1301. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165450 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 1:37 pm

I have yet to find one shred of evidence which clearly proves that MACRO-evolution occurred. I accept MICRO-evolution, which is soley the adaptation or modification within a species.

We have lots of that. But it isn't fair for us to give it to you. You need to prove your "God did it" theory first. I would like you to review the history of the Spartina grass species over the last two centuries and come up with evidence of divine intervention, please. Any evidence of God doing things would be appreciated.

1302. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165430 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Your question of the Bird Flu. I agree, I want the scientists to use their ideas of MICRO-evolution to try and trace the origin of the infection, not Macro-evolution. I assume you know the difference?

Being a scientist with close to 30 years experience in the subject, I am very sorry to admit that I don't. I have a B.Sc, an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in biology. If you don't believe me, you can look them up. The first and last were from University of London, the second from University of York. I have also published many papers after the Ph.D. In none of my education or research was the term "macro-evolution" mentioned. The reason is that it does not exist. It is a lie spread by creationists. Macro-evolution is a jump in evolution that can't be explained by a series of individual mutations. Biologists have never found such jumps. We have seen, even within human history, the formation of entire new species based on nothing more than individual mutations or a series of individual mutations.

I think this comes down to who you really trust when your life is in danger. Scientists like me, who believe in evidence, or Ben Stein and his friends and their prayers?

Who would you trust?

1303. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165412 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Comment #165408 by annabanana

I think it is a bug in the website. It may only take one person marking a post as troll for this to happen.

1304. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165398 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 12:45 pm

The inorganic cell hopping onto a crystal and turning into organic life. That's funny.

It is tempting to repond to such nonsense with details of the clay-based origin of life, but I am not in the mood.

Look at things this way, moron. If bird flu hit the USA, which would you rather happen - that scientists used their ideas of evolution to try and trace the origin of the infection and come up with a treatment, or would you rather have the idiot ID supporters praying for you?

1305. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165386 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Comment #165382 by TheTruthID

How can you begin to explain evolution when you can't even begin to explain where life came from in the first place?

So how did God do it? I would love to see how "magic" is recorded in the fossil record.

1306. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #165381 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 12:25 pm

As for you Rawandi-spinface, yes - you are a name caller, because it's all you got. I spent 20 years serving my country, facing off against people who want to destroy this world.

It is the lying cowards who made this movie who want to destroy this world. They don't care about the future, as Jesus is coming. Check out creationist sites and you will see global warming denial promoted as well. It is all like some kind of conspiracy theorist suicide pact and they want to tale the rest of us with them.

If you want to fight to save your country, and the world, fight against the science-denying crazies who want to wreck our planet.

1307. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #165320 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 10:36 am

Comment #165316 by navyjake95

if you have any guts, go watch you fearless "leader" stammer his way to nonsense. Embarrassing I know, but true.

I am so foolish. I realise now that I should reject the entire foundation of modern neo-Darwinist theory because Dawkins apparently stammered in a film.

I realise now I should also have given up on the modern ideas of quantum mechanics when I once heard Feynman miss a beat while playing his beloved bongos.

1308. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165308 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 10:14 am

So RD uses this language - he is a hero. I use his language - I am nasty. Go figure!

Dawkins has backed his claims with evidence. He has not lied here. These "Expelled" people have used lies and deception all through the process of organising and producing their film. Lies to those contributing, and lies about the subject.

You are nasty simply because you called what Dawkins does evil. That is between you and him. You are thoroughly nasty because you generalise, as in

However I do know that Dr Dawkins and his followers are most certainly attempting to dupe you.

I challenge you to name and face those who you call "followers".

1309. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165282 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 9:45 am

Comment #165280 by David A Robertson

However I do know that Dr Dawkins and his followers are most certainly attempting to dupe you. It is a wicked evil thing that they are seeking to do to you and to many others.

I have spoken to you politely in the past. No longer. There are good people here, who want nothing more than to be able to live peaceful lives, with their children having the benefit of freedom from religious propoganda and distortion.

You David, are one of the nastiest people I have ever encountered on the net. I do hope your congregation and others in your church can see your true character.

To counteract this awfulness, others have been reading this thread. Here is a comment from the widely-read reddit news site:

"I'm reading the richarddawkins.net forum posts beneath the letter, and they just don't seem all that objectionable. I'm sure that in the (currently) 153 posts, some aren't nice, but if anything it seems like a nicer group of people than those on a typical forum."

1310. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #165278 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 9:34 am

But Steve himself has stated that evolution has continued up until today for humans

Evolution up until today wasn't "for" anyone or anything.

Steve is treating this like a game, but when he stoops to misleading others about the science and claiming that I am conceding the point, he will get the bottom of my boot in response.

I don't mislead people about science. I will leave to you with your super future aliens with tardises :)

We can't second-guess evolution. It has no plans, and it has no motives. We may change ourselves, but to call that "evolution" is to take a very specific biological term and use it in quite another context. Evolution in biology has a definite meaning. Your attempts to misuse it remind me of a certain fellow called Dianelos who tried to present whacky ideas based on a distortion of the idea of "disorder".

You are the one trying to distort things by attempting to use humanities ability to breed things as some kind of justification to show that natural selection has been guided.

If that isn't distortion, I don't know what is!

You are trying to play your game at a bad time. I am not in the mood for this kind of torturing of scientific ideas for pet theories. The Expelled debacle has put in me a bad and rather depressed mood.

1311. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #165240 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 8:46 am

It does not matter that the end that you need to seek is moving away at close to c because of spacetime expansion.

Yes, it does. See below.

Contrary to your smarmy assertion that I have conceded the point, time does not care why the ends were moving so quickly relative to each other but only that they do so.

Sorry to ruin you scheme. but yes, it does. You only get relativistic distortion if you move through space.

There recently has been a description of a warp drive mechanism that works by distorting space. You don't get relativistic distortion, as you aren't moving through space.

An alternate mechanism (according to our current understanding of physics) is to use giant concentrations of mass, moving at relativistic speeds, in appropriate configurations, to create a local solution to the GR field equations that permits arbitrary time travel along certain paths. For a few notable examples, the Gott Loop, the Kerr Ring, and famous Van Stokum Cylinder (which admittedly is infinitely long and therefore is not localized).

I know this. I fail to see why you are quoting it. None of these mechanisms is going to help you with your God Theory.

Now you can make technical objections to any or all of these methods, but the point is that they all solve the GR field equations in such a way that arbitrary reverse time travel is possible, and since GR is one of the most sacred and well tested theories of contemporary science

And not a single one of them allows travel back to before the mechanisms were set into place.

Likewise there are experiments which demonstrate superluminal travel (Chiao) of photons (not just the theoretical tachyons).

No. There is no superluminal communication of information, which is what you would need for time travel. I suspect you are getting confused with either phase velocities, or the internal communication mechanisms of quantum mechanics.

He believed that this lack of tourists from the future constitutes empirical evidence against the possibility of time travel to the past. He has since recanted in the face of the various theoretical efforts in this field. So should you, Steve.

You can try and wriggle out of this with all the cut-and-paste science you like. Hawking was talking about intelligent aliens who may have already existed and already have time machines in place. His recant was about the inevitability of a time machine self-destructing on switch on, not about people using a time machine to travel back before it was built.. Before you start insisting people recant, you need to get your facts right.

In order to travel back in time you need to build a time machine. Time machines do not occur naturally, as there are no natural mechanisms for maintaining either the stresses on the structures involved or concentrating the negative energy requires to keep them going. So, it takes intelligence to make a time machine, so a time machine can't be used to generate intelligence.

End of story.

1312. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #165238 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 8:45 am

Comment #165231 by Quetzalcoatl

wouldn't that fail in any case since both ends of the primordial wormhole would be moving relativistically? Wouldn't one end have to be "anchored" somehow in order for anyone to travel back, not that the other end could be caught in any case.

Yes. It would only work if one or other end was travelling relativistically actually through spacetime, and not simply being carried away by the expansion of space.

Of course, there is a question of where this stretched wormhole is supposed to have come from, considering that if they exist at all in nature, it is at the Planck scale and Planck time.

This seriously is Dianelos-scale gibberish :)

1313. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #165223 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 8:29 am

Comment #164918 by Kardashovel

What of it, MaxD? Steve acted like I conceded a point that I certainly do not concede. It's disingenuous, and I expect better from him.

You were trying to insist that a wormhole that existed at the start of the universe could be used to get back to the origin because parts of that wormhole would be moving relativistically relative to us because of the expansion of the universe. I said you were wrong. Then, a few posts back, you said that relativistic movement has nothing to do with the expansion of the universe. Sure sounds like conceding to me.

Now all I need to do is to get you to give us your Tardis plans... I look forward to your description of how you cheerfully throw away our current understanding of relativity.

1314. Gods and earthlings

Comment #165150 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 6:10 am

Comment #165146 by mmurray

From that site:

Arguments we think creationists should NOT use

"think"...

"creationists"... "think"

No, I can't deal with those words together.

1315. Expelled Overview

Comment #165147 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 6:03 am

Fossils and other archaeological discoveries which seem to agree with the theory of evolution are published; others are suppressed.

Evidence please. I want specific examples.

Suppose you look under the hood of two different model cars from the same manufacturer. You may notice some similarities. The obvious explanation for this is "design and manufacturing efficiency." Therefore, "DNA similarities," may simply indicate some very intelligent, very efficient engineering, right?

DNA isn't efficient engineering. Much of it is junk, and it is full of stuff like endogenous retroviruses.

I would like, please, a detailed explanation of why similar species have the same bodged-in virus DNA. Natural Selection can explain it.

It does help to actually do some research before you step into the territory of experienced scientists.

1316. Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists

Comment #165086 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 3:44 am

Comment #165080 by irate_atheist

I can picture myself on a boat, just off the shore of the USA, ranting at the top of my voice until flecks of spittle appear.

1317. Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists

Comment #165076 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 3:24 am

Comment #165073 by AllanW

I agree with you; I just can't see what we can do. I am feeling pretty depressed by all this, to be honest. The intellectual future of the USA does not look safe.

1318. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165062 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 2:19 am

Comment #165058 by epeeist

A bit of googling gives around 7 or 8 dollars a ticket.

So around 1/2 million.

1319. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165057 by Steve Zara on April 21, 2008 at 2:09 am

One wonders upon what basis do you delineate between the proper and improper applications of Darwin's theory?

I think the question to be asked in the context of posts like this is...

who has been going around telling some people that scientists want to have anything to do with controlling the future of mankind? That is clearly the implication of such questions.

1320. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164867 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 7:06 pm

So that formula will plot your position in spacetime then? Sound good to me but how do you test it? A math only problem I would guess.

It has been thoroughly tested. It is the foundations of Special Relativity.

1321. 'Expelled' ripped off Harvard's 'Inner Life of the Cell' animation

Comment #164863 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 7:02 pm

Comment #164859 by godiseverywhere

God is revealed in an undeniable way through the Harvard animated video on the inner workings of a cell.

The animation is wrong. It is a huge simplification, to the point of being misleading (it has certainly misled you).

Here is Alan Kay, a computer scientist and biochemist, giving a talk which includes a discussion of this:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/228

1322. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164858 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Comment #164855 by Radesq

and I don't know how we could but that doesn't mean it is theoretically impossible does it?

Time isn't like the other spatial dimensions. This is why when one wants to find a distance in spacetime, one takes the square root of (the squares of the distances in the x, y and z dimension minus the square of the time difference).

1323. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164848 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 6:42 pm

Kardashovel, read The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, and you will be enlightened and educated in why wormholes allowing time travel into the past is pure fiction.

Other methods fail in this respect too: warped spacetime around infinite length spinning cylinders, and the use of cosmic strings.

1324. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #164842 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Comment #164829 by Christopher Davis

I had an anthropology professor who absolutely bristled at the idea of anything that even smelled of "group selection". She was adamant that natural selection worked only at the individual level, therefore there was no such thing as behaviours that contribute to the survival of the species.

She was wrong. Natural selection works primarily at the level of the gene, not the individual. This is why it can seem to act at the group level. A group can contain multiple copies of the same gene. A gene can assist its own survival by assisting with the survival of individuals within the group that have the same gene. This can work by kin selection - acting in ways beneficial to families, or by a genes somehow recognising individuals who have copies of the genes (the "green beard" idea). There are also strategies for competing in a group where other instances of individuals using the same strategy are present - Evolutionarily Stable Strategies. Genes for such such strategies will tend to survive.

1325. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164836 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 6:27 pm

Comment #164821 by widenerd

What perplexes me beyond measure is why he is so angry with religion.

Richard Dawkins is a scientist. He has dedicated his life to searching for the truth. Religion tries to prevent people thinking for themselves and discovering truths. As in the example of the film Expelled, some religious people are prepared to lie like crazy.

A well known atheist, Josef Stalin, murdered 20 million people. I guess he killed them to further natural selection

Stalin didn't believe in Natural Selection. In fact, in was banned in Stalin's Russia in 1948. Instead they supported the now discredited idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

no that was Hitler; then I guess it was the fault of the people who were murdered because they possessed a religious faith.

Hitler didn't kill people because of a belief Natural Selection - he wanted to breed different races of people. That is Artificial Selection.

It is important in society to have open debate, and not to close the door to the open exchange of ideas

Society has been open to any ideas from the "Intelligent Design" movement for some time. Years. They have no ideas. No theories. Nothing testable. Just "God did it". Nothing has been closed to them. As soon as they come up with actual ideas, there would be plenty willing to listen.

1326. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #164774 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 5:11 pm

Comment #164773 by Hmmmm

No one really answered the question...and I am curious. I understand your point about naturalism not being a philosophy, if someone really believes we evolved from inert chemicals, what is the basis for goodness to our fellow man.

Conscience and conversation. We have the ability to empathise with others. We have always done things this way, and clearly without any supernatural guidance, as no-one has been able to agree on what that guidance says.

1327. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164772 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Comment #164770 by Diacanu

Very clever :)

But what Karda wants is superintelligent future people to be able to get back into the past before there were intelligences so that they can alter evolution to make themselves, and whisper in his ear on the way.

1328. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #164762 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 4:56 pm

I don't think Darwin was responsible for the holocaust...but it does seem to me to a logical end point to a purely naturalistic philosophy based on survival of the fittest. Anyone care to explain the naturalistic basis for morality and compassion? What part of naturalism argues against helping nature out?

What part of naturalism argues for helping nature out? Evolution and the idea of survival of the fittest are what is observed in Nature. To imply they should be the basis of ethical decisions is as nonsensical as to suggest that because of we know of the second law of thermodynamics we should all light fires to increase entropy, or that because of Einsteins theory of gravity, using planes is immoral. It's nuts.

1329. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164758 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 4:51 pm

Comment #164734 by Kardashovel

Contrary to Steve's assertions about wormholes, they can in fact lead to reverse time travel to a time before their invention;

No, they can't, sorry. If you want to say otherwise, you are going to have to provide a mechanism.

moreover the expansion of space has no bearing on whether the other end is moving at relativistic speeds with respect to us.

I know. You were the one trying to use the expansion of space as a mechanism for relativistic motion of one end of a wormhole. Nice to see you admit you were wrong.

Hawking would not have conjectured that there should be time-travel exclusion if he was not concerned about the possibility.

Hawking was talking specifically about time travel devices within the known laws of physics. That means time travel devices which can't take you to before they are started up.

If you actually knew what Hawking said, you would realise he was talking about a time machine destroying itself as soon as it was created.

I would be even happier if he could show me that reverse time travel is impossible according to the current laws of physics, since that is what he is claiming. That would be a real problem for me.

I have been through this in detail. Reverse time travel is theoretically possible, but only back to the time when the machine is set up. The reason is simple. All known mechanisms for creating a time machine involve the distortion of spacetime so as to create the possibility of loops in time. However, the loop can't reach back to the point before which the loop was first created (in terms of wormholes, we aren't talking about the past existence of the wormhole, but the past existence of when it was configured into a loop).

I am also interested in Steve and B.Sand's insistence that complexity be measured by the number of base pairs in DNA... I have yet to hear a good reason for this notion.

Complexity is not directly connected to the number of base pairs, but DNA is expensive to produce and maintain, like any large biochemical molecule. There is a selective advantage to maintaining only the minimum required. Even supposedly "junk" DNA now looks like it may have important purposes in terms of regulation.

1330. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #164745 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way.

Indeed. BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast a programme called "A Rage In Dalston" about how anti-semitism carried on in the UK after world war 2, led by the British Union of Fascists.

1331. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #164736 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 4:29 pm

You may have to wait for a long time if you absolutely need other people to do your thinking for you.

Not really. You start with a recognised forum for discussion (in science, the journal Nature) and work from there. It isn't that hard to find out what the consensus is in a subject.

Note that top historians generally don't even touch the "Holocaust" theme with a ten foot pole.

OK, so let me see. You are claiming that you don't need to find out the general consensus in a subject because top historians don't touch it.

That is no excuse, sorry. Even if top historians aren't touching this subject for the wrong reasons, it still does not mean you know what you are talking about.

If you can't get access to a consensus, that does not permit you to make things up, or pick whatever view suits your prejudices.

This is a "conspiracy of the gaps" argument, and is crazy as a "god of the gaps" argument.

I have started from a reasonable source (Enclypaedia Britannica) and have found plenty of resources from historians who are clearly willing to deal with the Holocaust, including some apparently top-rank historians, such as Sir Martin Gilbert (official biographer of Winston Churchill) and Christopher Robert Browning, a professor of history in North Carolina.

Now, this is not my subject, but Encyclopaedia Britannica is a trusted source, and would be likely to pick respectable academics for its "further reading" sections. So, I have found at least one, probably many more, top historians who will deal with the holocaust. This only took a few minutes.

If you can't find a list of historians to get a consensus from, then I can easily do it for you.

1332. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #164714 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Comment #164713 by Mark Smith

I was allowing him the benefit of the doubt, by showing him how he could get past by "raving nutcase" filter.

1333. Religion is 'the new social evil'

Comment #164711 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 3:14 pm

"May" suggests that the long dead Rowntree is still in a position to be dismayed.

As the old saying goes:

"If he were alive today, he would turn in his grave"

1334. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #164710 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 3:12 pm

I didn't say "suspend critical thinking," did I? I said simply "get more data."

So, I am still waiting for the consensus of the views of five or six top-rank historians that I can read to back your opinions.

1335. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164684 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Nitpicking? Perhaps, but I do think there's an important distinction between the two ways the word "evolution" is used - the fact that it happens, or the theory of how it happens.

I am going to thoroughly pick nits about the use of the word "evolution".

Karda is trying to shift the context.

We observe evolution as it has happened over billions of years. The evolution we observe is by natural selection. We see not the tiniest smidgeon of pushing that evolution in a certain direction. Indeed, the mechanism of natural selection is purpose-free.

What karda is after is an admission that "evolution" can be for a purpose. If he gets that, he will attempt to say we have agreed that "evolution" as we have seen it could have been purposeful. He is trying to broaden the sense of the common use of evolution so that if we admit that any change in life could be purposeful, then he is allowed to claim a victory.

So, I am trying to ensure a single use of the term "evolution" in the context of this discussion - what we have observed in the history of life on this planet.

1336. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164673 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Comment #164671 by epeeist

As MPhil is saner and a clearer thinker than I am, you could be right.

1337. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164668 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Karda - as someone who suggested we be polite but ruthless with theists I am happy for you to stick around. The banter is fun too, keep with it.

Absolutely.

1338. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164664 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Comment #164653 by epeeist

Oh yes! I have used the "D-word" here in the last few days.

1339. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164643 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Comment #164631 by tonkjezail

He is also a passionate atheist. How can the atheistic Darwinian such as Professor Dawkins do, or approve of doing, anything that is "un-Darwinian".

Einstein was a passionate believer in gravity. Yet he still believed in using planes to resist it.

Believing that something like gravity, or evolution, exists does not imply any particular ethical views.

1340. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164632 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:32 pm

steve, i suppose that as they are the only large animals around then they must be, is that what you mean?

I'd say that Emus and Crocodiles are pretty large :)

Although in terms on numbers i wonder if sharks actually are more successful??

Sharks are suffering a worrying decline in numbers at the moment.

actually i wonder which 'phylum/group' displays the greatest size difference??

Has to be fish. From the 8mm Paedocypris to the 12m whale shark. A volume ratio of approximately 2 million.

1341. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164622 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Comment #164619 by Kardashovel

Science is another input, but it is hardly the only relevant factor in such a discussion.

So how are you going to understand the universe? Seances? Tarot cards?

We have come to the point where we can breed any sort of animal at all for particular traits we desire...

That sounds to me more like manufacturing rather than evolution.

Should we talk about the evolution of cars?

Karda is implying that evolution as observed was designed. We see nothing but the process of Natural Selection. Natural Selection is not a process of design.

Let's not forget for his future God to come back and design evolution, he would need some kind of Tardis.

1342. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164618 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:10 pm

Comment #164616 by ThoughtsonCommonToad
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0308_060308_evolution.html

1343. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164614 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Comment #164611 by Frankus1122

What do you think of Kardashovels question about intelligence such as we have becoming a factor in our own evolution, as it has in the evolution of dogs and sheep and the like?

I think that point is answered by recent findings that we have been evolving over the past few millenia but no-one knew it was happening.

1344. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164612 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:03 pm

Comment #164609 by ThoughtsonCommonToad

I have in the past suggested the quantity of genetic information in the zygote. The human genome (coding regions, not junk DNA) is small compared with many other species.

1345. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164610 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 1:01 pm

No PBUM. Evolution never tends to make things more complex. Humans are but a piffle compared with our mighty fish ancestors. Just look at the evidence. [/sarcasm]

Humans can't develop in a range of different ways from egg to adult depending on the environment. They can't live at a wide range of internal temperatures. They can't change sex (well, not naturally). They can't change colour. They can't deal with liquid environments at a range of osmotic concentrations. They have no electric field sense.

1346. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164607 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Comment #164601 by Peacebeuponme

Well, there has been an observed general trend towards greater complexity (though I know there are some great individual examples of the reverse). Would this not be expected once speciation occurs and there is more competition and need for specialism?

I used to think this was the case, but I now I don't think any such general trend can be guaranteed. It seems to depend entirely on the environment. There is certainly a trend towards a wider variety of phenotypes, but the number of "body plans" today is less than it was in the past, as a result of the extinctions of phyla.

Also, there is little doubt that mammals are the most successful large animal group on the planet today. But, are they the most complex? I would say not - their types of metabolism and developmental pathways are much less than those of amphibians or even fish. People talk about brains being complex, but they aren't in terms of basic structure. They are complex when they are filled with information, and that is not much to do with development. I think it is worth remembering that almost all the complexity of life is contained within the cell, and there were probably cells pretty much as complex as those in life now around a billion years ago.

Clearly, evolution does tend towards complexity up to a point, but I would say that past the level at which the eukaryotic cell arose, the overall complexity of organisms has varied back and forth considerably. The cell allows a huge variation in structural form of an organism at the cost of not much additional complexity.

1347. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164600 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Comment #164595 by Diacanu

Wonderful.

1348. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164593 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Comment #164592 by Frankus1122

So what?

Dammit, he is trying to take my precious science and torture it to make it fit his wild ideas. I have to rescue it from him. I can't stand to see it suffer.

1349. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164590 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 12:32 pm

You may safely ignore me, if you feel that force of numbers is what merits reckoning when dealing with theists.

I am not going to ignore you on that basis. I am interested in how you suggest that a TARDIS is constructed.

1350. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #164585 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 12:30 pm

Comment #164583 by MPhil

Yes :)