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- - Date 2013-06-04 22:17
[topic branch moved]
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-04 19:59 Edited 2013-06-04 20:03

>there are lot of real existing animals which look clumsy or atlethic ,  which have tiny hands or big paws.


I you do have a valid point here ,but as for the evolution part I don't believe in evolution ,there is absolutely no proof of evolution.
If the earth were millions and billions of years old the earth would have been in the sun.
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-04 21:08
As a scientist I have to say ther are millions and billions of what I would call a "proof". There are loads of relativly easy experiments and where they figure out "short"-time-evolutionary effects within a timescale from hours up to decades. You can call these changes on the genetical and  level however you want, but there are effects and you can simply "see" them.
Besides that neighter I see any connection between of the earth's age and lets say "possible" evolution nor the its age and its relative position to the sun? The position thing is related to "where" the earth's movement heading the sun has startet, how fast it is in average and "when" the movement started.
It is stupid to say that a "car" must have reached china because it is already 3 years old already. That does not make any sense.
But I think it is very senseless to start a discussion about such a difficult topic in a forum, especcialy an opensource game related forum

Anyway, it does not matter if you're believing in science or not, but guess you still believe in the existence of all these different species and their capability of climbing.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2013-06-04 21:11
Okay, may I stop any discussion about science and religion right here, please? :)
Parent - By Matthias [de] Date 2013-06-04 21:13
No. I want to see the blood.
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-04 21:53

>But I think it is very senseless to start a discussion about such a difficult topic in a forum, especcialy an opensource game related forum


I already stopped it :(
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-05 21:46
First I would like to ask you a question. Do believe that something can come from nothing?
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2013-06-05 22:23 Edited 2013-06-05 22:48
Sorry, what does the theory of evolution have to do with the big bang theory? Also, your question is invalid, scientific theories are not something to believe in.

Edit:
In science, the usefulness/correctness of a theory is measured by how reliably it can make predictions on the real world. Belief and science are two different leagues: Science seeks to gain knowledge and their theories are constantly revised based on new insights. Belief does neither exist to gain knowledge nor is it revised (well, you tell me...).

There is one thing you should be aware of: Belief is not based on logic, intelligent design or the Christian belief in general is NOT a scientific theory. And you shouldn't try to make it one, so I'd advise you to not even venture to try to make a logical argument against science. You will only embarrass yourself.
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-05 22:38 Edited 2013-06-05 22:50
This is a perfectly relevant question.

> Sorry, what does the theory of evolution have to do with the big bang theory?


EVERY THING if the "big bang" never o cured then what dose he believe created the universe.

>scientific theories are not something to believe in.


Evolution is not scientific and you should not believe in it. Even Darwin called evolution a theory and never has it been proven to be true
,and when I say proven I mean solid evidence that evolution is true not mutating cells so they change into mutated fast dying cells.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2013-06-05 22:43

>EVERY THING if the "big bang" never o cured then what dose he believe created the universe.


What if god created the universe with a big bang and then god created evolution? :)
Believing in evolution does not exclude believing in god. Even believing in the big bang theory (a theory that describes what happened shortly AFTER the universe was created) does not exclude believing in god. Peace.
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2013-06-05 22:56
There are some conflicts with the Christian belief though... you know, Adam & Eve ... the paradise, the seven days(?) of creation. As far as I know, no Christian denomination does state that these are just stories which should be read metaphorically.

I think the (Christian) religion is in dire need of a reform if it wants to keep hold of its followers. I mean, as you said, a belief in a general (Christian-like) god does not collide with science.
Parent - By ker [de] Date 2013-06-07 10:21

>the seven days(?) of creation


statistically speaking there should've been something resembling an intelligence or life 7 days after t=0. then again, by your question mark i'm guessing you wonder about the definition of days ^^
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-05 23:05 Edited 2013-06-05 23:28

>What if god created the universe with a big bang and then god created evolution? :)


>Believing in evolution does not exclude believing in god. Even believing in the big bang theory (a theory that describes what happened shortly AFTER the universe was created) does not exclude believing in god. Peace.


You do have a point ,but mutations are still not proof of evolution.
Why would "god" create the universe and then evolution?
Why wouldn't he just create the universe with the earth and all the plants animals and every thing else?
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2013-06-05 23:14
You mean it would be easier for him?
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-05 23:22
If "god" is all powerful then both would be equally easy.
Parent - By Newton [de] Date 2013-06-05 23:26
Jup
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2013-06-06 09:12

>Why would "god" create the universe and then evolution?


Who am I to question God's ways? ;)

For me it sounds equally plausible as creating everything as it is now and then deliberately creating all that pretty good hints and solid evidence that our science takes to prove that f.e. the earth is pretty old already.
Parent - By ker [de] Date 2013-06-07 10:22
if god exists, she obviously didn't want her creations to get bored ;)
Parent - By ker [de] Date 2013-06-07 10:25
uhm… mutations are a part of evolution, so you are right, mutation is not proof of evolution.
there's also genetic algorithms optimizing some "race" towards a goal.
and there's deliberate manipulation that could be called evolution (like humans inventing more and more tech and therefor "evolving" to a more sophisticated species)
please specify which type of evolution you want to argue about
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2013-06-05 22:58
What would be a proof in your opinion then?
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-05 23:16 Edited 2013-09-05 19:34

>What would be a proof in your opinion then?


Thank you, this is a very good question.
I haven't seen any rocks changing into cells or fish turning into birds or apes turning into humans. :)
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2013-06-05 23:28

> But I haven't seen any rocks changing into cells or fish turning into birds or apes turning into humans.


Yeah, that would be my personal proof for that god exists after all.
Parent - By ker [de] Date 2013-06-07 10:29
like after the 20 year experiment of some bacteria in petri dishes a politician asked "did they evolve into people?"
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-06 09:10
evolution does not say there are rocks which become a fish over night.

If I remember it correctly, there are already (some?) experiments which show that you can find chemicals which are called "organic" after puting several natural occuring chemicals into water (like what they expect from sea water in the very beginning)and combined with some energetic inputs (like a simulated thunderstorm, or heat, by a volcano, ...)

this has to be one of the first step to something which could be called "living"

"organic" materia consists amino acids an stuff. This is simply proper chemistry.

But I can totally understand you, that it is hard to imagine some chemical mixture becomes a "cell". I think it mostyl is caused because we can't imagine timeperiods of more then several hundred years. Of course each single step is/was incredibly unlikley. But if you compare what is unlikly today then it gets more imaginable. For example the chance to win a lottery jackpot is really unlikly but it nearly happens every single week in many many countries. It is mostly because there are so many people which take part. It is the same with the resistent bacteria: it is sooo unlikly that a single chemical componend of its DNA is changing exactly where it happend to become resistent: but if you have billions of bacteria on a single square meter it can occure to at least one of these cells. Which already could be enough.
Parent - By ker [de] Date 2013-06-07 10:30
you probably mean high energy sparks in atmosphere (e.g. lightning). but they were only able to obtain a very small number of the required molecules.
Parent - - By Newton [vn] Date 2013-09-04 09:08
Why did you change your post after 2 month?
Parent - By J. J. [us] Date 2013-09-04 22:22
I felt that I had given my view so I chose to change it.
Parent - - By Newton [vn] Date 2013-09-05 02:36

>I am not positive what would be my "proof."


I don't understand (your choice of words), could you elaborate please?
Parent - - By J. J. [us] Date 2013-09-05 19:37
Thank you, your right that did not make any sense after I changed it.

P.S.: Changed it again. :)
Parent - - By Newton [vn] Date 2013-09-06 07:37
So you deleted your answer now.
Parent - By J. J. [us] Date 2013-09-10 01:24
I don't understand what you mean by that? I just thought that my explanation was good, so I thought that I didn't need to get back to you on that later like I had thought before.
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-06 08:50

>Evolution is not scientific and you should not believe in it. Even Darwin called evolution a theory and never has it been proven to be true


,and when I say proven I mean solid evidence that evolution is true not mutating cells so they change into mutated fast dying cells.

first of all, Darwin found lots of evidences to set up his theory of course mostly based on morphology of plants and animals and compared to fossils and stuff, it was some hundred years ago and its nowady only the basis about understanding lots of different incidents. This theory was proven thousends of times with different experiments, measurements and observations. And of course the possibilitys of dooing research increase with the technical improvement. And all these measurements, observations and/or experiments were made concerning different fields of biology in ecology, traditional zoology, in modern experimental genetics or whatever you want.

>when I say proven I mean solid evidence that evolution is true not mutating cells so they change into mutated fast dying cells.


This is simply not the "only" proof. If you want to "search" for an evolutionary process, it would be very stupid to mutate cells actively. It has to happen without dooing anything with the cells. What you would do is simply waiting that something happens by chance. I would say the most famous "evolution"-thing is the existence of all these diverse pharmaceutical resistent bacteria and other pathogens(which are living, or at least are a virus). But these things are very simple evidences for what evolution can be in detail.

As I already said: there are loads of universitys and research organisations which have departments for evolutionary sciences. What do you think they do there? Simply burn the money with crazy gadgets?
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-06 19:42 Edited 2013-06-06 20:23

>I would say the most famous "evolution"-thing is the existence of all these diverse pharmaceutical resistent bacteria and other pathogens(which are living, or at least are a virus)


I do believe that animals and plants can adapt to there environment to a certain point.
Although as I understand it diverse pharmaceutical resistant bacteria come from bacteria that have lost genetic information or by using a design feature to swap DNA so that a
bacterium gains resistance from another bacterium that has resistance.
One way to understand this is by looking at Helicobacter pylori. H.pylori have a mutation that results in the loss of the information that tells the bacterium to produce an enzyme.
This enzyme normally converts an antibiotic to a poison which results in the death of the bacterium ,however when antibiotics are applied to a mutant H. pylori bacterium ,which has lost its ability to produce the enzyme, the bacterium survives and goes on to produce genetically deficient antibiotic resistant bacteria.
The second method of mutation in my understanding is as follows. A bacterium can get antibiotic resistance by gaining the previously mentioned mutated DNA from another bacterium.
It is important to note that this is still not considered a gain of genetic information since the information already exists and that while the mutated DNA may be new to a particular bacterium, it is not new overall.
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-06 21:00 Edited 2013-06-06 21:04

>It is important to note that this is still not considered a gain of genetic information since the information already exists and that while the mutated DNA may be new to a particular bacterium, it is not new overall.


I do not understand this really. It becomes an overall "information"within this specific population, because this resitant individual is the only one which can survive. So it is the only one which can reproduce itself, while the others are already dead.

Why you would not call this first step part of "evolution"? Maybe it is necessary to define what you think what "evolution" means. Obviously "your" evolution does not implement adaptation by a "stable" change on genetical level.
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-06 22:02

>Maybe it is necessary to define what you think what "evolution" means.


My definition of evolution is the changing of one species into a completely new species.

PS: I have appreciated that you have taken time to discus this topic with me. :)
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-06 21:26
And by the way I am biologist and I already worked with similar things (but not to simulate evolutionary effects)

What you are writing about loss of information and whatever is a crazy  mixture of diverese information which you get from I don't know. I do not want to look up all general mechanisms of Helicobacter pylori which are already known because there are so many different antibioticas with so many different effects. I cannot say by heart which is correct and which is maybe not.
But on thing I can say is that you should pay attention in talking about a "loss of information". What exactly do you mean with information? and what with loss?
THere is another thing: only some bacterias are able to "trade" with DNA. And I am sure it is not working for one to another species in most cases. Furthermore this DNA exchange possibility only helps that a population becomes resistant faster, but it has not to do anything with the "adaption"
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-06 22:13
That's what I think too.
Parent - - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-08 22:25
what do you think, "too"?
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-09 00:01

>only some bacterias are able to "trade" with DNA. And I am sure it is not working for one to another species in most cases. Furthermore this DNA exchange possibility only helps that a population becomes resistant faster


This is what "I think too."
Parent - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-12 18:56
what I wanted to say is: there is no relevant connection to the evolution topic
Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2013-06-05 23:29

> from nothing


Just a side note here. If you are referring to the Big Bang theory, note that what was before the universe is not necessarily 'nothing'. It could be anything, just nothing we can describe or comprehend. Any speculation is most probably futile ('emptiness' being also a speculation).
And that is because our whole perception of reality is based on the natural laws of our universe. It is simply impossible for us to imagine other laws (with other I do not mean changing some variables but truly others).

So 'nothing' is as good a shot as any.
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2013-06-06 01:26

>just nothing we can describe or comprehend.


Do you mean a deity or some "super force"? :)
Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2013-06-06 08:52
Not necessarily, no. As I said, any explanation is as good as any other one. On a scientific basis we will (probably) never be able to prove or disprove anything that was before the universe because the natural laws as we know them were created together with it. We are only capable of deducing findings from these laws because they define our reality and our sensoric system is based on them. Imagining anything beyond that is as difficult (or may I say impossible) as imagining a colour you have never seen before or a taste never tasted.

What was before could be as banal as a former universe collapsing and leaving residue which then resulted in the creation of our one. Or something completely different such as a thing we describe as a deity or a whole race of intelligent beings doing their science. No one knows for a fact.

My side note was directed towards invalidating your try of ridiculing the Big Band theory by stating that people who take it for granted would believe that "something came out of nothing". Even if somewhere someone uses the term 'nothing' to explain the state before the Big Bang, it is - for the above stated reasons - only a guess as good as any (and one that does not matter for explaining the Big Bang).

Finally, yes, you are free to believe that any kind of super force controlled or initiated the Big Bang. Just do not make the mistake of thinking that I, by choosing the word 'incomprehensible', was implying anything in the direction of me believing in such a force. It was simply chosen to go along with my 'you cannot go beyond your perception of reality' argument and meant to be neutral.
Because personally, I did not choose to believe in any deity. But that was not the point.
Parent - By ker [de] Date 2013-06-07 10:39
most likely we are a simulation running inside some kind of cellular automaton.
think about it:
1. maximum speed of information/signals (better known as speed of light)
2. big mess of randomness in the beginning coming from ~nearly nothing (just think about some basic game of life patterns that explode in the beginning and then slowly grow forever)
3. quantum mechanics: most CA have discrete values as the most basic building blocks
Parent - By pluto [ch] Date 2013-06-06 09:17
Do you mean the universy "comes" from "nothing"? or do you mean "live" comes from "nothing"?  the first one is about the big bang theory, the second one more or less about evolution. But I would say it has more to do with the theory of the origin of life, which might not necessarily be a part of the evolution-theory.
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2013-06-06 14:37 Edited 2013-06-06 14:40
Interesting, this is actually something I have though about - and no, I don't. What I personally believe is that there is just no need for something to come from anything. The universe might have been born this very moment for all we know, complete with the memories of an old universe in all of our heads. That's possible, but not very likely - whatever brought our universe into existence would have no reason to construct our memories in a way that adhered to the same rules that hold in the present. Or put another way: The amount of information that happens to be consistent around us is too large for it to be a likely result of chance (or a higher will, if you want).

As a result, I would say any possible explanation is the more likely the simpler it is. There's no direct reason for the big bang to exist, and there's no direct reason for a higher power to exist (apart from that it is a reassuring thought). But if we cannot assume anything and just go by what we see, the simpler our theory, the more likely it is to be true. And it's hard to beat the big bang theory or evolution in that field - creating a universe complete with bipedal humanoids in it is a monumental design task, but assuming a (maybe slightly asymmetric) singularity and a few laws of nature that give rise to evolution mechanics is so easy that it is just far and away the best way to explain things.

And btw, if the problem here is seeing complex structures coming out of simple laws, look at chaos theory. Heck, all of mathematics - Fermat's theorem fits in one page, yet requires hundreds to solve. Or, say, games - a few carefully selected rules, and all of sudden people trying to win create the most complex gameplay. Or the genetic algorithms that I build in my free time right now - give them a problem and you see behaviour develop that you didn't in fact program. The concept of evolution is just beyond any reasonable doubt. That it is what produced our world is just a theory, but a damn probable one.
Parent - - By Caesar [de] Date 2013-06-06 20:47
I think some Greek philosophers would want a word with you: ~Everything is infinite, because nothing can become of nothing.

>The universe might have been born this very moment for all we know, complete with the memories of an old universe in all of our heads.


I once thought this up to add some discussion spice to the boring religious education… Is there a proper name for this theory?

Btw, if you radicalize that theory, the Universe could also be destroyed and created the very same moment. Adds interesting room for new discussion
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2013-06-07 13:04 Edited 2013-06-07 13:09
Greeks might be wrong too - or, more likely, mean different things. But if you start, say, a game world in Clonk, it did in fact come from nothing in frame 0. If we programmed intelligent beings into our game world and never communicated with them, they have no way of deducing anything about the prior states, because (as we know) there simply were none.

To go further: From their point of view, there's zero difference between me having started the simulation or some other guy having started the simulation. For that matter, nobody even needs to start the simulation in the first place - it is enough for someone, somewhere potentially to start that simulation. Someday we might check whether there were actually residents in there scratching their heads about what came before frame 0, but that doesn't change the fact that in their world, they were always doing that. And they would call us crazy for doubting that their world didn't exist forever.

I don't think there's any reason to believe that our world is anything more than the solution to some formulas that somebody somewhere might or might not have calculated. It doesn't actually matter. To reverse a famous Greek saying without having much actual knowledge about the matter - whatever is enough to produce thinking entities is enough to be called "reality" by somebody. And I think the requirements for that might be very low indeed.
Parent - - By Caesar [de] Date 2013-06-07 13:10
I'm sorry to have provoked such an elaborate reply. That is more or less what I'm thinking. :P
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2013-06-07 13:16
Why sorry? It's a fun subject to discuss, I think :)
Up Topic Community / Off Topic / Evolution (locked)
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