Creation vs. Evolution

[Year.Zero]

Of course we're going to de-salinate salt water to drink. The problem is that it uses energy to do so, although that's a minor problem. We're not going to be running around screaming "ZOMG WE'RE OUT OF WATER!" We'll just have to take energy costs into account for the price of water.

There might be some other resources that will be affected by an increasing population but I can't really think of any, other than rainforests being chopped down for housing and farming. That'll have an effect on oxygen in the air for sure, but how major an effect will it be?

If we really wanted to, we could plant trees all over the bloody place: the top of every building, on every vacant lot, all over each piece of gov't owned property and then some. The problem is, noone wants to do that much work.

But that's retarded, since that kind of work means a job is created that anyone could do. If we overhauled the energy and infrastructure sector, as well as started internationally building large scale plants for the de-salination of water, there would be so many jobs created for those needs it would be ridiculous.

Our consumption of the ocean's water would be a drawing a drop from a bucket; hardly 'shaping our environment' when it's at that grand a scale.

But you're right, the destruction of forests and turning of land would be widespread and inevitable.

Although, I'll be damned if I ever see some pecaries and jaguars and pythons start planting trees 'cause we cut them all down. . .

 

[Grand Prix]

If we really wanted to, we could plant trees all over the bloody place: the top of every building, on every vacant lot, all over each piece of gov't owned property and then some. The problem is, noone wants to do that much work.

But that's retarded, since that kind of work means a job is created that anyone could do. If we overhauled the energy and infrastructure sector, as well as started internationally building large scale plants for the de-salination of water, there would be so many jobs created for those needs it would be ridiculous.

Our consumption of the ocean's water would be a drawing a drop from a bucket; hardly 'shaping our environment' when it's at that grand a scale.

But you're right, the destruction of forests and turning of land would be widespread and inevitable.

Although, I'll be damned if I ever see some pecaries and jaguars and pythons start planting trees 'cause we cut them all down. . .

I don't think any sane person actually thinks we're going to cause our extinction by creating our own environment. I think the main issue is that if we make a lot more species extinct because of it, it might make a bigger change of balance than expected. Our great-grandchildren might not be able to eat the same species of fish/food as we used to. Granted, that's inevitable anyway.

 

[Year.Zero]

Maybe not our extinction, but I believe we'll certainly make it difficult for ourselves. We have a tendency to wait until the last minute before we try to fix things, when our ounce of prevention ends up getting added onto the inevitable pound of cure that we require.

 

[Danoff]

when our ounce of prevention ends up getting added onto the inevitable pound of cure that we require.

As a complete aside, I hate this kind of reasoning. Just because its an old saying doesnt mean its true. Preventing your children from getting dirty isnt as easy as cleaning them off. Preventing weeds from growing isnt as easy as killing them. Even preventing yourself from catching a cold proves damn near impossible while curing it doesnt actually require any work at all, just a little patience.

Just try to keep in mind that just because youve heard it said a million times doesnt make it true.

 

[Year.Zero]

As a complete aside, I hate this kind of reasoning. Just because its an old saying doesnt mean its true. Preventing your children from getting dirty isnt as easy as cleaning them off. Preventing weeds from growing isnt as easy as killing them. Even preventing yourself from catching a cold proves damn near impossible while curing it doesnt actually require any work at all, just a little patience.

Just try to keep in mind that just because youve heard it said a million times doesnt make it true.

The bigger the problem, generally the truer it is. This is a pretty big problem.

And in the sense of many of your examples, keeping kids not dirty is as simple as not rolling in dirt; spraying your lawn can prevent weeds from growing just as easily as spraying them to kill them, yet you don't have to dig them out once they're dead; washing your hands when you have the chance is less of an impact on your professional and social life than spending a few days in bed—while also being a huge preventative to other much deadlier diseases.

There's always a flipside.

 

[Sureboss]

Australia can dig themselves out of their own problem, they just don't seem to want to pony up the dough. What I'm saying here, is that I don't see an overcrowding issue.

Not at the moment, but the trend says that the human population is increasing, and at a very fast rate. Surely having twice the people on earth we have now will have a huge impact?

 

[Danoff]

And in the sense of many of your examples, keeping kids not dirty is as simple as not rolling in dirt;

Keeping kids from getting dirty is nearly impossible. They will find a way.

spraying your lawn can prevent weeds from growing just as easily as spraying them to kill them, yet you don't have to dig them out once they're dead;

Preventing them from growing in the first place would require treating your entire lawn because you don't know where they'll come up. And as far as I know, there really isn't such a treatment out there.

washing your hands when you have the chance is less of an impact on your professional and social life than spending a few days in bed—while also being a huge preventative to other much deadlier diseases.

Washing your hands helps, but it won't prevent you from getting a cold. We have no vaccine for the common cold because it seems damn near impossible to prevent. Curing it, on the otherhand, requires almost no thought.

Conventional Wisdom is a lazy attempt to get someone else to do your reasoning for you. My favorite result is that you can get conventional wisdom to contradict itself.

- Look before you leap
- Fools rush in
- Best things come to those who wait

but...

- The rolling stone gathers no moss
- Early bird gets the worm
- Carpe Diem

So which is it? Plan ahead, or jump in feet first?

Should I shoot for the moon? Or should I remember that perfection is the enemy of good?

Comeon, give me a break with the conventional wisdom crap. It's nearly useless.

 

[livemusic]

I'm pretty sure we do have vaccine for cold over here.

 

[Famine]

I'm pretty sure we do have vaccine for cold over here.

Just 'flu. There's no vaccine for the common cold.

 

[Sureboss]

Isn't that because the common cold is never the same?

 

[niky]

Fail.

Damn you and your high verbal IQ! I claim Engrish-as-a-second-language as defense!

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On point of evolutionary control... the point that animals don't self-regulate... just as Duke said... yup... pretty much every successful animal consumes and multiplies until some limiting external factor... lack of food resources, predators, etcetera... reins them in.

Note rabbits in Australia... or pigs... everywhere.

Species that do not spread like viruses are limited by something else... or have been harbored by natural barriers against competition... since they have not had to evolve to keep up with competition, they're defenseless against it... look what happens to them when invader species (like rabbits... or pigs) enter their domain... they get wiped out.

-------

Intelligence is both a blessing and a curse. If you're intelligent enough, you can avoid or overcome things that would limit your survivability... predators, natural barriers, etcetera... but unless you exercise even more intelligence and limit your resource utilization, you'll eat yourself to death.

We may not be running out of land area or actual resources anytime soon, but we're seriously depleting the easily available resources at hand. Maintaining our resource burning lifestyle for another hundred years will cause ecological havoc, but the human race won't go extinct because of this, but this level of civilization might be altered or toned down drastically by the time our great grandkids get their turn at running the human race.

Human extinction = no. Fall of oil-based industrial civilization = maybe.

 

[Year.Zero]

*bump*

Work on the genome of the Rhesus Macaque was completed in 2007,[3] making Rhesus Macaque the second non-human primate to have its genome sequenced. The study [4] shows that humans and macaques share about 93% of their DNA sequence and shared a common ancestor roughly 25 million years ago.

Not sure what that says for creation.

 

[Touring Mars]

It doesn't say much about "Creation" at all. It is another well-deserved kick in the balls to anti-evolutionists however, and to those who believe that human beings are biochemically unrelated to the rest of the living world.

This story first surfaced earlier in the year when the genome project was completed and published in the eminent journal, Science. I just looked it up on the BBC news website, however, and couldn't help but notice what today's 'Most Read' news article was (bottom right hand corner of the screenshot)...

 

[Year.Zero]

Well, to me, the fact that scientists identified a specific species and a (near) exact time that the genetic divergence occurred, makes the evidence pretty damning. I'm just not sure how one would logically refute that.

On the subject of sharing DNA sequences, don't humans share a large percentage of their DNA sequences with MANY animals? I heard it was something like 92% with mice. (The ones frequently used in lab tests, whatever breed they are.)

 

[Sureboss]

Yep, of course some of the animals we have a close DNA sequence with (don't snails/slugs/something like that have similar DNA sequence to us?), problem with some people is, they hear we have a very similar DNA sequence to an animal, which is say a mice, and people say "That can't possibly be right, we look nothing like them", without sounding rude, they think that because the DNA is similar that we should look the same. I'm sure most of us have heard "We can't be related, we look nothing alike" statements.

 

[Touring Mars]

For some reason, the mere mention of the fact that there are such things as ubiquitous genes is enough to make some people uncomfortable - i.e. there are some genes that exist in every living organism, hence to atleast some extent, we are biochemically related to everything. But the corollary of that is to look at our closest evolutionary relatives and notice just how different we are despite having mostly the same genes. But saying that does not mean we are 98% chimp - and macaques are not 93% human etc.. Although we might look like that to a DNA sequencing machine, to compare species simply from a gene sequence similarity point of view is to miss the point spectacularly. A key argument levelled at evolutionists all the time is that evolutionary biology somehow devalues the importance of being human. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth (or more insulting, for that matter). You have to ask yourself what is more remarkable - that we are totally biochemically distinct (which is not true) or that we are biochemically near-identical to macaques and yet we're incredibly different creatures. For me, an understanding of evolutionary biology gives us a profound sense of knowing exactly who we are rather than pretending to be something that we are not. Why we need to pretend that we're more amazing (as a species) than we are already is beyond me.

 

[Kylehnat]

Isn't 50% of our DNA useless trash left over from the evolutionary process? Why would a Creator waste time filling our DNA with superfluous sequences?

 

[Sage]

“Junk DNA” is very likely a huge misnomer – it should be “We’re-not-quite-sure-what-this-stuff-does-yet DNA”. I would bet that most biologists and geneticists believe that it’s a combination of defunct sequences, padding sequences (various reasons for that), and regulatory sequences. Our knowledge of regulatory sequences is very tiny compared to our knowledge of coding sequences, and I’d bet that as time goes on we’ll find that more and more junk DNA has a hand in regulatory pathways.

 

[Year.Zero]

Would it be analogous to comparing an M5 with a Taurus? (two cars of different "species")

Both have a chassis
...4 wheels
...headlights
...steering wheel
...bumpers
...engine
...exhaust
...body panels
...suspension system
...floor carpets
...dashboard
...etc. ??

 

[Kylehnat]

If you compare every single part, you'll see that both cars have a very high number of similar parts (in terms of function). The other "2%" is what makes an M5 very different than a Taurus (and 5 times as expensive). They're different, sure, but they evolved from a common ancestor.

 

[Grand Prix]

Watch your step guys. A Creationist could very easily go along with the comparison and say that those automobiles still needed a creator, even if they do have 98% in common.

 

[Kylehnat]

Well, any mechanical system needs a human to create it. Metal does not assemble itself, as that is a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Atomic and molecular self-assembly is not, however .

 

[Year.Zero]

Atomic and molecular self-assembly is not, however .

Ummm, it's clearly God assembling those molecules there buddy.

 

[Alfaholic]

Ummm, it's clearly God assembling those molecules there buddy.

yeah... but which one?

 

[Year.Zero]

yeah... but which one?

This one.

On a serious note, is this thread really only limited to the Christian concept of Creation?

Popularity does not denote authenticity.

To me, that fact alone negates the concept of all religions' claims of creation.

 

[Joey D]

This one.

On a serious note, is this thread really only limited to the Christian concept of Creation?

Popularity does not denote authenticity.

To me, that fact alone negates the concept of all religions' claims of creation.

RAmen.

I don't see why this thread should be limited to only the Christian creation myth, there are several other stories out there that can and should be discussed. This is the main reason why I'm against teaching creation in schools...if you teach one you really should teach them all since not everyone in the world is Christian and they do believe different things.

 

[Alfaholic]

On a serious note I have seen a few people whose molecules look like they were assembled by Pratchett's Oh God of Hangovers.

 

[Year.Zero]

RAmen.

I don't see why this thread should be limited to only the Christian creation myth, there are several other stories out there that can and should be discussed. This is the main reason why I'm against teaching creation in schools...if you teach one you really should teach them all since not everyone in the world is Christian and they do believe different things.

And, as everyone should know, the story that the Earth was birthed from the armpit of The Great Mother of the Métis Natives is the only true way, because they believe it more.

...

Some interesting facts, courtesy of our defacto fact-source that is Wikipedia:

United States

45% of Americans believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

37% believe that "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process."[64]

Only 14% believe that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process."[63]

Belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education; of those with post-graduate degrees, 74% believe in evolution.[65][66]

In 1987, Newsweek reported: "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists, 0.14%) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly.'"[68][69]

In 2000, a poll by People For the American Way[67] estimated that:

20% of Americans believe public schools should teach evolution only;
17% of Americans believe that only evolution should be taught in science classes—religious explanations should be taught in another class;
29% of Americans believe that Creationism should be discussed in science class as a 'belief,' not a scientific theory;
13% of Americans believe that Creationism and evolution should be taught as 'scientific theories' in science class;
16% of Americans believe that only Creationism should be taught;

According to a study published in Science, between 1985 and 2005...

# of Adult Americans who accept evolution declined from 45% to 40%,
# of Adult Americans who reject evolution declined from 48% to 39%,
# of Adult Americans who were unsure increased from 7% to 21%.

Besides the United States the study also compared data from 32 European countries, Turkey ,and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%).[70]

Interestingly, on the note of popularity, America nearly stands alone on the Evolution issue.

Now, we all know that correlation does not imply causation, so no credence should be given to this next example:
(None whatsoever)

Public acceptance of evolution is most prevalent in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden at 80% of the population.[70

And 3 among the top ten highest living standards in the world are. . .

Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden!

Edit: ...those dirty liberals.

 

[Pako]

I find it interesting that Cell Theory as taught in the classroom states that all cells are created or assembled by other cells. Where did the first cell come from? The Cell Theory doesn't explain that... Odd.

 

[Year.Zero]

I find it interesting that Cell Theory as taught in the classroom states that all cells are created or assembled by other cells. Where did the first cell come from? The Cell Theory doesn't explain that... Odd.

...

Amphiphiles are oily compounds containing a hydrophilic head on one or both ends of a hydrophobic molecule. Some amphiphiles have the tendency to spontaneously form membranes in water. A spherically closed membrane contains water and is a hypothetical precursor to the modern cell membrane. If a protein came along that increased the integrity of its parent bubble, then that bubble had an advantage, and was placed at the top of the natural selection waiting list. Primitive reproduction can be envisioned when the bubbles burst, releasing the results of the experiment into the surrounding medium. Once enough of the 'right stuff' was released into the medium, the development of the first prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and multicellular organisms could be achieved.[22]