What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
Take Advantage of Ridiculously Low Holiday Airfares view!
travelzoo.com - Flights $52 and up for Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year. But move on it now.
73 Comments
- aphexmandelbrot, on 10/12/2007, -23/+92Well duh. It's all just a test. Either way, Darwin recanted on his deathbed! Rite? Rite?
And he said god had to have made the eye!
And Einstein was a Christian!
All of the above are false, as is creationism and the notion of intelligent design. - Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -6/+49I never understood why it would make any difference if Darwin recanted. Evolution happens. If Newton had denied the existence of gravity on his deathbed, people would not have suddenly started floating around in the air.
- hermeneutic, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Most modern Christians do not put any stock in a deathbed confession for Darwin. Some misguided souls still do, but the vast majority do not.
See here for details.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/darwin_recant.asp - MrUnderbridge, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23Apparantly there's no evidence varchar32 has a mind like humans either...
- Dainjah, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20Wait...What? Anyone care to decipher this incoherent babble?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17There's 700 million year old fossils of large organisms (worm burrows), it just seems as if no animal developed hard fossilizable shells until 580 million years ago. Even those taxa had a hard shell only in the sense an insect has a hard shell, not in the sense a crab does.
It is of course perfectly possible that the lack of oxygen up to that point was what kept animals from developing hard shells. - m0laria, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18This is evidence for God! Clearly 500 million years ago God saw that his worms were to squishy, so he hardened them up. No need for silly evolution to figure this one out. Peace
- Dainjah, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Monkeys can't understand what? Chimps are able to learn, replicate tool use, as well as learn sign language. Studies have also shown chimps are capable of understanding and identifying different emotions too. You would be surprise how intelligent monkeys are.
- AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11@varchar32
"I am not a native English speaker, and I am not sorry if you cant get the point from all!"
Oh, I get the point. It's just that your point is incorrect. The theory of evolution makes no claims about the intelligence of any animals. It simply states that mutation + natural selection = the origin of new species. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Something that confuses me about non-literalists is that after they finish proclaiming the bulk of their book to be fanciful stories, fables, and life lessons, what do they have left to believe in?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@varchar32: Using tools is widespread among animals. http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/primates.htm#monkeys
- Waterispoison, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Behe may not be "openly Christian", but he is a senior fellow of the Center of Science and Culture, a division of the Discovery Institute which is a Christian think tank that has been at the forefront of the ID argument.
- Morsetlis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9God put you here for our amusement.
- Dimensio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7" Behe, the modern originator of the ID argument (his book Darwin's Black Box was seminal for the movement) would hardly care about Darwin's Christianity because Behe is not a Christian himself."
Michael Behe is openly Catholic. Why are you lying? Do you believe that a case against the theory of evolution becomes stronger if you falsely claim that a leader of the Intelligent Design movement is not a Christian, as if to imply that Christianity is not a primary motivator for many evolution opponents? - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14There in lies part of the problem of the "fossil record." Only things capable of leaving fossils left them.
Every day we learn that ancient civilizations were more advanced than we thought they were. We also know, from studying history, that climate shifts do happen with and without human industry.
Need I remind anyone that not too long ago Vikings had farms on Greenland? The world must have been warmer then to allow for such things!
With the way plate tectonics works older evidence is slowly moved back into the core of the planet as plates converge. If there was something on this planet from before the dinosaurs it is quite possible that all evidence has been removed. - UncleCrapper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"And Parrots can talk, So what?? they are not doing all because it is meaningful for them. they are just replicating moves. Have you ever heard a monkey that learned how to use a tool built home itself??? that is the difference."
Absolutely. Chimpanzees in the wild have been seen using grass shoots to pull termites from termite mounds. Sea Otters use rocks from the sea floor to crack open shellfish. Note that neither the absence or presence of these beviours is a definitive proof of evolution, but it does negate your argument that animals are not capable of making or using their own tools. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Oh and for all the Christians who might jump in on the scene and think that this is somehow 'evidence of creation' you have to remember that this was long before the Christian bible said anything even existed - and also you have to remember the extensive fossil record that existed both before and after this period in the Earth's history.
Evolution doesn't go away just because of this - all it says is that our understanding of it and of some of the processes involved (as in many things in science) may not be as quite as complete as we would like. - Morsetlis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@varchar32
Your ignorance astounds me.
"They were doing same probably 5000 years ago and they are doing same today."
And you know this HOW? Because you were alive 5000 years ago to observe them? How do you know they haven't evolved better food-gathering techniques or bacterial resistance since then? Are you a biologist? Ecologist? Historian?
Just because you are using Digg on the Internet like a technologically advanced human being I should not think that it is meaningful for you. You are just replicating what the other Diggers do! Have you heard of an idiot that learned how to use Digg by itself???? That is the difference. - Dainjah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Yes I have. Gorillas construct 'beds' for themselves. They also use tools to gather food, like insects. Birds are also incredible smart when it comes to puzzle solving abilities. Try to find that video with the Japaneses crows that learned to crack nuts by dropping them on the road so passing cars would crush them. Point is these animals are learning and using what they learn for a meaningful purpose.
- Shaggy6ster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8sure they can. gorillas can learn sign language, and most apes can solves problems and use simple tools. besides, what does mans superior intellect have to do with the validity of evolution?
- polyphonic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7actually christians disagree on how old the earth is. many take the 7-day genesis story poetically, and only a small fraction would say the earth is literally 6,000 years old.
many diggers would be surprised at how much of evolutionary theory jives with many christians. - bob_the_alien, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10I am a christian, and I've studied the Holy Bible quite a bit, and I've yet to find a passage that absolutely denies evolution. In-fact, everything is left unsaid, and at the point, where Adam and Eve was created, their son Kain was sent out to find a wife, but if you believe Adam and Eve were the beginning of it all, then who would he be marrying.
Personally, I believe Adam and Eve where just companions that God would speak to, someone to be a personal friend to god, and Other people and other things already existed in the world, but it's just not spoken of, because everything in the bible is meant to tell a story and show how you should live your life, and thus the story of Adam and Even and their children all told those stories.
I am a Christian but I believe in evolution, and I also believe that God created the universe. I also have no idea why some Christians seem to want to prove science wrong.
If God created the universe and everything in it, it only goes to prove that every new fact we discover was something God intended to exist. And thus the more we learn in science the more we come to understand what God has done, and Personally I believe that by accepting his great works and learning more is the only way we can ever say we are close to God, otherwise we are denying all the wonderful things he has done. - Johannesrexx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Science is about finding answers by asking questions, doing experiments to test possible answers, learning from the result, changing the model of understanding, and moving the state of the art forward by publication and peer review.
Einstein wondered it the speed of light was independent of the speed of the observer and did experiments. That led to a prediction that light would bend around gravity wells, and sure enough it was so. If it was not so they'd alter the model until they get it right. That is science.
Same for evolution. If it does not explain something, you make changes to the model until it works. At no point does science say "oh, this cannot be explained, so GOD made it" because that is not science, science explains by understanding the model. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's not circular to identify a problem and using scientific methodology to try to solve it.
- NielsT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5But as humans we do not transfer our knowledge through our genes, we do so through books and speech.
- AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Looks like varchar32 got his English degree from Dr. Gene Ray's Time Cube Correspondence School: "Other Correspondence schools educate you stupid! Time Cube offers the only Harmonic Simultaneous Rotating 4 Corner 24 Hr. Days in 1 Earth Rotation degrees available!"
- Soulrebels, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Hi,
@bob_the_alien and hermeneutic
I totally agree with you two. I'm a Muslim and have studied the Koran and I've yet to find a verse that denies the evolution. I think god gave us the power to think and explore for ourselves. He didn't tell us everything, we just need to use the power he gave us to discover it for our self.
Recently I found a little verse in the Koran and I thought it might be an interesting view on the evolution theory:
"God created mankind and send it down to earth in the lowest form"
I think its referring to Adam (as he being the first man) and how god send him down to earth in the lowest form of life (maybe a single cell?)
There's Also (and I'm not sure) a story telling us how the sons of Adman and Eva were brought to life. Its says that they came from the side of Eva "body".....That doesn't make sense if they where in "full" human form, right? Again I'm not a scientist what so ever but just my 2 cents here guys
Its not a precise translation but I think some of you will get the point. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually we have sedimentary rock deposits back to at least 1.8 billion years ago. It is true the geological record gets spottier and spottier the further back you go, due to rock being churned down or altered so fossils are lost, but there exist way older sedimentary rock than 575 Myr.
I have studied geology, and the pattern is clear: you have old sedimentary rock without fossils and, starting about 700 million years ago, with scattered and uncertain traces of multicellular animals (worm burrows, traces of worms crawling over mud, that kind of thing), then in roughly 580 Myr old rocks you relatively suddenly get visible fossils, although many are strange and hard to interprete (the so-called vendian or ediacaran fauna), closely followed by more standard and more easily interpreted fossils of e.g. trilobites.
So something definitely happened roughly 580 million years ago, which meant that the geological record in just a relatively few million years went from "hardly any fossils at all" to "abundant fossils".
The main questions are: did it have something to do with the huge glaciation thought to precede that time, or was it tied to the appearance of free atmospheric oxygen (the iron ions in the sea had until then sucked up all the oxygen algae produced), or was it simply due to the evolution of some key feature (like, say, macroscopic size or hard, fossilizable, structures).
Or all of the above. - kokorhekkus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I belive you're right. With an oxygen starved environment (compared with today) there would have been a lot less food around for complex organisms higher up in the foodchain. That would mean that there could be a distinct evolutionary advantage in developing movability with as little cost as possible with no surplus energy available for growing structures that are just a _little_ more optimal. So they did it with soft parts only.
Have I missed anything obvious with this line of reasoning? - Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@jeolmeun -- My post was directed at creationists who cite Darwin's supposed recantation as a refutation of evolution. Never mind that this recantation never happened; my point was simply that evolution either does or does not occur without any regard for Darwin's personal belief structure. Of course, it does occur, but that is not a consequence of Darwin's belief.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3>I am a christian, and I've studied the Holy Bible quite a bit, and I've yet to find a passage >that absolutely denies evolution.
The Pope feels the same way.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/18/news/evolution.php - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No I know already that science is not about knowing everything there is to know about already, unlike religion which does profess (or pretend) to have all the answers. Science is a process of gradual discovery - so who knows maybe one day we will be able to fill in the blanks - just as we have done in the many discoveries that have been made in the past.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Don't know. You may well be right, because present oxygen-free environments never have very complex organisms either - certainly none which would fossilize well. Most of the life found in permanently oxygen free zones is single-celled, and the few multi-celled ones are small and simple, without hard-structure "frills".
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not quite the same - the God you subscribe to professes to know everything already. ('All seeing and all knowing', remember?)
Scientists on the other hand make no such claims. - Midnightbrewer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"With the way plate tectonics works older evidence is slowly moved back into the core of the planet as plates converge. If there was something on this planet from before the dinosaurs it is quite possible that all evidence has been removed."
With the way plate tectonics works, the lighter stone that makes up the continents "floats" above the heavier stone that makes the ocean floor, which is why we have sediments 575 million years old, even though the oldest oceanic crust is only 200 million years old. If everything got rolled back in, we'd have even less knowledge than we have now. - cliffy2000, on 10/12/2007, -13/+15Actually, His Noodly Appendage is changing the results every time you make a measurement.
- polyphonic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3science and christianity are at odds with one other.
trying to disprove christianity is a waste of time. scientific investigation of christianity at some point becomes flawed, bc it violates an essential tenet of science - the disprovable hypothesis. in science, every valid hypothesis MUST conceivably be disprovable. the essential claims of christianity are not disprovable, and therefore invalid.
trying to PROVE christianity is a waste of time. where science needs repeatable results, christianity requires faith, a belief in unseen things, which intrinsically will have non-repeatable results. - kurtu5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My dog all this ***** xtian ***** is pising me off.
1st, this is a scientific article.
2nd, I didn't read these comments to learn about your ***** mean volcano god Jehova and his more friendly replacement god Jesus.
3rd, lets talk about abiogenesis and things like that please?
So, anyone read Periannan Senepathy's, "Independant Birth Of Ogranisms"? He talks about statistical odds for the formation of various things like oglinucleotides, enzymes and the like. One of his most interesting arguments it that some organisms randomly formed early on, died and dumped the contents of their genomes back into the primordial pond. Then by random chance, these genomes were encapsulated in cell walls and a new organism grew as a egg cell with the new genome(or a mix of genomes) by feeding off the nutrients floating in the pond.
His explanation for the cambiran explosion or the burgess shale and the wierd mixing and interchange of body parts.
Lets talk about this instead please?
The score so far:
95% of the comments in this thread relate to religion
5% that are science are in repsonse to religion
***** religious thread jackers. - kurtu5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah ***** off ahole.
Go plug your ***** site somewhere else. - Midnightbrewer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@polyphonic:
"science and christianity are at odds with one other."
Actually, no. One explains the how, the other explains the why. Two different answers for two different questions. Science is not religion and vice versa. There is absolutely no reason to fear evolution as if it were a competing religion. There are enough of the regular sort to be going on with. - manchesterU, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You guys do realize that the Genesis story in the bible was oral tradition that had many rewrites by a few different authors right?
That being said, I also find it quite sad that a lot of people seem to believe that the theory of evolution disproves the possibility of a creator. - Stevethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Fair and simple, if God didn't intend us to use our minds, then why did he gave them to us? You don't have to be either theist or atheist to accept the clear truth.
- carbog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why does every discussion on a story about evolution have to become about God vs Darwin. It's like every time there is a story on the roundness of the earth, there is a debate about round vs flat. We don't need to bring in the idea of a flat earth every time. It's established scientific fact, we don't need to be debating it anymore.
- polyphonic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@raid
for the record, as a christian i do not profess or pretend to have all the answers, and i would also say my life is a process of gradual discovery. i feel many others would agree with me. - ambushxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The theory of natural selection and evolution existed long before darwin was born
Darwin did not discover evolution, but he is the one who first did extensive research on it - halfnormalform, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Sorry but I've never heard of "Darwin's Dilemma" so it can't be commonly known, as I'm pretty common.
- polyphonic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@ nepawoods
- br549, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Just another example of someone who was looked up to as having the answers and didn't.
- suirleycurley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's true that we have signifigant likeness to Darwin's theory...religiously people believe that we can't possibly be descended from Apes because of the entire Adam and Eve ordeal. I stand with the unknown.
- homerj1965, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1god LOL, thats pretty funny schtuff.
-
Show 51 - 73 of 73 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is