Thread: An Intelligent Discussion on Nature

More evidence being found confirms that birds evolved from predatory dinosaurs 50-150 million years ago.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Dinosaurs had 'earliest feathers'

PS Actually, I'm looking for a great photo of a dinosaur fossil, preferably in situ and also preferably Dromaeosaridae; Dromaeosaurus or Deinonichus. Can anybody help?

Another interesting article:The Appendix: Useful and in Fact Promising | LiveScience

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Another interesting article:The Appendix: Useful and in Fact Promising | LiveScience

We can include the tonsils and prepuce with the appendix as well. All useful body parts.

It's a common misunderstanding that "vestigial" means, or implies, "useless". That isn't the case, and the appendix is still considered a vestige.

There's a good article here on the recent paper on the appendix:

Evolution of the appendix? : Pharyngula

What I found particularly of interest was this part:

"We're not saying that Darwin's idea of evolution is wrong — that would be absurd, as we're using his ideas on evolution to do this work," Parker told LiveScience. "It's just that Darwin simply didn't have the information we have now."

So, a scientist is confronted with some evidence that doesn'y fully jibe with what he is pretty much admitting he already assumes is fact. So, instead of rethinking the previous assumption, he diregards what has now come to light.

Compare that with the Dawkins statement here.

Now then, all I'm saying here is that alot of weight gets put behind statements made by "scientists", as if they are above human flaws, operate by purely logical means, when that obviously is not the case. I do believe that the scientific method is a very valuble tool, but one that is difficult to put into full effect due to the GIGO effect (Garbage In, Garbage Out)

So, for a very long time the appendix is held up as a clear example of evolutionary progress, an old part no longer needed, shrivelled and useless. Clearly supporting a particular worldview. Then, when looked at anew, it is discovered that it may indeed look shrivelled and useless, but in fact it serves/served a very good purpose.....

Look at the original post in this thread. Somebody unearths a fossilized lemur, and wants to fit that round peg into his square hole of where he wants it to be. Good science, or bad?

Now here is a question for you: take the famous Lucy remains. Claimed to be a human ancestor, yet bears many, many more resemblances to chimpanzees than humans, so why not assume it is a chimpanzee anscestor, and not necessarily a human one?
And in that vein, evolutionary claims of genetic proof linking one ancestor to another; mitochondria, and all that. Is it not also taken as scientifically valid that we share 95-98% of the same genetic makeup as a chimpanzee? So how do they parse that out? If you were able to take the DNA from Lucy, from you, and from a modern chimpanzee, could you tell who was related to who, if 95% of the stuff is the same?

I'm sorry, Seraphim, your first statement makes no sense to me. Dawkins' statements in the video are many. Perhaps you could clarify what it is exactly that you're asking. I'll attempt an answer of sorts. Darwin was unaware of the digital nature of DNA and assumed it was analogue in nature. He was wrong about that, just as Newton was wrong about the cosmological nature of gravity. Scientists accept what has been failed to be falsified. If there are contradictory elements (like Mercury's orbit with regard to Newtonian physics) they don't throw out the baby with the bath water. They propose new hypotheses and perform new experiments and hopefully come to a new theory which includes the deviant information. So F=ma, still, at the global level, but E=mc² at the galactic level. Photons operate as both waves and particles even though this seems contradictory to us. It is not uncommon for science to improve its understanding of nature.

Ida is not a square peg. It fits exactly where paleontologists predicted it should and has only small differences between its nearest cousins, apparently that it connects the wet nosed and dry nosed descendants of its tree. Ida was predicted well before it was found and found to fit precisely where predicted.

Where did you hear that Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) was more like a chimp than a human? I believe whoever told you that was incorrect.
These simple images should make that clear. If not a little research on the net should enhance that.

[Edit] Perhaps there is a confusion in that Lucy bears more resemblance to chimps than we do. The reason then to accept her as a hominid is that she bears more resemblance to us than she does to a chimp. View the following video segment at about the three minute mark for a dramatic representation of some differences in the gate of homo sapiens (human), australopithecus afarensis (Lucy), pan troglodytus (Chimp) and pan paniscus (Bonobo)

I was interested a little while back in discovering exactly how much like humans bonobos are, how they might evolve. I discovered that while Lucy is about three million years behind us, the bonobo would be millions of years behind that even.

We actually share the great majority of our DNA with all living things on the planet. The little differences are still profound ones. I'm not an expert in DNA, but I'm pretty sure that the DNA code would only tell us what we see anyhow and would indeed identify how closely related various species are.

I just want to correct some thinking here.

E=MC^2 is not just galatical gravity understood, (ie: curvature of objects and space itself by gravitational force) it describes things much closer to us then say some blue shifted galaxy at the end of our galatic cluster.

E=mc^2 describes hydrostatic equilibrium, the source of all life on this planet, and without that balance being understood, our whole understanding of our existance would be moot.imho

On the topic of sperm meeting egg, and the results of two identical humans, wouldn't it be easily deduced by determining the true amount of human beings that have walked the earth, because as far as I know, there's never been a recorded story of two strangers running into one another and being identically similar, except on late night tv ofcourse.


With regards to God, god is subjective, and entirely unprovable except from a logic standpoint, this type of discussion is called Ontology.

There is a final point in Ontology by a philosopher Popper. He basically stated if you say god is dead or god has never exsisted, you have created and killed him in the same very statement, meaning the concept of god itself makes god exsist from a logical standpoint.

I'll leave you with that.

cheers
D

Originally Posted by Sirshavesalot

On the topic of sperm meeting egg, and the results of two identical humans, wouldn't it be easily deduced by determining the true amount of human beings that have walked the earth, because as far as I know, there's never been a recorded story of two strangers running into one another and being identically similar, except on late night tv ofcourse.

I spoke with a few mathematicians on the subject a little while ago and we worked out that (without factoring in genetic mutation or genetic drift) with a holding population of about ten million people on the earth, it would take about 100,000 years for two identical people to appear. That's far more homo sapiens than have ever lived already.

I also found these two informative (among many disinformative) videos on YouTube cataloguing some of the differences between chimps and Lucy, Seraphim.
YouTube - Lucy was not a chimp