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Is Mankind A Fluke?

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Clara Tea

Well-Known Member
Awestruck by the complexity of life, and struck by unknowns, minds drift to deities and aliens. Some see a strange event in the sky and assume that it is alien (from another planet or solar system).

Yet, we know that DNA organizes small cells into complex beings. We just don't have detailed knowledge of the whole process (yet).
 
Cooky

Cooky

Veteran Member
Clara Tea said:
Awestruck by the complexity of life, and struck by unknowns, minds drift to deities and aliens. Some see a strange event in the sky and assume that it is alien (from another planet or solar system).

Yet, we know that DNA organizes small cells into complex beings. We just don't have detailed knowledge of the whole process (yet).
Click to expand...

if you straightened out all the DNA in your body, it would be about twice the diameter of the Solar System. It could wrap around the earth 2.5 million times, or reach to the sun and back 300 times
 
Cooky

Cooky

Veteran Member
ADigitalArtist said:
The vast majority of religions have no problem with evolution. Just a small subset o

The odds are incredibly good for traits which fill an ecological niche to be selected and further refined multiple times.
Wings are not one mutation that happened, there were incredibly long periods where non-wing or 'half wing' like structures that couldn't be used for flight existed before wings.
But if a 'half wings' used by theropod dinosaurs for display, insulation and egg brooding gave them access to more food because they could jump longer or glide, then bigger, more complicated, more flight specific wings would be a natural result as more food and better survival = small traits that add up to a specific behavior. So the thousands of non-flying dinosaurs are gone because they couldn't reliably get as good food and survival escapes as flying dinosaurs.
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Not only did feathers develop independently in flying dinosaurs, and birds, but Anseriformes and Galliformes also developed feathers with similar patterns independently from one another... This makes little sense as far as selection is concerned. It is surprising.

Evolutionary pathways to convergence in plumage patterns | BMC Evolutionary Biology | Full Text

ADigitalArtist said:
You definitely do not need an outside agent for convergent evolution to happen.
Click to expand...

That's right, you don’t. You may only need multi-faceted intelligence at the micro-level.
 
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P

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
blü 2 said:
If a self-replicating cell was capable of evolving into more complex assemblies of cells and then into multicellular animals and then into bilaterans, then four-legged creatures with spinal columns, and then into mammals and then into primates, and then into Homo and then into H sap sap, would that be a fluke?

Well, in some senses, yes ─ as the late Stephen Jay Gould discussed in his (somewhat criticized) book Wonderful Life, if you ran the evolutionary tape again from the start, you might end up with a most-intelligent-species, but it VERY likely wouldn't be H sap sap.

But more broadly, no ─ the processes involved are substantially understood and explained.
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There seems to be some direction with evolution, despite what some would say.
Some critters stay simple, some even go backwards (ie worms that once had legs)
but with higher animals the trend is for higher and higher intelligence.

Re 'intelligent design' - you could 'design' an advanced cellular system without all
the clumsy effects and redundancies, ie only some cells have DNA, there's only one
mitochondria, not millions etc.. but then this cell would be vulnerable. What appears
to be bad design is actually quite fault tolerant.
 
exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Salty Booger said:
You make it sound so simple. Who is making the selection?
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Come on. You can't be so ignorant as not to know that. It's not "who", it's "what".

And the answer is....the environment the population of organisms finds itself in (including other organisms).

This is unbelievably basic stuff. Are you really claiming you do not know this is the basis of natural selection, when you could find it out in a 30 second internet search? Here is one example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zpffr82/articles/z7hj2nb

There is no excuse for anyone who can read not to know this.
 
exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Cooky said:
But why must we ignore that the mutation must occur first, which is the real catalyst. And that selection is only a refining (secondary) process in evolution.
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We don't. Darwin's principle was variation and selection.

But creationists seize on the variation part and stupidly try to pretend the theory implies that this, on its own, would lead to a 747 assembling itself. They always deliberately ignore the selection part, which is key.
 
exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Salty Booger said:
And believing it is correct makes it correct?
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No. In science, what makes it "correct", or rather, the best model (which the most one can ever claim for a scientific theory), is evidence that supports it, especially evidence that is predicted by the model and subsequently found.

Science is evidence-based.
 
Terrywoodenpic

Terrywoodenpic

Oldest Heretic
A perhaps more interesting Idea, is that "Nature" is to some extent self adjusting.
Is disease a counterbalance to uncontrolled and out of balance expansion of a destructive species.
Is Covid 19 one of natures ways of limiting being over run and destroyed by man.
Are the new Covid 19. mutant variations. a tightening of that screw.

Would this mean that nature is conscious. or is consciously guided.
Or would it mean that there is an inbuilt balancing mechanism, to limit the power of an individual organism to destroy an ecosystem.

Man is clearly on the way to destroying of our ecosystem. he may only succeed in destroying himself.
After any devastating event nature always finds a way of repairing itself and moving on.
 
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exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Salty Booger said:
Well, I suppose my question conveys my curiosity: Why would a person of science hang in a forum for religion if not in search for answers?
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Speaking for myself, it is in part to prevent the spread of erroneous notions about science. Of which this thread of yours is a prime example.
 
Salty Booger

Salty Booger

Royal Crown Cola (RC)
exchemist said:
Who is "searching for" science here? Not you, apparently: you seem to be trying as hard as possible to avoid learning any.
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I am here to be among spiritual people. I can't afford to jet off to an ashram, so I'm here. I have no problem sharing this space with others, but science isn't my motivation. I can get plenty of that on YouTube when I want it. :)
 
exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Salty Booger said:
I am here to be among spiritual people. I can't afford to jet off to an ashram, so I'm here. I have no problem sharing this space with others, but science isn't my motivation. I can get plenty of that on YouTube when I want it. :)
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Then why did you start a thread with a false analogy about a scientific theory? Was that a "spiritual" thing to do?
 
exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
Salty Booger said:
Nobody on this team are trying to whip up additional critters, or none that don't come naturally. Yours is a theory that has yet to be proven, but I'm not saying you are wrong. It would be a miracle nonetheless. ;)
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No theory in science is ever "proven". This is another common creationist misunderstanding about science.

Theories rely on evidence - reproducible evidence - but "proof" is for maths and logic, not science.
 
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