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BoKu
Sport climber
Douglas Flat, CA
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"Dear America,
Yes, please do indoctrinate your children with religious dogma instead of teaching them science and technology.
We want their jobs.
Thanks, and best regards
China and India"
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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If we haven't changed since we were "created," where is the skeleton of "us," exactly the way we are now, from 100,000 years ago?
JL
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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This is a convenient out. With all the critters out there (namely, those that reproduce within weeks of being born), you'd think scientists would be able to manipulate mutations for a new species.... at least once. After all, there've been millions, possibly billions, of mutations to get us where we are today.
Big mutations (liike forming a new organ) take big chunks of time (like millions or at least hundreds of thousands of years.) The best you're going to be able to witness in a single human lifetime is the easily inducible transformations in fruitflies
It may be a "convenient out" but that's the situation.
Forest,
Thanks for playing straight. Those childish "shoot the messenger" ploys are so lame.
I couldn't agree more, and sorry for the sarcasm above. I really do try to avoid that.
If we haven't changed since we were "created," where is the skeleton of "us," exactly the way we are now, from 100,000 years ago?
The creationist explanation I've heard is that the world is only 6,000 - 10,000 years old. Anyone with more insight care to answer?
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arete
Trad climber
Estes Park, Colorado
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Yes Largo, there is no fossil of 'Us' that is 100,000 or more years old. But to "intelligent" designers, that is beside the point. If you look at who is opposing the teaching of evolution in this country you will find most opposition comes from biblical fundamentalists who believe in the literal interpretation of the King James! Since the Book of Genesis says God created everything in 6 days -- that is the ULTIMATE TRUTH and WORD OF GOD -- period. God created everything including the fossil record and all the evidence that earth is billions of years old (boy, what a great joke on us) in just 6 days.
This whole "Intelligent Design" moniker seems quite disengenuous if not dishonest since it implies and intelligent designer. Gee, who could that be? Zeus on Mt Olympus? Ra the Sun God? My second cousin Virgil? Allah? OH NO -- it has to be the biblical Jehovah. Why don't they just say so without obfuscating their agenda? The fight against evolution is just the latest version of religious opposition to the progress of knowledge that goes back thousands of years. Poor Galileo -- smarter guy than any Pope who ever lived.
Well, I give up. I've converted to literal interpretation of the bible myself. I read about justice demanding an 'eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth' in the old testament and then read how Jesus himself stated that if someone should strike me, I should turn the other cheek. The other day this evolutionary biologist hit me and I turned the other cheek to let him do it again. Then I smashed his face -- TWICE.
I feel pretty self-righteous about it too. Sure is nice having God on my side.
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Matt
Trad climber
places you shouldn't talk about in polite company
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Largo-
Those "fossils" were just buried in the dirt by the creator, in order to challenge our faith!
Testing, testing, 1,2,3-
just testing.
(your faith, that is...)
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WBraun
climber
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Just wondering?
How long does it take for the 57K dial-up modem folks to get down here?
5 seconds for DSL ..........it's a long ways down here to hell!
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Blight
Social climber
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"Big mutations (liike forming a new organ) take big chunks of time (like millions or at least hundreds of thousands of years.) The best you're going to be able to witness in a single human lifetime is the easily inducible transformations in fruitflies"
And yet nobody has every produced even a fruit fly with an extra organ or apparatus, have they?
Let alone shown a fossil which was demonstrably that of an earlier or later species plus or minus an appratus.
So to sum up, you believe in a system which you concede cannot be observed working, which has no physical evidence to support it and the mechanism of which is unknown.
And you think this says something about MY intellect?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I am astounded at the persistence of this thread... I only look at it occasionally these days even though I have a cable connection. Keeping track of the threads-within-a-thread has required too much attention lately.
OK, on the Standard Model, currently we're thinking that there are 6 quarks, 6 leptons, 5 types of "intermediate bosons". There are some other particles, like the Higgs boson we expect to be around but haven't seen. This would "explain" the electro-magnetic, weak and strong interaction. I put the quotes in because the field theory which describes the interactions of these things leaves a lot out, most importantly, how do the particles acquire mass. This is an ancient puzzle that may actually be solved in our lifetimes. Many aspects of the Standard Model have been tested to high precision in a variety of experiments. The stuff that is left out is termed "beyond the Standard Model" and will be the subject of a series of experiments to be conducted over the next decade or so, mostly at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva Switzerland (the lab Sacherer worked at when he died climbing The Shroud on the Grande Jorasses).
Then there is gravity...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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A question for JL - if he has the interest to look this far down - from a mechanistic point of view, the study of thought is really just delving into the incredibly messy programming, the "wetware" of consciouness. The evolution of thought, awareness, consciousness, etc. is certainly expected. Examained from outside of the "program" one would expect this to have changed over time on the evolutionary timescales, say millions of years. Human thought, or any animal thought, would then have a continuum of state. The similarity in mechanical structures, and common evolutionary development, would hint at similarities.
The wetware is undoubtly complicated. Most likely in this model, the final product is the combination of a set of simple rules that result in a rich and complex set of behavior. Judged from "inside the program" this may all seem remarkable, but viewed from outside, many of our sophisticated behavior might not be so deep (see e.g. last week's Sunday NYTimes Magazine on Monkey's and money...).
The study of the "spirituality" of the human mind may only be delving into the roccoco aspects of evolutionary programming over millions of years. This in its self is interesting (to me) but may not have any deeper significance, there may be nothing deeper than physical reality.
Just a thought.
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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And yet nobody has every produced even a fruit fly with an extra organ or apparatus, have they?
see previous comment about big changes take big chunks of time. fruitflies are easier to observer changes in that most, but your still going to end up with a fruit fly (albeit with some noticeable different characteristics.) This is how it is.
Let alone shown a fossil which was demonstrably that of an earlier or later species plus or minus an appratus.
And just how would something like this possibly be any more "demonstrable" than the already fairly clearly shown similarities between dinosaurs and early birds?
So to sum up, you believe in a system which you concede cannot be observed working, which has no physical evidence to support it and the mechanism of which is unknown.
Actually, it can be and ha been observed quite clearly. Just not to the point of growing a new "apparatus", but again unless you have a lifespan of at least several hundred thousand years, that's just not possible to live long enough to see.
For physical evidence, see fruit flies.
I don't know where you get the idea that the mechanism is unknown. DNA, the random mutation thereof, and increased propogation of the fittest are all understood reasonably well WRT to evolutionary theory.
And you think this says something about MY intellect?
Well, not being a christian, it's more convincing to me than "the priests/preachers/ministers told me so" as a way to explain the natural world.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
Nice of you to "keep it clean" in here. Good job.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Ah, this thread is still alive and evolving I see...
"And yet nobody has every produced even a fruit fly with an extra organ or apparatus, have they? "
"extra organ or apparatus" - that is your expectation for observable proof of speciation? Why? And I don't want to sound mean here, but that is a pretty childlike and guileless assumption about what the observable effects of speciation should be...
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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MikeL, Nice way of saying you don't know and don't care to struggle with it to the point of being in direct conflict with anyone else. I'm not being sarcastic mind you. I think many of us feel similarly and what's clear to me is we all have a different frame of references for the absolutes or the lack thereof in this universe.
So, what would you say to the Jew?
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Nibs
Trad climber
Humboldt, CA
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Two excellent posts Ed, thank you.
As one that has experienced what I take to be spiritual phenomenon, mostly based in Christian mysticism (yes, there is such a thing), and paranormal apparitions (one an angry apparition that afterward in questioning the nature of reality led to a Christian epiphany), I still come back to the possibility of that last paragraph:
"The study of the "spirituality" of the human mind may only be delving into the roccoco aspects of evolutionary programming over millions of years. This in its self is interesting (to me) but may not have any deeper significance, there may be nothing deeper than physical reality."
well said...how can any of us be anything but humble before the great mystery of life that we all experience completely differently, yet paradoxically the same?
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nature
climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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I'm very humble when it comes to considering life as we know it. I've very very very very little clue as to how and why it could be. It's very egotistical to think you got it figured out. But guess what.. a lot of folks have it all figured out. One points to his ear and explains it all that way.
I'm agnostic and atheist. I was a part of a private Vajravidaran blessing with some monks (and a Lama) from Tibet a few years ago. Something happened in that room i cannot explain. I won't even try. It could and should have put a dent in my athiest/agnostic stance. I didn't. Still, there was an energy force in that room (it was all our negative energy the Lama was pulling out with the dough effigy) I can't explain. I'd be egotistical if I tried. It was there. I have no proof. My scientific mind won't/can't accept. No big deal. I wish the monks would return. Amazing is the only way I can describe it.
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