Evolution, my thoughts

Been a while since the last post... Time to enter the debate!

Let me start by stating my credentials. I am not the most intelligent person, but I always try to think my arguments through. My IQ is roughly 121. I am currently in an Australian University studying Microbiolgy.

Now, as for my argument:

I am going to point out a few things I know about life. Things which are rather obvious.

1. Everything that lives will eventually die. Be it Disease, famine, predator, accident, not knowing water depth and jumping, everything that is alive, or will be, will die.

2. Something that is not suited to it's environment is more likely to die. Examples: A crocodile out of water, Plant in constant shade, slow rabbits etc.

3. While things are alive, most of them will reproduce. These reproductions are not clones. Life reproduces with variation. Easily observable, just notice how you're different from your parents. The exception to this rule are creature is reproduce asexually, but even these mutate to create variation.

Because life reproduces with variation, life is constantly changing. In an unchanging environment, if a species has a high survival rate, few changes will occur over long periods of time. If the environment changes, and the species is no longer well adapted to living there, the changes will be more dramatic.

The term 'more dramatic' means that while individuals will still look very similar, the whole population will change in a certain evolutionary 'direction' very quickly. The individuals who are best at surviving in the environment will reproduce more, causing certain features to be more prominent, and/or others to be less prominent. In some cases, two populations of the same species, in the same environment, will begin to diverge. The populations have to be somehow separeted, or else the gene pool will be flooded by the other. The separation may be an earthquake caused fissure leaving half the population on each side, or perhaps a diverted river.

I haven't found evidence for it, but it seems to me that if behavioural conditions cause certain packs or herds to remain separate, despite no other barrier stopping interbreeding, speciation could occur. This would probably take much longer, considering the likelihood of outliers who cross to another herd or pack.

Eventually, the separate species have varied so much that interbreeding is no longer an option. This is when they are considered 2 different species. I even have an analogy for how a reptilian-like creature(RLC) could have evolved into a bird.

Based on observed facts, we can choose a group of RLC's who lived in trees. The survive on a diet of insects and plants. A RLC is born with slightly lighter bones. This gives him the advantage of being able to jump higher, and use less energy during the course of life. He survives longer, and reproduces more, because he can get more food, and is less susceptible to death due to fatigue. There are other factors, but they don't play a particularly significant role. His genes are passed onto the next generation, some with lighter bones, some with heavier, but all lighter then the average of the last generation. This trend continues, creating lighter and lighter bones, until a compromise is reached between survival through extra resources, and death through broken bones. The original mutation could have occured a number of ways. It could have been a random mutation caused by mutagens in the diet, or environment; it could have been a result of a particular combination of genes; etc..

To answer the obvious statement: "Bone-density doesn't make a bird", I say You're right! But the idea behind my logic can be applied to wings, feathers, beaks.... basically anything. The thing it can't work for, are things that don't originally give a benefit, even if the might eventually. It uses the argument "what's the use of half a x" as evidence for evolution. AND, whose to say that only one change can occur in a population at a time? While bone density is improving, perhaps vestigial wings are developing, or scales are growing into feathers.

And finally, evolution has no aim, no foresight. It has no hindsight either. Whatever works right now is what is selected. And, NO! I am not suggesting something is guiding natural selection, other then the energy, and fertility, of the individual beings, and the choices of the sexual chooser. (By this I mean when a certain sex selects a mate based on appearance, or dominence)

Now, hit me with your best shot! I want to hear counters to my explaination, flaws in my argument and other such things. I especially want to hear from Athiests, and Evolutionists (I know, not a real group, but used for understanding purposes). If you come at me with a stupid argument, be prepared for an equally stupid response. I'll do my best to answer all responses.

Einstien's coffin nail

I've recently seen this popping up alot. Basically, a troll/poe/creationist will post a link to a website, which has no facts on it, and claims that this is de-bunking Atheism. In fact, I had one of these on my Immaterial Materialism post. While the sites I went to were... I wont say intereting, as they were boring as hell... they were completly stupid. Without any facts to support thier claims, they point out to the reader that Atheism "destroys hope" and is "Immoral", and that "Because of Atheistic belief, all Atheists should kill themselves". It's possible that I'm reaading this wrong, but this seems like yelling at the rain. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean you won't get wet. The sites were supposedly to do with Nostradamus, an apparent seer, though they said nothing of his predictions, nor did they link to sites with his predictions. They just said that the "confused Athiests and Sceptics" were now "Nostradamians". With no proof, I'm inclined to think of the websites creater as a retard.

Then, most stupidly of all, they post a link to a website (normally youtube) which talks about Einsteins theory of relativity, as though it somehow confirms that atheism is false. The one I got went to a video describing how Relativity allows for time travel. Big F*cking Deal. I really don't see what this has to do with whether or not God exists, or whether He created everything. It's a completly seperate subject, and should be treated as such. I don't claim to know physics. I know a little, but not much. But I do know that Einstein didn't believe in God, nor did his ideas cause him to believe. Even if he did, that doesn't mean that God exists. There is no proof for god, or creation, or any super-natural claim for that matter. In fact, there are challenges about in which you recieve a large prize for the simple act of proving a paranormal claim.

So, what is the point of these pointless websites, and silly reasoning? As far as I can tell, they realise that if more people see their stupid site, there's more chance of one of them converting. The only thing they forgot was that for it to work agaisnt the thinking population (Atheists in general), they need to at least sound like they're giving information. Bypassing the intellect wont work, because we realise our intelect is more likely to hold REAL answers then our emotions.

Until next time, Fui fides tantum in testimonium.

Immaterial Materialism

Recently I've been thinking about the current trend towards consumerism in society. I wasn't thinking so much about how, or even why, but more on it's value. Within our current society, Capitilism has taken a firm hold. This is no secret. While there is no firm definition of Capitalism, one of it's important aspects is profit in the marketplace. Nowadays, this has led to an 'anything for profit' mentality.

Some people will be up in arms, pointing to the Ronald McDonald house charity, or one of the numerous other big corporations doing charitable things, assumably at there own expense. However, every year, McDonalds has a McHappy month, in which they say they'll give $1 from each big Mac to the Ronald McDonald house charity. All well and good, but the number of big macs sold in this month can double or even triple, because of people looking to help charity, while still getting something for themselves. Ask yourself, have you even chosen one brand over another, not because of price or quality, but because you have heard of the good things the company does? I know I have.

Now you're expecting me to say something like "And this is horrible because..." But I won't play that game, yet. We've all heard it before. Instead I'm going to direct your attention to something that I have been thinking on. I call it Immaterial Materialism, and for simplicities sake, I'll treat it as real. Basically, some people get sick of prices, and whatever, and decide to give up things. Most do this sensibly, and give up all but the bare essentials, and 1 or 2 comfort items. Others however, take it to the extreme. They live with nothing but the barest of essentials. Clothes and a little bit of food and water. Many don't start like this, but slowly 'achieve' it. Bit by bit they sell, or give away they're 'useless' objects. Towards the end, they either give away thier money, or buy things with it to give away. I would assume that, like inversing materialism, every time they give an object away, they feel a sense of accomplishment. This is dangerous, as eventually they sell their home, or worse give it away, meaning they live on the street, or in the wild.

Everything has an opposite. Happy and sad, black and white, Theism and Atheism. This was my interpretation of the opposite of materialism. I'm yet to see evidence for its existance, though I am fairly sure it does. As it stands, materialism is on the up and up, and belief in people is dropping. Eventually, if this trend continues (assuming I'm correct in my assumption), people won't even notice each other anymore. They'll be aware of their existance, but other then that stuff is what matters, not each other. Just watch the movie Wall-E. Points it out perfectly.

Until next time - fui fides tantum in testimonium.

My Social Experiment

In my last post, I pointed out a few things that I'd noticed about childhood, and school life. And I would suspect you would like for me to explain how I feel it has affected the adults of the world. Well, too bad. Today, I am instead going to explain an experiment I am going to conduct, and some research I am going to do, on the topic of the competitive nature of man.

First, I am writing a survey. Within this survey, it asks for age and gender, which will be used on for collaboration; and it will ask a few questions about different aspects of life. Of these aspects, the ones I am most interested in are relationships and education. Now, I'm no psychology student (yet), but I still feel that this information can be used to determine the benefits and detriments this system has on society as a whole.

I will not only be speaking with regular people, but also with businesses, schools, and other organisations. They will have both the questions asked of everyone else, plus a few that are for organisations only. With the line of questionging, this should determine how embedded competition is within the infastructure of society.

With this information, I'll draw conclusions about the welfare of the populace, as well as attempting to divine a plausible reason. If at all possible, I'll try and find a better solution, but without any experience in this field, I'll need some help.

That brings us to my experiment. It will be a long running experiment, if I can even get it started. I wish to test a idea of mine, though it may be difficult to find voluteers. My idea is that we survived the evolutionary process due to our cooperative nature. When people work together, the best abilities of each can be utilised better then if each person works seperately. As such, Children who work together throughout their education should have a more firm idea of the concepts presented to them, and of how to utilise their own abilities in the execution of said concepts. This basically means that a group of children, about the age of 5-6, would be placed in a group. This group is always together when learning. This includes grading systems like assignments and exams. As such, they'd be held to a higher standard. My thinking is that by the age of 18, not only is this group efficient at thier work, but have the understanding to survive outside of the group... though I doubt they'd want to.

Obviously this is a very strange, and difficult to organise, experiment; with far-reaching possibilities. It is also quite clear, that I haven't done much background research into the subject of childhood development. That being said, this is of course simply in the conceptual stage, and is far from being implemented, if it ever is. I am only posting it now so that I don't forget it, and to see if anyone else has ideas to put forth on this subject, or would like to help me.

The research part is also conceptual, however I should have the rough draft of the surveys in a month or two. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

Until next time - fui fides tantum in testimonium.

Introduction to The Prophet of Logic

I have only recently discovered the world of Blogging (kind of late, I know). From what I've discovered, it's the perfect place for me to start discussing all of the things I have learnt, and add to my repertoire of knowledge through discussion and debate. Within this oh-so-crowded internet communication medium, I have decided to post mostly on a contorversial, and highly populated, topic: Atheism vs. Theism. For my first post, I'll give a brief description of my beliefs, and the reasoning I apply.

Recently, people in my life have begun to question my beliefs, trying to determine a cast-iron code of conduct that I live by. This doesn't make any sense! It's extremely difficult for me to pin-down my beliefs, whether they be ethical, moral or social, because they can change. Alot of people will be outraged to hear that my morals/ethics can change, but I challenge anyone objecting to stand firm when an act that is normal acceptable makes your blood boil, or when an unacceptable act seems reasonable. Hell, I'll even use examples.

For the former, free-speech. You try to stand firm in your belief in freedom of speech when a charismatic man is lying to people, or using word-games to convince people of something that you know is a lie, or is directly harmful to the ones you love. For the latter, killing. Try and say all killing is wrong when a man hunts you relentlessly, for whatever reason, with the intention to make you suffer. Hopefully, this will allow you to see when it is possible for morals and ethics to change. I will say that I DO believe in freedom of speech... In fact I believe everyone should have as many freedoms as is possible, and I DO NOT think that killing is moral.

As for my beliefs in society, I feel that the masses are under-educated and overly aggressive. This is not helped by the poor education systems of the world (I don't know them all, if you feel you countries education system is good, please let me know). Add to this the unnecessary competition we are all placed in - known as the 'Rat-race' i believe - from a young age. I won't enter into it in this post, that will come in a later post. I will say, however, that from school houses to sporting teams, "reality" television to job-searching, we are saturated with the idea that competition is the way to survive.

Now, for the meat of the post, my Religious beliefs. You all know this is what you want to hear. I am completly Athiest. The idea of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent deity is out-dated. And proven illogical many times over. I'll be doing a post later on about the illogical nature of god. I believe that if a being exists that created the universe (caused the Big Bang), then they are an alien. Not all powerful, not all knowing, not infinite, just another life-form.

I will believe anything that has sufficient evidence. As such, I support the Big Bang, Evolution, and pretty much all of actual science. While I do not claim to know all of science, I do know that the scientific method is a reliable means of determining the truth about the universe, and exposing the frauds and dealing with them appropriately.

Wow, that turned out to be longer then I thought, and I even set myself up a couple topics to post about in the near future.

Until next time - fui fides tantum in testimonium.