How science makes world more fascinating and wonderful

Maravilla · 12-09-2013, 07:55 AM

There are many things which have remained a mystery through out time, from spirits to UFO sightings to unexplained phenomena, etc. as much as science has tried, it still has many mysteries that it simply will probably never answer, then you either leave it, or look for the answer, but that's the point, where's the answer where even science doesn't have it? It has to be caused by something.
(** points at magical guy in the clouds)

But I do agree that for many things science does make this life wonderful, such as medicine/cures, and plenty of other great stuff.

loishounslea · 12-09-2013, 08:34 AM

In Islam, they say that the CREATOR has no partners, siblings, parents, etc, yet most of us are still attached to this dogma of a grey bearded man lying above the clouds watching down of us. Obviously the media has a great hand in the imagery, movies such as The Clash of the Titans' etc.

I've not come here to bible(quran)bash, just appreciated the words from the op, bless you...

loishounslea · 12-09-2013, 08:34 AM

In Islam, they say that the CREATOR has no partners, siblings, parents, etc, yet most of us are still attached to this dogma of a grey bearded man lying above the clouds watching down of us. Obviously the media has a great hand in the imagery, movies such as The Clash of the Titans' etc.

I've not come here to bible(quran)bash, just appreciated the words from the op, bless you...

Frooxius · 12-09-2013, 07:19 PM

@Maravilla: But that's precisely what I'm talking about. If we can't find an explanation, what good is making some arbitrary one (that doesn't even have any explanatory power)? It doesn't provide us with an actual answer, just an illusion of having one. It's perfectly okay to sometimes say "I don't know" or "I don't understand this".

Just think back a few hundred years. When people were ill and delirious, people couldn't explain why they behaved that way. So they made up an answer - that some kind of evil spirit possessed the person and made them misbehave. Some thought that by drilling holes in the skull they can free them of these evil spirits and "cure" them, which obviously doesn't work. Because it's nothing more than made up "answer", which doesn't explain anything and doesn't have any roots or support in reality.

Using the scientific method, we have learned over the time about bacteria, about viruses, genetic defects, cancer or mental illnesses, including the intricate details of the mechanisms they influence someone's behavior and make them behave in erratic way.

The explanation is supported by massive body of evidence and carefully gathered and analyzed observations. Moreover we can actually use these answers to create counter measures and actually help these people - because we actually know what causes their problems, unlike people who thought they were possessed by evil spirits - that was never a proper answer.

But you also mentioned UFO sightings and spirits. I don't think you have researched these things properly from all angles, mainly what the science says about them and how science actually works.

We have quite good understanding of human psychology, the way our brains work and how they can be deceived (not just by someone external, but self deceived as well) into thinking or interpreting some sensations wrongly. These ""supernatural"" things have been researched a lot and so far, in every case, we found out that there wasn't any actual phenomenon, but the people claiming it were either making it up or were self deceived or interpreting something badly.

If you look at the way neural networks operate and thus also our brains at base level, you'll see that they essentially form various associations between stimuli. As was shown in Skinner Box experiment for example though, they are prone to making associations even between events that aren't linked in any way - by making up some kind of entity (spirit, god, UFO...) and linking some perceived stimuli to that.

Our brains are prone to many cognitive biases and can be surprisingly easily fooled (illusionists use that a lot to make it seem like they have some kind of supernatural power), which is why we should use more reliable methods to examine the observations.

One of the things about our brains is that they were shaped by evolution to interpret any potentially dangerous stimuli as a threat: Some little moving shadow, odd sounds and so on, because not so long ago we lived in environment, where the source could be a predator. Even if it's something innocent (like a wind or house settling), it's more safe it the brain makes a mistake and avoids potential danger, rather than ignoring these stimuli and potentially get killed.

Today however we live in an environment where predators are rare. But our brains still tend to link these stimuli to some kind of entity and when they can't find anything real, they make one up - and that's where the ideas of ghosts and spirits can come in. Also for example some of the UFO abduction reports are simply people misinterpreting a sleep phase, during which the body feels weightless.

Science has a lot to say about these things. It doesn't confirm that UFO's, spirits and so on actually exists (rather the opposite), but it shows up that large bulk of reports of these are just people's brains being deluded.

And as for things that it actually can't answer: Again, how does making up an answer help you? It doesn't explain anything, you don't know whether it's true or not, because it hasn't been properly verified. Why is it not okay to say "We don't know"?

You have to take the answer on faith and that's not really good reason to believe things. Anyone could make up any random explanation. How do you know that a god caused it and not a transcendent supernatural toaster? Or perhaps it was a collision of an eternal super-potato with pink slime in the top universe. Anyone could make up millions of random "answers" and they're no better than yours.

How is it different from people from long ago thinking that erratic behavior is caused by an evil spirit, simply because they couldn't think of a better answer?

While god can give someone an illusion of answer, it doesn't mean it actually is the real answer. You just don't know, so you're making an argument from ignorance. Rational thing when we don't understand something (yet) isn't to make something up. It's to say "We don't know".

And it's the not knowing that pushes us forward to find the actual answer. Plugging the gaps with made up, unverified figments of someone's imagination only stalls us.

So yes, if the science doesn't have answer, you look for an answer. Question is, do you want real, solid, evidence based answer or do you satisfy with something that was made up, feels like an answer, but you have no way of knowing it's really real?

Just because it's difficult to find an answer doesn't mean we lower (or completely disregards) our standards of evidence when looking for one.

And by the way... what caused the magical guy in the clouds? I find it really silly trying to explain something complex with something even much more complex.

If you look at the current state of science, you'll find that complexity forms from simplicity. Universe started quite simple, with a few basic particles, following the laws of physics. More complex things formed from these simple interactions, like galaxies, stars and planets. Similarly organisms started with simple biochemical reactions and over the millions of years got more and more complex. The simplicity keeps rolling like a small snowball, clumping into a bigger and bigger chunk.

And lastly that's not really what I was talking about when I said that science makes this life wonderful. I wasn't talking about the technological or medical marvels it gives us.

I'm not sure if you actually read my article or just skimmed it, but in short, what I talked about is how the science makes the world wonderful by actually explaining it in detail and giving us extensive knowledge about the way it works.

Don't get me wrong (again), technological/medical marvels are amazing, but my article wasn't about that. It's just purely about looking at the world its complexity and intricate beauty and finding that wonderful, compared to view that explaining world strips away its beauty.

@loishounslea: I don't really care what form any supernatural entity takes, what I care about is actual evidence to support whatever form someone claims exists.

Personally I find some form that is nothing like we know more plausible than big bearded guy in the sky, but I don't believe in either of them, simply because of lack of evidence.

Maravilla · 12-09-2013, 10:26 PM

Yea, I apologize for going off topic, cheers.

Frooxius · 12-10-2013, 12:53 AM

@Maravilla: You seem to have serious lack of understanding of the way science works, as you've repeated some of the most common misconceptions and logical fallacies.

First, you don't know what word "theory" actually means in scientific context. Saying a scientific theory is "just a theory" is completely ridiculous, because theory is the highest way of knowing in science.

It doesn't mean what the colloquial use of the word means, as in "it's just an hunch/idea". Scientific theory is a large collection of experimentally verified data and facts and explanations of those. To get a scientific theory you need to collect large amounts of facts and experimentally find/verify links and explanations of these.

Scientific theory isn't just an idea or a hunch how something might work. It's a large body of gathered evidence and experimental data.

What you are doing with "as believable as a car evolving into tractor" is known as strawman fallacy - a logical fallacy (which I'll explain a bit later), here you misinterpreted and twisted an argument into absurdity. You are not arguing actually against the theory though, but a very twisted, distorted version of it.

Card/tractors and living organisms are two different things with different origins and it doesn't make sense to compare them like that.

Let me give you a bit topical example of why such "argument" cannot be used: Imagine someone saying that computers can't exist, because believing that arranging a lot of pieces of metal and thinking it will be capable of doing billions of calculations per second is as believable as thinking that arranging a bunch of rocks together and pouring fuel on them and lighting it up will make it form into a super fast worker robot.

Obviously that's ridiculous, but we both know computers /do/ work and they are actually more complex than arranging some pieces of metal, not to mention that metal and electricity have quite different properties from rocks and fuel.

As for the theory of evolution, I encourage you to actually study something about it from actual scientific sources (a lot of religious sources only talk about the absurdly distorted idea of it, not the actual theory). If it's really wrong, it can't hurt to see what actual scientists are saying about it, can it?

We actually have massive amount of supporting evidence for the theory of evolution. Most prominently there's the DNA evidence - by comparing genomes between species and rate of mutations, we actually found out how related various species are and the data formed a big family tree, there's also comparison between humans and chimps (or some other primate) - we have one less chromosome than they do and since we share common ancestry, it means that two chromosomes must've fused - and in fact, we found that the fusion happened in chromosome 2 by finding telomeres in the middle of it.

The DNA evidence also corresponds to the fossil evidence which shows the gradual changes in many species over the long period of time and we also see small changes in many species within the short period of time (large changes take a lot of time though), from bacteria, fruit flies to some large mammals/reptiles - for example there's my favorite Russian Silver Fox experiment, which is a genetic experiment that researched domestication of dogs using foxes and by intense selective breeding they were able to change traits of the foxes significantly in just 50 years and identify some regions in the DNA where changes occurred.

Also since we're on a forums devoted to computers and computer science, I wouldn't feel right if I didn't mention evolutionary/genetic programming. It's an area of computing that's based exactly on the same principles of evolution that living organisms undergo.

For example you can use the mechanism to make robots and programs learn to process certain stimuli - by setting the fitness criteria (rating various individual configurations based on how well they completed given task) and simulating a few thousand generations. For example you can get robots that learn how to find a way out of maze by themselves, without programming them to do so! You essentially get specific algorithm from chaos (random initial configurations), simply by imposing a filtering rules on them.

Similarly, living organisms have evolved based on the fitness rules imposed by the environment - real world they live(d) in, using the very same mechanism. From simple, chaotic configurations of molecules, with enough time (and thus generations) you can get something quite complex that is capable of surviving in the environment very well - because the real world sculpted its growth, eradicating any configurations that didn't work well enough.

Evolutionary algorithms show that evolution works. They are even widely used for various applications, like image processing or face detection - you might find them in your camera or camcorder for example.

And also there's one quite interesting and well known experiment from computer science by Karl Sims. He used the evolution process to simulate thousands of generations of simple organisms in simple world, imposing various fitness criteria on them (for example on movement speed, jump height and others) and he got very interesting behavior essentially from "nothing", in some cases very similar to actual real world organisms. Watch the following video:

These are just a few bits on evolution, how it actually works and how do we know it's true, but can you really find it so hard to believe now? There's even proof in computer science and I don't know about you, but when I see cool technology that works based on some mechanism, I find it quite ridiculous to say that it's unbelievable to say it doesn't work.

Things in science aren't just about an opinion. That's another bad thing that people use a lot - try to reduce everything into "an opinion". As someone once said, people are entitled to their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to their own facts.

And science is based on facts. It carefully gathers them, measures them, records them and analyzes them. Science has several important properties that make it the most reliable tool for studying the world we live in.

A very important one is replicability: Anyone can replicate some experiment and assuming he doesn't make a mistake, can get the same/similar results. It shows that reality is objective (in the most meaningful sense of the word), it doesn't care if someone believes if something works or not: solid, carefully measured and gathered data gives us something to work on.

That's also another important thing: it records everything, scientists record how and under what conditions they performed certain experiment and for example what was their sample size. It gives us concrete data to work with, black on white. It is reliable. Human mind and anecdotal evidence aren't very reliable. Our perceptions can be distorted and so could our memories.

And also important aspect of it is peer review. Every work, if it has any ambitions at gaining some scientific significance, has to go through a serious scrutiny. While individual team of scientists can make a mistake (and that happens sometimes), others can point that out and even do their own experiments. If they get different results, they look for what's wrong and see if the scientists made some kind of mistake. If they however get same results, it adds more credibility to that test.

Peer review, like an immune system, eradicates the mistakes, error or even fraudulent data, so only thoroughly verified data make it into the theories.

Maravilla Wrote:Even science has proved that human genome and chimp genome can't be combined and yet you still have excuses to believe in evolution

Sorry, I had to quote this, because it's really silly. It's like you said "Evidence shows that computers were capable of running any of the programs programmed for them. Yet people still claim that computers work.".

Yeah... they supposed to do that when they work.

I don't really know where did you get your information on the theory of evolution, but it's wrong (although I suspect it might be from religious sources, since these often spread the misinformation about it). Evolution actually says that species can't breed, because their genomes are too different. It doesn't say the opposite. It's a process known as speciation (which evolution explains very well).

And chimps not deciding to evolve?! Where are you getting this stuff? It's complete nonsense. Evolution doesn't say that evolving is a conscious process and you can decide just not to evolve.

I think you are trying to say another common "argument" (a misconception): "If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?". Answer to that is simple - we didn't evolve from contemporary primates. We all share a common ancestor - species that doesn't live anymore, from which the evolution forked in several directions (which happens a lot).

We are part of one of the branch and contemporary primates are part of another - they evolved in parallel with us, sharing the same common ancestor somewhere in the past. We're like cousins. Not parent and a child.

Science doesn't actually say much about higher power, because science studies the reality. You're confusing burden of proof here. Any person who claims that there's a god needs to provide evidence to support that claim. Also very importantly that person has to provide a clear definition of that god.

If that god has any measurable effect on the world we live in, science can study that. If it doesn't, then it's indistinguishable from something that doesn't exist. Science hasn't really tried to "explain" higher power and failed - you need to show that such higher power exists in the first place.

Science doesn't have to prove that you're wrong, you have to prove that you're right.

So yes... a lot of things you say are and sound laughable. Problem is they're not what science actually says, or that the theory of evolution says.

Like I said in my article, I encourage you to actually learn more about science from good quality sources, because I can tell that you have severe (and quite common) misconceptions about it, what it says and how it works.

A lot of these misconceptions are used by religious people, because they have to twist and lie (maybe not intentionally) about the science and evolution to make it sound ridiculous - because that makes it easy to attack.

Except that you're attacking a strawman, not the actual thing - another logical fallacy known as strawman fallacy.

So really... if you think science is awesome in so many ways, wait until you learn how it actually works, what it does and what it says ;-)

Also that's okay, you're not hijacking it. It's quite related to the topic and I don't mind discussing this and I hope that others will find it a good source of information or education. And I myself though I would clarify/explain things about science and evolution :3

Although you haven't really answered the central point: How does making up an answer really help explain anything? How can you build any technology, any solution off that answer? And most importantly how do you know that the answer you chose is right and some other isn't (what evidence is there to support it?)?

Frooxius · 12-10-2013, 12:53 AM

@Maravilla: You seem to have serious lack of understanding of the way science works, as you've repeated some of the most common misconceptions and logical fallacies.

First, you don't know what word "theory" actually means in scientific context. Saying a scientific theory is "just a theory" is completely ridiculous, because theory is the highest way of knowing in science.

It doesn't mean what the colloquial use of the word means, as in "it's just an hunch/idea". Scientific theory is a large collection of experimentally verified data and facts and explanations of those. To get a scientific theory you need to collect large amounts of facts and experimentally find/verify links and explanations of these.

Scientific theory isn't just an idea or a hunch how something might work. It's a large body of gathered evidence and experimental data.

What you are doing with "as believable as a car evolving into tractor" is known as strawman fallacy - a logical fallacy (which I'll explain a bit later), here you misinterpreted and twisted an argument into absurdity. You are not arguing actually against the theory though, but a very twisted, distorted version of it.

Card/tractors and living organisms are two different things with different origins and it doesn't make sense to compare them like that.

Let me give you a bit topical example of why such "argument" cannot be used: Imagine someone saying that computers can't exist, because believing that arranging a lot of pieces of metal and thinking it will be capable of doing billions of calculations per second is as believable as thinking that arranging a bunch of rocks together and pouring fuel on them and lighting it up will make it form into a super fast worker robot.

Obviously that's ridiculous, but we both know computers /do/ work and they are actually more complex than arranging some pieces of metal, not to mention that metal and electricity have quite different properties from rocks and fuel.

As for the theory of evolution, I encourage you to actually study something about it from actual scientific sources (a lot of religious sources only talk about the absurdly distorted idea of it, not the actual theory). If it's really wrong, it can't hurt to see what actual scientists are saying about it, can it?

We actually have massive amount of supporting evidence for the theory of evolution. Most prominently there's the DNA evidence - by comparing genomes between species and rate of mutations, we actually found out how related various species are and the data formed a big family tree, there's also comparison between humans and chimps (or some other primate) - we have one less chromosome than they do and since we share common ancestry, it means that two chromosomes must've fused - and in fact, we found that the fusion happened in chromosome 2 by finding telomeres in the middle of it.

The DNA evidence also corresponds to the fossil evidence which shows the gradual changes in many species over the long period of time and we also see small changes in many species within the short period of time (large changes take a lot of time though), from bacteria, fruit flies to some large mammals/reptiles - for example there's my favorite Russian Silver Fox experiment, which is a genetic experiment that researched domestication of dogs using foxes and by intense selective breeding they were able to change traits of the foxes significantly in just 50 years and identify some regions in the DNA where changes occurred.

Also since we're on a forums devoted to computers and computer science, I wouldn't feel right if I didn't mention evolutionary/genetic programming. It's an area of computing that's based exactly on the same principles of evolution that living organisms undergo.

For example you can use the mechanism to make robots and programs learn to process certain stimuli - by setting the fitness criteria (rating various individual configurations based on how well they completed given task) and simulating a few thousand generations. For example you can get robots that learn how to find a way out of maze by themselves, without programming them to do so! You essentially get specific algorithm from chaos (random initial configurations), simply by imposing a filtering rules on them.

Similarly, living organisms have evolved based on the fitness rules imposed by the environment - real world they live(d) in, using the very same mechanism. From simple, chaotic configurations of molecules, with enough time (and thus generations) you can get something quite complex that is capable of surviving in the environment very well - because the real world sculpted its growth, eradicating any configurations that didn't work well enough.

Evolutionary algorithms show that evolution works. They are even widely used for various applications, like image processing or face detection - you might find them in your camera or camcorder for example.

And also there's one quite interesting and well known experiment from computer science by Karl Sims. He used the evolution process to simulate thousands of generations of simple organisms in simple world, imposing various fitness criteria on them (for example on movement speed, jump height and others) and he got very interesting behavior essentially from "nothing", in some cases very similar to actual real world organisms. Watch the following video:

These are just a few bits on evolution, how it actually works and how do we know it's true, but can you really find it so hard to believe now? There's even proof in computer science and I don't know about you, but when I see cool technology that works based on some mechanism, I find it quite ridiculous to say that it's unbelievable to say it doesn't work.

Things in science aren't just about an opinion. That's another bad thing that people use a lot - try to reduce everything into "an opinion". As someone once said, people are entitled to their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to their own facts.

And science is based on facts. It carefully gathers them, measures them, records them and analyzes them. Science has several important properties that make it the most reliable tool for studying the world we live in.

A very important one is replicability: Anyone can replicate some experiment and assuming he doesn't make a mistake, can get the same/similar results. It shows that reality is objective (in the most meaningful sense of the word), it doesn't care if someone believes if something works or not: solid, carefully measured and gathered data gives us something to work on.

That's also another important thing: it records everything, scientists record how and under what conditions they performed certain experiment and for example what was their sample size. It gives us concrete data to work with, black on white. It is reliable. Human mind and anecdotal evidence aren't very reliable. Our perceptions can be distorted and so could our memories.

And also important aspect of it is peer review. Every work, if it has any ambitions at gaining some scientific significance, has to go through a serious scrutiny. While individual team of scientists can make a mistake (and that happens sometimes), others can point that out and even do their own experiments. If they get different results, they look for what's wrong and see if the scientists made some kind of mistake. If they however get same results, it adds more credibility to that test.

Peer review, like an immune system, eradicates the mistakes, error or even fraudulent data, so only thoroughly verified data make it into the theories.

Maravilla Wrote:Even science has proved that human genome and chimp genome can't be combined and yet you still have excuses to believe in evolution

Sorry, I had to quote this, because it's really silly. It's like you said "Evidence shows that computers were capable of running any of the programs programmed for them. Yet people still claim that computers work.".

Yeah... they supposed to do that when they work.

I don't really know where did you get your information on the theory of evolution, but it's wrong (although I suspect it might be from religious sources, since these often spread the misinformation about it). Evolution actually says that species can't breed, because their genomes are too different. It doesn't say the opposite. It's a process known as speciation (which evolution explains very well).

And chimps not deciding to evolve?! Where are you getting this stuff? It's complete nonsense. Evolution doesn't say that evolving is a conscious process and you can decide just not to evolve.

I think you are trying to say another common "argument" (a misconception): "If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?". Answer to that is simple - we didn't evolve from contemporary primates. We all share a common ancestor - species that doesn't live anymore, from which the evolution forked in several directions (which happens a lot).

We are part of one of the branch and contemporary primates are part of another - they evolved in parallel with us, sharing the same common ancestor somewhere in the past. We're like cousins. Not parent and a child.

Science doesn't actually say much about higher power, because science studies the reality. You're confusing burden of proof here. Any person who claims that there's a god needs to provide evidence to support that claim. Also very importantly that person has to provide a clear definition of that god.

If that god has any measurable effect on the world we live in, science can study that. If it doesn't, then it's indistinguishable from something that doesn't exist. Science hasn't really tried to "explain" higher power and failed - you need to show that such higher power exists in the first place.

Science doesn't have to prove that you're wrong, you have to prove that you're right.

So yes... a lot of things you say are and sound laughable. Problem is they're not what science actually says, or that the theory of evolution says.

Like I said in my article, I encourage you to actually learn more about science from good quality sources, because I can tell that you have severe (and quite common) misconceptions about it, what it says and how it works.

A lot of these misconceptions are used by religious people, because they have to twist and lie (maybe not intentionally) about the science and evolution to make it sound ridiculous - because that makes it easy to attack.

Except that you're attacking a strawman, not the actual thing - another logical fallacy known as strawman fallacy.

So really... if you think science is awesome in so many ways, wait until you learn how it actually works, what it does and what it says ;-)

Also that's okay, you're not hijacking it. It's quite related to the topic and I don't mind discussing this and I hope that others will find it a good source of information or education. And I myself though I would clarify/explain things about science and evolution :3

Although you haven't really answered the central point: How does making up an answer really help explain anything? How can you build any technology, any solution off that answer? And most importantly how do you know that the answer you chose is right and some other isn't (what evidence is there to support it?)?

Maravilla · 12-10-2013, 01:34 AM

Well in that case, since you don't mind:
And yet you claim things on this "evidence" which are all just theories to begin with. Life coming from particles and evolving is as believable as a car evolving into a tractor if you take it to fertile land, it's even more outrageous how all science answers when given an unexplained event is the following, "we'll we're not sure, but we "believe" the human brain blah blah blah..." Guess what? That's just an opinion. Even science has proved that human genome and chimp genome can't be combined and yet you still have excuses to believe in evolution. And if you want me to rephrase all you just wrote, but my version, here it is, "I refuse to believe in a science where it has over and over been proven wrong, I refuse to believe that the universe was formed by 2 big rocks hitting each other and conveniently made everything perfect, then some particles that came out of nowhere decided to bring life." In all honesty that's even more unlikely. Not to mention laughable. Only life can bring life, not 2 rocks. Science tries really hard to debate the existence of a supreme being but ultimately falls short always. We've got bored of how unexplained things go answered by, "we'll we have no proof, but we believe..." Well, I believe that's bull, a higher power exists is my belief, and you know what? I can't prove it to you, neither can science prove me wrong. I don't buy the logic that some chimps decided not to evolve, that's ridiculous if anything.

Although I do apologize for maybe high jacking your topic for something else, it's just that since you started with the "magical guy in the clouds" I just decided to clarify a little, but yea maybe I'm way off topic, so I won't rant anymore Lol, yea, science is awesome in so many ways, and I'm definately thankful to it. Cheers.

1) You're forgetting or ignoring a simple thing: What makes you think you're right and not me? Can you prove it other than theories science has tried to come up with? I don't study evolution, I don't believe in it, and since you claim you do then instead of trying to go around and around the subject answer this: if we came from chimps/apes/ why are we not seeing proof of the missing link? Why are there still those species how they've always been? You can try all you want to deny that Darwin and scientists were wrong, just don't try to say you have evidence as even science has refuted this. According to evolution if you leave anything long enough it'll evolve to it's needs, that's ridiculous.

Maravilla · 12-10-2013, 01:34 AM

Well in that case, since you don't mind:
And yet you claim things on this "evidence" which are all just theories to begin with. Life coming from particles and evolving is as believable as a car evolving into a tractor if you take it to fertile land, it's even more outrageous how all science answers when given an unexplained event is the following, "we'll we're not sure, but we "believe" the human brain blah blah blah..." Guess what? That's just an opinion. Even science has proved that human genome and chimp genome can't be combined and yet you still have excuses to believe in evolution. And if you want me to rephrase all you just wrote, but my version, here it is, "I refuse to believe in a science where it has over and over been proven wrong, I refuse to believe that the universe was formed by 2 big rocks hitting each other and conveniently made everything perfect, then some particles that came out of nowhere decided to bring life." In all honesty that's even more unlikely. Not to mention laughable. Only life can bring life, not 2 rocks. Science tries really hard to debate the existence of a supreme being but ultimately falls short always. We've got bored of how unexplained things go answered by, "we'll we have no proof, but we believe..." Well, I believe that's bull, a higher power exists is my belief, and you know what? I can't prove it to you, neither can science prove me wrong. I don't buy the logic that some chimps decided not to evolve, that's ridiculous if anything.

Although I do apologize for maybe high jacking your topic for something else, it's just that since you started with the "magical guy in the clouds" I just decided to clarify a little, but yea maybe I'm way off topic, so I won't rant anymore Lol, yea, science is awesome in so many ways, and I'm definately thankful to it. Cheers.

1) You're forgetting or ignoring a simple thing: What makes you think you're right and not me? Can you prove it other than theories science has tried to come up with? I don't study evolution, I don't believe in it, and since you claim you do then instead of trying to go around and around the subject answer this: if we came from chimps/apes/ why are we not seeing proof of the missing link? Why are there still those species how they've always been? You can try all you want to deny that Darwin and scientists were wrong, just don't try to say you have evidence as even science has refuted this. According to evolution if you leave anything long enough it'll evolve to it's needs, that's ridiculous.

Frooxius · 12-10-2013, 03:05 AM

@Maravilla: I already addressed that in my post, please read it more carefully.

But briefly: My position is supported with large amount of evidence, you can't just dismiss that for no reason (I say there is evidence, because these is, if you have any arguments against the evidence presented, please show it). What do you have to support yours?

You said you haven't studied evolution, yet you make claims about it, which are just wrong and show lack of understanding even of the basics of the theory.

There's no reputable scientific source that would say this evidence is invalid, but just in case: Can you provide sources and reasons why is the evidence we have invalid?

Maravilla Wrote:According to evolution if you leave anything long enough it'll evolve to it's needs, that's ridiculous.

That's not what the theory of evolution says. Theory of evolution explains the diversity of species and how natural selection (fitness "criteria" imposed by the environment) causes organisms to slowly change over the time, by non-randomly selecting from a pool of random variations.

Really, if you're going to argue against something, please try to actually learn what it says first from a proper source (or rather, multiple sources) and argue against that, otherwise you're just falling back to the strawman fallacy, by attacking some distorted, caricature version of it.

Grab a biology textbook, watch some lectures and actually learn about it, otherwise it's just like arguing that computers don't work, because throwing a bunch of rocks together and adding fuel doesn't make a robot.

If you're not going to bother to learn about it, at least look at this very short explanation if not anything else: