Myweponsg00d

Are they? I've yet to see a situation in our present life where true random has been replicated. We just defined random as being something that happens by chance. Lots of things happen by chance. Are you saying that the chance of DNA mutating or the Earth forming is somehow different from the chance of a die being rolled? What are you talking about "replicating" randomness? Because it depends on how you look at it. If you flip a million coins, and you look at a coin that landed heads up, would you say "Wow how random!". It was almost certain that a coin would land heads up. The word "random" was being used to mean "an event that easily could not have occurred". If this is your definition of random, then the origins of the Earth were not random. If you want to use the proper definition of random, then yes, it was random. But this definition of random implies nothing about how likely the event is.

Let me point out that when you said: I laughed at you. And I absolutely disagree with you on that point, and it would take someone without a clue as to what a mutation is, or how it works in evolution, to say it. I'm calling you out on your ignorance. Anyhow, it seems you've wised up to the fact that mutation is very pertinent to evolution and genetic variation, and that evolution at its very core is a mutation of species - changes in their DNA - and that mutations are purely random. But it has nothing to do with cancer and all that other crap you mentioned. I have this picture in my mind that you think that evolution suggests that one-legged organisms were walking around, and then were subject to radiation, and gave birth to two-legged freak babies. This isn't the case at all. DNA has random variations that occur during replication, and it has nothing to do with cancer and tumors that needed to be caused by some kind of radiation. It also has nothing to do with people who get exposed to radiation and then give birth to babies with 4 thumbs on one hand. Change just happens.

I never said it was improbable? I said that if you say a creator does not exist, then the universe cannot have been created anything but randomly. See above. So then what does the randomness have to do with anything? It is random, so what? Lots of things are random.

I don't understand... I was saying that YOU seem to be of the misconception that evolution predicts that one species randomly gives birth to freak mutants of other species and they fight to the death.

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?

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. I guess we again have just reached a point of disagreement. If you are honestly convinced that you understand biology and you aren't willing to accept the fact that you are clueless about a lot of things in biology, then theres nothing more we can discuss to this point. Again I assert that you haven't the faintest idea of what you are talking about. Are we talking about the first one celled organism? It still has genetic information contained in DNA. There are many traits of a single celled organizm that are coded in its DNA (example: how do I get food? how to a make waste?). Future generations of this organizm would be able to have slightly different information in their genes regarding any number of a cell's basic functions. Remind me again, what is the theory of evolution? Because it sounds like you have no clue. Mutations are random. But is it random that successful mutations get passed on to future generations? No. Beneficial mutations, as well as harmful mutations, are bound to happen as the species replicates. The beneficial mutations are bound to be passed on to future generations in higher quantities. There is no luck involved. It is no accident that we have eyes. Organisms were bound to develop eyes on Earth because of the wavelength of light emitted by our Sun. You can't put a probability on this like 1 in 10^6 or whatever number you choose, because it isn't something that happened by luck. Eyes were guaranteed to develop on a life-bearing planet that recieves light with wavelength 400-800nm. You make it sound like it is some strike of luck that an intelligent being with eyes, ears, aposable thumbs, etc happened to evolve. It is not luck. It is evolution. The only sort of luck involved is that we have been lucky enough not to suffer a collision with a giant asteroid that destroyed all life on Earth. It just isn't luck. Stop comparing anything dealing with evolution with luck, chance, etc. Evolution is not luck. No luck. Just stop it. One of the most stereotypical creationist arguments is "But what about a tornado ripping through a junkyard and making a plane?" Its crap. This is not an argument because evolution doesn't say that humans had a low liklihood of developing. It simply is not related to luck. And no ammount of fact-denying or creation-science is going to change that.

For Y_guy Here we go again. Random is not the same damn thing as improbable. If I have 100 different pennies in my pocket, all the same except for one, what is the chance that I will pick one of the 99 pennies? It is 99%. This is random. But, the fact that it is random doesn't mean that all other events are equally probable...I just don't understand the correlation that is being made between random and improbable. Again, even if they came about randomly, this doesn't mean our universe was improbable. Some think that there are billions, trillions, or an even larger number of other universes that might exist outside of ours. If this is true, then yes, the chances of any particular universe being randomly selected would be small. BUT the chances of our universe existing at all approaches 1 as the number of universes approaches infinity. Also, this is assuming that some physical constants, such as speed of light and Planck's constant, can even be altered at all. Would you say "Boy, it sure is lucky that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is 3.14159........"? No. You wouldn't this is simply the only way that a circle could ever exist. Some people are also of the thought that perhaps the only way "a universe" could ever exist is if Planck's constant is 6.62 x 10^-34 ========================================================================= For sees_all Did you just call 10^100 similar to 10^10? I'm going to assume you meant 10^10 for both of these... Okay. 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. Again, this is complete nonsense. Evolution is not the same thing as random chance. Evolution is guaranteed to occur and it is guaranteed that the best traits will be passed on. It is not an accident that we have the species that we have: they evolved because they work. They did not evolve out of random luck! In this last quote, I fixed your second number to 1/10^10 and crossed out the last number because quite frankly it just doesnt make any sense. It is complete nonsense to take a statistical estimate based on the number of species. If you think it makes sense, you really must educate yourself on biology. So if we correct your crazy mistakes what we get is a chance of 1/10^22 for having a planet like Earth. There are 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe and each of these galaxies contain at LEAST a billion stars. For ease of estimate, lets say that each galaxy contains exactly 1 billion. That right there puts us at 10^20 stars in the universe. So if we use your corrected estimate of 1/10^22 and compare this to a very slim estimate of 10^20 stars in the universe, the Earth would only have to overcome odds of 1/100 to actually make it into existence. If we nevermind the fact that your probability estimates are a lot lot lower than the estimates of people who spend their lifetimes studying this stuff (most estimates I have seen place the odds at 10^-9 through 10^-10), we still see that there is a fairly decent chance of Earth existing. Also I grossly underestimated the number of stars in each galaxy. Some have upwards of 100s of billions. Again, this post is total and complete nonsense. Using the number of species in any time of probability calculation is so nonsensical that I can't even begin to address it.

By that definition, then yes the universe was a random event. But I don't think thats how people are using the term... For example, you flip 5 coins, and you see that 2 of them come up heads. You then look at these and say "Look! It came out randomly? Its too random, God did it!" CGF is using the idea of "random" to somehow imply that the event is unrealistic, illogical, or improbable. Addressed above I do not fully reject any idea with 100% certainty. This is like saying we won't be able to figure out where humans came from unless we can recreate all of evolution in a lab experiment just to make sure. Theres no telling what kinds of cosmological evidence might be out there that helps us trace back to the universe's origins.

Anyone who has ever taught or tutored a subject knows that you get the same questions over and over. Why should learning how to play Runescape be any different than learning anything else?

I want to get this thread's opinion on something: chest hair. When do you gentlemen think it is okay to show chest hair? All my life I have been wearing casual button-ups and polos with a crew neck t shirt underneath, to cover up the chest hair at the top of my chest. I have always noticed that models, some friends, and celebrities manage to pull off the button-up with only a v neck undershirt or no undershirt at all...But when I try it, and when I see some other friends try it, I think it looks really dumb and trashy. What do you guys think? What makes chest hair look great in some situations but totally sloppy in others?

So when you were in gradeschool and asked your teacher: "How do I divide 23 into 455?" he just looked at you and handed you a math textbook? What questions ARE legitimate? Ultimately all questions could be answered on your own. The factual information is out there, but sometimes people need help making sense of it from expert experience. The answer may seem obvious to you from looking at a guide, but from a newbie point of view it could be a very confusing question, due to some misunderstandings he may have about the game.

Yeah, and it also sucks when people get scammed IRL. So let's appoint government officials to monitor every trade that takes place between citizens. That, or we could all live inside a big plastic bubble where everyone is safe from all the dangerous stuff. ... Sure, theres more scamming and abuse now, but if it is either that or a lack of freedom, I choose the scamming.

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. Again, I still don't know how you can think it is "too random". Since there are billions of billions of stars and billions of billions of planets, some of those planets are bound to exist just far enough away from their star so that life can exist. Of those planets that are in the right area to support life, at least one of them is bound to see life, especially after millions or billions of years of pre-biological events occuring in the "primordial soup". I just don't get your meaning of "random" or "chance". There seems nothing random about it to me. If life didn't appear here on Earth, it easily could have appeared on any other Earth-like planet. This simply isn't true. Theres no telling what sorts of scientific breakthroughs will allow us to obtain new knowledge about our surroundings. If you were alive 50,000 years ago you probably would be saying "Theres no way we will ever know what that great ball of fire in the sky is!". If you were alive 500 years ago youd probably be saying "Theres no way we will ever know how humans came to exist on this planet!" Knowledge always seems unobtainable until we obtain it. If we weren't perplexed by how to answer the question, then we would be able to answer it. Do you ask these questions about everything? Why does the photon have no mass? Why does the photon behave like a particle and a wave? Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? Why is the electron's charge negative? None of these natural phenomena have a motive behind them. They just happened. There are reasons for what caused these things to happen, but there isn't a philosophical justification for why these events occured. They just did. It is nature. Why would there need to be an explanation for the philosophy of why the universe exists? It just exists.

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. So you just said that science should answer "how?" questions. Therefore, shouldn't "How did life begin on Earth?" and "How did the universe begin?" be answered by science?

The world needs morality. You can have morality without having some belief that things in the physical world are being manipulated by a puppet-master.

"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. So you are suggesting that every time we figure something out, we say "Okay, I guess God doesnt actually explain this, but it will explain whatever we don't know now!" Reasonable. Again this simply isn't true. The RNA in the first lifeform is just as suseptible to genetic variation as any other lifeform. I don't know where you got this "The first lifeform couldn't have varried" bullcrap from but it simply isn't true. Also we have many explanations for how life could have originated. What we don't know is how life specifically originated on Earth, like, the historical truth. You act like biologists are standing around and saying "WTF?!?! Where does teh life comes from?!!!!!?!?!" We have plenty of explanations for how life can come to be, we just aren't yet sure of which story is historically accurate for Earth specifically. More appeal to ridicule. You think the formation of a symbiotic relationship is implausible, and your substitute theory is that a man in the sky made some hocus pocus and forced life to exist? Why is your intelligent design theory any more plausible? And what the hell is your theory on God anyway? That he set things into motion and then let them happen...but then intervened at random times? You think he let the Earth form all by itself...but then life simply couldn't have come without divine intervention? You think he then let life evolve, but intervened to give humans intelligence? Why is it that you think God simply happens to fill the gaps of current accepted scientific truth? 50 years from now are you going to adapt your God theory to just explain whatever it is that we dont know then?

Isn't it confusing when they use arguments that actually are more effective when aimed at religion? For example, I was incorrectly accused of using an appeal to ridicule argument, when in reality the main argument many creationists make is an appeal to ridicule.

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. No...that's not how it works at all. You seem to have beliefs about evolution that even myself, a grade 11 science student, know are false. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBHEsEshhLs Please just watch that. Lmfao. Thank you. Sounds exactly like half of my debates with creationists. The other half just walk away as soon as we start talking.

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. You act like we don't have perfectly reasonable scientific explanations for how stars, planets, and life have come to exist. What would you like explained? The formation of stars? Atoms? The evolution of life? We've most of it down completely. I insist that you stop referring to this stuff as random chance; there was nothing random about it. Well, there may be somewhat random elements, but I wouldnt say it happened by chance.

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. If you're curious to how stars and planets come to exist, pick up an astronomy or astrophysics textbook.

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.

What in the hell are you talking about? All living organisms have genetic variation. This is another "WTF?!!?!" moment. What are you talking about and how does a carcinogen have anything to do with evolution?

I don't really know what you mean by linear. I don't know what to tell you about this except that individual cell components are not useless by themselves. It sounds like you just got this from some random person using the "irreducilby complex" argument. I've heard this many times about things such as the bacterial flegellum. The flegellum would not work if any of its componets were not present. However, it just would not work as a flegellum. The flegellum with a few less parts could still be used as a sort of syringe for attacking other organisms. Intelligence is the most useful tool for survival. As humans gained intelligence, we lost other features that were now useless. For example, our hands are not good for attacking barehanded, but they are extremely good at using tools. As humans evolved, we lost features that we had in our musculature that made us strong by ourselves, and gained features that were more useful for using tools. This just seems to be another huge misconception regarding evolution. It's not like any random animal can just evolve to produce intelligence, several other features must be present. If the animal does not have sufficient motor capabilities to manipulate the environment around it, it will never need intelligence and would prosper more from having other features. But..compare us to apes. Apes are one of our closest evolutionary "relatives". They have far more intelligence than other species because they are quite similar biologically: they have the ability to use their surroundings as tools. First of all, shrimp eat other lifeforms...so I'm not sure how you think they just exist for others to eat them... Secondly, shrimp are bigger, stronger, and faster than many other smaller lifeforms that are found in the ocean. First of all, a cow is only the female bovine. Are you trying to tell me that a bull isn't strong, fast, or scary...? Secondly, the cows we eat today are largely a product of domestic breeding. Asking this question would be like asking why a poodle is so fluffy? Whats the evolutionary purpose? None. They were bred. "Survival of the fittest" is a term that only applies to animals in the same species. The shrimp we see today are stronger, faster, and more apt for survival than the animals that may have resembled shrimp 5 million years ago. A lion is certainly one of the most fit animals for survival. Does this mean that he goes around the plains and squashed all of the bugs, eats the grass, and hunts every animal from a wildebeast to a small mouse? No. And it isn't his goal either.

I would like to know what you estimate to be the odds of Earth developing are. Because even if the odds are 1 in a billion, there would still be a billion earths in the universe. Even if the odds were 1 in a billion billion, there would still be at least 1 Earth, and thats all we need. Or if the odds were 1 in a billion billion billion, that would mean that all we have to do is get an extraordinary stroke of luck and then we have Earth. What do you think of medical oddities that happen? There was a man that I saw on the Discovery channel who could run electric current through his body. I have never seen this or heard of this anywhere else, so I assume he is probably the only guy who can do this. Therefore the odds of a person being able to do this are like 1 in 8 billion, or even less. What do you think of this man? That he was born by supernatural methods? The chances of his case happening are extremely low, so therefore God is responsible? Dawkins and Harris both are scientists. Also none of these authors try to prove that an intelligent creator does NOT exist, as it cannot be done. Undergraduate in Physics and Astronomy. I would be going to graduate school for Physics but instead I decided to obtain a post-grad degree in teaching so that I can help fight the US's terrible problem with scientific illiteracy. If anyone is claiming that God does exist, there is simply no possible way that this person is well-versed in experience with making scientific claims or defending scientific arguments. Good, another book. Theres books written about the flying spaghetti monster, should I link you to those? Anybody can write a book and it doesn't help your argument. 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. Genetic variation has nothing to do with toxins Again, a complete misunderstanding. It isn't like a worm randomly mutated and became a catterpillar. These two seperate lifeforms came from millions of years of very slight genetic variation. This is simply not true. Organisms evolve on a much much much larger timescale than this...

That isn't my point at all. Millions of dollars are being spent on research to figure out what the mechanism is that makes matter have a gravitational attraction. My point is that we don't just say "God" or "Fairies" or "little green men" are responsible for other stuff. We don't go around saying "Hmmm, I wonder why my roof blew off" and say "The spirit of the house must be angry with me!" If you existed 1000 years ago in Russia, you would likely have blamed it on the Domovoi, the spirit of the house. But today, when we develop explanations for things, most people think that these explanations are dumb. The point wasn't that "gravity just exists" the point is that literally every natural phenomenon is not explained by some type of magic or superintelligent being. You either misunderstand what "chance" means or you misunderstand the scientific theories. For example, many anti-evolutionists make the argument "The human eye is so complex, you think that came about BY RANDOM LUCK? BY CHANCE?!" This isn't at all what evolution suggests. In fact, evolution says that it is CERTAIN that we would evolve. Complex lifeforms don't thrive because of random luck, they thrive because they are stronger and more fit for survival. It has nothing to do with luck. The same can be said about our Earth. Many people think "What are the chances that Earth exists?" Well, okay...heres the thing. There are billions of stars in the galaxy and many many more planets. These planets aren't all going to be Earths, but some of them are BOUND to be Earths. It is CERTAIN that an Earth would exist simply because there are so damn many planets in the galaxy. And the principle can be extended to the universe. One of the current leading theories suggests that there may be many many other dimensions and many many other universes. If a huge number of universes exists, that means that a universe like ours is bound to exist. It might be RARE to find planets like Earth, but that doesn't mean that we had any especially good luck. Earth was bound to be created somewhere, and life was bound to evolve on it until it becomes intelligent. Interestingly enough, the author of the book has NO BACKGROUND IN PHYSICS. Not even in any type of science or mathematics. Do you also go to Jiffy Lube to get a cheeseburger, McDonalds to have your taxes done, and call up an exterminator when your cable goes out?