A Civil Discussion: Evolution, Science, Theology, Atheism, Climate

Darth Omar said:
A Creator isn’t even the issue at this point.

It’s just a fact that humans are unique in important ways. I’ve been reduced to having to defend a fact lol.
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No shit, Einstein. Yet you fail to recognize from that previous post that whales are, too.

We should act more like animals, since they tend to not engage in mass genocide.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Absolutely Whales have culture. All social animals have culture. Now granted Whales do have extremely conservative culture and are not the lest bit progressive which could mean that natural selection has marked them for extinction but hey...who knows?
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lol @ joke.
they have social organization, but not culture. they cannot create what they are not able to do by instinct.
They are unable to use their intelligence for anything else but existinance

Not that they aren't intelligent,but they aren't able to create.
 
anatta said:
lol @ joke.
they have social organization, but not culture. they cannot create what they are not able to do by instinct.
They are unable to use their intelligence for anything else but existinance

Not that they aren't intelligent,but they aren't able to create.
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Whale songs?
 
Thing1 said:
For starters, zoology and anthropology are human pursuits - so, you're judging other mammals in the context of the human perspective.

We are just animals; again, sorry about that.

And why do you keep insinuating that dolphins and whales (in particular) have no art, music, culture or history?
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Well, show it to me and then we’ll discuss it lol.

Do you have any other fantasies you’d like me to indulge in?
 
Hello Micawber,

Thanks for the reply.

Micawber said:
I guess it's better to say nothing at all then, because I have nothing nice to say about them.
If you do not understand evolution you are poorly educated and it is you who should shut up, however.
If you believe in any superstitious theory of cosmology or species origins you are also uneducated and
brainwashed and wholly irrational, without a speck of science to support your beliefs.
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If you know more than others, what part of that indicates you should be insolent to them?

I don't understand this concept that those who know the most should be mean and aloof to those who know less.

How would those who know less, ever learn more, if those who know more, refuse to talk to them?

Micawber said:
And if you are these things, you likely voted for the orange asshole who is exploiting your ignorance and doubling
down on dumb by removing "evidence based" from the lexicon, trampling the EPA on climate
science, trying to stop funding for the arts and sciences and making the rich richer and the poor poorer in every possible way.

Our differences transcend Putin's petty intrigues, they are indigenous to this country, and have been lain
bare by right wing media lie machines since the first day Rush Limbaugh co-opted the shock jock DJ
ratings formula across rural America.

The left has the truth on science, the right is a fucking joke and there is nothing good about what it
has become. I say that as a former Reagan, Bush, and Bush II voter. It took a shitload of
dumbass to break my tribal bond with that party inculcated from my parents. But break it they did, and then some.
Education is the cure, and so that dumbass party attacks public education spending too.
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OK, now I see more of where this is coming from. It's a blaming/venting thing. Forgiveness is indicated.

Education would definitely help the situation, but being apprehensive is not an effective education method.

Few react to being insulted by wanting to learn from the insulter. Usually the reaction is an equal and opposite response, or an escalation of disrespect.

Stereotyping is definitely not instructive or helpful. Rather, it leads to a plateauing of knowledge level, and an inability to learn any more.

One must always be able to learn more.
 
Thing1 said:
Whale songs?
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instinctual. they do it because they have an organisms ability to do so.
can they communicate emotions? probably -and in that sense it more then just survival uses-
but again they cannot shape their enviornment or use that ability to domore then emote.

Which is fine. they are "god's creatures" and they are noble beings
 
anatta said:
instinctual. they do it because they have an organisms ability to do so.
can they communicate emotions? probably -and in that sense it more then just survival uses-
but again they cannot shape their enviornment or use that ability to domore then emote.

Which is fine. they are "god's creatures" and they are noble beings
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No - not strictly instinctual. You're wrong on this.
 
Hello Micawber,

Micawber said:
I dont know where this discussion is because I have so many chumps blocked, but the reason radio telescopes are used is because
they can detect electromagnetic radiation from the most remote distances and therefore back in time the farthest, and by using interferometry
can detect slight differences in signal with an effective reach of the earth's diameter "baseline"
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I have over 20 on Ignore but despite having their posts filtered out I have no problem following the conversation. I do know what you mean, though. I've been using the Ignore feature for so long I've gotten used to interpolating the missing gist of the conversation. Usually I don't miss much of importance because my standards for placing entries on the Filter List have little to nothing to do with their political positions. It's all about the ability to carry on civil discourse.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I'd suggest you do some more research on cetaceans. You're seriously wrong.

http://us.whales.org/wdc-in-action/cetacean-culture-way-whales-do-things
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complex voice uses, or localized differences in using the enviornment ( like sponges on the bottlenose) are adaptive behaviors.

The fact the adaptations vary in different enviornments does not suggest different "cultures"
it suggest a high ability to adapt within the overall enviornment localized from one area to another.
 
Hello Micawber,

Micawber said:
Frankly I hope we don't get discovered, it is likely any alien life would exploit us.
Let's hide in plain sight and evolve for a million years or so before we send probes out.
That's just asking for trouble. We need to go stealth, displace our galactic aspect, throw shapes,
appear to be a lifeless ice rock like Neptune for as long as possible.
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There is merit to that.
 
PoliTalker said:
Hello Darth,

So we're not arguing the ability to use tools but merely the sophistication of the tools used?
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think Naked Ape.
we have inferior bodies -we cannot long exist as anything but an inferior ape with small populations and wracked disease and famine without using our brains to create an enviornment to not just survive but to thrive.


That ability to thrive means we can create civilizations that are more about ideas then just improving survival rates.
We create human culture for it's own sake, because it gives us a quality of life
 
CFM said:
They do when the supposed new "facts" contradict what the old "facts" were being used to support.
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In science you either revise your theory based on the knowledge gained by the newly discovered facts unless the newly discovered facts falsify the theory and the theory is no longer usable. Then you toss that theory and replace it with a new one.

Remember, a scientific theory isn't an absolute fact. It is based on fact but the purpose of a scientific theory is to model specific natural phenomena or related groups of natural events. If newly discovered facts contradict the existing facts that support a scientific theory than that theory must be revised to eliminate that contradiction.

A good example of that would be evolutionary theory. Darwin based his theory on three foundational facts. However the true weakness of Darwin's theory when he postulated it was though he understood it's factual basis, he did not understand what the actual mechanism driving biological evolution was. He predicted though that it would be discovered. Interestingly enough is that that mechanism had already been discovered by a cloistered monk, Gregor Mendell, who did not publish his work. It wasn't until after Darwins death and at the turn of the 20th century that Mendell's laws of genetic were published. With this knowledge of the laws of genetics it was understood that genetics were the driving mechanism of evolution by natural selection and the theory was revised accordingly. One problem though. We didn't know what the functional mechanism of genetics were so there was still a weakness in both theories (genetics and evolution) and then DNA and other nucleic acids were discovered. Now the functional mechanism of both genetics and evolution are known and studied and evolutionary theory was again revised to it's current Neo-Darwinism definition of "a change in allele frequency within a population over time.".

Another example was how gravitational theory has been revised do to new facts discovered. When Newton promulgated gravitational theory and the law of gravity he only defined its mechanical physical properties. 350 years later this guy named Einstein discovered that not only does gravity have mechanical physical properties but that it also has relativistic properties on both time and space. Gravitational theory had to be revised to include our new understanding of the relativistic physical properties of gravity along with its mechanical physical properties.

These are two examples of how theories are advanced over time and there is always a possibility, even if remote, some fact could be discovered that falsifies the theory and then that theory must be tossed and replaced by one that includes that newly discovered fact.
 
CFM said:
They do when the supposed new "facts" contradict what the old "facts" were being used to support.
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Such as what? So far all the evidence backs the theories.IF they had contradictions, they would respect them. Science is not working to back a theory. It goes where it goes. But this is speculative. Religion blocks evidence to maintain a belief. Science does not.
 
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