Evolution? How?

rex

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The theist knows the answer... That love "precedes" all... The scientist conceives of love as a product of life and the theist sees life as a product of love...

.

Wow man, like look at all the colors.

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The General wrote:

Course that would be rude. Ill let gus do it.

and . . .

The Inimitable Ros wrote:

. . . it was a little more complex, requiring something other than a simple numeric answer, so I made mine as easy to answer as possible.

Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

You boys crack me up . . .

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spendius wrote:

timber wrote

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Care to provide substantiation for that assessment, spendi? Just what of the story of the human condition do archaeology, anthropology, and history get wrong?

As I've said earlier there are things which are "hid".
The human being is not an animal and no valid comparison can be made regarding behaviour with animals.Mankind's reproductive rates are not subject to deterministic criteria.The male animal is on a reflex.

Poppycock, balderdash, whole-cloth imagination, and consistent neither with logic and reason nor with observation. Apart from articficial exceptions gained through communication skills and technology, humankind is absolutely as environmentally dependent as any other living thing, plant, insect, or animal. If any creature on the planet may be considered "specially endowed to prosper and perservere", it would have to be the cockroach. Humankind in particular, due to physiology, is specially environmentally dependent; that's why there are such things as clothes and constructed dwellings.

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Why did Augustus introduce laws to try to get the state more babies and which class in Rome fought that legislation the most fiercely and defeat it.That class didn't have the sort of controls you mentioned.

Irrelevant.

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And why was the Aboriginal population stable for what they think is 25,000 years despite having plentiful food and a healthy outdoor lifestyle.

The human population remained in natural environmental equilibrium untill such time as humankind acquired and began to exploit the capability to alter the environment through technology - agriculture and organized, structured societies - like it or not, consistent with this that or another religious belief, that is fact. For thousands of years, humankind's capabilty to mold the environment remained rudimentary, effecting a control on population growth - a lesser control than prior to humankind's development of civilization, but a control none the less. Humankind's population growth began an exponential rise with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.. Like it or not, believe it or not, that's fact.

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Why was the birth rate in England 2.95/woman in 1964 and 1.63 in 2001.What factors in your post caused that.

Irrelevant

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If average age at marriage is 20 you get five generations per 100 years and if it is 25 four.What factors in your post cause such a change.Animals copulate as soon as the female is capable of reproduction and not before.In humans this age is about 13.What factors in your post lead to your age of consent being 18 (I'm told).It's 16 here.

Irrelevant.

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What factors in your post lead to the huge discrepancy between the number of babies a woman has and the number she is capable of (22-5).

Irrelevant.

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What factors in your post lead to normal women choosing to avoid reproduction altogether.And suppose they all did on a mass fertility strike organised by well to do feminist writers.

Irrelevant.

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What factors in your post cause reproductively capable men to cease reproductive activity when their wife does which is roughly 30 years earlier.

Irrelevant.

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History,archeology and to a lesser extent anthropology do tend to produce a record of ruling elites and are also distorted to some extent by the sensitivities of researchers which is one of the reasons why the Vatican library is so difficult of access.

Misinformed at best, ignorant at any stretch, and paranoid ranting to all appearance. The only massive conspiracy at work is that perpetuated by religionists so thoroughly bewildered they perceive science to be antithetical to the religious experience. Science neither need be nor is antithetical to the religious experience; science in fact deals not at all with the religious experience (except, perhaps, glancingly, through psychology and sociology, but that's neither here nor there). Some religionsits of the Fundamentalist Christian persuasion are so weak in their faith and limited in understanding they find its only validation in the concept of Biblical Inerrancy, a ludicrous proposition on its very face.

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I've recently been told that the Australian government give a $A 3000 grant to a mother on production of a baby.We do something similar but much less crudely.They get a house and a grant to pay the rent.France is currently engaged on a policy of increasing the population.

Irrelevant.

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The natural assets of the US are worthless without a certain number of people to exploit them.

What do you think is the optimum population size of the US and do you think there are think tanks trying to work it out and when they have decide how to get there.

Irrelevant.

Not all religionists, not even all Protestant Christian religionists, remain stubbornly mired in the intellectual dark ages. Founded in the Wesleyan Tradition and Evangelical in philosophy and mission, The Church of the Nazarene is the parent of Olivet Nazarene University, is a well-regarded, mainstream, religiously oriented, fully accreditted institution of higher learning. There, Dr. Richard Colling, PhD and Post Doctoral Honors, Biology, holds the Chair of the Biology Department. Dr. Colling happens as well to be an ordained Methodist minister, degreed a Doctor of Divinity. Dr Colling recognizes Creationism/ID for what it is; a hinderance to Christian understanding and an embarrssment to the entire Christian proposition. Just the other day,he had this to say:

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NOT SUCH INTELLIGENT DESIGN

SCIENCE TEST

Christians can't afford to oppose evolution

By Richard Colling

November 27, 2005

A high-profile trial is on public display in the Dover, Pa., school district's federal court case.

This controversial case concerns the fate of a new intelligent design science curriculum that some parents say is creationism in disguise.

A second important case, to be decided outside the courtroom in the arena of public opinion, also looms large. This case concerns how the public views Christians. And while perhaps not immediately apparent, either way the Dover school board case turns out, intelligent design will continue to severely damage the case for God and Christian faith.

Even worse, the damage is largely self-inflicted by Christian leaders' unwitting and undiscerning endorsements of intelligent design ...

... The reason for this liability is simple: While a growing array of fossils shows evolution occurring over several billion years, information arising from a variety of other scientific fields is confirming and extending the evolutionary record in thoroughly compelling ways.

The conclusions are crystal clear: Earth is very old. All life is connected. Evolution is a physical and biological reality.

In spite of this information, many Christians remain skeptical, seemingly mired in a naive religious bog that sees evolution as merely a personal opinion, massive scientific ruse or atheistic philosophy.

Coupled with these ideas, the anti-evolution tack of intelligent design proponents continues to propagate the myth that God and evolution are mutually exclusive realities. Scientific discovery does not require one to discard God ...

... another critical question flowing from the science-faith discussions is how Christians will be defined.

This question will largely be answered on the basis of public perceptions of scientific understanding among proponents of intelligent design ...

... Regarding the case for Christian faith, until intelligent design becomes more intelligent, the best hope is for an appeal.

Dr Colling gets it - the Creationists/IDers damage the credibilty of Christanity overall. I doubt the Creationist/Id crowd even is capable of conceiving, let alone conceding and redressing such a thing. No greater force is at work in the interest of marginalizing Christianity, driving The Public from its precepts, rendering the entire Christian Faith a laughungstock, than Creationism/ID. Perhaps in that the Creationist/ID crowd do humankind a service; they dig the hole into which will be buried the spectre of Fundamentalist Christianity. I say in that endeavor, which they so dearly embrace and vigorously pursue, "Best of luck. Keep up the good work; the world needs less of you".

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I am reminded of the Canadian television program, This Hour Has Twenty-two Minutes. In a short skit on Saturday, they lampooned two idiocies at once--they did a send-up of the popular home renovation shows, but with God as the interior designer--they called it Intelligent Design.

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real life wrote:

Hi Ros,

Maybe you've accepted it as a fact because you refuse to recognize any possibility of falsification of the theory.

Hi RL,

Nope, I've accepted it as fact because it *is* a scientific fact (within the realm of science, certain things are defined as fact, and evolution is one of them).

real life wrote:

Perhaps you'd like to address the topics of the magnetic fields or regarding retrograde motion with a little more vigor than your previous attempt, then.

What's to discuss. Some planets have magnetic fields. Others have retrograde motion. What the hell is your point? Do you think that the mere fact that these conditions exist in the Universe prove something? What do you think is proves?

Come on man, get real Smile

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The "controversy" was laid to rest in the 4th Century, by Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), who in his commentary on Genesis held that a literalist interpretation of creation demeaned the abilities and intention of The Creator. Augustine argued against the idea of any distinct miraculous creation for each and every one of all things and all creatures. It was Augustine's position that the universe was brought to be in a single act, an act through which Augustine's God put in place the conditions for all that developed subsequently - excepting only the human soul, which Augustine held to be eternal and divinely endowed, entirely separate from temporal and corporal concerns.

Augustine termed these conditions put in place by his God "seeds", and held that they would come to maturity in the fullness of time, each in its order, as the state of the universe and all in it developed to allow the flowering of these seeds, each in in its own time, manner, and place, as intended by The Creator. Each seed would, as any seed, develop into something complex and wonderful, inter-related, interdependent among, and in concert with each and every one of the seeds The Creator cast into being, and would generate seeds itself, in an ongoing and inevitabkle, divinely inspired process of unimaginable majesty.

What Augustine was saying is that his God enabled the universe to be, and caused it to be such a thing as it is. Arguably among the greatest Theologians of all time, even argubuably singularly the greatest, and indisputably a shaping force within Christianity to this day, Augustine got it too - more than a millenium and half ago. Nothing in Augustine precludes evolution, or the formation and demise and new formation of galaxies over untold Billions of years. Augustine knew nothing of such things, but the philosophy he developed allows for such, and from a theologically valid perspective, explains them very well and reconciles science and God. It was Augustine's view that Theology encompassed natural science, that it compelled it, that it was one with it.

There is no reason to not look to the past to determine the future course of Christianity. However, those who look no further into the past than a Century and a half miss the mark by a factor of ten, in the process diminishing their God and their Faith.

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fm-

First of all this is the Spirituality and Religion forum and I'm attempting to deal with questions on it in that light.Animals do not have spirituality or religion and humans are unknown without those in some form.Animals are all soma and humans are soma plus psyche.

I would agree with this-

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The human population remained in natural environmental equilibrium untill such time as humankind acquired and began to exploit the capability to alter the environment through technology - agriculture and organized, structured societies

It is precisely the "organized,structured societies" we are discussing.Which structures are the most important to us?To what extent is the development of patriarchy responsible for the sudden flowering of civilisations?

As a flat out scientist once said-"without a psychic inhibition,sexual energy can never be misdirected".
What animal uses psychic inhibition to engineer it's survival and its progress toward domination over nature?And the sole function of religion in the ideal state i.e.minus corruption, is such engineering.And how does a scientist provide such guidance when a scientist treats matters materially.He has no hope of providing psychic inhibitions which is a process not dissimilar to mass hypnotism.

It is very common in the area I am exploring to find more excitability than is normally associated with scientific reserve.

Don't allow yourself fm to think I hold a brief for ID or that I'm only 5 years old.I am attempting to treat a highly sensitive area of life in a scientific manner.I think that to remove the process of psychic inhibition by mass hypnotism will return any society that successfully achieves it to a matriarchal cultural setting and the derangement of all institutions.Even I might agree that that is a belief but the onus is on the other side,after,say,7000 years of patriarchy and still not complete,to show how it could be done when we have 2 million years of matriarchy to view with not a whit of progress in any direction discernable never mind such things as a detailed examination of fossil records or an analysis of radiations millions of light years old.

I am not interested in the particular methods of providing the psychic inhibitions,ID being one of many,and a bit of a new kid on the block,
but I believe it necessary that such provision takes place and a strict evolutionary approach has nothing to say on the matter and leaves society at the mercy of blind forces.As Veblen said-"the illegitimacy rate represents the triumph of the hormones over the proprieties."What has evolution to say about the proprieties.Nothing.Evolution,could it speak,would be aghast at an age of consent of 18.
And with psychic inhibition going on some solace or higher justification than horny scientists can hope to provide is neccessary.

How can anybody believe that religion is antithetical to science,least of all me.An assertion as fanciful as it is false.

Psychology and sociology neither here nor there-you must be joking.We are interested in running a successful operation not being right.The only thing that's right to a realist is what works.

It can be argued that science has run its course.A "second religiousness",as Spengler called it, is in the bud.I'm catching the bus mate like any sensible scientist would.I fear that you are too complacent fm.

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farmerman wrote:

rex
Quote:
The theist knows the answer... That love "precedes" all... The scientist conceives of love as a product of life and the theist sees life as a product of love...
.

Wow man, like look at all the colors.

Farmerman,

I see you have the luxury to ignore/deny a deity for your own self serving "science"... Science means little to me compared to God... You worship the creation without a single consideration as to where the creation came from. You see crude patterns and assume the patterns are the answer you seek. They only answer partly how... but not who, what or more often why... That is why I am not in the science forums insulting "scientists". Because I am not the one with the "issues"... I have answers in my life not questions.

You do not own science exclusively. But you act like you do... maybe you should not think so highly of yourself, it is unbecoming. That is just my opinion though.

You are not the only one with comprehensive skills.

I had a B+ in psychology and B in earth science...
I am talking from a scientific point of view too and my B in chemistry and A+ in geometry. I never really left college I continued on with my studies as I had been studying long before college... I am just more open to consider what cannot be seen. You have seemingly closed your mind to the ultimate goal of science... truth. I am not arguing against evolution and I ALSO personally believe the Bible teaches evolution... So that throws a monkey-wrench in your plan.. Some Christians believe in evolution you baboon... Smile

Ge 1:11 - Show Context
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so

Comment:
Does that sound like God says, poof there it is... No, "let the earth bring forth" indicates time passing...

I will submit that Christians do not know science sometimes or their Bible and scientists do not know Christians or the Bible. If you (christians/scientists) knew the Bible you would know that evolution is taught in the Bible... Religion keeps fooling you scientists into not seeing evolution in the Bible. Not that you would probably care anyway. Your (scientists) inability to see evolution in the Bible only leaves your nemesis strong and able to capture the name of God in their crusade against you.

The only thing created in Eden was spirit (which science is oblivious to). Everything else was created billions of years earlier according to the Bible.

So what is the darn rub? It says God "formed" humans and "made" them... Formed... to change form gradually over time? If you people would just get your studies right this discussion would cease to exist. THE BIBLE TEACHES EVOLUTION!!!!!!!! THE SEVEN DAYS ONLY MARK THE TIME WHEN HOLY SPIRIT WAS CREATED... The earth/humans were not created then according to the Bible but much earlier.

To make something and form something takes "time". To "create" something takes no time. THE ONLY THING CREATED IN EDEN WAS SPIRIT which was the image of God in humans (the human spirit). All other things other than the spirit were created perhaps billions of years earlier (according to the Bible).

How you all err and just spin and spin in your wheels. You involve each other in this rhetoric taunting each other over something in a book that was erroniously interpreted. I sit back and am just taken by such (forgive me for saying this) ignorance on both sides. There is an answer... It is evolution AND creation...

"God formed man from the dust of the ground..."

Comment: That is evolution!!! So once you take the evolution conflict from the Bible what does science have to say to deny an earlier creation like the big bang?

Scientists do not know this and most Christians and biblical people do not know this. Why? I guess because of some sort of worldly religious political system. Cheifly designed to keep you all dumb and at odds...

See I know...

All so you could "worship" yourself and your science exclusively. If you can dish out the insults you should be able to take a few back FM...

You think you and your scientist "goons" are the only ones who read over science articles every day. You think "Christians" live in a vacuum. I can tear down a computer and reassemble it in under 20 minutes. For the last 5 years all I have done with my life "24/7" is to read news/science on the internet. I have been on the internet for over 15 years. My first computer was a commodore 64 with no hard drive. I still managed to hook that Commodore up to a DX7 synthesizer through midi mastertracks and sequenced multitrack recordings on tape recording machines.

I am so steeped in science that that is all I can see around me constantly. I am a recording artist and computer technician devoted only to my "own" art... which is all pure technology, math and an admiration for science. I have lived a life that most people dream about. To have been an artist all of my life and had the time to really think about things. FM you are so quick to label... (evolution/christian) Well, I do not fit in any of your labels. Why? Because people are "more" than most silly labels.

I just thought I would let you know that I do take offence to your comment and I can and have stood with the best.

Peace with God

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It's more than science that you do not value.

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RexRed wrote:

Rosborne wrote (to reallife):

...there are certain definitions at work here which are undebatable. One being the definition of science, which precludes the assumption of the supernatural (deities of any form). So anyone, scientist or not, who assumes the existence of a deity is making an unscientific assumption. It doesn't make them a bad scientist, it just means their assessment of reality is an unscientific one. Nothing more.

My comment:
Science does not preclude anything...

Yes it does. It precludes the assumption of the supernatural, just like I said.

RexRed wrote:

It just has not observed the movements of God yet...

Science can't "observe the movements" of something which it is precluded from recognizing.

RexRed wrote:

The theist knows the answer... That love "precedes" all... The scientist conceives of love as a product of life and the theist sees life as a product of love...

Ya know, I really have to agree with Farmerman on this. It's a lovely sentiment, and I'm sure it gives you the warm fuzzies, but it really sounds like a 1960's hippie love fest, pass the acid please.

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She comes in colors in the air
She's everywhere
She's like a rainbow . . .

Wow, Dude . . . awesome . . .

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Quote:

real life wrote:
Hi Ros,

Maybe you've accepted it as a fact because you refuse to recognize any possibility of falsification of the theory.

Popper recognized the attendant sciences that serve to underpin many theories are themselves falsifiable , so , are, in themselves science as defined by him. He was always making a series of excuses for his mispeakings about what is, or is not, science. Evolution is merely

a synthesis made of scientific findings and evidence.

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rex, Id be a fool to respond to your posts. Im not being rude, I just dont know from where your coming and to where your points lead. Im not even sure that its theology. I say this a s one heavily steeped in Jesuit mind games , so much so that Ive been an early dropout of the Saul Train.

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Rex wrote:

I have been on the internet for over 15 years ...

<nostalgic chuckle> I remember 300-baud handset-cradle modems, tiny monochrome monitors, audio-cassette-based data-and-program storage and retrieval, 16kb being an incredible amount of RAM, and trying for busy-signal after busy-signal to connect my mostly self-built computer with a Bulletin Board.

You might say Ray Tomlinson planted the seed for what became email as early as 1971, while working with the US Department of Defense ARPANet project - the direct progenitor of the internet. Developed in 1986 as an alternate to ARPANet, the National Science Foundation's NSFNet first linked the 5 then-existing super-computer centers, then every major university, and by 1990, had entirely supplanted ARPANet, which was shut down that year. What was to be the Internet Backbone had come about.

In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, credited the Father of The Internet, developed the first browser and server - he called it a "Web Client" - envisioning a world in which anyone could go "On Line" and interact with anyone anywhere else in the world, in real time.

Before there was a 'Web, and before there were browsers and email clients, there was Usenet, born at Duke University in 1979, essentially as an outgrowth of "The Great Blizzard of '78". An eclectic, and near-impossible to navigate disjoointed, all-but-anarchically-organized aglommeration of individual repositories of information and discussion more or less between-and-among, for-and-by geeks, UseNet became a mass-market, general user proposition beginning in 1995, with the appearance of the now-defunct (Google ate it - read the February, 2001 Press Release) DejaNews, which brought a modicum of user-freindliness and logical organization to the unruly beast.

Before UseNet, there were Bulletin Boards, sort of like UseNet newsgroups, but each hosted on a particular machine, accessed by dialing in to that machine (often with a modem which held the handset of a standard telephone). While some Bulletin Boards boasted multiple dial-in modems, permitting more than one user to access the Bulletin Board simultaneoiusly, many were one-user-at-a-time deals; a user would access the Bulletin Board, leave a message for another user or the general membership of that particular Bulletin Board, disconnect, and return later to check for responses.

What we know as the 'Web of today dates to the mid '90s, with the introduction of Bill Gate's Windows 95 and the appearance of a version of Marc Andreesen's UNIX-based NetScape Browser compatible with Windows 95. The new browser accomodated a particular image display protocol which could only be read by NetScape; hence the near ubiquitous-at-the-time tag "This page best viewed with Netscape" and a link from which Netscape could be downloaded. By '96, Netscape had about 75% of the browser market, and there were perhaps a million "Websites" one could visit and experience with Netscape. By 2000, there were hundreds of millions of websites, Netscape had been purchased - and largely ignored by - AOL, itself then host to 10s of Millions of websites.

One easily may have been online 15, even 20 years ago, but the Internet and Web we know celebrated its 10th birthday this year, 2005.

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I remember dialing in with a sound like
"bweeeehoooooh blublublublublu blulabalabalabalaba eeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bweeep!.followed by a shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. then silence and then after what seemed like a weekend, something would appear and wed marvel. Could you imagine such a blow by blow interactive conversation.

We had a usenet set up with the EPA and DOE in the early 90s and it was all done with like a typeface series of lines, in which, if we ever had 3 or more people on the line the machines would grind to a halt, emit some e-fanity and then freeze tighter'n a.....

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We're pretty good us guys eh? I'm not sure if there's anything we can't do given motivation and a bit of time.

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And I'm with RexRed all the way till the wheels fall off and burn.

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Setanta wrote:

real life wrote:
Setanta wrote:
Your having referred to a catastrophism theory--which i had already derided, by the way--is meaningless unless you can demonstrate that there are astronomers of repute in statistically significant numbers who make such a contention as that catastrophism is an important and frequently observed factor in celestial mechanics.

Google Uranus collision

You'll find it's a frequently referenced theory including the NASA site.

I didn't deny that scientists occassionally allege catastrophic events. It is typical of your rhetorical style that you have ignored "an important and frequently observed factor in celestial mechanics." One swallow does not a summer make. As usual, you conflate a specific circumstance with the entire gamut of data and conclusions in a discipline--in this case, astronomy.

And, of course, as usual, you will do anything to avoid the question:

Do you assert that a creation is the best explanation for the diversity of life forms on this planet? If so, what is your circumstantial evidence that this so?

Hi Setanta,

You asked for a reputable source, and I gave NASA as one.

NASA > astronomers of repute

Mostly likely NASA just posted it on their site for fun, not because they thought it had any credence, right?

-------------------------

The most common theory to explain the retrograde motion of the 3 planets in question is, in each case, a planetary collision, an idea even suggested by the link you had originally posted, had you read it.

Aside from there being no real affirmative evidence of a planetary collision (such as the massive damage one might expect from crashing into another planetary object or similar) in the case of Uranus for example, Uranus also has several characteristics that would be very odd indeed for a planet that had suffered a catastrophic collision. It's orbit is much more circular than elliptical; Uranus' moons are relatively stable and orbiting it's equator which puts them perpendicular to the ecliptic; and Uranus' orbit itself lies very close to the ecliptic, not what you'd expect in the aftermath of a calamitous collision.

The whole concept of a planetary collision having changed the rotation of Uranus is just unsupported and probably unsupportable.

This then brings into question the common theory of planetary evolution which holds that these bodies were spun out into their orbits from a cloud of debris surrounding the sun. How can the retrograde motions of these planets be explained if they were all spun out from the same area in a similar manner?

There are many other characteristics of the planets of our solar system which defy the common planetary evolutionary hypothesis.

It's fun though because planetary collisions are also proposed to explain other anomalies in the other planets as well, probably because ........... well something must be said, you know and we can't just say they were made that way now, can we? Laughing

Our Solar system is positively a billiard table of activity, eh?

---------------------

I guess you'll do anything you can to avoid this. OK.

BTW it is hilarious that you keep asking if I believe in creation when I've taken that position for literally hundreds of pages. Keep it up. Ask again. Laughing

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real life wrote:

BTW it is hilarious that you keep asking if I believe in creation when I've taken that position for literally hundreds of pages. Keep it up. Ask again.

Actually, Setanta's question was a bit more than your characterization. It was clear and concise and has yet to be directly addressed.

setanta wrote:

Do you assert that a creation is the best explanation for the diversity of life forms on this planet? If so, what is your circumstantial evidence that this so?

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Thanks, Mesquite, although i doubt that he is any more prepared to respond now than he has been for the last several dozen pages . . .

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