Any religious people watch the Wonders of Life last night?

[ringo747]

Womb, egg - it doesn't really matter, the slow progressive process is determined entirely by random mutations, 'decided on' by natural selection.

Hold on. This is an irrational unguided process. How can you possibly ascribe intelligent attributes such as choice to such a process?

In terms of determining what's 'expensive' natural selection makes and guides that determination; If you're a predator, the regulating factor on the size of things such as teeth, claws, long strong legs for running fast, are determined entirely by the environment.

I thought natural selection was an unguided process. How can such a process determine anything?

It sounds like natural selection can see into the future and work out what will be good for it.

Well, it can and does - organisms actually use chemical processes to determine where things are placed, where eyes go, where legs, organs etc all go.

These mechanisms are the results of complex chemistry and biological processes - there's no mystic 'weird' answer, it's just the way it is.

That's a deeply profound statement. No answer, it just is? I'm struggling to grasp this to be totally honest.

 

[Robosapien]

I find it amazing that atheists believe the universe came from nothing, by nothing, and just happened to land on all the right parameters for a life permitting universe. If that doesn't take faith then I don't know what does!

As CS Lewis said: "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

I'm sure it was counter intuitive for the first monkeys to venture out from the jungle too - don't worry, we'll all get to wherever we're going in due time. Not even TIME exists as we experience it - it's a property of the universe itself. 'Nothing' is an extremely hard notion to grasp. Not very comforting either, but it should be because it means you can start living for the here and now, and not for some fake afterlife. And I don't think our moral compass would break any time soon - we all depend on our local communities for support, i.e. our sense of basic moral values probably derive from evolution and the need to act as groups more than anything.

What are your views about organised religion as a method of social control?

I'd love to hear your explanation. It absolutely is a genuine question. If it only takes Dawkins 2 minutes on youtube to explain making an eye then no question is too simple.

Forwards is just a perspective based on where our eyes are situated.

It probably gave an advantage of some sorts because A LOT of creatures today have 2 eyes only. We don't even need to delve into genes, the evidence that we share a common ancestor is all around us.

 

[Jason2]

Would that be these points? I'll admitt my knowledge is lacking when it come to the changes in chromosome numbers but I'd like to see your views on the second law of thermodynamics argument:

According to evolutionists, living organisms rearrange themselves to become more complex. The second law of thermodynamics says this is impossible. The second law of thermodynamics is proven to be correct.

 

[RDM]

According to evolutionists, living organisms rearrange themselves to become more complex. The second law of thermodynamics says this is impossible. The second law of thermodynamics is proven to be correct.

This was answered earlier but you either missed it or ignored it, we aren't in a closed system, huge amounts of energy are pumped into the system via the Sun.

 

[ringo747]

We don't even need to delve into genes, the evidence that we share a common ancestor is all around us.

Have you any explanation for where the concept of sex arose? Assuming everything started from this common ancestor then the introduction of male and female must have happened at some point in time along the evolutionary journey.

Why would it be limited to just two sexes?

Another question I think about many times is did man or woman evolve first?

 

[Jason2]

V-Spec, I'm interested in hearing your views on human eggs and sperm.

I came across this:

The evolutionist ignores the problem surrounding the human female egg and the male sperm in the evolutionary theory. The female egg contains the X-chromosome and the male sperm contains either an X-chromosome for the reproduction of a male or a Y-chromosome for the reproduction of a female. The female eggs all develop within the ovaries while she is a baby (fetus) within her mother's womb. Evolutionists claim environmental factors cause small changes in the offspring in the evolutionary chain. However, the environmental experience of the female cannot change the chromosomes within her eggs and cannot have any effect upon her offspring. Her body cannot go into the eggs contained within her ovaries at her birth to make an intelligent change. Females cannot be a part of the evolutionary theory for these reasons.

 

[Urgannagru]

I find it amazing that atheists believe the universe came from nothing, by nothing, and just happened to land on all the right parameters for a life permitting universe. If that doesn't take faith then I don't know what does!

As CS Lewis said: "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

But if there was no before it doesn't come from nothing as there was no nothing. It's a difficult concept to get your head round and it's not one we know is right.
The parameters for life is far easier, if they hadn't occurred the way they had I wouldn't be here to marvel at it. Actually now I'm trying to put into words I'm struggling I'm going to have to use a pretty crap analogy, if the parameters were different in such a way that it had created us as sentient robots we'd be saying what are the chances of that.
Or another example is if I said "the universe has been around 13 billion years, yet I was born on the 15th of August 1988, rather than the 14th of August, what are the chances of that", it's only amazing because we are here to make that conclusion.

I hope there is someone more elloquent than me who understands what I'm trying to get at

 

[Urgannagru]

According to evolutionists, living organisms rearrange themselves to become more complex. The second law of thermodynamics says this is impossible. The second law of thermodynamics is proven to be correct.

Could you please state the 2nd law of thermodynamics for me there are 2 main descriptions for it, they both mean the same thing but the way they are worded only one directly applies to this arguement. If you can state this for me I can explain why this is not the case.

 

[Robosapien]

Have you any explanation for where the concept of sex arose? Assuming everything started from this common ancestor then the introduction of male and female must have happened at some point in time along the evolutionary journey.

Why would it be limited to just two sexes?

Another question I think about many times is did man or woman evolve first?

Haven't thought enough about it to be perfectly honest. I seem to get distracted every 6 seconds by it.

Probably some quirky biological division of labour in the reproductive process that also presented some advantage. As an aside, we see common processes in species today (again the common ancestor, male and female aren't just unique to homosapiens) and also some which show great variety in reproductive methods (such as male and female roles reversed, males look after the eggs, etc (can't remember which species this is)).

The fact that cells always divide into two is niggling at me.

 

[The Running Man]

According to evolutionists, living organisms rearrange themselves to become more complex. The second law of thermodynamics says this is impossible. The second law of thermodynamics is proven to be correct.

So let's discuss humans do you believe that humans have evolved since they first roamed the earth?

Not only are humans now larger than they used to be.

They also changed skin pigment colour due to differences in sunlight. This is evolution in progress.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...lved-5-500-years-ago-food-habits-changed.html

 

[d_brennen]

This concept of coming to know that light = food must be something experienced individually by each creature. Are you assuming that these creatures had an extremely high life span in order for there to be a chance that the mutation actually happens? I would assume that they don't just work it out overnight.

I'm talking super simple organisms, like Collodictyon, perhaps a bit higher up the ladder, they don't know anything, their behaviour is all hardwired. They sense stimulus like light or temperature and have a fixed response. With millions of years worth of mutation, and the sheer speed/numbers they breed in it's inevitable that each one is not an exact copy of it's predecessors. The mutation to enable the light = food response may well have been happenstance but proved very effective, giving that branch of the species a huge advantage

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

It's not about the individual "working it out"

 

[Nitefly]

 

[Robosapien]

 

[ringo747]

Haven't thought enough about it to be perfectly honest. I seem to get distracted every 6 seconds by it.

Probably some quirky biological division of labour in the reproductive process that also presented some advantage. As an aside, we see common processes in species today (again the common ancestor, male and female aren't just unique to homosapiens) and also some which show great variety in reproductive methods (such as male and female roles reversed, males look after the eggs, etc (can't remember which species this is)).

The fact that cells always divide into two is niggling at me.

I just find it staggering the whole thing is taught in schools to children as fact when it can't provide answers to the most basic of questions.

If a man evolved before a woman then how did the human family carry on? Did he just happen to find a creature that looked rather like himself, who he examined in close detail and discovered by chance that this similar creature just happened to have a suitable place for him to insert a certain feature into? The result of this experimentation just happened to unlock the mystery of reproduction? You couldn't make it up!

 

[d_brennen]

According to evolutionists, living organisms rearrange themselves to become more complex. The second law of thermodynamics says this is impossible. The second law of thermodynamics is proven to be correct.

Who states this? Evolution favours the best solution, not the most complex. Sometimes the best solution is elaborate (think chameleon), sometimes it's almost stupidly simple (jellyfish)

So we gather that you do not understand both evolution and the second law of thermodynamics

 

[V-Spec]

Hold on. This is an irrational unguided process. How can you possibly ascribe intelligent attributes such as choice to such a process?

Because it's simply the case, that in nature - it favours the ones that are equipped to do well, not because natural selection is some sort of intelligent invisible process that uses a magic wand to determine what lives or dies, but simply because - in the real world, if you can't survive you die - there's no intelligence, it's just how life works.

It's not irrational or 'unguided' that things either change to suit their environment or die.

I thought natural selection was an unguided process. How can such a process determine anything?

It sounds like natural selection can see into the future and work out what will be good for it.

Take this guy;

The bio-luminescent fishing rod stuck to it's head has evolved to attract fish - it then eats the fish.

It would be said, that the prey fish would be 'selecting' the angler fish by becoming it's prey, because in becoming it's prey the angler fish lives - and is therefore successful and lives on.

This isn't guided/unguided as such, it's simply how nature works - the only 'guidance' really, is the fact that an angler fish with a full stomach is successful, that's the driving force.

If the prey fish evolved sufficient intelligence to realise that the mysterious light in the darkness is actually an angler fish trying to eat it - the angler fish would be in trouble and would also have to adapt, this is the sort of constant arms race that's occurring in all living things, all the time.

We're actually 'evolving' rhinos by poaching so many - simply for their horn, it turns out that to have a big impressive horn is now a disadvantage so it's getting smaller, evolution predicts that if the current trend continues the rhino horn will grow smaller and smaller because humans are selecting it.

None of this is intelligent or rational, it's just nature.

That's a deeply profound statement. No answer, it just is? I'm struggling to grasp this to be totally honest.

​

​

Well it's the truth,

You're asking a lot of good questions, but I'd say the best thing is to go into a book shop and buy any of the detailed books on life and evolution, all of them will explain it better than I can and provide better examples - all the stuff i'm saying i've read in books, none of it is 'my information'

 

[ringo747]

I'm talking super simple organisms, like Collodictyon, perhaps a bit higher up the ladder, they don't know anything, their behaviour is all hardwired. They sense stimulus like light or temperature and have a fixed response. With millions of years worth of mutation, and the sheer speed/numbers they breed in it's inevitable that each one is not an exact copy of it's predecessors. The mutation to enable the light = food response may well have been happenstance but proved very effective, giving that branch of the species a huge advantage

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

It's not about the individual "working it out"

If we take more advanced creatures then... the millions of years of mutation is surely knocked flat on its face by the cambrian explosion discoveries?

 

[Jason2]

Could you please state the 2nd law of thermodynamics for me there are 2 main descriptions for it, they both mean the same thing but the way they are worded only one directly applies to this arguement. If you can state this for me I can explain why this is not the case.

The second law says that disorder, or entropy, always increases or stays the same over time.

 

[Robosapien]

The second law of thermodynamics says that things always tend towards disorder in a closed system.

We look at life and think it looks ordered and structred, but what the creationists neglect to take into account is the environment surrounding life.

Looking at both as a closed system, we see that net disorder is in fact increasing, despite pockets of order.



How the information version of entropy relates to this law, I have a harder time with. Perhaps someone could explain.

 

[d_brennen]

I just find it staggering the whole thing is taught in schools to children as fact when it can't provide answers to the most basic of questions.

For the love of God! It's not taught as fact. It is called the THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

YOUR INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEORY MEANS IS ANOTHER MATTER