Creation vs. Evolution

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Imari
Impossible at the current stage of technology obviously, but not possible at any time in the next 5 billion years before the Sun leave the main sequence? I find that implausible.

Let's assume that you have to get there within a single human lifespan, so we're not talking about arkships that are essentially little worlds unto themselves.
Let's assume that sometime in the next 5 billion years technology develops to the point where energy is no longer a restriction, either through total conversion of matter to energy or some other means (solar powered lasers and a light sail?). So we can have a ship that accelerates halfway there and then decelerates the other half, minimising trip time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration

While the time for an observer on Earth is pretty long for anywhere beyond Proxima Centauri, relativity means that the experienced time on board is much shorter. You can get to a lot of places in a single shipboard human lifetime.

Then it becomes about can you create a ship that can support humans for years. At the moment we can probably do it for a limited period of time, but a major obstacle is human psychology.
But let's also assume that in the next 5 billion years the understanding of human psychology advances to the point that we can have humans living in confined quarters for twenty years without going psychotic, and that the systems supporting them are sufficient to function safely for that period of time. If we've got an antimatter drive, we can make oxygen and food generators that self-repair. Or just take plants.

I don't think these assumptions are unwarranted given the periods of time we're talking about. Human technological history is what, maybe 100,000 years old if you count from fire and sharp rocks? Given where we are now, and how technological progress seems to be accelerating over the last few hundred years, I feel like given 50,000 times as long there's basically no problem that is absolutely unsolvable unless there are physical laws preventing it. And interstellar travel is totally possible within current physics without even getting into wacky faster-than-light drives or anything particularly controversial. Straight up acceleration with Einsteinian time dilation does the trick.

Bar a breakthrough it's not going to happen for thousands of years, but it will happen eventually if only purely from population pressure. Provided we don't kill ourselves, which is why I had the first part of the question.
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This assumes of course that climate change does not wipe out humanity in the next few hundred years.
 
Imari
Impossible at the current stage of technology obviously, but not possible at any time in the next 5 billion years before the Sun leave the main sequence? I find that implausible.

Let's assume that you have to get there within a single human lifespan, so we're not talking about arkships that are essentially little worlds unto themselves.
Let's assume that sometime in the next 5 billion years technology develops to the point where energy is no longer a restriction, either through total conversion of matter to energy or some other means (solar powered lasers and a light sail?). So we can have a ship that accelerates halfway there and then decelerates the other half, minimising trip time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration

While the time for an observer on Earth is pretty long for anywhere beyond Proxima Centauri, relativity means that the experienced time on board is much shorter. You can get to a lot of places in a single shipboard human lifetime.

Then it becomes about can you create a ship that can support humans for years. At the moment we can probably do it for a limited period of time, but a major obstacle is human psychology.
But let's also assume that in the next 5 billion years the understanding of human psychology advances to the point that we can have humans living in confined quarters for twenty years without going psychotic, and that the systems supporting them are sufficient to function safely for that period of time. If we've got an antimatter drive, we can make oxygen and food generators that self-repair. Or just take plants.

I don't think these assumptions are unwarranted given the periods of time we're talking about. Human technological history is what, maybe 100,000 years old if you count from fire and sharp rocks? Given where we are now, and how technological progress seems to be accelerating over the last few hundred years, I feel like given 50,000 times as long there's basically no problem that is absolutely unsolvable unless there are physical laws preventing it. And interstellar travel is totally possible within current physics without even getting into wacky faster-than-light drives or anything particularly controversial. Straight up acceleration with Einsteinian time dilation does the trick.

Bar a breakthrough it's not going to happen for thousands of years, but it will happen eventually if only purely from population pressure. Provided we don't kill ourselves, which is why I had the first part of the question.
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I understand that and, in theory, it is possible. But it seems to me quite optimistic to assume no natural/cosmic event will interfere with our development. How many cataclysms wiped out millions of life forms on Earth time and time again? Ice ages, meteorites, possibly catastrophic solar winds? That could easily happen again, and probably will before the sun engolfs the planet. Then there's climate change, pandemics, superviruses, etc. And then there's our own propensity to war and general nonsense.
 
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TheGeologist
This assumes of course that climate change does not wipe out humanity in the next few hundred years.
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We've already survived climate change before, though maybe not as drastic a change. Modern civilization could collapse if the problem is bad enough, but that doesn't mean humans will go extinct.

zzz_pt
I understand that and, in theory, it is possible. But it seems to me quite optimistic to assume no natural/cosmic event will interfere with our development. How many cataclysms wiped out millions of life forms on Earth time and time again? Ice ages, meteorites, possibly catastrophic solar winds? That could easily happen again, and probably will before the sun engolfs the planet. Then there's climate change, pandemics, superviruses, etc. And then there's our own propensity to war and general nonsense.
Click to expand...
We're advancing faster than nature. The disasters you mention tend to happen over geological time scales. 10's of thousands of years for high frequency events. At our current pace of technological development I have a hard time predicting where we will end up in that amount of time. We could end up unlucky and be wiped out by an asteroid in a decade or so, but in perhaps 500 years that might be an impossibility either because we can move asteroids or because we've spread beyond Earth and there would need to be multiple simultaneous disasters to wipe us out.
 
TenEightyOne
And a majority of significant species have been wiped out by climate change before. Bit of a gamble.
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Oh I don't mean to dismiss the threat. Just wanted to point out that severely damaging civilization doesn't equate to extinction of the species.
 
Exorcet
We're advancing faster than nature
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Not really. We're part of it. Our technology seems to be evolving faster than our own bodies.

We're quite susceptible to viruses, for instance, and it's not that far fetched to imagine someone, somewhere, creating a highly contagious virus that spreads out of a lab, with unpredictable results - intentionally or not.
 
Exorcet
Oh I don't mean to dismiss the threat. Just wanted to point out that severely damaging civilization doesn't equate to extinction of the species.
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The issue with climate change isn't that humanity will be wiped out directly. We can adapt and move to escape extreme weather events.

The issue is that certain plants/animals are wiped out leading to total collapse of food chains. That's what can wipe out humanity.

Extinction by ecological collapse.
 
The plague is reportedly spreading in China, prompting authorities to set up checkpoints. Better do this at airports ASAP.
 
TheGeologist
The issue with climate change isn't that humanity will be wiped out directly. We can adapt and move to escape extreme weather events.

The issue is that certain plants/animals are wiped out leading to total collapse of food chains. That's what can wipe out humanity.

Extinction by ecological collapse.
Click to expand...
Interesting that humanity survived the Last Glacial Period, with ice sheets over two miles thick over everything outside the tropics, but neither us nor our indicator species can survive a historically minor increase in temperature that's not even unusual within this epoch...
Dotini
The plague is reportedly spreading in China, prompting authorities to set up checkpoints. Better do this at airports ASAP.
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Oh no! If only we'd developed treatments and cures for this in the last 400 years!

Oh, wait, we have. What's the relevance to the topic?
 
Dotini
The plague is reportedly spreading in China, prompting authorities to set up checkpoints. Better do this at airports ASAP.
Click to expand...

Most years there are more cases of Bubonic Plague in the USA than there are in Europe. No epidemic yet, I suspect modern medicine is well equipped to deal with it.

Famine
Interesting that humanity survived the Last Glacial Period, with ice sheets over two miles thick over everything outside the tropics, but neither us nor our indicator species can survive a historically minor increase in temperature that's not even unusual within this epoch...
Click to expand...

There's an interesting article on that topic here. The issue isn't a persistently low temperature (at least in Europe) but a dramatic change in sea levels, wind conditions, "weather events" and the ability of 6 billion people to source enough fresh food and clean water for survival. During the last Ice Age societies were more mobile, the evidence shows that people were able to move to new hunting/gathering grounds and continue life although we don't know the impact on the global population, it's still very likely to have been severe.
 
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Scaff
As the 'human eye is perfect, explain that...' point comes up often in this thread, and I can across this today (on just how imperfect and messed up the human eye actually is) and thought it worth a share.

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I hardly would say the human eye is perfect. Why do people say that?

Also, that is very easy to explain.

The better version you have, the less likely you are to be killed by predators. Survival of the fittest.
 
While not perfect, eyes (not limited to those of humans) are really kind of amazing. As are the brains that ultimately utilize the information they receive.

Of course, this isn't to say that any of it is product of intelligent design.
 
Well, folks who don't think the eye could have evolved don't really think anything could have evolved, right? "No way this could have happened, therefore the whole thing is malarkey!"
 
wfooshee
Well, folks who don't think the eye could have evolved don't really think anything could have evolved, right? "No way this could have happened, therefore the whole thing is malarkey!"
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Yeah, but they need some kind of independent proof in order to pwn the evolutionists. (Do people still say "pwn"?) Even if they have to cobble something together out of incomplete statements and mined quotes.
 
TheGeologist
I hardly would say the human eye is perfect. Why do people say that?
Click to expand...

Because they're idiots. Also, because they think that the eye is an example of a complex system that couldn't exist except by design instead of what it really is, a bag of barely functional jelly that our brain has to constantly post-process and outright lie to us about what it's seeing.

I guess it's an example of how anything can be used as "evidence" for creationism as long as you ignore the actual reality of what you're talking about. ;)
 
Imari
I guess it's an example of how anything can be used as "evidence" for creationism anything as long as you ignore the actual reality of what you're talking about. ;)
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👍

[Edit] Example: "Islam is violent because there's violence in places where Islam is practiced."
 
TexRex
While not perfect, eyes (not limited to those of humans) are really kind of amazing. As are the brains that ultimately utilize the information they receive.

Of course, this isn't to say that any of it is product of intelligent design.
Click to expand...

wfooshee
Well, folks who don't think the eye could have evolved don't really think anything could have evolved, right? "No way this could have happened, therefore the whole thing is malarkey!"
Click to expand...

UKMikey
Yeah, but they need some kind of independent proof in order to pwn the evolutionists. (Do people still say "pwn"?) Even if they have to cobble something together out of incomplete statements and mined quotes.
Click to expand...

Imari
Because they're idiots. Also, because they think that the eye is an example of a complex system that couldn't exist except by design instead of what it really is, a bag of barely functional jelly that our brain has to constantly post-process and outright lie to us about what it's seeing.

I guess it's an example of how anything can be used as "evidence" for creationism as long as you ignore the actual reality of what you're talking about. ;)
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They should stick to DNA. That's the crux of the discussion when it comes to "complexity". After you allow for DNA, the eye (and the brain), is pretty obvious to follow through evolution, including lots of botched and archaic stuff (in both eyes and brains). DNA is a better hill to die on.
 
Danoff
They should stick to DNA. That's the crux of the discussion when it comes to "complexity". After you allow for DNA, the eye (and the brain), is pretty obvious to follow through evolution, including lots of botched and archaic stuff (in both eyes and brains). DNA is a better hill to die on.
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Perhaps it's only a better hill if you're no less familiar with it. If your understanding of DNA is less than that of how the eye works, using it as the basis for an argument is more of a gamble.
 
TexRex
Perhaps it's only a better hill if you're no less familiar with it. If your understanding of DNA is less than that of how the eye works, using it as the basis for an argument is more of a gamble.
Click to expand...
Exactly the problem. People spouting "knowledge" and "facts" on subject with which they have no actual understanding.

I was seated just behind the wing on a flight out of Atlanta yesterday. It was a muggy, rainy day, and the wing produced the puffs of vapor that you see in that kind of weather. Anyone that understands how a sharp pressure drop in high humidity can condense the water vapor into a visible mist, even for a split-second, doesn't give it a second though. Someone who "knows" that airliners spray chemicals would wonder why they'd bother so low to the ground.
 
Thanks to the Department of Anthropology here at the University of Utah, we now know ancient hominins were probably interbreeding earlier than we first thought:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/8/eaay5483

Abstract
Previous research has shown that modern Eurasians interbred with their Neanderthal and Denisovan predecessors. We show here that hundreds of thousands of years earlier, the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with their own Eurasian predecessors—members of a “superarchaic” population that separated from other humans about 2 million years ago. The superarchaic population was large, with an effective size between 20 and 50 thousand individuals. We confirm previous findings that (i) Denisovans also interbred with superarchaics, (ii) Neanderthals and Denisovans separated early in the middle Pleistocene, (iii) their ancestors endured a bottleneck of population size, and (iv) the Neanderthal population was large at first but then declined in size. We provide qualified support for the view that (v) Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of modern humans.
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It's kind of cool to see the place I work at making such a big discovery in the line of human evolution.
 
Joey D
Thanks to the Department of Anthropology here at the University of Utah, we now know ancient hominins were probably interbreeding earlier than we first thought:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/8/eaay5483



It's kind of cool to see the place I work at making such a big discovery in the line of human evolution.
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Also strange, cause you know... Utah. Shocking that they havent passed laws that would require the silencing of evolution theory
 
Rallywagon
Also strange, cause you know... Utah. Shocking that they havent passed laws that would require the silencing of evolution theory
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Weirdly, the LDS Church takes no official position on evolution and says it doesn't know what happened before Adam and Eve. Like most people, the more education a LDS Church member gets, the more likely they are to accept evolution. Something like 80% of Mormons with a college education apparently accepts evolution albeit with a healthy dose of intelligent design. Among those who have less than high school education, over 95% flat out deny evolution and say the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

My archaeology professor back in college was very Mormon and had is doctorate through BYU, he was also the bishop of one of the largest Mormon churches in the Detroit area (on Woodward in Birmingham). He taught our human evolution class too and we even asked him about his religion and evolution. His answer was more or less God gave him the ability to learn and analyze and therefore he wasn't going to waste it by denying the evidence. He still subscribed to intelligent design, but only briefly touched on that in class when we got to alternative theories of evolution. I always admired the way he could separate religion and science without feeling like he was putting one over the other.

Still, I do find it weird that the LDS Church is somehow more progressive on evolution than other Christian based religions.
 
Joey D
Weirdly, the LDS Church takes no official position on evolution and says it doesn't know what happened before Adam and Eve. Like most people, the more education a LDS Church member gets, the more likely they are to accept evolution. Something like 80% of Mormons with a college education apparently accepts evolution albeit with a healthy dose of intelligent design. Among those who have less than high school education, over 95% flat out deny evolution and say the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

My archaeology professor back in college was very Mormon and had is doctorate through BYU, he was also the bishop of one of the largest Mormon churches in the Detroit area (on Woodward in Birmingham). He taught our human evolution class too and we even asked him about his religion and evolution. His answer was more or less God gave him the ability to learn and analyze and therefore he wasn't going to waste it by denying the evidence. He still subscribed to intelligent design, but only briefly touched on that in class when we got to alternative theories of evolution. I always admired the way he could separate religion and science without feeling like he was putting one over the other.

Still, I do find it weird that the LDS Church is somehow more progressive on evolution than other Christian based religions.
Click to expand...
I think that, again, goes back to your point about educated mormon being more accepting. I am willing to bet that the stats are similar across most religions. The more educated, the more they will separate science and religion and the more they will follow things like evolution. I do wonder what the higher education statistics are across the different religions.
 

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