sees_all1

OMFG is your theory that some fish gave birth to a [developmentally delayed]ed air breathing monkey fish thing! You have no idea what you're talking about! -.- What on earth are you talking about? How did I imply this from what I have said? You didn't imply anything. You explicitly said it: What in the hell are you talking about? All living organisms have genetic variation. The first life form to appear on earth has absolutely no genetic variation. How can there be genetic variation in just one organism? There isn't any! This is another "WTF?!!?!" moment. What are you talking about and how does a carcinogen have anything to do with evolution? How ignorant are you? What causes genetic variation? Mutations. What is cancer? A malignant mutation. What causes cancer? Carcinogens, radiation, the same thing that causes mutations. Okay bro, whatever you say. You seem to be totally messed up on what your idea of DNA replication is. There are many reasons that produce slight variation in organisms, and none of them have anything to do with cancer, carcinogens, radiation, or whatever other crazy ideas you have dreamt up. The first lifeform to exist on Earth certainly replicated to have variation in successive generations. You think the only reason people look different is cause some kind of carcinogen interfered in our reproduction?? :blink: Go back to high school and pay attention in Biology class. Your idea of evolution seems to be that one day, a fish gave birth to a freak mutant baby who could walk on land and breathe air. This is absolute nonsense.

OMFG is your theory that some fish gave birth to a [developmentally delayed]ed air breathing monkey fish thing! You have no idea what you're talking about! -.-

seriously what is that man doing to his anus

You are now. Why have you only quoted yourself? Is it just me or are we the only result in google for that phrase?

This is a lot of complete biological nonsense. It sounds like you got this info from a creationist book where the author just wants to disprove evolution. It sounds like you've never read a biology book. How many traits did the first organism have? Did it have blue eyes or green eyes? Was it short or tall? Oh wait, it didn't have any of those. The only way for a new species to form is through mutations, not genetic variation. Remind me again, whats the definition of a mutation? Because it sounds like you have no clue, and its a rather large part to the theory of evolution.

Many problems with this. The big one is that we don't have other data points. We don't know of other planets where life has evolved. We don't have other universes to compare. Therefore, the probability of life evolving as it has on our planet is incalculable. There isn't enough information to get a true answer. Furthermore, your assumption would maybe be kind of correct if you were calculating the probability of a specific species evolving, but, according to our best data the probability that, once started, life will proliferate and mutate to fill all available niches, assuming it doesn't die out completely, over time is approximately 100%. Here's a six sided die. You get to roll it once. Oh, you rolled a 6. What was the probability you'd roll a 6? You only rolled it once, we don't have other data points. We don't know what the other rolls would be, but we can make reasonable and logical assumptions. Six sided die? Six outcomes. Probability of rolling a six? Less than one, greater than zero, could be somewhere around 1/6. Also, I'm not calculating the probability of a specific species, I'm calculating the probability of the number of all known species. The probability of a specific species (such as humans, for example) would be MUCH lower - like the probability that their genome was a very specific length (30000 instead of 30001), and contained very specific values (like ACGTTTAATTGCCC versus GCGTTTAATTGCCC) which decreases at a very rapid one in 4^(length of key DNA) or less for complex life. A better critique would have been that my probability was just for a given planet being earth, and not for all planets in the universe. If that was the case, you'd sum it up as a geometric distribution sum[k=1, k=n planets] {(1/10^120)*(1 - 1/10^120)^k) That number wouldn't approach anything remotely close to a small number for anything less than n=10^40, and I don't think there can be that many planets. Which is why I say its too random.

The earth's size (and gravitation field), position relative to the Sun (versus the Sun's mass), frequency of rotation on its own axis and frequency of orbit around the sun's axis are all random variables, which if slightly different would not have produced life. I could set up several integrals to show the totals of the probability mass function for all of those variables, and I'd estimate that the total probability of a planet of the right size spinning at the right speed in the right orbit is less than one in 10^10. Given that the planet is in the right spot, the probability that it is composed of the right materials (enough water, nitrogen, and hydrocarbons for life to occur) is probably a similar amount, one in 10^100. Given that the planet HAS the right materials and is in the right spot, the probability of life occurring is a continuous function over time, very slowly increasing to 1. Life occurred approximately 800 million years after earth as we know it formed, I'd estimate the probability of that happening that quickly (800 million years or less) to be close to 1 in 100. Now that life has occurred, it has to evolve. The only way life can evolve is through mutations, some random occurrence changing the organism and its offspring. This is known as a mutation. Heuristically speaking, the probability of a successful mutation decreases with the complexity of the organism, but increases with the total population of an organism. Also, the relative frequency of mutation decreases the survival rate of an organism, which also gets back to the planet's position. We know that the number of species worldwide is somewhere greater than 1.7 million, so if you think about it the 1.7 million is the least number of successful mutations that could have possibly occurred to get from one life form to all current life forms. I'm guessing its closer to (1.7 million) ^2 for extinct species and the chains of subspecies required to get there. A very rough estimate is the probability of 1.7 million species after 3.8 billion years is on the order of 0 to 1 in a thousand, with my bet at 1 in 10^8. Given all this, I estimate life on earth and all that jazz to be close to (1 / 10^10) * (1 / 10^100) * (1 / 10^2) * (1 / 10^8) = 1 in 10^120, which is why I say its too random.

There is no such thing as consent from someone younger than the age of consent. "Yeah, I'm old enough, let's do this," Sorry honey, the government says that its not your decision to make, and the answer is automatically a resounding "NO." What happened to her WAS wrong. A 54 year old man should not be having sex with a CHILD. If you're an adult, children (minors under the age of 18) are off limits.

Single parent working two jobs, understandable that she didn't notice I said parents, not parent. It takes two to make a kid, and its both parents responsibility to raise their child. Separated parents forming a dysfunctional family might be to blame more than just the mother.

This is disgusting. I don't see any humor at all in this situation. Its horrible that we need to have an "age of consent" in law, and even worse that we're forced to prosecute people for it. A 13 year old is NOT mature enough to make that decision, and I don't find any fault in her at all for what happened. Her parents allowed it to happen, especially by not monitoring her activities online or even in real life. The cell phone should have been a HUGE red flag that something wasn't right. I wonder if the girl realizes the man could've been her grandfather (based on age difference).

You are now.

Science has answered "How did life begin on Earth" - given a bunch of initial conditions, along with a spark and basic proteins were able to form, organize, and start reproducing. That's all well and good, except it leaves everything up to too much chance, its too random. Science will never be able to answer "How did the universe begin" unless they can observe another appear out of nowhere, especially because the experiments they set up require initial conditions, require matter to be present, where we know that couldn't have been the case before matter. Also, trying to answer those questions misses the basic point - the universe exists, why does it exist?

[hide=Specifically two passages come to mind] [/hide]

If you're still hung up on the Old Testament, you've really missed the point.

I enjoyed the visuals. I think it'd be cool to have some of the outfits TBEPs were wearing, or the extras. I won't comment on the music though, as everyone else seemed to have summed it up.

I believe that God designed the universe, and everything in it at the beginning (all the initial conditions that were just so perfect). Then He formed the universe, and let everything begin to work. I believe that there have been limited times of direct intervention, usually as miracles (and things that are seen as random, highly improbable or extraordinary certainly qualify). I believe that science explains how, and religion explains why. I also feel like asking "how, how, how, how, how" is pointless, because its missing the big picture. You can't see the forest for its trees. EDIT: You really should read the New Testament. There's a lot of good stuff in there, and you'd fix your gross misconceptions.

"We have absolutely no f-ing idea" is not a "perfectly reasonable" scientific explanation. How did the Universe come to exist? Where did matter, gravity, electromagnetic forces and nuclear forces come from? You have no idea, but you act as if science has explained it all. Hell, the particle accelerator at Cern is looking for a "God" particle - something that gives matter mass. That's not an explanation. How did life come to be? You act that evolution through genetic variation explains everything, yet you fail to understand that without life there can be no evolution, and that the first life form to appear would have no genetic variation. Furthermore, there are huge gaps in basic scientific explanations. A good example would be examining several organelles within a cell, such as the mitochondria. The first life forms used anaerobic chemical reactions to provide energy, and somewhere they developed mitochondria to react with oxygen to produce more energy. The best hypothesis to explain this were that the mitochondria were separate organisms, and the larger cells "ate" them, to form a symbiotic relationship. Great explanation.

If life was a robot, a theist would tell you that the robot was designed and built by someone else, a higher being. An atheist would tell you that the robot occurred out of random chance - somehow the metal fell into place, coiled itself to form motors, and a battery formed naturally causing it to move and replicate.

The way you've described the conditions, I wouldn't call it an intervention. However there is so much more questions as to how everything came to be in your scenario (like the billion planets, the life that occurred that we don't discuss how it occurred) that it makes the "absurd" higher power much more probable and much less absurd.

What in the hell are you talking about? All living organisms have genetic variation. The first life form to appear on earth has absolutely no genetic variation. How can there be genetic variation in just one organism? There isn't any! This is another "WTF?!!?!" moment. What are you talking about and how does a carcinogen have anything to do with evolution? How ignorant are you? What causes genetic variation? Mutations. What is cancer? A malignant mutation. What causes cancer? Carcinogens, radiation, the same thing that causes mutations.

You completely misunderstand how evolution works. Each organism has some type of genetic variation. Think like, how some people are tall? Some have very thin hair? Different color eyes...etc. Each lifeform has the chance of developing a random trait that is more fit for survival than others of the same species. For example, if a bird randomly developed a genetic trait that allowed it to fly faster than other birds of the same species, then this bird would be more likely to reproduce and pass its genetics on to another generation. The first lifeform wouldn't have had any genetic variation, which is why "survival of the fittest" doesn't explain how all of life came to be. Genetic variation has nothing to do with toxins Because there is no such thing as a carcinogen.

There's one over zealous person I can think of that kicks people that don't have a rank. The rest of us are chill. You should try again, maybe befriend negative and get at least a smiley next to your name. Then you won't have to worry about that anymore.

Another part about evolution as a way to explain the origins of life all the way to where we are now that is difficult to believe - Life is believed to have begun from a single organism, as some random combination of proteins that reproduced itself. That's all well and good, except for evolution to work the organisms need to be differentiated somehow. If all of life on earth came from one organism, the resulting organisms would be exactly the same. There wouldn't be a "fittest" to survive. It also means that at some point the organism had to mutate - one of them had to be exposed to radiation or a toxin or something - that when it reproduced it formed something different. This had to happen more than hundreds of millions of times to produce the wildly differentiated array of species we know today. You can try to reproduce this - take a single bacterium, put it on a sterilized Petri dish, seal it and let it grow for a long time. If evolution occurs, you'd expect an entirely new species (not known to man) to exist in a rather short period of time. More than likely the bacteria growing there won't differentiate, which makes the explained origins of life on earth difficult to believe.