h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well if it doesn't learn to I'll hit it with something heavy

this was the first thing that came to hand.

"It can be quite hard to accept that sometimes the universe just doesn't fit our parochial preconceptions."

And why should it? It wasn't put together solely for our benefit.


Are you serious blicky? I thought everyone knew quantum events were truly random and therefore without cause.

F

Yeaht I'd never heard of these bits:

We know this is true because of two measurable phenomena: Casimir forces, which cause two objects close together in space to be pulled twoards each other and Hawking radiation, which is emitted at the event horizon of black holes.

<>



And you won't get to heaven either! Earlier Si9mon askes me why I capitalized the word God if I don't believe in him as my god. Well, it's simply because he is a character in a book and, as with all proper names, they are capitalized. So when I refer to the christian god I write God.

az

Whereas 'azahar' is a character in cyberspace and doesn't deserve capitalisation?

I do that too (capitalise God) because it's the convention in Western Christian society but it's perhaps going a bit far to capitalise Scripture and His etc. I shall desist forthwith.

F

Was it not douglas adams himself that had a go at people using capital letters to make something sound cooler/more interesting than it really is?


The Toilet Roll Of Doom!
The Pen With No Lid!
or anything of similar vein.

although mabey i'm getting Confused?

Fathom,

<>

Well, exactly! 'azahar' is my creation and I prefer small letters, thanks, so there! But I like, for example, in Terry Pratchett's books when Death ALWAYS SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS. It's quite effective and also very funny.

And so I also usually capitalize anything to do with the christian God, as in His desires, His demands, His . . . well whatever. Goes along with the whole christian God character. Like TP's Death character always speaking in capital letters.

az

"His experiments show natural selection, which i view as differing from evolution, and i havce no problem with this."
Si9mon, post 49


Wait a minute...
How is natural selection much different from evolution?
Natural selection is a process.
It makes the species better
Natural selection is a natural thing, and, when it happens, is part of the whole that is evolution, which is not a process, just a name for the collective natural selection of huge spans of time.

And evolution does have relevance to wanting to survive.
Naturally, those that don't care about surviving, probably won't And I'll bet the more people who did care, did survive. Which would explain why most(if not all)

Thanks for the reasoning behind capitolising, thats fair enough.
The way i see it, natural selection is where we start off with a wide variety of traits, some of which die out because they are damaging to the species. Although this is a form of evolution, it differs from what i would call evolution, which - correct me if im wrong, i know you will - is where a species starts with few traits, then developes many more through mutations and suchlike, depending on its environment. These two seem to work in opposite directions.
To help you understand i will give some examples:

Natural selection:
There is a herd of prehistoric giraffes, some have short necks, some have long necks. Lets say, just for arguments sake, that the long neck gene is recessive, we'll call it 'l' and the short neck gene is dominant, 'L'. the long neck giraffes are thus 'll' and the short neck ones either'Ll' or 'LL'. Lets say all the trees in the area are tall and only have edible branches at the top, which only the long necked giraffes can reach. the short ones cannot eat and thus die. This leaves the gene pool with only the 'l' gene for neck length, so all the giraffes from then on have long necks and can eat and live.
This seems to me to be quite possible, however i do not see it as a necessary step as i think that if God could make giraffes with a range of neck sizes, then he could just as easily make them with long necks already. Perhaps they lived in a place with food only on the ground at some stage so it was necessary for them to have the short neck gene. I do not know if that was the case.

Evolution:
We start off with a herd os short necked giraffes, all of them 'LL'. Either: a) the trees are too tall to reach the leaves, so they stretch over time and the characteristic is passed on - i think this may have been john baptiste de lamarck, or possibly erasmus darwin who beleived in this. - This form of evolution is not possible, and has been proven so. if you cut off the tails of 100 mice, they will not produce tail-less babies.

or b)the giraffes manage to survive long enough to give birth to a few offspring, one of these has somehow had their genes altered so that the are the first 'Ll' giraffe. This ones survives long enough to breed a few times, and its offspring are all 'Ll'. these offspring then breed to produce 'll' giraffes who eat and breed according to natural selection, so that we get all long necked giraffes. This theory works better if the long neck gene is dominant, so that the first mutated babies would have long necks and there would be no need for natural selection, as nearly all of them would be tall. This requires beneficial mutations, but most mutations are degenerative, and produce a sterile creature. Mutations happen very rarely, and the odds of even one mutation in 100 being beneficial are very slim. I guess thats why it needs 'billions of years' to take place.

or c)The short necked giraffes develope wings through mutations as in (b) and can then fly up to the higher branches. Completely ludicrous i think youd agree, but i apologise if you are offended by my saying so.

Both natural selection and evolution work much simplier (is that a word?) if the long neck/having wings gene is dominant. Evolution, as i see it, requires the gain of genetic information through mutation, which i do not see as possible. (b) is possible to some small extent, for instance, a bird feeds on frogs. If you had green speckled frogs in a pool of green algae, the bird cannot see them, so they survive. The algae starts to die out due to a more resistant red algae, then if some of the frogs mutated to have red speckles, they would survive better. This however, would be a very rare event but plausible.

I hope this clears up any confusion when i refer to natural selection and evolution as different things.

Advocatus Diaboli

Assuming this heavy breathing and footfalls are the result of some dinosaur (which im quite hapy to accept it may not be), doesnt evolution and the 'scientific' view put humans and dinosaurs at different points in time? different by millions of years? i know im just being picky here, but i thought it ironic. My apologies, of course, if this thing behind him is just another caveman or some such thing.

You over look some obvious things Si.

Actually there were other giraffe like creatures many different species who all had long neck genes that were recessive and they eithr died out or by natural mutations specialised in other eating beahaviours, but lucky for the giraffes theirs is dominant and the giraffes survive.

This satisfies your aprehensions but still leaves evolution as a viable theory. Examination of fossils show many mutations that didnt make the cut.

In recent history wolves in the UK bit the dust. They were well adapted hunters, fast, strong with good techniques. Man got here and the environment changed, now the seemingly less able badger is the UKs top wild predator.

Si9mon

As I understand it, the scientific theory of evolution requires an understanding of several different theories or principles. You appear to already have accepted some of these individual elements yet reject their summation in the theory of evolution.

For example:

1)Natural selection - you accept that organisms that are better able to exploit their environment will be more successful than organisms that are less well adapted to that environment.

2)Mutation - you accept that mutation occurs. Whether a mutation is recessive or dominant, beneficial or detrimental is irrelevant. What is important is that it IS possible for a single mutation to have a beneficial impact. A mutation with a detrimental impact will not spread through a gene pool, whereas a mutation with no apparent impact will spread slowly. A mutation with a beneficial impact will spread much more rapidly.


The only elements that seem to be missing from your understanding so far are:

3) Environmental changes - organisms live in dynamic environments. The weather changes on an annual cycle, but also changes over millenia, producing ice ages and periods of tropical warmth. Local environments also change through the interaction of many different organisms. As a consequence a mutation with no benefit in one decade or century that spreads (even only partially) through a given population may have a significant survival impact in the next.

4) Migration - organisms migrate over considerable distances. They can do this actively in the search for safer environments or richer food stocks, or passively as a coconut on the waves. This leads to geographically separate populations. That is separate gene pools, subject to different environmental pressures and with no possibility of mutations being spread across geographical barriers. This ultimately contributes to diversity.

5) Probability theory - mutations appear and spread with greater regularity than you think. The odds of a beneficial mutation in a given species occuring may be low, but with a sufficiently large population and given enough time the number of opportunities for such a mutation to occur rapidly increases to the point where not just one mutation will enter the gene pool, but many.


If you can spot any major flaws in any of these, then feel free to point them out.

Obviously you are still at liberty to reject evolution in preference to what I would consider to be a far more unlikely possibilty, ie creation, but that is your perogative.

Madent

See, Si9mon, I consider both your examples of natural selection and evolution, both natural seleection and evolution. They're both both those things...
Either way, it makes way for those with long necks to survive, improviing the capabilitiy of the species: evolving.
(not a major change, nor a minor one... probably happened over a couple thousand years anyway, bit your examples work fine)


>>or c)The short necked giraffes develope wings through mutations as in (b) and can then fly up to the higher branches. Completely ludicrous i think youd agree, but i apologise if you are offended by my saying so.
<<
Well I don't see why anyone's be offended...
that though is so much of an adaption I think it nearly impossible. Anyway they'd have to build up to it first, and have 50 foot wings, the heart and muscle strength to support nd beat those wings, feathers possibly, and know how to use them to fly.

Si9mon:

"I hope this clears up any confusion when i refer to natural selection and evolution as different things."

It does, thanks. The reason is very well summed up by Madent, but can be more rapidly paraphrased as:

>YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EITHER<

"Although this is a form of evolution,"

See - you DO believe in evolution. You don't understand it and haven't really thought about it enough. For example:

"it differs from what i would call evolution, which [...] is where a species starts with few traits,"

Now: just please consider how any species could have "few traits". What is a "trait"? Is a short neck a "trait"? Is spots on the skin or fur a "trait"? How about breathing oxygen?

Don't get carried away with the simplistic idea that there is anything so remotely easy to understand as a "gene for short necks". Genetics just isn't that simple - and that's the difficulty.

Creation is nice, simple, easy to understand - it's a story designed to appeal the level of a small child, someone who would have a hard time spelling "biology", let alone studying it. That's why Christians like it - they get it. And it's also why they look so stupid trying to argue against evolution. More often than not, they're arguing against something they only THINK they understand. Sadly, the rest of the time, they're arguing against something they proudly boast that they DON'T understand, and don't WANT to understand. I hope that's not you...

"These two [natural selection & evolution] seem to work in opposite directions."

Only because you've a narrow view of what's going on - you're thinking is too simplistic. The world is more complex than you make it out to be.

"There is a herd of prehistoric giraffes, some have short necks, some have long necks."

OK, there's your first problem. No herd of any animal is like that. You've imposed a simplistic binary separation - "long neck" vs. "short neck". This just doesn't happen. There's a continuum of neck lengths, from short to long, with everything in between. This is CRITICAL to understanding what happens next, and you've completely ignored it.

"Lets say, just for arguments sake, that the long neck gene is recessive,"

OK, next problem, there is no such thing as "gene for a long neck". The interaction of various genetic codes which results in a particular neck length is much, much more complex than that. Sure, there are a few characteristics of some animals which can be narrowed down to specific genes - sickle cell anaemia, for instance. But the vast majority of characteristics, benign, malign and neutral, are the result of interactions far more complex than we can currently understand. The idea that there's a gene "for" things is a media simplification which has taken an unfortunate hold on the public imagination.

"Lets say all the trees in the area are tall and only have edible branches at the top, which only the long necked giraffes can reach."

Another ridiculous assumption. You simply can't just "let's say" that. You've a herd of animals living there - there has to be a food supply. You can't just blithely say things like that and have your example taken seriously.

"This seems to me to be quite possible,"

Oh good...

"however i do not see it as a necessary step"

...uh oh...

"as i think that if God could make giraffes with a range of neck sizes, then he could just as easily make them with long necks already."

Basic failure of logic. The theory of evolution does not require god to make them in the first place.

You have to understand - if you're going to ASSUME the existence of god, then you might as well give up on science right now. If there's a god, and he can do anything, then all the laws of physics and chemistry and biology are just his little joke. He can ignore them any time he likes, so they're not "laws" at all. They're a lie designed to make intelligent people not believe in him.

Presupposition of the existence of god makes any attempt to understand evolution a waste of your time. If you're going to spend your whole time looking for ways to reconcile the evidence with your beliefs, you might as well stop wasting your time and ours.

If you really want to learn, you have to first open your mind and look at the evidence on its own account, and not filter it through the Bible. If you can do that, great.

"if you cut off the tails of 100 mice, they will not produce tail-less babies."

Duh. If you circumcise every generation of Jewish children for five thousand years, they will not produce foreskin-less Jews.

"This requires beneficial mutations, but most mutations are degenerative, and produce a sterile creature."

What is your evidence for this statement? (As a side question, what is your definition of a "mutation"?)

"Mutations happen very rarely,"

Compared to what?

"and the odds of even one mutation in 100 being beneficial are very slim. I guess thats why it needs 'billions of years' to take place."

You are SO close to some degree of understanding here that it's frustrating to watch.

"c)The short necked giraffes develope wings through mutations as in (b) and can then fly up to the higher branches. Completely ludicrous i think youd agree,"

No more ludicrous than the idea that giraffes sprang into existence fully formed, with a genetic code showing their descent from a common ancestor with other antelopes and fossil evidence of those ancestors in the rocks beneath them. How stupid and unbelievable is that?

"Evolution, as i see it, requires the gain of genetic information through mutation, which i do not see as possible."

You don't see it as possible because you don't undertand it. This is not something to be ashamed of, by itself. Rejecting its validity merely on that basis is, however.

"[frog example]This however, would be a very rare event but plausible"

You really are SO close to understanding, I think. You are prepared to accept evolution is plausible in principle, which is excellent news.

You are talking about a very rare event. Winning the lottery is a very rare event - the odds are one in almost fourteen million. And yet it happens to /somebody/ almost every week.

Why? Because LOTS of people play. Millions in fact - so many that, despite the astronomical odds, you're more surprised if nobody wins than if somebody does.

Well, the odds of DNA or a molecule like it forming from inanimate constituent chemicals in any given pinhead-sized drop of water in any given second are TINY, really very very unlikely indeed. BUT:

1. It doesn't form spontaneously - it's built up from smaller, simpler building blocks, each of which is quite unlikely, admittedly, BUT:

2. How many pinhead-sized drops of water are there on the planet? (Answer: somewhere in the region of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

3. How many seconds are there for it to happen in, just in say one billion years? (Answer: 31,536,000,000,000,000)

4. How many chemical reactions can take place in each second? (conservative estimate, 1000)

5. It only has to happen once, ever.

That last one is the killer. You're looking for the probability of an event - the spontaneous arising of a self-replicating molecule like DNA. You know it's "pretty unlikely" to happen, but in your favour you have 1x10^24 places for it to happen in, multiplied by 3x10^19 moments for it to happen in.

Given that you have 3x10^43 opportunities for it to happen in just the first billion years, shouldn't you be more surprised that it doesn't happen more often? Shouldn't you be wondering what made DNA so special, and why all the other self-replicating molecules which must have sprung up didn't win?

Once you start to look at the numbers, the sudden and apparently spontaneous "chance" creation of life, without need for outside interference, in a soup of otherwise unremarkable chemicals stops looking unlikely and starts seeming inevitable.

This is especially so when you consider the lesson of the extremophiles - life forms which thrive in conditions where you wouldn't think anything could live. It's educative to consider that everywhere we have so far looked on earth, we have found life - life living in anaerobic conditions below freezing in Antarctica, life hanging on in cracks in rocks kilometres underground, life in ponds so caustic or acid they would burn your skin off, life in night-black boiling water around volcanic vents.

Life is not "special". It's commonplace, and it's everywhere. It's inevitable, given a few, very few initial conditions. No creator necessary.

I hope you understand this.

damn. good job. I want to see the response.

There is always the theory of divine evolution. thats where the evolution of the species is engineered by a higher body. I find raw evolution hard to believe personally.

Personally I find this theory of divine evolution far far more hard to beleive.

Why? The idea that every thing you see around you has happened by accident is easy to believe? the idea of an exostential being is hard to believe? Tell me either of them two is easy and simple. If you believe in God then you believe devine evolution is possible by direct fact that you believe God is all powerful. If you believe in evolution then they idea that this is orchestrated by a higher being is about as believably that it all 'just happened'

>>Why? The idea that every thing you see around you has happened by accident is easy to believe? <<
You should read the incredibly long psot above, the part about the chances of a self-improving cell appearing, or something like that, each second. It's not easy to beleive because we have such short life spans, I believe, but in the grand scheme of things, yes, it is.
>>the idea of an exostential being is hard to believe?<<
Yes, it's one of the hardest and most absurd things I've ever heard. Besides there being reasons that people could hypothetically have made their religions up(social control, for one), its about as believable as a children's fairy tale except if you believe in it you get an incentive to continue doing so(going to heaven)

>>If you believe in evolution then they idea that this is orchestrated by a higher being is about as believably that it all 'just happened'<<
And so, if I had to choose between the two, I would choose the far more rational one in which (nearly) everything makes sense. I beleive that the only reason peopel do not beleive this is that it doesn't include a reason for why the universe is here, but that's only because the reason hasn't been discovered yet. It's *there*, we just don't know it.