http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4708459.stm
Well, it looks like, finally, speciation has finally been observed.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4708459.stm
Well, it looks like, finally, speciation has finally been observed.
I thought it was already shown with drosophilae?
I don't know to be honest. Dawkins said in one of his recent books that the whole process was yet to be observed.
a genetically new strain of drosophilae has been observed recently in test areas. I thought anyway.
Cool :)
Any links before I spend the next ten hours of my life sifting through irrelevant Google entries?
Evolution makes Baby Jesus cry.
Contrary to popular opinion the concept of evolution does not preclude the existence of a creator.
After all, you will still need the original protocell capable of undergoing evolution before you can start. (LUCA: Last Universal Common Ancestor)
Where did the protocell come from?
(We've been here before, haven't we?)
That's pretty amazing stuff IMO :)
Indeed, but common sense does :DQuote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
Common sense is very ill-defined. Your objection is noted but summarily dismissed into the annals of nothingness :thumb:
Humans affecting evolution:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050717...t_050717075953
Humans affecting evolution again:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...708_lotus.html
Evolution is a work in progress
I'm used to that :DQuote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
I wasn't objecting though, merely opining.
And how was the creator created?Quote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
Open Source :DQuote:
Originally Posted by grilkip
GNU (God's Not Unix)
evolutionoitulovevolutionoitulovevolutionoitulovevolutionoitulovevolutionoitulovevolutionoitulove
Yes we've been here, but much as in the case of marmite, we'll always stick (pun unintended) to one opinion of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
What did Marmite evolve from?Quote:
Originally Posted by mendhak
Chocolate pudding. Don't believe the peanut butter junkies... they're all heathens. :mad:
If there's a creator that is omnipresent, ominscent (and so forth) then he would have to exist outside of time for this to be true.Quote:
Originally Posted by grilkip
As we know time is a property of the universe. A finite dimensional universe. The creator only has to exist in another dimension not subject to time to have never have been created just always have been.
A similar question is what was there before the big bang. There was no before because time came into existence at the precise moment of the big bang.
Physicists suggest there were many big bangsQuote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
:wave:
And hence why we can never prove nor disprove the existence of said creator. And that is why the creator and creationism are religion and not science.Quote:
If there's a creator that is omnipresent, ominscent (and so forth) then he would have to exist outside of time for this to be true.
You're an American right? Is it true that some schools overthere teach creationism? Or does this only happen in private schools perhaps?Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
As far as I know, each time these zealots try to get it into the curriculum it gets struck down by a court or a school board. There are some school districts that no longer teach anything.Quote:
Is it true that some schools overthere teach creationism?
Now they are trying a new tact to get their religion into schools. It's called intelligent design.
http://www.adl.org/issue_religious_f...eationism2.asp
Don't get me started on ID, our own minister of education (Christian-Democrat) suggested a while ago that it's something that has to be taken seriously. Thank -who knows who- the parliament disagreed.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
It is indeed a mask for the same old creationism. Biblethumpers drive me mad.
Being a scientist, I feel very protective of the field. So it pisses me off when non-science people who know nothing about the scientific method try to further their agendas by promoting this pseudo-science crap.
This isn't limited to creationism but can include:
"alternative medicines"
Feng Shui
New Age "meta-physics"
Cell phones, artifical sweeteners and overhead powerlines cause cancer
etc.
The worst thing about these people is that you cannot debate them, in the end they simply say: "I believe".
A christian once said {fingerpointing} to me that Christ died for my sins as well! {/fingerpointing} Great, thanks...
Well, tell them to thank the old boy when they see him. Bring him a bottle of wine or something.
As for speciation, I don't believe in it. The whole concept of species is one that was created back in the day when the animals were considered static creatures. If they are static, then you can fit each one into a nice little category, and all is well. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
In fish, there are any number of different hybrid possibilities. Some are sterile, but some are not. If two 'species' can cross, and can produce a viable offspring, are those two 'species' actually distinct, or are they one? However, any average visually equipped person would be able to look at these two species and say that they are obviously not the same. They SHOULD be in different categories. They don't normally reproduce either by temporal or spacial separation, and they appear and act differently. However, they can interbreed if we intervene.
The concept of species is OUR concept, it is not enshrined in the natural world itself. Therefore, speciation can be said to occur whenever we say it occurs. We made it up, we can make it mean whatever we want it to mean.
I don't mind people believing things as long as their beliefs don't affect me.
Someone can tell me I'm a sinner headed to hell all they want, but once they start to put their beliefs into law (as the Christian Fundamentalists try to do here) or force them on me (Islamic Fascists), then we have a problem.
But I digress...
I agree. I don't much like them attempting to force ignorance on our children, either.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
I don't believe it. People are agreeing with me for a change. It feels wierd.
Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
Saying something rational must have felt even stranger ;) :wave:
Now that's more like it! It feels like home.Quote:
Saying something rational must have felt even stranger
Just couldn't resist, hope you weren't too offended.
Should I stop believing that the planets in our Solar System revolve around the sun?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
If you say something that makes sense then of course people will agree with you. You have succinctly said what the vast majority of us believe. :) :thumb:Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
How can planets circle a flat Earth? It's nonsense :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by mendhak
I don't believe in gravity; the Earth sucks.
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
(BTW do you EVER go to sleep ?)
I don't believe in that either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mendhak
My best response to this, unfortunately, is: Hunh?
I'm too lazy to review my post to see if I said anything that dealt wtih the solar system, and I don't see how that has anything to do with whether I think the concept of species is a poor representation of the real state of biology. So, what was that about?
It was something of an attempt to create an analogy of what I thought of your statement regarding the representation of species in biology and therefore my attempt to create a large run-on sentence such as this one.
I think what I was referring to was the concept itself. It may be an observation by us humans, true, but it's an observation nevertheless, and it exists. It's something like understanding the true nature of the universe. You never will be able to do that as long as you're part of it. But we observe what we can observe.
And similarly, while earth was considered to be static (literally) at one point, and that other objects revolved around it, that has now changed.
I am not sure how the analogy of the solar system came in, but that was my line of thinking at the time.
I think it would have been a better analogy to say that you don't believe that Pluto is a planet since he's talking about a definition of species vs. the definition of planet.
Ok, I sort of see where you were going, but I can't say the analogy was one of your better ones. After all, my point was that species doesn't exist. We defined it as existing based on a faulty understanding. Condsidering the terribly blurred lines we find between many existing species, surely there must be a better way to talk about creatures....or maybe not. Perhaps species are close enough. But since the lines are so blurred, at what point a single species is considered two seems to me to be a matter of academic interest only. If some group got together and looked at two populations of fish, they might be able to agree that they have now become two different species, with little change between them. Was it the last little mutation of a pigmentation gene that finally pushed them over the edge from being subspecies to full fledged species?
The system is dynamic, though the change may be too slow for most of us to watch it. We have a dynamic system forced into a static nomenclature for the simple reason that we thought the system was static when the nomenclature was created.
Yeah I am currently reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...612116-2729243 and he says sort of the same thing . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4156544.stm
Indeed Shaggy - exactly what you were saying . . .
It's all in the genes.
Funny you should mention fish. I breed, or am attempting to, african chichlids from the rift lakes. Most of the species are almost extinct. Now we're running into problems. Apparently a bunch of different scientists studied a bunch of different sections of the lakes. Unfortunatly they ended up defining a bunch of different species of fish that were actually the same fish. they only move a few meters from where they are born and this caused color and size changes based on the rock that they were born on and the group they grew up with. Now all of these so called speices are breeding with each other in aquariums and no one really knows what the originals look like. This is unfortunate because most of them will be extinct in a decade and the only way to save them is aquarium breeding. Why do Africans crap in a lake rather than digging a hole and burrying it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
because at some point some idiot would dig up the hole you just filled in