Evolution
 

I fuckin' god-damned love the concept of evolution, man. I love this shit hard. On top of the fact that the science behind evolutionary theory and evolutionary biology is interesting as fuck, an added factor of interest is that so many people don't understand it, therefore they don't believe it, despite it being a verifiable fact of life. This has driven me to memorize as much as I can about the subject because while i've seen many people argue over opinions, i've never seen so many people so staunchly opposed to a fact.

I had a pretty solid secular education, despite my parent's best attempts otherwise, as well as being in a northern extension of the Bible belt. So I had accepted evolution as a fact without truly understanding it up until sometime in 2006, when DJ FC publicly shamed my ignorance on this very board somewhere and I started looking further into the matter. Since then i've become familiarized with it enough the point of seriously considering going back to get another Undergrad in evolutionary biology, but that's another story.

Anyways this thread is about evolution. I am constantly reading up about it as it gives me the biggest science boner out of the entire field of science, so i'll try to update here often. Feel free to do the same.

If you're looking for some reading on the subject, I highly recommend these two books:

http://www.nubblies.net/forums/Photopost/data/2/124.jpg http://www.nubblies.net/forums/Photo...w_on_Earth.jpg

I just started The Origin of Species as well.

Humorous Icebreaker:


Srs Business:




Decent History channel segment on the descent of man: Ape to Man

The Top Ten Daily Consequences of Having Evolved | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine

New mathematics research proves there's plenty of time for evolution

Hey asshole, are you saying my grandfather was a monkey? ARE YOU? SOMEBODY GET CLARENCE DARROW ON THIS GODLESS HEATHEN!

Why are you black? If so, then yeah, your grand father was probably a monkey.

What do you get when you cross a monkey with a black guy? Retarded monkey.

What's the difference between tires and black people?

Tires don't sing when you put chains on them

A classic. In 1960

What's white on top and black on the bottom?



Society.

What's black on the outside and white on the inside?

An oreo.

a better example.

Why do niggers stink?


So blind people can hate them too.

What do you call a black man with a Harvard education?

A nigger

I've always thought a lot about the correlation of human loss of body hair and clothing. Found the following excerpts really interesting.

Study of lice DNA shows humans first wore clothes 170,000 years ago

Why do tigers in Africa go around licking each others ass holes?

To get the taste of nigger out of their mouths.

All that time in Africa would explain the black race. I'm assuming the whites were from being around Israel and maybe wearing clothes?

I hope that's a joke

CorpWatch*:*World: Bananas are a Dying Breed

Let me downplay it a little first. I don't put too much importance on my opinion on the subject, as it doesn't really affect anyone else. And as I said, it's the best explanation we have. But I wouldn't give a book saying gravity doesn't exist the time of day. Gravity is a daily observable, testable phenomenon. Darwin's theory is an interpretation of left over evidences. I still pick up books for and against Darwin's theory and I still find both viewpoints really interesting.

I think the main things that will need to be addressed in the future are whether or not there are limits to what natural selection can produce. There's some question about information actually being added through mutation. (The only real counter argument to that is that opponents aren't being specific enough as to what "information" actually is). I already mentioned irreducible complexity. And (this extends a little past Darwin's theory) a somewhat decent explanation for how life began. There really isn't a viable theory out there.

The more of those that get answered, the more solid my confidence in the theory will become. The attacks are really a good thing in my mind anyway. At the very least, it's just going to chisel and refine the theory into something better.

While definitely far from conclusive, the Miller-Urey experiment offers some fantastic grounds for a possible origin of life, and a much more feasible one than involving a deity:


In regard to your information inquiry, Dawkins covered that at length here: The Information Challenge | Australian Skeptics

"Attacks" are only good when they are based on healthy scientific debate, not just clambering for any Biblical excuse possible with practically no evidence whatsoever to support it. I like the quote from this article:

Good stuff.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

I think there's definitely a stigma attached to looking at alternatives to evolution. Someone had better have a slam dunk evidence that crushes the theory in one fell swoop to receive the acclaim they're saying. Anything less, they'll look like they have an agenda. In Ben Stein's little documentary there were people that said they had their grants taken away for even mentioning certain possibilities. People that supposedly weren't religious at all. Do I buy that there's a huge conspiracy? Not at all. Avoiding a professor with an agenda is probably smart. But I think it does squash some honest inquiry before it gets started.

I agree with this to an extent, except the only real "challenge" to evolution is creationism...which came first.

Its definitely good to be skeptical and to be open to new theories concerning evolution.

I'd actually argue that the theory of relativity and the theory of evolution are comparable. There are actually legitimate alternatives to the theory of relativity, but that's besides the point. You cannot see gravity, you can only see its effects. Similarly you can see the effects of evolution in the fossil record and in biology. Evolution is also testable, laboratory reproductions of mutations and natty selection support the theory.

I know I'm splitting hairs here a bit but I just wanted to mention that evolution is more than just an interpretation of left over evidence, it is observable and testable just like the theory of relativity.