Where do you start? by citizen

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Where do you start?

POSTED BY: CITIZEN
UPDATED: Friday, March 17, 2006 18:14
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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 3:40 AM

Cartoon,

My 2 cents, on Creationism.

I am sure of very few things. Everything I try to analyze on the basis of evidence. Socialism may be the ideal society. I don't think so. If it wants to convince me of that, it has to present an abunance of evidence.

Creationism is wrong. Blatantly factually incorrect. I'm probably more sure of this than most things. The theory "human beings are a type of octopus" has more merit than creationism. If religious societies and individuals want to uphold the concept of divinity, they have to at least meet the facts halfway.

The idea that somehow "evolution is wrong" is patently absurd. I could start all over tomorrow, knowing nothing, and I would be inescapably drawn to the conclusion that evolution is an operating force of the universe. Anyone with any foundation in either math or statistics knows it to be a certainly, and even if they could not figure out that it was an unavoidable conclusion, would be faced with a truly daunting mountain of evidence everywhere they looked.

I think you're smarter than this. Just let go. Take some time to consider the possibility that the world is the result of constant competition, conflict and change. You won't ever look back, I promise.

Omegadark,

I pity you you're world view. A black and white faith-based perspective will never be able to objectively view the evidence and arrive at a logical conclusion. Since there is nothing in this world which reaches the 1 of truth, then everything in your world is ultimately going to be proven "false" if enough evidence is presented to you, and therefore you can know nothing.

While, ideally, that's fine, if you know nothing, but suspect everything, I think it will actually lead you to cling to the first thing you learn, not let go, and thus fail to ever replace it with something closer to the truth. I think if it wasn't obvious, the world view of truth being shades of grey rather than black and white was something I came to after years of searching, not a presupposed imposition, so you are truly unlikely to get me to abandon it by saying, oh the position you were taught originally is better. I think you need to read something that is not of western thought. Particularly something Asia, hindu bhuddist taoist or whatever, something not written by christians or other cult of yhwh followers.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 3:45 AM

DREAMTROVE

7%, Rue,

I'm impressed you people have the energy for this one. I guess I would shorten my argument to this one: The evolution train is leaving, jump on board or be left behind.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 3:51 AM

CITIZEN

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Cartoon is a extremist religious nut. He will only lend credence to a source if it supports the Bible as literal truth and says that non Christians are evil and the source of all things bad in the world.

He will also only subscribe to sources that confirm his belief that all non Christians should be burnt at the stake, especially children, he likes that.

Doesn't matter if the source was written by a brain dead conspiracy theorist that parades around in tin-foil accessories, as long as the source says what Cartoon wants to hear.

What Cartoon wants too hear is that the rapture is coming and that he will be saved, as long as he preaches religious hatred and burns as many non-Christians as possible. He is a moron and a dribbling psychopath.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 6:02 PM

DREAMTROVE

Citizen,

Quote:
Cartoon is a extremist religious nut. He is a moron and a dribbling psychopath.

He plays basketball?

Hmmm. I thought he was a reasonable man. I still do. I think he's misguided on this one. I invite him to weigh in here.

Cartoon,

Okay, creationism I won't argue with you on, I'm certain it's false, beyond a shadow of a doubt, but what makes you cling to it. I want to hear the case for what it possibly would say if it were true. Why would one even want to believe? I'm serious, give it your best shot. Just the 'whys' - I'm not up for a long list of factual attempts to prove that it actually is so, I just want to here why someone would want to believe and what it would mean if it were true. With that advisory, fire away.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 7:32 PM

ROCKETJOCK

The problem with creationism/intelligent design is that it just begs the question. Consider:

If there is a creator, then where did that creator come from?

There are three basic possibilites:

A: The creator was itself created by something else.

B: The creator came into existence spontaneously and/or in an act of "self-creation".

C: The creator evolved, in some manner.

Answer "A" just pushes the question back another layer, to the question of who created the creator's creator.

Answer "B" assumes that a creator capable of intelligent design could come out of nowhere -- but the whole argument for intelligent design is predicated on the idea that the universe is too complex to exist without a creator; and logically, something capable of creating the universe must be more complex than that universe itself, and would therefore require a creator even more than the universe! Puting it another way, if the creator can come into existence spontaneously, then surely something less complex--such as the physical universe--could do the same--therefore eliminating the need for such a creator! (This doesn't prove there isn't one, but it does eliminate the necessity of a creator.)

Finally, answer "C" simply begs the question again, in much the same manner as answer "A", since for the creator to evolve implies an earlier existence of some kind--which implies a creator--and here we are back at Ourorboros eating his tail again.

"If Helen Keller were alone in the woods, and a tree fell on her, would it make a noise?" -- Mr. Mike

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 7:58 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I know objectively this might seem like nitpicking the issue, but my point is:

No, it doesn’t seem like nitpicking; it seems like bullshit.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 8:00 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
There are three basic possibilites:

A: The creator was itself created by something else.

B: The creator came into existence spontaneously and/or in an act of "self-creation".

C: The creator evolved, in some manner.

Except for the fourth possibility:

D: The creator always existed.

Creationism is a religion, not a science. Arguing the veracity of one with regard to the other is a moot point.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 8:24 PM

ROCKETJOCK

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Except for the fourth possibility:

D: The creator always existed.

Sorry, but your answer "D" is semantically equivalent to answer "B", in that it implies that the creator exists without a cause. It's basically the same thing as self-creation--and if the creator "always existed", then why couldn't the universe also have "always existed"?

But the truth is that the universe was created in 1964 by a kid named Herbie Popnecker, and any evidence (including memories) of a universe before that point are merely Herbie's test of our faith.

Hey--Prove me wrong!

"Praise Herbie, and pass the buck!." -- Elliot Weinstein

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 8:35 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
Sorry, but your answer "D" is semantically equivalent to answer "B", in that it implies that the creator exists without a cause. It's basically the same thing as self-creation--and if the creator "always existed", then why couldn't the universe also have "always existed"?

First of all, it’s clearly not the same, because if the creator always existed then you can dispute the existence of a creator by claiming that it’s too complex to have been created. Second, I didn’t say the universe couldn’t have always existed, but that doesn’t seem to be in tune with modern scientific thinking on the matter.

Also I don’t remember any Gospel of Popnecker.

Quote:
If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?
-- Cicero

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
Hey--Prove me wrong!

I have no intentions of doing that.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 8:58 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
No, it doesn’t seem like nitpicking; it seems like bullshit.

Usually your less of an ass. This was an assinine response. You completely miss my point.

A dogmatic retort is a dogmatic retort whether you're dogmatically retorting 5,000 or 4.6 billion. I'm familiar with the science, I was using this as an example. The truth is evidence doesn't really support the 4.6 number. It's generally close to the truth, much closer than 5,000.

By extension, I also mean the position "Bush is always right, well intentioned and a skillful executer of well crafted policy" which is so often retorted on this forum by various members is not even on the same planet as the evidence.

The best thing that can be said for Bush is that he's hopelessly incompetent. That's the best possible light in which it can be put. IMHO. Anything other than that would lead me to the conclusion that he is simply crooked.

But what this whole God debate has exposed to me is that a large number of people on this forum are not weighing the balance of evidence, and they making their best guess. They are parroting what they were told.

One parrot is not smarter than another parrot just because his answer is closer to the truth. He's still just a parrot.

I think there are probably people parroting Bush is bad because he's a republican, I've seen a few of those around as well. I bother responding to your posts because I think you think. Or at least I think you think you think.

I spent some time studying this stuff in college, and I'm not just reading fallen nostril hairs and calculating astrophysics from it. There just wasn't a whole lot of support for the 4.6 billion year old Earth in the evidence, and I assure you, the data we had did have that assertion in theory, with nothing dated within 1.3 billion years of that figure.

Now, if one were to accept my wandering Earth theory, which you surely don't, there's wiggle room for the age of the Earth, since the Earth existed in some form before it arrived at its new destination. But this really isn't the point. The point is that, like the big bang, and like creationism, it's dogma. It's not just dogma, it's faith-based dogma. It was decided on long before the evidence was collected, and objectively deserves little if any reverence at all.

The fact is wandering Earth theory explains the layout of the solar system as we see it. That doesn't mean it must be so, but it's one possibility. Another fact is that the accepted scientific dogma fails to explain the layout of the solar system as we see it. This means that categorically, the accepted dogma is wrong. It is not only possibly wrong, it is certainly wrong. We don't know in which way it is wrong, but it must be because at least some minor alteration is required to explain the extant data.

Here are some things which have been tried as patches that don't work to explain the missing matter from the #5 band, where now the asteroid belt lies:

1. Killer dustbunnies in space. This theory says the matter in teh #5 ring never formed a planet and asteroids formed from the dust. It doesn't seem to be true. This simply doesn't generate enough pressure to create the kinds of bodies we see, and it fails to explain large amounts of missing matter.

2. Planet be gone. This says planet #5 just up and left either into deep space or fell into the sun. This is almost certainly not the case, it would never gain the escape velocity necessary to escape the solar system, and extreme unlikely it would collect an orbit so eliptical as to collide with
the Sun.

3. Jupiter Stress. This says planet #5 was torn apart by the gravity stress between Jupiter and the Sun. Not only is the matter of the cummulative asteroids completely insufficient to equal the initial mass of the band, the gravitational stress would be substantially less by an order of magnitude then the stress placed on the earth by the sun and the moon, which completely fails to having anything more than a casual passing affect on the Earth.

There's a final point here to these theories. All of these were in all of my text books and in several papers I read, and all of these were come up with by scientists. They are also all clearly not the case, based on the evidence we now have, and could possibly have been proven wrong at the time. Science is not an exact science. It's educated guess work. If you treat it like religious doctrine, you're just being willfully ignorant. 4.6 billion years is a guess, nothing more. It's not connected to guiding principles of the universe the way evolution, chaos and quantum mechanics are. It's just a number, out of a hat. I'm not be any means disputing that that is the age of the moon. By all accounts it is. But I took a look at this new evidence, and there seems at least to be much evidence now for 3.5 or 3.6 B. I read the australian thing, and it's not conclusive that these crystals are not of extraterrestrial origin, in fact they may be. But to cling to something because someone said it a long time ago is argumentatively no different from the perspective of the flat earth society.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:07 PM

DREAMTROVE

Not to be the thread police, but I also think that this threadjack about the existance of God is boring, imho (No offense intended). It's all theocratic posturing, and Chrisisall nicely created another thread for it.

Now back to the subject at hand, which is where do we begin, I said my piece on the Earth, and on people, who I said were essentially no different than the oversize monkey-like mice which were munched on by dinosaurs a couple hundred million years ago, with the major exception that we have written language. Someone trounced this as discrediting me, that we are decended from such a creature, but that's accepted fact. I simply think there is nothing *unique* about humans, and that we do not posseess a special soul, or any special thing at all, save one: A written language.

Now I know a few people violently disagree with me, but I'm curious. Does anyone think I'm in the right general direction?

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:45 PM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
He plays basketball?

Hmmm. I thought he was a reasonable man. I still do. I think he's misguided on this one. I invite him to weigh in here.

No dribbling as in what people in padded rooms do.

As for reasonable man, bollocks. Reasonable when you echo his comments exactly, disagree with his world view and all of a sudden your sub human scum not worth talking or listening too, which is what happened to me.

I disagreed with Cartoons Christian Fundamentalist website that said by definition Islam and Muslims are evil (the definition, one assumes, is that they aren't Christian) and should all be put in camps and murdered.

He violently disagreed with my assertion that Islam was in essence a split from Christianity: how dare I say another religion is related to his one true divine one. I must be a heathen deserving of death.

So no, Dream, he's not a reasonable man, not even close. He is ignorant and stupid and he reveals in that, he even thinks his ignorance and stupidity vindicate him, prove he's on the right path. Look at his comments here, the way he says he's over his depth oozes that attitude. I can imagine him sitting there, a little smirk on his face thinking how he's fighting the good fight of the common man against the intellectual scum.

Fuck him; he's not worth talking too. He hasn't brought anything too any conversation here, except his smug self satisfied attitude and unwarranted superiority complex. Ignore him and you lose nothing.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 5:47 AM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Usually your less of an ass. This was an assinine response. You completely miss my point.

I’m not sure you have a point. You’re all over the board – from Bush to the asteroid belt to OJ to rogue planets to Bush again. You can call me an ass if you want, but I’m just calling it like I see it, and I see this as bullshit.

You start off stating that it’s a fact the earth is 3.3 billion years old (unsubstantiated) and claim that anyone who disagrees with you is part of some “pseudo-creationists theory” bias, whatever that is. Then you go on to tell us all that science is unable to give a competent answer so you'll tell us all how it is because we’re just all parrots anyway, and you've researched this, unlike all those scientists. And all throughout this, all these wild theories, this attack on science and calling us all parrots and the occasional Bush-hater remark (for some strange reason gets tossed in there) you have not offered a single piece of corroborating evidence, a single source, a link to a site, anything. You’re just bullshitting.

So in the famous words of Vincent Gambini:

“Everything that guy just said is bullshit.”

I don’t know what you expect me to do. You’re speculating so broadly that I don’t even know where to start.

And of course this is a gem: It conjures up the good old days of Vizzini running wild on this board.
“Science is not an exact science.” -- Dreamtrove

But you know, Vizzini, for all his rhetorical blundering, actually had a good deal of scientific understanding; he reminded me a lot of myself when I was young and full of shit.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 2:46 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

It’s possible that there were super intelligent rodents running around the Jurassic, but there’s certainly no evidence of it, and I would say nothing particularly probable about it. The assumption that there is nothing unique about humans, I think, is a poor one. Indeed the intelligence capability that humans possess would seem to be very unique.

Human intelligence is a powerful tool that has made humans the dominate life form on the planet, but it is a hard won victory. Humans are so highly specialized that without their ingenuity they are weak and completely incapable of competing with other life forms of similar mass or even smaller. Compare a full grown human male against a German Shepard half the weight. This would seem to be a powerful disadvantage with the ability to completely wipe out the species if for any reason intellect wasn’t sufficient. Furthermore, human offspring are born with large skulls that make birthing complicated and dangerous, and once born human offspring are completely dependent and helpless for years. Most other life forms give birth to much smaller offspring, relatively speaking, and these offspring are able to move and begin caring for themselves within weeks, not years. This is another powerful disadvantage for humans. Human ingenuity has certainly proven to be a trait that is powerful enough to overcome these enormous disadvantages, but if macroevolution is responsible for creating humans then one imagines that it must have been an extremely thin margin of error to make it through the tens or hundreds of thousands of years it took to arrive at a state where human intellect could begin making up for humans’ many, many other disadvantages. In order to believe that you have to be willing to concede that there was good deal of luck involved for humans to have even survived at all. So I think that humans are a very unique species that evolved only because a very tightly constrained set of circumstances allowed it to happen, whether one believes these circumstances were designed by a creator (which I do) or just happened by accident.

Also intelligence is not by itself necessarily a useful asset. It must be accompanied by a physical capability that permits the use of tools. For instance, dolphins are considered to be highly intelligent, so why have they not evolved human type intelligence? The answer, perhaps one of many, is that dolphins have no ability to capitalize on such an intellect. Fins do not serve well for using tools, engineering buildings or writing. So there is a limited number of species that even possess a capacity to put intelligence to use. Rodents may be among them, I don’t know, but even among animals with similar physical traits as humans, such as apes, human type intelligence is rare. The most intelligent of apes and monkeys are Chimpanzee; they seem to possess some human intellectual traits: they use tools, they socialize, the fact that they can be taught some degree of sign language suggests a capability of abstract thought, yet they also eat their own freshly defecated feces, and you’re not likely to find a chimp writing a sonnet or engineering a bridge.

So considering the many disadvantages human intelligence brings to humans compared to other animals, the dependence on physical tool-usage characteristics and the lack of any other species of similar intellect among the earths many thousands of mammals, much less other animals, I would say that the development of human type intellect is a very rare event.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 5:38 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
I’m not sure you have a point.

I'm never sure myself.

Quote:
You’re all over the board – from Bush to the asteroid belt to OJ to rogue planets to Bush again.

I was trying to relate that the same type of dogmatic thinking prevails in each case. The press ,and probably to some extent the procecution, made a failure to correctly analyze *why* OJ was guilty, as a result, there was a mass feeling he was innocent, and also he was aquitted. The failure was one of dogmatic thinking.

Similarly Creationism and this pseudo creationism persist through dogmatism. I can follow to the point where I get all their facts, but then would argue that those fact by no means mandate the conclusions they draw, and my extensive study of the field led me to the not too subtle information that they didn't draw the conclusion from the facts at all, but were already working from the conclusion before they started. This, in essence, is the same as the creationists have done.

The same dogmatic thinking tells people Bush is a republican, you're a republican support him. My own pragmatic thinking leads me to think 'i want republican policies, if Bush can't deliver that, I'd like to see him gone and replaced with someone who will.'

If I have a point it's that dogmatic thinking isn't thinking at all, it's being an amplifier to the already extant thought, but not actually thinking for yourself.

Quote:
You start off stating that it’s a fact the earth is 3.3 billion years old (unsubstantiated) and claim that anyone who disagrees with you is part of some “pseudo-creationists theory” bias, whatever that is.

I think this is a drastic mischaracterization of my position. I was saying IMHO, I have evidence that the Earth is 3.3B years old. It's probably older, sure, I conceded. But I don't have evidence that it's 4.6 B years old. Other people can think what they want. The whole idea of pseudo-creationism is this instant universe mix theory which was cooked up before there was any evidence at all, and sold by crackpots long before it was ever scientifically or scientifically investigated. The whole idea is suspect. The fact is, we don't know. There is what you say, which is 'what they tell us' but the reality is the universe might be quite different from what the scientific establishment tells us. Which I say, objectively with no motive whatsoever, just an inherent mistrust. The way when you go in to see the doctor and he gives you lots of reassuring words. The fact is he's afraid to say he doesn't know. Science is the same way. People are a lot less sure than they pretend. All of this "the universe was created in 3 minutes 16 billion years ago" is not fact supported by evidence, it's random speculation based on unproven mathematical theory, which, and here's what I mean, is suspiciously reminiscent of religion doctrine.

[qupte]Then you go on to tell us all that science is unable to give a competent answer so you'll tell us all how it is because we’re just all parrots anyway, and you've researched this, unlike all those scientists.

This is blatantly unfair to me. This is not what I said at all. I'm saying you're holding scientists to a standard of gods, and other people to be dog ticks, because 'scientists' know everything, and other people therefore know nothing. This isn't reality. Scientists are actually on the exact same level as everything else. Anyone can read this stuff, do the research, make calculations, and come to conclusions. There's nothing special about scientists at all. They're random people with PhDs. Lots of other people have PhDs, lots don't, but have working brains. I by no means think they're morons, and that I'm smarter, but they aren't gods either, they're just people.

I was mostly using it as a an example of dogmatic thinking, and to state my answer to the question, "where do you start" which was the thread topic. Wasn't looking to argue the point. I gave plent of evidence. The age of continental rocks on the earth, the chemical composition of the Earth being more jupiterian and less lunar, and the moon scarring. Finally, I can add more. look at the non-solid larger entities, the barely solid or pseudo-solid surface of venus, the 120 mile crust of Mars and the 3-20 mile crust of earth. Clearly, planet cooling is a matter of distance from the sun and planetary size. This would indicate that the Earth is likely to have cooled slower than the Moon, and thus its surface is not as old.

I'm not doubting that the sphere of matter of the Earth was formed not long after the moon, it's hard to know exactly how long it would take. the orbiting object would hurl through the cloud of the solar system disk picking up material for some time, this would happen faster at a closer orbit.

My other point is:

It's not their way or the high way, other theories are also potentially valid. In fact, if it were not so, science would get nowhere.

And Finn,

I'm not a moron. I actually do know what I'm talking about. A great deal, in fact. Conventional scientists, of whom I have talked to a large number, are, like doctors and historians and everyone else, occassionally wrong. It's part of being human. I don't think I have all the answers, as I have frequently said, I'm always searching, but I try to speculate based on the information, and a lot of academia, which is really what we're talking about here, academics, not lab scientists, doesn't. Many professors have a vested interest in the accepted theories because they have used them as a starting point for much of their own work, some of it already published. The idea that the underlying theory might be wrong is actually quite frightening to them, and they reject the notion in a manner similar to the way christian priests reject evolution.

And yes, I am always listening to the counter arguments of why the accepted theories are correct, and in this world of shades of grey, many may be partially correct.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:25 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
It’s possible that there were super intelligent rodents running around the Jurassic, but there’s certainly no evidence of it, and I would say nothing particularly probable about it.

Again you're mischaracterizing my remarks.

1. No one said they're super intelligent. Well, okay, you did, just now. But no, I think they're probably no smarter than mice today. Neither for that matter are humans.

2. The existance of these creatures are ancestors, is far from my idea, it's the currectly accepted evolutionary history of man. I've read it nuberous places, and there was one discovered quite recently, monkeyish mouse rat thing about 1 foot tall, lives 150 milion to 200 million years ago or so. This isn't my theory.

3. There's tons of evidence for it, not just the fossil record, but there's real strong evidence that intelligence is not an endless assent, but is a random oscilator.

4. Would these ancestors of people be capable of making a scientific study of the solar system? Of course not. Neither would most humans. And I said, most humans. I mean, folks in trailors who eat sleep and mate. These creatures could probably form simple societies, and likely had such things as civil unrest, possibly even laws, and sure, language. This is not earth shaking stuff, monkeys and some mice today have these, as do far simpler life forms such as several species of insect. If an insect with a total mental capability of about .001% that of man has these things, then it says is nothing special about about man that he has them.

Quote:
The assumption that there is nothing unique about humans, I think, is a poor one.

Not nothing. We have written language.

Quote:
Indeed the intelligence capability that humans possess would seem to be very unique.

Not at all. Problem solving like that of humans is seen in many species, and some exceed our ability to a small degree. What we have is written language, which means that each human does not have to start at scratch. For instance, I can read all about what other people have found about the age of the Earth and the structure of the solar system and the universe, then I can read the problems other people have pointed out and then the solutions that still more people have come up with to explain those inconsitancies and drawn my own conclusions and even add a little of my own. If an octopus had my situation and wished to persue it, he would be starting from square one, which is probably, are those objects in the sky painted on? And he would maybe get as far as basic religious notions if he were lucky.

Quote:
Human intelligence is a powerful tool that has made humans the dominate life form on the planet, but it is a hard won victory. Humans are so highly specialized that without their ingenuity they are weak and completely incapable of competing with other life forms of similar mass or even smaller.

Partly as a result of that evolution. But humans are not so horridly weak physically.

Quote:
Compare a full grown human male against a German Shepard half the weight.

Compared to a dog, sure. But we're more fit to survive in the wild than many other omnivores and herbavores.

Quote:
This would seem to be a powerful disadvantage with the ability to completely wipe out the species if for any reason intellect wasn’t sufficient.

Not really. Dogs would never on mass attempt to wipe out humans, in fact, dog-man symbiosis predates modern society, technology and a written language by at least 100,000 years. This again, is not theory, but well recorded in the fossil record.

Another scientific reality is that dogs are pretty smart, and a wild dog has about half of the cognitive power of an uneducated human, or similar to that of a neanderthal. An elephant, an octopus, a dolphin and a whale all have similar mental cognitive abilities to that of man. But they have no written language.

Quote:
Furthermore, human offspring are born with large skulls that make birthing complicated and dangerous, and once born human offspring are completely dependent and helpless for years.

This is all putting the cart before the horse. The evolution of human society preceded the weakness of humans. Elephants have evolved more or less the same thing, as have monkeys and dolphins. Unique would be unique. Humans are unique in having technology. If we want to understand why, we need to look at what humans have that is unique.

Quote:
Most other life forms give birth to much smaller offspring, relatively speaking, and these offspring are able to move and begin caring for themselves within weeks, not years. This is another powerful disadvantage for humans.

Not really. I think this is still headed off in the wrong direction. Humans really have no enemies, and the longer nurturing time exists to grow a larger brain. The curiosity is that elephant evolved a 2 year gestation. Humans have evolved a sort of external gestation, where the non-functional baby human still is building the brain after birth. But in itself, it does not kill humans - *not* because of our ingenuity, but because of our total lack of natural enemies.

Another sobering statistic I heard on a discovery channel program, I haven't checked it, so in the absence of more research I assume their right: The leading cause of death in cats in the wild: starvation. The leading cause of death in mice: Old age. Someone has been feeding us a line about the significance of predators in the life cycle of animals. Most probably, in the evolutionary history of man, the only enemy man has had for the last million or perhaps ten million years is man.

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Human ingenuity has certainly proven to be a trait that is powerful enough to overcome these enormous disadvantages, but if macroevolution is responsible for creating humans then one imagines that it must have been an extremely thin margin of error to make it through the tens or hundreds of thousands of years it took to arrive at a state where human intellect could begin making up for humans’ many, many other disadvantages.

Well, I hope you take the above arguments to heart as a possibility to show that this is not so, that no unlikely event occurred. The proto-humans 10 million years ago who also had no natural enemies undoubtedly did not have this slow development. In fact they seem to have started evolving towards our society, even though they possessed an intelligence no greater than that of present day dogs.

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In order to believe that you have to be willing to concede that there was good deal of luck involved for humans to have even survived at all.

I don't believe in luck. Moreover, it's a well established fact that the human race evolved into multiple species, and that in all instances, genocidal war ended the split, and at least one such instance the less intelligent human defeated the more intelligent one. Or so said prominent evolution scientist Steven J Gould, whose word I take, again, because I have encounter nothing to prove it false. Cause, that's what I do, accept the evidence I see, unless it has some major recognizable flaw or evidence which contradicts it. Then I stop holding on to, because it's not a religion.

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So I think that humans are a very unique species that evolved only because a very tightly constrained set of circumstances allowed it to happen, whether one believes these circumstances were designed by a creator (which I do) or just happened by accident.

Again, I really disagree. I've seen no evidence of a creator, and the idea is violently at odd with everything I do see evidence of. The non-weak humans which created their society long before the evolution of weak humans counters this argument, but so does the rest of biology. Humans were first at technology. Various species of rodent have gotten quite advanced in spoken language and tool use, and one species of rats has been found to make cave tally markings similar to humans of 100,000 years ago or so. So we're ahead, but we're not alone, or unique. We're just exceedingly lucky.

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Also intelligence is not by itself necessarily a useful asset. It must be accompanied by a physical capability that permits the use of tools. For instance, dolphins are considered to be highly intelligent, so why have they not evolved human type intelligence?

This is more sound. Yes, plenty of species without the means to have written language. Octopus can use tools, but he has nothing to write on. Dolphins have nothing to write with or on. Rats, mice, figuring it out, but lots of time before that's an issue.

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The answer, perhaps one of many, is that dolphins have no ability to capitalize on such an intellect. Fins do not serve well for using tools, engineering buildings or writing. So there is a limited number of species that even possess a capacity to put intelligence to use.

Sure. Granted.

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Rodents may be among them, I don’t know, but even among animals with similar physical traits as humans, such as apes, human type intelligence is rare.

Okay, we're much closer to the same page than I thought, my apologies.

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The most intelligent of apes and monkeys are Chimpanzee; they seem to possess some human intellectual traits: they use tools, they socialize, the fact that they can be taught some degree of sign language suggests a capability of abstract thought, yet they also eat their own freshly defecated feces, and you’re not likely to find a chimp writing a sonnet or engineering a bridge.

Curious side note. The brain to bodyweight ratio winner is a species of mouse, who outranks by a margin of 4:1 the second highest bbr winner, which is another species of mouse.

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So considering the many disadvantages human intelligence brings to humans compared to other animals, the dependence on physical tool-usage characteristics and the lack of any other species of similar intellect among the earths many thousands of mammals, much less other animals, I would say that the development of human type intellect is a very rare event.

Sure, you just have to look around you. But we're not that different from our own ancestors. Or for that matter, present day mice. Were not amazingly different in our abilities from dogs or cats. We're lightyears ahead of sheep.

But the idea that we suddenly became a superbeing at a point in the recent past doesn't seem realistic to me. We created a written language, and then society took off. We had been at essentially the same level of brain development for 40,000 years to the best of my knowledge.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:42 PM

DREAMTROVE

Finn,

A final thought.

Figure a parallel in which a society of ignorance thinks the answer to a question is "A."

Then I figure in the grand book of knowledge, on page one it says "B."

I think Of myself as someone who read that a very very long times ago, and then read 10,000 more pages, and it one the page where I'm beginning to think the answer is "C."

The attitude towards my ideas in yYou're responses comes across as 'What, you moron, you don't know enough to have read that it's "B."?'

I acknowledge B was closer to the truth than A, but I'm not the uneducated guy who thinks it's A.

Now, I don't present these ideas very well, possibly, and I'm not really looking to convince anyone. I was just stating what I knew, suspected, which is based on an inordinate amount of study, and not random rants from ingoramus land, and I get shouted down by old B dogma I decided many years ago was not necessarily the case.

Now sure, the Earh may be 4.6 billion years old. Or it may not. I know it's at least 3.3B. But I know Bush is sucky conservative. It doesn't take a sucky genius to see that. I know that Arlen Specter is almost single handedly responsible for the Alito and Roberts nominations, and yet I hear him being slammed - not by you - in this forum as some sort of RINO or psuedo-dem and Bush hailed as god-emperor, so well, that's what it looks like.

In the all hail the executive world we would have Miers and Gonzalez. Which is not a happy thought. I just listened to a speech by Russ Feingold, and he made some interesting points about the out of control executive. He said if we allow this idea that the war on terror is a war, and we treat terror suspects like combatants, and if we fail to stop the executive from taking the law into its own hands, we will end up in a position of state executions by executive order. This would turn america into a tin plated dictatorship. Furthermore, he pointed out, even if you think Bush is aces, what happens when someone else comes to power?

Mr. Feingold has a point. I think the old world order was vastly superior and infititely more fair then what has sprung up.

Anyway, you present a good argument, and you're probably more level headed than me. I still disagree. Humans were never weak enough for it to matter, but they got weaker after the safety of human survival was assured, and intelligence became a survival trait.

I will concede one other possible thing which sets humans apart:

The natural enemy of humans is humans. This became true after the evolution of base human society which protected humanity from the element in an environment of no natural enemies. Because of this, intelligence became a survival characteristic because humans had to outsmart other humans in order to survive. This created a natural competition. It probably helped the development of our brains, and it certainly would have helped the development of human education, and may have spurred on the creation of a written language.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:30 PM

FLETCH2

On the weak human/long development time for children issue. Humans are pack animals, they live in groups and cooperate. This is because a single breeding pair would be seriously disadvantaged if they had to raise children alone. This pack behavior (troop behavior really) predates humans as a species and is a primate characteristic (ie it exists in monkeys and well as apes.) It is the fact that we cooperate that allows us to overcome individual weakness and allows us to raise offspring that are dependent for so long.

In fact it may well be that the reason that societies evolved (ie cooperating between groups that are not genetically related) is the need for larger groups to share child rearing duties. This ability to share group identity with other none related humans eventually extended to other social animals like dogs. A point was reached where we stopped fearing the wolf and instead adopted it for our mutual benefit. I can't think of any other instance in the animal kingdom where that has happened.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:55 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

The domestication of wild dogs occurred around 15000 BCE followed by the domestication of goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, asses, and honeybees. Also humans domesticated various plants, including wheat, around 9000 BCE. The discovery of fire is, in one source indicated 40,000 years ago, another suggest something close to 1.5 million. It’s perhaps difficult to tie down, but certainly one of man’s earliest discoveries. Around the same time, ancient man began producing cave art. The construction of tools such as the spear, bow, atlatl, and clovis point which require specialized training and understanding was more then 10000 years ago. In the last Ice Age, over 11000 years ago, humans were using these tools to kill game ~60 times their own weight. As far as I know these are all uniquely human discoveries and inventions. All this happened before the discovery of writing in 3500 BCE.

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Friday, March 17, 2006 7:30 AM

BRITET

Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
But the idea that we suddenly became a superbeing at a point in the recent past doesn't seem realistic to me. We created a written language, and then society took off. We had been at essentially the same level of brain development for 40,000 years to the best of my knowledge.

I was under the impression that it was the development of complex syntax (anywhere from 50-80,000 yrs ago, in most estimations) in spoken language that spurred the cognitive revolution in humans, rather than written language. Of course, written language marked an explosion in cultural efficiency, but the fact that this occured only after the agricultural revolution and adoption of permanently sedentary society, which also encouraged cultural growth and technological innovation, suggests to me that writing wasn't responsible for any changes in the intellectual capacity of humans, just in the ease of cultural transmission. I'd hesitantly (because I'll admit to having only a cursory knowledge of the subject) say that an adult human of 50,000 years ago would have the same intellectual capacity, ability to learn, etc. as a contemporary individual without formal education.

...Upon rereading your post, this very well may be what you have been saying anyway. Or maybe I'm just way off.

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Friday, March 17, 2006 6:14 PM

DREAMTROVE

Finn,

It was in science news a couple years ago, and I checked the source, domesticated dogs 100,000 bc appears to be a reality. At the very least, I was not making it up. Scientists can of course be wrong.

You make a strong case though. I didn't know about the origin of bows. Even so...

Animals sometimes use fairly complex tool set ups, and there are several species that engage in art. I'm not sure about representational art.

But, the snag here is that your date for written language is really a date for phoenetic language. The drawings were often early pictograms, and series of drawings appeared on cave walls to tell stories, I don't have a date. Long before 3500 bc series of tallies appear on a cave walls as a form of written language. I'm not sure, it's just a stab in the dark, but I think you'll find written language in its most basic form: the transcribing of marks to convey information to date back much further, to shortly after the arrival of cromagnon man, maybe 35,000 years.

Okay I just googled it and got 30,000.

Written language still in the runnning for being the lone trait of humans.

I think the point is, social animal plus hands plus brain plus something to write on make written language. Octopus isn't real social, though squid is, but ocean life isn't real writing-friendly. Still, could happen.

I say rats probably next in line.

Britet,

Written language allows information to pass on from one generation to another. Syntax only aids regular communication. Many species have language with reasonably sophistiated syntax. Some squids actually, come to think of it, have a written language of exact syntax, but it's not persistant. Monkeys have syntax, as do dolphins, including a complex system of personal-family names.

I agree that cromagnon was not really any different from humans in his ability to think, if I recall correctly he did not possess the wide range of vocals that we do.

I don't think that primitive agriculture is unique to humans.

Yeah, that was basically what I said. I believe of all the things mentioned, written language is still the earliest uniquely human trait to evolve, and logically it can be show how that would cause the drastic difference between humans and other animals. An infinite amount of knowledge will make a huge difference.

That in mind, the internet is a far more seriosu event then it would otherwise seem.

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