Global Warming vs. Terrorism

Chris Jury wrote:

Uh, no, evolution is very much proven, as much as anything ever can be proven.

LF: Not to me and hundreds of millions of other people. You may
believe what you wish to believe.

Millions of people also believe in alien abduction. Millions of people believe that intercourse with a virgin cures AIDS. Science is not agreed upon by a committee of the masses.

Evolution is a scientific theory yes,
just like Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

LF: No, it isn't anything like Newton's theory of gravity. I
don't need any geek with a college degree to tell me that
graivity exists, so it isn't even a theory to me. Newton has
nothing to do with it. Gravity exists whether Newton was
born or not.

I agree, it is difficult to concieve a world where we do not have an understanding of gravity, but without being taught of the existence of gravity we do not come to an understanding of it on our own. Without being taught about gravity we'd be just like people hundreds of years ago. We'd know that theings fall, but we wouldn't know how or why. We'd know that smoke rises and doesn't fall, but we wouldn't know how or why. So yes, to understand anything at all about what gravity is or how it acts, we DO need to be taught.

Evolution is and has been an observable and demonstrable phenomenon in natural populations.

LF: Wrong. No one has ever witnessed a species of vertebrate
become another species. There isn't anything but the sketchiest
of circumstantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that this
has ever taken place.

Speciation is not evolution, it is merely a consequence of evolution. Evolution is a change in allele frequencies at a given locus in a population. This has been observed countless times. These changes can lead to speciation, though it is usually a slow process. There are several well documented cases where it looks like evolution is leading to speciation as we speak (e.g., Hawthorne flies).

The data is anything but circumstantial. We have direct measurments of changes population genetics from countless species and countless studies.

To reject evolutionary theory you also really have to reject germ theory. If you do then you should only need one flu shot in your lifetime and will never get the flu again. Of course, that's not the case.

Arguing that evolution does not exist in any form is utter nonsense.

LF: That's what YOU think. I disagree with you. Nor can you offer
anything resembling concrete evidence to substantiate your
claims. All you can do is say "someone smarter than me told
me it is true, therefore it must be".

Ha, well, that's a little silly. I do have an undergraduate degree in evolutionary biology, so yes people have told me it's true, but pretty much everything we do in biology relies on the fact that it is true. Let me give an example: a friend of mine works on the sucseptibility of zooxanthellae (unicellular algae that live symbiotically with corals) to temperature stress. She's investigating physiological mechanisms, but putting her work into the context of the phylogenetic relationships of the zooxanthellae. There are a variety of clades (right now we just refer to them as "clades" because nobody has actually done the taxanomic work to figure out exactly where the splits should go--e.g., are these different genera, different families, different subspecies???). Tolerance to high temperature stress, as she and others have found, is strongly related to phylogenetic groupings. Certain groups exhibit high tolerances to elevated temperatures while others do not, at least amongst most of the types in each clade.

This is exactly the relationship we'd expect through an adaptive radiation of species over evolutionary time. When we look at other pieces of DNA that have nothing to do with any of this (mitochondrial, etc.) we see that the predicted pattern of speciation lines up precisely with the observed temperature tolerances. Indeed, as clades split off from each other (most zoox. are younger than 10 million years old, and many younger than 3 million) among the differences that defined them were different tolerances to environmental characteristics, such as temperature. Clade A is generally tolerant of high light. Clade B is generally tolerant of lower light, and some are adapted to low temp. Clade C is sensitive to temp. changes, but highly productive. Clade D is generally tolerant of high temps, but not as productive as clade C. Clade E is little studied. Clade F is very tolerant of high temps. When we look at the rest of their genomes we see an evolutionary basis for all of these relationships.

So, I don't need anyone "smarter than" me to tell me evolution is happening. My work and the work of my collegues demonstrates this fact constantly.

For some reason people have gotten the unfortunate idea that evolution is somehow at odds with a belief in a higher power or purpose in life. That is a very unfortunate misunderstanding. Understanding mechanisms in the natural world, I would think, shouldn't be enough to shake someones faith...

LF: That is an utterly irrelevant paragraph. I haven't said anything
about any "higher power".

Ok, disregard it then.

LF: Darwinian evolution is a shabby theory supported by
scant circumstantial evidence open to other interpretations.
That scant circumstantial evidence is only accepted as proof
by people who have decided in advance that the the ToE is
a fact and who have never examined the alleged evidence
supporting it.

What other interpretations are plausible? What is the supporting evidence for other interpretations? Which observations are at odds with evolutionary theory?

Again, evolution is not based on circumstantial evidence, it is observed, demonstrable fact (see above).

LF: Sure. The univierse is evolving in a sense. Becoming. But it
has nothing to do with so-called "random mutation" or
"competition for scarce resources". Nor is everthing evoloving
on the same path.

Darwinian evolution explains how and why living things evolve. It makes no attempt to explain how and why the universe changes. That's a bit like expecting a philosphy book to explain trigonometry.

LF: It's a good thing for us that the soil bacteria aren't mutating
and evolving at the rate that the ToE would have us believe
they would have to be. If they were, the planet would be
in big trouble indeed.

Huh? Soil bacteria most certainly are mutating and evolving at rapid rates. That is measured, and while I'm no expert on soil bacteria, I'd venture a guess that is has been measured many times.

Why would the planet be in trouble?

Also, a particularly interesting case involves the evolution of nylonase by a few species of bacteria. Nylon has existed only since 1935. In 1975 a team of Japanese scientists announced that they had discovered a Flavobacterium sp. that could digest byproducts of the nylon. These substances had never existed before, and are indigestible by normal bacteria. These bacteria, however, had undergone evolutionary changes and were able to use a suite of 3 enzymes to break down the nylon byproducts. This fairly sophisticated case of evolution occurred in less than 40 years.

People also forced evolution of another bacterium in a similar way in the lab. They took Psuedomonas aeruginosa and gave them nylon byproducts, but essentially no other nutrient sources. These bacteria developed an entirely different enzymatic system which also allows them to use nylon as a food source.

There are fungi near Chernobyl that use energy gained from melanin and radioactivity to produce energy--the same fungi from elsewhere cannot do this.

Yes, evolution is, as I said, observed fact.

LF: If there was even a significant amount of real compettition
in Nature, it would cease to exist. Just as all human societies
with a significant amount of competition have ceased to
exist.

Huh? Just about every organism is competing for some resource--either between species, or within a species. Also, every human society competes with other societies. I mean, we can't just go over to China a take their natural resources. They would (rightly) blow us up. Likewise, they cannot come over here and just grab our resources because we would (rightly) blow them up. We are most definitely competing. Two pines growing in a forest don't compete for light and nutrients if they are far apart, but they do if they are close together. If two sapling pines are growing right next to each other, they can't both make it. One has to die for one of them to survive. Without some other kind of intervention, eventually one outcompetes the other and survives while the other dies due to light limitation, or nutrient limitation. Pine trees don't cease to exist, nor do human societies. It is evident, however, that most of the organisms that are ever born die before they are able to produce a whole lot of offspring, if any at all.

LF: Competition is just negative cooperation. What if they
held a war and nobody came?

Huh?

Chris

 

Darwin didn't come up with the theory of evolution. His grandfather wrote about it long before. Charles Darwin's job was to simply promote the theory, which is really the religion of the inner elite. It's a masonic doctrine, which is the natural right to rule by an elite. That's why these people can kill millions of people and rationalize it.

 

Holy cow dude. I used to think that you just had strong, unfounded opinions. I am now beginning to think you may seriously be a little nuts.

In any event, Darwin was not the first person to suggest that there may be some sort of development of life over time. He was the first to figure out why (natural selection). He also sat on his data and writings for 20 years before he published because he knew that it would prove controversial, at least amongst literal interpreters of the Bible (of which his wife was one, and he loved her dearly).

Darwinian evolution is not a masonic doctrine. I did not recite any oaths at any point, that I can promise you. It is no religion--in fact, it is quite the opposite. Religion relies on faith--belief in the absense of evidence, or in contradiction to evidence. There is no counterevidence to evolutionary theory, and copious supporting evidence. Indeed, it is the opposite of a religion.

I'm unaware of any evolutionary biologists that "can kill millions and rationalize it." I, for one, have not killed millions of people, that I can promise.

Now, speaking very seriously for just a moment, it may be very worthwhile to see a doctor just to make sure everything is ok. Such extreme paranoia may be a sign that there is something that is worth taking a look at. Either that, or you're extremely high every time you come to this site

Best of luck,

Chris

 

There can be no counterevidence to evolutionary theory if there is no evidence of evolution to begin with. The trick of Darwin was to make you think we somehow just evolved in 200,000 BC, and before that he even said 10,000 BC. It's all utter rubbish that has been promoted with an agenda. Because I can guarantee you that people like Darwin and those behind him certainly didn't believe they evolved from apes. These people believe that they have been "perfected" and reincarnated into their current bodies with the natural right to rule over those they consider lesser. As I said, Darwinism was promoted as the justification for the few "superior" to rule over what they saw as the many "inferior." This goes hand in glove with eugenics and is very much the basis for the belief system the nazis held.

 

And no, I am not paranoid. I am simply tuned into knowledge that is beyond your comprehension. Like the erudite pseudo-intellectual you are, you believe everything can be explained by science and science alone, and that the key to understanding life can be found in equations and scientific formulas. I personally do not hold this belief, but to each their own. I have spent many years studying the occult and secret societies. I have traced the lineages of the aristocratic Darwin family and people close to them. I understand that the reality we are sold from the time of birth is not really the way it is, and that certain beliefs and theories are almost always presented and promoted with an underlying agenda. No, my mind is very much sound. To be paranoid is to exhibit unfounded fear or suspicion. To a person who believes in the world as it is presented to them on TV, I can see how I might appear crazy to them.

 

There can be no counterevidence to evolutionary theory if there is no evidence of evolution to begin with.

If nothing else, this statements lets me know that you do not understand what counterevidence is. Counterevidence does not depend on the existence or lack of existence of evidence. If I say that matter repells other matter (utterly proposterous) there are many easy ways to test this. Drop a rock, observe that it falls toward the Earth, not away from it. This is counterevidence to the statement above.

The trick of Darwin was to make you think we somehow just evolved in 200,000 BC, and before that he even said 10,000 BC.

Huh? Modern humans, we now know, are in the neighborhood of 100,000 - 200,000 years old. In Darwin's time, they didn't have many of the techniques we have available today to figure out something's age. Most at the time were guessing that the Earth was on the order of many millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of years old. No one knew that the Earth is actually about 4.5 billion years old because they did not have the techniques to determine age like this.

It's all utter rubbish that has been promoted with an agenda.

Darn all those biologists with their fossils and genetics. Darn them with their cell theory and germ theory. Darn them with their modern medicine, with their vaccines to life-threatening illnesses, and discoveries which alone feed 1/4 the world's population. I know that I personally go about kicking puppies and convincing teenagers to have premarital sex, not doing research. I know, I'm just another of those darned scientists.

Because I can guarantee you that people like Darwin and those behind him certainly didn't believe they evolved from apes.

Well no, not living apes. The only people that think we evoloved from extant apes are those that don't understand human evolution. Yes, we did evolve from apes that are now extinct. Really it's a bit funny to talk about thing in this way though because, for all practical purposes, we ARE apes. We may well be very intelligent, relatively hairless apes, but we are apes just the same. If chimpanzees are apes and gorillas are apes and organgatans are apes, then most certainly humans are apes.

These people believe that they have been "perfected" and reincarnated into their current bodies with the natural right to rule over those they consider lesser.

Ok? Well, I don't personally believe in reincarnation nor do I think I have the right to rule over anyone. Several of the greatest evolutionary biologists have been atheists, so they certainly didn't believe in reincarnation either. Not every concept is an attempt by the "elite" to control you. Besides, evolutionary biologists are anything but elite, that I can promise. Most good scientists rarely get payed even a fraction of what they're worth.

Chris

 

Chris, nice posts! Thanks for standing up for science in a forum full of scientific ignorance!

But personally, it gets really old trying to explain the basics of biology/geobiology. So I'm bowing out of this bullshit, mainly b/c I have more important things to worry about than the opinions of uneducated (and paranoid) people.

BTW, wait til the name calling begins; that is usually after people can no longer argue against overwhelming facts and have nothing else to go on but their opinion.

Peace and love

 

Seconded; very well said Chris. I gave up arguing with fundamentalist faith-heads a while back (superstition takes many forms), but nice to see your intelligent posts speaking up for reason and evidence over childish ignorance and assertion

 

The thing is, I think some of you might be scientifically illiterate yourselves, as there is much evidence in the field of physics, biology and cosmology that has lead many scientists to question Darwin's theory -- which is literally disporven as older and older fossils are dug up, showing that man is far older than we have been lead to believe. Some of you are simply too arrogant and have been brainwashed into thinking that anyone who questions the disproven Darwinian theory to be religious fundamentalists or paranoid kooks.

 

Cite your sources.

Peace and love

 

To answer the poll, the biggest threat is ignorance.

Peace and love

 

The thing is, I think some of you might be scientifically illiterate yourselves, as there is much evidence in the field of physics, biology and cosmology that has lead many scientists to question Darwin's theory

What evidence? This is a very, very bold claim. I'd like to know very specifically what evidence you suggest is contradictory to Darwinian evolution. I have never met nor heard of a biologist who did not accept and appreciate Darwinian evolution who was not also a staunch religious zealot rejecting the theory in spite of evidence, not because of it.

many scientists to question Darwin's theory -- which is literally disporven as older and older fossils are dug up, showing that man is far older than we have been lead to believe.

Huh? Modern humans are on the order of 100,000 - 200,000 years old as a species. These estimates have not changed in quite a long while. Of course our estimates do improve though as we gather more data. That is how science works--as new evidence comes in we improve our theories.

Now, if we found a 3 billion year old human skeleton, we'd really have to rethink things, but nothing remotely like that has ever happened. No counterevidence to Darwinian evolution has ever been produced because, beyond all but the faintest shadow of doubt, it is the truth.

Some of you are simply too arrogant and have been brainwashed into thinking that anyone who questions the disproven Darwinian theory to be religious fundamentalists or paranoid kooks.

I have only ever met two types of people that reject evolution. The most common are those people that do not understand what evolution is, how it works, or what the evidence is in support of it. Most people indeed are quite ignorant about what evolution is and how it works. This is unfortuante.

The other type of person I've known are those people who believe that evolution is at odds with their religion and reject it on these grounds. For these people, they honestly and truly think that belief in Darwinian evolution leads to innumerable suffering and sinnfulness. For these people it is a decision between 1) accepting what is true, and what many of them in their hearts likely know is true, but then risking the consequences of such belief (though I would have to say that these consequences bare no semblance of reality), or 2) rejecting any amount of evidence no matter how convincing, no matter even if the theory is correct, in an attempt to prevent what they believe will be a moral catastrophe. If a person truly believes that Darwinism leads to all manner of sinfulness and suffering and, ultimately, eternal damnation, it doesn't matter to them whether the theory is right or not--they will oppose it with everything they have.

So Pressed_Rat, you and littlefoot fit into the first category of people that reject Darwinian evolution. You guys are, I'm sure, very intelligent human beings, but you are gravely uninformed and misinformed on what evolution is and how it works.

Best,

Chris

 

Thanks for the kind words hippie chick and lithium. These conversations can be frustrating, but they are worthwhile I think if only for all the lurkers who read the posts but do not comment themselves.

Best,

Chris

 

Chris Jury wrote:

"So Pressed_Rat, you and littlefoot fit into the first category of people that reject Darwinian evolution. You guys are, I'm sure, very intelligent human beings, but you are gravely uninformed and misinformed on what evolution is and how it works."

Yeh. That's the sort of thing all ideological bullies say: "You disagree with
me, therefore you are ignorant and stupid. "

Save it for the peasants, junior.

I've studied the theory of Darwinian evolution very carefully. I've also
spent many years living intimately with Nature, observing it with my own
eyes.

All people like you do is read textbooks and websites and journals.

One of the things I observed during a long stay in a wilderness area
was that the local wolf pack and the local mountain lion co-existed
peacefully. And obviously had for a very long time.

Both are large predators, and if Nature is based on competition
like the Darwinians tell us, then why didn't the wolves kill
off the mountain lion ages ago? They obviously could.

Littlefoot

 

Seriously, why do you attack anyone who disagrees with you?

Peace and love

 

Haha, are you suggesting that's a bad thing?

"People like you, you can prove anything with facts!"

 

He called me "ignorant". First.

Why didn't you ask him why he attacks anyone who disagrees
with him?

You claim to be a clear thinker, yet you clearly are not.

Nice of you to follow me over here from this thread to resume
your bitchy attacks.

http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3880520#post3880520

You and your fellow Darwinist fanatic, Chris, are going to have to
learn that no one with a functioning mind is going to accept you
as the world's foremost authorities on the nature of reality just
because you can parrot ideas from the same sources.

A lot of us think that the Theory of Evolution is bunk.

You'll just have to learn to live with the fact that there are people
on this planet who can think for themselves and that you
can't bully into submission.


Littlefoot

 

It obviously is if the books and journals and websites are filled
with falsehoods.

Anyone can write anything and publish it.

Scores of millions of people can believe things to be true that
turn out to be false.

This has happened over and over again in the history of humanity.

Take a look at the history of science. It is a history of theories
that are universally accepted by the scientific establishment
that have later turned out to be false.

Littlefoot

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review

Science is a process of refining and perfecting. Many of Darwin's ideas were plain wrong, but evolutionary biology and genetics have filled in the gaps, falsified the parts of the theory which were incomplete or inaccurate and demonstrated the process of evolutionby natural selection and random mutation. As an example, notably Darwin adhered to Lamarckian somatic heredity, having no concept of genetic heredity, and this was plain wrong.

Even the Thomas Kuhn, whose notion of incompatible competing paradigms you are (possibly unknowingly) espousing did not finally believe that science, because it does not know everything, knows nothing. Theories which are truly scientific (ie. adhere to Popperian falsifiability etc) have doubt, scepticism and refinement at their very core and are never regarded to be final, fixed and true, but that does not mean that they are not far more accurate and demonstrate far more knoweldge about the way things are than what went before. Theories which are exceptionally well established and backed by plenty of evidence such as evolution are certainly not complete, we still have plenty more to learn, but to suggest that the whole paradigm will be overturned (by what - a creator-god hypothesis perhaps?) is naive in the extreme and akin to suggesting that our notions of gravity may turn out to be wrong. We still need to discover the mechanisms of gravity, the nature of the force (gravitons, etc) but the way it works on a non-quantum level is incredibly well understood, a theory which unifies and explains all the evidence.

Learn about the real process and progress of science and you will begin to understand how ill-informed you sound...

 

Littlefoot,

I very clearly and carefully detailed that I DO NOT think that you guys are stupid. Rather what I said and what I meant is that you ARE misinformed and ignorant on what Darwinian evolution is and how it works. This is very clearly demonstrated by what you've posted in this thread.

Of course wolves and mountain lions don't competitively exclude each other--if they did, there would only be one of those species, as you say. The two species occupy different niches. One species is better at doing some things and surviving in some situations than the other. They are able to coexist precisely BECAUSE they have diverged in their fundamental niches over evolutionary time. We see this even more clearly in Africa with a variety of large predators--each does goes about life in a slightly different way. This allows them to coexist in some places, but not everywhere. Indeed, in many parts of sub-saharan Africa lions outcompete hyenas and wild dogs and successfully exert competitive dominance. They can't and don't do it everywhere though, so those species and many others coexist.

You said that evolution is speciation. That is absolutely NOT what it is. That is a bit like saying that a guy losing his job and an economic recession are the same thing, or a rock and Mount Everest. No, no they are not the same.

You claimed that Darwinian evolution has problems because it can't explain comologic development, something that it makes no attempt to explain. As I said, that's like expecting philosophical theories to explain trigonometry--the two are independant.

No I do not just read journals etc., I and my collegues go out and do the work that gets published in those journals.

I never meant to insult you and don't mean to now, but as I've pointed out here, making these sorts of statements lets us all know that you DO NOT understand what evolotion is or how it works. You are trying to reject something without even understanding what you're rejecting.

Chris