@FinneousPJ I'm not sure that's really different from the idea of a deterministic universe - and as I said my understanding was that ThacoBell was not arguing for that.
@FinneousPJ I'm not sure that's really different from the idea of a deterministic universe - and as I said my understanding was that ThacoBell was not arguing for that.
By altering the proteins around DNA, you can cause genes to the flipped on or off. That's a really gross oversimplification of it, but you can read the wikipedia article for more. One experiment, introduced a protein in chicken embryos at specific spots during the right point in development, and they grew dinosaur-like tails, by re-enabling the genes for tails. The point being they had ancestors that had tails, and still had the genes for them, but they were just switched off. If you were designing a chicken, why would it still have genes for a dino-tail?
Neither of those examples you gave has the chicken itself being designed, though. You're more suggesting a framework that was designed that happened to give rise to the chicken.
Neither of those examples you gave has the chicken itself being designed, though. You're more suggesting a framework that was designed that happened to give rise to the chicken.
Neither of those examples you gave has the chicken itself being designed, though. You're more suggesting a framework that was designed that happened to give rise to the chicken.
My second example could include a designed chicken. It could have been designed with possibility for variation built in.
Neither of those examples you gave has the chicken itself being designed, though. You're more suggesting a framework that was designed that happened to give rise to the chicken.
My second example could include a designed chicken. It could have been designed with possibility for variation built in.
OK, that's a bit different than how I had originally interpreted your statement. At that point you're ignoring common descent and it's not really compatible with evolution. It's more trying to reconcile design with genetics. Which still leaves the question, if you were designing a chicken, why would it have dinosaur DNA and the multitude of vestigial traits? Why would human ankles be made up of so many small bones if they hadn't had a more recent 4 legged ancestor, instead of being fused into fewer bones for a more stable structure like an ostrich has?
Neither of those examples you gave has the chicken itself being designed, though. You're more suggesting a framework that was designed that happened to give rise to the chicken.
My second example could include a designed chicken. It could have been designed with possibility for variation built in.
OK, that's a bit different than how I had originally interpreted your statement. At that point you're ignoring common descent and it's not really compatible with evolution. It's more trying to reconcile design with genetics. Which still leaves the question, if you were designing a chicken, why would it have dinosaur DNA and the multitude of vestigial traits? Why would human ankles be made up of so many small bones if they hadn't had a more recent 4 legged ancestor, instead of being fused into fewer bones for a more stable structure like an ostrich has?
I'm just spitballing. Why would a creation have to look a certain way at all? It look however the a creator intended and react in whatever way they deemed appropriate.
Neither of those examples you gave has the chicken itself being designed, though. You're more suggesting a framework that was designed that happened to give rise to the chicken.
My second example could include a designed chicken. It could have been designed with possibility for variation built in.
OK, that's a bit different than how I had originally interpreted your statement. At that point you're ignoring common descent and it's not really compatible with evolution. It's more trying to reconcile design with genetics. Which still leaves the question, if you were designing a chicken, why would it have dinosaur DNA and the multitude of vestigial traits? Why would human ankles be made up of so many small bones if they hadn't had a more recent 4 legged ancestor, instead of being fused into fewer bones for a more stable structure like an ostrich has?
I'm just spitballing. Why would a creation have to look a certain way at all? It look however the a creator intended and react in whatever way they deemed appropriate.
Again, this should be in the other thread, but let's go anyway. How would you tell something created from something not created?
@FinneousPJ We don't have to go down this tunnel. I just see a lot "evolution" OR "creation" in this thread, but nobody really gives a reason why they would be mutually exclusive, or even what creation would even look like. Nothing says it would have to follow any kind of expectation, but "If creation, I think it would look like this." comments keep coming up. Why would it be expected to look differently/non-compatible with evolution? What SHOULD creation look like, if not an infinitely complex and changing web of life?
@FinneousPJ We don't have to go down this tunnel. I just see a lot "evolution" OR "creation" in this thread, but nobody really gives a reason why they would be mutually exclusive, or even what creation would even look like. Nothing says it would have to follow any kind of expectation, but "If creation, I think it would look like this." comments keep coming up. Why would it be expected to look differently/non-compatible with evolution? What SHOULD creation look like, if not an infinitely complex and changing web of life?
@FinneousPJ We don't have to go down this tunnel. I just see a lot "evolution" OR "creation" in this thread, but nobody really gives a reason why they would be mutually exclusive, or even what creation would even look like. Nothing says it would have to follow any kind of expectation, but "If creation, I think it would look like this." comments keep coming up. Why would it be expected to look differently/non-compatible with evolution? What SHOULD creation look like, if not an infinitely complex and changing web of life?
As an engineer, there's a lot of biology, like eyes, that I look at and say to myself, if this were designed, the designer should be fired. Eyes have been covered plenty of times, so how about the laryngeal nerve? The nerve that allows manipulation of the larynx. It wraps way down through the neck, down around the aortic arch, then back up to the larynx. It's about 3 times the length it needs to be. All tetrapods share this unnecasarily long nerve. In giraffes this nerve is 15 feet long! Some dinosaurs are hypothesized to have had laryngeal nerves over 90 feet long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
Some of the types of creationism you've suggested are incompatible with the part of evolution that says species share a common descent. I will say that the idea of a designer creating a framework and supplying initial material is not incompatible with the idea of evolution. I disagree with that for other reasons I'm not going to get into here, but I do agree that line of thinking is compatible with evolution.
The fact is design does not exclude evolution. I think it's interesting how every time.a see a discussion about evolution it gravitates towards creation.
If God or aliens designed some or all life on Earth it does not exclude the fact that life evolved and adapted to new environments.
Let me clarify I don't personally believe in design. If life was designed the engineer should be fired
A literal reading of Genesis might not fit the geological or evolutionary record, but on a broader level, it's perfectly possible to believe in an intentionally designed creation that later experienced evolution without creator input.
Somebody designed my bath mat, but that didn't stop it from getting infested with bacteria and turning from a clean, fluffy matrix of cellulose into a gross mass of decaying organic matter that had to be scraped off my bathroom floor with a razor. The manufacturer created it, but the manufacturer didn't manually guide its development once it left the factory.
Let it be known that it wasn't the Creationists that first brought up creation in this thread
@semiticgod Even with a literal reading (which I subscribe to most of the time) there is a lot in the Bible that is vague. Though we don't need to dive into that here.
Let it be known that it wasn't the Creationists that first brought up creation in this thread
Actually @DreadKhan brought it up first with asking how it would be testably different if something evolved vs being designed, and most of my points have been to address that.
ah, 2 in the morning and not even remotely tired yet; opens up a thread and only reads 10% of it so lets give my 3 cents ( since i always give a little extra )
now before i begin, i just want to say, i love science, and i watch and research lots of scientific what nots quite often actually ( since i have way too much free time ) and with that being said, i always try and have an unbiased/open opinion on the research aka not just use research that backs up my own opinion, but try and find proven peer reviewed work, so with that being said from i can gather:
in general, lots of people get the idea of evolution incorrect, or at least they miss some things here and there
evolution isn't based on the fact that creatures adapt to their surroundings or that the biggest and the strongest/smartest or whatever survives and the rest die out, but works a bit different
first, it starts with DNA, DNA is really the base of evolution, because DNA determines every aspect/trait a creature has
so when a creature reproduces their DNA is ever so slightly different than their parent, since DNA is a molecule it is practically impossible for the off spring to have 100% the same DNA as their parent, but nature does a good job and is usually 99. whatever amount of 9s % the same
but with that little bit of offset, that is enough to have changes, especially over huge amounts of time ( usually millions of years ) plus creatures that reproduce faster ( small rodents or bacteria for example ) can "evolve" faster since their DNA is changing from off spring to off spring so much quicker than say a human who on average breeds every 20 years or so
but, with that being said, thats not the full story on why creatures for example go extinct or evolve into different species, what happens, is that upon each offspring the ones who have mutated ( aka slight DNA change ) to better FIT into the environment will be the ones that continue on
that is where the saying; "The survival of the fittest" comes from, it doesn't mean that the strongest, or the smartest, or the fastest will survive, it means, whatever creatures FITS into that environment the best will survive
a classic example of this is dinosaurs, which roamed the earth for millions of years and for millions of years didn't change all that much because it wasn't necessary to, because "nature" or "life" or the "universe" or whatever you want to call it, doesnt give you more than what you need; another thing people have a misconception on what evolution is;
people think evolution means that creatures evolve into bigger, better, stronger, faster, ect, ect creatures to bitter fit in and all that, nope, straight up nope, what happens is that whatever you have, if its good enough, you keep, and if you don't need it, nature doesnt give it away unless its a hindrance to your survival
somehow nature has done an amazing job at what it does; keep things alive long enough so then it can produce more things, in the nature game, that is all that matters, our thoughts, our feelings, or existence really doesn't mean jack diddly to nature, as long as we survive long enough to produce, good enough
hence the reason why instinct exists, which to be honest is a very interesting phenomenon, we don't really know how it exists, but it does, and its the reason why we exist, perhaps it has something to do with quantum mechanics and the attraction of particles, which become amplified once you get to a macroscopic scale perhaps? anyway, back to the dinos...
during the time of the dinos which were ruling the earth ( like how humans rule the earth today ) they weren't the only creature in town, there was actually mammals walking around as well, although small rodents, and the problem the rodents had was they couldn't get any bigger or better or any of that cool jazz, because those pesko dinos were in the way
but then, a faithful day came about, about 65-66 million years ago, this big rock, anywhere from 5-10 miles across comes crashing down into earth at ridiculous speeds ( mach 40 or so? ) anyway, big rock comes down, causes chaos and mayhem and also a bunch of volcanos started going off and what not and the earth was just a place you didn't want to be back then, lets put it this way; the exhaust coming out of your car would have been way cleaner air than what the creatures of that period were breathing
so anyway, dinos get wiped out, but low and behold, mammals, they thrived, infact they started to take over, hence the period of mammals which was after the dino extinction, so how did this happen? why did ALL the dinos die/disappear and mammals did so well?
first off, dinos where at a huge disadvantage from the get go; they have "evolved" into an environment that was virtually never changing and they were fit so perfectly for that environment, there was no need to have a "back up evolution" plan if you will, so when the asteroid came down and caused havoc, the dinos couldn't fit into this new environment since they were built for their "dystopian" environment, plus they had another flaw; they lived way to long before they produced off spring, and this one really hurts, since we believed that dinos lived relative long lives ( if they didn't die from conflict or disease or the such ) they just weren't producing fast enough, and since they couldn't produce fast enough their future off spring didn't have enough time to mutate to fit better with the environment ( remember creatures don't adapt to new environments through evolution, its however mutates better wins )
this gave the mammals of that period a huge advantage, first off, their environment was always crap, dinos were in the way at every turn and the environment was never optimal for the smaller rodents, so when all this chaos started happening, as far as the rodents were concerned, it was just another day on the calender, but luckily for them, this wiped out a good 75% of the dinos right off the bat, and it was their time to shine since the dinos weren't in the way anymore, plus small rodents reproduce quick, as in they can bust out generations of families in a single year and have way more opportunity to mutate quicker, for every one generation of dinosaur, it would be plausible that you could have 100 generations of a rodent family in the same time frame, so because of that, rodents took off
quick side note, things like this still go on, because nature has this "food chain" type thing going on; every creature, is "fighting" for the top spot, obviously humans are here, we dominate the world, and its very advantageous to our survival to do so, hence the reason why all creatures "fight" for this spot, but the food chain is a "pyramid" per se i suppose you could say, and sometimes holes, come into this pyramid, and those are called; extinction events, and when this happens, the creatures that were below on the pyramid scale get to rise up, and whoever fits in better, will beat their competition to it and they will slowly make their way to the top as long as other go extinct and get out of their way
but, not all the dinos got wiped out, some luckily turned into birds, while others turn into reptiles, and its interesting because you can see aspects of how dinosaurs had to live back in those days by some reptiles who only eat once a week or 2 or even a month, something that would have been hugely advantageous for a creature of that time period, and again, evolution doesn't mean nature gives you cool abilities and "stats" per se, it only gives you what is good enough and doesn't take it away if its not necessary, hence even millions and millions of years later, we have reptiles still living like its the dino apocalypse
now we skip some years later, and we come across one of the most interesting creatures that have ever existed ( as far as we know ) on this planet; humans, or even primitive humans
if you look back in time, whether that is from the first single cell organism dating back to 3 billion or so years ago to now, you notice something; humans live vastly different lives compared to any creature from the past
when you look at the past, you see a cycle per se; creatures exist; they eat, sleep, breathe ( for the most part ) live, produce, defecate, and mutate into different things, and thats about it, no sky scrapers, no cars, no cell phones, no electricity, no taxes, no complex language, no written history of previous exploits and learning, and no complex hierarchy
now with that being said, some creatures show signs of some of these things ( language of sorts, hierachies) but to no where near the extent of humans, so whats up? how did this happen? is this very definition evolution itself?
to put in short for that last question, the answer of coarse is no, remember evolution doesn't give you more than what you need, it only gives you whats good enough to survive and reproduce and not a thing more, so if that isn't the answer then what happened?
as far as we know, the answer to that is in short; we don't really know how it happened, so we can only go off of speculation from what we do know, ( based off of the fact if it wasn't from some sort of "out worldly" meddling aka aliens or a creator ) first, it was a mutation of coarse, although a very lucky one at that, for the most part any animal usually has a brain ( or at least as far as im aware of ) and all brains basically work the same as in; they are what controls organ function and your senses and all that good jazz, although brains of all shapes and sizes can be constructed in different ways, for the most part they all do the same thing
from what we can speculate, there was a mutation in our prefrontal cortex which every animal has, this is a very important part of the brain since it controls rational reasoning, cognitive thinking, the ability to express art and the like
in animals, this part of the brain, isn't developed anywhere near to the extent of ours, because again, it wasn't necessary to survive and as i said before, evolution doesn't give you what you don't need, this is also the reason why creatures and animals, have not "evolved" their societies to our extent as well, since they do not possess the cognitive ability to do so
so because of this mutation, our prefrontal cortex started to "evolve" and we started to gain the ability to be more aware of our surrounding, to be able to do "outside the box thinking" and because of that, we figured out how to do more complex language, we also figured out how to do something that no other animal can do effectively; teach future generations knowledge from history
see with animals, they are completely driven on instinct, since they don't have the prefrontal cortex of our calibre they have no choice but to follow instinct to stay alive, but lucky for them, that is all they need, but with that, animals dont teach their young information from their past, they may teach them how to fly, or use a stick to get bugs out of a tree, but they dont have stored history of their ancestors that they can teach their young, they only teach basic survival skills at best, if they even do at all
but with humans, because we developed language and art we were able to pass this down on to future generations, giving each generation a head start to the learning process, giving them a huge advantage on life, and then the future generations could make new discoveries faster, and teach that to future generations, and then before you know it, just a few tens of thousands of years later, hear we are today, able to communicate with other humans, across the internet on what might as well be magic to an animal, across the world, articulating letters, and patterns that other humans understand and can comprehend
it is truly amazing when you come to think of it, billions of years ago there were only single celled organisms, half a billion years ago they were finally able to become more than 1 cell organisms, and then just recently, within the last few thousands of years, there comes a creature that compared to them may as well be deity like in nature, possessing technologies and ideas that they couldn't even begin to comprehend to save their life
i find that very fascinating, the universe gave us a gift, the gift of knowing the fact that we exist, the gift of awareness, the gift of complex sentience, and with this gift, humans have done extraordinary things, and perhaps some bad things as well, but to dwell on those, is to not live, we must learn from the mistakes of the bad things so then we can make the extraordinary things that much more extraordinary
just look at the world around you, even right now, where you are sitting, or lying down, all the neat things that you own, whether it be a computer, a phone, or a couch, or a bed, or even a paper clip, how it was constructed, how it was thought up, and how an animal couldn't even begin to imagine how these things were made, couldn't even begin to comprehend the use of a paper clip or even an elastic band or even a button on a calculator
and all of this, just from what would seem like fate itself, just that one tiny mutation 100s of 1000s of years ago, have made what and who and where we are today, in fact, it has also been said that if it wasn't for the asteroid that hit earth all those millions of years ago and wiped out most of those dinos, we wouldn't be here
so with that, i see humans, as if we were given a gift, the universe itself has given us the opportunity to become what we are today, and for that, i am extremely grateful, no matter how little or how much i have or give, or get taken away, i will always be grateful for my existence, whether i live for another 100 years or forever, or even peace out tomorrow by a falling piano, the gift of sentient life has been the best and greatest gift any creature could have ever dreamed of, regardless of the source that gave it to us
and with that, it is now pass 3am in the morning, and i think its time for bed ( have a DnD session later today, so need to be wide awake for that )
so have yourself a good night/morning my forum chums and chumettes and i hope your day today is a good one
Both the thought of how things have evolved up to this day and the potential outcomes of further evolution after humans left the stage has always interested me rather deeply. What the latter makes so interesting is that it's basically fantasy within what's scientifically plausible. For instance, the critters in After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Man After Man (all iconic books written by Douglas Dixon... though the last one isn't exactly for everyone's taste) are just sooo fascinating.
Neeldess to say that whole field is rather speculative. Hence its name: speculative zoology.
Both the thought of how things have evolved up to this day and the potential outcomes of further evolution after humans left the stage has always interested me rather deeply. What the latter makes so interesting is that it's basically fantasy within what's scientifically plausible. For instance, the critters in After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Man After Man (all iconic books written by Douglas Dixon... though the last one isn't exactly for everyone's taste) are just sooo fascinating.
Neeldess to say that whole field is rather speculative. Hence its name: speculative zoology.
Taking a look at the video now. I do think it's funny when people portray humanoid dinosaurs, though. Most of the bipedal dinosaurs would have been better at being bipeds than we are, with a lot more of their bones fused together in their ankles than humans have, and have millions of years more evolution to make them better at moving on 2 legs. So I don't think they would switch to a more upright posture. If you're talking about an intelligent tool using dinosaur, you might be looking at something like a raptor with more articulated arms and hands. The head very well could start to evolve to be more human like, though. If they're using tools to hunt and kill instead of their jaws, and cooking their food, the jaw could become much smaller. The skull could also get taller and more rounded to accommodate a bigger brain.
*Edit finished the video and still have to disagree about the upright posture. Other dinosaurs, like T-Rex manage to enlarge their skulls with bigger jaws, without the need to switch to a more upright posture. You just need to bulk up the neck to handle it. If the jaw is shrinking while the brain is getting larger, that takes some of the weight off. While it's all speculative, it seems less likely to completely restructure their bodies for a new posture than to bulk up the neck.
@DrHappyAngry Indeed, which are also things pointed out in the latter half of the video I linked. The time stamp 13:45 even shows a more plausible intelligent sauroid by C.M. Kosemen.
@DrHappyAngry Indeed, which are also things pointed out in the latter half of the video I linked. The time stamp 13:45 even shows a more plausible intelligent sauroid by C.M. Kosemen.
Yup, edited my above post once I finished watching it, probably the same time you were writing that one
So let's talk about alien life a bit. I think we'd see very similar shapes to what we have on Earth, with the main factor being so long as the gravity is close to Earth's. Earth had a huge amount of diversity during the Cambrian, but most of those odd shapes lost out in the evolutionary arms race. I think you'd see things shaped like fish and whales to move through water, and bug and tetrapod like (although the number of legs wouldn't necessarily be the same) things crawling around on the ground.
If gravity's a lot stronger, but still a solid planet surrounded by gas, I'd think more squat life forms, with weight distributed over a big area could be the norm.
Arthur C Clarke got into some interesting stuff with theorizing what life would be like on Jupiter. In the novel 2010 he describes ray like creatures moving through the dense gas, and animals like balloon jelly fish floating up and down to gather light or nutrients.
@DrHappyAngry Indeed, which are also things pointed out in the latter half of the video I linked. The time stamp 13:45 even shows a more plausible intelligent sauroid by C.M. Kosemen.
Yup, edited my above post once I finished watching it, probably the same time you were writing that one
So let's talk about alien life a bit. I think we'd see very similar shapes to what we have on Earth, with the main factor being so long as the gravity is close to Earth's. Earth had a huge amount of diversity during the Cambrian, but most of those odd shapes lost out in the evolutionary arms race. I think you'd see things shaped like fish and whales to move through water, and bug and tetrapod like (although the number of legs wouldn't necessarily be the same) things crawling around on the ground.
If gravity's a lot stronger, but still a solid planet surrounded by gas, I'd think more squat life forms, with weight distributed over a big area could be the norm.
Arthur C Clarke got into some interesting stuff with theorizing what life would be like on Jupiter. In the novel 2010 he describes ray like creatures moving through the dense gas, and animals like balloon jelly fish floating up and down to gather light or nutrients.
with that being said, creatures don't need to be based off of carbon, all life here on earth is carbon based
now naturally there is more carbon in the universe as apposed to the other stuff that helps us live ( like sodium and such ) and carbon easily combines with lots of atoms making it the "go to" for life making
but it is theoretically possible to have life forms that aren't based of the carbon model, for example you could have sodium based life forms or even magnesium based life forms, depending on how their solar system was formed, you could have more elements that we dont have be way more abundant in their solar system to make it so life just happens to be that way
perhaps in their solar system carbon is more rare than say uranium is here on earth, but on planet XFC-23874 maybe the whole planet is made out of sodium and instead of having oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen for an atmosphere it might be rich with chlorine or fluorine instead, and somehow sodium based life forms have found a way to flourish, while ironically their living environment would be deadly for us, but our living environment would also be highly deadly for them
@DrHappyAngry Indeed, which are also things pointed out in the latter half of the video I linked. The time stamp 13:45 even shows a more plausible intelligent sauroid by C.M. Kosemen.
Yup, edited my above post once I finished watching it, probably the same time you were writing that one
So let's talk about alien life a bit. I think we'd see very similar shapes to what we have on Earth, with the main factor being so long as the gravity is close to Earth's. Earth had a huge amount of diversity during the Cambrian, but most of those odd shapes lost out in the evolutionary arms race. I think you'd see things shaped like fish and whales to move through water, and bug and tetrapod like (although the number of legs wouldn't necessarily be the same) things crawling around on the ground.
If gravity's a lot stronger, but still a solid planet surrounded by gas, I'd think more squat life forms, with weight distributed over a big area could be the norm.
Arthur C Clarke got into some interesting stuff with theorizing what life would be like on Jupiter. In the novel 2010 he describes ray like creatures moving through the dense gas, and animals like balloon jelly fish floating up and down to gather light or nutrients.
with that being said, creatures don't need to be based off of carbon, all life here on earth is carbon based
now naturally there is more carbon in the universe as apposed to the other stuff that helps us live ( like sodium and such ) and carbon easily combines with lots of atoms making it the "go to" for life making
but it is theoretically possible to have life forms that aren't based of the carbon model, for example you could have sodium based life forms or even magnesium based life forms, depending on how their solar system was formed, you could have more elements that we dont have be way more abundant in their solar system to make it so life just happens to be that way
perhaps in their solar system carbon is more rare than say uranium is here on earth, but on planet XFC-23874 maybe the whole planet is made out of sodium and instead of having oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen for an atmosphere it might be rich with chlorine or fluorine instead, and somehow sodium based life forms have found a way to flourish, while ironically their living environment would be deadly for us, but our living environment would also be highly deadly for them
Sodium is a metal. Not really a good choice for basing a life-form on. Silicon, boron or phosphorous might be better choices. All of those have novel chemical properties that could possibly be exploited by life processes.
The fact is we don't know how life would evolve if not based on carbon or even of it could evolve if not based on carbon. That's actually why programs like SETI concentrate their searches on systems that have an oxygen-water planet.
Particularly I believe there are things out there we would have difficulty to recognize that are alive. After all we have things on Earth we are not sure are alive such as viruses.
IF we ever solve the energy problem for interstellar travel we are sure to be surprised by what we will find out there.
For those who might not be aware: the "silicon-based life" idea doesn't actually refer to computer-based life. The reason silicon has drawn some interest as a theoretical basis for life is because, like carbon, silicon is capable of forming four bonds per silicon atom, which means it could create the same double-sided strands that allow carbon to form highly complex molecules. Most elements can only create molecules of a certain level of complexity, but life requires much more complicated chemicals to self-replicate successfully. A protein molecule can involve hundreds of atoms bonded together, and you can really only get molecules that large when you can connect things in strands.
Thing is, we don't know if silicon could realistically form those complex strands and eventually result in self-replicating life, simply because we have no idea what the properties of those strands would be. You wouldn't be able to just take a typical hydrocarbon, replace all the carbon atoms with silicon, and expect it to work in any particular way. If silicon-based life did exist, it would probably be very radically different from carbon-based life. I recall that one of the theories said that silicon-based life would actually have to reside in sulfuric acid because water would not be a proper solvent for the right materials.
Comments
Of course, I'm not talking about @ThacoBell
P.S. I Still think this discussion should be in the religion thread
I considered this but it's possible to believe or not believe in evolution for reasons that are not religious in nature.
Some religious talk is inevitable when discussing evolution but it is not the main point of this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
By altering the proteins around DNA, you can cause genes to the flipped on or off. That's a really gross oversimplification of it, but you can read the wikipedia article for more. One experiment, introduced a protein in chicken embryos at specific spots during the right point in development, and they grew dinosaur-like tails, by re-enabling the genes for tails. The point being they had ancestors that had tails, and still had the genes for them, but they were just switched off. If you were designing a chicken, why would it still have genes for a dino-tail?
Or what if a "base set" as it were, was designed, but given the potential for infinite variation?
I don't really see why "design" and "evolution" are constantly considered mutually exclusive.
Right, that's not a true dichotomy, just like "random" and "created" are not
Indeed, and worth reiterating, with no evidence.
My second example could include a designed chicken. It could have been designed with possibility for variation built in.
OK, that's a bit different than how I had originally interpreted your statement. At that point you're ignoring common descent and it's not really compatible with evolution. It's more trying to reconcile design with genetics. Which still leaves the question, if you were designing a chicken, why would it have dinosaur DNA and the multitude of vestigial traits? Why would human ankles be made up of so many small bones if they hadn't had a more recent 4 legged ancestor, instead of being fused into fewer bones for a more stable structure like an ostrich has?
I'm just spitballing. Why would a creation have to look a certain way at all? It look however the a creator intended and react in whatever way they deemed appropriate.
Again, this should be in the other thread, but let's go anyway. How would you tell something created from something not created?
No idea, I'm not advocating for it.
As an engineer, there's a lot of biology, like eyes, that I look at and say to myself, if this were designed, the designer should be fired. Eyes have been covered plenty of times, so how about the laryngeal nerve? The nerve that allows manipulation of the larynx. It wraps way down through the neck, down around the aortic arch, then back up to the larynx. It's about 3 times the length it needs to be. All tetrapods share this unnecasarily long nerve. In giraffes this nerve is 15 feet long! Some dinosaurs are hypothesized to have had laryngeal nerves over 90 feet long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
Some of the types of creationism you've suggested are incompatible with the part of evolution that says species share a common descent. I will say that the idea of a designer creating a framework and supplying initial material is not incompatible with the idea of evolution. I disagree with that for other reasons I'm not going to get into here, but I do agree that line of thinking is compatible with evolution.
If God or aliens designed some or all life on Earth it does not exclude the fact that life evolved and adapted to new environments.
Let me clarify I don't personally believe in design. If life was designed the engineer should be fired
Somebody designed my bath mat, but that didn't stop it from getting infested with bacteria and turning from a clean, fluffy matrix of cellulose into a gross mass of decaying organic matter that had to be scraped off my bathroom floor with a razor. The manufacturer created it, but the manufacturer didn't manually guide its development once it left the factory.
@semiticgod Even with a literal reading (which I subscribe to most of the time) there is a lot in the Bible that is vague. Though we don't need to dive into that here.
Actually @DreadKhan brought it up first with asking how it would be testably different if something evolved vs being designed, and most of my points have been to address that.
now before i begin, i just want to say, i love science, and i watch and research lots of scientific what nots quite often actually ( since i have way too much free time
in general, lots of people get the idea of evolution incorrect, or at least they miss some things here and there
evolution isn't based on the fact that creatures adapt to their surroundings or that the biggest and the strongest/smartest or whatever survives and the rest die out, but works a bit different
first, it starts with DNA, DNA is really the base of evolution, because DNA determines every aspect/trait a creature has
so when a creature reproduces their DNA is ever so slightly different than their parent, since DNA is a molecule it is practically impossible for the off spring to have 100% the same DNA as their parent, but nature does a good job and is usually 99. whatever amount of 9s % the same
but with that little bit of offset, that is enough to have changes, especially over huge amounts of time ( usually millions of years ) plus creatures that reproduce faster ( small rodents or bacteria for example ) can "evolve" faster since their DNA is changing from off spring to off spring so much quicker than say a human who on average breeds every 20 years or so
but, with that being said, thats not the full story on why creatures for example go extinct or evolve into different species, what happens, is that upon each offspring the ones who have mutated ( aka slight DNA change ) to better FIT into the environment will be the ones that continue on
that is where the saying; "The survival of the fittest" comes from, it doesn't mean that the strongest, or the smartest, or the fastest will survive, it means, whatever creatures FITS into that environment the best will survive
a classic example of this is dinosaurs, which roamed the earth for millions of years and for millions of years didn't change all that much because it wasn't necessary to, because "nature" or "life" or the "universe" or whatever you want to call it, doesnt give you more than what you need; another thing people have a misconception on what evolution is;
people think evolution means that creatures evolve into bigger, better, stronger, faster, ect, ect creatures to bitter fit in and all that, nope, straight up nope, what happens is that whatever you have, if its good enough, you keep, and if you don't need it, nature doesnt give it away unless its a hindrance to your survival
somehow nature has done an amazing job at what it does; keep things alive long enough so then it can produce more things, in the nature game, that is all that matters, our thoughts, our feelings, or existence really doesn't mean jack diddly to nature, as long as we survive long enough to produce, good enough
hence the reason why instinct exists, which to be honest is a very interesting phenomenon, we don't really know how it exists, but it does, and its the reason why we exist, perhaps it has something to do with quantum mechanics and the attraction of particles, which become amplified once you get to a macroscopic scale perhaps? anyway, back to the dinos...
during the time of the dinos which were ruling the earth ( like how humans rule the earth today ) they weren't the only creature in town, there was actually mammals walking around as well, although small rodents, and the problem the rodents had was they couldn't get any bigger or better or any of that cool jazz, because those pesko dinos were in the way
but then, a faithful day came about, about 65-66 million years ago, this big rock, anywhere from 5-10 miles across comes crashing down into earth at ridiculous speeds ( mach 40 or so? ) anyway, big rock comes down, causes chaos and mayhem and also a bunch of volcanos started going off and what not and the earth was just a place you didn't want to be back then, lets put it this way; the exhaust coming out of your car would have been way cleaner air than what the creatures of that period were breathing
so anyway, dinos get wiped out, but low and behold, mammals, they thrived, infact they started to take over, hence the period of mammals which was after the dino extinction, so how did this happen? why did ALL the dinos die/disappear and mammals did so well?
first off, dinos where at a huge disadvantage from the get go; they have "evolved" into an environment that was virtually never changing and they were fit so perfectly for that environment, there was no need to have a "back up evolution" plan if you will, so when the asteroid came down and caused havoc, the dinos couldn't fit into this new environment since they were built for their "dystopian" environment, plus they had another flaw; they lived way to long before they produced off spring, and this one really hurts, since we believed that dinos lived relative long lives ( if they didn't die from conflict or disease or the such ) they just weren't producing fast enough, and since they couldn't produce fast enough their future off spring didn't have enough time to mutate to fit better with the environment ( remember creatures don't adapt to new environments through evolution, its however mutates better wins )
this gave the mammals of that period a huge advantage, first off, their environment was always crap, dinos were in the way at every turn and the environment was never optimal for the smaller rodents, so when all this chaos started happening, as far as the rodents were concerned, it was just another day on the calender, but luckily for them, this wiped out a good 75% of the dinos right off the bat, and it was their time to shine since the dinos weren't in the way anymore, plus small rodents reproduce quick, as in they can bust out generations of families in a single year and have way more opportunity to mutate quicker, for every one generation of dinosaur, it would be plausible that you could have 100 generations of a rodent family in the same time frame, so because of that, rodents took off
quick side note, things like this still go on, because nature has this "food chain" type thing going on; every creature, is "fighting" for the top spot, obviously humans are here, we dominate the world, and its very advantageous to our survival to do so, hence the reason why all creatures "fight" for this spot, but the food chain is a "pyramid" per se i suppose you could say, and sometimes holes, come into this pyramid, and those are called; extinction events, and when this happens, the creatures that were below on the pyramid scale get to rise up, and whoever fits in better, will beat their competition to it and they will slowly make their way to the top as long as other go extinct and get out of their way
but, not all the dinos got wiped out, some luckily turned into birds, while others turn into reptiles, and its interesting because you can see aspects of how dinosaurs had to live back in those days by some reptiles who only eat once a week or 2 or even a month, something that would have been hugely advantageous for a creature of that time period, and again, evolution doesn't mean nature gives you cool abilities and "stats" per se, it only gives you what is good enough and doesn't take it away if its not necessary, hence even millions and millions of years later, we have reptiles still living like its the dino apocalypse
now we skip some years later, and we come across one of the most interesting creatures that have ever existed ( as far as we know ) on this planet; humans, or even primitive humans
if you look back in time, whether that is from the first single cell organism dating back to 3 billion or so years ago to now, you notice something; humans live vastly different lives compared to any creature from the past
when you look at the past, you see a cycle per se; creatures exist; they eat, sleep, breathe ( for the most part ) live, produce, defecate, and mutate into different things, and thats about it, no sky scrapers, no cars, no cell phones, no electricity, no taxes, no complex language, no written history of previous exploits and learning, and no complex hierarchy
now with that being said, some creatures show signs of some of these things ( language of sorts, hierachies) but to no where near the extent of humans, so whats up? how did this happen? is this very definition evolution itself?
to put in short for that last question, the answer of coarse is no, remember evolution doesn't give you more than what you need, it only gives you whats good enough to survive and reproduce and not a thing more, so if that isn't the answer then what happened?
as far as we know, the answer to that is in short; we don't really know how it happened, so we can only go off of speculation from what we do know, ( based off of the fact if it wasn't from some sort of "out worldly" meddling aka aliens or a creator ) first, it was a mutation of coarse, although a very lucky one at that, for the most part any animal usually has a brain ( or at least as far as im aware of ) and all brains basically work the same as in; they are what controls organ function and your senses and all that good jazz, although brains of all shapes and sizes can be constructed in different ways, for the most part they all do the same thing
from what we can speculate, there was a mutation in our prefrontal cortex which every animal has, this is a very important part of the brain since it controls rational reasoning, cognitive thinking, the ability to express art and the like
in animals, this part of the brain, isn't developed anywhere near to the extent of ours, because again, it wasn't necessary to survive and as i said before, evolution doesn't give you what you don't need, this is also the reason why creatures and animals, have not "evolved" their societies to our extent as well, since they do not possess the cognitive ability to do so
so because of this mutation, our prefrontal cortex started to "evolve" and we started to gain the ability to be more aware of our surrounding, to be able to do "outside the box thinking" and because of that, we figured out how to do more complex language, we also figured out how to do something that no other animal can do effectively; teach future generations knowledge from history
see with animals, they are completely driven on instinct, since they don't have the prefrontal cortex of our calibre they have no choice but to follow instinct to stay alive, but lucky for them, that is all they need, but with that, animals dont teach their young information from their past, they may teach them how to fly, or use a stick to get bugs out of a tree, but they dont have stored history of their ancestors that they can teach their young, they only teach basic survival skills at best, if they even do at all
but with humans, because we developed language and art we were able to pass this down on to future generations, giving each generation a head start to the learning process, giving them a huge advantage on life, and then the future generations could make new discoveries faster, and teach that to future generations, and then before you know it, just a few tens of thousands of years later, hear we are today, able to communicate with other humans, across the internet on what might as well be magic to an animal, across the world, articulating letters, and patterns that other humans understand and can comprehend
it is truly amazing when you come to think of it, billions of years ago there were only single celled organisms, half a billion years ago they were finally able to become more than 1 cell organisms, and then just recently, within the last few thousands of years, there comes a creature that compared to them may as well be deity like in nature, possessing technologies and ideas that they couldn't even begin to comprehend to save their life
i find that very fascinating, the universe gave us a gift, the gift of knowing the fact that we exist, the gift of awareness, the gift of complex sentience, and with this gift, humans have done extraordinary things, and perhaps some bad things as well, but to dwell on those, is to not live, we must learn from the mistakes of the bad things so then we can make the extraordinary things that much more extraordinary
just look at the world around you, even right now, where you are sitting, or lying down, all the neat things that you own, whether it be a computer, a phone, or a couch, or a bed, or even a paper clip, how it was constructed, how it was thought up, and how an animal couldn't even begin to imagine how these things were made, couldn't even begin to comprehend the use of a paper clip or even an elastic band or even a button on a calculator
and all of this, just from what would seem like fate itself, just that one tiny mutation 100s of 1000s of years ago, have made what and who and where we are today, in fact, it has also been said that if it wasn't for the asteroid that hit earth all those millions of years ago and wiped out most of those dinos, we wouldn't be here
so with that, i see humans, as if we were given a gift, the universe itself has given us the opportunity to become what we are today, and for that, i am extremely grateful, no matter how little or how much i have or give, or get taken away, i will always be grateful for my existence, whether i live for another 100 years or forever, or even peace out tomorrow by a falling piano, the gift of sentient life has been the best and greatest gift any creature could have ever dreamed of, regardless of the source that gave it to us
and with that, it is now pass 3am in the morning, and i think its time for bed ( have a DnD session later today, so need to be wide awake for that
so have yourself a good night/morning my forum chums and chumettes and i hope your day today is a good one
Gotta love that youtube channel.
Neeldess to say that whole field is rather speculative. Hence its name: speculative zoology.
Taking a look at the video now. I do think it's funny when people portray humanoid dinosaurs, though. Most of the bipedal dinosaurs would have been better at being bipeds than we are, with a lot more of their bones fused together in their ankles than humans have, and have millions of years more evolution to make them better at moving on 2 legs. So I don't think they would switch to a more upright posture. If you're talking about an intelligent tool using dinosaur, you might be looking at something like a raptor with more articulated arms and hands. The head very well could start to evolve to be more human like, though. If they're using tools to hunt and kill instead of their jaws, and cooking their food, the jaw could become much smaller. The skull could also get taller and more rounded to accommodate a bigger brain.
*Edit finished the video and still have to disagree about the upright posture. Other dinosaurs, like T-Rex manage to enlarge their skulls with bigger jaws, without the need to switch to a more upright posture. You just need to bulk up the neck to handle it. If the jaw is shrinking while the brain is getting larger, that takes some of the weight off. While it's all speculative, it seems less likely to completely restructure their bodies for a new posture than to bulk up the neck.
Yup, edited my above post once I finished watching it, probably the same time you were writing that one
So let's talk about alien life a bit. I think we'd see very similar shapes to what we have on Earth, with the main factor being so long as the gravity is close to Earth's. Earth had a huge amount of diversity during the Cambrian, but most of those odd shapes lost out in the evolutionary arms race. I think you'd see things shaped like fish and whales to move through water, and bug and tetrapod like (although the number of legs wouldn't necessarily be the same) things crawling around on the ground.
If gravity's a lot stronger, but still a solid planet surrounded by gas, I'd think more squat life forms, with weight distributed over a big area could be the norm.
Arthur C Clarke got into some interesting stuff with theorizing what life would be like on Jupiter. In the novel 2010 he describes ray like creatures moving through the dense gas, and animals like balloon jelly fish floating up and down to gather light or nutrients.
with that being said, creatures don't need to be based off of carbon, all life here on earth is carbon based
now naturally there is more carbon in the universe as apposed to the other stuff that helps us live ( like sodium and such ) and carbon easily combines with lots of atoms making it the "go to" for life making
but it is theoretically possible to have life forms that aren't based of the carbon model, for example you could have sodium based life forms or even magnesium based life forms, depending on how their solar system was formed, you could have more elements that we dont have be way more abundant in their solar system to make it so life just happens to be that way
perhaps in their solar system carbon is more rare than say uranium is here on earth, but on planet XFC-23874 maybe the whole planet is made out of sodium and instead of having oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen for an atmosphere it might be rich with chlorine or fluorine instead, and somehow sodium based life forms have found a way to flourish, while ironically their living environment would be deadly for us, but our living environment would also be highly deadly for them
Sodium is a metal. Not really a good choice for basing a life-form on. Silicon, boron or phosphorous might be better choices. All of those have novel chemical properties that could possibly be exploited by life processes.
Particularly I believe there are things out there we would have difficulty to recognize that are alive. After all we have things on Earth we are not sure are alive such as viruses.
IF we ever solve the energy problem for interstellar travel we are sure to be surprised by what we will find out there.
Thing is, we don't know if silicon could realistically form those complex strands and eventually result in self-replicating life, simply because we have no idea what the properties of those strands would be. You wouldn't be able to just take a typical hydrocarbon, replace all the carbon atoms with silicon, and expect it to work in any particular way. If silicon-based life did exist, it would probably be very radically different from carbon-based life. I recall that one of the theories said that silicon-based life would actually have to reside in sulfuric acid because water would not be a proper solvent for the right materials.