Gnieus

creation is bollocks bashaf iz meshugge באַשאַ ףזײַן משוגעןער Shalom שלום Peace In yiddish as my aramaeic is a bit patchy But if you believe in the literary word as it was written down why don't you read it yourself .. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/320px-Estrangela.jpg Then you can bible bash until the Messiah returns.. Or more here: http://www.peshitta.org/ "With reference to....the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision." So in case you belong to this church you might have a point somewhere sometime, if not, let's face it you are not reading the original.. so have no point whatsoever.. http://www.peshitta.org/images/Peshitta.gif Read creationists read If you accept translation you accept change and lost your argument. Good bye..

First there was Fear then there was Religion to pretend the world isn't scary. Then they wrote some books the once that didn't want to be afraid and face up to life. These books said the World was made by God and that God protects you and if he doesn't it still makes sense. That is if you believe that stuff in the books. Then some guys in Victorian England said: hey the books aren't correct. The ones with Fear realised they would have fear if this was true. Then they went on and said, it can't be true cause we have the book of no Fear. And they made up even weirder stuff to have no fear, even if it ment to make a step backwards and not use that neo cortex that evolutions oops God gave them. That's how the story continues and they did not live happily ever after.

And sometimes people just like to go against the flow to get some attention. Nature has a lot to answer for. All they do is sneak in commercialisation through the back door to sell their wee pamphlet. While finding new stuff is of course commendable, what the hell can you trust these days. A scientific revolution every month/week/day to get some ads sold?

Galton wanted to select for intelligence not race and treat the non-breeders nicely. IMO Pearson was the more aggressive one. Well that's what my gf says, she studied him for quite a while. The man had imo OCD re counting.

Yes.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm Enough of an atheist agenda or do you need more? IMO he seems to fail to recognise the survival aspect advantages that a religion can bring. If you are calm in the face of death you got in my opinion a higher probability of survival as if you are sh***ing yourself cause you know nobody is gonna help you. He should be intelligent enough to accept it exists and why it exists instead of having a crusade against them. As long as fear is there people will try to make up stuff to cope with it. That's my --->opinion.<--

I think the misunderstanding here is 1.) Of course some form of informed speculation is valuable as long as backed up by some hard science 2.) Yet hundreds of hundreds of pages of speculation is a different matter There are loads of scientists doing 1.) We don't need a Theism/Atheism War. As mokele states creationist never listen to evidence so Dawkins and the creationists can go to some Island and battle it out there, although they might not want to as less money can be earned. The Theism/Atheism War including Evolution has been won in the 18th century with the advent of science... Evolution doesn't disproof God, only the Bible. That Dawkins uses the Creationists for his atheist agenda should hopefully be obvious. He is as bad as them as far as I am concerned. Just the other side of the coin.

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Nope if something grows and it's neutral until it's beneficial that's fine imo. That way a whole lot of complicated stuff can suddenly evolve if useless pieces float about until the final protein/etc evolves that makes a whole complex useful evolutionary. example could be immune system.. Behe's Black Box and minimal functioning systems. My personal opinion is that Dawkins starts to be become as unhelpful to evolutionary scientific progress as the creationists.. Nice contribution yet about as fanatic as the "opposition" and a bit simplistic.... AFAIK Dawkins "probability" seems to always be a uniform pdf . But true (operational) science involves repeatable' date=' observable experimentation in the present, which includes physics, chemistry, experimental biology and geology, etc. (see also Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science). Dawkins has made no notable contributions to any of these, or even to the history or philosophy of science. His main claim to fame is his ingenious story-telling about what might have happened in the unobservable past. [/i'] I can only agree, although I strongly believe in Evolution..

Creationists: Groundhog Day ...

Peacock decorative feathers aren't necessarily helpful in direct survival. ... If having a blue penis is correlated with a direct genetic line to the one who guy who was so cool and had a blue penis it might well be some indicator for genetic fitness ... Like in our society slim is in, while if you have nothing fat is in. When everyone was tanned through hard labour outside white was in as display of riches. Today that can afford the most holidays and is tanned is supposed to be healthy then the fakers aka tan studio come in and that is then frowned upon. All moving ... Then you forget the psychological stabilsation factor of rituals which can increase survival etc etc. So cultural evolution is pretty much the same as "normal" evolution where uses might be obvious.

Adaptive Dynamics. It's all flowing ... Adaptive Dynamics is a theoretical framework for bridging the scales between micro- and macro-evolution. It is based on two main simplifying assumptions: a separation between the population dynamical and mutational time scales, and clonal genetics. These simplifications allow rapid scientific progress, while the analyses of special cases suggests that the predictions obtained usually aggree with those from more sophisticated models. Evolution proceeds by the continual replacement of resident types by novel mutants. The latter originate by chance but their evolutionary fate depends on their fitness, i.e. on their capacity to increase in numbers. This fitness necessarily depends the current environment E which is set by the composition of the resident population. By eliminating E we get the invasion function, i.e. the fitness of potential mutants as a function of the type of the mutant and of the types constituting the resident population. In order to calculate this function we start with describing the dependence of individual population-dynamical behaviour on supposedly heriditary traits. From this we obtain the initial exponential growth rate of a mutant population in the ergodic environment set by the resident population-dynamical attractor. Once this invasion fitness is known, it provides a summary of the underlying processes necessary and sufficient to make the step to macro-evolutionary considerations. The research on the foundation of Adaptive Dynamics deals with (1) justifying and/or modifying the various theoretical steps sketched above in order to delimit as well as enlarge the domain of applicability of the theory, and (2) deducing consequences of the resulting framework in combination with developing tools for dealing with the large range of specific ecological-evolutionary models that fall under the general realm of adaptive dynamics.

One planet collides with other planet, one breaks the other not, it survives. Now imagine the planet changes somehow and reproduces and you are done with evolution.

or anything changing anywhere in the line to you would not make you you.

Interesting idea ... I would say a shitload of proteins and many possible bio-chemical reactions get minimised to the useful .. yo' date=' possible ... My point is also if you throw gold int sulphuric acid nothing happpens if you throw it into Konigswasser it disolves. You won't get Stilton suddenly. If the right chemicals are there it will happen. The eye [creationists favorite'] is always a bad example, as it's quite easy to make up some continous way imo.

Behe's "Darwins Black Box". Besides the naive interpretation of this teacher, I find these interesting concepts. I find systems that only work in complexity still an interesting challenge. The immune system being an example, which would collapse if one link would be missing. I haven't read that Dawkins book, but from previous work it appears to me that he hangs to much on uniform probabilities. Maybe he does not, I am happy to be convinced otherwise. Maybe he is just trying to override some of the ignorance with simple answers. Probability, chance = chance. Every system the more complex it becomes [besides uniform random mutations] has in my opinion more clearly defined probability outcomes. So if you have a couple of molecules that meet other molecules by chance, only one chemical reaction will work. Also you have to think of self assembling systems. Behe quotes some french guy on that. Forgot his name. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html Anyway, while I obviously think that the God think is a lot of bollocks, it remains an interesting question how irreducible complex systems have evolved without just quoting theoretically everything could randomly happen. Here are some interesting reviews on the above mentioned book: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n19_v48/ai_18763619 But whence came the flat eye, the light-sensitive spot? Modern science has shown that the "simplest" eye-spot requires a cascade of protein molecules -- rhodopsin, transducin, rhodopsin kinase, and more -- which must interact with one another at the level of the cell to produce vision. What causes a flat eye to curl up? There are dozens of complex proteins which control cell shape, with dozens more controlling the association of cells. In fact, the problem with all of Dawkins's evolutionary stories is that they speak of changes in whole animals or whole organs at once, ignoring the fundamental insight of modern biology that life is based on highly specific, complex interactions of molecules. A serious study of the possible Darwinian evolution of biological novelty would have to begin with molecules. http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/202/300/newreader/newreader.b03/Readers/Reader/1997Spring/dawkins.html Dawkins writes of this symbiotic arrangement, "it hires them, paying in the currency of oxygen." How could such an incredible, all-or-nothing relationship between two species evolve from intermediate forms? Dawkins doesn't say. These are interesting scientific questions which shouldn't really go under in the ususal creationist vs Dawkins battle. I think analogy [Convergent modifications of a non-homologous structure (or behaviour) aka bird wing - fly wing octopus eye human eye etc] proves that certain problems have limited solutions and some system [besides conscious design] must get them there faster than uniform probability or continous small changes [which are highly unlikely in minum complex systems], allows. There is a biochemical answer out there which could make someone famous..

Why don't you imagine you hanging on a chain dangling from some house. Hanging means you are born falling you are not. If any chain piece breaks then you fall and wouldn't be born. Hence the chain of your ancestry would be broken. Your mum and dad are the first ... but any other link would do too.

Stirling, did a 3 year stint in St Andrews {normal population ecology/dynamics }, currently working from home in Glasgow on the next St Andrews project til October, after that ... no idea yet. Maybe going back into full-time computing. My gf's brother is lecturer in Strathclyde Uni in Information Science. Is that like what you are "Knowledge Managment"? I wrote a small CMS once and sold my "knowledge management" server of to a German Science group. Well we didn't know it was knowledge managment until the term was in use. Looking at your degree, one of my aunts is a geologist emeritus at USGS, did some planetary picture analysis in the 60/70's with NASA. Is your interest in Evolution rooted in Paleontology? I am not that strong in that field, besides the usual stuff, mass extinctions etc and what you read. I did theoretical mathematical modelling of evolution, although using real data I collected, so it's hopefully not totally of the wall.

Well, my PhD is in Evolutionary Ecology. This does not mean I am always right, but it means, I should at least think a lot about it.

Yeah, like physics describe the things around us.. and computers calculate a lot.

Don't think so as this is exactly what I mean. Hence we are at no cross roads.

hmm' date=' we basically agree somehow and not. The perception that evolution will change, I don't know. Evolution as we think we knew it will change. but maybe it always was that way and we have vital evidence missing of what was before.. Maybe we are just using the bandwidth of evolution possible instead of actually changing it. I think what you mean [doubtlessly you will tell me if I am wrong ] is that evolution will/has/is changing from theory we made up on the evidence we had. If we attribute to evolution as what we attribute to other natural laws like gravity, it will be likely valid throughout the universe, hence it is and unchangeable and we only reached now a certain state were we realise it's full or wider bandwidth .. I think you summarised this with: I think the word changing was the word that confused me.

Really not, wasps make nests where they regulate the temperature ... We gain advantage over other species to make us live longer or produce more||better offspring, same game. And I am not hung up about dying. Death necessitates reproduction. If death was caused by changing environments, better adapted genes will survive with a higher probability .. Hence Death necessitates evolution .. As long as you die and things change evolution/adaption has to happen. You can't live forever in a static environment ... Evolution is about surviving with no clear end not about the Dawkins - Creationist fight of how Random or not random survival is. All that is changed in your picture is how we have to understand evolution .. Desgin is obviously possible, so throw away everything that says it HAS to be undetermined. Design is possible. We are proof of it. You still gonna die and have to adapt design or not .. so evolution in a broader sense is still on, no one has claimed Jesus Christ dad did it and all laws of nature are still there, and no one is swinging a bible. Let's quote the blind watchmaker "All that natural selection can do is accept certain new variations, and reject others. The mutation rate is bound to place an upper limit on the rate at which evolution can proceed. " OK, we design new species so are faster than mutation,hence evolution doesn't only work on mutations, so this is wrong. Or we change what mutation means in this concept some kind of change, then it's right. Yet: Where are these facts leading us? They are leading us in the direction of a central truth about life on Earth, ... This is that living organisms exist for the benefit of DNA rather than the other way around. This won't be obvious yet, but I hope to persuade you of it. The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes. The lifetimes of DNA messages (give or take a few mutations) are measured in units ranging from millions of years to hundreds of millions of years; or, in other words, ranging from 10,000 individual lifetimes to a trillion individual lifetimes. Each individual organism should be seen as a temporary vehicle, in which DNA messages spend a tiny fraction of their geological lifetimes. This still holds even if you design it. DNA survives ... All you need to do is not being anal about the random and the mutation thing and allow a wee ape species to mix a couple of DNA pieces together and still adaption, death, change is there. So I think right is some change in DNA has to happen whatever way possible and then we see what survives the longest. So you have not changed evolution but understood it a bit more. As long as there was no cognitive intelligence, mutations were the big deal with some cognitive intelligence other options of changing DNA are there. And oh wonder there is also RNA [like in Viruses], no one said there can only be one [this ain't Highlander]. That's all and we are still a lousy species on some small planet and not god.