Does any one believe in natural selection?

I believe in it. Its so wierd but true. Hopefully i can have an intelligent conversation with someone about it. Every one i ask doesnt even know about it.

 

Believe in it? What is it a religion now? That's like asking if anybody believes in gravity or believes that the earth goes around the sun. It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of fact.

 

I think it happens to a certain degree. Infact it can be seen happening in viruses and other species with very rapid lifecycles. On the longer scale it is far less certain. While I imagine it does have some effect over long periods of time it can not explain where sudden rapid advances come from.

 

There are some problems with the theory of evolution, the most problematic being the connection between man and the ape from which he supposedly descended, since no connection has yet been demonstrated I think.
Even so, it is probably the best theory out there, and makes a bit more sense than the Genesis version.

 

I don't see why it's a matter of belief; the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence points to that conclusion. It seems pretty self-evident to me...animals that don't have a life-threatening genetic problem are more likely to survive and pass on their traits.

Humans did not descend from apes...they share a common ancestor that probably wouldn't qualify as either a humanoid OR an ape. There are MANY obvious links between the two (not the least of which is the uncanny similarity of our DNA).

Evolution and natural selection are much broader than the human-ape connection; that is merely one example of millions.

 

hahahahaha. I hadn't heard about this theory until just now. It's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in awhile.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html

If the earth is 10,000 years old, where do all these trilobytes and dinosaur fossils and such come from? GOD PUT THEM THERE TO TRICK US, DIDN'T HE?!

 

Yeah, it's as true as electricity, the passage of time, gravity, light, etc. It's not even been debated (except for the details) by scientists since, what, the 1800s? Make no mistake about it, the real enemy of these Bush Christian idiots isn't "Tur" (as Bush calls it). Their real enemy is the scientific method and logic itself.

As epitomized by their slogan, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

If you read the rightwing blogs, you'll see a similar doctrine: if a neocon says it, that, of itself, causes it to be true. They really truly think that way.

I don't want to see mankind as it brings itself to catastrophic extinction, but I would like to see the looks on those unevolved righting faces as they realize there is no God, no Jesus, no heaven, no rapture, and no salvation. And no escape from the pain.

Yeah, I think I'd like to stick around long enough to witness that.

May their last breaths be the most pained sobs.

 

http://www.gaianet.fsbusiness.co.uk/gaiatheory.html

"The Daisyworld planet contains only two species of life: light daisies and dark daisies. Light daisies tend to reflect light, which has a cooling effect, while dark ones absorb radiation, and therefore warm the planet. Growth of the daisies depends on the present population, the natural death rate, the available space and the temperature (the equations that Lovelock used to model them were based on the dynamics of real daisy growth). The planet revolves around a sun, from which it absorbs energy at a rate which depends on the sun's luminosity and the albedo of the planet. It also radiates heat out to the universe, at a rate determined by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

Interestingly, when the model is run with the sun's luminosity gradually increasing, the population of the light and dark daisies adjust themselves naturally so as to keep the temperature constant at the optimal level for daisy growth. Daisyworld is an example of a self-regulating system. Feedback loops between the daisies and the planet temperature, contained in the equations relating growth rate to albedo, somehow conspire to maintain the conditions suitable for life.

Daisyworld is only a kind of thought experiment, but demonstrates the principle of self-regulation very convincingly. It's a viable ecosystem which regulates its temperature, without any recourse to selection or teleology.

One of the main ideas to come out of the Daisyworld model is that the species in an ecosystem can be concerned with nothing more than their own survival, yet as a consequence of their actions they help not only themselves but the whole system. We could say that the self-regulation is an emergent property of the system. There isn't any need for the white and black daisies to get together and agree quotas for each other's populations, and fix growth rates and argue over how much land should be left uncovered. They just do their own thing and the planet takes care of itself. All that is needed is that the daisies give positive and negative feedback to the temperature, and they are happiest at a particular temperature, so they tend to keep the planet around that temperature. They make the planet suit them. Daisyworld addresses the dichotomy that exists between the reductionist approach, which attempts to understand systems by breaking them down to their smallest components, and the holistic approach which views systems as complete entities that must be understood in their entirety."

.

 

Anyway the best guess for the age of the earth from the bible is 6008 years. Using poor logic you can say the earth is any age. If you start with the assumption that everything around us is part of some elaborate hopax by god then the earth could be any age. After all as any christian will tell you, the bible is a book. It is a historical record, not a holy book in the same way the Koran is to a muslim. The vast majority of the bible was written by people with all the flaws of humanity. Just look at Noahs ark, we now know that was written by Jewish scholars who got a little creative after a major flood of the Euphrates. If you are happy to believe that god make it at anytime, maybe it was yesterday and we were created with memories in place.

 

The answer, my friend, is slow mutations over time. Over long periods of time, gene mutations appear. Some of them are beneficial, and others aren't. If the mutation kills you, it luckily doesn't get passed on. If the mutation is actually helpful and helps you survive, it stays and eventually works it's way in. However, with modern medicine, almost any human can survive regardless of their genes, so our evolution has sort of slowed down, and has had a few more negative genes thrown in.

 

What kind of awful, shitty god completely hides himself and all evidence of his existence, then goes beyond that and puts every bit of evidence on the earth that suggests that the it is millions of years old, and that we evolved from other living things? Did god artificially age all of these artifacts and bones that we dig up and carbon date and find to be millions of years old? Is it just coincidence that apes have two arms and two legs and 5 fingers and toes on each hand and foot, and incredibly similar skulls?

I will not claim to know whether a god exists or not ,as you not only so ignorantly do, but even claim to know the specifics about him. The bible, like the Quaran, the Torah, and any other documents outlining the specifics of the origin of everything, are

BULLSHIT!

This doesn't mean you can't believe that we were created intentionally. The one valid arguments that religious types make is that everything is pretty complex, and flat-out unlikely, to have all appeared on accident. This doesn't have to mean that god is defying the laws of physics to interject his influence into events on earth. He definitely is not; the fact that a set of laws exist that matter will follow each and every time you expiriment with it suggest that every occurence is nothing but the one natural reaction that could occur as a result of the event that caused it. If you roll a dice repetedly, keep each and every variable involved exactly the same, it will always land on the same number.

So, even if we were intentionally created, god is not currently exerting influence over the earth now. It's just laying back and watching its brilliant creation unfold.

My point is, evolution does not at all counter a general belief in God. It's the extremely ignorant people who believe that every word in religious documents can be taken as absolute truth. Examples of bible passages that claim the earth to be flat have already been given. So, will you admit that these were wrong but cling to your literal interpretation of every other part of the bible?

By the way, I dont' have the bible passages to prove bible claims that the earth is the center of the universe (maybe the guy who had the ones about a flat earth can help me out?), but around the 1500s it was generally believed by the church that the earth was the center, and anyone who didn't hold that belief was likely to lose his head. Same goes for anyone who knew the earth was round.

 

Umm
He was obviously joking...

 

I beleive in it.

 

I think you might be right judging by his last post. But, there really is such a moon dust theory that plenty of people are quick to claim as "proof" that the earth is very young, and that evolution could therefore not have taken place.