Post subject: 458 |
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MTGAP
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:21 pm Post subject: 459 |
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| GH wrote: |
I guess that's basically what I thought to be true (evolution is a reasonable theory that correlates with observable evidence).
It's interesting to me, though, that people would get so worked up about a one-minute statement that basically says, "Evolution is a theory that correlates with observable evidence, but it's not the only possibility." I can't figure out why this is so important to some people.
Is it just that it's heavily supported by people who use their faith as the reasoning behind it? What if the Emancipation Proclamation had been mainly motivated by Lincoln's faith? Am I just way off base? |
It's not the only possibility, but it's ridiculously unlikely that anything else is correct. Nearly every time someone says "It's not the only possibility," they do not mean it in a scientific sense. They mean that intelligent design is a plausible alternative. It's not.
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This statement is false. |
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GH
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 7:07 pm Post subject: 460 |
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| It's not immediately obvious to me that Intelligent Design is not a reasonable theory that correlates with observable evidence. |
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Antrax
ESL Student
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| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 7:10 pm Post subject: 461 |
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That's not surprising - it was built with the known evidence in mind, and is in fact updated whenever new evidence surfaces (The "irreducible complexity" argument has been moved off the eye, which has since been explained, to some protein folding thing). It doesn't offer any refutable predictions (or really, any predictions at all), and thus it is not scientific, that's the only problem with it.
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After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick! |
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Zag
Unintentionally offensive old coot
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| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:19 pm Post subject: 462 |
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| GH wrote: |
| It's not immediately obvious to me that Intelligent Design is not a reasonable theory that correlates with observable evidence. |
| Wikipedia wrote: |
| Intelligent design is the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God that avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer. The idea was developed by a group of American creationists who reformulated their argument in the creation-evolution controversy to circumvent court rulings that prohibit the teaching of creationism as science. Intelligent design's leading proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank, believe the designer to be the God of Christianity. |
Emphasis mine. The emphasized portions are the reasons that I get my hackles up.
The point is that the inventors of "Intelligent Design" did not go looking at the evidence and the existing theories and say, "These theories do not explain this evidence -- let's come up with one that does." No. What they said was "Here is what we want to believe, now let's come up with a 'theory' which is essentially what we want to believe but seems to fit the evidence." That approach isn't science and it shouldn't be taught in a science class. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 11:30 pm Post subject: 463 |
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| I.D., as I've seen it expressed, depends on alleged failures or weaknesses in the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution allegedly fails to explain something, and that then is taken to be evidence for an intelligent creator. So, we've taken something complex and in need of explanation (life), and have posited the existence of something (an intelligent creator) also in need of an explanation. If evolution's failure to explain some aspect of natural life points to it having been created by an intelligence, then wouldn't I.D.s failure to explain the existence of that intelligence similarly point to the existence of a second intelligence which created the first? But it seems an implicit assumption of I.D. is that the creator doesn't need to be explained, and can be used to explain anything. Why then have any scientific theories about anything? Why not just invoke the same magical explanation for everything? Would that be less reasonable? |
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Samadhi
+1
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:02 am Post subject: 464 |
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I think this youtube pretty well sums it up: Skewed views of science
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And he lived happily ever after. Except for the dieing at the end and the heartbreak in between. |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:22 am Post subject: 465 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 12:15 am Post subject: 466 |
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I just borrowed The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins from the library. A quick look at the index shows
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| manatees, 169-70, 172, 342, 11 |
and
and includes a color picture of each. This is obviously the most important book on evolution in the history of the universe. |
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Quailman
His Postmajesty
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| Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 1:02 am Post subject: 467 |
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The guy from Hogan's Heroes and Family Feud? |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 1:32 am Post subject: 468 |
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| I guess. They sound the same when they speak. |
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casinopete*
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:36 pm Post subject: 469 |
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| Kakapo? |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 5:42 am Post subject: 470 |
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Mr Nigma
CLASSIFIED
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Samadhi
+1
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| Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:46 am Post subject: 472 |
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I used to respect Ben Stein but that movie made me readjust my opinion of him.
_________________
And he lived happily ever after. Except for the dieing at the end and the heartbreak in between. |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sat Aug 07, 2010 12:33 am Post subject: 473 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 4:00 pm Post subject: 474 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 1:46 am Post subject: 475 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:12 am Post subject: 476 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 3:17 am Post subject: 477 |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:22 am Post subject: 478 |
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Zag
Unintentionally offensive old coot
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| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2011 4:33 am Post subject: 479 |
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While I appreciate the humor, I thought I'd get back to the actual point of this thread.
I just heard on some science program, probably Nova, that humans (that is, homo sapiens) have existed for only 200,000 years. A quick check on wikipedia confirms this, and I even found this cool graphic showing when and where all the major species of genus homo lived.
So, 200,000 years is only 8-10 thousand generations. In evolutionary terms, that's nothing, I thought. And yet, look at the impressive diversity of humans, from Pygmies to Inuit to Asian to Caucasian to the Australian aborigines. Does anyone else find this to be incredible?
Second question: Of all the non-aquatic mammals, there's only one without hair covering its body: homo sapiens. (With the ridiculous exception of some hairless dog and cat breeds, but they are just freaks.) Is this tied to intelligence somehow? Did, for instance, the lack of hair on the first mutants who were missing that gene force them to get smart quick or freeze? (Don't try to claim that it is a positive evolutionary step and mumble something about parasites unless you are ready to explain why no other species has made the same step.)
I'm fond of thinking that the hairlessness was the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That is, it is the origin of that story -- perhaps the first generation that was hairless actually did think that it was because of something Mom ate. |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2011 6:02 am Post subject: 480 |
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Maybe the need for body hair disappeared when clothing was invented. But then that might increase parasite problems as clothing is shared and inherited.
We apparently didn't evolve much in the last 200,000 years. The question is how long did it take Homo rhodesiensis to become us? |
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