Gratifying, in some small way, that one's writing might be accorded such recognition by these boards' unrivalled master of gratuitously prolix rambling.
A Brief Primer on Natural Selection:
Quote:In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection amid an explosion of controversy. Like the work of Copernicus in the 16th century revealing the movement of the Earth, Darwin's idea shook the foundations of the establishment and profoundly altered humanity's view of its place in the universe.
Today evolution is the unifying force in modern biology; it ties together fields as disparate as genetics, microbiology and palaeontology. It is an elegant and convincing explanation for the staggering diversity of Earth's five million or more living species.
Evolution has several facets. The first is the theory that all living species are the modified descendents of earlier species, and that we all share a common ancestor in the distant past. All species are therefore related via a vast tree of life. The second is that this evolution is driven by a process of natural selection or the - "survival of the fittest".
Darwin argued that all individuals struggle to survive on limited resources, but some have small, heritable differences that give them a greater chance of surviving or reproducing, than individuals lacking these beneficial traits. Such individuals have a higher evolutionary fitness, and the useful traits they possess become more common in the population because more of their offspring survive.
Eventually these advantageous traits become the norm. Conversely, harmful traits are quickly eradicated as individuals that possess them are less likely to reproduce. Natural selection therefore works to create a population that is highly suited to its environment, and can adapt to changes.
(Source: John Pickrell, New Scientist Magazine, September 4, 2006)
timber wrote-
Quote:master of gratuitously prolix rambling.
Another assertion.
Give me an example of any "gratuitously prolix rambling" you think I have produced so that I may have an opportunity to defend myself for otherwise I fear lynching on your say so is your chosen field.
I'm sorry to say it wande but that last quote is for simpletons.
spendius wrote:I'm sorry to say it wande but that last quote is for simpletons.
I am glad that you found it helpful, spendi.
spendius wrote:timber wrote-
Quote:master of gratuitously prolix rambling.
Another assertion.
Give me an example of any "gratuitously prolix rambling" you think I have produced so that I may have an opportunity to defend myself for otherwise I fear lynching on your say so is your chosen field.
Sure - happy to oblige. Here ya go:
Quote:Give me an example of any "gratuitously prolix rambling" you think I have produced so that I may have an opportunity to defend myself for otherwise I fear lynching on your say so is your chosen field.
wandeljw wrote:A Brief Primer on Natural Selection:
Quote:In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection amid an explosion of controversy. Like the work of Copernicus in the 16th century revealing the movement of the Earth, Darwin's idea shook the foundations of the establishment and profoundly altered humanity's view of its place in the universe.
Today evolution is the unifying force in modern biology; it ties together fields as disparate as genetics, microbiology and palaeontology. It is an elegant and convincing explanation for the staggering diversity of Earth's five million or more living species.
Evolution has several facets. The first is the theory that all living species are the modified descendents of earlier species, and that we all share a common ancestor in the distant past. All species are therefore related via a vast tree of life. The second is that this evolution is driven by a process of natural selection or the - "survival of the fittest".
Darwin argued that all individuals struggle to survive on limited resources, but some have small, heritable differences that give them a greater chance of surviving or reproducing, than individuals lacking these beneficial traits. Such individuals have a higher evolutionary fitness, and the useful traits they possess become more common in the population because more of their offspring survive.
Eventually these advantageous traits become the norm. Conversely, harmful traits are quickly eradicated as individuals that possess them are less likely to reproduce. Natural selection therefore works to create a population that is highly suited to its environment, and can adapt to changes.
(Source: John Pickrell, New Scientist Magazine, September 4, 2006)
Nice summation, but no reference to randomization in its many forms, why would that be?
Chumly wrote:Nice summation, but no reference to randomization in its many forms, why would that be?
Chumly: I only posted an excerpt from a longer magazine article. Since intelligent design is supposed to be an alternative to natural selection, I merely wanted to summarize what is meant by natural selection.
I realize that some randomness is involved. However, the fact that certain traits are favored over other traits because they improve chances for survival is in itself
not random.
Democritus of Abdera is supposed to have invented materialism for the amusement of his fellows, probably when at bottle, during the decline of Greek culture: the decline being possibly associated with the apathy generated by sceptics, sophists and other materialistic ideas such as those of Epicurus, about whom more another time, within the intellectual elite of that degenerate time.
The world, he claimed, is made up of stuff which moved and jostled and coagulated together forming things and fell apart (dust to dust) within the "void". Only "stuff" and the "void" were real everything else being subjective.
Einstein invented "mass" to replace "stuff" which was, in certain circumstances, possibly in all circumstances at different rates not detectable by human observation, interchangeable with energy and was considered to be nothing more than a distortion of the "void" in which it was supposed it was floating. Photons and neutrons and such like having little or no mass nor do fields while "particles" pop out of the void, destroying each other and pop back in again.
If the notion of a designer is considered to be a personification of this process, for those unfortunates who are not theoretical physicists with Einstein's grasp on things, much as the genii hidden in Aladdin's lamp might be a personification of the gift of fire, it may supply an explanation of the world for those who need one, alas a large number, and motivate a study of the interaction which in ongoing to this day.
As the study progresses in time and sophistication early theories are reduced by later ones and hence will render those theories obsolete which is why it is difficult to understand why modern spokespersons for science still refer to them unless they are fighting turf wars which have little to do with science. (Except social science and psychology of course).
Unfortunately cultures do not respond as quickly to change as science does and thus these early ideas become embedded in cultures through such things as beliefs, customs, traditions, habits of thought and action and taboos and the more so as the culture is successful and thus reinforcing of them. Giant cultures, such as our western Christian culture, are riddled from top to bottom with the like and from front to back and any sudden removals of them can be thought of in the same way that "cold turkey" can be thought of in the case of drug addiction.
Are such difficulties to be undergone by society merely to satisfy the whims of a few impatient citizens who have come to believe, yes believe, that they understand science after reading an article in National Geographic or watching a Discovery programme or, indeed, reading Mr Pickrell's spiel and who have a need to draw attention to themselves by undermining the foundations of our culture with explosives rather than piecemeal, designed refurbishment and when they seem to have great difficulty in deploying their own native language in anything other than barking sounds.
Because materialism represents common sense, enthrones it actually, it has found itself having to try to ignore the uncertainties of modern physics which tell us that the vast bulk of our bodies partakes of the "void" and the "stuff" of it is miniscule (as with the solar system and the universe) whereas to our common sense our bodies appear as solid objects as do all other objects which are also mostly "void" and contain the very most mysterious objects and fields of force which it is possible to imagine, and then some, known as sub-atomic particles.
This is to assume they are particles in the common sense use of such a word rather than manifestations which affect our observations as if they are particles. They can't be seen. Philosophers often use the word unobservables as a collective as we do "votes" or "cars".
Materialism has,self-indulgently, allowed itself to remain relatively unaffected by these discoveries as well it might. It cannot think of matter without contrasting it with non-matter and thus admitting the existence of the "void" about which it knows nothing nor ever can.
The bat, the chorus girl, the oak tree, the sun are bits of stuff within a seemingly infinite void: tiny, incomprehensible, scurrying around at unimaginable speeds and forming into transient objects and disintegrating again in an endless cycle in which that most mysterious of all things life plays an insignificant part.
Who is to say it is all designed or not?
Who is to say that the capacity of life which can give these forms a tautological coherence in a brief moment of infinite time is or is not designed?
Who is to say that the human capacity to deliberately adapt a few of these forms for its own use with intelligence is or is not designed?
A very brief, much oversimplified tour of "stuff" can be undertaken at a bargain price by Googling "Sub-atomic particles".
Common sense should be left on the car park.
Now the social consequences of various ideas are another matter entirely. Common sense is mandatory because life is neither "stuff" nor "void" but what puts your dinner on your plate and gas in your tank.
How's that timber for a bit of gratuitous prolix rambling?
wandeljw wrote:Chumly wrote:Nice summation, but no reference to randomization in its many forms, why would that be?
Chumly: I only posted an excerpt from a longer magazine article. Since intelligent design is supposed to be an alternative to natural selection, I merely wanted to summarize what is meant by natural selection.
I realize that some randomness is involved. However, the fact that certain traits are favored over other traits because they improve chances for survival is in itself
not random.
I was just wondering. I understand the difference between saying evolution is directed and saying evolution contains some things which are ordered (well at least to the critical mind's perceptions and scientific discipline some evolutionary characteristics appear ordered - in fact as a bit of ironic humor; to the non-critical mind's perceptions and non-scientific disciplines, some things appear ordered too).
timber wrote-
Quote:Sure - happy to oblige. Here ya go:
Quote:
Give me an example of any "gratuitously prolix rambling" you think I have produced so that I may have an opportunity to defend myself for otherwise I fear lynching on your say so is your chosen field.
I'm content to allow our viewers to form their own opinion on that.
I'm sure those who might care to already, and long since, have.
A cybernetic parasitic being has invaded Spendi's body, recognizable by a small gill flap on the back of the neck. It's an open question whether this represents an evolutionary change in the sense of fitness, or a random outside influence destined for unknowable realms.
Just teasin' yah.
timber wrote-
Quote:I'm sure those who might care to already, and long since, have.
I'll agree with that.
Chum wrote-
Quote:A cybernetic parasitic being has invaded Spendi's body, it is recognizable by a small gill flap on the back of the neck. It's an open question whether this represents an evolutionary change in the sense of fitness or a random outside influence destined for unknowable realms.
Tease or no tease it does feel a bit like that at times.
My difficulty with stuff and the void is I can't see how it could form itself into bodies where when one of them starts riffling through a wad of twenties the other starts getting its kecks down.
It's difficult to imagine that happening by random chance with only "stuff" and the "void" to start off with.
It's nice thinking it is intelligently designed by some prankster for his amusement. Anti-ID is humourless. Right to its quark bottoms and its glueon charms and fermionic no-valence flavors.
If you are uncomfortable with evolution standing on its own two feet (pun) there is a much more plausible explanation than either popular traditional religions or ID, plus as a bonus it allows for the potential of a structure and/or purpose beyond earthly evolution:
That is of course the tenets of the British Labor Party!
In more seriousness I suggest directed panspermia.
Quote:A second prominent proponent of panspermia is Nobel prize winner Professor Francis Crick, OM FRS, who along with Leslie Orgel proposed the theory of directed panspermia in 1973. This suggests that the seeds of life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Crick argues that small grains containing DNA, or the building blocks of life, fired randomly in all directions is the best, most cost effective strategy for seeding life on a compatible planet at some time in the future. The strategy might have been pursued by a civilization facing catastrophic annihilation, or hoping to terraform planets for later colonization.
Other proponents of panspermia believe that life never evolved from inorganic molecules, but that it has existed as long as all other forms of matter. This is an extension of panspermia called cosmic ancestry.
Theoretically, by humans traveling to other celestial bodies such as the moon, there is a chance that they carry with them microorganisms or other organic materials ubiquitous on Earth, thus raising the curious possibility that we can seed life on other planetary bodies. The same can be said for unmanned probes manufactured on Earth. This is a concern among space researchers who try to prevent Earth contamination from distorting data, especially in regards to finding possible extraterrestrial life. Even the best sterilization techniques can not guarantee that potentially invasive biologic or organic materials will not be unintentionally carried along. So far, however, in the limited amount of space exploration conducted by humans, "terrestrial pollution" does not appear to be a problem although no concrete studies have investigated this. The harsh environments encountered throughout the rest of the solar system so far do not seem to support complex terrestrial life. However, it should be noted that matter exchange in form of meteor impacts has existed and will exist in the solar system even without human intervention, for example Martian meteorites show that at least in principle life can travel from planet to planet without intelligent help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Directed_panspermia
spendius wrote:timber wrote-
Quote:I'm sure those who might care to already, and long since, have.
I'll agree with that.
Chum wrote-
Quote:A cybernetic parasitic being has invaded Spendi's body, it is recognizable by a small gill flap on the back of the neck. It's an open question whether this represents an evolutionary change in the sense of fitness or a random outside influence destined for unknowable realms.
Tease or no tease it does feel a bit like that at times.
My difficulty with stuff and the void is I can't see how it could form itself into bodies where when one of them starts riffling through a wad of twenties the other starts getting its kecks down.
It's difficult to imagine that happening by random chance with only "stuff" and the "void" to start off with.
It's nice thinking it is intelligently designed by some prankster for his amusement. Anti-ID is humourless. Right to its quark bottoms and its glueon charms and fermionic no-valence flavors.
Spendius...
...where credit is due...credit ought to be given.
You are an absolute master at almost saying something...without every actually saying anything. And you use so many words in the effort. I guess that falls under the category of "Everyone has got his/her forte."
Let's see what you can do with this post. I've given you lots of opening. I'm interested to see if you can do anything with them.
My question to Spendi had a fun blend; it inferred the evolutionary implications of viral invasions, parasitic to symbiotic transformations, fitness versus random events, and cybernetics on the implications of evolution going forward.
Frank-
I just watch women. They just had to be designed. I see the Dick van Dyke shows as the science fiction of another world.
I'm betting there's no women out there.
Chum quoted-
Quote: show that at least in principle life can travel from planet to planet without intelligent help.
Yes Chum- we know that. The maternity wards are overwhelming proof of the scientific rigour of your statement.
Are you then saying that femoral intercourse (if argued as evolutionarily beneficial to Homo sapiens sapiens) would be more a question of fitness or of random event?
