Evolution Based On Lies?

[charles brough]

More interesting to me is why NG was so quick to publish the article without any real research regarding the information within it & the scientist(s) giving the information.

 

If that makes sense.

 

It makes perfect sense! He just collects what his "Creationists" sources provide for him and passes it on as is in hope he can convert someone and "save their soul." With that in mind, logic, reasoning and fact become irrelevant.

[blamski]

winkelix, if you find the issue of evolution so hard to believe try looking at its next of kin; artificial selection. the poodles and labradors, tabby cats and fresian cows you will probably know well were not created by some divine hand (though some would beg to differ) but by mankind selecting from promising lineages. in the space of a few thousand years we have generated a vast number of species - imagine the effects of a similar process, albeit less intentional, over millenia.

 

the thing i don't get about the creationsists and intelligent designers is there ability to believe that there could be a conscious creation of the vast complexity of life yet inability to grasp a fairly simple principle like evolution.

 

good to see people question everything though - just keep an open mind about the answers :)

[InfiniteNow]

More interesting to me is why NG was so quick to publish the article without any real research regarding the information within it & the scientist(s) giving the information.

 

The authors who submitted the article to National Geographic informed them that their paper was still under-going peer review with the journals Nature and also Science, and that they had every indication they would have a positive "okay" within the week. NG, not wanting to lose the story and have someone else publish first, decided to play the odds and meet their "go to press deadline" with the story included. Shortly after the magazine went to press, both Nature and the journal Science rejected the paper, so NG looked rather foolish by taking the chance they did.

 

Not sure what that leap to "passing on creationist" values comments was all about. Can you elaborate Chuck?

[Moontanman]

This is not too different from our race to conserve real (ie happening now) biodiversity.

 

The whales at the Atlanta Aquarium died btw. :esmoking:

 

Yeah, I can just see it now, some where out in the wilderness. A door opens to an old cabin just long enough to allow a spear of light to get past the opening, ma hollors"Hey pa, better get the 10 gauge, that damned t-rex from down in hollow is back and he's agoin' though our trash again!"

 

"Ok ma" says pa "Hold on ta ya horses." "If in he eat's enough of the nasty stuffin you throw in thar it might kill 'im befoe I have a chance ta shoot 'im"

 

As the two long time married folks haggle over weither or not what was said was an aurgument the T-rex slinks off to try and digest the pile of garbage he has accumulated tonight. Somehow plastic milk cartons, news papers, styrofoam meat containers, and rotten vegetables weren't on the menu millions of years ago when the t-rex digestive system evolved,

 

Michael

[charles brough]

Yeah, I can just see it now, some where out in the wilderness. A door opens to an old cabin just long enough to allow a spear of light to get past the opening, ma hollors"Hey pa, better get the 10 gauge, that damned t-rex from down in hollow is back and he's agoin' though our trash again!"

 

"Ok ma" says pa "Hold on ta ya horses." "If in he eat's enough of the nasty stuffin you throw in thar it might kill 'im befoe I have a chance ta shoot 'im"

 

As the two long time married folks haggle over weither or not what was said was an aurgument the T-rex slinks off to try and digest the pile of garbage he has accumulated tonight. Somehow plastic milk cartons, news papers, styrofoam meat containers, and rotten vegetables weren't on the menu millions of years ago when the t-rex digestive system evolved,

 

Michael

 

What a marvelous portrayal of our environmental mess! It more than just strips the idealism away from the subject! You see a picture of even the most common people well knowing what is happening but totally resigned to it. . . . good immagination . . . yet real.

 

charles, HOME PAGE

[clapstyx]

For my money I have no problem accepting evolution as a valid concept. Indeed I think that our own species is in for a hard time if evolution cant occur. I have a theory that I call "The Apex Ape Theory" and basically it says that every so often you get one member of a species that is just phenomenally smarter. I cling to some hope that sometime between now and when the symbiotic matrix of inter related survival probabilities breaks down that there will be an individual so phenomenally smart that they can work out how to solve really complicated planetary problems..not by being religious or self promoting but just by saying step by step this is the way to overcome every problem between here and the ultimate goal of creating complete harmony at a symbiotic level (if thats the final answer to maximising the probability of all life surviving into perpetuity).

 

I would say that given the complexity of the global problem you would probably need someone with an IQ of around 4 times smarter than George W Bush (assuming he is of average intelligence) so you would be talking DaVinci, Einstein and Christ all rolled into one person. Life on Earth has "created" these entities on an individual basis so to me its possible (although divinely improbable) that at some point in time those characteristics could manifest themselves in one body.

 

I suppose the question is whether that is evolution if that person has offspring with similar features?

 

If you deny evolution then you have to accept that we will never be any better or more evolved in any sense than we are right now and that we have reached the peak of our potentiality as a species. It I think at a sub-conscious level if you believed that to be the absolute truth then it would become so.

[blamski]

I love that equation - IQ of DaVinci + IQ of Einstein + IQ of christ = IQ of George W Bush x 4 :)

 

i find the whole thing completely believable apart from the assumption that Bush is of average intelligence. the theory proves the need for a planetary DNA bank - if this person doesn't evolve i the next 100 years we could just build them.

 

:D

[Moontanman]

For my money I have no problem accepting evolution as a valid concept. Indeed I think that our own species is in for a hard time if evolution cant occur. I have a theory that I call "The Apex Ape Theory" and basically it says that every so often you get one member of a species that is just phenomenally smarter. I cling to some hope that sometime between now and when the symbiotic matrix of inter related survival probabilities breaks down that there will be an individual so phenomenally smart that they can work out how to solve really complicated planetary problems..not by being religious or self promoting but just by saying step by step this is the way to overcome every problem between here and the ultimate goal of creating complete harmony at a symbiotic level (if thats the final answer to maximising the probability of all life surviving into perpetuity).

 

I would say that given the complexity of the global problem you would probably need someone with an IQ of around 4 times smarter than George W Bush (assuming he is of average intelligence) so you would be talking DaVinci, Einstein and Christ all rolled into one person. Life on Earth has "created" these entities on an individual basis so to me its possible (although divinely improbable) that at some point in time those characteristics could manifest themselves in one body.

 

I suppose the question is whether that is evolution if that person has offspring with similar features?

 

If you deny evolution then you have to accept that we will never be any better or more evolved in any sense than we are right now and that we have reached the peak of our potentiality as a species. It I think at a sub-conscious level if you believed that to be the absolute truth then it would become so.

 

At some point I think it's our own inability to accept our eventual decline as a species that will be replaced one day is a large part of the problem that needs to be addressed. Staying on the Earth without mending our ways and starting an agrarian society all over the earth with most of it left pristine is the only way we can survive. This I suggest is a short sighted way of looking at the problem I and am beginning to wonder if people in general aren't smarter than a fifth grader! Many people who think of colonization as being going out and finding earth like planets and colonizing them Much like the English in the early part of it's history. Everyone knows by now that the so called East India company wasn't exactly free trade. From the colonization view something like the East India company will not happen, not now, not ever. And by the way the English controlled those people was through opium addiction or smoking poppies, After getting an almost an entire race of people addicted to these drugs they fought wars to keep not only control of the markets but went as far as to require that people smoke the stuff by paying out part of their salary in opium powder. At the same time bringing huge amounts of treasure (money,gold, jewels, wood and elaborate wood working into the English homeland.) These people just see space colonization as just another round of business as usual for the powerful to control the weak.

space colonization couldn't be further from the truth. First of all space colonies will have to be build in space using raw materials already found there.

2. Only the brightest and the best could qualify for space colonization and exploration. Yes we could eventually have 1,000,000 or more people who live in space permanently. stations made so the insides look a lot like the surface of the earth.

3. By making such huge colony ships shaped like truck tires and spinning them so there is enough G-force on the inside of the ellipsoid to produce gravity. Also by piping air and light into the interior of the colony an earth like ecology could be maintained anyplace in the solar system for as long as we like. Maybe even enough time to use magnetic sails powered by the sun to allow us to use the suns radiation as fuel and use the target stars own radiation to slow us down we could actually shorten star travel to around 10% or even better of the speed of light.

You might say wooo hooo, every star in the galaxy will eventually be at our hands. Someone somewhere once calculated it would take about 250,000 years for the earth to colonize every available planet in the galaxy. These figures were extrapolated from relatively conservative uses of our own technology.

If this true, if it is indeed possible to colonize the entire galaxy with sublight ships and just some real determination then where are they? Yes where are they? Did we evolve first? Or are we the dregs left over from the last galactic civilization (if so maybe we will find all the humanoids all over the place when we go back. Left overs from a golden age that just hasn't got it all back together.

But what could explain some of the reluctance of the so called UFO's to contact us in a more straightforward, From high earth orbit out of reach of our weapons but still close enough to make themselves known in anyway they want.

Or step 4. maybe they set out to colonies every planet they can find and they find so few planets that harvesting planets becomes difficult if not impossible.

5. What if no one else has managed to colonize the galaxy (maybe it really is full of life) but colonizing another planet would be very difficult because,

Best case scenario the proteins utilized by different life forms on different world is impossible for use to utilize as food.

Worst cast scenario almost 100% of all planets are allergy hell holes were that even the most harmless thing like pollen or dust or dander on our world would be allergenic environmental toxin.

We do have real analogs of this here the earth in the form of weeds called Poison Ivy, Nettles, laurel hells, and just the thing that occasionally keeps us from living on our own planet and we have evolved right beside them for billions of years.

If such things could cause huge problems here imagine what exposure to proteins from another planet might have to us or ours to them!

Possibly the smartest way to colonize is to cast adrift small self contained seeds with all the earth life we'll need to set up as complex a ecosystem as we can and set it on worlds that have little or no chance to eventually have complex life or we could just keep going from star system to another building new colony vessels as we meet star systems with plenty of asteroids and comets for raw materiel's. As we move out it's almost like the earth is trying to reproduce and we are the sex cells it uses to spread complex life around. I know there are lots of flames there so get a extinguisher have at it! What you might say does any of this have to do with evolution, our Earth developing the ability yo move it's complex life forms to another planet is a prime example of something that cannot be proved no matter how much info you get on the subject. It just might be that simple speculation about the possibility is as close as we can get. Evolution is the supernatural, science cannot quantify the supernatural due to it's very nature. Evidence that all planets if they live long enough they develop life forms that can spread their technology around at some point or a catastrophe will occur that will kill the earth. The Earth isn't forever, eventually something will destroy the earth and if we are still here arguing over get's the last of the oil or the

coal or the water then the earth is a dead end and will become just another fossil record from deep in the past. Another dead end world that didn't make it. Whether or not there is a connection to the earth and life forms on other nearby planets will be up to us. As far as I know no other creature on the Earth has ever tamed fire. The taming of fire is the first step towards real technology. Let's hope we use that technology top spread complex life from our home out into the galaxy

 

 

 

 

Moon

 

"The pilgrims came to America to escape

religious persecution." "They then persecuted the Indians for having their own cultural and religious beliefs." Student, "What are they doing now?" Teacher, "Moving in on the rest of us."

[charles brough]

The problem with the Bush Administration is not a lack of intelligence but of popular ignorance. After all, they voted for him. He was able to get them to do it. He got us to invade Islam twice and they let him. They vote in crooks to Congress all the time, men who are basically supported by special interest groups. Democracy is a system where the people get what they deserve!

 

I am not supposed to say any of that because it is against our secular ideals and after all, I am not a religionist but an atheist. But lets call a spade a spade. Democracy does not work well. The world is not being run well. Our secular system is in decline and the old religions are coming back.

 

That brings us right back to Bush. He is a genius at getting what he wants. He wants democracy to be such a failure abroad that people will give up on the idea of "spreading democracy" and welcome back the old faith. His deliberately miserable foreign policy is perfect for turning Islam into fanatical terrorists. The overly-religious Muslim leaders love it too because they want us to be hated so that more Muslims will turn fanatical like themselves. It is a policy that benefits the old religions at the expense of the secular.

 

Don't get discouraged over the mess the world is in. It is all a process of social evolution and when it gets bad enough, the tide will turn. The stock market never turns back up from a slide until everyone thinks it will go down forever!

[TheBigDog]

I have a theory that I call "The Apex Ape Theory" and basically it says that every so often you get one member of a species that is just phenomenally smarter. I cling to some hope that sometime between now and when the symbiotic matrix of inter related survival probabilities breaks down that there will be an individual so phenomenally smart that they can work out how to solve really complicated planetary problems..not by being religious or self promoting but just by saying step by step this is the way to overcome every problem between here and the ultimate goal of creating complete harmony at a symbiotic level.

Here I am! No need to wait any longer.

 

Step one: Start building a big boat.

Step two: Await further instructions.

 

I suppose the question is whether that is evolution if that person has offspring with similar features?

My kids look just like me.

 

If you deny evolution then you have to accept that we will never be any better or more evolved in any sense than we are right now and that we have reached the peak of our potentiality as a species. It I think at a sub-conscious level if you believed that to be the absolute truth then it would become so.

Evolution is affected by all things that influence reproduction. When you reproduce you pass on your traits to another generation. If you fail to reproduce then you pass on nothing. In parts of the animal world only the most fit win the competition for reproductive rights. In other parts there are more passive methods of controlling the passing of traits. Humans pretty much let anyone breed, and we have even used science to eliminate the best part of reproduction from even being required anymore. Contemplating how we are evolving and what we will become in another 100,000 or more years is a very interesting puzzle. I think there will be more tall bald men with large noses, at least if I have anything to do with it.

 

Even though I poke a bit of fun, your theory of an Apex human is not without some logical merit. The challenge is this: how does this person get anyone to listen?

 

Bill

[NLN]

A reminder to all: please remember to name your sources when you make a case supporting any particular point of view. Without sources, your comments are not supported and therefore cannot be trusted.