COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey

[skb12172]

BURN HIM, HE'S A WITCH!!!

[Aglifter]

A) One of my close friends, and a very dedicated Christian, mentioned, "There is no indication of how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden."

B) I agree science should be taught in science class, rather than religion. But, actual science should be taught - Survivial of the Fittest is very well established, and easily observable.

There is not a valid explanation of "Origin of Species," in existence. "Hopeful Monsters" was laughed at, when first proposed, as it is absurdly improbable. The more we learn about biochem, at least when I was in it, the more completely impossible the theory became - especially in the higher order animals...

And, its still being taught, because there isn't another explanation, aside from "Then some magic happens."

Saying, "No current theory." Is Science. Saying, "Then some magic happens," is a humorous, yet honest, scientific answer. Saying some BS, which no knowledgable initiate actually believes, is Scientology.

Whomever finds the mechanism will earn a Nobel prize - one of the most fundamental lessons of teaching "Science", is that the answers aren't always known - and may not be known in your lifetime, but finding an answer could bring quite a reward.

THAT lesson would be teaching students Science. Teaching BS, rather than admit ignorance, is something else.

[Jericho941]

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."

[Aesop]

That little piece of published vivid imagination has been debunked by hordes of actual scientists, particularly biologists.

The few who still cling desperately to any of its actual tenets are laughingstocks, and/or doctrinaire atheists desperately clinging to their fervent religious beliefs.
The one thing Darwin was thoroughly incapable of explaining was the origin of species. He did a marginal job of proposing changes and variation within species.
Everything else, which was the entire aim of his little tome, wasn't science, quite as much as it was the anti-religious version of Kipling's Just So Stories. His (and the general 19th century's) complete ignorance of everyday intracellular biochemical interactions makes his suppositions on the "simple" origins of something as incredibly complex as a single cell, let alone an eye, read like bad fairytales, or the Onion version of science. On his best day.

If it weren't for a continued lifelong fear and hatred of organized and disorganized religion, and the lackwit legions there ready to burn books, most actual scientists would have sent Darwin to the showers decades ago, rather than continue to make the most ridiculous attempts to tell us, 160 years later, "What Darwin really meant to say is______", which mainly provide comedy relief for the people actually working in the various fields, of whom about 0% find the theories of Charles Darwin of any use in predicting where they should research further, or anything they'll find when they get there.

Somewhere between Galileo and the mid-1800s, a large swath of "scientists" began to see the journey as the destination, and "knowing" as more important than looking and seeing, and like climate change, once they found they could sway the idiot minions themselves, it became a quest for power rather than knowledge.

In short, Darwin himself started out learning. But once he saw he had discovered a hammer to use against the faith he himself abandoned, and could gain acolytes, social standing, and a steady income, he did what most human beings do when tempted: he succumbed. The level of outright fraud and P.T. Barnumesque shamelessly dubious promotion used in support of his discredited theories since would make Scientologists and televangelist faith healers blush, if not witch doctors.

When Sciencism falls, and scientists in any given field are not only allowed, but actually encouraged, to begin a lecture, article, or scholarly work by acknowledging that "Darwin was a complete idiot, wrong on almost every guess he made, who assed up actual science for two centuries", we may get the disciplines, let alone the magazines and texts, back to their original aims. But as of yet, the Leninesque veneration of the Holy Father of Atheism won't permit them to pull those statues down yet, and get back to actual work. Any "scientist" of any repute who doesn't acknowledge that the portion of his field called "I don't know" is bigger than everything he and everyone in it combined does know, and clearly and explicitly differentiates between settled knowledge and any version of supposition and speculation, is trying to sell something. Usually with calculated dishonesty. In some entire disciplines, that's the entire point of the exercise.

[Aglifter]

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."

Exactly my point. You think that "Survival of the Fittest" which is a means of selecting for the fittest genes in a population, accounts for speciation. It does not. The math is, clearly, impossible - nor does a "drift in genes of a population", account for differing species having rearranged genes...

Ugh, we've gone over this before, I think.

The scientific method is an excellent analytical tool for describing the natural world. So long as it can be described in mathematical terms, and you have time time to wait for it, it is truly superb - and, provided you have the wherewithal to face the results, including the absence of results, honestly.

Now, when it comes to biochemistry, we're, roughly, at the equivalent of noticing that "fire is hot."

Think of a life form's genetic information as the book, which fully, and completely, describes it - odds are, its going to be more than just the DNA in the nucleus, as now epigenetic factors are ending up being inheritable, and mitochondrial DNA has been known to be important for some time.

Nucleotides are, essentially, the alphabet - just about all known life is written in the same one. (All but, maybe a handful of species.)

Genes are words. So, all creatures known, share a common root language - one which is surprisingly related. (More like the Romance languages, than Indo-European.)

Some, are very similar. However, just different books, can be written with the same words, the order and arrangement matter far more than the words.

A chimpanzee's genes are, very, similar to a human's - but the order is very different.

No mechanism, really, is known for how to explain the rearrangement of genes.

There is a "hopeful monster" theory. The issue is that the "book" is proofread, every time it is duplicated. And, while slight variations are OK, rearranging the words, usually, completely wrecks the process. (Usually, in the sense, of "ALWAYS", but the internal mechanisms of the cell are the most complex process imaginable, and are dependent on quantum effects, so "Science goes Boink!" on occasion.)

It is known, that the traditional view of "random mutation/transcription error eventually causing new genes to arise," is impossible - too much genetic shift, in too few generations to account for that - that has been known for a, very, long time.

The "Hopeful Monster" process theoretically could work, if anyone could find a means of showing it happened regularly enough to actually work. And, that there was some mechanism which triggered it happening at a high enough rate to accommodate for the rapid genetic shift in a population, and then turning back off. Personally, I suspect something along the lines of transposons might be able to do something like this - but that's just a personal hunch, and one turning off/on, betting on the existence of an "evolve" switch isn't the best idea.

The other issue, which I suspect will be easier to solve, is that evolution is supposed to be "gene driven." That each gene is trying to replicate itself as much as possible - the issue becomes how to higher level animals arise under that model? (The most successful genes are those in bacteria, those in humans and elephants would be far less successful. There may be some way of trying to model it such that a gene has a greater rate of expression over time, but how would that tie in to "survival of the fittest.")

Especially with humans. We are very odd creatures. (Mammalian dive response, no hair, need a constant temp or clothing to survive, astoundingly high endurance, much more intelligence than any other animal, extremely long generational period, unique immune system, etc. - not saying all of those cannot be accounted for. The immune system could be explained that individual survival matters in humans, as individuals can have a high level of worth in determining the survival of a related subset in our species, which does not happen in any other - but it gets hard to accommodate under the math.)

IOW, our development was moving VERY fast, and our genes were re-arranging very rapidly - and then, seemed to have stopped doing so. (Perhaps I'm out of date. Entirely possible.)

And, not admitting that, is just as foolish, and idiotic, and dumb, as not admitting that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or being horrified about speaking the truth about man-made global warming.

[Termite]

Well, I want to know how we humans apparently went from life-spans in the several hundred years range to generally under a hundred years. Planned Obsolescence?

Yeah, yeah, I KNOW what Genesis 6:3 says.

[Aglifter]

You figure out why people die of old age, win a Nobel prize.

. Telomere shortening is suspected.

[Rich Jordan]

Well, I want to know how we humans apparently went from life-spans in the several hundred years range to generally under a hundred years. Planned Obsolescence?

Yeah, yeah, I KNOW what Genesis 6:3 says.

"In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the Dúnedain /ˈduːnɛdaɪn/ (singular: Dúnadan, "man of the west") were a race of Men descended from the Númenóreans who survived the sinking of their island kingdom and came to Eriador in Middle-earth, led by Elendil and his sons, Isildur and Anárion. They are also called the Men of the West and the Men of Westernesse (direct translations of the Sindarin term)."

...

"Over the centuries, the southern Dúnedain of Gondor intermarried more and more with so-called Middle Men. Only in regions such as Dol Amroth did their bloodline remain pure. Their lifespan became shorter with each generation. Eventually, even the Kings of Gondor married non-Dúnedain women occasionally."

Shamelessly quoted from Wikipedia so it must be true