What do Aussies believe re: Evolution?

[2020hindsight]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

.. When the energy in a closed system is inevitably going to reach its most useless form, where does that leave us?

hotter
and with a finite future.

 

[spooly74]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Just to throw something more into the mix, how does the second law of thermodynamics and increasing entropy fit into an evolutionary point of view? When the energy in a closed system is inevitably going to reach its most useless form, where does that leave us?

Earth is not a closed system :

 

[jonojpsg]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Earth is not a closed system :

No but the universe is, so it still begs the question. The 2nd law also leads to the idea that without direction (external input) a system wil tend to disorganisation rather than organisation.

 

[gordon2007]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Gordon -
I'd be interested in your opinion - do you find a different attitude in AUS compared to USA?

Assuming you live in Aus these days - recent influences being mainly Aussie, etc ...
would you give the same answer if put under hypnosis and taken back to your US youth? (assumed)

I am not a believer of organised religion, hence I don't pay any attention to it nor religious headlines. I can't really answer either of those questions with certain knowledge. Mostly, I was just pointing out that the voting option was slightly flawed because this forum is open to many other nationalities.

 

[spooly74]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

No but the universe is, so it still begs the question. The 2nd law also leads to the idea that without direction (external input) a system wil tend to disorganisation rather than organisation.

Are you implying the 2nd Law of thermodynamics disproves evolution

 

[nulla nulla]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

After totaly stuffing up Mars we sent an Ark to Earth 4000 years ago and commenced to totally stuff up this planet also. The irony is we are now atempting to recollanise Mars.

 

[rub92me]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

It's all too much for me at the moment - my four year old keeps waking up in the middle of the night and crying at us for no apparent reason, how does evolution explain that??!!

Ah, that's an easy one. Crying evokes parental response. I.e. the child's needs are taken care of. So its genes will stand a better chance replicating. It's therefore very useful behaviour for the child, but unfortunate for the parents

 

[drsmith]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

For anyone interested in human evolution the following online documentary series makes for interesting viewing.

http://www.becominghuman.org/

 

[Wysiwyg]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

As a result of man-made decisions and manipulations he was put in charge or the world's most influential country and allowed to put all our futures in doubt.

Maybe consider that all of us play roles in life.Every day the role of electrician, soldier, waiter or politician for example is performed by people who are acting out a role, following a script or dancing to someone elses tune.

This exteriorisation process disguised as `purpose` or `meaning` is in my opinion a thinly disguised operatic performance.It is what we call intelligence.It`s what sets us apart from non thinking animals.The common denominator beneath everyones role playing is survival, to a greater or lesser degree.

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

After totaly stuffing up Mars we sent an Ark to Earth 4000 years ago and commenced to totally stuff up this planet also. The irony is we are now atempting to recolonise Mars.

you suggesting nulla .. that in 4000 years we'll be back here again

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Maybe consider that all of us play roles in life.Every day the role of electrician, soldier, waiter or politician for example is performed by people who are acting out a role, following a script or dancing to someone elses tune.

This exteriorisation process disguised as `purpose` or `meaning` is in my opinion a thinly disguised operatic performance.It is what we call intelligence.It`s what sets us apart from non thinking animals.The common denominator beneath everyones role playing is survival, to a greater or lesser degree.

wysiwyg , So true.

In the words of Shakespeare.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

gg

 

[jonojpsg]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Ah, that's an easy one. Crying evokes parental response. I.e. the child's needs are taken care of. So its genes will stand a better chance replicating. It's therefore very useful behaviour for the child, but unfortunate for the parents

Nonononono - this behaviour makes us want to put her out the front door and leave her there!!! We are trying hard not to favour her younger sister but if she keeps it up, that's exactly how we will end up thinking.

 

[rub92me]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Nonononono - this behaviour makes us want to put her out the front door and leave her there!!! We are trying hard not to favour her younger sister but if she keeps it up, that's exactly how we will end up thinking.

So maybe she's looking for (even) better parents?
In a similar vein, saw this gem on another forum:
"On a completely unrelated topic, I just felt like asserting without evidence that it's a well documented medical fact that Young Earth Creationists are born with a condition known as cranial-rectal inversion (CRI). Infants in which this condition is discovered are known as CRI-babies. Sometimes they never grow up and thus remain CRI-babies all their lives."

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

wowo
wassies - you gotta watch SBS tonight "Intelligent Design "

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
Sunday, December 7, 8.30pm
Channel: SBS
Duration: 65 minutes
Country: USA
This series captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools.

Lol the judge who rules that it's unconstitutional to teach a religion-based creed on Creationist , repackaged as " Interlligent Design" or whatever - ends up getting death threats

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

PS ...

one thing I've noticed is that older US Presidents were more inclined to say that the State and the Church should not be confused - (and then along came GW Bush lol)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., Case No. 04cv2688, was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts against a public school district that required the presentation of "intelligent design" as an alternative to "evolution" as an "explanation of the origin of life."

The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
...
Eleven parents of students in Dover, York County, Pennsylvania, near the borough of York, sued the Dover Area School District over a statement that the school board required be read aloud in ninth-grade science classes when evolution was taught.

The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) and Pepper Hamilton LLP. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) acted as consultants for the plaintiffs.

The defendants were represented by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC). The Foundation for Thought and Ethics, publisher of a textbook advocating intelligent design titled Of Pandas and People, tried to join the lawsuit as a defendant but was denied.[1]

The suit was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania seeking injunctive relief. Since it sought an equitable remedy the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial did not apply. It was tried in a bench trial from September 26, 2005, to November 4, 2005, before Judge John E. Jones III.

On December 20, 2005, Judge Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision, ruling that the Dover mandate was unconstitutional, and barring intelligent design from being taught in Pennsylvania's Middle District public school science classrooms.

The eight Dover school board members who voted for the intelligent design requirement were all defeated in a November 8, 2005, election by challengers who opposed the teaching of intelligent design in a science class, and the school board president stated that the board did not intend to appeal the ruling.[2]

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson on The Gospels, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

http://rwaxman.org/id58.html

If they are good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa or Europe; they may be Mahometans, Jews, Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists....

George Washington, to Tench Tighman, March 24, 1784

I wish it were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.
- Benjamin Franklin on Christianity, Works, Vol. VII, p. 75

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

-Thomas Jefferson on Jesus, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

 

[Wysiwyg]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

From the wedge strategy ...

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built.

Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science.

Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment.

This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art.

Do we believe what these `thinkers` portray and what of observable physical data proving up the evolutionary process that "all" living organisms go through?

Is it folly to believe that human species development is a different process from other life form development?

Is intelligence purely a development of communication?Like we teach intelligence through communication. Like if the child grew up in the bush with no human contact would the adult be intelligent, would it be human?

 

[Calliope]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

2020 - I refer to your post #175. Last night I watched part 2 of "Judgement Day - Intelligent Design on Trial."

After Judge Jones handed down his ruling against Intelligent Design he received so many threats against his life from the god-fearing creationists that he and his family had to be given police protection.

These are scary people

 

[Doris]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

2020 - I refer to your post #175. Last night I watched part 2 of "Judgement Day - Intelligent Design on Trial."

After Judge Jones handed down his ruling against Intelligent Design he received so many threats against his life from the god-fearing creationists that he and his family had to be given police protection.

These are scary people

It was so incredulous that this court case was so recent!

Scary too when almost half the population in the US believe in creationism.
Scary... when a person is judged by them to be 'good' ONLY if they are god-fearing!
Scary... when the 'infidels' (non-believers) have their lives threatened.
... scary parallels with radical Islamists.

The trauma of modern history that began 200 years ago involved failure. Failure began when Napoleon landed in Alexandria and has continued since then in almost every walk of life -- in health, wealth, literacy, culture, and power. Muslims are no longer on top. As the mufti of Jerusalem put it some months ago, "Before, we were masters of the world, and now we're not even master of our own mosques." Herein lies the great trauma, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith pointed out forty years ago in his ground-breaking book Islam and Modern History.

There have been three main responses to this trauma -- three main efforts to make things right again: secularism, which means openly learning from the West and reducing Islam to the private sphere; reformism, which means appropriating from the West, saying that the West really derives its strength by stealing from Muslims, therefore Muslims may take back from them, a middle ground; and Islamism, which stressed a return to Islamic ways but in fact takes hugely and covertly from the West -- without wanting to, perhaps, but still very much doing so.

... Islamism is an ideology that demands man's complete adherence to the sacred law of Islam and rejects as much as possible outside influence, with some exceptions (such as access to military and medical technology). It is imbued with a deep antagonism towards non-Muslims and has a particular hostility towards the West. It amounts to an effort to turn Islam, a religion and civilization, into an ideology.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/954

 

[derty]

Re: What do Aussies believe re Evolution?

Very early days at the moment. Scientists have taken a significant step in starting to fill the biggest gap of all; How did/could evolutionary life begin?

How Did Life Begin? RNA That Replicates Itself Indefinitely Developed For First Time

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2009) ”” One of the most enduring questions is how life could have begun on Earth. Molecules that can make copies of themselves are thought to be crucial to understanding this process as they provide the basis for heritability, a critical characteristic of living systems. New findings could inform biochemical questions about how life began.

Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely...

...the main value of the work, according to Joyce, is at the basic research level. "What we've found could be relevant to how life begins, at that key moment when Darwinian evolution starts." He is quick to point out that, while the self-replicating RNA enzyme systems share certain characteristics of life, they are not themselves a form of life.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090109173205.htm