/lit/ - Literature

Hey /lit/. I think we can all agree this is a great bait. Really convincing, right? That said, I think we also agree that we shouldn't respond to it beyond this. I know it will be really hard, but please don't.

>>3986608
Well, looks like I wont be perusing /lit/ today.

- Darwin's Black Box

Also, prepare your jimmies.

>>3986608
>>disprove evolution
Thank you for making me lol OP

>>3986616
thanks

>>3986614
already have that one

Any of these. They debunk radiocarbon dating, and other 'dating' methods, and show why the scientific community is just one giant circlejerk of bullshit.


"Some organic materials do give radiocarbon ages in excess of 50,000 "radiocarbon years." However, it is important to distinguish between "radiocarbon years" and calendar years. These two measures of time will only be the same if all of the assumptions which go into the conventional radiocarbon dating technique are valid. Comparison of ancient, historically dated artifacts (from Egypt, for example) with their radiocarbon dates has revealed that radiocarbon years and calendar years are not the same even for the last 5,000 calendar years. Since no reliable historically dated artifacts exist which are older than 5,000 years, it has not been possible to determine the relationship of radiocarbon years to calendar years for objects which yield dates of tens of thousands of radiocarbon years. Thus, it is possible (and, given the Flood, probable) that materials which give radiocarbon dates of tens of thousands of radiocarbon years could have true ages of many fewer calendar years."

sage

>>3986624
Interesting. He makes a great point re: the Flood and its effect on radiocarbon dating.

Also in for recommendations. Tired of seeing this rather esoteric theory bandied about.

>>3986624
One of the most spectacular living fossils is the coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish. Once known only from fossilized remains, this fish was considered by many to be a key transitional form (“missing link”) between fish and amphibians. Its fossils are found in Devonian strata, which are assigned a stunningly vast age of 400 million years. However, a live coelacanth hauled up in a fishing net off Madagascar in 1938 showed the same well-designed form as the fossils. It uses its unique fins to orient itself vertically in the deepest seas of the Indian Ocean, not for “walking” onto land from shallow waters. Where is any evidence of natural selection having made even one significant change in this fish over its supposed 400-million-year existence? A similar question could be asked of a host of living fossils.

The most straightforward explanation for why the living form looks so much like the fossilized one is that instead of eons of evolution having taken place, both were created recently.

>trying this hard to push your retarded views
You can stop now OP

>>3986630
or that the fucking fish lived in a secluded, unchanging environment to which it was perfectly adapted. Because the environment does not change, the mutations that would otherwise be beneficial in a changing environment lose their relevance in the mating process, so the don't get favoured, don't produce more offspring than the others and it ultimately results in only minimal changes in the overall population.

tl;dr: trole harder, evolution isn't that hard to grasp

I hate neo-atheism as much as the next guy on /lit/ but this is the stupidest thread I've seen in weeks.

>>3986608
Anything by Katharine DeBrecht.

>>3986624
>Any of these. They debunk radiocarbon dating, and other 'dating' methods, and show why the scientific community is just one giant circlejerk of bullshit.
And they also walk on water and declare racism to be the #1 reason that India is still a shithole.

kill the thread
cut its throat
kill the thread
bash it in

>>3986624

>>3986634
>>trying this hard to push your retarded views
Thankfully, most people are not hopelessly deceived. Polls in America show that the majority believes in creation, and many more want it taught. Less than 10% are confirmed evolutionists, yet they seemingly control education.

Richard Dawkins claimed that evolution is a proven fact, just as "proven" as 2+2=4. When challenged, he insisted the two statements are equivalently true. Is this so? If not, what is the difference?

Here's a simple experiment to verify one of the statements. Extend two fingers on your left hand, and then extend two on your right hand. Lay them all on the table in front of you, and count them. You should get four. If you are careful, every time you count them, you will get four. This is an observational fact.

Now devise an experiment to verify evolution. Keep trying. There must be one. I suspect even Dawkins would be unable to propose an experiment to verify evolution like we verified our mathematical equation. Even if both statements are facts, obviously they are not the same kind of facts.

That's because evolution is not something we can observe. If it's happening today, it's going too slow to observe. If it happened in the past, we can't return to the past to see. It may be a fact of history, but how would we know? Certainly not in the same way we know 2+2=4.

Evolution, at the most, is an idea about history, not observational science. There may be inferences we can make about the past based on modern observations, and these may or may not be true, but don't bother claiming that ideas about history are the same as repeatable observations in the present. And don't insult us by thinking that we will believe that they are.

It makes you wonder if evolutionists really believe what they say or if they are purposively trying to mislead. I suspect there are some of both.

Many evolutionists I have met have something in their own past that has turned them away from "religion." Maybe it was legalistic parents or abuse by a respected figure. Maybe it was the insistence that we should "avoid science because it contradicts the Bible," leaving them without answers to historical claims made in the name of science. A bitter hatred of God and Biblical truth developed, leading them to a life dedicated to freeing others from the shackles of Scripture, justifying the wrong use of evolutionary claims.

However, most evolutionists are evolutionists because they are victims of the wrong teaching of others. Naturalism (i.e., naturalistic evolution) is often desirable, for it seemingly frees us from the authority of a Creator God. Without a God to whom we are accountable, we are free to live as we choose. College students, often surrounded by hedonism are particularly ripe for wrong thinking, and many never recover. Either way, it can lead to ludicrous statements, such as "evolution is as true as 2+2=4." They may teach that evolution is well proven, but we don't have to believe them.

>>3986648

Quoting from some creation webpage. Please just stop and delete this shitty thread.

>>3986648
>If it happened in the past, we can't return to the past to see. It may be a fact of history, but how would we know?
This. We don't know that the Roman empire existed. We can't devise an experiment to verify it, so it's just a theory.

>>3986641
You're the worst kind of person. You "hate neo-atheism" because it's part of /lit/ morality to hate neo-atheism. But "this is the stupidest thread" because ultimately, your morality was shaped by popular culture and popular science and you just know the chief of police of popular science would disapprove of this thread. Learn how to think.

See, you guys are looking at this wrong:
There used to be hundreds or thousands of gods in the western world, now we're pretty much down to one. Clearly we are destroying the habitat of these unique and fascinating creatures. It may already be too late.
Now, you could say that gods are an evolutionary dead end, and theres a case for that: the main attempt at interbreeding with allied species two thousand years back seems to have produced a sterile hybrid that only possessed a few of the extraordinary characteristics of the male parent.

Still, we need to do what we can to keep this one from dying out, if only for the sake of scientific interest. Building those big white steepled nesting structures all over the American South seems to have had only a small effect. But we must do wat we can.

>>3986608
>>3986614
as a life-long atheist to answer your question, I just have three words for you:

the bible

I'm sure /sci/ would get way more mad than /lit/, why don't you take this there?

ITT: dumb fedoras and dogmatic evolutionists don't even know the difference between macroevolution and microevolution.

>Macroevolution
refers to major evolutionary changes over time, the origin of new types of organisms from previously existing, but different, ancestral types. Examples of this would be fish descending from an invertebrate animal, or whales descending from a land mammal. The evolutionary concept demands these bizarre changes.

>Microevolution
refers to varieties within a given type. Change happens within a group, but the descendant is clearly of the same type as the ancestor. This might better be called variation, or adaptation, but the changes are "horizontal" in effect, not "vertical." Such changes might be accomplished by "natural selection," in which a trait within the present variety is selected as the best for a given set of conditions, or accomplished by "artificial selection," such as when dog breeders produce a new breed of dog.

The small or microevolutionary changes occur by 'recombining' existing genetic material within the group. As Gregor Mendel observed with his breeding studies on peas in the mid 1800's, there are natural limits to genetic change. A population of organisms can vary only so much. What causes macroevolutionary change?

Genetic mutations produce new genetic material, but do these lead to macroevolution? No truly useful mutations have ever been observed. The one most cited is the disease sickle-cell anemia, which provides an enhanced resistance to malaria. How could the occasionally deadly disease of SSA ever produce big-scale change?

Dogmatic evolutionists assume that the small, horizontal microevolutionary changes (which are observed) lead to large, vertical macroevolutionary changes (which are never observed). This philosophical leap of faith lies at the eve of evolution thinking.

In 1980 about 150 of the world's leading evolutionary theorists gathered at the University of Chicago for a conference entitled "Macroevolution." Their task: "to consider the mechanisms that underlie the origin of species" (Lewin, Science vol. 210, pp. 883-887). "The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution . . . the answer can be given as a clear, No."

Thus the scientific observations support the creation tenet that each basic type is separate and distinct from all others, and that while variation is inevitable, macroevolution does not and did not happen.

If evolution had successfully been disproven the scientific community would have abandoned it.

>Inb4 scientific community is corrupt/has ulterior motives

>>3986687
The "scientific community" doesn't sit around refreshing everyday with new self-analyses. Certain dogmas simply go unquestioned and if anybody asserts that they have proof on the contrary, they're quickly labelled a quack without any actual review.

>>3986676
I know this is copied from some website, but seriously, dividing up evolution into 2 (usually more, like 6 or so and including abiogenesis in their definition of evolution) is probably one of the stupidest things I've seen actual people believe. They always say it like some big discovery, something like "learn the secret about evolution that scientists don't want you to know" and "this man will tell you the truth about evolution, scientists hate him!", when its just an inability to understand

>>3986687
I bet you believe the mind is a deterministic machine, and free will and consciousness are just illusions.

>>3986648
>Richard Dawkins claimed that evolution is a proven fact, just as "proven" as 2+2=4
Never thought this Dawkins guy was *this* retarded.

>Muh water apes!

>>3986608
10/10
the replies this troll gets is unbelievable

>>3986697
>when its just an inability to understand
Oh, I think they understand evolution perfectly, they are just manipulating their congregation.

I honestly think that all the creationists that write this anti-evolution stuff from a scientific perspective must be some kind of troll.

I think the problem isn't that evolution is shaky, it's that the only alternative we're ever given is "magic", which is really not an answer. We just don't see new species or planets or whatver being created around us very much, so there's no need to come up with extraordinary explanations for this phenomenon.

Considering the world and life on it is supposed to be only six thousand or so years old, and the universe is supposed to be more than ten billion years old, why aren't other gods making other worlds everywhere? and if they are are they just really far away?

gods are an interesting idea, but we can't get them into the laboratory very easily, so it's hard to determine if they can actually control the weather or heal the sick, or curse your enemies as they're supposed to be able to do. Until we can actually predictably observe the effect we shouldn't be extrapolating mechanisms for it.

Atheist: "Hello /lit/, I'm an atheist. Empirical observation is the only reasonable form of knowledge and faith is dumb."

/lit/: "You dogmatic fedoras are fucking retarded. Scientism isn't objective truth. You can't know anything."

----

Noble Christian: "Hello /lit/. I have faith in the almighty God, and I'm sceptical about the scientific method."

/lit/: "You dogmatic Christians are fucking retarded. Evolution is a proven fact, the word of God is a lie."

>>3986659
never believed in those buggers anyway

>>3986739
Average /lit/izen: "All this is fine; science is fascinating and theology has many points of interest. There have surely been many great works of literature written on both these subjects. Why don't we discuss them?"

>>3986696
which is the direct opposite of organised faith, which questions its dogmas and ideas at least twice a day...

>>3986739
Evolution itself is an observable fact though. Just as much as gravity is.

>>3986711
While it is probably true that this is some guy getting his jollies from copy+pasting creationist babble, that doesn't make his words inconsequential. It's important to remember that millions in the US (around 45% of the total population if studies are to be believed) believe this crap.

>>3986660
I don't believe in any god whatsoever and I don't have problem with others believing in various gods (if they aren't annoyingly trying to convince me) but I don't even know what the bloody hell is "neo-atheism" supposed to be? How is it different from classic atheism? I suspect some cool shit for teenagers.

>>3986696
Nah, it's just that more often than not they really are quacks.

Okay OP, suppose evolution is now disproved. What now?

>>3986760
almost everyone I know believes this crap

>imblying evolution leads to non extinction
>imblying evolution can foresee global changes

>>3986759
>process spanning millions of years
>observable fact

this is how /lit/ does science

>>3986648
>dat ignorance
And this is precisely why we must revamp the education system. Jesus fucking christ.

>>3986676
nice b8 m8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

It's not a coincidence that this is one of wikipedia's biggest articles. Have fun disproving all of this, science-haters.

>>3986815
http://www.icr.org/

>>3986815
>disproving all of this
lol no, you have the burden of proof. First prove evolution is true, then we will talk.

>>3986676
There is no such thing as micro and macro evolution. Those are terms made up by creationists.

>>3986838
>There is no such thing as micro and macro evolution.
There is. Just read his post.

>>3986612
you could have stopped thishttps://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/image?c=03AHJ_Vuunfb5zNWy1tkHrxdm3I0wRhX1an87P6IyEQVIWzfgjVsOrA8bh0n_BPJN07RIJMh62vyWusNyQXztk5r7ridHSsqh9chtD2Va_cHBwL02cSetlRvmpEExslDO8KT8v7q282j-qSukyTlWMMY8fkeejV22R0Me4Tcxoq1WqdcN0oQBhnKo

>>3986846
read the rest of the post you replied to

>>3986823
I just don't even. How do you fight evolution? It isn't even a difficult concept to grasp. Have you taken freshman biology?

>>3986846
Oh he said it in his post, must be true.

"Macro" evolution is just what happens when you look at the product of a lot of "micro" evolution.

A "macro" evolution of a Bobs personality would be observing them in 2010 and then in 2020.

A "micro" evolution of Bobs personality would be observing him in 2010 and in 2011.

They're the same thing.

>>3986859
Are you really this dense?

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution
Macroevolution is evolution on a scale of separated gene pools. Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of species, in contrast with microevolution.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microevolution
Microevolution is the changes in allele frequencies that occur over time.

America, you're the smarter country in the world.

How I envy your education.

>>3986870
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution

"Contrary to claims by creationists, macro and microevolution describe fundamentally identical processes on different time scales"

Oh god, it's to perfect. Did you even read the articles you linked me?

>>3986870
"Within the Modern Synthesis school of thought, macroevolution is thought of as the compounded effects of microevolution."

Holy shit man, more proof that what I said was right from YOUR LINKED ARTICLES

>>3986870
"Thus, the distinction between micro- and macroevolution is not a fundamental one – the only difference between them is of time and scale."

Oh god this is to much

>>3986804
There are animals that have a lifespan of like one day.

>>3986838
>There is no such thing as micro and macro evolution.
>>3986870
#rekt

>>3986913
see>>3986907
>>3986900
>>3986894

>>3986648
>>3986676
These are direct copypasta from a creationist website.

I was thinking of engaging this thread but that just outright proved you're a troll.

>>3986918
What about it? You claimed that
>There is no such thing as micro and macro evolution. Those are terms made up by creationists.
and you got #rekt.

>>3986857
how about you stop flinging passive-aggressive ad-homs and prove evolution is true? you had the opportunity yet you hasn't done it, coincidence?

>>3986859
>"Macro" evolution is just what happens when you look at the product of a lot of "micro" evolution.
For a supposedly 'rational' and 'scientific' person you sure fucked up your understanding of math!

Not all functions are continuous, you troglodyte nitwit.

In fact, functions which describe the changes in genome during evolution are demonstrably _not_ continuous.

>>3986894
>"Contrary to claims by creationists, macro and microevolution describe fundamentally identical processes on different time scales"
Again, whoever wrote that has zero understanding of math.

Evolution is not continuous. 'Macro' changes cannot be a sum of lots of 'micro' changes, by definition of what a continuous function is.

>>3986608
Actually a better bait than usual. It's not the usual "black people are dumb" stuff that so obviously paints you as a stormfag, and given how painfully ignorant half of America is this is potentially believable.

6/10, almost made me try and argue you

>>3986948
proving evolution true is sort of a pointless exercise. I'm sure it can be done, but there really hasn't been an alternative suggestion other than some form of mysticism or magic, which isn't really an alternative.

What explanation do you like instead, ruling out magical stuff of course? I'd be happy to consider its merits.

>>3986980
>implying hendricks is attractive and not obese
>toning

>>3986998
Hendricks wouldn't be my first pick either, but I found this and did not make it.

Gave me a rite chuckle tho

>>3986985
>proving evolution true is sort of a pointless exercise. I'm sure it can be done, but there really hasn't been an alternative suggestion other than some form of mysticism or magic
argument from ignorance right there, I think it's official now: you are being demoted, return your fedora.

Though I am not a believer, I can grasp why someone would have this faith in an omnipotent creature//force/spirit - I enjoy reading studies on secularized vs religious societies and families in terms of overall life quality, "happiness", productiveness, etc.

But hating on evolution? come on, dawg - do you even read?

Evolution is fact. End of discussion.

>>3986973
you serious?

>>3987015
Hey i've had my Fedora since '72! It's a classic! And i'd still like that alternative explanation. I know a lot about evolution but not a lot about other, non-magical explanations for the characteristics of life. I'd really like to hear about them.

So how about it? What's our favorite, you don't need to list them all. As long as they don't conflict with what we know about physics and chemistry I'm willing to listen. Eager, even.

>>3987049
Why do you think there is an 'alternative explanation'? There isn't.

>this entire thread

>>>/pol/

>>3987037
>you serious?
Yes I am. Look up the definition of what a 'continuous function' is, dipshit, before posting your juvenile funny pictures.

>>3987049
>And i'd still like that alternative explanation
and I still have to point out you are making an argument from ignorance

read more

>>3987052
>Why do you think there is an 'alternative explanation'? There isn't.
There isn't _any_ explanation. Forget 'alternative' explanations -- the commonly-accepted one basically boils down to 'it sorta happened by itself randomly'.

Such an 'explanation' might have been plausible in 1396, before algebra was invented, but in 2013 we have probability theory, and 'sorta happened by itself randomly' is _not_ an explanation.

A real explanation would need to reference functions, groups, probabilities, vector spaces and convergence.

What passes for a 'theory of evolution' in 2013 is a shameless face, fit only for ooga-booga tribes and other simpleminded folks.

8/10, bretty gud

ten bucks there hasn't been any actual creationist in this thread so far

Sage
It's time to end this shitty thread

>>3986676
>mfw not believing that the world was created in seven days, 6000 years ago, is being a fedora reddit atheist

>>3987072
don't reply, stop the bait

>>3987072
>isn't _any_ explanation
Oh God, it's you again. We really need to badger Moot about italics on /lit/, if only to prevent your underscore abuse.

>>3987072
But there is.

Random mutations in an organism's genetic code when passed to offspring produce random variations in that organism's characteristics. Natural selection, an all but random process, then weeds out those whose particular traits mean it has less chance of surviving in certain conditions. Evolution then, over thousands or millions of years, is the continual and cumulative effect of all the natural selections to date.

There are no concrete maths because there doesn't have to be; what possible benefit would there be to all of those calculations? The definition of a natural process into maths is for the benefit of prediction, so humans may reliably predict how a system will react or be in a future state. This mathematical quantification, for the end of prediction, is irrelevant in evolution, since we cannot intervene in it. It is far more efficient nowadays simply to manipulate directly the genetic code of an organism.

>>3987052
without a viable alternative, it's sort of pointless to try to shoot holes in the existing one. Theological and cultural explanations are okay in their place, but you need a theory to work off of.

If OP wanted to use his argument to establish that there was a magical explanation, he'd have to first establish that there were only two possible expalnations, his and evolution, which he hasn't even attempted to do. Therefore the possibility of a heirarchy of other nonmagical solutions must exist. I'm wondering what some of them might be.

If he wanted us to believe in a magical explanation, he'd be establishing evidence for that, not shooting holes in evolution. That would be jsut wasting his time.

>>3987095
Glad to see that your only objection to my post is the use of italics. I guess my treatment of the topical subject matter raises no objections?

>>3987066
I'm not arguing at all. Is that what you mean by an argument from ignorance? I have no dog in this fight. I just want to hear from the other side. If you're attacking evolution as unscientific, what more scientific alternative do you propose?

>>3987079
>ten bucks there hasn't been any actual creationist in this thread so far
'Actual creationists' don't exist in the real world, you asshole. Your little in-group invented 'actual creationists' so that you could have a convenient little scapegoat to blame your problems on and foster your little cult groupthink mentality.

>>3987055
Again, I ask, are you serious?

>>3987106
There were other theories, such as Lamarckism, which were around in Darwin's time, but these were roundly disproven quite early on. There has been nothing since then to touch even remotely the validity of natural selection and evolution.

>>3987128

>>3987128
Holy shit, America. Please say this isn't real.

I'm a science teacher, and this is makes me what to kill.

>>3987128
>>3987132
>American education

>>3986624
Why is David Bently Hart on there? He believes in evolution and has never written a book even remotely related to it. The book listed on there is a general retelling of Christian history that stops to give counter points to the attacks Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchins like to throw about how "hurr religion is evil"

>>3987112
>Again, I ask, are you serious?
Did you read and internalize the definition of 'continuous function'?

>>3987142
may I ask what level of education you have?

>>3986608
>What are some good books that disprove evolution?

>>3987114
Then waht is OP talking about? He seems to dislike Atheism, which he apparently connects with evolution somehow (does he think atheists evolved from something?) on the grounds that it's dogmatic and intolerant, as well as unscientific. I can't imagine he'd invoke a dogmatic, intolerant and unscientific explanation for the characteristics of life on earth.

I'd like to hear it even so, just as long as no magic is involved. And what's the "argument from ignorance thing? Who's arguing?

Not OP, but can someone answer the picture in the OP?

>>3987128
>>3987132

>mfw Christianity was once the prime organ of Western culture and the centerpiece of the achievements of human civilization

>>3987134
It probably is. Granted not sure how common it is. I attended a Christian school from k-12 and never took a test that looked like that. All my classes in science I took stayed away from the chapters on evolution.

>>3987134
>Holy shit, America. Please say this isn't real.

Unfortunately it is. It's from a private school a South Carolina.

This thread belongs on /sci/. Ever notice how anti-evolutionists almost always make their criticisms of evolution towards people who aren't well-versed towards science? It's just posturing that can only convince the ignorant. It's the scientific equivalent of someone trying to convince laymen that Randian Objectivism is the best philosophy.

>>3987072
>implying that any biologist legitimately thinks that evolution is random

Not even Dawkins believes in that shit.

Anyway, mathematics and evolution go quite well with each other. To even get a degree in biology, you have to be pretty familiar with mathematics. There's plenty of material written by actual mathematics supporting evolution, here's one you can find easily: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/52/22454.short

Plenty more where that came from, just Google Scholar "darwin evolution mathematics" or some other similar combination and you'll find plenty of mathematical support.

Finally, to the dipshit(s) who keep on saying "HURR DURR EVOLUTION GROUPTHINK CIRCLEJERK", congrats, you've proven you don't know what you're talking about. There's plenty of debates and dissent within evolution. Gene-centered vs. organism-centered, the timeline of how certain species came about, what role evolution plays in our psychology, just off the top of my head.

>>3987151
Because evolution happens over hundreds, thousands, or millions of years. Because an organism 'can't' choose what to become. Because split infinitive.

>>3987154
>>3987160
it isn't

>>3987114
>There has been nothing since then to touch even remotely the validity of natural selection and evolution.
That's because in its current form 'natural selection' is not a scientific theory. It's an unfalsifiable philosophical statement about determinism and positivism.

A scientific theory needs to have two properties:
a) It describes empirically-observable processes in formal language
b) The formal language can be used to predict events, which can be confirmed as true predictions or falsified as false predictions.

'Natural selection' has neither of these two properties. It is not a scientific theory. It is a scienticist philosophical statement.

>>3987162
It sure had million of years and there's still no immortal orgnism on thsi planet

>>3987167
Why should there be? You are giving a 'direction' or 'end' to evolution; something which it certainly does not have.

>>3987151

The OP's picture is vacuous, presumably intentionally so. Animals that evolve themselves not to go extinct are the animals that are not extinct. The dodo specifically went extinct because its natural environment placed no pressure upon it to avoid humans or predators of any kind, and the arrival of humans and the rats they brought with them rapidly decreased the numbers of dodos and their eggs to unsalvageable levels before any attempt to adapt to the new environment could be made.

>>3987161
Learn what the word 'random' means, you dipshit. Take an introductory probability theory couse and come back, I have no time to argue math with fedoracore liberal-arts idiots.

From the paper you linked:

>Biological evolution is such a complex process that any attempt to describe it precisely in a way similar to the description of the dynamic processes in physics by mathematical methods is impossible.

End of story. Have a nice day.

>>3987167
>It sure had million of years and there's still no immortal orgnism on thsi planet
I'm pretty sure that there are actually lots of immortal organisms on this planet.

(You said 'organism', not 'mammal'.)

>>3987164
We observe the effects of natural selection all around us every day - the selection of foxes, pigeons, and seagulls for inner-city habitats are a few examples.

Many experiments have been performed where certain environmental pressures have been placed on organisms and over generations few have been selected to suit best the pressure: fruitflies, bacteria, etc, etc.

The formal language is biology, and the maths is catching up. And merely because something is, you say, a 'philosophical statement', doesn't mean it's not correct.

>>3987167
Nice fact there, brah.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality

Immortality is normally nothing an organism wants to achieve, because it means no breeding and therefore no adaption to the environment, and no death of the older generations, which leads to overpopulation and lack of available food.

>>3987175
Because evolution went in a direction that defended the organism and helped it survive. Why not make it survive forever?
>>3987192
So why didn't this work for mammals too?
>>3987201
>because it means no breeding
What?

>>3987193
Let me repeat this again, for those liberal-arts lost souls who didn't manage to fit into their heads the first time around:

>A scientific theory needs to have two properties:
>a) It describes empirically-observable processes in formal language
>b) The formal language can be used to predict events, which can be confirmed as true predictions or falsified as false predictions.

As of 2013, 'natural selection' does neither of these two. It is not falsifiable. It makes no predictions about speciation that can be tested.

>>3987167
there are life-forms with indefinite life spans on this planet, where is your god now?

Sage

There are not many immortal organisms on the planet because natural selection does not 'give' a shit about individual animals, but the proliferation of genes. Immortal animals would clog up the gene pool, overpopulate, consume everything, and self-destruct in addition to destroying the surrounding ecosystem.
That being said there are a few living things that are in fact, quite 'immortal', some examples include the Turritopsis nutricula, and Planarian flatworms.

>>3987207
> Because evolution went in a direction that defended the organism and helped it survive
It certainly did not - it helped the *genes* to survive, not the individual. Individual organisms are meaningless.

You're also anthropomorphising an inanimate process; evolution cannot 'go', 'defend', or 'help'. It's simply, like most things, the most efficient way for the universe to gain entropy in this particular part of space.

>>3987212
How does the individual organism predict the future? I thought its main objective was to keep the organism alive, not to look around and check whether the planet is overpopulated

>>3987215
>saging a thread at the top of the board

lmao

ITT
Christians: 1
Fedora-clad atheist evolutionists: 0

>>3987213
> liberal arts
BSc in Chemistry, MSc in pharmacology, PhD in cancer medicine. And I'm a science teacher.

Dude, no.

>>3987218
b-but mu le downvote?

>>3987216
So why does the organism still hepl and defend the individual after they passed their genes, and are unable to pass any genes further?

It is possible to observe evolution in petri dishes, due to the speed with which bacteria reproduce. Outside of the laboratory, one can see evolution when diseases become resistant to vaccines.

>>3987224
>BSc in Chemistry
Pretty good, but you won't get a real math education with that BSc.
>MSc in pharmacology
Not a science.
>PhD in cancer medicine.
Definitely not a science.
>And I'm a science teacher.
I feel bad for the poor kids you teach.

>>3987224
>PhD in cancer medicine
Does Dichloroacetic acid actually offer a viable cure?

>>3987207
Well, I fucked that up. The point I wanted to make was that overpopulation and (non-)accessibility of food would regulate and slow down the growth of an immortal population automatically.

>>3987223

>XXI century
>there are still christians
>shit, i'll sleep till next century

>>3987239
It's not like the food crisis appears during the live of the organism. How is the organism supposed to know that the food will run out if it doesn't die?

>>3987217
It's 'objective', if an inanimate process can 'have' anything, is for gene survival and dispersion. As the individual organism is a holder of these genes, then it's beneficial for the organism to get to reproduction age, although beyond that, it's an irrelevancy.

>>3987236
Yeah, right.

>>3987237
That whole picture is nonsense.

>>3987248
So why don't they just die after they passed the genes?

>>3987248
>That whole picture is nonsense.
Really?

Cancer cells generally express increased glycolysis, because they rely on anaerobic respiration that occurs in the cytosol (lactic acid fermentation) rather than oxidative phosphorylation in the mitochondria for energy (the Warburg effect), as a result of hypoxia that exists in tumors and malfunctioning mitochondria. Usually dangerously damaged cells kill themselves via apoptosis, a mechanism of self-destruction that involves mitochondria, but this mechanism fails in cancer cells. DCA restores mitochondrial function, thus restoring apoptosis, allowing cancer cells to self-destruct and shrink the tumor.

>>3987255
To reproduce again, and again, and maybe again. Humans, remember, didn't used to live past infertility without the help of technology and science.

>>3987255
They do, you age and die.

Other than that genes can't know if you passed them on.

Go back to your cave, Jededaiah.

>>3987255
what would make them die? magic?

>>3987246
Well, it doesn't know that. There will be less food around and more organisms will die then, a population like this is just not able to sustain themselves. Hence the term
>automatically
This is a self-regulating process , stemming from the ( genetic ) 'goal' in all organisms: reproduction which leads to adaption ( which leads to further reproduction and makes an organism perform "good").

polite sage

>>3987257
Not all tumours are hypoxic, and even then, hypoxia occurs only in the centre of relatively large tumours, by which point metastasis may have already happened. Mass cell apoptosis is also very toxic to other tissues and the body as a whole.

There are as many cancers are there are cell types in the body, remember, so what works for one, will almost certainly not work for another.

>mfw i won't pass my genes and sabotage the nature

WHAT NOW MOTHER NATURE?

If nature wanted me to reproduce then why the fuck did it make me such a loser?

>>3987305
because your mother didn't sacrife enough goats

>>3986968
What the fuck, macroevolution is literally the science of observing microevolution. That's what the definition is.

Not every function is continuous, but macroevolution looks at the continuous functions.

Your said nothing except "not all microevolution leads to change", no fucking shit, what do you think natural selection is.

>>3987305
>mfw mother nature didn't want you to breed and it's all part of her master plan

>>3987313
also for >>3987299

>>3987312
My head hurts a lot now after reading this

>>3987305

>implying nature wanted you to reproduce

How's it feel being a dead-end tangent to the human lineage?

>>3987321
special

>>3987164
Evolution can be falsified in several ways, such as anachronistic fossils (ie dog in the precambrian era), a species that evolved for the 100% benefit of another species, or if geology/cosmology showed that the Earth/universe was too young for evolution to happen.

a) Evolution has been observed, by experiments on bacteria, fruitflies, and mice.

b) Evolution has made predictions. Off the top of my head, it was hypothesized that organisms in constantly-changing environments would have more mutations. Experiments with bacteria has shown exactly that.

>>3987188
Yay, creationist quote-mining. If you actually read the whole paper, you would know they stated that to show why the commonly cited mathematical model is incorrect. The entire rest of the paper is them building a mathematical model out of the evolutionary process.

Also I have no idea why you associate evolution with liberal arts. It's something accepted by almost 100% of biologists.

>>3987325
>Evolution can be falsified
>b) Evolution has made predictions. Off the top of my head, it was hypothesized that organisms in constantly-changing environments would have more mutations. Experiments with bacteria has shown exactly that.

Microbiologists contend that instead of increasing complexity, evolution can occur by losing complexity. How accurate or meaningful is this new idea about "reductive evolution," whereby life evolves by losing genes?

The authors described their new hypothesis of evolution in the medical journal mBio. They formulated this reductive evolution concept after they observed bacteria losing genetic information.

The bacteria lost particular vital functions by somehow letting go of the genes that aided those functions. The bacteria survived by relying on nearby microbes to perform that vital task for them. Without devoting resources to that function, the bacteria are free to perform other roles more economically.

To these evolutionists, when bacteria lose genes, "reductive genome evolution" is occurring. But they admitted, "There is a tendency in evolutionary discourse to describe life's history as a progression towards increasing complexity." So has evolutionary discourse been misguided? Instead of simple-to-complex, was life's history instead filled with complex-to-simple evolutionary changes such as bacteria losing certain genes?

Life's history is often described as a progression because without a Creator, transforming hydrogen into humans required some kind of natural progression. One cannot climb a hill by falling down a hole.

But these study authors inadvertently showed why the story of simple-to-complex evolution is not scientific. They did not observe nature constructing bacterial genes, but they did observe bacteria losing genes. Gene loss may be termed "evolution" by some, but it provides absolutely no support for big-picture evolution. If evolution describes both the reduction and addition of genes, then it really doesn't describe anything.

>>3987336
Thanks, interesting read although I am not sure where you are going with this.

>If evolution describes both the reduction and addition of genes, then it really doesn't describe anything.
I don't quite understand this, is evolution something different from adaption? Because in my sense of understanding, evolution tries to describe the (genetic) change a specific species goes through over a course of time to make surviving/reproduction in the surrounding environment easier.

>>3987336
Evolution is simply adaptation to an environment via natural selection and mutation. Nowhere in that definition is the promise of increasing complexity. The reason for the "tendency in evolutionary discourse to describe life's history as a progression towards increasing complexity" is simply because this is what occurs in the majority of cases (with complexity referring to number of genes rather than sophistication of gene expression). If anything the study provides more evidence for evolution. The bacteria made an adaptation to their environment due to selection pressure. Its textbook.

>>3987161
>This thread belongs on /sci/.
Fuck you. We don't want them either.

>>3987336
This is another direct copypasta from a Christian website. Word-for-word.

http://www.icr.org/article/6770/

Anyway, I'll engage your copypasta. The article they cite itself notes that gene loss isn't new, what is the new is the particular hypothesis of how it all came about, so right off the bat, the copypasta misrepresents evolution.

The main point of the copypasta is that "hey, you observed bacteria losing genes, therefore you can't really be certain that simple-to-complex evolution is real!" Ignoring the fact that science doesn't claim to be certain, there are reasons to believe that organisms did in fact start off simple, such as the fossil record. The fossil record itself shows organisms, on the whole, going from simple to complex. We have not found fossils of dinosaurs or humans dating from the precambrian era, for example.

>>3987336

>"There is a tendency in evolutionary discourse to describe life's history as a progression towards increasing complexity."

Which tendency is a result of retarded individuals such as yourself. Simple-to-complex is a vague trend in macro-level traits such as bodily size of individual organisms, doesn't have anything to do with number of genes, and is without grounding in reality since the vast majority of organisms in the known universe are "simple" from a human perspective, with hypercomplex multicellular shit like trees and birds making up an insignificant percentage of organic life. The notion that evolution is always a progression from simple to complex is just as fucking dumb as the notion that it's always a progression from complex to simple. Chuang Tzu knew how evolution worked 2300 years ago: "[The Tao] goes always by the rightness of the present This." Why are modern Christians dumber than a dead Chinese man who spent his entire life sitting under a lacquer tree doing nothing?

>>3987111
I know this is a troll but it still made my blood fucking boil. All the trolls in this thread have actual almost identical real life counterparts

>>3987380

almost all the "trolls" in this thread are copypastaed from denialist sites. Are you new?

>>3987383
can text post itself?

>>3986762
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism

Good, down to earth christian man, a god fearin man who pays his taxes:
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8DDIe_2cHM

Edgy, metal listenin, fedora donnin, no good atheist fellas who dont help the community in any way:
hxxp://archive.org/details/TrollingWithLogicLive-KentHovindPwnage
hxxp://archive.org/details/TrollingWithLogicLive-KentHovindPwnagePart2

>>3987072
All the rest of this aside...
>1396
>Before algebra was invented

>tfw there are quadratic equations from Ancient Egypt

>>3987134
My son just finished his Bio 11 course in a Catholic School (Canada) and he studied evolution.

>>3987441
It's a very nuanced bait, that's for sure.

>>3987134
It's either fake or from a Sunday school at a very evangelical church. Don't get your britches in a bundle.

>>3987451

a catholic school in Canada isn't as conservative as a evangelical school in South Carolina? no shit, numbnuts

>>3987461
Don't use conservative incorrectly.

>>3987460

it's real; from Blue Ridge Christian Academy, near Greenville, SC. Ken Ham is cited as evidence, even, so it passes criterion of embarrassment.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/sciencetest.asp

>>3987464

But that is a correct use of conservative. Modern evangelical doctrine on the natural history of Earth has been conserved since 1920s.

>>3987451
I think when he said America he meant the US.

It varies where I'm from, but not by much. I was taught it, briefly, but there is one school that has been steadily pumping out generation after generation that disbelieve it. The school strawmans evolution and then devotes hours and hours to showing videos 'refuting' evolution and the idea that the earth is more than 6 thousand years old. A friend recalled to me a snippet of what one guy said in a video, something along the lines of: The earth couldn't be billions of years old because all the heat would be gone, and are YOU freezing?

>>3987468
>Ken Ham is cited as evidence, even, so it passes criterion of embarrassment.
Not quite as embarrassing as that comma.

>>3987476
I live in The Netherlands and I have yet to meet a creatonist who believes the earth is 6000 years old (and I've met a lot of christians). Gays are also accepted in churches and all that.

Get with the times, America

>>3987491

Seems fine to me. Commas can be used to set off an adverb in the middle of the sentence, though the use of 'even' as an adverb is kind of irregular.

>>3987476
Was the man in the videos going by the name of Kent Hovind?

>>3987507
Wouldn't it have been better to use a semicolon following even?

>>3987503
>Get with the times, God
Fixed.

>>3987472
You could also say fundamentalist.

>>3987503
Anybody who thinks we aren't doesn't know much about anything outside of their own country. I'm not sure what you should get with, but you need to get with something that will help you actually learn something about people in countries distant from your own.

>>3987512
>Wouldn't it have been better to use a semicolon following even?
No. 'So' is a coordinating conjunction, so it can join clauses like this one.

>>3987512

Only if he dropped the "so"

>>3987476
Not sure where you live, but I live in California and have never once been taught anything biblical other than the history involved with it. I've never met anyone who believed that stuff either, so all I'm seeing is one small group of people who believe in young earth stuff, which happens literally everywhere.

>atheists and people that believe in the perverted abrahamic religions still think either one of them is correct
lmfeo

>>3987537
Isn't that a bunch of stuff ripped straight from Kabbalah but made crazier?

>>3987503
I get so sick of people thinking that everywhere, or even every first world country, is secularized. With the Internet now you get events that have local context spread into international contexts and other local contexts, where the events are seen as the epitome of edginess, because the person perceiving them doesn't know or understand or take into account the cultural context (because it is perceived as the same). I can only speak in experience for a small part of the Southern US' bible belt, but I know for sure that this area never went through the process most European countries went through throughout the 20th century, the secularizing process. My own provinciality has made it hard for me to believe you when you say you haven't met a young-earth, but the idea I've been talking about in this paragraph makes me realize I probably could believe you, and it definitely could happen.

>>3987510
I dont know

>>3987534
Capital city of Mississippi, Jackson. The US is huge, fucking huge, about twice as big as Europe. It's more than one culture. But its not just a small group of people, it's not of the same type of those things that happen everywhere. Unless by small group you are referring to the culture here (not 4chan, bible belt), which would be correct but misleading

>>3987557
>Mississippi

Dear, God.

>>3987557
It's not the same group of people everywhere of course, but there are small, extreme branches of religions literally everywhere, and yes, they are an extremely small minority, some of whom have large sums of money.

>>3987557
They're about the same size, actually.

Why are there even people denying evolution because of their religion? I mean, "this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory."
-Pope John Paul II

>>3987537
I think you should stop posting and go back to popping acid.

>>3987577
I'm saying that is the dominating culture in this area, which is relatively large. I agree that there are small groups of extremely religious people everywhere (at least I would think so), but I'm saying this is a different type of thing. (You may have already gotten that, I can't tell)

>>3987582
it depends how you're measuring, really
hxxp://goeurope.about.com/od/europeanmaps/l/bl-country-size-comparison-map.htm

>>3987542
>ripped off
>crazier
>trivializing complex shit
>mfw

>>3987603
I don't think that culture dominates anywhere. I highly doubt the majority of the people you meet when walking down the street in a big city are young earth creationists.

>>3987593

>popping acid
>popping

>>3987603
> about.com
No chance I'm visiting that shit. I'll stick with my Google and Wikipedia, who back me up.

>>3987584
Most creatonists aren't catholics, they are protestants.

>>3987613
>>3987603

Since this is already the thread in which retards vomit up half-digested information they barely knew in the first place, isn't there some weird paradox in cartography where the measured land area of a country will actually increase towards infinity as the map grows more detailed?

>>3987584
JPII was one of the most brilliant philosophers of this era. He was not allowed to express his knowledge though, because he was the pope.

>>3987611

>I don't think that culture dominates anywhere.

You are wrong. It's not just in the Bible Belt, either; I grew up in a certain part of Michigan rife with the same shit. Of course if you go to New York or Los Angeles you won't see young-Earth creationists everywhere, but there's a disproportionately influential subculture of the United States citizenry which is still dominated by conservative Christian thought.

>>3987623
The circuference becomes greater as you use finer scales. It's a type of Zenos paradox though.

>>3987623
I've never heard that before but I think maybe it should be the coastal perimeter that gets infinite. Because a coastline is never perfectly curved or straight.
A better way to think of it: for a human walking the coast of california would be a long way, for a microscopic bug it would be a hell of a lot more since it would have to cross ridges of sand and stuff...

>>3987612
Doesn't make your pseudo-religion any less insane.

>>3987632
Well I live in a red area of California, and we have one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the country here and they own half of the town, but they still don't dominate, and most of the people who live here still think they're crazy.

>>3987663

If you live on the west coast, you have no idea what you're talking about when you say that conservative religious culture doesn't dominate any part of the US.

>>3987620
Actually it has been the Catholic practice since Augustine to not argue against observable fact with crude nonsense because it is common sense that people are more inclined to take you seriously if you aren't talking out of your ass. Evangelicals have never developed anything similar, because they create group identity through conflict with outgroups.

>>3987674
Once again, it may exist, but dominate is far too strong a word you're giving them, and technically, you and complainers like you are at fault for legitimizing their "movement" by saying they dominate anything.

>What are some good books that disprove evolution?
>204 posts and 21 image replies omitted. Click here to view.

-/lit/ 2013

>>3987692

How innocent of me! I'm sorry I didn't realize that all I had to do to effect mass change in religious practice was to forget that religious people are everywhere.

Seriously, have you ever even been outside your state?

>>3987662
Yeah dude, that Plato, Nietzche, and most ancient civilizations, the ones that pioneered liberal arts sure were insane. And that was not me, by the way, but instead of calling others insane for your own intellectual shortcomings, maybe you should see yourself insane enough to shit your own perspective based on your assumptions, immature emotional investment, and fanaticism on your own legitimate pseudo religion.

>>3987700
I've been all up and down the bible belt, from Mississippi to Illinois. All I saw was drug addicts and rainstorms in the Summer. Not much to write home about, and certainly not much of a culture. Nobody really bothered me about their religion though.

>>3987697
It's /lit/ Summer 2013.

>>3987709
Jesus Christ, calm down.
>legitimate pseudo religion
I guess modern science is a "legitimate pseudo religion" now. Crawl back into your postmodern hole, you thick cunt.

>>3987697
OP is samefagging

>>3986608
>2013
>not being an atheist
i shiggy diggy

>>3987725
Not that dude, but maybe you should stick to /v/ dude. Maybe /r/atheism.

>>3987611
if you discount every place that is not a "big city" then you lose a whole lot of places, thats a condition you didnt mention before. The first part of the post I am replying to doesn't add up to the second. "anywhere" and "big city" are not the same, pretty much opposite. The amount of "anywhere" (even if you narrow it down to large populations short of being classified "big cities") that is not a "big city" is, by a vast amount, larger than the area that is. I am telling you that culture dominates everywhere I've been in Mississippi, including the capital city of Jackson, where I live. see the first paragraph of >>3987557.

>>3987613
can you give me a link to that then

>>3987632
was that area in michigan a small are like he's talking about or larger?

>>3987663
the US is huge, and this culture is so extremely different in at least one way that you seem to have trouble visualizing it. I don't fully agree with >>3987674, because many people who live on the west coast (I presume) could realize how much religious culture dominates in other areas of the US, but the context of the west coast is different enough to give you trouble.

>>3987692
complainers. fuck you. You are blind, cant conceive of a place different from where you are. Where I'm from this culture dominates. They are not a movement. They are the culture that is moved against. If you had any idea what it was like here that sentence would not only seem nonsensical at best but also piss you off.

>>3986612
>>3986612

≥Hey /lit/. I think we can all agree this is a great bait. Really convincing, right? That said, I think we also agree that we shouldn't respond to it beyond this. I know it will be really hard, but please don't.

lit pls stop

>>3987160
Yeah, sounds about right. (I live there). When people found I wasn't a creationist back in high school, it was the talk of school. When you've got back filling kids up with this of shit and their baseless conviction, it just feeds a never ending cycle of ignorance.

>>3987754
You don't have to be an atheist to realize Adam didn't exist.

>>3986608
>>3986823
>>3987223
>>3986648

stop
stop
stop
STOP

Daily reminder that Wittgenstein did not believe in Darwinian evolution.

U mad?

>>3986608
>>3986624

thanks for the lels, guys

>>3990103
He believed in Lamarckian evolution?

>Falling for such shitty trolls
Come on, guys...

What's, next? EU vs USA threads?

>>3986648
>Now devise an experiment to verify evolution. Keep trying. There must be one. I suspect even Dawkins would be unable to propose an experiment to verify evolution like we verified our mathematical equation. Even if both statements are facts, obviously they are not the same kind of facts.

That's because evolution is not something we can observe. If it's happening today, it's going too slow to observe.

how do creationists counter evolution being observed in quickly-adapting micro organisms? how is this adaptation explained?

>>3990103
I don't really care what Wittgenstein believed outside of his philosophy.

>>3986624
>They debunk radiocarbon dating
surely noone can be THIS retarded right?
4/10 if trole

>americans
/thread

I can not believe this thread got so many earnest replies.

I thought people who read books were supposed to be smart.

You'll find them in the fiction aisle.

www.greggobbard.com

Wow /lit/ really does have terrible mods.

>>3986624
Do they realize that you don't only have to use carbon for radiometric dating?

Sage

>>3986608

>disprove evolution
>good book

pick one

>>3986624
Deepak Chopra is a cool guy. I might read that book.
I know some here would call him a new age faggot for housewives, but he's worth checking out.

Sage

>>3993077
best post so far

>>3993316
i cant believe you bumped this