Adam and Eve or Evolution? (5 Viewers)

[katie_tully]

ya know, im suprised this thread is still going.

working in the health sector with the invariably bogan public has evaporated any lingering thoughts i may (or lets be honest, may not) have had regarding 'intelligent design'.

 

[chicky_pie]

We didn't come from monkeys you fucking moron, we shared a common ancestor.

It's just as all modern cars gained evolutionary traits from the Ford Model T, but a Holden didn't descend from a Mazda.

Murrrrr.

i guess you hate sarcasm

 

[HalcyonSky]

i was using it as an example, and i was hesitant to use the word perfect, dont take it literally. I never said it was unexplainable by science, i was looking for someone like you (although perhaps less touchy) to explain it for me, but thats besides the point i was making. All i was doing was suggesting that it seems as though there's an underlying beauty in evolution which transcends cause and effect, like a set of inherent universal formulae.

Dick.

And yes i know there's theories that attempt to explain the origins of the big bang, i've read alot about string theory and im looking forward to what observations the large hadron collider will make once its completed.

and yes, im asking about the initial development of cyanobacteria.

 

[katie_tully]

in other news, they're trying to prove parallel universes exist.

 

[chicky_pie]

in other news, they're trying to prove parallel universes exist.

yeh i read a article about it (below).. amazing!

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science".

The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.

In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.

A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.

It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly - and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.

Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Dr Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, said: "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science."

According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles occupy nebulous "superposition" states, in which they can have simultaneous "up" and "down" spins, or appear to be in different places at the same time.

Observation appears to "nail down" a particular state of reality, in the same way as a spinning coin can only be said to be in a "heads" or "tails" state once it is caught.

According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by "wave functions" representing a set of multiple "probable" states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options.

The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.
© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=paUniverse_sun14_parallel_universes&show_article=1&cat=0

 

[katie_tully]

it's just mind boggling. i wish i could understand it on even the most basic level.

 

[Enteebee]

I think it's kinda disingenuous the way they use the example of a 'near miss' from a motorist on a motorcycle, my understanding of mwi is that it's only most relevant at a sub-atomic level.

 

[dreamer17]

depends who is portraying them.
i think ppl are beginning to realise that Jesus isnt the white man they envisioned him as, he prob looked like osama! and slowly, those closed minded white ppl are beginning to realise its most likely, that seein as white ppl make up such a small percentage of the population, and considering the locations within which the biblical events occured, that the biblical characters are not the white stereotypes we illustrate them as

Bravo

 

[HalcyonSky]

The multiworlds interpretation is pretty obscure and is rejected by (some / many )physicists, we really need to understand quantum gravity before delving into ideas like multiverses.

Mainstream media and documentaries tend to latch onto the conception simply because of the interest it generates, and they make it seem like its a theory that has been proven.
A direct quote from BBC's outline of its program "Parallel Universes" :
"[FONT=arial, helvetica]Parallel universes really do exist and they are much stranger than even the science fiction writers dared to imagine"

completely misleading.
[/FONT]

 

[Slidey]

They haven't been disproven; nobody can tell whether the many-worlds interpretation holds, or if one of the dozens of others hold. The many-worlds is actually considered a mainstream interpretation, contrary to your claim that it is rejected by most physicists. I suspect any doing so do it purely on intuition - and how many times has that been wrong for physics in the past 100 years alone?

But I definitely agree with you re the media.

 

[HalcyonSky]

When i say most, i mean about 50%.

" 'Many worlds'-like interpretations are now considered fairly mainstream within the quantum physics community. For example, a poll of 72 leading physicists conducted by the American researcher David Raub in 1995 and published in the French periodical Sciences et Avenirin January 1998 recorded that nearly 60% thought many worlds interpretation was 'true'. "

"A 2005 minor poll on the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics workshop at the Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo produced contrary results, with the MWI as the least favored"

 

[Enteebee]

I think it's a fine view when you're dealing with things at the sub-atomic level, the only thing that really makes it seem particularly whacky is when people go and take such an interpretation and apply it to our perception of a physical world i.e. a person, a planet, a wall or a car.

 

[Slidey]

When i say most, i mean about 50%.

" 'Many worlds'-like interpretations are now considered fairly mainstream within the quantum physics community. For example, a poll of 72 leading physicists conducted by the American researcher David Raub in 1995 and published in the French periodical Sciences et Avenirin January 1998 recorded that nearly 60% thought many worlds interpretation was 'true'. "

"A 2005 minor poll on the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics workshop at the Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo produced contrary results, with the MWI as the least favored"

Hardly evidence for a decrease in belief in MWI. What was the size of the sample for the waterloo study? What other thoeries were competing in the poll? What background did the physicists polled have? Has there been independent verification of this finding?

 

[HalcyonSky]

dont know, dont care. The 'most' in my other post has been fixored

Will be interesting to see the developments in the theory come may / june when the large hadron collider is ready

 

[Enteebee]

dont know, dont care.

Will be interesting to see the developments in the theory come may / june when the large hadron collider is ready

end of the universe.

 

[Stevo.]

At least it will save me from deciding on my future.

 

[Ademir]

Not sure if this has been addressed, but someone early in the thread suggested that science supported the idea of Adam and Eve because of Mitichondrial Eve.

It does NOT prove that all humans descended from one woman. Mitichondrial Eve is given that name because it can be proven that all human beings are part of her "family" - basically, to put it simply, we all have some sort of relation to her, though for most of us it is fairly distant (obviously). She is the MOST RECENT common ancestor that ALL HUMANS share. This does not mean she was the FIRST human woman to ever live.

To give a stupid scenario in order to explain things better, imagine if everyone on earth died except for one family. Within this family there were four daughters, and each had their own lines of progeny. However, three of those daughters lines eventually died out, while one ("Eve's") did not. It could then be said that all humans alive from that point on were descended from Eve. It does not make her the first woman to ever have lived though, nor the origin of the human race. This is a REALLY basic example, and does not go into the complete complexity of the truth here (it's not worth typing it out, search it up on the net). Also, this is just an example of how the Eve evidence could have come about. I'm not suggesting that everyone else except Eve's family died out.

To put it in even more perspective, Y-chromosomal Adam also existes, however, he is separated from Mitichondrial Eve by tens of thousands of years. Just like her, he is definitely not the first man to ever live. He's just the man to whom all humans alive today can prove to have some of his ancestry.

To be honest, I wish scientists thought before they gave names like this out. It just gives religious people illusions that they have scientific backing for their beliefs.

Oh, in case it's not obvious, Evolution > creation anyday for me. Religion doesn't make any sense.

 

[Enteebee]

It's kinda sad that you needed to write that much to explain it, but I'm sure someone still won't get it...

 

[HalcyonSky]

i believe this thread mentioned adam and eve, so i felt compelled to make a purely philosophical statement based on no evidence whatsoever

 

[Slidey]

What 3unitz said. There is no inherent guiding force in evolution (not in the intelligent sense). There is evolutionary optimisation, though. Simulations on supercomputers (and normal computers - I made an evolutionary algorithm myself actually) using the exact same method (mutation, crossover, selection, death, selective pressures, etc) have ALSO produced beauty and "living organisms" without human input other than setting the system up - it's not something unique (in the sense it requires an intelligent creator). But beauty is beauty regardless of who made it.

Something interesting is cellular automata. Actually they're very closely related to optimisation, so it's no surprise that "life" or order will emerge from the random chaos (idealistic life, I might add - there're no changing rules as in reality), but I digress: http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

Set it to fast, small, and then use your mouse to randomly put lots of dots on the screen - try dense clusters and sparse clusters of dots. Oh wow I just spent 10 minutes watching it. Man, that game is why mathematics (and life) is beautiful - and that's one of the really simple automata!

An interesting hypothesis for the origins of life is that it evolved in between rock layers where a sludge similar to a primitive cell exists: http://www.physorg.com/news115988029.html