How do I put this? The prevailing notion is that time is linear or cyclical, but time is actually constant. Since everything exists constantly, it's impossible to move "forward" or "backward" in time, and therefore it doesn't exist.

Isn't there a possibility that people just want to know? It's not like Darwin went out shouting "HOW CAN I FUCK WITH RELIGION TODAY" while he was trying to develop the theory of evolution; he just wanted to know more about the universe because he felt his knowledge was inadequate.

I think that problem is escaped nicely by positing the theory that things outside the universe aren't subject to the rules of the universe. So while matter can't spontaneously be created in the universe, what's to say outside of the universe it can't be?

PS: Big bang theory doesn't say how the big bang occurred in the first place, it only describes what happens after all of that matter/energy got clumped into such a tiny space (you know, the whole timeline of the early universe and whatnot). Much as how evolution doesn't describe how life originally began, but how it's changed since it first got going.

PPS: Brady, Vonnegut's dead.

To answer the question: yes, I believe in evolution. So far, it shows the most convincing proofs to me with the evolution of the cerebrum, DNA closeness...

I always wondered: religion and the state are supposed to be separated in the US. Teaching creationism or its derivatives in religion/philosophy class is legitimate to me, because most of the time, they rely on pure faith rather than the scientific method

But why should creationism and its derivatives be taught in classes like biology, which relies on experimentation rather than faith?

That's what we're all trying to figure out. :(

Wait, what? I hope, as RR alluded to, this is just an homage to Slaughterhouse-Five. As far as I remember, spacetime can be modeled as a 4-space through which everything in the universe moves with a constant speed. When we move through space, our time-speed is slowed so that the magnitude of the vector sum remains constant.

We can't ask what came "before" the universe or define a point in time at which the universe began, because time is contingent upon the existence of the universe. We understand the rules which apply within the universe, but we can't assume that these same rules apply to the universe itself, end of story.

That is really one of the key points that I agree 100% with. If there can be an infinite god that created all life and existence, then why couldn't a single cell organism have always been there? People say that it has to come from somewhere. Why does it have to come from somewhere? To the human mind, we only understand the concept of things being created. Well we know so little about the universe that maybe things don't have to be created. Maybe things are just there for no reason? Maybe they appear for no reason?

If I told all of you 500 years ago some of the things technologically we can do today, then you would all say impossible. So the concept of something not having an origin point right now is ridiculous. The key word being RIGHT NOW. The thing is if everything has to have an origin point then how did an infinite god get there? Like DarkLink asked, why can't something else be there infinitely just the same?

I'm not challenging anyone's beliefs, I'm just making points.

Vonnegut lives!
in our hearts

The odds of life on Earth currently are 1 in 1.

There is new genetic information, whatever is necessary to stop producing that chemical. Unless you believe that staph cells have consciousness.

The idea that life on Earth evolved as described by the theory of evolution is currently in an unknown status. Don't act as though you know the answer, when nobody else does. That specific point was brought up on the second page I believe.

That's nothing more than a defensive cellular reaction to an invasive, destructive, element being introduced to their environment. Many times cells will stop producing a chemical, produce more of one, change their shape, even get rid of their cell wall for a time in order to prevent themselves from being destroyed. The survival instinct is not just something common to "higher" forms of life. The point is, they haven't created anything from nowhere to combat the drug. They've used means already at their disposal.

Additional Spam:
Just before someone brings this up to combat this post, I'll cover this point now, Einstein did not provide a means of travelling forward in time. He provided a means by which someone can percieve the passage of "time" at a different rate.

I agree with Brady, if I'm understanding him correctly. Time is something only percieved. Everything that exists exists right now. Time is just a name humans gave to how the Universe makes it's "forward motion."

However, there is the "Multiple Universe Theory" which I find interesting, and I'd like to believe. However, there really isn't any evidence to support this. It's one of a few ideas proposed to explain some weird shit that goes on down at the Quantum level. It also could explain things that go on at a larger scale, such as black holes/wormholes, etc. If there is a Multiple Universe Theory, then the idea we have of "time" persay, is not so much a chronological dimension as it is a spacial dimension. A different place exists for every single possible moment that ever could have happened. It's a cool idea/theory, I think :).

Time is essentially a fourth linear dimension. The second is related to the meter by a factor of c. Velocity is, in fact, unitless. By extension, energy can be measured in kilograms.

The only difference between space and time is the way we perceive it. Somehow we experience time in a "compressed" form. It's sort of flattened onto a three-dimensional page, so that no matter where you are in time in relation to everything else, you still perceive everything else as being in your space. This is how special relativity works. This is also, I believe, why we can't travel back in time, in the traditional sense. Even if an observer moved backward along the time axis, everything else would still move forward as usual. Though on the bright side, it might reverse the aging process.

um...the theory of evolution sounds much better to me I guess and that's why I believe it more.

For one man to have been created and a woman made out of his rib (basically the same DNA), and produce offspring? It's even worse than incest between siblings in the genetic point of view. And them being the parents of the entire human population? Ehh I don't know. Doesn't really work for me.

And does it really even matter? One day the universe will collapse back into itself thus negating all life anyway.

But if I don't hear it wrong, theory of evolution has been proved NOT to be quite right (I didn't say it to be wrong, OK?). I learned it in my biology class. And the prove given is in fact very logical.

This is a biological issue.



Even Darwin write in his 'Origin Of Species' about things that can make his theory ruin into pieces. He even claimed in his dying bed that his theory was merely an imagination, and he believed that GOD created all.

To tell you the truth, I still don't know which is to be believed. I believe that GOD create us and help us improve by evolution. That is what I believe.

P.S. If there's any mistakes, please tell me.

Ozma: While I am not a believer in many parts of Evolution, there are a couple flaws in your reasoning.

There are still monkeys because the way evolutionary forces work, different environmental changes are supposed to spur changes in specific populations. It isn't necessarily a worldwide thing. So monkeys in population A might be driven to "evolve" while monkeys in population B might not.

Another interesting fact about the fossil record, is that species of all complexity are found in many different layers, not just in the most recent fossil layers.

This is a common myth about Darwin. He didn't actually say this on his deathbed, or at least there is no credible reason to believe so. At the time Darwin came up with his theory, cells were believed to be very simple things, not the vastly complex objects we know them as today. I believe this is what you refer to when you mention certain facts ruining the theory of evolution - however, keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with rewriting and revamping a theory as we learn more about it.

Additional Spam:
Actually, the reason incest is forbidden (barring the obvious moral reasons, and the repulsion the very idea brings up =/) is because there is a much greater risk for birth defects in children. This is because our genes, over thousands of years, have gradually begun to decay. I imagine that the first humans (assuming they were created, not evolved) would have had perfect DNA and therefore no issue with birth defects in offspring until much, MUCH further down the road.

This confuses the hell out of me. It's well known that we didn't evolve from monkeys, but that we merely shared a common ancestor. Who still thinks we evolved from monkeys?

There are many transitional fossils

The story of Darwin's recanting is not true. Shortly after Darwin's death, Lady Hope told a gathering that she had visited Darwin on his deathbed and that he had expressed regret over evolution and had accepted Christ. However, Darwin's daughter Henrietta, who was with him during his last days, said Lady Hope never visited during any of Darwin's illnesses, that Darwin probably never saw her at any time, and that he never recanted any of his scientific views.

The story would be irrelevant even if true. The theory of evolution rests upon reams of evidence from many different sources, not upon the authority of any person or persons.

My bad on this when I offered my explanation. I didn't even think about this. Been up all night with no sleep, high stress, chemical imbalances =/.

Extremely valid point. If Billy Graham before he died had said God was an imaginary idea, you certainly wouldn't believe it, would you Ozma?

Yeah I believe in the Evolution Theory. That been said I think the "Adam and Eve" part of the Creationist Theory may also be relevent. This could be showing the time that man kind finaly Evolved past there basic animal instincts to a more devolped erea of thinking. I might be mistaken.. most likely am.. but the beliefe of a supreme beign, something greater than ones self requires a significant ability to think "out side the box" for lack of a better term. So what you could be seeing in the creationist theory is not the creation of man kind from nothing but the dawining of our ability from basic animal instinct to a though process of higher thinking.

I guess I just don't understand, then. You say you have a good grasp on what evolution is, but then you go on to say that the only evolution that counts is when genetic material is added. You think that evolution is some sort of special action that a life form does. You argue that it's incredibly unlikely for life to exist at all, which is why evolution is unlikely. You confuse evolution with biogenesis. You think it's possible that some species are more evolved than others.

Evolution is an observable and provable process. Arguing that there is a difference on the micro and macroscopic scale is as dull as arguing that while a glass of water is wet, the ocean isn't just because it's bigger.

Is new information in the form of genes created? Why yes, all the time and quite naturally. Radiation from the earth and cosmic radiation from space drives naturally occuring mutations in all forms of life. These are not guided by anything "intelligent", but every now and then a gene may mutate in a way that offers the creature it belongs to an advantage, allowing it to excel against it's environmental competitors. This creature will prosper, become more numerous and eventually marginalise all similar creatures without this advantage. As a result, this chance helpful mutation proliferates.

A changing environment doesn't cause an organism to deliberately change because of some magical in-built mechanism or "defence system". Rather, it causes those creatures least suited to the changes to die off. If the change occurs too quickly or is too extreme (such as getting creamed by a huge flying rock from space), they'll all die regardless unless their lifecycle is very short (eg a bacteria or virus, in which case they can evolve more rapidly) or if they are already by good fortune better equiped to cope with the new situation they live in. If the change is slow however, it will allow time for potentially advantageous natural mutations to occur, and certain organisms will survive. It's dumb luck, basically.

All of this requires no God. It is serendipity.

You aren't reading. I have a good grasp on evolution, what it is, and how it works. After I said that, I then proceeded to explain the various problems I find with parts of the theory. The process of macroevolution - that is, a less advanced species evolving via various natural forces into a more genetically advanced form - obviously requires the generation of new genetic material. That's a major snag I found with the idea, and something I specifically pointed out with the examples you gave, which were NOT examples of an increase of genetic information.

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You've convinced yourself that this is the only evolution that counts, and because you haven't found a suitable explanation of it on the internet you're convinced it doesn't work. It's less the flaws of the theory and more the flaws of your understanding, is what I'm trying to say.

Is it not reasonable to focus on, and request an explanation for, an integral part of a theory which, as far as he is aware, has no explanation? Recombination is the standard driver of evolution, true, but that does not mean that all other methods can be easily written off as irrelevant. Whether or not he has a thorough understanding of evolution, the question posed needs an answer.

That being said, one means that genetic material may be added to an organism is "failed" mitosis or meiosis(nondisjunction, aneuploidy, etc), where extra copies of the same chromosome are brought into the same cell. While often times these events are detrimental to organisms(especially the more complex ones, like humans), that does not make it harmful to all creatures 100% of the time. Therefore, its only a matter of time before this information is whittled down to more useful configurations.
I'm sure there are other means, and I'll be looking through Nature, and other such publications for them soon.

edit: Another means by which genetic material may be added is through viral gene injection. Often viruses have destructive self-duplicating genes which get injected into the host cell, however, due to the large volume of viruses which may be produced, there is an increased chance of variations within their resulting genes, some of which may prevent viruses from injecting these destructive self-duplicating commands, enabling the rest of the genetic information to be passed on the other cells/organisms.

edit2: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

It's more reasonable than the number of commas in that sentence.

No, I have not said that, nor do I believe it, and in fact, I believe I have said exactly otherwise. You are, once again, putting words in my mouth that I never said nor inferred.

Macroevolution does NOT equal Evolution. Macroevolution requires the gain of genetic information, and currently, we do NOT have evidence to support that. Every time I see information put forth that supposedly "proves" this, it ends up being something like the example of disease-resistant bacterium that you put forth.

The flaw lies in your understanding of what I'm trying to say. Once again:
1. I say I agree with parts of Evolution.
2. I then say I don't agree with other parts.
3. I then point out that I don't agree with Macroevolution in particular.
4. I point out a very vital, integral mechanism for the processes of macroevolution, that we don't have evidence for.

I'm not sure I can put it any simpler than that for you.

I'm sorry I don't agree with you on the topic of Evolution, but that doesn't give you the right to start re-inventing what I say.

Mathematically macroevolution becomes more probable when dealing with organisms who have rapidly replaced generations. It's more likely to observe genetic traits being adopted over the course of hundreds of years in insects than higher mammals. Spread out over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, new species branch off of the base species (which may very well still be in abundance). Then over millions and hundreds of millions classes begin to form.

There is, of course, no set timespan for any macroevolutionary change, but the "faults" of macroevolution are more a fault of human perception than of logic. Of course, we probably can't definitively prove it until protohumans are able to directly observe the changes over several millenia, but in the meantime it's the most reasonable explanation for the origin of the species.