Evolution? The most GDed ridiculous Fing thing ever to have been imagined

originally posted by: iamthevirus

Would that be local or universal?

So where is everybody else...

Fermi Paradox

Local...

Lifeforms such as humans I see as a very rare event. Earth is most likely very rare too even with the probability of 300 million stars in the Milky Way. We can make the statement that life in general is most likely common throughout the universe, will happen when conditions are right as it is a fundamental process in our universe.

The problem is for life to evolve into complex lifeforms it needs a lot of time and a stable environment to do so, otherwise it just keeps getting knocked back to simple levels over and over again, kind of like what happen with snowball earth 600 million years ago.

So there is so much more needed than a planet being within the goldilocks zone. For life to advance on earth we also need the large moon, liquid core, big planets that act like vacuums to allow life to evolve for 70 million years at a time between big hits, and many other factors that helped stabilized the environment for advance life to form.

When talking about life that can travel in space we know that in 4 billion years only one lifeform from earth went to our moon. That doesn't give good odds for a universe teeming with space traveling life when we have almost the perfect planet/environment for life to form and just once it happened.

The size of space in general does not play well with life. Time is the killer of all species and space is so damn big that even if there are space faring aliens out there the likelihood we ever meet is extremely low when in either case the species will come and go before that happens.

When we look at the Drake Equation I feel to solve these last 4 steps that are all unknown the number of imputes needed for advance life of any kind to form much less intelligent advance life would give us a very small number in the end.

the fraction of those suitable planets whereon organic life actually appears;
the fraction of habitable planets whereon intelligent life actually appears;
the fraction of civilizations that reach the technological level whereby detectable signals may be dispatched; and
the length of time that those civilizations dispatch their signals.

a reply to: iamthevirus

Omg. The op was attacking evolution (albeit with a monumental misunderstanding of the process). You are the one who is changing the subject matter to those other things…

originally posted by: iamthevirus

If evolution can't expand beyond its narrow scope then maybe discussing the diversity of life is donning the wrong robes being all up in the metaphysical realm of origin and creation.

So the topic is evolution and not origin, but the OP and their supporters always want to mix the two as one and the same. I have yet to hear their view on how all this advance life got here. I have asked if the advance life we see today just spontaneously pops into existence, and if not how does it come about? I think their answer is God created everything 6000 years ago as it is today with everything on the planet as it is, and even if things are tested to be old or we can say the universe is 14 billion years old and earth is 4 billion that is just how God made it to look 6000 years ago.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: Xtrozero

...

3. Science tells us "matter and energy can never be created or destroyed." Yet the Big Bang states creation came out of nothing, aka Creatio Ex Nihilo.

originally posted by: ScepticScot

...

3. Not evolution.

One could count It as falling under the topic of cosmic evolution (although one could also argue cosmic evolution follows the Big Bang, separating it as 2 different topics). But the so-called Big Bang theory won't actually get into what came before or what caused the Big Bang. It's people like Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins that promote the idea of "a universe from nothing" (as per the title of Krauss' book).

So it's not actually the Big Bang theory that states that as ElectricUniverse described it. But it's still fans or promoters of evolutionary philosophies that promote it because of being adherents of philosophical naturalism.

originally posted by: whereislogic

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: Xtrozero

...

3. Science tells us "matter and energy can never be created or destroyed." Yet the Big Bang states creation came out of nothing, aka Creatio Ex Nihilo.

originally posted by: ScepticScot

...

3. Not evolution.

One could count It as falling under the topic of cosmic evolution (although one could also argue cosmic evolution follows the Big Bang, seperating it as 2 different topics). But the so-called Big Bang theory won't actually get into what came before or what caused the Big Bang. It's people like Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins that promote the idea of "a universe from nothing" (as per the title of Krauss' book).

So it's not actually the Big Bang theory that states that as ElectricUniverse described it. But it's still fans or promoters of evolutionary philosophies that promote it because of being adherents of philosophical naturalism.

The word evolution can be used in lots of different contexts but in terms of biological evolution our understanding of the origins of the universe could be completely wrong and it would not impact on evolution at all.

You will tend to find the same people supporting both the big bang theory and evolution because they are scientifically literate.

originally posted by: Ohanka
a reply to: iamthevirus

Marxism has nothing to do with evolution, and evolution has been expanded upon a lot by other scientists since Darwin. ...

Effects of the Evolution Theory (Awake!—1995)

...

Effects on Philosophy and Politics

The Origin of Species offered a fresh outlook on human behavior. Why does one nation succeed in conquering another nation? Why does one race prevail over another race? The Origin of Species, with its emphasis on natural selection and survival of the fittest, gave explanations that stirred the leading philosophers of the 19th century.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Karl Marx (1818-1883) were philosophers who had a profound effect on politics. Both were fascinated by evolution. “Darwin’s book is important,” said Marx, “and serves me as a natural scientific basis for the class struggle in history.” Historian Will Durant called Nietzsche a “child of Darwin.” The book Philosophy​—An Outline-​History summarized one of Nietzsche’s beliefs: “The strong, brave, domineering, proud, fit best the society that is to be.”

Darwin believed​—and wrote in a letter to a friend—​that in the future “an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.” He used as a precedent the European conquest of others and chalked this up to “the struggle for existence.”

The powerful were quick to latch on to such statements. H. G. Wells wrote in The Outline of History: “Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding. And they believed further that they had to be strong, energetic, ruthless, ‘practical,’ egotistical.”

Thus, “survival of the fittest” took on philosophical, social, and political overtones, often to an absurd extent. “To some war became ‘a biological necessity,’” said the book Milestones of History. And this book noted that during the next century, “Darwinian ideas formed an integral part of Hitler’s doctrine of racial superiority.”

Of course, neither Darwin, Marx, nor Nietzsche lived to see how their ideas would be applied​—or misapplied. Indeed, they expected that the struggle for existence would improve man’s lot in life. Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species that “all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.” Twentieth-​century priest and biologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin agreed with this, theorizing that eventually there would occur an ‘evolution of the minds of the entire human race; everyone would harmoniously work toward one goal.’

Degradation, Not Improvement

Do you see such improvement occurring? The book Clinging to a Myth commented on De Chardin’s optimism: “De Chardin must have been quite oblivious of the history of human bloodshed and of racist systems such as apartheid in South Africa. He sounds like a man who is not living in this world.” Rather than progress toward unity, humanity in this century has experienced racial and national division on an unprecedented scale.

The hope held out in The Origin of Species, that man would progress toward perfection, or at least improvement, is very much unfulfilled. And that hope keeps receding with time, for since the general acceptance of evolution, the human family all too often has descended into barbarism. Consider: More than 100 million people have been killed in the wars of this century, some 50 million in World War II alone. Also consider the recent ethnic slaughter in such places as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Is this to say that there were no wars and brutalities in past centuries? No, there certainly were. But the acceptance of the theory of evolution, this brutal struggle-​for-​existence mind-​set, this survival-​of-​the-​fittest idea, has not served to improve man’s lot. So while evolution cannot be blamed for all of man’s ills, it has helped push the human family into ever greater hatred, crime, violence, immorality, and degradation. Since it is widely accepted that humans descended from beasts, it is not surprising that more and more people act like beasts.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
a reply to: tanstaafl

In any case life needs to start somewhere right?

Yes, and that, my friend, is the gazillion dollar question that most likely none of us will ever get an answer to until we see for ourselves what comes after...

What I find hilarious is those who claim to know...

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: tanstaafl

Unless you made a mistake excerpting the comments of whom you were responding to?

I was responding to ScepticScot demanding that I provide some kind of authoritative source to prove what I was saying, as if there was one...

originally posted by: ScepticScot
a reply to: tanstaafl
Since you don't even seem to understand biology to the level taught to 12 tear olds it might be better if you looked at your own education.

Rotflmao!

So, let me guess - you're a public fool 'teacher'...?

originally posted by: ScepticScot
a reply to: tanstaafl
Do you understand what simultaneous means?

Do you understand that...

a) each and every single mutation would have to occur simultaneously, in hundreds of thousands if not millions of individual organisms of the same species in order to have a chance of being propagated and becoming permanent, and

b) this would have to be repeated millions of times, over millions of years, in order to change one species to a new species.

And that is just for one species.

No, can you multiply?

originally posted by: tanstaafl

originally posted by: ScepticScot
a reply to: tanstaafl
Do you understand what simultaneous means?

Do you understand that...

a) each and every single mutation would have to occur simultaneously, in hundreds of thousands if not millions of individual organisms of the same species in order to have a chance of being propagated and becoming permanent, and

b) this would have to be repeated millions of times, over millions of years, in order to change one species to a new species.

And that is just for one species.

No, can you multiply?

You can keep repeating that it doesn't make it true.

There is absolutely no need for simultaneous mutations in hundreds of thousands of individual organisms.

Now unless you can provide a link to support that claim all you are doing is refuting an assertion of your own making.

originally posted by: tanstaafl

originally posted by: ScepticScot
a reply to: tanstaafl
Since you don't even seem to understand biology to the level taught to 12 tear olds it might be better if you looked at your own education.

Rotflmao!

So, let me guess - you're a public fool 'teacher'...?

No I just went to school.

originally posted by: tanstaafl

Yes, and that, my friend, is the gazillion dollar question that most likely none of us will ever get an answer to until we see for ourselves what comes after...

What I find hilarious is those who claim to know...

This is why I do not like to debate God, because neither side can prover anything, so it is all based on faith. Faith is not something to debate, so all I say is that I do not see a need for God for the universe to do what it does, and leave it at that.

The problem is evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life, doesn't care how life started with either intelligent design or not, but people with faith seem to think it is one and the same so they argue the crap out of it always missing their mark along the way.

The other issue I put forth is in asking a simple question of "Just what is life"? And the reason I ask is that the term life is just a human construct to describe a natural chemical process that can be simple or extremely complex. We then assign it some special category that it takes God powers that come from outside of our universe for all that to happen, but to the universe it is just another natural event that happens when conditions are right. We also put life in a magical bubble outside of space/time in it doesn't change and somehow appears in its advance form and in enough numbers to keep the species alive with diversity in the breeding.

I just wish we could come together on all this and just say that there could be intelligent design, or not, and life would still follow some natural process with or without intelligent design, but we can't. lol

a reply to: Xtrozero

And the reason I ask is that the term life is just a human construct to describe a natural chemical process that can be simple or extremely complex.

No it isn't just chemical. Life is intelligence, simple or complex as you say, but always capable of taking in information from it's surroundings, processing it to make decisions and store it.

but to the universe it is just another natural event that happens when conditions are right

Because the universe itself is alive, intelligent.

Life is magical, there's just nothing more amazing anywhere. The problem to me with ID is simply that it puts humans on a pedestal as the crown of a process that will most likely continue for another few billions of years, so we as species are probably somewhere at the beginning of the middle in the evolution-story.

originally posted by: Peeple

No it isn't just chemical. Life is intelligence, simple or complex as you say, but always capable of taking in information from it's surroundings, processing it to make decisions and store it.

OK and that proves???? I don't disagree, but all that intelligence is done through chemical processes too.

Because the universe itself is alive, intelligent.

Life is magical, there's just nothing more amazing anywhere. The problem to me with ID is simply that it puts humans on a pedestal as the crown of a process that will most likely continue for another few billions of years, so we as species are probably somewhere at the beginning of the middle in the evolution-story.

Life is only special because we say it is special just as we say Humans are the most special with ID. They are one and the same in terms of Humans kind of just making it all up to describe things.

I find you first line kind of funny in "Life is magical, there's just nothing more amazing anywhere" but what if life is everywhere as part of the natural process of the universe?

a reply to: Xtrozero

OK and that proves????

lol nothing, it's just a response to what you wrote.

We're not 'just making it up' a big part is actually observed even if our categories are in reality a little more fluid than we care to admit.

but what if life is everywhere as part of the natural process of the universe?

Why 'what if'? It's pretty much what I said.

originally posted by: Peeple

Why 'what if'? It's pretty much what I said.

I agree it is most likely everywhere when conditions allow it to happen. I'm not saying that life can't be unique in its own way, just not special as people want to suggest that we are so special we need all the powers of an ID to happen.

I think life just f'en happens at a basic chemical level and goes off in whatever direction the environment drives it. What if we find that on a scale for intelligence from 1 to 10000, humans are 47 and there are 1000s of other species in the 1000 to 10,000 range of that scale...lol We would be the dumb ones being the smartest fish in a small pond and not so special anymore.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
...

The other issue I put forth is in asking a simple question of "Just what is life"? And the reason I ask is that the term life is just a human construct to describe a natural chemical process that can be simple or extremely complex. ...

QUESTION 2: Is Any Form of Life Really Simple?
Since the topic of interdependency comes up in that article:

Of course, some people have a motive for blurring the lines of what is alive and what isn't, obscuring the matter by giving the impression that it is unclear "just what is life". But the definition given in this video works fine for me (0:21), it's not that unclear at all:

a reply to: whereislogic

Thanks, I do agree and do understand what life is, so my question is more rhetorical in I just want to people to back up and reevaluate what they see as life when they go down paths that only make sense to them and is 100% faith based views. Nothing wrong with faith based, but when it fills all aspects then that is where it would be good for people to relook at the whole things from a very basic level.

a reply to: Xtrozero

It's fascinating to think about. We have a tendency to look at the macro when searching for 'superiority' but I mean there are micro-entities almost as old as the universe and all basically (clones of) the same being. The possibilities If they can maintain a sort of QE-communication are just mindblowing.