They have nothing to do with Biological Evolution, including natural selection. Questions 1, 7, and 18 are questions for cosmology and physics. 1, 2, and 10 are questions for abiogenesis and while related to evolution they are not intrinsic to it. 21 and 27 are questions for history and archeology (I take back 20 btw, that is a question that evolution can answer.) 24 is more a question for sociology and 25 has yet to be demonstrated (though it could possibly be answered if there ever is found a direct genetic link to homosexuality). Wherever did you get this idea? Evolution is science. As such, questions of god and purpose are beyond its scope. In fact, most people who believe in evolution also have some sort of religious belief. Your assertion is unfounded. On the contrary, the theory of evolution is well proven and logically quite sound. Evolution states nothing about god(s) or souls or the purpose of life. Evolution simply explains how life works on a physical level. If you're trying to read more into it then you are mistaken. Creationism cannot explain complexity, it presumes the preexistence of complexity and explains nothing. In contrast, evolutionary models can explain, and reproduce experimentally, complexity quite nicely. Most of your 27 points are easily addressed by evolution and none of them do anything to discredit evolution. I along with many others here have done what we could to make you aware of some of the answers to your questions but you don't seem to be paying much attention to us. I'm not sure what the problem is and so I'm unsure of how I might resolve it. I'd be happy to try to explain more but you really don't seem to be interested in the answers. So I wonder what your purpose here is. If you were looking for explanations from evolution and a critique of your own hypothesis you seem to be ignoring it. If it's just a soapbox for you then so be it but don't expect a kind welcome. In science it's okay to not have an answer to every question. Not knowing exactly how life originated is no more a problem for evolution than not knowing how the Universe originated is a problem for physics. Observing the world as it is we can discover quite a lot but it seems that inevitably the answers we discover bring forth more questions. ~Raithere P.S. I posted a brief answer to each of your relevant questions (and even some of the irrelevant ones). I wrote this first but decided to post the answers ahead of this. Take it as you will.
Excellent post I must say. Good thing that not everyone is as lazy as me in posting Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
has anyone heard of the law of scientific probability? i have but i dont remember the exact calculations of it. but basically if something is so far off that is wouldnt happen in so many chances then the scientists say it will NEVER happen. ive read that evolution is so far off the scientific probability charts that it can NEVER happen. but most still insist that is has happened. cant scientists follow their own LAWS?
Thanks for that. I was tempted many times to give up on this forum for I thought I would never have a person that would agree with me. The scientific community will not drop Darwinian natural selection (we are talking about natural selection here not evolution) because to do so would imply an intelligent designer and that smacks of metaphysics. They will only accept what they know and to suggest that “it must have been created by someone” is taking the whole subject out of the “science” camp and putting it into the realm of theology. So the scientific community is stuck with Darwinian natural selection which they all must know is a load of bunk.
I've never heard of such a law, can you reference it for us? Seeing as evolution is an observed fact, the probability is 100%. Just what do you think the difference is between "Darwinian natural selection" and Evolution? Can you define these terms in context for us? It might help if I understood exactly what you think each is and what you expect it should encompass. ~Raithere
Thanks for responding to my earlier posts. If you are quoting someone on this forum then close the quote with [/QUOTE] and this should work okay. I suggest you click on the “reply” button of any post you want to answer. You will be taken to a window that provides many tools for the correct formatting of your posts. Several points here. Does it matter if it is 150,000, 200,000 or 1.6 million years ago? We still have an ape like ancestor whether it is Homo erectus or the Australopithecus which dates back 3 million years ago. Our DNA is 99.6% identical to the chimp so you can hardly say we are not descended from the ape. You refer to the fossil record but the fossil record is all over the place. If there was a good fossil record showing the gradual evolution from an earlier ancestor to modern man then the debate would have been put to bed. But there is no such fossil record for our species and most others. The fossil record for the horse is fairly good but (as Steven J Gould pointed out) most species were extremely good at hiding the bones that would prove the gradualist argument. If there were several species move out of Africa (“Multiregional hypothesis”) that were not modern man then they would have become more diverse due to regional differences. It would have been impossible for them to all finish up as modern man so the “Out of Africa” argument is the only one of these theories that has any possibility of being correct. But for this to be true one of two possible things must have happened. First is that all those other genetic lines must have died out leaving only one species. Other migratory species (such as birds and fish) have left what we call families of species in various places around the world. Not just one species such as our own that has races from Alaska for example that can interbreed with Australian Aborigines. The other possibility is that the modern man that evolved in Africa 150,000 years ago must have then got very quickly on the move and tracked down all those other species and killed every last one of them. Neither argument is tenable. I am not sure what you are going on about here. When you refer to highly migratory populations can you clarify what era you are talking about? We have been a highly migratory population for the last 300 years but before that we were not. As mentioned before birds and fish (that were highly migratory) have left families of species that can not interbreed but our species only has races that can interbreed. So if you follow the logic of your argument then our species must have done a lot of interbreeding over the last 100,000 to have remain one species. More so than birds and fish that hop from continent to continent on an annual basis. This of course did not happen so we are left wondering why birds and fish have produced families of species while we have left races that interbreed. You also refer to the DNA map here as if it were a historic record carved in stone. It is true that some DNA is very stable but we also have jumping genes and genes sequences that can hitch a ride on viruses from one species to another. And the immune system can (within hours) mutate and rearrange DNA to fight off invading antigens that have never existed on earth before. It is doubtful if DNA can be seen as a reliable historic record of how species evolved. Actually I was not setting up a straw man. If I had to choose one of these arguments I would go for the migration on water argument. I do not think the Atlantic was crossed on a Kon Tiki or Ra type craft. Nor do I think the thousands of pacific islands were found this way. But if you prefer the ice age (and lowering of sea levels hypothesis) then how was Hawaii found? And why in God’s name was primitive man heading for the Behring Straits during “the peak of the last ice age”? Sure the sea level may have dropped but food would have been scarce and I am sure it would have been a little cold on the feet. Can you tell me of any complex system in existence that was not directed or have a purpose? I am arguing that there must have been a creator but to avoid the obvious criticism I prefer to say that, “something must have kicked started it”. The God Gametes theory does not suggest who that something is or how life and the universe was created. It does put forward a model for, “what it might be doing”. The selection of more adaptable body parts is not random. But according to Darwinism the genetic code that makes those body parts (the designs that are chosen by natural selection) is a random process. In other words; natural selection can only select the body parts that are best adapted to a particular environmental niche at a particular time. Something else had to design the parts being selected. And according to Darwinism that process was RANDOM. I suppose you are correct in saying that life does not have to progress to the more complex. Some would argue that it has not and that the life and consciousness of modern man is no more important (or complex) than the primitive bacteria that got life started 3.8 billion years ago. I am reluctant to accept this argument but listening to the fools that argue this case I am becoming convinced. If modern man believes that there is no purpose in life, that human consciousness has no meaning, that the progress in human civilisation is no more important than bacterial life then he is most likely correct. The evidence that you are correct is ample. We only need to look at the way we are hell bent on destroying our planet to know there is no progression to a higher life form. Our scientific community must know that the so called intelligent life we have evolved has no purpose or a meaning for they are mostly involved in developing more efficient ways of destroying the earth we live on. What more could we expect from a community that does not place any more value on their own life and consciousness than primitive bacteria?
Alibim I heard Colin Tudge make this statement on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Australian equivalent to the BBC) radio. I made notes but have not had time to read all of Tudge’s books to see if I can get a better reference. The quote from Tudge that I supplied in my book is as follows -: “A crocodile is more closely related to a bird than a lizard. British fishmongers will sometimes substitute dogfish for salmon to unsuspecting customers because they look and taste identical. A salmon however is more closely related to a horse than a dogfish.” Published works by Colin Tudge can be found at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/tudge.html To say; “The differences between us can be put down to differences in the control genes that regulate expression of other genes” is hardly adequate. DNA has been held up as the building blocks on which life is structured. You (in an earlier post) even suggested we can track the evolution of species by following the DNA map. But when DNA proves inadequate to explain the differences between species (as it has proven inadequate in explaining many other aspects of life) you merely say it is the control genes. I agree that it may not need a non-scientific explanation but just to say it is the control genes is not an answer. If the DNA between human and chimp is 99.6% identical then how do these “control genes” account for that difference. You are asking me to provide evidence but it should not be me. The God Gametes theory does not claim to know how humans migrated around the world. It only suggests a model for what might be the purpose of life. I opened this thread with the suggestion that it might have been possible for our earlier ancestors to have evolved from an aquatic mammal. But it was never meant to be more than a discussion point; certainly not a claim. It is conventional science that makes emphatic claims that they know the answers (or will eventually find answers) so it is you that should be providing the evidence that we walked along a land bridge or sailed on bamboo rafts etc.
Raithere I disagree with this. To understand evolutionary science we will need to address the issue of a creator and a purpose for life. You seem to be putting the “reductionist” argument that supposedly went out of fashion 20 years ago. Most people recognise for example that an architect needs to look at the aesthetics of a building as well as the mechanics that make the structure safe. And a good doctor will likely study the psychology of his patient before making a medical diagnosis. The failure of evolutionary science to provide answers to how we got here is no doubt largely due to the fact that scientists are reluctant to address the issues of a creator and a purpose. This is crazy. If you won $1,000,000 in a lottery would you say that now it has happened the probability is 100%. Would you assume that if you took another ticket in the next lottery then your probability of winning was again 100%. As I understand it “probability” refers to the chance of something happening in the future. There is no such thing as the probability of a past event. You criticise me for not understanding maths but do you think this type of rubbish is any encouragement for me to learn. If this is the logic of a mathematician I would be very happy to forget what little maths I know. You only need to look in a dictionary. Evolution is the changing of species from one to another. No sensible person disagrees with the fact that evolution happens. On the other hand Darwinian natural selection refers to the argument that the variation in living creatures is solely responsible for the evolution of new species. Evolution by natural selection is a controversial point and few outside academia would agree with it.
Not at all. The argument is quite simple. God is reputedly supernatural and thus, by definition, is beyond the scope of experiment and observation. Reluctance has nothing to do with it. The issue is being studied but unfortunately there isn't much in the way of hard evidence and abiogenesis remains highly speculative. Purpose, assuming we have free will, is a matter for us to decide. This is correct. It's just that the question is a bit silly regarding an event that already occurred. Nope. HRS said, "ive read that evolution is so far off the scientific probability charts that it can NEVER happen". My point is that we have observed evolution so obviously HRS's estimate of its probability is off. We not only have evidence that evolution occurred in the past, it is occurring now and will continue to occur in the future. Why would you let anything I say discourage you from learning? Speciation is a consequence of evolution. Evolution is the genetic change in a population across generations. Genetic divergence of populations causes speciation. The onus is upon you. We have observed the evolution of organisms, we have see that mutation and natural selection drive evolution and can result in speciation. If, as you suggest, there are other forces at work you need to find positive support for your hypothesis. ~Raithere
Given that it was clearly impossible for early man to cross the Atlantic, he did not decide to head for the Behring Straits during the last ice age, did not find Hawaii by accident and Peking Man did not sail out of a river in northern China on a bamboo raft only to later get washed up in Australia. So how might it have happened? In the opening thread to this post I suggested a variation to the aquatic ape theory. I did not argue that we evolved gradually through a water based ape stage. Rather I put the view that it might have been done more rapidly by the sudden rearrangement of DNA. The example I gave was the mutation of DNA in the immune system (one million times faster then the background mutation rate) and then its rearrangement to fight off invading antigens that have sometimes never existed on earth before. The suggestion being that we might have suddenly evolved flippers when our species needed to migrate (probably during an ice age) and then lost them again when it was more beneficial to go back to being a land based species. Well there is more evidence for this type of sudden evolutionary change. I remembered this article from Encyclopaedia Britannica when thinking about this discussion at work. (I do not think it is in the current editions of EB but was in my old book edition purchased about 1980.) Encyclopaedia Britannica – Evolution So changing the level of magnesium chloride in water can produce fish with a median cyclopean eye. Is it not therefore possible that an ice age triggered the evolution of fins and flippers on people? We use less than 2% of our DNA and the rest is thought to be a historical record of how we evolved. An ice age might have trigger some sort of “frame shift” in the DNA that codes for the next generation of people. For example some DNA that now codes for making body parts (arms and legs) would become silent and the DNA that is currently silent (that codes for making fins and flippers) would become active. This may have made it possible for our species to go back into the warm water and to eventually find land that was not frozen. Once ice free land was found our species would then have reverted to a land based creature; same as fish revert to paired eyes once they are placed back in water with normal levels of magnesium chloride. If this were true then it would perhaps explain two things -: First is why we have so much silent DNA that hither to has no apparent function. And why we bother to copy out this 98% of so called “junk DNA” in every cell of our body. It might also explain why there have been more reported sightings of mermaids than prehistoric man floating across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on bamboo rafts.
Given that this thread has a high rating I would have thought that someone would have responded to my last post. Or have I confounded the sceptics? If so I will declare myself the winner and seek out a new venue for expressing my radical ideas. But just in case there are still some disbelievers on sciforums I have been doing some research over my holiday break and came across some interesting points. In my above post I quoted an article in Encyclopaedia Britannica that showed how adding magnesium chloride to water can produce a fish with a median cyclopean eye. So by changing the environment we can change the phenotype. And given the fact that less than 2% of our DNA codes for building body parts, that genes shuffle all over the place, then who can specify the limit of the genotype? Additional evidence for this radical phenotypic change is the blue headed rask; (I saw this on a replay of “Understanding Sex” Discovery Channel – Narrated by Candice Bergen – Produced by Maureen Lemire. Not sure of the spelling of blue headed rask?) This fish is found is schools with one male and all others being female. But if the male is removed then one of the females turns into a male. Quite a phenotypic change don’t you think? Maybe producing humans with flippers instead of arms and legs is not so impossible after all! Other interesting points I came across on my holidays. Also from Understanding Sex – Discovery Channel: Some species are all female. Darwinists argue that the mixing of male and female genes is essential for providing the genetic diversity necessary for adapting to an ever changing environment. But parthenogenetic species (such as the whip tail lizard) are successful and must have adapted to environmental change to have survived. There is in fact a considerable disadvantage in gender based reproductive systems. It means a successful female can only pass half her genes onto her progeny. She risks giving her offspring genes from a less well adapted male or a male that is strong but not necessarily heading down the same evolutionary path as the mother. The above is also interesting because these whip tail lizards have sex to reproduce. Two females get it off and this seems to trigger the production of an egg in one of the females. So it would seem that neither gender or sex is necessary for reproduction and this is consistent with what I have argued in God Gametes (Chapter 6 on Sexual Selection). From another source: Homo Erectus (about 1.5 million years ago) was found in many places from Africa to China. So did all the Homo Erectus outside of Africa die out leaving only one race of African pre historic man to spread throughout the world? And after the discovery of Flores man it would appear that several species of intelligent man existed but only one species survived. Again; did all these more modern man die out to leave one species of Home Sapiens? So this remarkable dieing out of all but the African species needed to have happened twice! Or is the Out of Africa theory incorrect? If so then did all the different species of Homo Erectus, in all their different climatic and environmental conditions, accidentally hit on the same species of modern man?
Well it seems my thread is rapidly sinking to the bottom of the page again without comment. Let me say that I originally posted this thread as something of joke; not really thinking that it were possible for man to suddenly produce some form of aquatic offspring. But the more I think about it the more I am convinced it is what happened. Apart from the many points made earlier in this thread there is the example of the terrestrial frog giving birth to aquatic infants. It has often been noted that babies are very comfortable in water and quickly learn to hold their breath and swim underwater. Sea mammals are noted for being friendly to people and would very likely have formed some sort of symbiotic relationship to help our aquatic progeny return to the sea. Even the biblical story of Jonah suggest some form of aquatic link with our past. God Gametes is now available as an ebook and in printed form from my lulu shop front -: www.lulu.com/godgametes
The attachment, gives a novel reason why one strain of homonoids may have been able to kill off all the others. If only interested in this, search article for "Neanderthal" The attachment is mainly about "Free Will" and shows that genuine Free Will (not quantum mechanical chance choices at the molecular level in our nevrous system, but choices made by ourselves) can be consistent with physic. The attachment is an extract from an article I published in Johns Hopkins University's APL technical digest. I have a a PH.D. in physics, so it may be worth its 4 pages if interesed in Free Will.
I read your article and found it very interesting. Hallucinations, visual dreams, etc. are easily understood with the concept that what we experience is an internal simulation of the world, not an emerging transform of the retinal data. I totally agree and I have been thinking the exact same thing. It seems obvious to me that what we experience is a simulation and you have given good reasons to believe this is most probably the case. You then make a nice link with a much more fundamental question: who are we? Thus the only reality we directly experience is this simulation and we are part of it. That is, we are an informational process in a simulation, not a physical body. When we are in deep dreamless sleep the simulation is paused and we do not exist - I don't know if I can follow your logic here, i.e. aren't you mixing up the experiences with the "I" who is experiencing them? We can't be part of the simulation, as it is a result of incoming external the information. I guess you know cybernetics and systems theory? I have to read about their use in brain theories though, but your theory does remind me of them. Isn't it so that "consciousness" is an emergent phenomenon of the brain? It is this conscious "I" that experiences the simulation. I guess you familiar with Penrose and Pribram as they go agains the A.I. interpretation of how the brain works.
From Robert_js’s first post..... From a Robert_js post on this page..... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Millimeters of DNA? 15mm of DNA coding for “body parts”? The only difference between land and sea mammals is flippers? Ice ages triggering “DNA frameshifts”? As a geneticist I can safely say that this is complete and utter gibberish. Total nonsense. (I presume that all the intervening pages are the same; I certainly haven’t wasted any time reading through them.) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! One thing is very clear: Robert_js doesn’t know what he is talking about.<P>
Glad you found my attachment to prior post "very interesting". I think it a unique solution to the Free Will vs Physics problem. All other solutions that I know of rely on quantum mechanics to escape from LaPlace's strictly determined future, but I did not want "QM Free Will." QM free will is only an illusion. The actual choices are made by the chance results of quantum events in the molecular interactions (chemistry) in our nervous system, not by "ourselves." Which brings me to your question - who / what are we, the "I" having the experiences? Yes, I do mean that "I" am part of the simulation of the world we experience, not a physical body in the "real" physical world. This "I" probably is a very complex subroutine in the parietal simulation. Part of this "I" subroutine (the physical body image) is generated in the parietal cortex as the sequela to parietal strokes demonstrates (unilateral neglect, etc.) but another part of the "I" subroutine is generated in frontal cortex. This is clear from the personality changes that were made a few decades ago by prefrontal lobotomies. (Fortunately, modern drugs can now calm highly distrubed patients instead of the surgen's destructive knife.) You said "I" can't be part of the simulation because the simulation "is a result of incoming external the information." I do not agree. Why can't we ("I") be part of a simulation? The simulation is sometimes (in dreams) not well connected to the sensory inputs. Thus, it can run without these inputs. "I" may exisit (and often do) in my dreams. This "I" of my dreams can have essentially no connection to the sensory input and become so scared that my body is sweating when I wake up. In that dream, "I" surely existed and had strong experiences. If you wish, you can think of the "psychological self" as a separate brain activity, not part of the parietal simulation, proceeding in the frontal lobes, but where in the brain "I" am constructed as an informational process is not of great interest or concern to me. I tend to think of the frontal lobe activity / information more like a recipe for constructing the psychological parts of "me" that are delivered to parietal tissue for the execution of that recipe. (BTW, in the original Johns Hopkins paper, I used quotes as you did to distinguish this psychological "I" from the body image I.) I think you agree with me that "I" and our experiences are constructs of the brain, not a physical body plus neural transforms of sensory inputs. Why can't these brain constructs be part of the same brain activity? (Namely the simulation of the world we experience is also creating us as part of the simulation.) What most people, who think they are physical (a body), fail to realize is that they must believe in miracles (and/or "souls") if they also believe they can make real choices, rather than only have the illusion of making choices. Without any violation of physics, their "choices" are actually made at the level of the molecular chemisty in the brain (up take of neuro-transmitters etc.) and completely governed by physical laws. Almost everybody does believe that they (not brain chemisty) make real, non illusionary, choices. This is only possible (if miracles do not happen with every choice) if we are non-material. I not only explained this, but showed that being "non-material" is a probable result of the evolution of our physical bodies in the attachment to the earlier post. (Our ability to make a real-time simulation of the external world, rather than perceive it slightly delayed by many neural processing stages, may be the reason why our ancestors killed off the bigger brained, stronger Neanderthals, who may have preceived the delayed "computational transforms" of sensory inputs that modern cognitive science teaches as established fact for how we perceive. etc. - They were not as quick as we were in ducking thrown rocks etc due to approximately 0.2 seconds of neural delays but we projected the continious neural inputs ahead by 0.2 seconds to achieve a real-time, highly accurate, simulation of the external world which was, and is, the basis of our experiences, not delayed neural transforms.)
This "I" probably is a very complex subroutine in the parietal simulation. As I mentioned earlier, isn't it probable that our consciousness is an emergent facility of our brain. This means that the "I" has no particular location either, as it is the result of a complex interaction of different parts. I've only read about systems theory in application in communication systems etc., so I don't know yet how they have applied this in neurology. This nicely explains the metaphysical nature of the self, which nonetheless is a result of physical interaction. Why can't we ("I") be part of a simulation? The simulation is sometimes (in dreams) not well connected to the sensory inputs. Thus, it can run without these inputs. I think that somewhere you are fundamentally wrong on the concept of the 'self'. Aren't dreams a result of earlier "inputs" of data to begin with? Anyway, I think dragging in dreams would overcomplicate the point I'm trying to make. You do agree that something is experiencing this inner simulation, no? Our 5 senses make up our experience of the exterior -- that "I" is the one who somehow receives all the stuff. How can we be part of that? It's two different things. Now, within a dream, you are still "digesting" all the information you received. I fail to see how this proves that we are part of the simulation. A dream would be a simulation of a simulation. It doesn't change the logic which tells me that there has to be something that experiences all of it. The "I" you talk about in your dreams is a special case, isn't it? You walk around in a world that's real for you. In fact, I believe it doesn't matter, there are many layers of reality - following on David Bohm's theory of the implicate order. But that doesn't change the fact that the "I" in your dream, is just the same "I" when you are awake. What most people, who think they are physical (a body), fail to realize is that they must believe in miracles (and/or "souls") if they also believe they can make real choices, rather than only have the illusion of making choices. In my opinion, you just re-defined the term "soul". The essence of "soul" lies within its metaphysical nature. You have been emphasising this quite a lot, so I wonder if you have ever focussed on your own Self in this way? Basically, that's just mediation, isn't it? it's the oriental knowledge meeting science or something. I used to do meditation, and my experiences confirm that we can feel totally seperated from the gross body...your conscious awareness of it becomes totally detached, and you are truly aware that when you move let's say your arm, that your arm is just a tool, and no part of your "I". I'm gonna try getting a course on brain theories next semester, as it could be helpfull writing me thesis too. I'm in the field of archaeology, so it seems far from my domain, but ultimetaly it's all about understanding what we are and how we work on all levels (not just physically).
