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

Its very easy to say "Adam and Eve is Crap" - I mean its too silly for words isn't it.

Its all about faith though - and these days the majority of people put faith in science. The only trouble with this is that most science makes huge statements and has absolutely no way of verifying them.

Its just so easy to say that the earth is millions of years old - there is absolutely no way to prove that - scientific experiments themselves are based on nothing but faith.

If science is so good - how comes the only examples of "The Missing Link" have been forged by scientists. With the masses aamounts of old bones and stuff - how comes none of it can actually show the eveolution of man? Why - because evolution is a myth. And slowly and surely people around the world are begining to realise that. Some schools around the world are not even teaching evolution - they have come to the conclusion that it is totally absurd!

Have you ever been to, or heard about, the Galàpagos Islands? (I love PBS )

Evolution is just another word for change. The only thing that stays the same is that things are always changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst, but most often a bit of both. To say that we are forever trapped just as we are scares me more than all the bible-toting political advocates in the world (and they scare the h*ll out of me -- no pun intended).

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying we're not changing. I do have a problem with the Theory of Evolution - we're not cghanging that much - and if we were surely ther ewould be literally millions of fossills showing a gradual change from primate to man!

A common misconception, I think, is that evolution is a smooth, gradual process. Personally I wonder if it's more of a series of big mistakes that happen to work out for the better... deformities as it were. For instance, if a flying species were to become (or branch into) a land or water species, most assume that its wings would gradually grow smaller until they disappeared. A more probable scenario is that one chick is born without or with deformed wings. A serious deformity for its species. However it survives to have children of its own. Perhaps one or two out of each clutch inherit the deformity, passing down the gene. These deformed birds (now landbound) develope stronger leg muscles and other smaller traits which help it survive its new lifestyle.

Which makes me wonder what man is to become. Have we gotten too smart for our own evolution?

Assuming we have not become him/her/it already. Maybe we'll find out in about 50 years when we start establishing colonies offworld, or maybe even sooner, depending on what they get up to on the International Space Station.

*using all p
http://204.202.137.114/sections/science/DailyNews/apefossil981209.html
note the word 'theory' contained in the term 'evolution theory'. tis simply a logically related set of ideas to explain something, based on what evidence that has been found, furtheremore, if there were no fossils of early man surely there would be no such theory in the first place, particularly one which has such a large consensus.
the great change in man can be seen not in his physical evolution but in the evolution of his ideas and indeed, science. is it really Expected that man should evolve in any other way when he uses his mind to survive moreso than physical attributes?

In that case then man had better get busy tapping into those powers of the mind that the mainstream call just plain crazy and stop limiting himself.

Evolution is a theory. yes. But so is creationism. That aside, I take great umbrage at the Science is Crap heading. Could this be due to me having spent three years of my oh so small time on this planet doing actual scientific research. Could be.
IMHO the biggest problem with getting science across to the masses is not that they are too stupid, we are too clever, or, indeed, that it is a load of bollocks. It is because it is such a large subject, that in no way can you understand it all. No-one can, me, you, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein or even Sir Isaac Newton. Of course he would claim he could, but that is a different story.
Thus, it is a big subject that can sound a little improbable from time to time, but that is not because it is crap.

Don't think that helped the argument much, but at least I got to put me and Stephen Hawking in the same sentence.

aaah! life long dream realised. are you prepared to be thwacked to death with an old cane chair now?

Er, okay. Do I get any padding for this totally unprovoked attack?

only what you can grab hurredly at as a rush towards you brandishing the afformentioned chair

To right Science isn't crap. The applications sometimes are a bit though.
The scientific method is a wonderfull way to find things out. I'm sure that most people here know what it is, but to repeat it, it goes.
Come up with an idea, test the idea, review the idea depending on the results of tests, persuade others that what you have done is right (peer reviewed publications). Eventually others will look at your idea and say we don't agree and why.
It's the continual review of ideas which makes it different from faith/religon.

Another thought on science is crap, is the continuing comments about people being turned off science at school and not studying it further. I've no idea what to do, but wish I did.

*Munchkin hurriedly grabs first available object. Then he promptly throws away the stack of old papers as being a bit useless. Turns frantically around, eventually coming up with a 486 box, which proudly states it runs at 25MHz* Aha, no won will mind this being damaged. Come ahead varlet, I shall fend you off with consumate ease.

Need to find ways to make it understandable yet interesting. Returns to my point about it being a huge subject and difficult to get going on. I, personally find immersing things in Liquid Nitrogen can interest the non-scientist.

Indeed doing tricks like that can interest a non-scientist, but then how do you keep the interest? or even explain what happens when you do the immersion in Liquid Nitrogen?

The difference between science and faith is that science is, as Phil and an apple tree stated, that science goes out to discover what is really out there, and allows for the possiblity that we may have gotten things wrong. Faith allows for no such possibility, and simply forces you to accept what someone else tells you at face value.

Science is saying that we DON'T know what it's all about. But that doesn't mean we're going to give up trying to understand it all. Science is asking questions and coming up with reasonable hypothesis based on what is actually observable (by anyone, not just one "chosen one"). The more people experience something the more solidly it becomes a truth. Though in science no thory is ever considered infallable. The only thing science takes on faith is that we don't know everything.

In effect, science is pretty much the antithesis of faith.

I certainly agree (but then again, you're agreeing with what I say so I would).
For a very good apraisal of this idea see The Meaning of It All by Richard Feynman. It's the text of three lectures given in the 60's by the esteemed man in science, it's values, religion and science and a few other things.
It's a wonderfull book, and the text does convey his enthusiasm for science and the idea of the scientific method. I really aught to get round to reading the autobiography as he's a very good writer - if only I had been able to see one of his lecture live, but I was born too late

I agree that science is the antithesis of faith, but they can coexist. Faith has no way of explaining how things happen, but it does try to answer why they happen. Science has no way of explaining why things happen, but is essential to find out how things happen. Together we can use both science and faith to discover the how and the why.

Too smart for our own evolution? - I don't think that's it . . .

The process, as you most eloquently illustrated it, does depend on evolutionary pressure or "survival of the fittest" to make the deviation stick.

We use "social behaviour" to override such evolutionary pressure and natural selection (most of the time). I mean you don't see babies with defects getting left out for the wolves these days. Well, not in Surrey anyway.

I find it very difficult to work out what the evolutionary pressure on our species is these days. What factors in general will make one person more likely to have more babies which will survive to provide more grandchildren etc. than another person? It is not as obvious as one might at first think because National boundaries and natural disasters have an unquantifiable limiting effect.

It's still possible that there _are_ millions of fossils that we just haven't found yet.