No, that's not even remotely the essence of what I am saying. :bugeye:leopold99 said:
Open Debate: Evolution.
- Thread starter Muslim
- Start date
I'm alive, the chair isn't. What's your point?leopold99 said:
The generally accepted biological definitions of life, in no particular order, are metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli and reproduction. Recent advances in genetics have complicated matters a little when it comes to whether or not we classify viruses as alive. However, all these various requirements for life can easily delineate between a human and a chair, don’t you think? Again, what’s your point?leopold99 said:
No, fire most certainly does not exhibit every one of those definitions. Hence, it is not alive.leopold99 said:
One of the conditions that I neglected to mention is that living things are composed of one or more cells. This certainly excludes fire.
Metabolism involves both catabolism and anabolism. That is, breaking things down into simpler units and building complex things up from simpler units. This cannot be said of fire.
Growth occurs when anabolic activity is higher than catabolic activity. This growth is not simply the accumulation of matter but is a controlled application of anabolism where the organism needs it. The “growth” of fire is simply a linear relationship with available combustible material. It’s not the same.
Similarly, fire doesn’t reproduce like an organism. Living reproduction, whether it be simple cell division or the production of a whole new organism, is a controlled expenditure of energy at an appropriate time and environmental circumstance. Fire “reproduction” is simply an automatic relationship with the environment. It’s not the same.
Adaptation is the adjustment of a living organism to a changing environment. Fire simply follows the environment.
Maybe it can be said the fire responds to physical stimuli, but it’s passive rather than the active response of living organisms.
The "something" started to exhibit the traits I mentioned above.leopold99 said:
This is, of course, all purely dependant on definitions. But that’s science. Science exists on the basis of defining things, categorizing things, labeling things.
Edit: I think this is what you’re getting at, isn’t it? Life is a continuum so our attempts to label it with constraints are sometimes very artificial. Life is analog and we’re trying to make it digital. The idea of taxonomic species is one such example. Organisms that can be classified as one species by morphology can often be classified as another by DNA analysis. And as you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about, the gradual process that turned inanimate matter into a living cell is another continuum that science tends to impose a (perhaps arbitrary) pre-life and post-life boundary. But the scientific method has developed to suit the human mind. Humans have an innate tendency to look for patterns whether they are real or imagined. Life as a whole is far too complex for us to tackle as a whole, so the best way to learn about it is utilizing our pattern-finding ability and divide biology into labeled chunks, modifying and reclassifying as we learn more.
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you guys...why don't we go ahead and throw alien interference in with all the rest? seriously. if you want to know how we all (and i mean that collectively, as in every living thing...except teetotaler and thedevilsreject ) evolved, you might as well question the seemingly sudden jump in early man's intellilect and the continuation of it today (the industrial and technological ages). a bigger cranium - for those of you that saw that special on the history channel about the infamous missing link everyone's been searching for - does not an intelligent being make.
) evolved, you might as well question the seemingly sudden jump in early man's intellilect and the continuation of it today (the industrial and technological ages). a bigger cranium - for those of you that saw that special on the history channel about the infamous missing link everyone's been searching for - does not an intelligent being make.oh, hell...i've walked into a conversation totally misinformed about what's going on...
i hate that
i hate that
It wasn't exactly a jump. The pre-modern humanoid species weren't as dumb as a rock, or anything close. To assume they were is a manifestation of the arrogance of humans. We're discovering quite a bit about Neanderthals, such as that they had linguistic capabilities – quite a contrast to the old idea that they were simple, dumb cavemen.nubianconcubine said:you guys...why don't we go ahead and throw alien interference in with all the rest? seriously. if you want to know how we all (and i mean that collectively, as in every living thing...except teetotaler and thedevilsreject
Don't get me wrong, it's not that alien interference is impossible. It's just that we don't have much evidence suggesting that alien interference may have happened. As Occam's razor states: Don't assume too much when hypothesizing.
Oh well. At least you're using your brain, unlike some others in this thread.nubianconcubine said:
Nope. That's pretty much it. What else would we be?leopold99 said:
What HR said.
Was the first simple replicator "alive"? All a replicator has to do is make copies of itself. There may be many was of being a replicator. The kind we're made of (RNA/DNA and its early precursors) were replicators that were subject to copying errors and damage from radiation. This was probably disasterous for 99.9997854% of the replicators at the time. But some of the "mistakes" were beneficial for replication and survival, as you would expect just based on simple odds. This is how simple replicators began to "evolve" more efficient strategies for replication and survival. Natural selection is just the natural fallout of random copying errors, of which a few are not disasterous for the replicator, but neutral, or even beneficial.
Random mutations (chance) are the smorgasboard of opportunities layed out for natural selection (highly deterministic) to work on.
For all of you "anti-evolutonists" out there, are you aware that evolution by natural selection is regularly observed in the lab? Are you just arguing against human evolution, or just evolution in general?
Ophiolite said:
Because most of these people do not understand, for a start there is no such thing as the "stone age" humans have been civilized from the start. Even what you class as the "stone age" humans had tool, I can show you tools which are 12,000 year old. which "primitive" man made. Hay I can show you flutes that date back to about 95,000 years ago. Tell me is this "primitive"?
These pseudo scientists come and talk a whole load of shit and claim they have made a "discoveries" and then add there own shit and make it into a philosophy. Its all the fault of scientists they remind me of the Greeks like they used to talk a hell load of bullshit too. Uncivilized swine eaters.
superluminal said:
I don't disagree with micro-evolution, thats a fact. But talking about humans evolved out of genetic garbage is a load of b.s.
Creationism should be taught in schools not crap about "dinosaurs" and "primitive man" and the "stone age" all this is a load of crap. The supreme reality is the Abrahamic faiths are the absolute holders of all truth written in riddles only the wise will understand. There should be a law anyone opposing this should be hanged.
Scientists have killed more people then anyone on the planet. While knowing what they are doing, science is going to be the downfall of humanity.
Muslim said:These pseudo scientists come and talk a whole load of shit .... Its all the fault of scientists they remind me of the Greeks ....Uncivilized swine eaters ... Creationism should be taught in schools not crap about "dinosaurs" .... The supreme reality is the Abrahamic faiths are the absolute holders of all truth .... There should be a law anyone opposing this should be hanged .... Scientists have killed more people then anyone on the planet .... science is going to be the downfall of humanity.
There, there
There is no point in trying to convince a religious person that we evolved from single celled organisms. I could spend hours trying to explain all of the things that scientists have learned about DNA to someone like Muslim, but he would not listen to me. People see what they want to see in life. Everything is subjective. Existence is information and perception. Two scientist could be examining the same data and come to two different conclusions because of their religious or ideological beliefs. Religious people usually don’t have a problem with science until it contradicts something that was written in the bible or the Koran. The evidence of evolution is all around us, but people will always see what they want to see.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light: and there was light. ~ The Holy Bible, Genesis, Chapter 1
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about creation and infinity because it is beyond our comprehension. (How can something be created from nothing? How could god exist before the beginning of existence? Ect.) I would be more inclined to believe in an intelligent design theory if the bible and other religious books were written a little differently. For example, In the beginning god created an infinite number of strings with eleven different dimensions. Then god decided to make the strings vibrate. Over a period of time the vibrating strings evolved into something that humans will one day call subatomic particles. Genesis could then go on to explain the process of the subatomic particles evolving into atoms, molecules, amino acids, RNA, DNA, Ect. I would definitely be religious if the authors of the bible had some knowledge of the scientific theories and facts that we would learn in the future, but there is no scientific information in the bible.
As for Hercules Rockefeller and leopold99’s debate about life and inanimate objects, I believe that our perception of sentience and self-awareness is an illusion. I don’t believe there is any real difference between an inanimate object and a human being. If you took a human being apart atom by atom we would be no different than the inanimate objects around us. It is the sum of our parts working together at once that gives us our perception of reality. What we perceive as life is nothing more than chemical reactions.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light: and there was light. ~ The Holy Bible, Genesis, Chapter 1
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about creation and infinity because it is beyond our comprehension. (How can something be created from nothing? How could god exist before the beginning of existence? Ect.) I would be more inclined to believe in an intelligent design theory if the bible and other religious books were written a little differently. For example, In the beginning god created an infinite number of strings with eleven different dimensions. Then god decided to make the strings vibrate. Over a period of time the vibrating strings evolved into something that humans will one day call subatomic particles. Genesis could then go on to explain the process of the subatomic particles evolving into atoms, molecules, amino acids, RNA, DNA, Ect. I would definitely be religious if the authors of the bible had some knowledge of the scientific theories and facts that we would learn in the future, but there is no scientific information in the bible.
As for Hercules Rockefeller and leopold99’s debate about life and inanimate objects, I believe that our perception of sentience and self-awareness is an illusion. I don’t believe there is any real difference between an inanimate object and a human being. If you took a human being apart atom by atom we would be no different than the inanimate objects around us. It is the sum of our parts working together at once that gives us our perception of reality. What we perceive as life is nothing more than chemical reactions.
Muslim said:
How can you disagree with something you don't understand? Wouldn't Allah be upset with you in that regard?
Then, what are we to tell students in regards to the mountains of evidence for dinosaurs, primitive man and the stone age? Should we just ignore it?
Yet, even the wise cannot understand those riddles correctly as they all disagree as to what exactly the truth should be.
Is that the Islamic way of handling people?
Can you name one?
So, will you be discarding your computer, internet connection, home, car, and most everything else you own and use on a daily basis in favor of an empty cave?
If not, why not? Wouldn't not doing so make you a hypocrite?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
No, my good fellow. Abrahamists have killed more people than anyone on the planet. For starters, the disciples of Abraham obliterated three of the world's six civilizations: Cushitic Egypt (Muslims did that), Aztec and Inca (Christians did that). Estimates of the number of aboriginal Americans killed by the Christian occupation of the New World go as high as a hundred million, but are certainly no less than twenty million. The various waves of Muslim conquerors that have swept across the Mideast and occasionally into Europe and Africa, including Moghuls, Arabs, and Ottomans, easily match that figure. The Crusades and the Holocaust rack up on the Christian side of the ledger, and the Muslims in modern Africa are keeping it a close race.Muslim said:
Even if you blame "scientists" for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as many people do, that wasn't even a large fraction of a million victims.
Only the Communists have surpassed the Nazi death toll and come close to matching that of either the Christians or the Muslims, but their sun is setting and they will never eclipse the performance of the sons of Abraham.
If there is one single development in the history of human civilization that has caused more suffering and destruction--including the irreplaceable loss of entire civilizations with everything they might have accomplished, which by any code of law must be the most unrepentable of all sins--it is the metastasis of the endless series of monotheistic, patriarchal, evangelical religions out of the Middle East that teach their followers to arrogantly assume they are superior to the rest of us and therefore can kill us without a qualm.
If there were a law to punish those whose belief systems appeal to the dark side of human nature and which bring civilization to the brink of destruction several times in every millennium, it would be the Christians, Muslims, and Jews who would be "hanged" by unmerciful, self-important tyrants. Thankfully there is no such law because for the most part the world is still run by rational, compassionate people who tolerate diversity no matter how much sorrow it causes.