..Fake but accurate..
Posted on 10/16/2005 11:50:09 AM PDT by Crackingham
Edited on 10/16/2005 12:04:43 PM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Natural history museums around the country are mounting new exhibits they hope will succeed where high school biology classes have faltered: convincing Americans that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a rigorously tested cornerstone of modern science. At Chicago's Field Museum, curators call their upcoming effort "Evolving Planet." The University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln calls its program "Explore Evolution." And here at the American Museum of Natural History, the exhibit that opens next month is called simply "Darwin."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That's why they didn't say that it *had* been "proven correct". They said it had been rigorously tested. And it has.
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Yes you are right in this place. But in many other articles the authors treat evolution as if it has in fact proven true. That's what I was reacting to and those were the people I was calling stupid. (Not you and certainly not God!)
every one of these types of posts should be mandated to include that "geez, n.t.s.a." image.
aside from that (an let me prefix i'm not a defender but a questioner of both)... i'm curious how human kind evolved from a non-upright species that could give birth fairly easily (due to the wide hips, etc.) into an upright walking species with closed hips that made it extremely difficult to give birth and resulted in huge amounts of death in the reproduction process. i'm not trying to go off on a pro creationist tangent, but that just seems backwards.
looking at the facts and statistics it certainly seems that, especially in comparison to other mammilian species, humans (up until modern medicine) have had abysmal live birth rates.
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In fact it would be impossible to do science of any kind if the laws of nature are changing, have changed or been tampered with.
And it is impossible to do science if you believe this has happened. What would be the point?
It would be like playing chess with comeone who can override your moves.
There would be no play at all. We use the idea of evolution in sociology, history, which is kind of a problem and the source of much political debate. Every day another reformer stands up, and then conservatives question whether we would be better off. How are we to make sense of the gang riot yesterday: is it some kind of evolution, a change of rules in the middle of the game?
Earth to Alter...where is evolution going on around me? I have seen no new species. Where do you live?
So much for astronomy since Hubble.
What? How does observing distant stars "prove" that a man evolved from a duck three hundred billion years ago?
Hey, if science had a "time scope" where they could look back in time to the beginning of life as it actually happened, similar to seeing light that was emanated billions of years ago, then that could be called rigourously testing a theory.
But they don't and so sherlock holmes it is.
> i'm curious how human kind evolved from a non-upright species that could give birth fairly easily (due to the wide hips, etc.) into an upright walking species with closed hips that made it extremely difficult to give birth and resulted in huge amounts of death in the reproduction process.
While infant mortality may go up due to trying to shove out a large-headed baby, this is offset by the advantages that come with larger brains. This is apparent just by looking at the world around us: even before the scientific revolution, when infant mortality was overall atrocious, humans had managed to colonize the entire planet and bend it to our will.
that blogger-forum thing really got your goat, didn't it?
> so sherlock holmes it is.
So you have a problem with forensic science? Perhaps we should dispense with "CSI: Peoria" and just install psychics and necromancers, as it's all just guesswork anyway...
The thing that gets me about evolution though, is how efficient it is. For it to create the complexity of life around us, you have to have (1) an amazing mutation rate and (2) an environment accomodating enough to allow enough organisms survive but also be (3) harsh enough to shave away suboptimal organisms. The environment also has to (4) change smoothly enough for organisms to adapt over time or contain enough varied organisms to survive any severe changes, like the meteors that killed the dinosaurs.
I know you have to condition all this on the fact that we exist -- if we didnt' exist, we wouldn't be around to discuss evolution. And there are gazillions of other planets which have not given rise to life.
But intuitively it just seems as though 5 billion years and a large number of experimental creatures is not enough time or fodder to get mechanisms as complex as the eye or liver or even a little virus. And the more I learn about the world, like about the bacteria that thrive in hot ocean vents, the mysteries of quantum physics, the weirdness of relativity, I really have to start wondering. I'm not religious, but the world is such a magnificent place you really have to believe there is a God, if only to act as a proxy to explain the amazing array of "stuff" around us.
Plus anyone who has done genetic programming (GP) knows what a pain in the ass it is to get any interesting behavior. :D
But then contrast GP to the game of Life developed by Dr. Conway which can actually give rise to quite complex behaviors including Turing machines which can compute anything. The trick is that they start with the right set of rules...
..Fake but accurate..
No I don't have any problem with forensic science...we need it....I was just pointing out that evolution could not and has not been rigorously tested as like a chemistry or physics experiment. When you mix two chemicals together and each time they create the same substance...then a hard conclusion can be made about the reaction. Not the same for forensic science.....conflicitng evidence, or lack of evidence, can really throw a monkey wrench into the deduction process.
Darwinism is loaded with said monkey wrenches....so to speak :)
"What? How does observing distant stars "prove" that a man evolved from a duck three hundred billion years ago?"
Gosh...it doesn't. The age of the Earth itself is only around 5 billion years, so it would have been difficult for a duck to have been around 300 billion years ago, I'd think.
Further, nobody claims any connection of descent from a duck to a human being. Their evolutionary threads separated long ago.
Time for you to read something, I guess. But that's OK. I still don't understand quantum physics, despite trying to learn it myself.
In fact, in physics there is a reliance on some kind of design in the universe, intelligent design is not necessary, but if the fundamental laws of physics were evolving or changing it would be difficult to do physics.
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Yeah no kidding, that's what always amazed me! For example F=ma works everywhere, everytime! Plus it's so mathematically simple! Just multiplication, one step up from addition! Why is that? No matrices, no integrals, nothing.
And then why does it seem, the further out in scale you go, either up or down, the math gets that much nastier? Schroedingers equation you need partial derivatives to solve. You can't get closed form solutions to any of them?
I don't know if you have any answers but given you have a degree in Physics and made such great observations above, maybe you have some ideas.
evolution in sociology, history, which is kind of a problem and the source of much political debate. Every day another reformer stands up, and then conservatives question whether we would be better off. How are we to make sense of the gang riot yesterday: is it some kind of evolution, a change of rules in the middle of the game?
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Another interesting idea. Have you noticed how cyclic history is? I think it really is true, those who do not know history about doomed to repeat it.
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