You Are an Ape

Discussion in 'Science' started by ChiCowboy, Sep 9, 2021.

  1. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Are you saying that because life didn't begin where it was less likely to thrive it therefore must have begun by chance? It seems to me that finding life did exist where it couldn't thrive (which may happen, but hasn't yet) and thus failed would be more of an indicator of chance.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2021
  2. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Sorry, I'm confused by your question and statement :/
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2021
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  3. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm trying to clarify your comment, lol...

    Lets try this. We know there is life on earth. Earth is also the place where life as we know it has the best chance to survive and thrive.

    Evidence suggests that life could exist on mars, though if it did, it would be unlikely to thrive unless it were substantially different life from 'life as we know it.' Yet, despite searching, we havn't found any life on mars.

    Granted, our ability to search mars for life is extremely limited right now. But from a scientific standpoint, we assume life is not there until we can confirm that it is (or was).

    It seems to me that finding life that existed on mars but failed to thrive due to mars' harsh conditions would be evidence to pile on the 'life exists by chance' side of the debate, since its unlikely that any 'intelligent designer' would initiate life in an environment which was not sutied for that life to thrive. Thats would be a pointless endeavor and is more like something 'chance' would do.

    So far as we know, life only exists here on earth, where it is best suited to thrive. As much as it would be most likely for life to abiogenesize in conditions that are best suited for it, it also makes the most sense for life to be created, designed, implanted (or w/e) also in conditions most likely for it to thrive. So I don't see how this notion of 'life only on earth = life came from chance' is supported.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2021
  4. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    One may theorize anything. But humans come from humans. Apes come from apes. And God made both. He raised our spirits in eternity. He made man in his image and placed our spirits in our bodies, endowed with a sliver of remembrance of his excellence called conscience, to better see right from wrong in this physical world, along with the power of free choice to prove or fit ourselves for eternity. Nothing in nature but man holds this position. That's why we don't put animals on trial for wrongs. Nature can do no wrong. The one constant that I know to be true is that there is a God. He is real and he lives and resides in heaven. This will always be true and unchangeable.
     
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  5. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    That's a religious belief. Again, you're free to believe anything you want, but science says something else entirely.
     
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  6. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    We watch evolution happening in laboratories. We use evolution to create animals and plants good for consumption. There is huge evidence of evolution in the records of life on Earth, including evidence of evolution of humans.

    This idea that humans didn't evolve can not possibly be substantiated.

    We don't put animals on trial for the same reasons that we make exceptions for humans with significantly less than average mental capacity for understanding our ideas of right and wrong.

    The "nature can do no wrong" idea has to do with what WE consider to be a wrong. When is it wrong to eat your babies?
     
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  7. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Additionally, "morals" can be seen in all hominids, especially chimps.

    There is nothing about our nature that requires the supernatural. Evolution explains it all very elegantly.
     
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  8. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    You know what doesn't make sense in creationism? The human spine (among other features of many animals.)

    Evolution explains the human spine. Creationism suggests the creator is a moron.
     
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  9. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    For how long?

    Some of the oldest existent "oral traditions" only reach back a few thousand years. But there are some that may be even older. Hence, many of the pagan religions globally have almost the same myths, just changed to fit the surroundings. But to find those "legends", it would have had to survive for over 40,000 years. And even that would only be about Neanderthal, which is almost unrecognizable apart from modern humans.

    Oral traditions do not survive that long. And there was no "writing" back then either. We do have some rather remarkable oral traditions that have survived into the modern era, and all show the memory tricks used in oral traditions.

    But you are talking "five or six thousand years ago". Well, that is already about 35,000 years to late to have seen any other hominid species.

    We also know that humans in the Americas saw saber tooth cats and large hairy elephants. None of that remained in the tales told later. Just as Europeans would have been able to walk from France to England, where is that in the oral tradition?
     
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  10. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    Well they had the story of creation as well as other Gods. Why not something, anything about evolving.
     
  11. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Because they didn't know. Science, though grounded in antiquity, is a fairly new process.
     
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  12. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    Does it explain Chicago?
     
  13. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Got anything intelligent to say?
     
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  14. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Yep. It even explains January 6.
     
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  15. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    That would make one of us. I'm still trying to figure out why your ancestors went all the way thru the evolutionary process to only then invent the concept of God.
     
  16. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    They went all Ape?
     
  17. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    No, it's a little more complicated and sinister than that, I'm afraid.
     
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  18. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    Part of the evolutionary process...a refinement of the species? Better call science.
     
  19. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    More a result than a part of the evolutionary process. Certainly not any refinement of our species, unless the deaths of Trump supporters that day might have helped.
     
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  20. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, you're obviously stuck. I'd tell you to pick up a book, but I doubt that would help.

    You're lost dude. Stick to religion. More your speed.
     
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  21. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    That concept evolved also, most immediately from polytheism. Religion evolves like everything else does.
     
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  22. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Do you see any mention about our own evolution in the past thousand or so years?

    We know humans are still evolving. In the past 2,000 years some of the changes are striking. Female hip size has increased, much greater diversity in eye and hair color, lactose intolerance as well as allergies to grains is on the rise, as well as the size of infants at birth, and the decreasing age when females first menstruate.

    Why is this not being spread all over the place?

    And which "Creation" myth? The one where man was made from clay, and woman from his rib? Where humans came from former gods or their offspring? Where they were spontaneously created by the Earth itself?

    We know for a fact that modern humans are larger than our ancestors were. Both George Washington and Abe Lincoln were described as "Giants" by their own contemporaries. But Washington was only 6'2", and Lincoln only 6'4". Both well below the 6'7" height of the average NBA player today. And for as large as the legends portrayed the Vikings as, the average Viking was only about 5'6", in an era when most men were around 5'3".

    This is what you are missing. Such changes take place over hundreds or thousands of years, and each following generation envisions the stories in their own light. Abe Lincoln would hardly stand out today in a crowd, but 150 years ago he stood out like a sore thumb. And in the reverse, Napoleon was actually of slightly taller than normal height. When the norm of the early 1800's was 5'5", he stood 5'6". All of those are proof of evolution continuing even today, funny but you almost never hear anybody talking about it.

    We know for a fact that most "Knights in Armor" from the Middle Ages were only from 5'2" to 5'6". We know this for a fact as many examples of their armor still exist in museums. What was a "large warrior" 500 or so years ago would barely fit an adolescent today.
     
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  23. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    You do not seem to even comprehend "evolution".

    Changes and genetic drift are always happening. Some end up being good things and are passed along, some are not good and die off. It is not "refinement" at all, simply change.
     
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  24. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    There is no debate, really. "By chance" is the default position since there is no indication of any special creation of life. The way life works is entirely a product of physics and there is nothing about life on this planet that indicates any kind of "designer" was involved. The evidence we do have is that it evolved from more primitive forms, and that the earth's life was microbial for the vast majority of its history.

    Regarding earth and life thriving here, earth has some key qualities that have allowed the planet to remain habitable for so long, most notably its strong magnetic field. Life has also shaped the climate over long periods, such as by filling the atmosphere with oxygen, without which there would be no animal life. Mars, on the other hand, lacks a strong magnetic field, which has allowed its atmosphere to be largely stripped away by the solar winds over the eons, leaving it no longer suitable for life as we know it on the surface. Since Mars has been inhospitable for billions of years now, any evidence of past life is going to be hard to find, as most of it will have been lost to decomposition and erosion. Venus is even worse, being the hot, acidic hell that it is; if any life existed there, all signs of it are likely long gone.

    So, beyond Mars, our options are scant. We might find something in subsurface oceans on certain moons, but that is an environment that is as yet not understood. We might also spot what are termed biosignatures from exoplanets by observing their atmospheres when new, more powerful telescopes come online, but there again most of the exoplanets we find are very probably inhospitable for various reasons, and we can't observe most that don't cross directly between their host star and our planet.
     
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  25. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Yep. Not biological evolution but similar. Certain traits get passed along, and new ones emerge, in different populations. Hence, we have three Abrahamic religions and countless sects among them, all evolved within a population.
     
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