Evolution

[sinner]

and sorry for my english...

[DaHanG]

The creationist will say "hey you got the answer right here in the bible, no need to ask all the silly questions!!!! God loves you!" and the atheists will say "Without a doubt, there is no way a god exists or any divine energy of power, and this is the only truth". Both these are simply WRONG. As quadz was mentionning, it is jumping to the conclusion, then doing the research with a pre-defined conclusion.... WTF

If you can find one quote in the entire forum that corresponds to: "Without a doubt, there is no way a god exists or any divine energy of power, and this is the only truth", I would be pleased.

[haunted]

Sinner that was really off-topic lol.

This thread is about evolution. Slayer then said that we can't tell the age of things through C-14 dating, and seemingly wasn't aware that we can tell the age of multiple elements by the how much it has decayed......and when I say decay, I mean on the atomic level.

[|iR|Focalor]

The creationist will say "hey you got the answer right here in the bible, no need to ask all the silly questions!!!! God loves you!" and the atheists will say "Without a doubt, there is no way a god exists or any divine energy of power, and this is the only truth". Both these are simply WRONG. As quadz was mentionning, it is jumping to the conclusion, then doing the research with a pre-defined conclusion.... WTF

If you can find one quote in the entire forum that corresponds to: "Without a doubt, there is no way a god exists or any divine energy of power, and this is the only truth", I would be pleased.

Without a doubt, there is only one god. I do exist. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am that I am. If you want to see heaven, you must accept me into your heart and life... and bank account.

...and I take personal checks or debit cards. The afterlife has never been so quick and convenient.

[Th0m@s29]

I am not sure who's side to choose in this argument still lol.

[jägermonsta]

had a good drunkin talk with a buddy over this, how he was complaining we're not evolving... while I decided how we will evolve is technology wise. now i dont understand much on this topic but imo we evolve to the stars... we leave this delicious milky-way and move on... of course this takes a long time and ill be long dead from lung cancer or liver rot, heart disease, raging forum nerd gunshot wound, etc.. but i think how humans evolve is by moving off earth, some type of cloning shit and cybernetic implants, crap like that, no organic changes.

[Whirlingdervish]

people who complain that we aren't evolving have fallen prey to 2 very popular myths about evolution, and should be corrected on at least these two points:

1: Humans of all shapes and sizes are not anywhere near as gentically disimilar as certain ethnics groups and racist factions would have you believe. Most of the external biological differences we see are minor adaptations to localized threats to survival.

2: Evolution does not mean that people will develop extra limbs or telekinetic abilities or any manner of major change in design unless there is a survival need present for a very extended period of thousands of generations to drive such an adaptation.
We look the way we do because the earth is the way it is and we've lived on it long enough to adapt to it's current conditions.

If it changes, we do too, or we don't survive. (this is a common brainfart for creationists who say "look how perfectly our world is designed to support us!")


Misconception 1: comes from people thinking that we haven't evolved at all since some arbitrary point in the past. We actually haven't stopped at all. Every time someone breeds successfully we continue to evolve in some fashion. All of the variety we see and refer to as "races" can really be defined as area specific adaptation of a common species.


Look at people of what we call African decent. There is a reason they have darker skin than people from the colder northern climates and it is the same reason that people of middle eastern decent are browner than most europeans. It's called adaptation to their surroundings. Increased amounts of melanin in their skin protect them from heightened levels of solar radiation found in the regions where their genotypes adapted. This occurs because over a very long time people who had darker skin survived to breed more often in that environment and after a time it became a dominant trait in terms of survival and was bred into almost all people in the region.


misconception 2 tends to come about because of our limitted view of time (a side effect of our short life spans):

The earth has been in a relatively stable period in terms of climate and surface conditions for thousands of years, during which we have evolved and adapted to those surroundings. The only way we are going to change drastically in shape and function is by a process that will take place over millions of years, and that's only if the earth changes at a rate that we can evolve to keep up with. If we don't breed and adapt as fast as it changes, we'll get left behind and die.

[quadz]

A colleague just sent me the following link:

"Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time..."

http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/feb/17/meet-flintstones/

 


But anyway... back to the topic at hand...

had a good drunkin talk with a buddy over this, how he was complaining we're not evolving...

Contrary to intuition, it appears human evolution may be speeding up, rather than slowing down:

"Plentiful food has made it easier than ever before to survive and reproduce in many parts of the world, so it's tempting to think that our species has stopped evolving. But a controversial new study says that isn't so. Far from slowing down, human evolution has sped up in the past 40,000 years and has become 100 times faster in the past 5000 years alone, according to the analysis. . . . "

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2007/12/10-01.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008730844_evolve11.html

[QwazyWabbit]

Natural selection is a combination of environmental pressure, predation, mutation and resistance to disease. Pure mutation and variety is not natural selection. A mutation should provide a survival benefit and manifest itself early enough in the life of the individual organism so that the trait can be passed on to the next generations and make that variant more populous. A mutation that doesn't enhance survival may or may not be an "improvement" in the species. If there is no pressure like predation, disease, or environment to "select" the advantageous mutants, one only has diversity of species, not evolution.

It's worrysome to contemplate that long haired, mascara-wearing, self-pitying emos might be an advantageous mutation and reproduce in quantity.

[haunted]

"Plentiful food has made it easier than ever before to survive and reproduce in many parts of the world, so it's tempting to think that our species has stopped evolving. But a controversial new study says that isn't so. Far from slowing down, human evolution has sped up in the past 40,000 years and has become 100 times faster in the past 5000 years alone, according to the analysis. . . . "

So this analysis concludes that evolution was faster post-civilization than pre-civilization? Hard for me to believe, although i'm sure this stimulates progression within certain parts of the gene pool.

[quadz]

C14 dating is very accurate for wood used up to about 4,000 years ago.  This is only because it is well calibrated with objects of known age. Example: wood found in a grave of known age by historically reliable documents is the standard for that time for the C14 content. This standard content of C14 can then be used for wood not associated with a historically documented date. Dates up to this point in history are well documented for C14 calibration.

Reasonably informative overview of radiometric dating techniques, used to determine the age of the solar system:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDrq8rikJc

[reaper]

Why don't we just go make robots that are weapons at the molecular level.  Always a double edged sword.

As for the earth, the dinasaurs were around, so that makes it older than 6,000 come on!

[QwazyWabbit]

Why don't we just go make robots that are weapons at the molecular level.  Always a double edged sword.

As for the earth, the dinasaurs were around, so that makes it older than 6,000 come on!

Nanotechnology is currently being applied in clinical trials in the U.S. for treating cancer. There are several trials ongoing right now.
The technology involves both diagnostic and treatment methods.