Evolution

[Marcus Wolfe]

Sigh....here we go again.

By 'getting a tan on a species level' I meant evolving a darker skin. I hate having to explain myself!!!!

Now what was peregrine saying.......

"The thing that makes this topic so unclear, is that Darwin supposedly said his theory of evolution wasn't correct a few years after he published it. I don't know if it is true, but I've read about it in several books.

 

 

This is an outright lie. Darwin never took back his theory. The suppsed "deathbed conversion" is a lie spread by creationists who want to discredit the theory by any means necessary. Unfortunately, the fraud seems to work, as many people believe it without checking the facts."

Not to argue with that or anyyhing, BUT..........

recent evidence shows that some of the minor (and I mean minor) mutations that occur in life actually assist in survival. So, in Darwin's giraffe situation, small mutations may stretch the neck a bit, and this trait would be passed down to the children, but it would not have as much of an effect as having naturally longer necks at birth.

[FritzDerochebrune]

Absolutely and completely wrong. Time is defined in terms of a physical constant (rate of decay for a specific element, I believe). The only way to get a 10,000 year old universe is if you redefine the english word "year" to refer to a different physical value. But then it's a meaningless statement, it would be just as valid to say that the universe is one year old, a trillion years old, or any other arbitrary age I could think of.

 

You did not get my point: I mean, we say a year is 365 days (or 366), each day consisting of 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds. But is that really a year? We can't know. My point is: The time we know today, are just the values a smart guy gave them hundreds of human years ago. Example: He said a day consists of 24 hours, so we think it consists of 24 hours. All invisible things are given names so man can understand it (feelings,...).

 

So the real value of an universal year might be 2 human seconds, while an universal day might be 3547 human years.

 

Marxist ßastard did get it though :D

 

For the rest I didn't quote: if you think so, that's fine by me. Still it is hard to believe dinosaurs evolved into birds with so little proof.

 

As for Darwin: it might be a lie, it might not be a lie. Creationists cay say Darwin said that, while Evolutionists can say it is a lie of the Creationists. How do you know who's lying? You can't. It has been told so often, nobody knows who started lying, Creationists or Evolutionists. Every group will

 

cya

 

Fritz

[Abramul]

There is no "Universal year", because the universe does not orbit anything.

There is a "Galactic year", which is estimated to be between 225 and 250 million years, although the term "Solar year" might be more apt.

There is also a "Cosmic year", but this appears to be more of a convenience for comparing the relative lengths of different periods.

[crazydave]

You did not get my point: I mean, we say a year is 365 days (or 366), each day consisting of 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds. But is that really a year? We can't know. My point is: The time we know today, are just the values a smart guy gave them hundreds of human years ago. Example: He said a day consists of 24 hours, so we think it consists of 24 hours. All invisible things are given names so man can understand it (feelings,...).

The fact is that when Up was first defined as up, the world was thought to be flat, so no mater where you were up would always be up. Hovever, now we know that the world is round, so the concept of up and down becomes subjective. I would say up is exacly 90 degrees from the floor in my room, While some one in China would say the oppisite. Time, as we know it today, is a constant. Mabey one day some physicist will make the discovery that time is omnidirectional, but for the time being it is constant.

[Abramul]

The fact is that when Up was first defined as up, the world was thought to be flat, so no mater where you were up would always be up. Hovever, now we know that the world is round, so the concept of up and down becomes subjective. I would say up is exacly 90 degrees from the floor in my room, While some one in China would say the oppisite. Time, as we know it today, is a constant. Mabey one day some physicist will make the discovery that time is omnidirectional, but for the time being it is constant.

And I suppose you would also claim that two parallel lines can never meet?

[crazydave]

And I suppose you would also claim that two parallel lines can never meet?

If you are complementing my ability to state the obvious, thanks I guess. But its not as good as other peoples ability to utterly ignore the obvious.

[Abramul]

Actually, my intent was to point out that Euclidean geometry doesn't apply to a sphere. All straight lines meet, and there is no "other side".

[crazydave]

Ah, I see what you mean. I was thinking in terms of the dimension of time. Any way, we are probably way of topic by now.

[KzinistZerg]

I was under the impression that seconds are measured via the radioactive decay of cesium 2 ions...?

 

OK, dude, look; time as we know it is a constant with the exception of two places.

 

One: near the singularity of a black hole

Two: near lightspeed.

 

We're near neither, and most of the universe isn't either, or it'd be red- or blue-shifted out of the visible spectra.

 

I don't get what your argument is about anyway.

 

Marcus Wolfe: What? Yes, the epigenome can mutate, and yes that tends to get passed along, but... Huh?

 

And, who CARES what Darwin said on his deathbed? The THEORY has to much evidence behind it that there's no way in hell he could have had any evidence it was wrong, and we had a good long time to disprove it and no one has.

[Peregrine]

Absolutely and completely wrong. Time is defined in terms of a physical constant (rate of decay for a specific element, I believe).

Well, slightly and technically a bit off. The SI second is defined in terms of how long a stable, non-radioactive cesium-133 atom takes to react to electromagnetic waves at around the microwave range. The principle here is vaguely similar to neon lighting, but very precisely timed and controlled. The kinetics of radioactive decay are much trickier to handle compared to this, and thus radioactive decay isn't a suitable basis for a standard.

 

Thanks, I knew it was something at the atomic level, but I was just too lazy to look it up.

 

 

And who cares what the human definitions are. The age of the universe is billions of years, with years being defined in terms of that physical constant. All you're doing is changing the English language word "year" to mean something other than the scientific definition. So you might have a universe that's only a few "years" old, but then the young-earth creationist would have to claim a universe younger than a single day!

 

For the rest I didn't quote: if you think so, that's fine by me. Still it is hard to believe dinosaurs evolved into birds with so little proof.

 

Did you even bother reading my reply? There is plenty of proof, in the DNA of modern birds, as well as traces in the fossil record. This isn't just wild speculation, we have some pretty solid evidence here.

 

As for Darwin: it might be a lie, it might not be a lie. Creationists cay say Darwin said that, while Evolutionists can say it is a lie of the Creationists. How do you know who's lying? You can't. It has been told so often, nobody knows who started lying, Creationists or Evolutionists. Every group will

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hope.html

 

Key point: "These attempts to fudge Darwin's story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. "I was present at his deathbed," she wrote in the Christian for February 23, 1922. "Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever."

 

Besides, as KzinistZerg said, even if Darwin had changed his mind, unless the Theory of Evolution was just a giant appeal to authority, it's completely irrelevant. Since Darwin's time, the theory has been supported by vast amounts of evidence and independent verification. While Darwin of course deserves full credit for his work, his approval is not necessary. The theory is perfectly capable of standing on its own without him.

 

recent evidence shows that some of the minor (and I mean minor) mutations that occur in life actually assist in survival. So, in Darwin's giraffe situation, small mutations may stretch the neck a bit, and this trait would be passed down to the children, but it would not have as much of an effect as having naturally longer necks at birth.

 

Err, what are you talking about here? A mutation by definition is present at birth (well, the genetic code that produces it is present at birth, even if the effects of that code don't show up immediately). What you're saying makes no sense.

 

If you're trying to say that a giraffe could gradually stretch its neck (NOT a mutation) and then pass it on, you're completely wrong. This idea has been completely disproven for a long time. An organism's genetic code is fixed, there is no mechanism for changes in the physical body to alter those genes. If you doubt it, just use a little common sense: people lose various body parts, for various reasons. But their children are completely normal, the dramatic change is NOT copied into their genes.

 

The most you could have is genes for "is able to stretch the neck over time" being passed on through Darwinian selection. But it's the ability that's being passed down, not the end result itself. The offspring will still have to repeat the same stretching process themselves.