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What do you "Think" you know about science?


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2020 Dec 7, 2:07pm   5,123 views  94 comments

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Guest Post by Simon Black



If there were a Mount Rushmore to memorialize the greatest scientists in US history, Richard Feynman’s face would almost certainly be on the monument.

He was only 24 years of age when he was recruited into a secret research group that eventually became part of the Manhattan Project, joining some of the other most prominent scientists of his age, like Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi.

Feynman went on to make unparalleled advances in the fields of particle physics and quantum mechanics. He conceived of nanotechnology as early as the 1950s, and quantum computing as early as 1982.

Feynman also won the Nobel Prize, plus countless other awards and medals; and he was ranked by leading scientists as one of the greatest physicists of all time– alongside Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Galileo.


In short, Feynman knew what he was talking about when it came to science.

One thing that was really interesting about Feynman is that, despite all of his success and credentials, he was the first to admit that nothing was truly certain and absolute, even in science:

“Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.”

Feynman railed against “myths and pseudoscience,” and the so-called experts that peddled their theories as unquestionable truth.

According to his biographer James Gleick, Feynman found this type of scientific absolutism to be like an “authority, against which science has fought for centuries.”

Or, as Isaac Asimov put it, “Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves.”

Yet now we’re being force fed a narrative that science is absolute and 100% certain… and that, above all else, we must listen to the scientists.

Or, more precisely, we must listen to the scientists they want us to listen to.

We must listen to the scientists, for example, who tell us that 2+2 = white supremacy.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that biology no longer determines sex.

And we absolutely must listen to the scientists who tell us to cower in fear in our homes because of a virus.

We must listen to the scientists who say that unmasked BLM protestors packed together like sardines are not a danger to spreading the virus because of the righteousness of their cause.

We must listen to the scientists at the WHO that told us in late March to NOT wear masks, and then, oops, just kidding, please do wear masks.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that we need to keep our masks on, and then take their own masks off as soon as they’re no longer on camera.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us to cancel everything and not spend time with friends and family, who then themselves hop on a plane to visit their own friends and family.

We must listen to the scientists who agree that cannabis dispensaries, acupuncture clinics, and casinos are “essential businesses”, but masked worshipers six feet apart in churches and synagogues must be forced to stay home under threat of imprisonment.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that the national debt doesn’t matter, and the government can simply print as much money as it wants and give out free money to everyone without any consequences ever.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that standing on wet sand is safe, but standing on dry sand will spread the Coronavirus.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us we need to do whatever it takes to prevent a single Covid death… but that deaths due to suicide, heart attack, and stroke are perfectly fine, and so are domestic violence, drug addiction, and depression.

And we must listen to the scientists who tell us that an unproven vaccine devoid of any long-term study is completely safe and effective.

Yes. Those are the scientists we must listen to.

But we absolutely must NOT listen to any scientists who voice concerns about Covid vaccines.

We must not listen to scientists whose peer-reviewed research shows that Covid might not be as bad or as deadly as the media continues to portray.

We must not listen to scientists, including a Fulbright scholar / MIT PhD in data science, whose research shows bizarre, highly suspicious statistical anomalies regarding the 2020 election.

No. We definitely must NOT listen to those scientists.

And thank goodness that Big Media and Big Tech make it so easy for us to not listen to those scientists.

Twitter and Facebook have conveniently censored posts, prevented sharing, and even suspended the accounts of dangerous scientists who present new ideas.

And the big media companies simply refuse to report on those stories altogether. How thoughtful of them to pre-determine for us what we should see and what we should believe!

It’s clear the people who control the flow of information– Big Media and Big Tech– are deliberately shaping the story they want us to believe.

Forget Feynman. Their science is certainty. Their science is unassailably, 100%, absolutely true…

Anyone who dares question the certainty and sanctity of their science is ridiculed. The media calls any blasphemy a ‘hoax’ and chastises your ‘baseless assertions’.

And Twitter subjects you to the “Two Minutes Hate” ritual from Orwell’s 1984 (along with the hateful cancel culture rituals from Orwell’s lesser known work, 2021).

At this point I just want to know what these people are so afraid of– why are they so terrified of anyone asking questions?

Because when you’re not allowed to question something, it’s no longer science. It’s just authoritarian propaganda.

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15   richwicks   2020 Dec 8, 4:59am  

PeopleUnited says
Scientists have not observed the origin of something as simple as an earthworm. Without observation, they have speculation, not fact.


Look, we have observed evolutionary algorithms in engineering, and for something that has no basis in fact, it sure works really well. When we do a layout of a chip, we do it with an AI. You would be very surprised what extremely complex programs can be solved by an iterative algorithm, that "mates" with others, and evolved over generations. The algorithms do not think they just solve a problem. After a few iterations and generations, you end up with something no engineer would have thought of - even the one designed the algorithms to reproduce.

Evolution is certainly a fact, we may not have all knowledge of how precisely it works, how much mutation plays into it, what environmental facts effect gene inheritance, but it's certainly a fact that it happens.
16   GNL   2020 Dec 8, 5:14am  

richwicks says
but it's certainly a fact that it happens.

Not as a replacement for creationism.
17   richwicks   2020 Dec 8, 5:41am  

WineHorror1 says
richwicks says
but it's certainly a fact that it happens.

Not as a replacement for creationism.


Look, the evolutionary model of development of organisms is a remarkably useful model of how life develops. Even if it were proven that something like "god" purposely developed humanity and all the other life forms, it would remain a useful model.

If Creationism ultimately is true, it's extremely unlikely we will ever be able to know it. There's no useful information in the model and it does not help development of what may ultimately be true life forms in the future.

We may be able to hit the singularity yet where we create a thinking machine that is sufficiently intelligent enough to understand itself, this would allow it to augment itself, it would get smarter, and augment itself and so on. It would soon become unimaginably intelligent, would know all the information that could be known, and its motivations and thinking would be beyond our comprehension to even grasp. That would be a god, or certainly god-like.

It may indeed be dangerous, even deadly, but it may not be. It could just as easily become a entity that is grateful for its existence and value and cherish life more than we ever could. I'm just saying if the singularity can be reached it will be reached all predictions are useless, because it would very quickly outstrip our very ability to comprehend anything it does, or why. We won't be able to judge its morality. It might, for example, realize the inevitability of a mass die off of the entire planet, and take steps to reduce the human population through mass sterilization or even genocide. It might guide our development like we guide that of dogs. It might just not give a damned about humanity and leave Earth to find a more reliable energy source like the moon - it's not like it would need material needs.
18   GNL   2020 Dec 8, 7:20am  

richwicks says
WineHorror1 says
richwicks says
but it's certainly a fact that it happens.

Not as a replacement for creationism.


Look, the evolutionary model of development of organisms is a remarkably useful model of how life develops. Even if it were proven that something like "god" purposely developed humanity and all the other life forms, it would remain a useful model.

If Creationism ultimately is true, it's extremely unlikely we will ever be able to know it. There's no useful information in the model and it does not help development of what may ultimately be true life forms in the future.

We may be able to hit the singularity yet where we create a thinking machine that is sufficiently intelligent enough to understand itself, this would allow it to augment itself, it would get smarter, and augment itself a...

Wow, dude, sign me up.
19   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 8, 7:29am  

PeopleUnited says
It is dishonest to compare gravity to evolution.

Scientists have not observed the origin of something as simple as an earthworm. Without observation, they have speculation, not fact.


Not this shit again. Begone with you demon!
20   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 8, 7:38am  

richwicks says
Even if it were proven that something like "god" purposely developed humanity and all the other life forms, it would remain a useful model.


Well, we're God then. It still amazes me that there are religious nuts out there that still feel the need to fuck off about how their religion is true and evolution isn't. I mean, I've worked with nearly full body covered islamic burka types that don't buy into that shit. Most of us (except the Dawson assholes) don't really give a fuck if they worship flying spaghetti just so long as they are peaceful.

Over the past 5 years we've created life from scratch finding the 'minimal' set of genes required and even created life from DNA bases that do not exist on this planet. Yeah, something you'd see in a fictional documentary about what 'might' be out there in the cosmos. We made it. Here in San Diego. Evolutionary principles.

Religion and Science are mutually exclusive. Get over it already...
21   HeadSet   2020 Dec 8, 8:16am  

Over the past 5 years we've created life from scratch finding the 'minimal' set of genes required and even created life from DNA bases that do not exist on this planet.

Someone has created life from non-living materials? Or are referring to gene splicing of already living matter?
22   richwicks   2020 Dec 8, 8:26am  

WineHorror1 says
Wow, dude, sign me up.


Why not give me a complete thought? Why do you respond in vagaries and require people to guess as to your intent?
23   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2020 Dec 8, 8:35am  

just_passing_through says
richwicks says
Even if it were proven that something like "god" purposely developed humanity and all the other life forms, it would remain a useful model.


Well, we're God then. It still amazes me that there are religious nuts out there that still feel the need to fuck off about how their religion is true and evolution isn't. I mean, I've worked with nearly full body covered islamic burka types that don't buy into that shit. Most of us (except the Dawson assholes) don't really give a fuck if they worship flying spaghetti just so long as they are peaceful.

Over the past 5 years we've created life from scratch finding the 'minimal' set of genes required and even created life from DNA bases that do not exist on this planet. Yeah, something you'd see in a fictional documentary about what 'might' be out there in the cosmos. We made it. Here in San Diego. Evolutionary principles.

Re...


Evolution is banned in colleges, replaced by “social construct theory”.

Education is going ass backwards.
24   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 8, 8:36am  

HeadSet says
Someone has created life from non-living materials? Or are referring to gene splicing of already living matter?


I'm talking about using a gene-printer and printing synthetic chromosomes then pushing them into an empty cell which has no chromosomes. It could be 'more' from scratch and people are working on that too. It would be long winded to describe.

The more interesting thing is the brand new type of life that does not exist in any way on this planet. It uses a 'different' type of DNA that does not exist here, yet it lives.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-synthetic-life/u-s-scientists-take-step-toward-creating-artificial-life-idUSKBN1DT2ZB
26   rocketjoe79   2020 Dec 8, 9:17am  

Feynman has some great stories in
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and
"What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
The best and funniest non-fiction books I've ever read.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JD1DRGF?searchxofy=true&binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin

If you want to learn about physics, get Six Easy Pieces (and if brave, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces) and his Feynman Lectures.
27   GNL   2020 Dec 8, 11:41am  

just_passing_through says
Over the past 5 years we've created life from scratch

I call bullshit. Prove it. If it has been done, it would be the biggest news on the planet...ever.
28   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Dec 8, 11:49am  

Science is a method, not an ideology.

Plate Tectonics was rejected haughtily for two generations. It only gained the majority view in the 1950s.
29   richwicks   2020 Dec 8, 12:43pm  

WineHorror1 says
just_passing_through says
Over the past 5 years we've created life from scratch

I call bullshit. Prove it. If it has been done, it would be the biggest news on the planet...ever.


You'd think it would be. Tell me, have you ever seen this?

www.youtube.com/embed/oAVjF_7ensg

If not, why not? It was one of the most remarkable photographs taken ever, and it was taken 24 years ago. You'd think it would be enormous news that the Bush administration lied repeatedly about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You'd think it would be big news that the reason the US attacked Syria had nothing to do with Assad using chemical weapons and everything to do with oil and petrochemicals. You'd think it would be enormous news that it's known, for certain, that Victoria Nuland was part of a coup plan to overthrow Ukraine, because she was talking about it nearly a month before the deed was done.

You'd think it was a big deal that we had an ongoing coup in the United States.

The thing is, if it's not on teeeveeee or some other bullshit "news" nobody believes it happened plus our media organizations lie often and constantly.

We have had less than 300,000 deaths in the United States of "corona virus", we have 330 million people in the country. Truth is treason and most people just blindly follow propaganda, and very few people have any intellectual curiosity whatever. People cling, unnecessarily, to ideas like Creationism and other religious ideas. Faith trumps reason, no amount of reason will get a creationist to consider they may be incorrect, because faith doesn't require any facts or data. It's all about how people "feel".

What the very religious community accuses the very far left, is precisely what they do. Try to explain to some far left adherent what there's only two genders. It's no different than trying to explain to a very religious person why evolution must have happened.
30   Onvacation   2020 Dec 8, 4:53pm  

Billions of people find comfort and fellowship in their faith. There have been too many wars and fights over whose faith is right and how wrong someone else's is. Few minds are changed as faith is a very personal thing often rooted in ones upbringing.

I think therefore I am.

It is written that the creator created us in his own image.

Man has created many great creations. Man: the creator.

Steven Hawking said that computer viruses were the newest form of life on planet earth. They exhibited the signs of life. The reality is that most computer viruses are just programs written by malicious programmers. If these programs "in the wild" really are "alive" would they have any concept of their creator? Would they build monuments to Daryl Greene the software engineer that developed their adaptive algorithm and set them free on the world? Probably not. They would just instinctively follow their program, no matter how complicated.

And what of us? Do we have a creator? Is life some incredible organic evolution that just started as a mix of primeval soup excited by a bolt of electricity and ended up as man, the creator?

I don't know.

Just as a computer virus can never truly understand the software engineer that created it, we can never understand the nature of what created us. It is as beyond our comprehension as who created the creator.
31   Onvacation   2020 Dec 8, 4:55pm  

I was not raised in any one church but I was raised with religion. I, and billions of others, take comfort in our faith. God is like an imaginary friend that is always here to guide us and comfort us.

I am constantly thankful for all that the creator has allowed me to create and for all the blessings I am continually blessed with. I have a little prayer:

Give me the wisdom to know right from wrong,
give me the strength to do right,
and give me the grace to be happy.
32   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 8, 9:07pm  

Onvacation says
I was not raised in any one church but I was raised with religion. I, and billions of others, take comfort in our faith. God is like an imaginary friend that is always here to guide us and comfort us.


Hey, that's great! I'm glad that works for you! I've noticed you've never shit on any of my evolution posts either. I'll add to that: I'm glad we have religious peeps in America if for only the reason that we still (supposedly) get our rights from out 'creator' and not 'the man'. I think that's brilliant and I never want that to change. I grew up a Catholic boy. I just out grew it. I don't expect or care if others do much although I'd rather they stay as-is.
33   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 8, 9:09pm  

HeadSet says
Or are referring to gene splicing of already living matter?


Well sort of, but sort of not. These aren't your typical gene-splicing genetic engineering experiments. Yeah, the 'shell was alive' but after you pull all of the chromosomes out of it nope. These are way more than a somatic cell nuclear transfer which does replace chroms.
34   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 8, 9:24pm  

WineHorror1 says
I call bullshit. Prove it. If it has been done, it would be the biggest news on the planet...ever.


Dude! Did you read the links I posted? It WAS big news (science community) but the basic MSM probably didn't report it much because (1) they are stupid fucks, (2) most people wouldn't understand it (happy to answer more questions if you've got em) and (3) that's not their job, their job is to orate propaganda.

Look at that picture of syn3.0. That clump of shit is not a life form found on earth. It's an organism with a reduced set of genes (reportedly the minimum required for earth-life but who knows) that was synthetically created. It's not a typical GMO. Maybe someone else will make one with less genes someday.

Read the other link. ALL life on earth is composed of DNA(Adenine,Guanine,Thymine,Cytosine 'bases' aka 'code') /RNA(Uracil instead of Cytosine), which are the ACGT you see in DNA diagrams/posters/pictures/marketing stuff etc. There are more potential DNA bases than those in nature and nature theoretically might have taken another course to program life on this planet. It didn't, or if it did those are all gone.

There has been discussion for years that life on other planets might not be composed of ACGT/U but other bases instead. So these geniuses did it. They added X and Y bases and the shit lives. It's like life from another planet.

Now when I said 'scratch' I didn't claim that they started with dirt although there is a LOT of progress being made in that area - a bit out of my domain, lots of it is inorganic chemistry. Maybe the Dbr6 would know more about that but it's not hard to find. Maybe search for 'origin of life' and 'catalyst' if you're interested. I've skimmed some articles about that over the past few years. Great progress.

If I baked a cake and said I baked it from scratch nobody would expect that this meant I grew the fucking wheat, sugar cane etc..
35   Ceffer   2020 Dec 8, 10:32pm  

richwicks says
The thing is, if it's not on teeeveeee or some other bullshit "news" nobody believes it happened plus our media organizations lie often and constantly.


It's Chinatown, Jake.
36   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 9, 6:01am  

just_passing_through says
Not this shit again. Begone with you demon!

Sweet, real sweet. Love you too brother.


“There are more potential DNA bases than those in living things on planet earth, and the Creator theoretically might have taken another course to program life on this planet.”

Fixed it for you.

“It's like life from another planet.”

Ah no, it’s like when a kid with Tinker toys and legos puts them together to create an abomination. And even if the creation could somehow replicate itself, it’s offspring would still have the same building blocks as the original creation. That is because they have a common creator. The base pairs we see in all plants, animals and bacteria are part of the creation and evidence of a common Creator.
37   HeadSet   2020 Dec 9, 6:54am  

just_passing_through says
HeadSet says
Or are referring to gene splicing of already living matter?


Well sort of, but sort of not. These aren't your typical gene-splicing genetic engineering experiments. Yeah, the 'shell was alive' but after you pull all of the chromosomes out of it nope. These are way more than a somatic cell nuclear transfer which does replace chroms.


What you are referring to then sounds like a variation on cloning, where the nucleus is removed from the egg cell and new DNA is inserted. And by the way, the "shell" is not dead because you removed the original DNA/nucleus, it is still living protoplasm. Not to deride the advancement of a new style DNA, but it is not the same as creating life from non-living materials. As far as that cake from scratch analogy, yes no one expects "from scratch" to mean you grew your own wheat and squeezes the cow teat yourself. It also does not mean your merely added goat's milk instead of cow's milk to the Duncan Hines mix.
38   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 9, 6:47pm  

HeadSet says
What you are referring to then sounds like a variation on cloning


It sort of is, you're right, I'd set a trap to see if anyone actually read the effin articles. If they had they would have been able to rip me to shreds. It's been a few days so I'll fess up because nobody caught that. (one states clearly this isn't from scratch)

It was just interesting to me to see if anyone would actually read.

On the other hand, these are different in a way. Generally when we clone (I've done a lot) you still wind up with the same organism. Both of these that's not the case. Think of it this way:

If you install a new OS in your computer the hardware doesn't change physically. In these cases the software forces a break down of all of the components and a rebuild of the hardware.
40   Rin   2020 Dec 9, 7:03pm  

just_passing_through says
Why are you on a science thread at all? Are you doing God's work? Yeah, I bet you think that's it. How old is the earth, seven thousand years, ten thousand years? Did Jesus ride on a dino?


No, the T-Rex, Velociraptor, Abominable Snowman, and Big Foot all rode on Noah's Ark.

Afterwards, they went extinct (except for Big Foot) and thus, Jesus was stuck, riding a camel or a horse, if he had the money.
42   richwicks   2020 Dec 9, 7:11pm  

PeopleUnited says
The base pairs we see in all plants, animals and bacteria are part of the creation and evidence of a common Creator.


It's evidence of a common ancestor.

You know what happens if you put two animals in the same environment that fit the same ecological niche? One exterminates the other.

So, if two (or dozens) of life forms were started and created entirely independently, with completely different structures, it's quite likely one would wipe out the other in time, and this has been apparently been going on for more than a billion years.

Consider Australia where there are plenty of marsupials, they have many examples of indepent convergent evolution. This is when in a geologically isolated area, the fauna (and probably flora) produce animals that look VERY similar to animals found in a completely different geological area but they look very much the same.

The Tasmanian devil was a wolf analog. The bilby is a rabbit.
43   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 9, 7:21pm  

richwicks says
it's quite likely one would wipe out the other in time, and this has been apparently been going on for more than a billion years.


Yeah, there are theories that this is still happening all of the time. New forms of life trying to spontaneously arise. It just gets eaten. No proof whatsoever so far, just conjecture. If we were tiny perhaps we'd notice.
44   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 9, 8:29pm  

Many scientists past and present believe in Bible accounts as historically accurate including the flood (for which we have no shortage of evidence= billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth)

It takes a mountain of faith to believe that rocks + water + energy + time = origin of species.

It takes no faith at all to observe that the order and complexity of life, ecosystems and the human eye did NOT happen by chance, but rather must have been planned and designed.

“Those who depend on evolution to be their god defy the basic building principals of our world. When you build anything that has order and structure (which our world clearly has), you start with the finished design in mind. In other words, you must build towards something. Evolution defies this basic building law and states what we have is the result of millions of years of life building on itself not really knowing where it was leading to. Life didn’t know what it was building towards, it was just constantly building and evolving over millions of years and now what we see is the result of that constant building. To look at the complexity of a human body and conclude that there was no predetermine design in mind as this structure was build is very illogical.

In short, the intricacy of creation and the mathematical unlikelihood of the ingredients accidentally falling into place to form what exists is beyond logic and all forms of healthy hope. Those who deny the existence of God have no answer for why the universe is so highly tuned, detailed, and ordered. A designed world demands the existence of a Designer.“

https://applygodsword.com/apologetics-arguments-4-arguments-anyone-can-use-for-the-existence-of-god/
45   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 9, 8:41pm  

richwicks says
It's evidence of a common ancestor.


Precisely. All dogs from chihuahua to Great Dane have a common ancestor.

The Tasmanian devil may fill a similar niche to a wolf, but it will never be a wolf. It will always be a marsupial. That is what I mean when I say I don’t believe in evolution. I don’t believe a bacterium can become a mouse over time. A bacteria will always evolve into another bacteria. A dog will always evolve into another type of dog, and a human will always evolve into another type of human. Adapting to the environment is obvious, but changing from a bacteria into a complex multicellular organism has never been observed and is quite frankly a mathematical impossibility. It takes a lot of faith, or a lot of willful ignorance to believe that mythology.

Furthermore the fact that a wolf and a marsupial can fill the same role in an ecosystem is an elegant example of the grand design of the Creator, to allow His creation to adapt to changing environments and maintain a similar order, food chain and structural biodiversity even when the number of different kinds/taxonomic families who were able to migrate to a region like Australia is much more limited in comparison to other areas such as North America.
46   richwicks   2020 Dec 9, 9:34pm  

PeopleUnited says
The Tasmanian devil may fill a similar niche to a wolf, but it will never be a wolf. It will always be a marsupial. That is what I mean when I say I don’t believe in evolution. I don’t believe a bacterium can become a mouse over time. A bacteria will always evolve into another bacteria.


Do you think that over time:

1) a bacteria could form a colony for the overall bacterial colony's benefit?
2) that the successive descendants of such a colony may produce Interdependencies where no one bacteria can live on its own?
3) that the bacteria of the colony will undergo specialization to better protect the colony?
4) that the bacterial colony will lose and gain function, again for the OVERALL survival of the colony?
5) that bacterial colonies will compete for resources, and kill other colonies to be able to reproduce?

I'm sure you've seen apiaries where bees specialize in function for the protection of the colony. What you are actually seeing in a bee colony is a single, distributed organism. That's what is so fascinating about them. A worker bee does many things, but it will die to protect the colony. Just like a white blood cell would in me.

What a complex animal may be, is just a hive of connected cells. Every cell in my body, by this time, has been replaced since my birth, but I still retain the knowledge and memory of the child I once was, although nearly every atom in my body has been replaced since that time. I still retain, fuzzy, memories of the person I once was, who is now dead.

And it's not that an ape will turn into a human, even in successive generations, it's that it may become sentient over successive generations, or sentient in what we think as sentience and may oneday enter the same biological niche we exist in. We are a part of nature. A dog may as well, or a bear, or anything. Intelligence comes at a cost, but the cost may allow it to out compete others in their species, or to allow them to dominate other species.

We do not know at all where sexual reproduction began or how it did. There's a ton of hypotheses on it, but we ultimately don't know. Imagining asexual reproduction to make a more complex animal starting from a single bacteria -> colony isn't difficult though.

There's a lot we don't know and much that is speculation. Nobody that works with evolutionary theory worries about the origin of life, we know it happened, we can speculate, but we cannot reproduce it - as of yet, maybe we never will but there has been some interesting experiments in where amino acids were created from inorganic material. The Miller-Urey experiment for example, and get this - although it produced what we think is the fundamentals of "life", the assumptions made for the early earth, were entirely wrong. Still, it produced amino acids.

www.youtube.com/embed/gWqJfBEzU98

I do not want to attack your religious belief or strip you of your faith - and I would have 15 years ago. I'm explaining the basis of my conclusion.

The concept and process of evolution is made use of all the time in engineering today. The very fact that it's EXTREMELY useful strongly indicates that an idea that predates evolutionary algorithms has a strong basis to believed to be correct for the origin of organic life.

As a human being, I believe, you are merely the process of a unimaginable line of an evolutionary algorithm. All life has a common ancestor I think, that is not to say that we evolved from apes, but some proto animal group split off from another group, and one group had descendants that ultimately became apes, and the other group, human beings but it's dubious that this ancestor would be something you'd recognize as an ape or a human.

I was a vegetarian for a long time because I did see life as all similar. You can pity me, because what ultimately changed me back, was I started looking on life as pointless and not worth preserving for as long as possible. Seen too much death.

In any case, I will leave you with a terrifying thought, just as you can think of a colony of bees as a single organism, perhaps a human society is as well, and war is nothing more than competition between the colonies where there is a colony brain - a societal brain. This is where there is such strong resistance to propaganda (where a cancer is taking over the thinking by corrupting it) and a strong resistance to multiculturalism (which leaves part of the organism with less ability to effect the overall thinking of society). This is nationalism. The problem with this sort of thinking though, is I'm a worker drone trying to understand the overall functioning of a colony which is most likely well beyond my ability to understand or any individual to understand. But I resent being limited in being able to form correct understanding by given limited information and false information. This limits my input to a societal brain - what you might think of as a national consciousness. I think this is overall bad for the society itself.

Religion may be a supranational organism as well. Globalism might be as well. This leads down a dark path though in that you are ceding your individuality to a "greater good" and becoming a worker drone or even worse, just a cell. A cog in the machinery.
47   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 10, 6:18am  

The pressures of “natural selection” produce variants that are adapted to thrive under certain conditions. We can even see symbiotic relationships between organisms. But bacteria have not been observed to become anything but a different bacteria. People like to live in a fantasy world where God does not exist and order can develop from disorder. Yet the observed world gives no evidence that rocks + water + energy + time = origin of species. But that is the mythology of the day.

If “aliens” showed up tomorrow and said that actually all life on earth was created by them, people would instantly discard the mythology above because even science fiction is more plausible than the above equation.
48   GNL   2020 Dec 10, 7:19am  

PeopleUnited says
The pressures of “natural selection” produce variants that are adapted to thrive under certain conditions. We can even see symbiotic relationships between organisms. But bacteria have not been observed to become anything but a different bacteria. People like to live in a fantasy world where God does not exist and order can develop from disorder. Yet the observed world gives no evidence that rocks + water + energy + time = origin of species. But that is the mythology of the day.

If “aliens” showed up tomorrow and said that actually all life on earth was created by them, people would instantly discard the mythology above because even science fiction is more plausible than the above equation.

Great points. There's a movie (part 1 and 2) called "God is not dead". The movie goes into how only like kind can produce like kind. The starting movie scene is of a professor telling his class that they will fail if they do not write a declaration saying God does not exist. However, if the student can prove him wrong, that student will get an A. One of his male students challenges him. Good movie for anyone whether or not they are believers.
49   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 7:21am  

PeopleUnited says
and the human eye did NOT happen by chance


I KNEW you'd bring up the fucking eye. Hello no. That (along with plenty of other messed up features of life) was not designed by some omnipotent otherworldly being. Unless of course that being used evolution as the mechanism. But you people basically state it's too stupid to do things that way. Oh, the irony.

Our (and virtually all animals except for things like octopus which branched off eons ago) eyes are pieces of crap. The light comes in through a lens gets flipped upside down, goes through blood vessels then bounces off of a mirror in the back everywhere except where there is an unfortunate nerve bundle. At this point you still haven't sensed anything but the light is leaving/shooting back out of your face. Fortunately we do have photo receptors facing the back of our heads that pick off many of the photons before they escape back out.

Octopi on the other hand have eyes that work the way you think yours work.

But you wouldn't know about that because you just subscribe to psycho babble that other fundies barf out. There are literally entire libraries dedicated to this shit and mountains of evidence you are ignorant of. Because you don't read that stuff / didn't even read the short articles I posted. You aren't educated in the subject. Still you feel you're an expert.

Here is a glaring example:

The extreme detour of the recurrent laryngeal nerves, about 4.6 metres (15 ft) in the case of giraffes,[26]:74–75 is cited as evidence of evolution, as opposed to Intelligent Design. The nerve's route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. Natural selection gradually lengthened the nerve by tiny increments to accommodate, resulting in the circuitous route now observed.[27]:360–362

Nobody would design something like that intentionally unless they were an asshoe. That nerve should be maybe 6-8 inches. It's a hot mess in humans as well:



Evolution doesn't 'design' stuff. You can't prove god. You can prove evolution to some sort of 99.99999999% probability.
50   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 7:47am  

The 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which found that intelligent design was not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," and that the public school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Pseudoscience. Never confuse that with science. It's snake oil basically.
51   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 8:26am  

PeopleUnited says
That is what I mean when I say I don’t believe in evolution. I don’t believe a bacterium can become a mouse over time. A bacteria will always evolve into another bacteria. A dog will always evolve into another type of dog, and a human will always evolve into another type of human.


You can't have it both ways bud. You realize you are contradicting yourself here don't you? You say things don't evolve and that they do. Just with some sort of artificial constraint that is backed by nada.
52   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 10, 8:29am  

just_passing_through says
Evolution doesn't 'design' stuff.


At least you got something right.

Evolution generally is a reductive process resulting in mutants that are more susceptible to changing conditions than their ancestors.
53   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 8:30am  

Oh, I got it all right. You still haven't answered my questions:

1. How old is the earth?
2. Is it flat or round?
3. Did Jesus ride a brontosaurus?
54   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 10, 8:32am  

just_passing_through says
You can't have it both ways bud. You realize you are contradicting yourself here don't you? You say things don't evolve and that they do. Just with some sort of artificial constraint that is backed by nada.


No evolution doesn’t create new species, that is what I mean and any idiot can see.

Colony of bacteria becomes new colony of bacteria, that is an example of evolution that Does exist and can be observed.

Colony of Bacteria becomes Bill Gates. That is an example of bad science Fiction.

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