i dont belive in no evolution

[littlebird]

most people are desperate to fit in and will never have an opinion that might be unpopular. it's funny.

is either of the opinions, in terms of creation/evolution actually "popular"?

just curious as to the point you were making.

growing up with a parochial school education there was never anything taught beyond "creationism", though anything outside the school buildings/people i met that were friends of family, etc. insisted on evolution. made for an interesting upbringing. hippie parents/family who seemed to think bible-thumping schools were the best place for their kid.

so, not sure i ever fit in to either scenarios, nor wanted to.

[nomadthethird]

most people are desperate to fit in and will never have an opinion that might be unpopular. it's funny.

If this is true, then this must be why the vast majority of Americans are creationists.

[Chris]

If this is true, then this must be why the vast majority of Americans are creationists.

nah, I mean it for both sides. In the rural and suburban areas, you get a lot of phony christians, and in teenage and hip circles, everybody's fashionably atheist.

I'm not necessarily questioning the motivations of peoples' stances here, this board strikes me as a place where people at least think through and consider what they believe a bit. Which I respect, whichever conclusions they come to.

[nomadthethird]

I think it's funny that people really think you can like choose whether evolution is true like it's a kind of belief system.

It's just the best working theory about how organic life has come to be what it is on Earth. The consensus is there. There's really no room to doubt evolution, only to have slightly different versions of how it happened, or when the different eras or ice ages happened. There's tons of room for interesting work to be done filling in gaps, but there's no doubt about the fact that organic life happens according to an evolutionary process.

Saying "I don't believe in evolution"...That's like saying, I don't believe in Pluto.

Oh, you don't? Oh good, phew, for a minute there I was worried that it might not matter what the hell you believe in, seeing as facts are facts.

[luka]

of course it applies to both sides.
there is an unthinking acceptance on both sides. on both sides its holy writ.
as you all can probably guess im hardly up to date on the scientific consensus of the moment, if there is one. dawkins take on evolution is transparently silly, but he has plenty of detractors among scientists i take it. whats the current state of play?
natural selection doesn't explain things terribly well. i mean, if you just take death and success in breeding as the only factors in changing genetic makeup. then add a few mutations. burroughs was always going on about viruses becoming symbiotes. thats fairly accepted now right?

[luka]

i thik you should probably engage your brain before leaping in sometimes nomad, particluarly if you insist on adopting such an aggrssive tone.
think maybe about what the context is. im fairly obviously not going to be a creationist.
and the title of the thread is i dont belive in no evolution.
also when is anything i say supposed to be taken at face value?

[luka]

facts are facts is a pretty vacous thing to say

[Chris]

is either of the opinions, in terms of creation/evolution actually "popular"?.

sorry, didn't see this post at first...

yeah, it depends which culture you're in.

growing up with a parochial school education there was never anything taught beyond "creationism", though anything outside the school buildings/people i met that were friends of family, etc. insisted on evolution. made for an interesting upbringing. hippie parents/family who seemed to think bible-thumping schools were the best place for their kid.

so, not sure i ever fit in to either scenarios, nor wanted to.

totally, and I've noticed that a lot of people who've come up in religious environments where it was forced strictly on them, like say Catholicism or Mormonism, end up allergic to religion. Understandably.

I came up seeing the best of the religious world, it was never forced on me at all, was uber-tolerant, rational while encouraging of all types of creativity... so I'm a religous apologist for the most part. I still tend to hang out with agnostics and atheists though, but that's just because the types of christians in my area at the mo are these awful, non-denominational Christian Right business types who have more in common with the beliefs taught at "positive-thinking" New Age seminars.

[nomadthethird]

of course it applies to both sides.
there is an unthinking acceptance on both sides. on both sides its holy writ.
as you all can probably guess im hardly up to date on the scientific consensus of the moment, if there is one. dawkins take on evolution is transparently silly, but he has plenty of detractors among scientists i take it. whats the current state of play?
natural selection doesn't explain things terribly well. i mean, if you just take death and success in breeding as the only factors in changing genetic makeup. then add a few mutations. burroughs was always going on about viruses becoming symbiotes. thats fairly accepted now right?

Huh? No, I'm not sure sure, but nobody in the scientific community takes a lot of issue with the idea of natural selection, but that's MOSTLY because they're not interpreting the way I think you might be, which is not the scientific interpretation.

Evolution is the process by which organic life changes over time. This process is often affected by a) random genetic mutations, and b) the potential for these mutations to be "adaptive" given an organism's environment.

Success in breeding is not a "factor" in "changing" genetic makeup as such. I'm not even sure what that means. Explain.

[nomadthethird]

facts are facts is a pretty vacous thing to say

Not in this context it isn't.

I don't believe in the moon! Therefore, it doesn't exist.

I don't believe in the phases of the moon. Therefore, they don't exist.

[luka]

in that if you have a kid your genes get passed on and if you don't they dont.

[luka]

if thats not right then my understanding of this stuff is even more flawed than i thought it was

[littlebird]

natural selection doesn't explain things terribly well. i mean, if you just take death and success in breeding as the only factors in changing genetic makeup. then add a few mutations. burroughs was always going on about viruses becoming symbiotes. thats fairly accepted now right?

natural selection is too simplistic if it is just a death vs. breeding success, because as you pointed out there are mutations, viruses (mutated, but also man-made/created), the affect on environmental issues, etc.

seems there are the big buckets to fall into - creation vs. evolution. but once there, it is more a question of the science you are aware of/agree with, the known and the unknown factors, and what you choose to accept.

in some ways it is a belief system. whether it is just a question of science and variation, it is something one chooses to believe, is it not?

[nomadthethird]

in that if you have a kid your genes get passed on and if you don't they dont.

Sure. If you have a kid. But your kid's genes might mutate. Then the environmental conditions may change so your kid doesn't survive.

This is how I would explain it:

Say you have a very fast metabolism. This only works well, it's only "adaptive", when times are good and food is plenty, usually for people who live in agricultural societies and can rely on a harvest. But say you have two kids, and those kids' genes mutate, and one kid has a fast metabolism like you, and one has an even faster metabolism than you. Then your tribe moves, and there's a famine. You and your kids die very quickly from starvation, due to their fast metabolisms, and your genes aren't passed on to the next generation.

But your neighbor guy with the really slow metabolism who doesn't end up living as long as you, so he only had one kid--his genes win out in the end, because his kids survive the famine and go on to reproduce. Thus the slow metabolism gene is "selected" into the gene pool of a population that just experienced a long famine.

Does this make sense?

[luka]

when i say i don't beleive in evolution, and this is wearisome, having to spell this out, as i would have liked to think, given contxt, that this was fairly clear, that there seems to be more factors at play. now a lot of these things are not heretical, scientifucally, as far as i know. for example, viruses etc. other organisms melding themselves into human dna or whatever (excuse my loose use of terms i don't have any clear knowedge of) or like that docuentary taht claimed things 'learned' in the course of a lifetime could be passed on, eg a taste for lsd. (it didn't give that example, i made it up)
also the idea of a guiding intelligence at some level beyond the indivudual, whether at dna level or whatever is not one iw ould dismiss out of hand.
facts are facts is always a vacous thing to say. regardless of circumstance.