lucaspa

thanks Ophi and Kedas! actually this is good but whets the appetite, there is bound to be more interesting stuff about the behavior of wild (and captive) apes. hope more comes in

9. E Linden, Can animals think? Time 154: 57-60, Sept 6, 1999.

Some of the attempts to escape captivity -- including making lockpicks -- are as innovative as any human prison break. Orangutans are apparently some of the best. The joke was: put a screwdriver in a cage with a chimp or gorilla and they will sniff it, toss it, and tast it. Put a screwdriver in with an orangutan and he will hide it and, that night, use it to disassemble the cage.

typically by the agency of warfare. that was what I meant by

Actually, warfare is not the "typical" evolutionary way of stabilizing a population. Remember, "resources" includes modern agricultural methods and medicine. Eliminate modern medicine and the availability of large amounts of food thru mechanical agriculture and you lose a lot of people 1) to disease, including simple infections of minor wounds and childbirth and 2) lifespan decreases due to inadequate nutrition and plain old starvation.

You will probably get an initial period of warfare as civilization collapses, but then H. sapiens, like all other species, will have a stable population based upon the resources, without warfare.

I think that shifting the sex ratio (to something less than 50 percent females) would be more resource-efficient than reducing population by warfare

China is going to be facing the unintended side effects of this, because their "one-child" rule worked well enough to really skew the sex ratios for this generation. Women are very valuable property.

However, considering the number of children a woman can bear, you would really have to reduce the number to minimal values to reduce population. My great grandmother had 13 children. That's 12 men (+ one for the woman) for replacement of current numbers. A 12:1 ratio of men to women would end up with all the problems you want to avoid. First, women would revert to the role of property, to be bought and sold for their ability to bear a child. Second, imagine the possible warfare over access to women? And this would be ALL THE TIME.

No, I think LucidDreamer has the best idea: raise the standard of living. Data does show that, even in the absence of reliable birth control, the number of children drop as wealth increases. It's simple, the cost of each kid rises dramatically, so people can afford less of them. But, with better medical care, one kid is all you need to pass down your possessions to.

So, 2 couples each have one child. You've halved the population right there for the next generation: 4 to 2. Then those 2 get married and have 1 child. Population drops 75% in two generations. And, of course, the smaller the population, the more resources per person. Wealth increases, which argues for individuals choosing to keep the birth rate low.

"Race" is a term that has fallen out of use in evolutionary biology. In Darwin's time, "race" referred to a nationality or tribal group. Thus, you have the Irish "race", the Tahitian "race" etc. Today, the definitions as used in biology are given in Douglas Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology, 1998:

"Subspecies: A taxonomic term for populations of a species that are distinguishable by one or more characteristics, and are given a subspecific name (e.g. the spuspecies of the rat snake Elaphe obsoleta; se Figure 21 in Chapter 9). In zoology, subpecies have different (allopatric or parapatric) geographical distributions, so are equivalent to "geographic races;" in botany, they may be sympatric forms. No criteria specify how different populations should be to warrent designation as subspecies, so some systematists have argued that the practice of naming subspecies should be abandoned." pg 450

"Semispecies: Usually, one of two or more parapatric, genetically differentiated groups of populations that are thought to be partially, but not fully, reproductively isolated; nearly, but not quite, different species."

"Race: A vague, meaningless term, sometimes equivalent to subspecies and sometimes to polymorphic genetic forms within a population."

"Variety: Vague term for a distinguishable phenotype of a species"

Biological species are defined as "different species represent different gene pools, which are goups of interbreeding or potentially interbreeding individuals that do not exchange genes with other such groups." D Futuyma Evolutionary Biology pg 27

"Genetic polymorphism is the presence of two or more genetically determined, more or less discrete phenotypes within a single population of interbreeding individuals." pg 239

"A population is a group of organisms of the same species living together in a given region and capable of interbreeding." Biology the Study of Life 6th edition. 1993, pg 605

So, there are no "races" of humans, but there are populations. The subject is more confusing because the medical literature has not caught up to the evolutionary biologists yet, and many papers refer to "race" or "ethnic group" when they mean "population". Thus, you can have the population of "Northern European" or "Americans of African descent" or "West Africans" or "San" or "Eskimos". But to say "caucasian", "negroid", "mongoloid" or "aryan" is useless.

BTW, the recent genetic data shows that neandertals were a separate species, not a subspecies. We have Homo neandertals and Homo sapiens, both descended from Homo erectus. Sibling species.

Hi all' date='

Its interesting to see what is mainly a grown up debate on wether Complex Quantum Mechanics or other such theories should be treated with respect.[/quote']

All unfalsified theories/hypotheses are worth respect. However, I've never heard QM referred to as "Complex Quantum Mechanics". Could you please define what you mean by that term?

 

First I am blushing that you accept that we are talking about thepry rather than hypotheses.

A theory is not a grown up hypothesis. That is a common misconception. Both hypotheses and theories are testable statements about the physical universe. There is no hard and fast line between the two. Hypotheses are generally more specific statements while theories are more general statements. Hypotheses/theories can either be 1) untested, 2) supported (by the data), or 3 falsified (by the data).

 

As I studied QM as part of Physical Chemistry, it was a VERY strongly supported theory. Why don't you think it is supported?

I think the confusion that the gene is the unit of selection is because population geneticists look at the change in frequence of alleles in a population. The change in frequence of the gene is the result of selection on individual organisms. Since an increased or decreased frequency of the gene was the result of selection, Dawkins understandably, but erroneously, decided that the gene was the unit of selection.

How do you explain the fact that mothers are willing to die for their offspring? If it was really down to the organism, it would value its own life more than anyone else’s.

Altruism is explained on passing along the genes. But the SELECTION still occurs at the individual level. It is the individual that has those alleles that is going to have the behavior.

If a gazelle is eaten by a lion, it is the genes that are responsible.

But it is the TOTALITY of genes present in the gazelle, not just one. Remember, gene selection means that the single genes are being selected. That's not the case. In this case the gazelle can avoid the lion by several different mechanisms: early detection of the lion by better eyesight or hearing, agility, or straight out speed on a straight line. So, a gazelle that has the allele(s) for faster speed but the allele(s) for better detection is still going to avoid being eaten. Which gene(s) are selected? Or even, the gazelle with allele(s) for slower speed but better detection is going to avoid being eaten. So which gene(s) are being selected? Both.

It is because of the cooperative effort of genes in an individual that ensures that it is the individual that is selected, just like it was the team (individual in that competition) that was selected in the game, not Maradonna. No matter how good Maradonna was, if the team was bad, then Maradonna would not make it past that game to go further in the World Cup, would he?

But even organisms that were better at reproducing, would spread over organisms that were capable of surviving the asteroid strike.

That was a poor analogy. Any allele that confers an advantage or disadvantage after reproduction is essentially unseen by selection. This is why humans have so many degenerative diseases like blocked coronary arteries. Since heart attacks happen in the 50s or 60s, the individuals have already had their kids, so mutations to lessen heart attacks are not selective.

A current hypothesis on longevity in humans is the care given by grandmothers to babies. A child with a living grandmother to help care for it is more likely to live than a child without a second caregiver in a primitive society. So there is indirect selection for longevity in females (males just go along for the ride since the alleles are not sex-linked).

The strange thing is that gene was chosen when nucleotides are the obvious most basic unit of selection.

Sorry, but nucleotides are not the basic unit of selection. Neither is the gene. Instead the basic unit of selection is the package of genes that is the individual. It is the individual that has to compete, not the gene.

This becomes even more apparent when we remember that most traits involve several genes and that most genes are involved in more than 1 trait. The single gene -- single trait is good illustration because it is simple, not because it is common.

A single nucleotide doesn't even correspond to an amino acid. Instead, it takes 3 nucleotides to code for an amino acid. And the 3rd nucleotide is often irrelevant. So how can selection be on the nucleotide level when selection can't even see the 3rd nucleotide in a codon because any nucleotide there is going to give the same amino acid?

And remember, most SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) are very much neutral. You can see this doing a search on SNPs in PubMed.

Or the two will get married and at least avoid the appearance of unseemliness.

Yes, that is another alternative.

However, this highlights an inconsistency in the position: by the reasoning of anti-abortionists, even married couples would not be allowed to use the Pill. After all, aborting a "baby" within a marriage is "killing a child" just as much as aborting an out-of-wedlock fetus. So the result is to limit sex even in a marriage to those occasions where the couple is willing (and able) to accept a high likelihood of pregnancy. I wonder if the rank and file is going to like this. After all, the data indicates that nearly all American Catholic couples use birth control, many of them the Pill, despite the Church's official position on this.

Since many of these people also think that God created us directly, it also sets up the theological problem of why God would give us such a high sex drive if He wanted us to mostly abstain.

If it weren't for birth control, there would certainly be more abortions. People will still be having sex, and isn't it better to have birth control then using abortion as a birth control.

Good questions. I tend to agree, but that is because I agree with your premise: people will have sex whether married or not and whether birth control or abortions are available or not.

However, anti-abortionists don't agree with the premise. They think that if the risk of pregnancy is higer, people will abstain from sex outside of marriage. And that is what they want. Therefore they want to ban abortion and now, it seems, oral contraceptives in order to limit sex.

wat exactly is the creationists idea

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/1593_the_creationevolution_continu_12_7_2000.asp

However, all versions seem to have some elements in common.

1. They all agree that God directly manufactures either whole organisms or parts of them. That is, the organism or part was not there one minute, and the next it was.

2. All agree that humans do not share a common ancestor with apes. Humans were specially manufactured by God.

No. God is.

Why do you say that? It was desire to understand how God created that motivated Darwin to study nature and discover evolution. It was belief in the Christian God that provided the necessary assumptions about the physical universe for modern science to exist.

What about the ice age? I’ve heard that it wiped out most humans and the 1000 or so that survived went on to produce all of us? They had to be the smartest and most fit to survive that time.

Where did you hear this? Neandertals lived near the ice.

Now, genetic data does show that about 200,000 years ago H. sapiens went thru a genetic bottleneck. Thus we are all descended from a small breeding pool. But I have never seen it connected to any of the ice ages.

9. A Gibbons, Studying humans -- and their cousins and parasites. Science 292:627-629, April 27, 2001.

Also the development of speech (and then later on language) sent our intelligence flying. Same thing with out ability to tame fire, or to use tools etc...

The use of tools sent our technology flying. That is different from intelligence, altho most people confuse technology with intelligence.

But I suppose if you look at it from a whole, its accelerating. Our development has been exponential and still is.

You are incorrectly interpreting my statements. That is exactly the point I was trying to make.

With tribal warfare, in-group communication is key to survival.

But your premise involves competition between the communication skills of one tribe vs the communication skills of another tribe. You have competition between tribes. I am saying that the competition was not with tribes, but with predators and prey and members of your own tribe: the cheaters. As far as I can see, the evidence is against frequent intertribal warfare. The same negotiating skills that allowed intratribal coopertation would work toward intertribal negotiations to avoid conflict.

Speech related traits became genetically fixed at an uncharacteristically fast rate. And from an evolutionary perspective this can be for one of two reasons:

 

Superior speech was a trait that was needed for reproduction (i.e. sex linked)

Superior speech was a trait that was needed for survival

What is your data for "uncharacteristically fast rate"? We get humans in social groups from at least 4 million years ago. Since you are talking 50,000 years ago, that is 3.95 million years for speech related traits to become genetically fixed.

Even the FOXP2 allele that allows more complex speech is 100,000 years old.

Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Wolfgang Enard, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher, Cecilia S. L. Lai, Victor Wiebe, Takashi Kitano, Anthony P. Monaco, Svante Pääbo Nature 418, 869 - 872 (22 Aug 2002)

My conjecture is that in order for speech to become genetically fixed as fast as it did,

This seems to be your premise. Only it seems unjustified by the data.

I think tribal warfare certainly fits that conjecture well. But since I have no evidence of this for my own, I'm basically looking for anything which would support or refute this...

1. Modern tribes at that level of technology don't engage in frequent warfare. Why do you think tribes then did?

2. Of all the human and hominid fossils found, only a few neandertal fossils bear evidence of trauma due to human weapons. If tribal warfare were as common as you hypothesize, we should find that a large percentage of such fossils would bear testimony to old wounds.

Anymore of these? They are hilarious. And I for one, like Carl Sagan, am not afraid to call people who belive that the Christian God created the universe, IDIOTS.

Did you realize that you did not distinguish about how God created the universe? Creartionism is a particular method God is supposed to have used. Most Christians believe that God used the methods discovered by science to create the universe. IOW, God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution.

Now, some scientists who believe(d) that Yahweh (Christian god) created the universe:

Charles Darwin at the time he wrote Origin of the Species

Charles Lyell (the man who falsified the last version of Flood Geology and solidified uniformitarianism in geology)

Asa Gray (America's premier botanist in the late 1800s and one of Darwin's earliest supporters)

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Francisco Ayala (the most prominent living evolutionary biologist)

Kenneth Miller -- the most effective opponent of ID.

Now, if Carl Sagan thought these men were "idiots", or you think so, then I can tell you who the real idiots are.

That comic is funny, but eerily accurate.

Oh, it's very accurate. But you need to update your examples. Try the Kansas School Board minority report in July 2005 or the current case in Dover, PA.

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2005/KS/177_standards_debate_harming_kansa_9_1_2005.asp

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2005/PA/780_emkitzmillerem_trial_to_b_9_15_2005.asp

There is no cause for action, AFAIK, for teaching bad science in science class. We don't arrest bad physics teachers for using the "heavy boots" explanation, claiming that there is no gravity in space or on the moon. If the Dover school board just wants to use a really crappy textbook, it's sad, but not grounds for a federal case.

No one got arrested here, either. This is a CIVIL SUIT, not a criminal one. No statutes were broken. We don't arrest bad teachers, but we fire them. Because, guess what? "heavy boots" isn't part of the science standards.

However, what happened here is that the local government -- the school board -- decided that ID should be taught as a valid theory. Why would they do that? What's the purpose of teaching a falsified theory as a valid one? In this case it is to promote a religion.

Now, quoting from Quinn in discussion of the 1982 MacLean vs Arkansas case of creation science, yes, you can declare that bad science fails the Establishment Clause:

"a statute violates the Establishment Clause if it fails any part of the following three-pronged test:

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. . . ; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." ...

Ruse's second ploy is to suggest that for legal purposes Judge Overton had to argue that creation science is not science at all because he could not have held Act 590 in violation of the Establishment Clause if he had merely shown that creation science, though testable, has been tested and massively disconfirmed, and is therefore bad or weak science.25 But this suggestion is mistaken on two counts. First, as I noted above, Judge Overton could have held Act 590 in violation of the Establishment Clause without even addressing the question of the scientific status of creationism merely by arguing, as he in fact did, that Act 590 fails part of the three-pronged test. Second, if Judge Overton had been able to show that Act 590 has as a major effect the advancement of religion, then he could at least have tried to argue from the premise that creation science is bad science to the conclusion that Act 590 has the advancement of science only as a minor effect at best. And if he had successfully done this and also shown that Act 590 has no other major effects, then he would have been entitled to conclude that Act 590 has the advancement of religion as its primary effect, which is all he needed to establish in order to show that Act 590 fails the second part of the three-pronged test."

I don't see your argument as being stronger until one can point to an experiement in the lab that confirms abiogenesis. Only then can you show that life can arise by biochemical processes. Until you can do that, you just give fuel to those who claim that it's "only" a theory.

The Dover board specifically excluded abiogenesis from the teaching of ID. Go to http://www.ncseweb.org and check out the written documents.

Why do you focus on abiogenesis? IDers don't. Neither Irreducible Complexity nor Complex Specified Information is about abiogenesis. And you must know -- because you have read Origin of the Species (right?) -- that abiogenesis is not part of evolution:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.

However, to meet your challenge head on, yes, life has been made experimentally in the lab, and under conditions that occur TODAY in nature:

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/issue1.htm'>http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/issue1.htm

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/

http://www.siu.edu/%7Eprotocell/

http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

http://www.christianforums.com/t155621

If ID is religious, then it supports religion. ... Showing it to not be science is a first step in proving that case. Wrongly say that it is science, and the case is over.

That's my point: the case is not over if ID is a scientific theory (which it is). Being science is not enough to get a theory taught as a valid theory. The theory must BE valid. Can a school board mandate teaching flat earth as a valid theory in science class? Why not? The case would not hinge on the Establishment Clause, but instead it would discuss fraud and the deliberate deception of students.

Look, we both know that ID has a religious agenda. The question is: what is the best way, for science, to deal with that? Does science benefit if you try to artificially define science such that ID is not science? Since there is no clear cut way to determine what is science and what is not, you have to misrepresent science to provide such a criteria. How is misrepresenting science good for science or science education? How do you say that ID is not science? Because it mentions a (possibly) supernatural intelligence? What "rule" in science prevents a science from doing that? Do a PubMed search on "God" and you get almost 1,800 articles.

I say let science do what science does: test theories. Forget the religious implications of ID; they are irrelevant to deciding whether the theory is correct. Science doesn't care if there is a supernatural entity that manufactured life on the planet. Darwin showed that. OK, atheists care, but their religious views don't have any more place in science class than those of IDers. The universe is what it is and, if that would include a deity manufacturing life, then that is the way it is. Right? Don't you discard or modify beliefs when the evidence is against them? Why should that be any different for atheists than theists?

So, ID is testable, has been tested, and has been found false. I'll be glad to go into all that in separate posts. ID is a falsified theory. Why then do people want ID taught as valid? NOW is where the religious nature of ID comes in. IDers want ID taught as valid to promote a religion. Now ID fails the Establishment Clause. Here, let's see if I can summarize Quinn's excellent reasoning on this. I suggest you read the full article for yourself. BTW, Quinn is discussing the Opinion of Judge Overton in the 1982 MacLean vs Arkansas case. You are using the same arguments Overton used about creation science, i.e. it is not science but religion.

" Judge Overton begins with a statement of what he takes to be the essential characteristics of science:

(I) It is guided by natural law;

(2) It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;

(3) It is testable against the empirical world;

(4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word; and

(5) It is falsifiable (Testimony of Ruse and other science witnesses). 10 ...

6) If any statement S is scientific, then S either is a natural law or is explainable by a natural law and is testable, tentative and falsifiable. ... The problem is that (6) is demonstrably false. None of the characteristics it alleges to be necessary conditions for an individual statement to have scientific status is, in fact, a necessary condition of scientific status of an individual statement, ... To be sure, as Ruse notes, science looks for explanatory laws. 18 But if there are no laws to be found, scientists are prepared to settle for less and can do so without forfeiting the scientific status of their achievements. Certain statements about individual events in the quantum domain are not laws and have no known explanations in terms of laws; moreover, they can have no explanation in terms of laws if contemporary quantum theory is correct, as it seems to be. But they will remain scientific statements even if contemporary quantum theory is correct. Hence, either being a natural law or being explainable by a natural law is not a necessary condition for scientific status.

"Consider next the conditions of testability and falsifiability. As a result of the work of Pierre Duhem, it has been known to philosophers of science for three-quarters of a century that many scientific statements are neither testable nor falsifiable individually and in isolations but only conjunctively and in corporate bodies. Hence, being testable and being falsifiable are not necessary for individual statements to have scientific status, and the argument for (8) fails too. Moreover, it would not strengthen Judge Overton's argument to retreat to the more plausible claim that only in the case of whole theories, and not on the level of each individual statement, do testability and falsifiability count as necessary conditions for scientific status. Creation science as defined in Section 4(a) of Act 590 and as further interpreted by Judge Overton himself clearly satisfies these conditions. For example, the statements in 4(a)(l) and 4(a)(6), as Judge Overton interprets them, together imply that there is no matter on earth more than 20,000 years old. The trouble with this claim is not that it is untestable or unfalsifiable. Its problem is rather that it has been repeatedly tested and is so highly disconfirmed that, for all practical purposes, it has been falsified.

"Unfortunately, the patently false claim that creation science is neither testable nor falsifiable seems well on its way to becoming, for some evolutionary biologists, a rhetorical stick with which to belabor their creationist opponents. [same thing with ID]

"Rather than taking on the creationists obliquely and in wholesale fashion by suggesting that what they are doing is "unscientific" tout court (which is doubly silly because few authors can even agree on what makes an activity scientific), we should confront their claims directly and in piecemeal fashion by asking what evidence and arguments can be marshaled for and against each of them. The core issue is not whether Creationism satisfies some undemanding and highly controversial definitions of what is scientific; the real question is whether the existing evidence provides stronger arguments for evolutionary theory than for Creationism.39

The question is not whether creation science fails to accord with some dubious and probably ephemeral theories about what is necessary for counting as science. The real issue is whether creation science, whatever it may be, now has high epistemic status as compared to its rivals for credibility in the empirical domain. Since it does not, the following argument seems promising:

(21) Act 590 does have the advancement of religion as a major effect.

(22) Act 590 does not have the advancement of empirical knowledge as a major effect.

(23) Act 590 does not have the advancement of any other aim as a major effect.

(24) Hence, Act 590 has the advancement of religion as its only major effect.

(25) Whence, Act 590 has the advancement of religion as its primary effect."

I find this line of reasoning overwhelming, which is why I'm using it for ID. Substitute ID for "creation science" and the argument is still overwhelming.

"CONCLUSIONS

Scientists and their friends should derive little comfort from the outcome of McLean V. Arkansas. Victory was indeed achieved at the wholly unnecessary expense of perpetuating and canonizing a false stereotype of what science is and how it works." Phillip Quinn Chapter 25 in But Is It Science? Edited by M Ruse, pp. 367-385

(From Science and Reality: Recent Work In the Philosophy of Science, edited by James T. Cushing F. Delaney, and Gary M. Gutting. Copyright ~ 1984 by University of Notre Dame Press. Reprinted by permission.)

Its like you find caveman skulls and ancient human skulls but where are the half way in time skulls?

??? The "cave men" skulls in Europe are Cro Magnon, who are us -- H. sapiens.

Now, if you mean going back to H. erectus (who was only sometimes a cave dweller) yes, there are skulls that are in between:

Erectus to sapiens: Omo valley. Omo-2 "remarkable mixture of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens characteristics" pg. 70.

Omo-1: another mix of erectus and sapiens

Omo Valley, Ethiopia: ~ 500,000 ya. mixture erectus and sapiens features

Sale in Morrocco: skull discovered in 1971, ~300,000 ya. also shows erectus and sapiens features.

Broken Hill skull: another skull with mixtures of erectus and sapiens features

Tautavel, 200Kya: large brow ridges and small cranium but rest of face looks like H. sapiens.

"We shall see the problem of drawing up a dividing line between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens is not easy." pg 65.

Ngaloba Beds of Laetoli, 120 Kya: ~1200 cc and suite of archaic (erectus) features.

Guamde in Turkana Basin, 180 Kya: more modern features than Ngaloba but in-between erectus and sapiens.

Skhul, Israel "posed a puzzle to paleoanthropologists, appearing to be almost but not quite modern humans"

Skhul and Jebel Qafza caves: "robust" H. sapiens at 120 Kya that have brow ridges like erectus but brain case like sapiens.

Bouri http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0611_030611_earliesthuman.html

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/06/11_bones-background.shtml

actual paper: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v423/n6941/full/nature01669_r.html

Vertesszollos, 400 Kya. Teeth like H. erectus but occipital bone like H. sapiens. brain ~ 1300 cc

As to civilization, we can see intermediates all over the planet today. Tribes that have agriculture and some building but not massive amounts of technology. The Masai and Zulus in the 19th century come immediately to mind.

The "Ice Man" discovered in the Alps dating to 15000 years ago shows intermediate civilization. It appears he was on a trading trip south of the Alps (commerce) but died on the return trip. Trading implies an economy where goods and services are traded, which in turn implies a civilization.

My own hypothesis has always been that the rapid evolution of humans came about through tribal warfare in which one tribe would wipe out all the (male) members of the other tribe' date=' thus the best thinkers who were able to outsmart their enemy and the best communicators who were best able to work together against their enemy were favored by evolution, as those who lost out died. Thus we are descended from the best thinkers and speakers among the proto-humans. Is this how it happened?

 

Beyond that, I'd say socialization and forms of expression became intermingled with sex, and thus appreciation of music, dance, etc was genetically favored because it became a sex-linked behavior.

 

Am I at all on here with what SCIENCE has to say about it?[/quote']

Have you done a PubMed search on this?

 

The consensus is that our intelligence and communication skills came about by cooperation and social interaction within the social group, not competition between social groups. If we look at stone age cultures today, they do not engage in warfare as a rule. So why would our ancestors have been different?

 

Remember, for most of our history, humans had primitive weapons and they were just as often prey as predator. Brains and communication were needed for cooperative behavior to both fend off predators and to cooperatively hunt large prey. For instance, the European cave bear makes the grizzly look like cuddly teddy bear. Yet when H. sapiens migrated into Europe, the cave bear went suddenly extinct. Both species wanted the same real estate -- caves -- but humans had better cooperation.

 

Since humans had to live in social groups to survive by cooperation, there was also the possibility of cheating by individuals within the group. So here too intelligence was needed both to 1) figure out new ways of cheating and 2) detect cheaters. A brain module to detect cheating is one of the few modules that evolutionary psychologists have really good data for.

I'm looking around on the web doing research on something and then I come across something I just find very odd.

 

Someone claims that birth control causes early abortions.

http://www.prolife.com/BIRTHCNT.html

 

What is this claim this person is really trying to say?

 

They are talking about common oral contraceptives.

""By carefully detailing the available medical information concerning the abortifacient effects of oral contraceptives' date=' Randy Alcorn has developed a logical and thoughtful challenge to every prolife person. The conclusions of this study are scientifically accurate. Birth control pills usually prevent pregnancy, but sometimes they cause an abortion. Questions? Objections? Randy has addressed them in a gentle but firm way. This is the manner in which the often fiery debate over prolife subjects should be carried out- unemotionally, intelligently and quietly. The evidence is before us . . . `How should we then live?'"

~ Patrick D. Walker, M.D., Professor of Pathology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences"

This guy Alcorn has apparently written a book that alledgedly surveys the scientific literature and he has found (which no one else has) that a side-effect of oral contraceptives is to cause fertilized ova to abort. IOW, prevention of ovulation is not the only mechanism oral contraceptives use to prevent pregnancy.

As I read the blurbs about the book, this really highlights that the pro-life movement is really about sex, not protection of the unborn. The real objective of the anti-abortionists is to keep people from having sex except in situations approved by them -- marriage.

The possibility of pregnancy is used as a means to keep people, especially women, in fear so that they will only have sex in situations where, if they do get pregnant, they will be able to take care of the kid. The baby is being used as a way to force people to be "moral" by the standards of the anti-abortionists. Abortion made it possible for women to get out of pregnancy whenever they wanted. Now we have this attack on birth control pills. So the objective is to get rid of the most convenient and [b']reliable[/b] form of birth control. Put the fear of God (and babies) back!

Cancer could be viewed as evolution where selection unit is the cell and not the gene.

In evolution, the selection unit is always the individual. Not a single gene. It is the individual who survives and reproduces, not the gene.

Once we are able to target cencerous cells specifically I think we should be able to effectively 'cure' cancer. ... But at least resistance to treatment will not be passed on to other individuals.[/

But, when each cancer cell is a little different from all the other cancer cells, how do you target each and every cell? Whatever you use for the target, there will be one or two cells (out of the billions in the tumor) that don't have that target. So, you still have 1 or 2 survivors, who then divide and make the tumor all over again. And now the new tumor is immune to your treatment.

Yes, the problem is exactly that resistance will be passed on to new cells. In this case, the cell is the "individual".

I think saying there will "never ever[/i'] be a cure for cancer" might be a bit excessive...

Maybe, but Zynod's point is that cancer is not a single disease or cellular defect, but a number of diseases and cellular defects that have similar results. So it is unlikely to be a SINGLE cure for all cancers.

In the last 20 years, I have seen what appeared to be cures. However, both failed because of natural selection. Each cancer cell is a little bit different because they accumulate changes in the genome. So, a treatment will kill 99.99% of the cells and reduce the tumor to invisibility on MRI or CAT scan. However, a few cells survive and begin dividing again. Soon the entire population of tumor cells has come from cells immune to the treatment.

Natural selection in action.

Hmm, what do you mean by this? I don't see how being prone to cancer is at all evolutionarily advantageous.

An hypothesis can vary from person to person. But surely an good hypothesis is based on at least some fact and asumption based on the facts.

When it is first proposed, a hypothesis comes from our imagination and doesn't have to be based on any fact at all. It is testing AFTER you form a hypothesis that establishes a connection to facts.

Now, hypotheses come in 3 forms, depending on the state of testing:

Untested.

Supported

Falsified.

But hypothesis can be wildly different if we take on intent as an ingredient in the building of the hypothesis even though facts dictate both hypothesis.

Example= The capitalist world is the ideal circumstance in which to invest capital for profit, so let the capitalist world thrive and let us make more profit.

Anti= The caspitalist ideal is to make more profit, at the expense of the poor, justice and the enviroment, so end capitalism.

These aren't scientific hypotheses, because both involve ethical judgments: "ideal" in the first and "justice" in the second.

Now, you can have competing hypotheses that both explain the data. For instance:

1. The fossils at Dinosaur National Park were deposited by a local flood.

2. The fossils at Dinosaur National Park were deposited by a world-wide flood.

Both would account for the data, since both involve a flood. The difference is the extent of that flood. To decide between the hypotheses, you need more data.

Notice in all of this' date=' the author doesnt give a single number, nor indicate how fast the galaxy is rotating.

 

Just for the record, the solar system takes 220 millions to orbit the galaxy. That isnt so fast.

 

But, more importantly, this information comes from a man by the name of Humpreys whose methodology is seriously faulty: the author was a guy by the name of Humphrey, who deduced his conclusion by following a model from a supercomputer. The problem: he made all the starts attract to the center of the galaxy, but not to each other.

First, thank you for taking the time and effort to answer each and every one of the points in the OP. WELL DONE!

Second, there is no requirement that the Milky Way has always been a spiral galaxy or will always be one. My recollection is that, as you look farther out in distance/farther back in time, there are no spiral galaxies. Galaxies change shape. Humphreys, in addition to the problems you discussed, has made a mistaken assumption.

That is not what I am saying, because I can go outside and observe the law of gravity which means it takes no faith to believe in it. However unless you personally have preformed every experiment and collection of data for the theory[/b'] of evolution, you have to have faith in those results.

1. Laws are not more reliable than theories. Laws are simply well-confirmed theories. However, in the 1800s when scientists realized that deduction could not strictly "prove", they stopped calling theories "laws". Based on how it was done in the 1700s, we could say the Law of Common Ancestry and the Law of Natural Selection.

2. Science is such a reliable form of knowledge because it ONLY uses information that ANYONE can get under approximately the same circumstances. So, you COULD do the experiments. That you don't is due to lack of time, lack of interest, or lack of money. In contrast, I cannot stand with Thomas and put my hands in the nail holes in the risen Jesus. Therefore, I must trust the Biblical account. But I do not have to trust the data for evolution. I can get the same data myself. That's the difference between faith and science.

I seem to see a distinct difference. For example I can take my dog outside and throw it off my roof. Now lets say I do this 1,000,000 times my dog is going to fall to the ground all 1,000,000 times. But I can't take my dog outside and set it down and watch it become an entierly new species.

Because evolution happens to populations, NOT individuals. You are born with your alleles (forms of genes). They do not change during your lifetime. However, your children will not have exactly the same alleles as you (and the other parent). Mutations occur at the rate of 1 per individual. The genetic makeup of a population will change over the course of generations as some alleles become "fixed" (are present in every member of the population) and other alleles are eliminated. Over the course of generations the population will slowly change such that the individuals in the population 10,000 generations from now won't look like the individuals now. This has begun in dogs. Genetically, dogs are now four different species, not one. Each species has alleles different from all the other species.

So, if you want to understand evolution, you must think in terms of populations. Understand evolution correctly first. Then, if you disagree with it, you are at least disagreeing with what evolution really is, not some imaginary thing.

have you personally tested evolution?

Furthermore religious faith is believing in what the holy text related to the religion says or what the leader of the religion says.

And here I thought Christianity was about having a personal relationship with Jesus! That doesn't depend on any text or leader of the religion.

You have to have faith that they followed the scientific method and that they did not tamper the data.

Again, the data they used becomes an accepted hypothesis for the next investigator's hypothesis. If the original data were fabricated, then the next experiment doesn't work. In fact, this is how fraud in science is usually detected.

Let's consider Piltdown Man. A fake. It tended to show that humans evolved in England. Yet the next transitional form showing a mixture of ape and primitive human traits was discovered in South Africa. In fact, instead of 2 fossil individuals, dozens of A. africanus were found. The hypothesis that humans evolved in England didn't work with the new data. Thus, most anthropologists were convinced Piltdown was a fake for 2 decades before it was finally proven.

Now I am not entirely sure on this with out doing research on it I seem to recall that Quantum fluctuations occur in a stream of quantum particles which means that they did not come out of nothing.

Virtual particles occur in our existing spacetime. This is what you meant. However, one of the attractions of String Theory is that quantum fluctuations could make a spacetime.

Regardless lets say that the first law of thermodynamics doesn't apply here and there particles are spontaneously appering.

The First Law of Thermodynamics does not apply to getting a universe. It tells us what happens IN this universe. But it doesn't forbid getting a universe to begin with.

do they ever randomly fall into order?

Not "randomly", but they fall into order without direct intervention by an intelligence. In chemistry, hydrogen gas and oxygen gas combine to form water. Water has more order than the gases. But I've never heard any creationist claim that God has to directly intervene to get that to happen.

And back to an early example if it was all based on a this happening over an infinite amount of time wouldn't eventually a bomb so large it could destroy all of the known universe spontaneously apper and detonate. Further more there particles can only remain stable for a very short peroid of time meaning they have no time to "evolve"

1. Virtual particles can gain permanence if energy is supplied. This is what happens in particle accelerators. The energy of the collision makes the virtual particles permanent so they can be studied. You collide 2 refrigerators and get a toaster and a blender in addition to the 2 refrigerators.

So are you saying that evolution is just as provable as gravity.

Oh yes. Been done. Species have been observed forming from existing species hundreds of times and natural selection has been documented even more.

But when studying how life changes over time you clearly are going back in time. Well eventually you have to reach the beginning don't you?

But since nobody has answered my original question to prove without doubt, evolution using the scientific method I will for now, until proved otherwise, assume that it can't be done.

This is a red herring. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you innocently did this.

Strictly speaking, you can't "prove" anything by deductive logic. This true for 2 reasons:

1. No matter how many times you test a theory, there are still an infinite number of tests to do (such as dropping your dog off the roof to test gravity) and it is always (barely) possible that the theory may fail the next test.

2. There is always the possibility, no matter how remote, that there is a better theory to explain the data out there that we haven't thought of.

So what happens is the we provisionally accept a theory as true. Unless and until new data comes along to falsify it. In the meantime, we use that theory as the basis for new hypotheses and testing those hypotheses become more support for the theory. Let me try a simple example. We have the theory that the sun is the center of the solar system and the planets orbit the sun. We accept that as (provisionally) true. We then plan the paths of our spacecraft based on that. When the spacecraft arrive when and where we calculated, that is more support for the theory.

it still takes faith to believe that you came to the right conclusions.

No, it's not faith, because of that "provisionally". Based on the data we have now, we conclude evolution is true. If new data shows up, then we change our conclusion.

However, there is also some evidence for creation, mainly (Again this is my "untrained" mind) the fact that we are here, now this might now seem like much but I challenge anyone to give an example of something spontaneously coming into existence.

Actually, this is evidence against the theory of special creation. After all, if God has been zapping species into existence, why isn't He doing it anymore?

However, if you want an example of life coming from non-life, then that has been observed happening spontaneosly:

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/issue1.htm'>http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/issue1.htm

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/

http://www.siu.edu/%7Eprotocell/

http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

http://www.christianforums.com/t155621

The old example of if I see a clock there has to be a clock maker, the hundereds of carefully timed gears did not just spontaneous come into existence and then randomly fall into working order.

Ah, but here is the genius of Darwin. Darwin discovered an unintelligent process that will make design. It's natural selection. The designs in plants and animals did not come into existence "spontaneously"; they took many generations. But they did come into existence without being manufactured like a clock.

scientist say that there is no maker, that it all just spontaneously appeared and ramdomly fell into order.

Actually, a scientist, speaking as a scientist, does NOT say this. He can't say that there is no deity or that God did not cause the universe to come into existence. What the scientist CAN say is that: once the universe exists, there are processes within the universe that will cause the order without God having to intervene directly. Science is NOT atheism. Science is agnostic.