- Sebastian Helenius
- Lahti
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Human Evolution
Evolution is one of the most tested theories present in the scientific community today. The fact is that it appears to be hardening into substance - more fact that theory.
Modern evolutionary theory discusses two principle pathways of evolution - punctuated vs. gradualism.
So who are we, the humans?
Our rate evolution is beyond understanding in comparison to pretty much all other species.
Or is it?
I believe that yes it is and that there lies something bizarre hidden in the facts of our evolution.
I short summary of what we have accomplished as since homo sapiens in 50,000 years -
traveled the globe.
settled across the globe.
brutally slaughtered all our relatives or absorbed all other directly related species into our gene pool (theories differ).
developed a diverse network of cultures.
built skyscrapers.
built spaceships.
Now, i hate to sound pretentious but are we not one fantastically competent species? Give yourselves a pat on the back! No, don't. really.
Anyway, the question is how have we achieved this feat of evolution? Other animals require millions of years before they are able to fly.
I would like to hear some opinion.
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natasha nikulina 50+
Here is the link :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wr-lXLGCxQ&feature=related
Stewart Gault 30+
natasha nikulina 50+
Stewart Gault 30+
He fails to mention that the uranium decay which he says is useless for dating because it also decays into helium and not just lead, only makes up for less than 0.2% of the uranium isotopes. 99.8% of all uranium decays into lead which he failed to mention, convenient?
Also ufo tv doesn't instantly strike reliable source into the minds of people.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Theories explain and predict and organise the facts.
Atomic theory explains hundreds of facts and observations.
So does the theory of evolution.
Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation is just a theory too, that explains facts.
Einsteins theory of relativity, just another theory.
I guess all theories are useless because they only explain facts, but they aren't facts.
And like all science they can be refined and improved and built upon or thrown out if we develop better explanations of the facts.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Science and the tools it has led to have revolutionised our lives.
If you ever have an operation or a tooth out, thank science for the anesthetic.
natasha nikulina 50+
Maybe you are right challenging ' uranium decay' argument. Frankly, i don't know, and it was not that attracted me.
Don't you experience a kind of a cognitive dissonance when you are suggested to believe that life emerged from a random mutation out of primordial soup under the dubious and controversial circumstances, which can never be recreated and tested ? Don't you think that it requires the same degree of ' belief ' as religion does ?
In QM the Newtonian physics is viewed as a ' limited case ', maybe the theory of evolution is the similar limited case in the process where consciousness is the major player and totally not taken into account in TE ?
Re "This fully depends on what you define as consciousness "
I don't define consciousness, as far as i know, nobody does. Or did i miss something here ? In my own understanding it is something/everything that do not think , but where all thoughts came from.
Einstein thought that the whole Universe was conscious ( Spinoza's version ), I don't think that he would be flattered to know, but I do share this vision :)
Thanks for responding !
Stewart Gault 30+
And no i dont feel weird when considering if I came from one cell. And no it doesn't require the same amount of belief as a religion, simply because the methods of evolution have been proved to work and that there is no reason to think it hasn't happened in the past. Also fossils showing primitive structures. Then there's gene similarity and there's just so much evidence which all points towards a common ancestor it's incredible
Matthieu Miossec 100+
that is not evolution you are describing. Evolution describes how species vary and give rise to other species. It doesn't have anything to say about how life arose. Having said that, there's nothing particularly shocking about self-assembling proteins coming into being. Chemistry is all about bonds and repeating patterns with reactions leading molecules to more complex compounds.
I submit to you that your cognitive dissonance comes from an unfulfilled expectation to have the answer ready made. It wasn't until 1859 that the idea of evolution was put into words, why should we already have the answers regarding the genesis of life? You can't arrive at your destination while the tracks are being built (and you won't know until then if it's testable or reproducible and believe me there are people who are testing ideas all the same) You want to quench your thirst, why don't you have a look at all the hypothesis that have been formulated and that are compatible with the knowledge we have accumulated (instead of throwing it all away like Mr. Milton).
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I guess it depends on your perspective. I wonder how (1) people can latch onto specific god ideas with such confidence when even if there is a god the odds are not good their view is correct and (2) that people don't see that assuming some god or supernatural force or agency is involved doesn't answer anything - its just a big magic plug for ignorance and (3) that people can not clearly see we are mammals and so similar in so many ways to other animals. The evidence for common descent seems so intuitively obvious to me but not others.(4) that so many think this magic force or agency is still intervening in our lives and revealed and knowable yet is invisible, intangible, immaterial extremely elusive and virtually unrecognisable from a delusion.
While I don't rule out there being something more, I don't have any issue if we are the results of natural processes with no other agency involved. For me, when I see the physical and even behavioural similarities we seem to be smart animals, obviously physically related, we have a mechanism via genes and DNA and natural selection that explains the changes and adaptation actually occurs in front of our eyes in a relatively short time. I can extrapolate that back easily for all vertibra. The further back you go, it gets less intuitive and obvious for me, but I see no reason not to accept a natural explanation is most likely. I mean we don't need gods or supernatural agencies to explain anything we have figured out in detail - lightening, earthquakes etc.
I would be careful saying never recreate or reproduce. We've confirmed DNA in the last 50 years and only mapped the human genome recently. What we will know in another 50 years or 5,000 or 5 million?
If we were designed, what a crappy design, and we must have been created to look evolved. Its a dog eat dog world. Animals live by eating other life.
Wherever there is water on Earth we find life, even in the underwater volcanic vents.
natasha nikulina 50+
Stewart Gault 30+
Matthieu Miossec 100+
natasha nikulina 50+
Matthieu Miossec 100+
I would also argue it is bad practice to let the video do the conversation. Maybe you should give some sort of summary of the video. That will show both that you watched it yourself and that you understand enough of it to comment about the validity of the claims that are made. If you can't do that, you're commiting the argument from authority fallacy by assuming that Milton knows best. Not a scientific approach.
Gerald O'brian 50+
It's just too lazy to copy-paste a link to somebody else's idea. Summarize it, make it your own.
Valuable knowledge is open-source. It's not Darwin's idea anymore. It's mine.
I wish more people made summaries, made things their own.
natasha nikulina 50+
I don't think that being interested in other people thoughts on the subject in question is a bad/lazy practice. Why i should have an opinion in the first place ?
I have questions instead.
As to my experience in TED conversations, those who have unshakable opinions or strong beliefs ( which is pretty much the same ) seem to have arrived to the place of destination and entertain the idea that they know the truth. I prefer to stay open and opinion is the last thing i want to have. Though i have some :)
Thanks for responding !
Matthieu Miossec 100+
Peter Law 30+
Interesting link. Thank goodness for people who are willing to think for themselves. Sooner or later the truth will out.
:-)
natasha nikulina 50+
Frankly, I don't think that Creationism holds the truth.
If you mean that truth :)
Peter Law 30+
I wouldn't expect you to fall for that :) Creationism is a belief. The truth is that evolution is having to resort to court cases & gagging orders to quench negative investigation. This must eventually become apparent to all.
:-)
Obey No1kinobe 50+
The court cases I have read about are about keeping religion and creationism out of public schools and stopping special interests teaching something that does not stand up scientifically.
Science deals with unusual or novel hypotheses all the time. They ultimately progress or not on their merits, on the evidence.
Evolution doesn't disprove gods. Science and evolution has nothing to say about the existence of god. It just explains things better and better over the years. If your particular beliefs don't fit the explanations, then the choice is yours how to proceed.
Do you really think all the god fearing Christians who are biologists or geologists are part of some grand conspiracy to trick everyone about whether we evolved or the radiometric dating of fossils and rocks? Do you think it is just their presupositions that the universe is old that leads them to interpret the data on the distances of stars and how long it took the light to reach us. Are they supposed to ignore that because it can not be because of the bible so they must be interpreting it wrong or something supernatural happened to make it look like it took a long time.
I'm not helplessly committed to evolution etc. We might some better explanation one day. We might be able to prove spirit energy exists or what ever.
The difference is I'm not committed to a book being absolutely right. I'm okay saying we don't really know
Meanwhile I support public and scientific debate but not slipping in non scientific beliefs into school science.
I actually support teaching about all the religions and general spirituality in schools, their historical development, similarities, the fact they are based on faith, on revelation, scripture and authority and critical thinking. The challenges of origins and consciousness
Peter Law 30+
You really need to watch 'Expelled' if you want perspective on this. You may well disagree with it, but in my attempts to educate myself I hear over & over about scientists getting into hot water over this. Here in the UK our schools are banned from teaching anything that disagrees with mainstream science. This is a really strange way to stimulate enquiry, which is the bedrock (or should be) of science.
You will get Expelled 1of 10 here. I found them all up to 9, so you may miss the end. (The butler did it).
:-)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=expelled%20ben%20stein&source=video&cd=4&ved=0CEsQtwIwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DcEvq4xIHmH4&ei=rGQyUI6FGaPD0QWXkYCgDQ&usg=AFQjCNH7iDUaYlFt0LM7QqsAzx7b-IKW-A
Matthieu Miossec 100+
Ben Stein is as dull as a doorknob and his grasp of evolution sucks. I watched it to get a good laugh, but it wasn't even funny bad, it was just bad. The only funny bit was when a cartoon Dawkins is pulling all the slot machines to illustrate the improbability of beneficial mutations (which of course also illustrates how creationists make the same mistakes over and over and over and over again when they talk about evolution). This is essentially the error behind William Dembsky's whole reasoning.
I'd recommend everyone not waste their time watching this unless they want to see propaganda at work.
Peter Law 30+
I agree you can take or leave the window dressing. Mr Stein has an odd sense of humour. However real scientists are losing real jobs over this, & the testimonies given should invoke some concern in anyone with a sense of fair play.
:-)
Matthieu Miossec 100+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I support questioning and testing out novel ideas. There has been lots of discussion on ID. But from what I understand of ID it just does not cut it as a scientific explanation.
It is hard to comment on some of the specifics of the case from a distance. I don't know exactly what happened or whether he should have been sacked.
In Australia an anti discrimination commissioner got sacked for expressing a discriminatory opinion. He is welcome to his opinion, but it probably wasn't appropriate for his job.
I suggest ID is so bogus, you might question the competence and motivations of someone in a senior scientific role publishing this junk. If I can work out ID is a flawed and discredited argument, unless they have some new stuff, I question the competency. But again I don't know enough about the specifics to have a firm opinion.
Again, no issues with the debate in public. No issue with scientific discussion and debate. But I hope you can see the difference between rejecting something that has been thoroughly debunked and rejecting something controversial that has merit.
I've read up quite a bit on ID, because I though they might be on to something. Now I have more information and its a bit like someone is saying 1 + 1 = 5, this has been reviewed and rejected, yet the campaign continues. If a maths professor publishes an article saying 1 + 1 = 5, you would question his suitability for the job.
I'm not rejecting ID because it disagrees with evolution. Potentially it could be compatible, if they had convincing evidence that some bits and pieces could not evolve. Its just they have no evidence left after it has been examined.
It fails on lack of evidence, before questioning if going from we don't know to god/creator/designer did it is even logical or verifiable.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
There may be a gods. Jesus may have resurrected. There might be heaven and hell. Or Buddha could have been right about reincarnation. Or LRH about Xenu.
Super beings may have evolved in a previous big bang and created our universe.
There could be a spirit realm and intangible beings.
It is just science can't test these things.
Also, we know enough that evolution is a robust theory. God could have helped it along in places, perhaps even kicked started it. We just can not test that unless there is some evidence and so far ID has none that has stood up to scientific scrutiny.
So the magic world is still available except where the magic beliefs make claims that clash with what we reasonable know to be correct. The sun is not being pulled by a chariot and humans share 98% DNA with chimps and natural selection happens.