The idea that individuals "adapt" to their environment is one of the most common misconceptions about evolution.
Smetimes though it is simply a case of people using shortcuts. I suspect that is the case in the Wiki article above.
Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...
by ILoveTTATT 130 Replies latest jw friends
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ILoveTTATT
Apognophos: I AM reading the thread... just absorbing everything...
I am sorry I didn't read the thread you posted...
Adam: Generally, I am impressed by your explanations... they make sense.
These questions just came up:
Ok so, Evolution holds in the entire universe? Is there life outside Earth? Even microscopic? There MUST be... did we send biological probes to Mars?
I couldn't find a straight answer on the age of the other planets in our Solar System, but, assuming they are the same age, shouldn't there be AT LEAST microbial life there? Is there a limit to the adaptations possible?
The high end for temperature is currently 122C for actual conditions, with 130C inhibiting ability to reproduce, and theoretical maximum of 150C because of DNA breakdown (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile), compared to the temperature of Venus, 462C, Mercury ranging from -173C to 427C.
Mars could be a candidate for life... even reaching "normal" temperatures of 35C.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile shows that there ARE organisms on Earth that resist all sorts of things that would definitely kill humans and most large organisms... yet they survive!
Given this, there SHOULD be life out there... if the theory holds...
Does all life evolve the same way? I.E. we are carbon-based. Why wouldn't other elements be good for the basis of life's chemistry? In University, in one of the colloquium classes, one classmate gave a short speech on silicon-based life-forms.
Is there specific criteria for the development of intelligent life? How about organisms bigger than microbes?
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Apognophos
The idea that individuals "adapt" to their environment is one of the most common misconceptions about evolution.
Smetimes though it is simply a case of people using shortcuts. I suspect that is the case in the Wiki article above.
Yes, I'm pretty sure they didn't mean "individual organism" there. When I read that passage, I took that to mean "species".
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cofty
there SHOULD be life out there...
I agree. The extreme conditions that bacteria and archaea can thrive is astonishing.
Nick Lane is of the opinion that the transition from prokaryotic to eucaryotic cells was so unlikley that it may have happened only once. If he's right then there may be lots of bacterial life out there but no ET.
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ILoveTTATT
Does anyone know if probes have been sent to Mars to examine if there are microbes there? You would think that SOMEONE in the scientific community would have rallied for that inclusion...
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prologos
ILoveTTATT's original starting post touched on several deep issues, evolution being just one of them.
As to the clever insights into the evolution, evolving process, the greatest surprise is that life is ENDOWED with , posesses these near - miraculous capacities.
As to the questions of ILoveTTATT about the creator's creator, the designer's designer, the FIRST cause's cause,
Adamah provided the answer: There was no time before the beginning. Therefore:
since cause & effect, designing a designer, creating a creator is a sequence of events, a sequence that is a function of time, but
THERE IS NO TIME before the BB (quoting Adamah here), therefore,
the first cause, the first (supposed) designer, the unique creator are the real thing,
they CAN HAVE NO PREDECESSOR.
some, like R.Penrose and other serious workers beg to differ, There was, UNMOVING TIME* before the big bang.
in that perspective, Evolution of the species is a side issue. entirely possible.
* In all coordinate systems depicting the time/space relationships, the time-axis is always shown as stationary, with matter shown as MOVING through it.
There is always space to the left or below for time that was, but had no movement through it, (Penros,s pre-big happenings the exception)
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prologos
of the 4 most abundant elements in the universe all 4 are related to (organic) life.
1) Hydrogen the H2 in WATER,
2) Helium, the ashes and secondary fuel of the ENERGY that drives life.
3) Oxigen the O in water and the fuel part to release stored star energy.
4) carbon our very own organic building block.
water, the best protector against radiation damage in the hostile stellar medium. * mars, venus, mercury, the moon sterilized by radiation.
All exo planetary system must have "goldi -locks" zones for life of one kind or another,
The very outer solar system is full of water, dirty snowballs comets, coming and going.
my opinion/answers to ILoveTTATTs queries in his first post:
there is a first cause , a creator, (see post above)
life has originated, adapted to all possible niches on this planet
speculating, but life is potentially present in all star systems like our own.
wt of course limits life to this planet, satan's sovereinty challenge, the FALL, redemption, kingdom interests concentrated here.
wt vision is too limited. they need a telescope.
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Apognophos
So was this thread helpful for you, ILoveTTATT? Any other questions on the subject? Do you understand why your description of entropy on page 6 was incorrect?
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ILoveTTATT
What an amazing difference 8 months can make!
I am so sorry that I didn't read the blind watchmaker before!
I've begun to watch Cosmos too and it's all starting to make sense!
Something about The Blind Watchmaker that just blew me away was the explanation of accumulated change.
Random changes by themselves make for impossible odds... leading to "infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters for an infinite amount of time"...
But I actually made the experiment of making random letters with Excel
=TRUNC(RAND()*26,0)
Then =VLOOKUP(Sheet1!A1,Sheet2!$A$1:$B$26,2,FALSE) (a list from A to Z, 0 being A and 25 being Z)
Then =IF(B8="H","H"," ") (Doing an IF and finding the letter that I wanted)I am sure a MATLAB coding would work better... anyways...
I got "There is a big differenc" (I only did 20 characters) in 103 attempts.
So I went from 1/ 26^20 to just needing 103 "generations" of 20 characters to get an end result.
Of course, that assumes that there is an "end game" with evolution, which now I understand that there isn't... but the exercise blew me away because I now realize that just about any structure and trait seen in biological systems can come to existence with evolution...
It explains our eyes, our brains, our hearts, hemoglobin, EVERYTHING!!
I am so happy that I now understand it a lot better!!
Thanks to everyone!! Cofty, Apognophos, and Adamah deserve special mention.
Thanks!