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Shadey
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 08, 2007 05:03 PM |
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So a pope becomes infallible upon election? Then what difference does it make whom the cardinals choose? Why not pick someone at random and then say that "so God has spoken, and so it shall be"?
Then it becomes naturalism and evolution.
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted November 08, 2007 06:24 PM |
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How come picking a person at random comes to evolution?
As everyone knows they pick one of themselves. That might be an argument for the anti-democratic cause. But then no real democracy is present in modern times so why should it be present there?
Just for the record intelligence services don't have the right to do those things(in theory) but they do it anyway(you think prisoners will just tell them what they know ).
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DON'T BE A NOOB, JOIN A.D.V.E.N.T.U.R.E.
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Shadey
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 08, 2007 06:43 PM |
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Edited by Shadey at 18:55, 08 Nov 2007.
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Quote:
How come picking a person at random comes to evolution?
As everyone knows they pick one of themselves. That might be an argument for the anti-democratic cause. But then no real democracy is present in modern times so why should it be present there?
Just for the record intelligence services don't have the right to do those things(in theory) but they do it anyway(you think prisoners will just tell them what they know).
If Catholics just randomly choose their pope, then it becomes just as logical as naturalism and evolution's explaination for their worldview.
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted November 08, 2007 07:24 PM |
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If Catholics just randomly choose their pope, then it becomes just as logical as naturalism and evolution's explaination for their worldview.
What's wrong with it being logical for a change?
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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Shadey
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 08, 2007 07:45 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
If Catholics just randomly choose their pope, then it becomes just as logical as naturalism and evolution's explaination for their worldview.
What's wrong with it being logical for a change?
touche 
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 08, 2007 08:27 PM |
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Quote:
If Catholics just randomly choose their pope, then it becomes just as logical as naturalism and evolution's explaination for their worldview.
Evolution isn't random.
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted November 08, 2007 08:42 PM |
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Evolution isn't random.
It is, actually.
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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executor
Famous Hero
Otherworldly Ambassador
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posted November 08, 2007 08:50 PM |
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It is ramdom.
Better genes from successful organisms have simply bigger weights, but still can lose.
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Understanding is a three-edged sword.
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted November 08, 2007 08:51 PM |
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Also, new genes are created through random errors in DNA replication.
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 08, 2007 09:07 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 21:24, 08 Nov 2007.
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Quote:
Also, new genes are created through random errors in DNA replication.
Mutation is indeed random to a large (but not total) extent. (And anyway, not all mutations come through errors in replication, random or otherwise.) But natural selection is not a random process at all, and so evolution is thus not random. If you want me to quote passages from published texts on evolutionary biology for you, I can certainly do so, as I have many in my library.
Edit: heck, just google "evolution random" (without the quotes) and the first page contains links to pages with such titles as "Top Ten Myths about Evolution" and "Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution". But if you need more convincing that you don't really understand evolution as well as you think you do, I will be happy to supply you with passages from more scientific sources. It just goes to show you how poorly understood evolutionary theory is by most people, since even the people who believe in it are confused about many of the important details.
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Lord_Woock
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posted November 08, 2007 09:46 PM |
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If evolution largely consists of mutations and natural selection, the first of which is largely random, then we get the following:
E = random + not random
E looks random to me.
EDIT: Also, I admit that my knowledge on evolution is rather limited, as it is based mostly on what I learned at school.
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 08, 2007 10:45 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 23:29, 08 Nov 2007.
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Perhaps an analogy will help you.
Say I am interested in baking a cake, except I have no idea how, and no access to any information. The only thing I know are the basic ingredients: milk, eggs, butter, sugar and flour. But I have no idea what proportions to use or cooking times or anything.
With no better way to proceed, I do so randomly, deciding to roll dice to determine the amount of each relative ingredient to add. For instance, I might use 1 cup of milk, 4 eggs, 4 tablespoons butters, 3 cups sugar and 2 cups flour, as determined by random die rolls. I proceed and put these ingredients together and bake the mixture according to more randomly determined variables (temperature and time). Anyway, I end up with a cake - actually probably so bad that they it hardly be called thus. Nevertheless, I put it on the table and marvel at my creation. Now, up until this point, you can say that the cake has been made by a mostly random process (not completely, mind you - the choice of ingredients and variables was not random, and this is an important point!). Most probably, the cake absolutely sucks. It has bad texture, bad flavor, and is probably either not cooked at all or way overdone. Nobody would eat it. How ever will I make a better version?
The most obvious answer is simple: mutation. I take the same starting recipe and randomly vary the amount of one variable (3 eggs instead of 4, for example), and bake, and see what happens. Is the result better, or worse? If better, I can use that as my new starting recipe, and repeat the process until I have a damn good cake. If worse, I toss the result away, and go back to the old recipe and modify something else, and see if THAT result is better. Naturally, this will be a laborious process and will likely take many, many, many iterations. Depending on the number of variables, and possible values for the variables, I may never hit upon a successful cake in my lifetime, and my children will have to take it up after me. However, eventually, given enough trials, I will eventually end up with a good cake, because I'm continually building from a better model than the one before it. It is worth stressing that I would probably also, given enough trials, come upon a good cake if I just used random recipes and did NOT start with the better model each time, but the process would take much, much longer.
What you may recognize here is that prior to making a value judgement on the quality of the product, we have been dealing with MOSTLY random mutations to a basic starting recipe. This is of course analogous to the process of mutation in DNA. Note that DNA mutation is not totally random. It also doesn't happen just as a result of replication error. It's not totally random because there are limitations, biochemical ones, as to what form the mutation will take. An adenine nucleic acid (one fo the 4 building blocks of DNA) cannot, for example, be mistaken for a benzene, which is not a building block of DNA. So you see, even mutation is not completely random because some possibilities are restricted. There are other reasons why mutation is not totally random but it's unnecessary to get into why.
However, in my analogy you also encounter the process of selection, which is a value judgment (in this case, a conscious one). When I consider the quality of a product cake, I CHOOSE whether the new cake is better than the old one, and I CHOOSE to adapt the new recipe if it is better, or stick with the old recipe if it is worse. While the "mutations" to my recipes may be mostly random, the evolution of quality of my cakes progresses, generally speaking over time, in a nonrandom fashion. Why? Because the quality of my cakes will tend to get better over time. If I subjected the value judgment to a random process (flipping a coin, for instance, to determine whether to go ahead with the new recipe or stick with the old), evolution would tend to migrate in a random direction. (Strictly speaking, there'd BE no evolution, because each successive iteration would be randomly better or worse than the one before it.) My cakes would continue to be mediocre except in the extreme unliklihood that I selected a good recipe by chance, which of course would happen given enough rolls of the dice, so to speak.
So you see, while baking a cake in this fashion does incorporate random elements, it is not a random process, because I consciously select which products are better, and subject only those better variations to future mutation. In evolution, the value judgment is of course not done consciously; it is done by the ability of the product to survive in the wild. (Evolution also doesn't have an endpoint in mind, while I did!) Only GOOD models go on to reproduce and make copies of themselves. Bad models die off. That way, "random" mutation always starts from a better starting point than the generation before. So again, evolution is not random, because organisms to not evolve in a random direction. If evolution WAS random, future generation organisms would be just as likely to be LESS likely to survive in the wild than MORE likely to survive, which would defy the whole point of evolution!
That evolution is a "random" process is a very major misconception, and many people who do NOT believe in evolution often cite its alleged randomness as a reason for its implausibility: "well, how could these creatures all have come about RANDOMLY?" The fact is, they did not come about randomly at all, and even so these people obviously do not understand statistics well enough to know that "unlikeliness" is not disproof of anything, particularly with a large number of trials involved. In any case, the difference between evolution and, say, intelligent design, is not a degree of randomness in the former, but the fact that the former has no a priori goal or endpoint towards which it is striving, and value judgments are not conscious ones. Even so, the nonrandomness of evolution is something that is not appreciated even by people who know that the theory is correct.
I'll conclude this long-winded post by saying the famous (though overly bombastic at times) evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has modeled random mutation and nonrandom selection using very simple computer programs. In his book "The Blind Watchmaker" he describes these models, along with many easy-to-follow figures and demonstrate quite eloquently the nonrandomness of natural selection and, hence, evolution. He also has, if I recall, a lengthy section on why mutation at the molecular level is also not completely random. If this is a topic that interests you, I highly recommend the book. It is easy to read and you will come out understanding evolution a lot better than what you remember from school. I wish some of those who deny evolution would read it. Not because I think they need to be convined that evolution is correct, but because I think it would be helpful for them to at least understand a theory before they go around saying how wrong it is. There are few things worse than an opinion formed out of ignorance.
(Edited several times to fix little clerical errors.)
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Moonlith
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
If all else fails, use Fiyah!
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posted November 08, 2007 11:03 PM |
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I wonder why this thread is still going.
It's already been stated these discussions are impossible without the religious side acknowledging the possibility that their bible does not contain truth, and as such, it becomes no more than a childish "I am right" fest.
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Cmon he gave an EXAMPLE,that means that god has the power to do what he wants,he is all-powerful,and the wars he did in the ancient times,or killed,then was necessary to,like sodoma and gomorathe ppl in that city were all perverts,evil(like our society in these days but much more worser) less noah and his family for what i know.
I find it ironic how your profile claims you are 21 while your thoughts are alike to a 15 year old, no offense.
Speaking of Noah, do you guys HONESTLY believe Noah built an arc and collected 2 (a male and a female) of every species alive on earth, put them in his arc, managed to survive a flood that way, and since then, let those animals spread all over earth again to repopulate?
Please say yes, PLEASE.
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Lich_King
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted November 08, 2007 11:14 PM |
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Not to mention Bible mentioned that all species except cats were collected, yet they survived... The act of Devil perhaps ? LOL
Bible is not to be understood directly, so quoting exact quotes for proving some points seems rather funny to me...
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roy-algriffin
Supreme Hero
Chocolate ice cream zealot
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posted November 09, 2007 12:13 AM |
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Quote:
Speaking of Noah, do you guys HONESTLY believe Noah built an arc and collected 2 (a male and a female) of every species alive on earth, put them in his arc, managed to survive a flood that way, and since then, let those animals spread all over earth again to repopulate?
Noone ever mentioned that every specieis survived.
The dodo certainly went extinct, I bet several more did back then. Anyway if god is omnipotent i bet he can do anything! Even keep a boat from sinking!
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"Am i a demon? No im a priest of the light! THE BLOODY RED LIGHT"
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Moonlith
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
If all else fails, use Fiyah!
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posted November 09, 2007 12:17 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Speaking of Noah, do you guys HONESTLY believe Noah built an arc and collected 2 (a male and a female) of every species alive on earth, put them in his arc, managed to survive a flood that way, and since then, let those animals spread all over earth again to repopulate?
Noone ever mentioned that every specieis survived.
The dodo certainly went extinct, I bet several more did back then. Anyway if god is omnipotent i bet he can do anything! Even keep a boat from sinking!
So you are saying the dodo went extinct due to that specific flood? I am not getting your point.
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Shadey
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 09, 2007 01:26 AM |
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Edited by Shadey at 01:42, 09 Nov 2007.
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That's a great analogy Corribus, and well spoken. However, in evolution there must be a mechanism to add information to the genome, not simply change the existing information. To use your analogy add strawberries, whip cream, and chocolate sprinkles. Since you never even started with those ingredients, there is no way to add them to your cake.
In order to go from bacteria to human you must add information to the genome, not simply gain resistance to an antibiotic.
EDIT:
Furthermore, it takes over 70 seperate enzymes to control the process to produce a single protein from DNA. Now assuming that lighting, UV radiation, and lava were the only sources of energy 4 billion years ago. Completely random chemical reactions would have to take place on a unprecedented level for all 70 of those enzymes to come together, be placed in a phosolipid membrane with DNA, RNA, and fully formed and functional ribosomes. Now even with the best technology scientists havent even been able to create their own form of simple life.
For your analogy to be accurate Corribus you would have to first create from completely random events the ingredients for your cake in the first place.
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roy-algriffin
Supreme Hero
Chocolate ice cream zealot
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posted November 09, 2007 03:22 AM |
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Quote:
So you are saying the dodo went extinct due to that specific flood? I am not getting your point.
oops. I meant if the dodo can go extinct i guess other creatures could have back in that flood i guess. I doubt every creature came out of there alive (the ark that is)
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"Am i a demon? No im a priest of the light! THE BLOODY RED LIGHT"
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 09, 2007 05:58 AM |
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Edited by Corribus at 06:19, 09 Nov 2007.
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@Shadey
Of course, being an analogy, it's not expected to be a 1:1 correspondence with the truth. I mainly am trying to illustrate the point that evolution is not random because natural selection is not random (even though mutations are, to a large degree, random). I considered incorporating additional ingredients into the analogy but it was getting messy, so I just decided to keep it simple.
As you say, an inventive chef will at some point try adding new ingredients into the mix to make the cake better, either for flavor or texture. And at the same time, additional "ingredients" are added during the course of biological evolution - well, this is not really true in the sense of the building blocks involved, which is why the analogy was getting messy. More like the complexity with which they are combined. A better way to modify the analogy would be the size of the kitchen I can use, the tools I have at my disposal, that sort of thing. But after all, it's just an analogy. No need to read too much into it!
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In order to go from bacteria to human you must add information to the genome, not simply gain resistance to an antibiotic.
The basic code is the same, however. Certainly, the processes that effected a change from bacteria to human are more complex - and took a great deal more time - than those that change a strain of normal streptococcus to a vancomycin resistant strain.
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Furthermore, it takes over 70 seperate enzymes to control the process to produce a single protein from DNA. Now assuming that lighting, UV radiation, and lava were the only sources of energy 4 billion years ago. Completely random chemical reactions would have to take place on a unprecedented level for all 70 of those enzymes to come together, be placed in a phosolipid membrane with DNA, RNA, and fully formed and functional ribosomes. Now even with the best technology scientists havent even been able to create their own form of simple life.
First, we are not discussing evolution any longer in this case.
Second, within the subject of abiogenesis, chemical reactions that give rise to simplistic "living" (using the term very loosely) systems would not be nonrandom for the same reason that evolution is nonrandom: that is, because of natural selection. Chemical reactions that give rise to self-replicating systems would be favored over those that do not. And besides, nobody claims that all of a sudden *poof* there were 70 complex enzymes transcribing a complex molecule like DNA into proteins.
(There are a lot of interesting abiogenetic theories out there. None of them are as developed as evolution of course, but many of them borrow some of the same general principles as evolution - randomness in the form of the exploration of "chemical space" and nonrandomness in the form of a naturalistic selection. There have been some experiments that were able to show the creation of biological molecules using nothing but some basic ingredients and energy - look up the Miller-Urey experiment. Actually I've read about some really strange abiogenetic theories that actually deal with inorganic species as the first "living" systems. I believe Richard Dawkins uses clays in riverbeds, IIRC. Cool stuff, albeit very speculative.. but also way off topic.. Such a discussion would be better reserved for another thread.)
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For your analogy to be accurate Corribus you would have to first create from completely random events the ingredients for your cake in the first place.
The ingredients need not arise randomly, first of all. And again, evolution does not say anything about the origins of life. This is another misconception. Thus, any analogy trying to demonstrate the principles of evolution do not really need to account for the origin of "ingredients". Certainly, to have an understanding of everything about the origins of life through to the present time, my analogy would need to include that, but one must draw the line somewhere. 
Anyway, I reiterate that I offered the analogy merely to demonstrate to Woock why evolution is not a random process. Whatever you feel is the origin of DNA and other biological molecules, or even whether you feel that evolution is complete nonsense, it doesn't change the fact that the evolutionary process as described in the theory is nonrandom.
(Hopefully all that was coherent. I'm zonked.)
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted November 09, 2007 06:16 AM |
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@Gallow:
Quote:
No,not all have morals and that,pretty sure that most of the bad atheist dont,I dont believe in evolution,and yes im in their side any problem?
I'm asking IF they happen to SIMULTANEOUSLY believe in evolution AND be good, as unlikely as it may sound to you, are you still 'on their side' to paraphrase you.
Because you say that if someone has morals that you are on their side, but the impression I get is that you are more biased than you give yourself credit.
@ZJ and Geny on the commandment:
Actually, when the commandment was first transcribed it meant;
Thou shalt not kill another JEW
At the time of Moses etc.
Just as thy neighbour meant fellow jew.
As was further defined by Moses Maimonides:
If one slays a single Israelite, he transgresses a negative commandment, for Scripture says, Thou shalt not murder. If one murders willfully in the presence of witnesses, he is put to death by the sword. Needless to say, one is not put to death if he kills a heathen.'
Needless to say!
@Shadey:
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Furthermore, it takes over 70 seperate enzymes to control the process to produce a single protein from DNA. Now assuming that lighting, UV radiation, and lava were the only sources of energy 4 billion years ago. Completely random chemical reactions would have to take place on a unprecedented level for all 70 of those enzymes to come together, be placed in a phosolipid membrane with DNA, RNA, and fully formed and functional ribosomes. Now even with the best technology scientists havent even been able to create their own form of simple life.
The first living thing did not necessarily contain DNA.
But a creator of something complex must be much more complex than the thing he is creating, the creation.
If the argument is that such a complex thing is unlikely to exist, then a creator is less likely by unmeasurable factors, so that argument is defunct.
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John says to live above hell.
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