Evolution, Christian Darwin's Theory, Now Proven Wrong

Mosquitos featured back on page 3 or so of this thread. They are incredibly successful creatures.

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essemoni wrote:

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erdelyii wrote:

But motherhood is a chain, and those who leave return in the journey when they become mothers.

I think everything is connected, and have always liked the idea that we are made of stars.

This concept is probably the most mind blowing to all my year 10 students when I teach year 10 astronomy as part of their physics course. Its something that still, to this day blows my mind. So much so that i'm doing my masters in Astronomy/Astrophysics. But just to be clear - the really heavy elements arn't made in a star during its normal life, they are made when the star goes supernova (mostly).

It's good to hear that 15 year olds can be mind blown by science. That must be rewarding. Does a masters mean you'll go and work on a big telescope somewhere? Star changes are quite something, the way the reactions change to different elements. It's something I saw at a planetarium show, a star going through its stages. So do we have the heavy elements or just the mid-ones or something?

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erdelyii wrote:

Maybe Templar_G will parse that and ponder. It's super clear.

I find that unlikely, too many words, sorry.

Cheers,
Matt.[/quote]

The objection to "walls of text" makes me wonder how Templar_G goes with the Bible. Have you read it, T_G?

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erdelyii wrote:

Mosquitos featured back on page 3 or so of this thread. They are incredibly successful creatures.

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essemoni wrote:

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erdelyii wrote:

But motherhood is a chain, and those who leave return in the journey when they become mothers.

I think everything is connected, and have always liked the idea that we are made of stars.

This concept is probably the most mind blowing to all my year 10 students when I teach year 10 astronomy as part of their physics course. Its something that still, to this day blows my mind. So much so that i'm doing my masters in Astronomy/Astrophysics. But just to be clear - the really heavy elements arn't made in a star during its normal life, they are made when the star goes supernova (mostly).

It's good to hear that 15 year olds can be mind blown by science. That must be rewarding. Does a masters mean you'll go and work on a big telescope somewhere? Star changes are quite something, the way the reactions change to different elements. It's something I saw at a planetarium show, a star going through its stages. So do we have the heavy elements or just the mid-ones or something?

Most stars do not produce heavy elements.

This is because as soon as a star start making iron, it's decaying. This is because up until iron, every fusion (merging of 2 atoms, one of which is almost always hydrogen or helium) generate energy. Iron and forward though, consume energy. So for a star to generate heavy elements, it needs to be either extremely big or go supernova. The bigger the star, the farther down the periodic table it can go.

In addition, odd numbered elements are much rarer than even numbered elements (with the exception of hydrogen (1)) because the vast majority of fusions of elements use helium (which is element 2).

Your crusade ended swiftly when you substituted evidence with opinion and proceeded to claim something was proven.

In all honestly i have never seen hard evidence of evolution, but the signs do point towards it. More than can be said for other theories of creation which is why the theory still stands as the best there is. It has held up to scientific scrutiny thus far(criticism which lives up to scientific standards like logic), whereas all the other theories fall apart easily.

What could be hard evidence? I suppose actually catching the evolution actually occurring, with recordings of the genetic material of pre and post states. Keep in mind however that evolution is gradual, like lengthening of legs doesn't happen in one go it happens over many generations. However what you are looking for are the very few leaps when something extraordinary happens inside the reproductive organs of a species, such that the offspring will be born with it, it won't actually be visible in the originator. Now i might be wrong, but i think those kinds of leaps are very few when looking at historical charts of species and their progression - and mathetically to catch that happening the chances are probably so slim that it could be thousands of years of heavy human effort and still the chance would be slim to catch it.

However, what is more evidence itself is that we are actually able to chart out the evolution of species in a sensible way, we can see where those leaps happened and we can see that only subspecies of those species carry those genes. When we can add up the picture like that and it makes sense, suddenly we are looking at some form of evidence.

But, I guess for some that is too hard to fathom - and emotion substitutes logic leading to conclusions like OP.

It was way too tempting when I saw the name and the act did indeed bear resemblance to the misled "righteous" crusades.

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Mr_Smiley wrote:

The biggest bear in his neck of the woods will get most of the mates. Because he's able to run off smaller bears. His genes survive in his successors, and less dominant males cease to exist. But if there is a shortage of food, the bigger bear needs to eat more, in which case the environment would be preferable to smaller bears. These are processes that have been happening for billions of years.

My god, you gave me an idea which I am about to share. Not saying this is the truth, but food for thought. Original extinction theory by yours truly. Possibly others have said before but I haven't seen it.

They always wondered how the dinosaurs died out, here is an alternative explanation. Most species, human included, and apparently also dinosaurs, get larger and larger over time. We are taller than our ancestors. Fossil evidence suggest dinosaurs kept growing.

Now imagine this,

At the dawn of life, there were only simple beings. Eventually came fungi and plants millions of years before animals. This makes sense as animals are more advanced. Plants came first and "ruled" the world, they were all over - flourishing without animals to hold them in check.

Eventually in this land of plants came animals, animals that fed on plants, and since plants were uncontested for millions of years, the food source for these animals was enormous and they could rapidly grow in numbers and size.

Then came along other animals - predators(carnivores). Predators started feasting on plant-eating animals, the so called herbivores. Together, predators and herbivores entered a race much like we are going through now where we are getting larger and taller. They became eventually enormous.

But, nothing is infinite and lasts forever, and one day, the gigantic surplus of plants had simply been eaten up. However, since the surplus had been so enormous, the dinosaurs had so long to grow that they had become too huge for this new world. There were not enough plants to sustain such huge animals and their numbers started dropping. All the big plantation was eaten up and they all searched for food but there simply wasn't enough to sustain their size and the survivors quickly ate up anything left until they had no more.

And so they simply died out, the animals became too big and when the food source was, in the scope of time, abruptly finished, they were not able to evolve into tinier species fast enough and so the biggest of the animals, the dinosaurs, simply died out.

So the gigantic dinosaurs were a logical consequence of the earliest era of life with plants and fungi in surplus, and were eventually doomed to die out when the surplus would be brought to an end - leaving only lesser animals which could coexist in an animal-plant equilibrium state.

Tell me this does not make logical sense.

EDIT: Now i have looked into the mass extinction of dinosaurs and it is too complicated to connect all the dots for me this quickly. I find it hard to match all the evidence to above theory though. One should never disregard good reasoning however! How would an event as described here affect carbon dioxide levels and how would that in turn affect all of life. Most of events i find described could match up above explanation so i cannot rule it out either. An event like described should destroy not only lots of sources of oxygen(photosynthesis) but also the dead matter should consume enormous amounts of oxygen through respiration - leading to oxygen deficiency and dieoff of oxygen dependent species which again leads to more respiration which again leads to increased acidity in water. I am gonna leave it here for now.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

Spoiler

There's a reason the most popular religions in the world have a rigid balance between 'punishment' and 'reward'. That stuff is easy for simple people to follow, and if they follow it, they get into Heaven/Paradise/whatever. Don't, and they suffer for an unimaginable duration (we are not really equipped to conceive of eternity as anything but an abstract). But in the end that's just a spiritual version of some of our earliest lessons as a child, notably cause and effect. Action and consequence. Why can't I do this thing I want to do now? Because it will be bad for you later. Not because it's wrong. Not because we have some inner guiding empathy or innate sense of morals. Those come later. But not too much later -- the moment we understand that hurting someone else feels the same way, give or take, as it feels when we are hurt, we *typically* become less inclined to squeeze hands so hard or bite or whatever.

Do unto others and all that.

I am not sure whether you mean the part I bolded in the specific context of the mentality of an immature child or in the larger context of our complicated reality as it truly is. In the latter context, I assert that there is no difference between that which will be bad for one's bloodline and/or the preservation of our species later, and that which is morally wrong.

Both. And that's nice, re: the assertion. I obviously disagree but see no point in taking that any further -- we're not going to agree because I see your way as unfeasible in its coldheartedness...

You're about as spiritual as two sticks that happened to fall perpendicular to each other. And I suspect you're proud of that. Then again, you didn't really have a crisis of faith in a belief system. I suspect you had a much more mundane crisis in faith in other people. You call yourself atheist, I see a nihilist. They're not mutually exclusive and some would argue they're synonymous but some would be wrong.

I think it's only fair then that you tell me what you think is moral in the most enlightened sense of the term. And if the moral does not at some point align with the practical, how do you reconcile that?

I find your insult of coldheartedness a little odd. As I implied earlier, my idea of a moral exemplar is best described in fiction as Hari Seldon from the Foundation series -- a man with the ability to see the flow of humanity hundreds of years into the future and enact change that greatly benefits the lives of those yet unborn. (Obviously I don't consider myself anywhere near that power level, but I'm more focused on the direction of this vector than on its magnitude.) Do you consider this character cold-hearted? Do you consider his intent evil? Do you consider his methods impractical? Do you consider him a nihilist? Or aspiritual?

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鬼殺し wrote:

no, your extrapolation of 'the future is a potential heaven or hell' from 'afterlife consequences for the soul' doesn't work. Because of that word: soul. I'm almost curious where you lie regarding that word, but only almost. Reading between the lines suffices here. Do you physically snort when someone uses the word 'soul' seriously? Raise that honed Peterson-wannabe eyebrow of infinite archness? Don't answer. You'll ruin my fun.

When a theory like evolution, invented by a Christian, doesn't pan out... some people will be just too proud to admit they were wrong.

On and on they'll defend themselves even when in this case a fossil record laughably shows absolute no case of evolution, ever.

So people make vague statements about how "it just does happen"...

Or, they describe evolution happening in any case except those we can observe, with fossils.

The hard evidence is in, and evolution is a laughable joke.

Sort of like the big bang, another theory invented by a Christian.

It's ok... you believe a valid theory worth looking into, that a Christian gave you...

Some of you will listen to Christians in the future, who tell you other things to think.

Since apparently the atheists and hindus and jews and budhists etc etc, can't seem to come of with such theories, on their own.

It's good to be on top.

†

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鬼殺し wrote:

I think I'd need to read Foundation to respond to that, but I've seen my share of 'practical' characters in literature with incredible, inhuman foresight and they rarely come across as particularly moral creatures. They typically feel the word 'moral' doesn't apply to them. They're usually messianic, but occasionally just despotic. Since we cannot really conceive of such a creature yet, I find it...silly to define morals in a practical sense by way of such a fanciful conjuration.

Fair points. (In the Foundation series Seldon is depicted as merely a well-respected academic in his own time but as messianic after his death.)

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鬼殺し wrote:

By your definition, it's perfectly okay to murder or steal if it can be justified in the long run, correct?

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鬼殺し wrote:

do not kill (amended to murder)

By your definition as well. Why else draw the distinction between killing and illegal killing?

I don't quite want to go full anarchocapitalist meme on you, but I assume you're not opposed to taxation -- that is, the socially legitimized redistribution of wealth from parties that have earned it to parties who haven't, under penalty of law. Now if you don't want to call that "theft" because of whatever reasons then I don't want to get into semantics any more than I have to, but just as you draw a distinction between killing and murder, I'm reasonably sure you draw a distinction between the seizure of property by force and robbery.

So what you're doing here is trying to come off all holier-than-thou attacking my "fringe" views, when in reality the social acceptance of killing, property seizure and imprisonment/kidnapping under certain conditions is so pervasive that it's utterly banal. For the most part, we call it government, and there's virtually no place our species lives that doesn't have one (or more).

I'm not an anarchist. Therefore: yes, correct.

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鬼殺し wrote:

You'd go back and murder baby Hitler, for example, right? Whereas I'd rather study his life entire and see if we could figure out certain junctures where something less drastic than murder might prevent him from becoming what he became.

Have you ever played Command and Conquer: Red Alert? I think I'd leave baby Hitler alone.

Seriously though, time travel to the past is so complicated a thing to work out the ethics of that I'm hoping it remains as impossible as it seems.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Your morals justify behaving immorally now, as defined by the line:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I assert that there is no difference between that which will be bad for one's bloodline and/or the preservation of our species later, and that which is morally wrong.

By this, can I assume that you also believe the opposite is true? That that which will be good for one's bloodline and/or the preservation of our species later is no different to that which is morally good?

Correct.

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鬼殺し wrote:

You can believe that morals can be reduced to the purely practical but you're wrong in that belief. Flat-out wrong. Thinking that way results in a loss of morals in the present tense, which as I said is difficult to defend unless you have some hypothetical god-like being who can say, yes, if we do THIS now, we absolutely will be better off in the future. And if you're talking hindsight, your approach at its most insidious can retroactively justify genocide. You walk a dangerous path, but thankfully you're almost certainly impotent to make any of your questionable beliefs a threat to anyone, so that's okay.

In the sense that one could justify farmers yoking oxen to draw the ploughs in earlier times: yes, perhaps. But in the modern era such a practice would be considered crude to the point of nonviability. We now have better methods to discriminate between people to separate friend from foe, and we've had them for quite a while now. Good is always relative to the array of choices one is presented with. Ethics evolves with technology, and thus will never be complete (until technology is, if such a thing ever occurs).

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

In the sense that one could justify farmers yoking oxen to draw the ploughs in earlier times: yes, perhaps. But in the modern era such a practice would be considered crude to the point of nonviability. We now have better methods to discriminate between people to separate friend from foe, and we've had them for quite a while now. Good is always relative to the array of choices one is presented with. Ethics evolves with technology, and thus will never be complete (until technology is, if such a thing ever occurs).

Bolding mine. Big statements.

What are these better methods, Scrotie? Who is "we"? And, ethics improving with technology, what makes you think this? I'm curious.

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Charan wrote:

No need to 'think' that, it's an absolute truth. [that everything is connected] One of the few, really. And for me one of the greatest joys in life is seeing or being shown connections that we'd otherwise miss or be unable to perceive. Those little moments where everything feels just a little bit transcendent. But just a little bit -- I've no interest in chemical overloads there. A little insight is more than enough now and then. :)

As for motherhood, I think we can amend that to parenthood in general. Cue the opening to 'Circle of Life'...

But in the context of Earth, I suspect something a little less circular will be the end result. It is sheer folly to say, 'we're killing the planet' but I think it's alright to suspect we might be actively killing our ability to sustainably stay with the planet. When the departure comes, it'll probably be goodbye rather than see you later. Which is fine -- some mothers eat their young, some are eaten by them. The term for this is matriphagy (simple enough to figure out if you've ever googled 'coprophagy' and hey, who hasn't?)...and I do believe we're engaging in some fairly superficial matriphagy when it comes to old lady Gaea. I doubt she notices though.

Ah, the doors of perception. I think that anyone who works for NASA should undergo ongoing psychedelic therapy. DMT sessions with a trained psych.

(NASA are not my only canditates for this, but yeah, it would be helpful). This may sound flaky to some, however it is an exciting frontier that's shedding the Altamont taint for example, where Dr William Richards, from John Hopkins will be presenting.

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faerwyn wrote:

Most stars do not produce heavy elements.

This is because as soon as a star start making iron, it's decaying. This is because up until iron, every fusion (merging of 2 atoms, one of which is almost always hydrogen or helium) generate energy. Iron and forward though, consume energy. So for a star to generate heavy elements, it needs to be either extremely big or go supernova. The bigger the star, the farther down the periodic table it can go.

In addition, odd numbered elements are much rarer than even numbered elements (with the exception of hydrogen (1)) because the vast majority of fusions of elements use helium (which is element 2).

Thanks for the star science, Faerwyn. What's the heaviest element that can be generated by a supernova star?

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Crackmonster wrote:

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Mr_Smiley wrote:

The biggest bear in his neck of the woods will get most of the mates. Because he's able to run off smaller bears. His genes survive in his successors, and less dominant males cease to exist. But if there is a shortage of food, the bigger bear needs to eat more, in which case the environment would be preferable to smaller bears. These are processes that have been happening for billions of years.

My god, you gave me an idea which I am about to share. Not saying this is the truth, but food for thought. Original extinction theory by yours truly. Possibly others have said before but I haven't seen it.

They always wondered how the dinosaurs died out, here is an alternative explanation. Most species, human included, and apparently also dinosaurs, get larger and larger over time. We are taller than our ancestors. Fossil evidence suggest dinosaurs kept growing.

There are a lot of environmental factors that come into play with regards to size. It's my opinion that if food, water, and climate are of sufficient quantities to support larger sizes, creatures will evolve to get larger. But should climate change happen, which can lead to shortages of food and water, then creatures will downsize.

Spiders and insects for example used to be a bit larger than they are today. Some scientists think that it's due to the Earth having more oxygen in the atmosphere. There were periods of 10s of millions of years where most of the Earth had equatorial region climates everywhere but the poles. This extra plant life released more oxygen into the atmosphere. Such a climate is preferable for large creatures.