Ye Religion Thread

[quadz]

I'm assuming that the anti religion posters are people who believe in evolution.

It's an important distinction that one doesn't "believe in" evolution by natural selection.  One accepts (or rejects) the evidence for it.

Example: Do you believe in ancient Greece?  Or do you accept the evidence that ancient Greece existed?

It should be noted that there is vastly more evidence for evolution than there is that ancient Greece existed.

Question for the evolution people, how did it all start and how did we get to this point 

Steve McCroskey: Jacobs, I want to know absolutely everything that's happened up till now.

Jacobs: Well, let's see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes. I couldn't believe it.





P.S. if you're serious about that last question, I could recommend some books, articles, lectures...

[Sgt. Dick]

My opinion is - we really do not know.  Whatever you believe, you have to have some amount of faith to say it is this or that.

We have theories, but that is all they are.  Some may have evidence to back them somewhat, but none are completely proven IMO.

I am not a avid reader so many aspects of this discussion I may not be aware of, that is one reason why I asked the evolution question.
From what I know, many aspects of evolution are still just theory.

[|iR|Focalor]

I'm assuming that the anti religion posters are people who believe in evolution.

It's an important distinction that one doesn't "believe in" evolution by natural selection.  One accepts (or rejects) the evidence for it.

Example: Do you believe in ancient Greece?  Or do you accept the evidence that ancient Greece existed?

It should be noted that there is vastly more evidence for evolution than there is that ancient Greece existed.

That statement's a little off and I have to disagree. The "evolution" you're referring to is theorized to have happened over millions of years since way before man recorded history. The "ancient Greece" you're referring to is far more recent and was meticulously recorded by man. Because of this, it's a lot easier to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that ancient Greece existed. The earliest manmade recorded history of evolution in an equivalent fashion would be the cave paintings of half naked stick figures hunting down wolly mammoths.

If you refer to only physical evidence, there are plenty of fossils that show similarities between them. There are physical ruins of buildings in Greece that match descriptions in writings which tell of life in ancient Greece. As far as I know, mankind has yet to force any organism to mutate itself in a way that would support theories of evolution other than at the microscopic level with things like diseases gaining resistance to cures and immune systems gaining resistance to diseases.

[quadz]

That statement's a little off and I have to disagree. The "evolution" you're referring to is theorized to have happened over millions of years since way before man recorded history.

The evolution I'm referring to is still going on right now. 

The "ancient Greece" you're referring to is far more recent and was meticulously recorded by man. Because of this, it's a lot easier to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that ancient Greece existed.

If you refer to only physical evidence, there are plenty of fossils that show similarities between them. There are physical ruins of buildings in Greece that match descriptions in writings which tell of life in ancient Greece.

The evidence for ancient Greece is neither more recent nor more meticulously recorded than the evidence for the ongoing processes of evolution.  The evidence for evolution spans a period from 3.5 billion years ago, up through modern times.

As far as I know, mankind has yet to force any organism to mutate itself in a way that would support theories of evolution other than at the microscopic level with things like diseases gaining resistance to cures and immune systems gaining resistance to diseases.

There seems to be a cultural echo chamber that keeps repeating that claim, but it's not true.

Speciation has been observed to occur both under artifical selection conditions in laboratories, as well as in the wild over the past couple centuries.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/


It's really impossible to overstate the vastness of evidence existing in support of evolution.

Quantitatively, there's more evidence for evolution than for ancient Greece.  But, the ruins of an ancient civilization have the advantage of being easily understood intuitively by homo sapiens.

By contrast, many domains of nature being explored by modern science unfortunately don't lend themselves to being intuitively understood by human brains.

Evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics are each difficult for our brains to grapple with intuitively.  Nevertheless, the extraordinary degree of evidence for each has produced an overwhelming scientific consensus that each of these theories represent facts about nature.  (Cultural echo chamber notwithstanding.)

[quadz]

We have theories, but that is all they are.  Some may have evidence to back them somewhat, but none are completely proven IMO.

I am not a avid reader so many aspects of this discussion I may not be aware of, that is one reason why I asked the evolution question.
From what I know, many aspects of evolution are still just theory.

Unfortunately in English, the word 'theory' has multiple meanings.

Most folks seem to be familiar with theory defined as: a speculative or conjectural view or idea.  As in, "I have a theory about that..."

This is not what is meant when theory is used in a scientific context.

If you're serious about making headway on your question, I'd recommend the following 30 minute lecture.

The Universe - Neil deGrasse Tyson - The Big Bang (8 of 12)

While this lecture concerns the Big Bang theory as opposed to Evolutionary theory, it focuses on the common misunderstanding of what is meant by the term 'theory' in science.

If you put on your thinking cap for even just the first six minutes of the video, you should come away with at least the seeds of the conceptualization of what differentiates scientific theory from mere conjecture.


Regards,

quadz

[|iR|Focalor]

As far as I know, mankind has yet to force any organism to mutate itself in a way that would support theories of evolution other than at the microscopic level with things like diseases gaining resistance to cures and immune systems gaining resistance to diseases.

There seems to be a cultural echo chamber that keeps repeating that claim, but it's not true.

Speciation has been observed to occur both under artifical selection conditions in laboratories, as well as in the wild over the past couple centuries.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/


It's really impossible to overstate the vastness of evidence existing in support of evolution.

Quantitatively, there's more evidence for evolution than for ancient Greece.  But, the ruins of an ancient civilization have the advantage of being easily understood intuitively by homo sapiens.

By contrast, many domains of nature being explored by modern science unfortunately don't lend themselves to being intuitively understood by human brains.

Evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics are each difficult for our brains to grapple with intuitively.  Nevertheless, the extraordinary degree of evidence for each has produced an overwhelming scientific consensus that each of these theories represent facts about nature.  (Cultural echo chamber notwithstanding.)

You could've economized your words and just said, "You're fucking stupid."

I briefly read over the evidence of speciation in plants and animals (mostly insects), and that isn't exactly what the majority of the masses considers to be "evolution". Cross-pollination and hybridization (to my knowledge) isn't what they teach about evolution in schools. Sure, you can cross-pollinate similar plants. Sure, you can breed two different dogs and have a litter of mutts. But it's yet to be shown that you can put dogs up in a tree and they'll grow wings to fly from tree to tree or opposable thumbs to climb around in trees more easily.

I'm not saying that I don't believe evolution of that sort is impossible. Since I don't for one second believe that some gray bearded dude in the sky waved his arm and created everything uniquely, then there must be another perfectly logical explanation for it, and evolution seems the most logical. I just think that scientists are probably WAY off on their guesstimations of how long it takes, how it exactly happens, and most importantly, how old the earth we live on really is. I think most scientists claim that the earth is around 4 billion years old. I say they're probably wrong. Seems to me that the earth is more likely MUCH MUCH older than that.

It would probably be a lot cooler if God really did exist and really did create the earth. I know the first thing I'd want to see in the afterlife is a timelapse video of the earth from the time it formed until now. How fucking cool would that be to see the formation of mountains over millions of years from millions of separate earthquakes. But since that will never happen, I'm stuck with watching the bullshit about it on the Science channel and listening to some annoying fucking english accent narrate it. Or Morgan Freeman.

[quadz]

I briefly read over the evidence of speciation in plants and animals (mostly insects), and that isn't exactly what the majority of the masses considers to be "evolution". Cross-pollination and hybridization (to my knowledge) isn't what they teach about evolution in schools.

To clarify, our obseravtion of speciation in modern times confirms what was already evident in the fossil record and in our genetic history: that an initial population of animals of one species, when split into two separate groups for N generations, can evolutionarily diverge to the point where the decendents of the two groups, when reunited, can no longer interbreed.

We didn't need to personally observe this happening to understand how and why it works biologically.  Normally long timescales are involved.  But it's nice that we've actually observed it occurring in the past couple centuries.

Sure, you can cross-pollinate similar plants. Sure, you can breed two different dogs and have a litter of mutts. But it's yet to be shown that you can put dogs up in a tree and they'll grow wings to fly from tree to tree or opposable thumbs to climb around in trees more easily.

But that's exactly the sort of evolution that has been shown to have occurred, in myriad ways, through multiple distinct lines of evidence.

Not just the fossil record, but also our genetic history.

Analysis of the fossil record produces a tree of life.  Analysis of the genetic history in the DNA of living species also produces a tree of life.

The evolution of species shown by these two trees overlap and agree.  Indeed, as Richard Dawkins has pointed out, it's amazing we have as many fossils as we do (conditions have to be just right when a creature dies for it to be preserved at all) -- but, he says, we wouldn't even need the fossil record at all for evolution to be demonstrably a correct theory.  The genetic history derived from the DNA of living species would be sufficient.

(These days, we indeed have sufficient and detailed understanding of the biological mechanisms of genetic evolution--DNA is a digitally coded instruction sequence, after all--that it is possible to view the system of processes in terms of information theory.)

I just think that scientists are probably WAY off on their guesstimations of how long it takes, how it exactly happens, and most importantly, how old the earth we live on really is. I think most scientists claim that the earth is around 4 billion years old. I say they're probably wrong. Seems to me that the earth is more likely MUCH MUCH older than that.

They're not guesstimations in the sense that would allow for the kind of variation you're talking about.

There are several independent techniques for estimating the age of the earth, as well as multiple techniques for estimating elapsed time since the Big Bang. 

We literally set our clocks by some of these techniques.

If we were wrong about the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes, atomic clocks (and GPS navigation) wouldn't work, for instance.


Regards,

[The Dreaming Dragon]

[astral]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

BIG BANG?   Ok then Mr Bing Bang, if the Universe is some 13-15 billions years old then how is the observable universe 93 billion Light years in diameter?

Yeah I'd like to see that evolution theory answer that one......

Good Luck!

[[BTF]Gator]

It is possible to travel faster then light i guess.  Seems the easy answer to me.

[reaper]

You can't travel faster than light.  That's how Einstein came up with his equations.  Newton's laws and the limitation, seen in many practical applications, didn't agree.  However space itself can expand, so the light doesn't need to travel for 93 billion years, because the universe isn't a box in a 3 dimensional coordinate system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system

[astral]

You can't travel faster than light.  That's how Einstein came up with his equations.  Newton's laws and the limitation, seen in many practical applications, didn't agree.  However space itself can expand, so the light doesn't need to travel for 93 billion years, because the universe isn't a box in a 3 dimensional coordinate system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system

If the observable universe is 28 billion parsecs, or 93 billion Light Year in diameter, it would seem logical that the light occupies that "observable" distance. 

Plus as far as I remember "observable" means space-time IE 3 dimensions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

[Whirlingdervish]

one word: expansion.

I think quadz touched on this in a recent post.. I'll look for it.

[reaper]

If the observable universe is 28 billion parsecs, or 93 billion Light Year in diameter, it would seem logical that the light occupies that "observable" distance. 

Plus as far as I remember "observable" means space-time IE 3 dimensions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

"seems logical" is because around you, objects seem to be in a 3 dimensional coordinate system, and they obey basic laws from Euclidian geometry (fastest way between two points is a straight line).  However space is changed by the matter around it, which affects time.  Basically -

Quotes should be around distance.  In my last reply, I noted how space itself is changed by matter/gravity, that is the crux of your dilemma.  The actual distance changes, because space itself expands.

[reaper]

Plus as far as I remember "observable" means space-time IE 3 dimensions.

It's 4 dimensions, spacial and time (they have a relationship, space slows time, etc) when you get on the scale of distance across the universe, the space on the whole has gotten bigger, like a balloon expanding , so the distance across and age don't need to match up.