Life, would you like a side of religion with that?

[cowsmanaut]

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid= ... 3688075007

if you can spare an hour to watch it.. and would like to discuss afterwards.

I find it rather interesting.

[Joramun]

I think this documentary is very interesting but makes some dangerous historic confusions.

Attributing the crimes of the soviet union (notably under Staline) or the Jacobins in France to "atheism extremism" is wrong.The crime were those of a terrifying dictatorship, under the ideology of communism, or in the case of the Jacobins (during french first revolution), the idea of getting rid of the power of the Catholic Church, which was overwhelming at that time. So it's not really atheism, it's the following of a "political religion". And IMHO it's arguable that following a political idea to such extreme can be considered a religion. I mean communism was not only political, it also ruled the way people leaved day to day, and changed there moral values and psychology, through propaganda and oppression. And it was the same of the Terror during the french revolution : the revolutionary wanted to impose their newly created ideas and way of life to every one by any means.

I was an atheist and then agnostic (without creed), now I define myself more as an existentialist. It means I don't deny god(s) existence, but it is unecessary to my understanding (and misunderstanding) of the world. You can read "Jean-Paul Sartre" for further information on existentialism

I do think violence, extremism is due to the politisation of religion and it's use and abuse as a mean to control people. Over history, crimes in name of religion or ideology were commited mostly when the religion/idea was under the command of some organisation / gurus etc. or as a response to oppression / violence.

I don't like the piece about physics, but it's probably because I'm studying quantum physics and don't agree with the way science is compared to religion. I think the idea that the "fine-tuning" of the constants of the universe to host life is proof of god's existence is pointless
- Physically : We don't even know the meaning of those constants, the precision we have on them, and besides how can we pretend that life can exist only in a universe like ours ?
- Religiously : if god exists and wants life, why hasn't he made a universe with more than a few planets with life per billion billion (...) lightyear-cube ? (ok this one is falacious too , but religion is too "man-centered" - should be woman-centered maybe )

Then about Darwinism and evolution... Well I don't think darwinism goes against religion. It goes agains religion taken to the letter. Of course if you do believe that the world was made 5000 years ago (or BC, don't remember) you're out of any reasonable arguing. You can as well worship the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster. The progress of the Catholic Church (or at least some people in it) in developping a fully metaphoric interpretation of the books, was a great step forward to understanding what is the purpose of science. Science does not assert truthes, it asserts causality within the observable world, that is seeks the cause and logic of events without relying on an invisible hand. Darwinism is the explanation of the life as we see it with only observable physical and logical reasons. And eugenism is the contrary of Darwinism. Darwinism says : your genes survived because you were *lucky* and able to reproduce. If it goes on for further generations, it means you are adapted to current environment. It's not a course to betterment : the process of selection is PASSIVE. Euginism gives arbitrary criteria of "better beings" and then makes ACTIVE selection through murder / sterilisation. Note that man is probably not an adapted specie because it is destroying the environment it adapted in, and so will probably soon face a massive extinction of itself.

Too conclude, I mostly disagree with this documentary, and don't like the way it presents things. But I do agree that the atheist creed is not morally better than religion, because the very reason there is violence, wars and crime, is not because of religion, but because of human nature. Religion is only one of the numerous areas where our "raw nature" is seen : man is an animal with a highly "conditionable" mind, and some people use this characteristic to influence / condition other people, when it is not the structure of the society and its dynamics that do it by itself.

The only way in which atheism is better, is that atheism doesn't host internal conflicts (as far as I know ), while every religion is torn apart between different cults (like Protestant / Catholic / Orthodox or Chiite / Sunnite ... ) I also notice that polytheisms are less prone to violence and intolerance.

[Sophia]

This didn't quite resonate with me, either, though it was interesting.

It seems to me that phrasing it as "atheism vs religion" is a bit of apples and oranges, because in a pure form, "atheism" is simply the opposite of "theism": the belief in a god/supreme being/creator whatever, vs. the belief that there is no such thing. It seems like you could eschew the whole concept of 'organized religion' as a tool of an establishment to ram beliefs down your throat and take your time/money, whilst still believing in spiritual/supernatural things.

To me, in addition to the duality of theism vs atheism-- and maybe this is what the documentary was talking about-- there is also a whole "religion of atheism" (where one takes religion to be a set of belief systems with dogma, rules, scripture etc.) based on the principle of no god, but also based on secular humanism, science, Darwinism, etc.

I agree with Joramund on the point that Communism is another "religion," founded on the idea of atheism, but with lots of other economic and social beliefs thrown in. The fact that Communism is atheist is likely not responsible for its brutality, as things like radicalized Islam prove that the devout can be quite brutal too.

However, that means that rival atheist "religions" could and will crop up. Communism opposed with some radically different but also atheist belief system, for example. For that matter, Communism against Communism. The Soviets and the Chinese didn't get along, nor did the Chinese and Vietnamese, or the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge.

[cowsmanaut]

What it really ends with is that people with strong beliefs one way or annother can often feel as though they need to defend that belief. As he said, that those who are wrong need to be punished somehow. Regardless of their religious standing. Religion against religion, or Religion against Atheist, it really makes no difference.

Ultimately he closes with a sort of statement about "Why can't we all just get along" which I feel is the true point of the documentary. He shows both sides in their most extreme. Granted there has been a bit of a spin on it, to greater solify his argument.. but ultimately, he has a point to make to show the atheists who are on the war path that they too have a sortid past.

I'm not religious, though I do wonder how some things can simply evolve. I mean, having an ecosystem that is so balanced that when one species is gone, several other die out, and others to over populate. That intruduction of a new speices can destroy the ecosystem as well. Ie, what are the chances of a pin falling onto annother pin and balancing perfectly tip to tip?

It seems almost rediculous to assume that there is not hand at play in the design of some of these ultimately perfect elements of nature. An Maple tree's seed is a propeller. It flies on the wind to a new location so that they do not seed to close to eachother and thus compete for soil and sun. Not enough to convince? Perhaps the maple tree itself was/is conscious of itself and reinvented itself by making a new way to deliver it's seed.

How about the squirrel who takes the acrons which are a favorite food and buries them. This odd desire in no way benefits the squirrel really.. nor does the fact that it has a HORRIBLE memory which means that the acorn then grows into a full tree because the squirrel has this insatiable urge to go and bury it's nuts everywhere.. travel far distances braving even heavy traffic, just to get the nuts spread out. In fact such an urge often gets them killed in large numbers, so it's not survival of the fittest here.. since really it's quite retarded. Unless squirrels and oak trees have a long standing agreement as life long friends these past few centuries...

who knows.. perhaps it is all just wonderful conicidence. Or perhaps aliens.. or maybe their is a deity of some kind out there.

[beowuuf]

Or, as Douglas Adams once said, it's like a puddle getting self aware, looking around, and going 'wow, this hole I'm in fits...it fits really well...a little bit too well...surely that can't be by chance...

Survivial of the fittest is merely 'survivial of those that can reproduce best'. As long as the squirrels reproduce in large enough numbers, it does not matter it then has an inhenrnt flaw of going to bry nuts in stupid places and dying, this trait will carry on as there is nothing to oppose it - especialyl if the nutty burier speciaes then has give its next generation more nuts around to eat

[cowsmanaut]

indeed.. well I think the puddle idea is a little far stretching, though amusing. The nut and squirrel argument has some validity though. They spread out the food and thus have more, and then can breed more and have more food and so on. I would suppose that stands. But how about berries which tempt little bears and rabbits to eat them but the seeds are immune to digestive juices. so that they are carried in thier stomach for a while and then are burried in prime fertaliser in a new location ready to grow into a new plant... how does random convergance explain that?

given time you can come up with a good many seemingly flawless designs that seem less than accidental due to their excellent nature.

For instance the Maple seed if it's flight was irregular and flawed, if it's seeds were not all so perfectly shaped.. it would seem a bit more random wouldn't it? instead each is the same and perfect.. their flight and design seem manufactured exccelence. In fact it seems almost as if it's grown a pair of dragonfly wings and attached them to each seed.

it's not the only thing.. in fact as scientists and inventors we look to nature to make our lives more convenient. Zippers, aeronautics, velcro, Radar, advanced telescopes, Themometers, fiber optics, etc are all based on things found in nature.. and more.

we ourselves with our vast resources and big brains still look to the "random evolution" examples around us for perfection in design to solve our needs and scientific problems. In many cases we can not improve on them. Apparently they are still trying to figure out how to make something as strong as spider web for equivilent thickness. Which is yet annother question.. how does one evolve to make a super hard and sticky substance come out of your but so you can make a big net from it of fantastic design and strength (spiders, ants, and bees are fantastic architects) so you can catch other bugs and eat them.... ??

too many questions and not enough answers. God? Aliens? random accident? the accident is the easiest solution only because it doesn't spurn more questions. If it's god or aliens.. we have a why? a how? and a... who made them? because if we say random accident to them.. then why not random accident instead of them..?! we run in circles and tie our brains in knots.

[George Gilbert]

It seems to me that phrasing it as "atheism vs religion" is a bit of apples and oranges.

One could argue that it's apples and apples too! Atheism and religion are both examples of peoples (sometimes extreme) belief in something that they have no proof of (by the same token that humanity can't prove there is a God, they can't also prove that there isn't one).

I think the real debate to be had is between agnostism and blind faith. I.e. those people who accept that we don't know what's out there, and those people who are utterly convinced on the basis of no available evidence that they do know what's out there (whether that be something or nothing).

[cowsmanaut]

I'd say I'm willing to accept I have no idea if there is or isn't a god.. after all.. I think the search can sometimes be more rewarding than the answer..

[Joramun]

GG : I agree with that point. Atheism can be considered a creed, and therefore a faith.
What Sophia calls "atheist religion" (or what I call political ideology) is also a system of faith. Communism and Capitalism are two different paradigm that fought fiercely against each other.

Cowsmanaut : what you're talking about is called "Intelligent Design". It's the belief, on the contrary of darwinism, that some external cause or preprogrammed idea in DNA leads the evolution where it should. But then, is the same force that brought the dinosaurs to extinction to make place for mammals and us ? I think it is a very "human"-centered idea. Dinosaurs were much more adapted to the planet than mammals, they survived for 150 million years. It is only the accident of an asteroid fall and the climate change that followed that allowed the mammals to take over. Also it means the very first bacteria had coded in itself the human being ? Or that a god slightly pushed our dna molecules so that we appeared ?

I really believe all the odds of squirrels and nuts, maple tree etc. are the result of million years of random evolution. What we should take into consideration is that our knowledge of how DNA exactly program our body to grow is very limited. We only know that almost every single protein we have in our body is coded into the DNA. But what tells the body to grow this or that way ? It must be coded in some way too.

There is a very interesting book by a french biologist called "De l'oeuf à l'éternité" ("From the egg to eternity") by Vincent Fleury (it is recent, not yet published in english, if ever). He studied how life forms proceed to get there shape during their growth. To sum it up, he thinks that the form into which a being grow [which is not evolution] is neither the result of a random chance OR an external cause. It is mainly due to : the mechanic property of each "organic fabric" (like different members, muscles, bones, skin of plant hard/soft matter) and the rate at which they grow. He did simulation of growth of different "fabrics" sticked together, and depending on their respective properties and growth, the body takes a different shape : when the growth rate is not the same, curves and folding appear and grow, giving birth to the prototypes of members or ribs etc. He states in his book that the DNA codes the proteins and the hormons that control the growth of each fabric are sufficient to shape the human body, or carots, by the same general processes. It is really interesting (and convincing). It shows that subtle change in the maples DNA would have given their the seed a slightly different shape, but those who had a flying seed spread much wider, while others didn't procreate that fast (because a tree grows slower in the shadow of its parent (or any other) tree). So this "theory" allows a random evolution of DNA code to shape our body in determined forms through simple mechanical properties. In this respect, it agrees with darwinism idea of evolution and selection.

Of course this is only an idea, but it is very important for biologist to explain things in terms of natural logic, else it is not a science anymore.

[zoom]

a tree grows slower in the shadow of its parent (or any other) tree)

I don't think that is true. It grows differently for sure. The tree will stretch out more and grows vigorously, yet not as swollen as in full sunlight and a bit fragile. It is hard to explain, don't know if you ever go into the forest? Leavage does not swallow up as much sunlight as you might think.(80% gets through or sth).
Temperature under a tree (or a forest ) is much less fluctuent(changeing) and therefore more moderate than on a grassy plain.[in the night it is warmer and in the day it is cooler]. I believe I heard that little trees grow better in groups(wind protection, etc), up to a point when they are fighting over water or size makes problems.I guess some trees were made to grow in forests.

[Sophia]

One could argue that it's apples and apples too! Atheism and religion are both examples of peoples (sometimes extreme) belief in something that they have no proof of (by the same token that humanity can't prove there is a God, they can't also prove that there isn't one).

No, atheism and theism are both examples of that. Those are the two apples.
Religion is a system of beliefs, and possibly dogmas, that give an overall view of the supernatural, etc. To me, that means it may or may not include a supreme being. It also doesn't necessarily have to be "organized religion," which is a different kind of fruit altogether-- perhaps a lemon.

I think the real debate to be had is between agnostism and blind faith.

Or, you might say, those who question and adapt against those who remain rigid in their ideologies no matter what.

what you're talking about is called "Intelligent Design". It's the belief, on the contrary of darwinism, that some external cause or preprogrammed idea in DNA leads the evolution where it should.

I don't know about this, at least as the phrase is usually used in the US.
Here at least, "Intelligent Design" does not have anything to do with evolution at all, even evolution that got a helping hand-- it's simply a polite name for "creationism."

[beowuuf]

But how about berries which tempt little bears and rabbits to eat them but the seeds are immune to digestive juices. so that they are carried in thier stomach for a while and then are burried in prime fertaliser in a new location ready to grow into a new plant... how does random convergance explain that?

Berries that aren't spread wide enough don't create a dominant species, and I guess ones that animals eat and excreete along with fertaliser is by far one of the best methods of spreading your seed, better even that aerodynamic seed pods.

Obviously, berries that are nice enough to eat so carried by animals but robust enough to be excreted again will then be the only ones carried far, hence the backbone of dominant flora as they develop. Again, restroactive perception of your environment and circumstances and how well you fit into it.

[cowsmanaut]

the fact that they spread well is not in questions, the fact that they are coated in a tasty and appealing nutricious fruint shell and then protected with a hard shell that is resistant to being chewed or digested. It seems so specific that it was intending for yet again, spread by animal.. down to the very minute detail.

I just personally, find it hard to understand how something so precise can happen by pure accident. Certainly anything is possible.. but when you look at the probability of that.. and as I said.. dropping two pins and have them balance tip to tip standing straight up.. how often do you suppose that would happen? at least not without a little nudge..

here's a neat little idea.. a fantasy likley... but still interesting. Suppose when this meteor landed, we were visited by aliens. They saw the potential for all the life on the planet to die out so they made an effort to save what they thought could be saved. we have the technology new to be able to create new species. We can grow a human ear on the back of a rodent. We can genetically splice different plants to make new heartier or tastier fruits and plants. Imagine where we will be tomorrow.. and imagine the idea that someone else may have gotten there long before us...

If we as humans discovered life on annother planet, just barely evolved.. mostly stupid animals.. and then we saw impending doom, do you suppose we would not make some attempt to save them? Or is sympathy only a human trait?

I suppose thats verging on scientology either way though.. it's yet annothr possibility that is neither proveable or dissprovable. All though based on our ability divine the nature of our universe.. it seems slightly more likley than an actual deity. At least from a scientific standpoint.

[beowuuf]

It seems so specific that it was intending for yet again, spread by animal.. down to the very minute detail.

Yes, the hole fits the puddle very well.

You can see it as a seed would have to eventually have those characteristics to be the most survivable (by evolutionary theory) to survive. Only the sweetest seeds get picked up, that characteristic carries, but only on those seeds that also have an ability to not be destroyed carry on too.

Hey, it can work in reverse too - the animals who eat the non-toxic seeds develop a taste for them, so the taste thing doens't necessary have to come first, because those that eat the other deadly berries instead that 'taste' better die. But hey, those deadly berried ones survive too, although it is stupid to poison your carrier, because then birds drop them.

Anyway, I'm not fully conversant with evolution beyond what evreyone knows, but that's my understamnding. I also seem to recall that Darwin's deeper theroies also bordered on a religeon himself, as if there was some will to even evolution - anyone?

Anyway, my feeling is you don't design somehtign to do a task, the function designs the item (In a way). Also, spreading by animal dung is not the best carrier method at all, since it relies on a seconardary species. And perhaps ploantlife that can sap nutriants from dung become dominant, dung did not used to be the perfect fertaliser millions of years ago. It simply seems he best after the fact, since it works so well.

Just like mamilian reproduction, when you compare it to everything else it's actually one of the best in terms of ensuring fertilsiation and nurture, yet that doens't mean it was intelligently designed, there are surely much better ways!

Anywa, I am rabbiting on, mostly because my connection seems stable again! Woohoo!

[Gambit37]

This is the kind of discussion I really enjoy -- face to face. I can't deal with such an interesting topic in this format.

[cowsmanaut]

yes I knew this subject would get some attention... after all we are the RPG sort.. we like to ask questions, solve riddles, and look in every corner for the answer we need.

back to the topic though.. Fuzzface.. you can't say that dung wasn't the best fertaliser back one million years ago.. because no one now who can tell us, was alive or potentially even using dung at all back then. so we really don't know..

That aside, I think that disemination through animal carriers is a great way to go about it since animals are a rather random carrier.. they can travel a good distance.. more so than the maple seed ever hopes to get, though the dandylion seed has a good distance sometimes.. at any rate, the beasts also have a tendancy to stay near water.. which is ideal for the plants.

Sybiosis can be said to be the first design, as they seem to think that the pairing of symbiotic organisms led to more complex life forms in the first place. There even is a stict need sometimes for symbiosis. Not thinking about parasites at all which really do not aid.. but think about the cleaner fish down along the reef who are not eaten by the sharks.. in fact the sharks go there to be cleaned of nasty parasites which these cleaner fish eat. Withou their aid the sharks could become rather ill and even die. Odd isn't it? that this fish happens to be conveniently available, and not only that but has some kind of relationship with the shark that it recognises them and does not eat them? Have a crack at that one

Why not simply eat the fish? and why evolve to eat parasites of other fish? That one is just bizzare to me in terms of evolution. The sharks that didn't eat these fish didn't get sick as often and so could breed easier because they were healthy.. and they uhm would in fact go in.. lay down on a rock and let these fish eat off them.. and.. uh... WTF? chicken and the egg alert.. let's just say I buy that.. how does the fish's evolutionary pattern fit here and which comes first? the shark or the fish?

worlds mysteries keep popping up

[beowuuf]

well, actually the fact that animals are random carries and are infact just as likely to dump the seeds in unsuitable dry ground, under other established foliage, etc doens't make them perfect, just better than most

Personally for intelligent design of eater fish, woulnd't the extretions of the cleaner fish from coral poisoning the shark parasites be a much more intelligent design - again, THAT might have happened but is less likely, as the ticks who would die from that would not breed - whereas you gave a far fetched but logical reason why not, or it can just be random chance.

People seem to think that random chance is so outlandish, however when dealing with a bewildering amount of species, random chance actually would become quite common in alot of places

As you say, its a chicken and the egg, you can arue both sides sdo no point in debating it anymore, it's jut a fun thought experiment, but the fact is these pairing exist, and whether you ascribe to god, intelligent design, random chance, evolution, or whatever for the moment there has been nothing conclusive that can shake any faith position

[Joramun]

Zoooom : you're probably right now that i think about it. But a tree that spreads its seeds farther is bound to be more successful than others, isn't it ?
(at equal rates of growth / procreation )

I don't know about this, at least as the phrase is usually used in the US.
Here at least, "Intelligent Design" does not have anything to do with evolution at all, even evolution that got a helping hand-- it's simply a polite name for "creationism."

Yeah, they tried to sell a sweeter pill here in France, it's actually a french "anthropologist" (I don't think she got the actual doctor status) which came up with an idea of a design in man's evolution.

Cows : I don't think aliens are a satisfying reason for evolution ( Who made THEM evolve ? That's the alien chicken and alien egg )
But I agree that beyond the shapes of evolution, what is truly amazing are behaviours : bees, cleaner fish, spiders. For "less" intelligent species, I suppose it means behaviours are dna-coded or learnt through early conditioning. But for mammals, birds, well I suppose we get only a photography of evolution, so we can't really grasp how it working on the larger scale. (That's a bit like climate change )

[George Gilbert]

I just personally, find it hard to understand how something so precise can happen by pure accident. Certainly anything is possible.. but when you look at the probability of that.. and as I said.. dropping two pins and have them balance tip to tip standing straight up.. how often do you suppose that would happen? at least not without a little nudge..

Cows (and anyone else); the key point here is that evolution is a result, not a process. What you need to look at and understand is the process and evolution "just happens" as a result of it.

The process in question is Natural Selection (which is what Darwinism is, specifically, Darwin didn't propose evolution, just pointed out that it's bound to happen given the process of natural selection).

To understand natural selection you only need to understand two concepts; A) that each generation is very slightly different from it's parents and B) that these differences can cause an advantage / disadvantage in the environment in which it lives in.

Let's take the berries as an example. Let's say that at some point each berry has a "tastiness qotient" (TQ) of 0.5 (1.0 is really tasty, 0.0 is horrible). The next generation of berries will be very slightly different, some berries will have a TQ of 0.50001 and others 0.49999. Now let's look at the animals that eat the berries and let's say that they "prefer" tastier berries to less tasty ones. Now the difference is tastyness is very very small between each of the berry types but on averge, over a long period of time, the animals will tend to eat more of the 0.50001 berries than 0.49999 berries and so fractionally more of the 0.50001 berries will form new plants.

The next generation of berries also display variation from their parents and so there will be some at 0.50002, some at 0.50000 and some at 0.49998. Crucially though, there will be ever so slightly more of the 0.50002 berries than the 0.49998 berries (because there are more 0.50001 parents that grew than 0.49999 parents that grew).

Fast forward a few billion years and there are now lots of 1.0 tasty berries. Note that the berries did not "choose" to become tastier, in fact an awful lot of berries (about 50%) were actually less tasty than their parents, but by the process of natural selection the berries "evolved" to become sweeter because it gave them an advantage in their environment.

Anyway, after all that ramble, let's look at the pin example you gave. Now there I agree with you, dropping two pins and them both ending up vertical is phenomenally unlikely. BUT, pins don't evolve into that position; there is no "advantage" to the intermediate states between flat and vertical (in fact it's impossible).

So, the way you need to look at evolution is by looking at the intermediate states and asking yourself, is it possible that this change gave the thing a slight breeding advantage over other random mutations in the opposite direction? If so, then you get evolution, if not, then you don't.

Clearly everyone is entitled to make their own mind up with regard to where those 0.5 berries came from in the first place (or if you invoke evolution from another plant, where that came from, or if you invoke evolution several more times, where all matter in the universe came from), but I think that the process of natural selection giving rise to evolution of the species is a done deal and bordering on irrifutable.

[George Gilbert]

BTW; the above is a simplified version of evolution by natural selection where there is only one environment, only one method of producing offspring (animals eating berries), and only one indicator of suitability (tastiness).

If you have multiple environments etc then you get diversity.

For example, consider a generic blob that lives on the beach. That blob will (via random mutation between generations) spontaneously have random very slight protrusions on it's blobiness.

- Those blobs that happen to have "fin-like" protrusions that give them a slight advantage in the water will catch more food and therefore stand a greater chance of having offspring (and therefore their starting point for mutation will be a fin like mutation which, via natural selection will grow over billions of years into fish suited for water).

- Those blobs that happen to have "feet-like" protrusions that give them a slight advantage on the land etc etc evolve into mammals.

The point is that by asking "isn't it amazing that such-and-such is particularly suited to it's environment" completely misses the point. The process of natural selection virtually guarantees that every creature is suited for it's environment. It's not amazing at all, it's blindingly obvious and no matter what the environment was / is / will be, it will always be the case that, given sufficient time, the creatures that inhabit it will be those that are suited to it (because those that weren't didn't breed as well and so eventually die out).

[beowuuf]

http://www.bash.org/?95326

And again, saying 'isn't it a freakish co-incidence' also ignores that, out of a whole planet, only a few sets of each thing actually reach these equalibriums. The many, many that didn't either died out, or do soemthign else - sometimes just as brilliantly suited to their environment, or other times of such salmon-like stupidity you know that there can be no design behind it

Or, as another example, epopel would go 'isn't that freakish to get 10 heads come up in a row in a coin toss' ye wouldn't bat an eyelid if the freakish head/tail/head/tail progression came up ten times, when that is equally aslikely/unlikely - it just appears more random. Similarly, we can miss some of the more mundane co-incidental miracles because they are..well, mundane, and ascribe more weight to something that seems really cool, even though the probability of it happenign if it is a necessary requirement for somethign to live would be quite low really

[cowsmanaut]

My point was, why did that fist shark just lay down? and why did the Cleaner fish trust it enough to eat off it? I mean asside from these traits evolving into their species at all.. it seems even that situation based on the nature of those species in the first place. if the cleaner fish excreeted a numbing agent and were fast swimmers like mosquitos then I wouldn't wonder so much..

as for the aliens. What if we saw those aliens and their past and their past was so much more accident after accident. That they developed biological enhancement sciences out of a need for more order in their world? That if you look at them before they invented it an they were all mutations.. no one quite the same as the others..

Most of the selective mutation going on now is human aided... and yet in nature, we are not seeing any hints of it. Even over the past 170 years or so since darwin gave us his theory.

Or perhaps we have and I'm just not aware of them?

[Joramun]

Well, I see your point. But I think it's more amazing if it all happens by natural processes rather than calling to an external entity, be it interstellar blobs or "godly entities".

I don't think sharks suddenly let the cleaner eat on themselves, because it was not a cleaner in the first place. Only men call them cleaners. They are just fishes that eat parasites on the skin of other fishes. Only though a very long process were selected fishes which had a better hygiene, which were the one that let those "cleaner" fishes approach them. And a coselection of fishes which had a smooth way of approach occured, leading to the current situation of a cleaner and cleaned fishes. There is a parasite that imitates the cleaner fish but instead of cleaning bites its victim !

[beowuuf]

Actually cleaner fish are small and sharks larger why would the shark attaclk somehting that isn't harming it that is too fast and small to make a meal, and why wouldn't a cleaner fish start eating off of anything, living or not, that is not darting about and large enough to be a table?

170 years is nothign to the evolutionary theory I'm afraid, I am guessing it is fossil records etc thta provide any evidence at all. There may be short lived species that show some traits but i don't know of them either. The rainforest with its teeming life and millions of species would be a good place to see that sort of thing, but we are of course killing it off much faster than we can explore and catalogue it

For all we know we have met alines already - their forms perceptions and reality would be so diffrent from our own that is recognised as 'life' here would we even spot them? Assuming they ever recognised us as so and came anywhere close to this way

Has some strange interference pattern been ignore by seti as it is the actual alien, travelling through space, not a message. And similarly were we ignored as there is no sentinence in our radiowave transmissions, the only thing thye would perceive?

The thought that life would evolve as a the same form of living, breathing, thinking as us and what exists on this planet always strikes me as rather odd.

[mikko]

Of course it's much faster when people forcibly breed cats, dogs, horses and whatever animals or plants.. In nature it's a much slower process and 170 years is really nothing in the history of the world.

I think that George's posts above are very good and worth a second or even third read..

[cowsmanaut]

well we can see a species go from in danger to extinct in a matter of 100 years. We can through selective breeding see a new species in a of dog or cat or horse etc in a matter of 10 years. Selective breeding is not so much forcing them at gun point.. it's just a matter of making sure they are in the same room. Proximity is really what is important here. We see some examples of that with feral cats and dogs in cities.

Ofcourse some breeding experiments go horribly wrong, for instance the Mule, which is the offspring of the male donkey and female horse. The end result is a mule which is almost always sterile. This can be annother example of why some new species never went past their first mutation..

Either way, it is possible to see mixes, and spontaneous mutation instantly. lets say for exampel rabbits. Rabbits breed like crazy, their gestation period is about 1 month and they only live about 5-10 years. accepting there will be some overlap in 170 years you should expect about 28 or so generations within that time period at minimum, they also tend to produce 3-7 babies at a go. increasing the chance for deviation in the genetic make up.

So, where is our atlantic humpback aquatic hare? (kidding)

but you see, those with shorter life spans and greater breeding cycles have more potential to evolve in a shorter time span. Mice is annother example. Some animals have a drive to breed so strong it kills. The Ferret is an example of this, if a female ferret goes into heat 3 times without being bred she will die. As if the body assumes she is in some way unfit to breed and therefore should not be eating the food supply as she doesn't help move on the species.. this is again what seems like brutally cold but intelligent design. Though I can still agree it is possible to be random.. I just have trouble swallowing that without some assistance.

I agree that it is equally amazing if it happens by complete fluke, but, not quite as cool

Someone just informed me there is an example of evolution going on now. There are examples of a new breed of elephant which are developing no tusks. Because of this they are not being hunted and thus go on to live longer lives.. now the females normally are attracted to the ones with the tusks... but since they are distinctly unavailable .. the one without tusks are breeding more.

interesting..

[Gambit37]

Someone just informed me there is an example of evolution going on now. There are examples of a new breed of elephant which are developing no tusks. Because of this they are not being hunted and thus go on to live longer lives.. now the females normally are attracted to the ones with the tusks... but since they are distinctly unavailable .. the one without tusks are breeding more.

interesting..

Source?

[cowsmanaut]

http://site-essential.com/archive/2005/07/18/5414.php

I just did a search.. there are a number of links on the subject.. the above is just one of them...

[Zyx]

Adding to what George said, here's an example about how it could have happened that seeds " are coated in a tasty and appealing nutricious fruit shell and then protected with a hard shell that is resistant to being chewed or digested. "

Let's start from a hypothetical era when trees didn't have all this sophistication, when after the fertilzation they only yielded shell-less, tasteless and fleshless seeds.
Any mutation giving more energy to the seed would give an advantage for natural selection, since the seed could grow from its reserve instead of having to nurture from the soil from the beginning.
Thus, through natural selection, the seeds would slowly evolve into fleshy seeds. Or better said, trees wiht flesh seeds would slowly supplant trees with fleshless seeds.

At this point, if a new mutation led an animal to feed on seeds, then, unlike in the past, it would find a rich source of energy and thus be advantaged: the mutated gene would then be favoured through the natural selection, leading after millenia to a population of seed-feeding animals.

The selective pressure on the trees would thus build up: having fleshy seeds would be less and less advantageous, since more and more animals were becoming fructivore.

From this state of things, several mutations could lead to new advantages:
- a gene for toxic flesh would kill any fructivore feeding on the mutant tree.
- a gene for bad taste would dissuade the fructivore to eat - or keep eating after the first one - the seeds of the tree
- a harder skin would forbid being eaten (ie, coconut)
- a resistant core would save the seed, even if eaten.
This last mutation would also have the benefit that if eaten by an animal, besides still being to live and grow, the seed would travel further, thus having more opportunities of unclaimed soil and light spots.

Suppose one of our trees had a resistant core mutation. The population of unshelled seed trees would slowly tend to a population of shelled seed trees through natural selection.

From this point, since being eaten by an animal would give an advantage, a mutation for being tasty, or attractive through color or smell would be selected.

One could even go further saying than any mutation that could somehow help the fructivore animals would indirectly help the spreading of the seeds, so a mutation of the skin of the fruit that render the animal immune to a crippling disease for example, would still be selected because it benefits the tree (or to be more precise, it benefits the mutated gene for his reproduction). But I'm just extrapolating. I don't know if there are known examples of this particular case, though other mutualisms are known.

Etc., etc.

I just made up this theory and I don't know if it really happened this way in this case. It's just a possible path. Anyway, I think it gives a correct idea of how co-evolution can happen.


@Parallax: who is this anthropologist?
Teilhard de Chardin already emited the idea of directed evolution, coining the term of omega point, using the also the word Noosphere, trying the unify the christian dogma with the idea of evolution, etc. His ideas reached a big impact in the 60' and are still widely discussed nowadays. The idea of directed evolution, anyway, is a recurrent ghost, every two or three years I hear a new theory about it. Since it cannot be verificated, it cannot be refuted either.

[cowsmanaut]

there are a few birds who are immune to some of our local poison berries. So they can eat them but we can't. I remember learning this when Iw as young.. so yes, the animals can just as easily adapt to the change in the bushes.. the advantage here is an abundant food source that no one else can eat.

The evolutionarily called dibs on those berries

(yes I just made that word up)

anyway, the way you describe it all gives an idea of sentience to the plants though as they would need to make this change if animals were eating up all their berries and they could not reproduce. it would need to happen quickly or they die out.

This is a point at which intelligent design perhaps does not need to come from an external source.. but perhaps an internal one?

Gold fish for example, do not grow beyond the limits of their bowl but when thrown into a lake can grow very large. So based on their environment they seemingly choose to stop growing. Bamboo can shoot through solid rock but then choose to go around a floor of a house because humans walk across it.

It often seems that perhaps by some means the internal organisms, (let us remember that they say we started through symbiotic organisms joingin to make more complex organisms) could be aware of more than we are concious of. We've seen examples of genetic memory. Creatures growing up with instinct and behaviour so specific you would think it was learned. Yet it carries on just from birth. Even sometimes not from birth. They have supposed reports of people who have transplants and then get cravings for foods that the person who orriginally owned the organ enjoyed.

perhaps we have small things inside of us aware of the surroundings we exist in, see the flaws and act accordingly, based on our needs.

Perhaps it's them that scream to us when someone is watching us, letting us know..