Roosh's "Theory Of Evolution Does Not Apply..." Discussion

[Quintus Curtius]

One thing that is incontestably true is this: in the past 30 years or so, humans have crossed an evolutionary threshold.

We now have the ability to do something that no organism has ever been able to do before: to tinker with its own evolutionary trajectory.

Nanotechnology, robotics, and genetic engineering have now given us a frightening new power. What once might have taken thousands of years to develop, can now be developed nearly immediately.

Things really are different now than in the past. If I'm wrong on this, someone jump in here.

In this sense, we, as a race, have uncoupled ourselves from the natural biological processes that have shaped Earth's biosphere for 2 billion years.

This to me is deeply unsettling. In this sense, it can indeed be said that evolution is "different" now than what it once was. We are now subject to a whole new set of processes, inputs, and feedbacks that never existed before.

One could even say that we're giving rise to a new species of humanoid that will eventually replace us.

 

[Americas]

I had no idea there were some many evolutionary dogmatists in this community. Just like you detected that the red pillers and MGTOWs were becoming retarded, you've once again spotted the more irrational part of the manosphere and called them out on it. I don't know how you have such a knack for this stuff.

For example, look at Caveman above: just a rambling bunch of nonsense with zero reasons to support any of his objections. Ad hominems, and quoting some other blogger whose entire post consists of huge quotations of your text followed by one-sentence rebuttals. I really pity these guys to have invested so much of their ego in a flimsy scientific theory. These guys really think they have the truth figured out but are unable to defend their "truth" without having a meltdown.

I just don't find this fair at all.

If an individual accepts the theory of evolution he or she is now dogmatic? And furthermore, anyone who accepts the theory of evolution is irrational?

The beauty of the scientific method, and science in general, is it is forced to attack their own beliefs through experimentation and evidence. There is no absolute certainty in science because we continue to critique any hypothesis out there by conducting more evidence to prove it wrong.

The thing that has happened with the theory of evolution is in the past 200 years or so, it has not been proven wrong, quite the contrary, it has been significantly strengthened by the scientific community and has now became perhaps the most accepted and most certain theories in all of science.

Thousands upon thousands of experiments and analysis has been conducted on the theory of evolution or on parts of its complexity. The vast, vast, majority of all these experiments have coincided or either built onto the existing theory.

To say that evolution is "flimsy" and that anyone who supports it's validity is dogmatic is quite frankly just incorrect.

I have to agree with Caveman, if this is the discourse that is going to be pushed by the manosphere, that anyone who believes in evolution is irrational and dogmatic, then you are going to alienate a lot of its base. There are hundreds of people on this board that come from a scientific or are at least knowledgeable in science and to alienate them is not conducive to making a strong united front at all.

 

[Samseau]

I had no idea there were some many evolutionary dogmatists in this community. Just like you detected that the red pillers and MGTOWs were becoming retarded, you've once again spotted the more irrational part of the manosphere and called them out on it. I don't know how you have such a knack for this stuff.

For example, look at Caveman above: just a rambling bunch of nonsense with zero reasons to support any of his objections. Ad hominems, and quoting some other blogger whose entire post consists of huge quotations of your text followed by one-sentence rebuttals. I really pity these guys to have invested so much of their ego in a flimsy scientific theory. These guys really think they have the truth figured out but are unable to defend their "truth" without having a meltdown.

I just don't find this fair at all.

If an individual accepts the theory of evolution [and doesn't believe he or she could be wrong] he or she is now dogmatic? And furthermore, anyone who accepts the theory of evolution [and doesn't believe he or she could be wrong] is irrational?

Fixed that for you. And the answer is yes. No man is infallible.

The beauty of the scientific method, and science in general, is it is forced to attack their own beliefs through experimentation and evidence. There is no absolute certainty in science because we continue to critique any hypothesis out there by conducting more evidence to prove it wrong.

Right. Which is why I'm laughing hard at the guys who are crying at a critique of selfish gene theory. Selfish gene theory is woefully inadequate to describe organisms like ants, bees, many types of apes, other social animals (even dolphins), and especially humans.

The thing that has happened with the theory of evolution is in the past 200 years or so, it has not been proven wrong, quite the contrary, it has been significantly strengthened by the scientific community and has now became perhaps the most accepted and most certain theories in all of science.

The thing is, evolutionary theory hasn't really been strengthened at all since Darwin conceived it. The fact of the matter, what most people believe today has almost nothing to do with what Darwin wrote. Don't get me wrong; Darwin was a genius. But his original ideas have been adapted to fit into Gregor Mendel's genetics, as well as Watson and Crick's DNA theory.

In other words, the theory of evolution was only strengthened by being torn down several times and rebuilt with new infrastructure. That's how good science works; via the imagination.

Thousands upon thousands of experiments and analysis has been conducted on the theory of evolution or on parts of its complexity. The vast, vast, majority of all these experiments have coincided or either built onto the existing theory.

That's not how good science works. It's not the experiments which verify theories that are important, it's the experiments which falsify a theory which are important. Google "Karl Popper Falsification" for more info on how science makes progress.

To say that evolution is "flimsy" and that anyone who supports it's validity is dogmatic is quite frankly just incorrect.

All scientific theories suffer from errors, because all humans are full of errors, and evolution is especially erroneous because there is such a dearth of information needed to truly make the theory respectable:

- Massive gaps in the fossil record
- No one has yet to create a new specie using evolutionary theories
- Selfish gene theory does not describe how social organisms work

I have to agree with Caveman, if this is the discourse that is going to be pushed by the manosphere, that anyone who believes in evolution is irrational and dogmatic, then you are going to alienate a lot of its base. There are hundreds of people on this board that come from a scientific or are at least knowledgeable in science and to alienate them is not conducive to making a strong united front at all.

If these guys are alienated by this discussion, then we aren't losing much because they aren't good scientists.

 

[SamuelBRoberts]

Thousands upon thousands of experiments and analysis has been conducted on the theory of evolution or on parts of its complexity. The vast, vast, majority of all these experiments have coincided or either built onto the existing theory.

What experiments have they done to prove evolution? The entire point of evolution is that it takes place in an uncontrolled setting, with a huge population and mutations that are random and occur on their own time.

 

[Americas]

Fixed that for you. And the answer is yes. No man is infallible.

The presence of fallibility does not make something someone believes to be dogmatic. Otherwise, everyone in the world is dogmatic.

Furthermore, I have yet to see anyone in this thread claim that they could never be wrong about evolution or anything else for that matter.

Right. Which is why I'm laughing hard at the guys who are crying at a critique of selfish gene theory. Selfish gene theory is woefully inadequate to describe organisms like ants, bees, many types of apes, other social animals (even dolphins), and especially humans.

What's your point?

The thing is, evolutionary theory hasn't really been strengthened at all since Darwin conceived it. The fact of the matter, what most people believe today has almost nothing to do with what Darwin wrote. Don't get me wrong; Darwin was a genius. But his original ideas have been adapted to fit into Gregor Mendel's genetics, as well as Watson and Crick's DNA theory.

1) That's not true at all. For example, Darwin's introduction of natural selection to this day still remains a pillar of the theory of evolution.

2) This is a natural course of research. Someone makes a relative breakthrough and his ideas are challenged or modified to fit more systematic and larger bodies of evidence that are brought upon by the community by experimentation and further research.

To claim that evolutionary theory hasn't been strengthened since Darwin (and by the way others such as Wallace were working on evolutionary theory at the same time and before as well, is foolhardy. The theory of evolution has gone from a basic idea and some ground-breaking research to a monolithic and multi-branch theory that has been tested in various forms thousands and thousands of times in the last 200 years.

That's not how good science works. It's not the experiments which verify theories that are important, it's the experiments which falsify a theory which are important. Google "Karl Popper Falsification" for more info on how science makes progress.

Not true at all. Any research that either builds on a foundation of knowledge or disproves something is equally celebrated by the science community. Research in general is the driving force of science and academia, the creation of new knowledge is the result whether it strengthens or weakens some paradigm.

All scientific theories suffer from errors, because all humans are full of errors, and evolution is especially erroneous because there is such a dearth of information needed to truly make the theory respectable:

- Massive gaps in the fossil record
- No one has yet to create a new specie using evolutionary theories
- Selfish gene theory does not describe how social organisms work

Classic trite reasons for arguing against evolutionary theory.

1) Gaps in fossil records is not a good measure of the validity of the theory of evolution. Expecting everything to be perfectly fossilized in a constantly changing biosphere like earth is ridiculous. Furthermore, many organisms do not fossilize well in any circumstances. The fossil record is extensive and we have found copious examples of transitional fossils.

2) The incompleteness of Evolutionary theory has no relevance when discussing the validity of the theory of evolution. All theories have gaps, the point of any researcher is to identify those gaps and research/produce knowledge on them.

3) Competing theories within the broader theory of evolutionary theory does not mean the theory is not valid. Scientists do not dismiss the theory of evolution, but there is certainly contention on the processes of how it happens and other matters. Just because one possible explanation/hypothesis isn't completely concrete in its applicability doesn't mean the whole theory of evolution is invalid.

 

[Americas]

Thousands upon thousands of experiments and analysis has been conducted on the theory of evolution or on parts of its complexity. The vast, vast, majority of all these experiments have coincided or either built onto the existing theory.

What experiments have they done to prove evolution? The entire point of evolution is that it takes place in an uncontrolled setting, with a huge population and mutations that are random and occur on their own time.

Virtually every piece of information that has been established in the theory of evolution has been derived from some kind of experiment. That is how science works.

You don't experiment the whole thing, you make controlled experiments and the results are thrown into the pile of all all existing information.

If you want to see the tip of the iceberg go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_biology

Those are some of the most major publications on evolution, if you go and read these books you will see thousands and thousands of experiments that have been conducted by people to provide these findings.

Or you can scour through the nearly 3 million and a half publications here:

https://scholar.google.com.mx/scholar?q=evolution+++biology&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

 

[SamuelBRoberts]

The word "experiment" doesn't appear a single time in the section on evolution, and there's nothing in any of the descriptions that suggests any experiments were done. It's kind of unfair to ask me to read thousands upon thousands of pages in the hopes that eventually I'll come across one.

You know that observational data isn't the same as an experiment, right? Darwin didn't experiment at the Galapagos, he observed what was in front of him and drew conclusions from that. And that's fine, but it's not an experiment, it's not the scientific method, and you shouldn't say it is.

 

[Gringuito]

Am I missing something or was the article about evolution (as it expressed in non-sentient creatures) is no longer applicable for modern humans. It didn't seem to make the case that plants, bacteria, etc are not affected by evolution. I would think this is obvious. One simple example would be eye-sight. About 20,000 years ago someone with extremely terrible eyesight would have died young or at the least had a much harder time hunting and surviving. He would have had few if any decedents. Now this person gets a pair of glasses/contacts and is no different any anyone else. The same goes for many different genetic problems that are easily corrected by modern technology.

I'm not sure I would say that evolution no longer applies to us. The basic process of DNA being inherited from 2 parents still applies. Traits from parents and handed down to children and mutations can make their way into decedents as well. The real issue is that the effects on modern humans of evolution are now overshadowed by how our intelligence can manipulate the environment. The part of evolution where survival of the fittest causes a species to adapt to an environment does not really apply anymore to modern humans. We now use our intelligence to adapt to environments at a speed thousands of times faster. Who chooses to have children is very different than who is fittest based on the environmental niche they live in.

I would propose that you can determine if a species is truly sentient if they are able to adapt to any new environment quickly without having to wait for the slow process of evolution to get around to doing it for them.

 

[Americas]

The word "experiment" doesn't appear a single time in the section on evolution, and there's nothing in any of the descriptions that suggests any experiments were done. It's kind of unfair to ask me to read thousands upon thousands of pages in the hopes that eventually I'll come across one.

You know that observational data isn't the same as an experiment, right? Darwin didn't experiment at the Galapagos, he observed what was in front of him and drew conclusions from that. And that's fine, but it's not an experiment, it's not the scientific method, and you shouldn't say it is.

What Darwin did was what we call a field experiment. And the whole point of using the Galapagos is that it is/was relatively controlled.

And yes, making observations in a relatively controlled environment is the scientific method.

You don't have to read thousands of pages, you could virtually point your finger on any of those google scholar articles and go to the data/experiment section of the paper.

The majority of science publications in journals are backed by some kind of experiment, that's how they prove their hypothesis.

 

[Sonsowey]

Evolution is such an obviously nonsensical idea that, absent total cultural propaganda, it truly does take an impressive intellect to talk oneself into believing it.

I doubt very much that most people here would believe in evolution if they had never heard of it before and were presented the evidence with a blank slate. At this point most people simply default into believing in evolution (and by believing I should more accurately say, "not questioning") because of peer pressure ("What, you don't believe in evolution? Wow...and I thought you were intelligent").

There is a certain intellectual blindness that always accompanies hubris. I would caution those who are utterly convinced they know facts about what supposedly happened billions of years ago to keep that in mind.

I wonder how seriously you've engaged in reading about evolutionary theory? I am not a scientist but certainly enjoy reading it, and there are many good websites that are "red pill" and discuss it in quite a bit of detail.

There is tons of data and thinking going into evolutionary theory, it is not just some charlatans chattering amongst themselves.

You can read for instance:

www.unz.com/gnxp
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/

These are two pages kept by scientists who discuss evolution and modern biology in reference to a lot of red pill concepts, if not using that name explicitly.

I just wonder if you quibble with this:

1. Genes exist and are passed down from parents to children
2. Some people have more kids than others, and thus their traits are passed down more often.
3. Over time, this process leads to a change in the overall frequency of certain genes, and as they influence traits, the overall frequency of certain phenotypes.

 

[Blobert]

One thing that is incontestably true is this: in the past 30 years or so, humans have crossed an evolutionary threshold.

We now have the ability to do something that no organism has ever been able to do before: to tinker with its own evolutionary trajectory.

Nanotechnology, robotics, and genetic engineering have now given us a frightening new power. What once might have taken thousands of years to develop, can now be developed nearly immediately.

Things really are different now than in the past. If I'm wrong on this, someone jump in here.

In this sense, we, as a race, have uncoupled ourselves from the natural biological processes that have shaped Earth's biosphere for 2 billion years.

This to me is deeply unsettling. In this sense, it can indeed be said that evolution is "different" now than what it once was. We are now subject to a whole new set of processes, inputs, and feedbacks that never existed before.

One could even say that we're giving rise to a new species of humanoid that will eventually replace us.

While genetic engineering is of course a new thing, tinkering with your own evolutionary trajectory is nothing new per se. We've bred animals and plants to our liking for millenia, and ourselves too of course, even if not as conciously or at the pace now maybe possible. When we conciously decide to not marry our cousins, for example, that's already a form of eugenics.

All social policies in their own way affect who gets to breed, be it an eugenic or dysgenic end result.

 

[Samseau]

Fixed that for you. And the answer is yes. No man is infallible.

The presence of fallibility does not make something someone believes to be dogmatic. Otherwise, everyone in the world is dogmatic.

You didn't comprehend what I wrote. Dogma is the idea that your beliefs cannot be wrong. Having a belief isn't a dogma, but thinking your ideas are immune to criticism is dogma.

Furthermore, I have yet to see anyone in this thread claim that they could never be wrong about evolution or anything else for that matter.

Then why are so many people freaking out? What's with all the meltdowns and strawmen arguments?

Right. Which is why I'm laughing hard at the guys who are crying at a critique of selfish gene theory. Selfish gene theory is woefully inadequate to describe organisms like ants, bees, many types of apes, other social animals (even dolphins), and especially humans.

What's your point?

You just read it.

The thing is, evolutionary theory hasn't really been strengthened at all since Darwin conceived it. The fact of the matter, what most people believe today has almost nothing to do with what Darwin wrote. Don't get me wrong; Darwin was a genius. But his original ideas have been adapted to fit into Gregor Mendel's genetics, as well as Watson and Crick's DNA theory.

1) That's not true at all. For example, Darwin's introduction of natural selection to this day still remains a pillar of the theory of evolution.

Before Gregor Mendel, Darwin's theory of natural selection made no sense to 95% of people. Mendel's understanding of genetics gave a mechanism to describe how natural selection could occur, but before that no one took Darwin seriously.

There's been hundreds of books written about this, fyi.

http://www.scientus.org/Mendel-Darwin.html

For a "scientist" such as yourself, shouldn't you know this?

2) This is a natural course of research. Someone makes a relative breakthrough and his ideas are challenged or modified to fit more systematic and larger bodies of evidence that are brought upon by the community by experimentation and further research.

Right, but to insist on calling it the same theory all along is nothing but nomenclature. Meaningless word games played by "scientists" who have too much ego invested into an idea.

To claim that evolutionary theory hasn't been strengthened since Darwin (and by the way others such as Wallace were working on evolutionary theory at the same time and before as well, is foolhardy. The theory of evolution has gone from a basic idea and some ground-breaking research to a monolithic and multi-branch theory that has been tested in various forms thousands and thousands of times in the last 200 years.

That's not how good science works. It's not the experiments which verify theories that are important, it's the experiments which falsify a theory which are important. Google "Karl Popper Falsification" for more info on how science makes progress.

Not true at all. Any research that either builds on a foundation of knowledge or disproves something is equally celebrated by the science community. Research in general is the driving force of science and academia, the creation of new knowledge is the result whether it strengthens or weakens some paradigm.

Right, again, the insistence on nomenclature is pointless man. Evolution today is nothing like Darwin understood it, to keep calling it evolution is disingenuous.

All scientific theories suffer from errors, because all humans are full of errors, and evolution is especially erroneous because there is such a dearth of information needed to truly make the theory respectable:

- Massive gaps in the fossil record
- No one has yet to create a new specie using evolutionary theories
- Selfish gene theory does not describe how social organisms work

Classic trite reasons for arguing against evolutionary theory.

Trite... spoken like a "true believer." They are major obstacles that have been around forever because the truth never changes.

1) Gaps in fossil records is not a good measure of the validity of the theory of evolution. Expecting everything to be perfectly fossilized in a constantly changing biosphere like earth is ridiculous. Furthermore, many organisms do not fossilize well in any circumstances. The fossil record is extensive and we have found copious examples of transitional fossils.

I understand this but it doesn't matter. Without empirical evidence it's hard to make claims of science.

2) The incompleteness of Evolutionary theory has no relevance when discussing the validity of the theory of evolution. All theories have gaps, the point of any researcher is to identify those gaps and research/produce knowledge on them.

Or, better yet, develop a new theory altogether just as Darwin did.

3) Competing theories within the broader theory of evolutionary theory does not mean the theory is not valid. Scientists do not dismiss the theory of evolution, but there is certainly contention on the processes of how it happens and other matters. Just because one possible explanation/hypothesis isn't completely concrete in its applicability doesn't mean the whole theory of evolution is invalid.

How do you know?

 

[Quintus Curtius]

One thing that is incontestably true is this: in the past 30 years or so, humans have crossed an evolutionary threshold.

We now have the ability to do something that no organism has ever been able to do before: to tinker with its own evolutionary trajectory.

Nanotechnology, robotics, and genetic engineering have now given us a frightening new power. What once might have taken thousands of years to develop, can now be developed nearly immediately.

Things really are different now than in the past. If I'm wrong on this, someone jump in here.

In this sense, we, as a race, have uncoupled ourselves from the natural biological processes that have shaped Earth's biosphere for 2 billion years.

This to me is deeply unsettling. In this sense, it can indeed be said that evolution is "different" now than what it once was. We are now subject to a whole new set of processes, inputs, and feedbacks that never existed before.

One could even say that we're giving rise to a new species of humanoid that will eventually replace us.

While genetic engineering is of course a new thing, tinkering with your own evolutionary trajectory is nothing new per se. We've bred animals and plants to our liking for millenia, and ourselves too of course, even if not as conciously or at the pace now maybe possible. When we conciously decide to not marry our cousins, for example, that's already a form of eugenics.

All social policies in their own way affect who gets to breed, be it an eugenic or dysgenic end result.

True enough. But don't you think the scale of the tampering now is on a magnitude that has never been seen before? Don't you think that we now have the technology to actually combine man and machine?

Consider this. It took ancient humans (we are told by anthropologists) hundreds (maybe thousands) of years of trial and error to produce corn (maize) in the form that we see it now. This took place in ancient Mexico or South America; no one knows exactly where.

Corn did not grow naturally; it was "invented" or bred by ancient man deliberately. But this still took many, many generations.

But now, with a few teaks to genetic code, we can do incredible things. With a few nanobots, we can do incredible things.

The scale and the magnitude are totally different, don't you agree? Natural evolution in the biosphere is being changed in ways that have never happened before. And what happens when technology reaches the level where we can live for 1500 years?


Q

 

[scorpion]

I just wonder if you quibble with this:

1. Genes exist and are passed down from parents to children
2. Some people have more kids than others, and thus their traits are passed down more often.
3. Over time, this process leads to a change in the overall frequency of certain genes, and as they influence traits, the overall frequency of certain phenotypes.

No, I don't quibble with any of this. Obviously we can see the power of genetics, assortive mating and heritable traits through the controlled breeding of dogs and other domesticated animals. Genetics are obviously extremely important when you consider that a Chihuahua and a Great Dane share a common ancestor that goes back only several thousand years.

However, regardless of how much assortive mating you do with dogs, you will never turn a dog into a chimpanzee or a crocodile, and you certainly will never turn a rock into a living organism (the first step of evolution on which all others depend). Genes can vary quite a bit on an intra-species level, but there is obviously no such thing as inter-species evolution. Genetic drift with species over time is not evidence of evolution, and the math behind evolution doesn't add up either (the amount of "good" mutations that would have had to occur millions of times for every animal on the planet is simply not mathematically possible even assuming a 5 billion year old Earth). Believing in evolution is inherently a faith-based proposition, it's nothing more than a modern scientific religion.

 

[JacksonRev]

Believing in evolution is inherently a faith-based proposition, it's nothing more than a modern scientific religion.

I don't believe in evolution, I understand it. I don't play the lottery anymore, I change situations to put the odds in my favor. I use evolution as the basis for my entire world, with game as a subset of the evolution mindset. My before and after results are all I need to understand why it works.

Religion is also a product of evolution. Religion, particularly Christianity, has come up with some great social and family programming that forms the basis of modern societies. Family structure has been constantly selected for, and a family unit based around marriage with gender roles provides a phenomenal foundation for society, primarily for the ability to produce large numbers of men adept at warfare.

The creation stories have not been constantly refined and selected for. So they have a tendency to meander around based more on the storytelling abilities of the messenger and the forced regurgitation from societal laws. Because we haven't had the technology for most of our existence for it to make a difference in the survival of different societies.

Now we do. Evolution and the scientific method have set the stage for our rapid technological advances over the past several hundred years, and are why we can destroy dark age religious societies at will. Their cultures don't have the ability to challenge creation myths, and so don't have the ability to take advantage of the same powerful ideas we do.

However, because the creation myths are so off, a great deal of people have thrown the baby out with the bath water, and rejected the family structure guidelines. Which are strongly based in reality, and necessary to continue the society we've built.

 

[Blobert]

I just wonder if you quibble with this:

1. Genes exist and are passed down from parents to children
2. Some people have more kids than others, and thus their traits are passed down more often.
3. Over time, this process leads to a change in the overall frequency of certain genes, and as they influence traits, the overall frequency of certain phenotypes.

No, I don't quibble with any of this. Obviously we can see the power of genetics, assortive mating and heritable traits through the controlled breeding of dogs and other domesticated animals. Genetics are obviously extremely important when you consider that a Chihuahua and a Great Dane share a common ancestor that goes back only several thousand years.

However, regardless of how much assortive mating you do with dogs, you will never turn a dog into a chimpanzee or a crocodile, and you certainly will never turn a rock into a living organism (the first step of evolution on which all others depend). Genes can vary quite a bit on an intra-species level, but there is obviously no such thing as inter-species evolution. Genetic drift with species over time is not evidence of evolution, and the math behind evolution doesn't add up either (the amount of "good" mutations that would have had to occur millions of times for every animal on the planet is simply not mathematically possible even assuming a 5 billion year old Earth). Believing in evolution is inherently a faith-based proposition, it's nothing more than a modern scientific religion.

Roosh's article wasn't about macroevolution, but about modern humans.

 

[scorpion]

I don't believe in evolution, I understand it.

No you don't. I'm sure you probably think you do, but you really have no idea. You just accept the idea on faith.

If you really do understand evolution, then by all means please explain how a lifeless rock can, over time, transform itself into the infinitely complex structure of a human being.

By the way, if you can do this you will win a Nobel prize and become the most famous scientist in history, since no one else has ever been able to offer anything more than wild speculation.

The devil is always in the details, a truism that is nowhere more true than when examining evolution. Everyone is always looking at the monkey turning into a human, when they should be looking at the rock somehow spontaneously evolving DNA.

 

[storm]

please explain how a lifeless rock can, over time, transform itself into the infinitely complex structure of a human being.

Naively one might try to argue as follows. Pick any number in a random way. Because there are infinitely many numbers, the odds of picking any particular number is zero. So the odds of you picking the number you did are zero. And yet it happened. This is because it is not the same thing to say something will occur with probability zero as it is to say that something cannot occur. This is fundamentally intertwined with the nature of infinity.

Of course there is a very big difference between picking a number in a random way and observing a rock over time.

However, suppose for a moment that there is no origin story. Time goes back infinitely. There is no beginning. At any point in time you can look back further, exactly like at any point in time you can look forward. Then by sheer volume of time alone and by the nonzero probability of molecules just happening to show up in the right place at the right time we, with certainty, will see exactly this situation show up at some point.

Bertrand Russell already has a Nobel Prize.

 

[scorpion]

However, suppose for a moment that there is no origin story. Time goes back infinitely. There is no beginning. At any point in time you can look back further, exactly like at any point in time you can look forward. Then by sheer volume of time alone and by the nonzero probability of molecules just happening to show up in the right place at the right time we, with certainty, will see exactly this situation show up at some point.

Bertrand Russell already has a Nobel Prize.

But you don't have an infinite amount of time. You have 4.5 billion years, the age of the Earth according to science. That's the amount of time you have to somehow turn a rock into a human being. You must explain how DNA spontaneously evolves out of a rock to even begin to entertain the idea of evolution. Most proponents of this idiotic theory overlook this (probably because they haven't actually thought about it and take it on faith) and just focus on the idea that apes evolved into humans, completely ignoring the earlier steps of the process which require DNA to appear out of nowhere, and then somehow, prevailing against odds which cannot even begin to be calculated, that DNA mutates perfectly hundreds of billions of times in order to evolve millions of different complex species.

And remember, it all started with a rock that one day randomly turned into a living organism.

Incredibly, this is all somehow regarded as "science" and not "scientific religion".

 

[Phoenix]

So, to clarify, people are debating the legitmacy of evolution as the best explanation for the origin of species?

OK, up to you. http://arstechnica.com/science/2012...ution-through-snapshots-of-40000-generations/

Regarding contraception, yes I've pondered this for a while. There is no doubt whatsoever that the 100 year old, recent contraception culture is inherently abnormal. Before that, everyone only had interruptus and their self-control to rely on, and people were expected to marry young anyway. I think this is going to be resolved both genetically (easier breeders displacing those 'holding out for aphrodite') and culturally (right-wing cultures like Islam pushing the West aside, for instance).

The interplay of genetics and culture is going to be extremely complex. One interesting aspect of it is a branch called 'evolutionary psychology'. I posted about this before, but that post caused a summary ban. Basically, behavior is selected for.

Just because it is complex, doesn't mean we should just throw out the old science, instead of using it as the building blocks of new science. This is the scientific (objective and rational) method afterall.