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Janissy
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01 Jun 2015, 9:19 am

nerdygirl wrote:
My biggest one is: how did humans come to dominate other animals? We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity, and compared to many animals, we are extremely vulnerable. How did we develop minds of reason before we were wiped out by predators?


Indeed-compared to many other animals we are blind, deaf and weak with no sense of smell. We have an absurdly long childhood during which we must be protected or we will die. It all seems like a recipe for failure but look closer. Within those apparent disadvantages are the seeds of our success.

'We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity'- the human baby is born with an unfinished brain. Having that brain complete its development outside the womb means exposure to more stimuli and more neural connections i.e. smart. The flip side of that is a longer time spent dangerously defenseless compared to many other animals but we are social creatures and do the defending and caretaking for them.

'We are extremely vulnerable'- weak,blind, deaf,no sense of smell, can't fly, can barely swim, run slowly, climb not very deftly etc. But the flip side of vulnerability is adaptability. We aren't a superior fit for any one specific niche but that means we are an 'ok, make it work' fit for nearly all of them. We are the ultimate generalists and can use our brains (those of us that survived dangerous infancy) to 'make it work' in any environment. No fur and it's cold? We'll skin another animal and wear its fur. Weak with no claws? We'll attach a sharp rock to a stick and use it to stab another animal.

Other advantages: we can eat a broad range of food. That also has helped us spread over the planet. We can always find something to eat. We developed flexible language which has allowed us a huge range of communication. Birds communicate with each other via sound too, but they are locked into a handful of bird calls which is very limiting. We can sweat if needed and pace ourselves running so even if we can't reach the top speed of other animals, we can run for a longer time if at a slower speed. We can also adapt and suddenly climb a tree to get away from a faster predator.



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01 Jun 2015, 9:27 am

nerdygirl wrote:
What I *really, really, really* do not get is how a whole bunch of people on a forum like WP who have all been dismissed in the larger world, being called stupid for not getting all kinds of stuff, like social interaction, are so easily able to turn around and call other people stupid because they don't get something you think is obvious. Unreal.


That's a fair point. But it seems to be an unfortunate tendency of humans to treat others as we are treated rather than the more virtuous way of treating others as we wish we were treated.



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01 Jun 2015, 9:35 am

Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
What I *really, really, really* do not get is how a whole bunch of people on a forum like WP who have all been dismissed in the larger world, being called stupid for not getting all kinds of stuff, like social interaction, are so easily able to turn around and call other people stupid because they don't get something you think is obvious. Unreal.


That's a fair point. But it seems to be an unfortunate tendency of humans to treat others as we are treated rather than the more virtuous way of treating others as we wish we were treated.

If only we had instructions on how to treat others... :mrgreen:



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01 Jun 2015, 9:40 am

nerdygirl-

When did I throw anyone under the bus?


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01 Jun 2015, 9:42 am

AspieUtah wrote:
My question wasn't that complicated. What caused the universe to exist? Creationists have put forth an idea for about 6,000 years, but I haven't heard from the anti-creationists. I guess that I still haven't.

My answer would be that we don't know that it did have a cause.



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01 Jun 2015, 9:48 am

Breaking Enigma wrote:
Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
What I *really, really, really* do not get is how a whole bunch of people on a forum like WP who have all been dismissed in the larger world, being called stupid for not getting all kinds of stuff, like social interaction, are so easily able to turn around and call other people stupid because they don't get something you think is obvious. Unreal.


That's a fair point. But it seems to be an unfortunate tendency of humans to treat others as we are treated rather than the more virtuous way of treating others as we wish we were treated.

If only we had instructions on how to treat others... :mrgreen:


It isn't for lack of instructions. We are drowning instructions and even paring it down to The Golden Rule- treat others as you wish to be treated- doesn't change anything. It isn't that we don't know what we're supposed to do. It's that we don't want to. You don't need religion to create social rules for treating others. What religion did was tack on afterlife sanctions to scare people out of breaking the rules.



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01 Jun 2015, 9:51 am

The_Walrus wrote:
AspieUtah wrote:
My question wasn't that complicated. What caused the universe to exist? Creationists have put forth an idea for about 6,000 years, but I haven't heard from the anti-creationists. I guess that I still haven't.

My answer would be that we don't know that it did have a cause.


To add on to that, even if it did have a cause, not knowing what that cause was doesn't make 'God did it' the default correct answer.

If somebody asks a question and I stay silent because I don't know the correct answer, that doesn't mean that the first person who actually calls out an answer is therefore correct.



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01 Jun 2015, 9:52 am

Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
My biggest one is: how did humans come to dominate other animals? We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity, and compared to many animals, we are extremely vulnerable. How did we develop minds of reason before we were wiped out by predators?


Indeed-compared to many other animals we are blind, deaf and weak with no sense of smell. We have an absurdly long childhood during which we must be protected or we will die. It all seems like a recipe for failure but look closer. Within those apparent disadvantages are the seeds of our success.

'We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity'- the human baby is born with an unfinished brain. Having that brain complete its development outside the womb means exposure to more stimuli and more neural connections i.e. smart. The flip side of that is a longer time spent dangerously defenseless compared to many other animals but we are social creatures and do the defending and caretaking for them.

'We are extremely vulnerable'- weak,blind, deaf,no sense of smell, can't fly, can barely swim, run slowly, climb not very deftly etc. But the flip side of vulnerability is adaptability. We aren't a superior fit for any one specific niche but that means we are an 'ok, make it work' fit for nearly all of them. We are the ultimate generalists and can use our brains (those of us that survived dangerous infancy) to 'make it work' in any environment. No fur and it's cold? We'll skin another animal and wear its fur. Weak with no claws? We'll attach a sharp rock to a stick and use it to stab another animal.

Other advantages: we can eat a broad range of food. That also has helped us spread over the planet. We can always find something to eat. We developed flexible language which has allowed us a huge range of communication. Birds communicate with each other via sound too, but they are locked into a handful of bird calls which is very limiting. We can sweat if needed and pace ourselves running so even if we can't reach the top speed of other animals, we can run for a longer time if at a slower speed. We can also adapt and suddenly climb a tree to get away from a faster predator.


I am not denying that we have all these qualities - but tell me HOW ON EARTH these developed via *evolution*, since evolution takes such a long time, BEFORE we were wiped out by predators???



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01 Jun 2015, 9:59 am

nerdygirl wrote:
Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
My biggest one is: how did humans come to dominate other animals? We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity, and compared to many animals, we are extremely vulnerable. How did we develop minds of reason before we were wiped out by predators?


Indeed-compared to many other animals we are blind, deaf and weak with no sense of smell. We have an absurdly long childhood during which we must be protected or we will die. It all seems like a recipe for failure but look closer. Within those apparent disadvantages are the seeds of our success.

'We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity'- the human baby is born with an unfinished brain. Having that brain complete its development outside the womb means exposure to more stimuli and more neural connections i.e. smart. The flip side of that is a longer time spent dangerously defenseless compared to many other animals but we are social creatures and do the defending and caretaking for them.

'We are extremely vulnerable'- weak,blind, deaf,no sense of smell, can't fly, can barely swim, run slowly, climb not very deftly etc. But the flip side of vulnerability is adaptability. We aren't a superior fit for any one specific niche but that means we are an 'ok, make it work' fit for nearly all of them. We are the ultimate generalists and can use our brains (those of us that survived dangerous infancy) to 'make it work' in any environment. No fur and it's cold? We'll skin another animal and wear its fur. Weak with no claws? We'll attach a sharp rock to a stick and use it to stab another animal.

Other advantages: we can eat a broad range of food. That also has helped us spread over the planet. We can always find something to eat. We developed flexible language which has allowed us a huge range of communication. Birds communicate with each other via sound too, but they are locked into a handful of bird calls which is very limiting. We can sweat if needed and pace ourselves running so even if we can't reach the top speed of other animals, we can run for a longer time if at a slower speed. We can also adapt and suddenly climb a tree to get away from a faster predator.


I am not denying that we have all these qualities - but tell me HOW ON EARTH these developed via *evolution*, since evolution takes such a long time, BEFORE we were wiped out by predators???


Because there is a big difference between an individual being killed by a predator and an entire species being wiped out. In general, there tends to be a balance between predators and prey. We seem to be the only apex predators in the history of apex predators that have ever wiped out other species.



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01 Jun 2015, 10:08 am

They are not so much instructions per-se but more like guide-lines. I don't think religion is needed for the wise™ to follow such Golden-Rule™ guide-lines:
"For every action there is an equal an opposite re-action."
"You reap what you sow."
"What goes around comes around."
"You will experience everything that you or your servants cause others to exerience."
Guide-lines of course are that, guide-lines, not an enforced dictatorship (because the Law-Unto-Itself indicates that we will be subject to dictatorship if we force/dictate others to follow our instructions/commands or else be punished).

Breaking Enigma wrote:
If only we had instructions on how to treat others... :mrgreen:

Janissy wrote:
It isn't for lack of instructions. We are drowning instructions and even paring it down to The Golden Rule- treat others as you wish to be treated- doesn't change anything. It isn't that we don't know what we're supposed to do. It's that we don't want to. You don't need religion to create social rules for treating others. What religion did was tack on afterlife sanctions to scare people out of breaking the rules.

Any sane™ person would know that they are thus inflicting harm upon themselves by bringing harm upon others unless "They know not what they do [unto themselves]" (some of the allegèd™ last-words of The Messiah's previous-incarnation™).
nerdygirl wrote:
I am not denying that we have all these qualities - but tell me HOW ON EARTH these developed via *evolution*, since evolution takes such a long time, BEFORE we were wiped out by predators???

EDIT: Okay, nevermind, you already beat me to using the example of Lego, and I was about to say that we don't know for certain that various species™ had evolved™ in the manner claimed by evolutionists, considering that finding a whole bunches of different shapes of fossils everywhere might be akin to finding a bunch of lego pieces everywhere, and you could construct or re-construct those Lego-blocks in any way you want, even to the point of making Evolution™ look & sound convincing™ to those who don't put such theories™ to question™.

Basically, we don't actually know whether the re-constructed bone-structures of those re-constructed species were what those extinct™-species of past-day actually looked like, and for all we know, wild imaginations may have been involved. Such to the point that we believe that species that have existed may not have ever existed and that the ones that maybe did exist are somehow being suppressed from main-stream™ sources (like we could have originally actually been a bunch of primitive alien™-species or even advanced alien-species or were genetically-engineered by a highly-advanced but sinister alien-species that runs the world-affairs with the rest of us humans™ being within some kind of mega-terrarium called an earth-planet).


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Last edited by Ban-Dodger on 01 Jun 2015, 10:17 am, edited 3 times in total.

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01 Jun 2015, 10:09 am

Janissy wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
AspieUtah wrote:
My question wasn't that complicated. What caused the universe to exist? Creationists have put forth an idea for about 6,000 years, but I haven't heard from the anti-creationists. I guess that I still haven't.

My answer would be that we don't know that it did have a cause.


To add on to that, even if it did have a cause, not knowing what that cause was doesn't make 'God did it' the default correct answer.

If somebody asks a question and I stay silent because I don't know the correct answer, that doesn't mean that the first person who actually calls out an answer is therefore correct.


This again gets back to my first post on this thread...

While the question of origin is different from evolution, the discussion goes hand-in-hand. If there was no "first cause" to the universe, explain how chemicals joined up together in the proper amounts without causing the earth to blow itself up before it began. Explain how the atmosphere has *just the right amount* of various gasses for life, how the earth is *just the right distance* from the sun to sustain life, how the earth spins on its axis at *just the right* speed. Explain where energy came from to cause the various chemical reactions. Explain where mathematics and the concepts of numbers came from, so that the "right amount" can even possibly exist. Explain how the first cell developed, how chemicals just "knew" how to come together to make protein chains and form DNA. Explain how the first life form had a cell wall that protected it.

Chemicals do not just roam around. Even if you say the energy came from the sun, where did the sun get it's energy?

If I have a pile of Legos on the floor in a heap, they will not arrange themselves into anything, nevermind into anything logical or organized. They will stay in a heap until they are acted upon. Even if you say they COULD arrange themselves into something by themselves, the question still remains how they got there, and how did they get the shapes they have.

How did individual chemicals form? Explain the development of isotropes.

To say there is a God who created and designed the universe (regardless if it was recent or long ago) is no more ridiculous than to say the universe has just "always been." When it comes to origins, it really gets down to whether one believes in a God or Not. And, ultimately, it gets down to whether one believes that the structure of the world points to a designer/creator or if it is plausible for all this to randomly come about or self-exist from eternity.



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01 Jun 2015, 10:10 am

Janissy wrote:
...even if it did have a cause, not knowing what that cause was doesn't make 'God did it' the default correct answer....

True, but it doesn't make the suggestion any less equally valid with all other ideas. Religious-based and science-based philosophers agree that, if the universe exists, something or someone made it exist because existence relies on causation. Both creationism and the big-bang theory explain that the known universe was created in a relative instant. But, what or who caused either possibility? In fact, what or who caused the initial what or who to exist which caused the possibility, ad infinitum? What I am trying to get at is: At the very start of our universe (zero plus one moment), what or who caused it? Until we answer that question, the answers are all equally valid.


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01 Jun 2015, 10:13 am

Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
My biggest one is: how did humans come to dominate other animals? We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity, and compared to many animals, we are extremely vulnerable. How did we develop minds of reason before we were wiped out by predators?


Indeed-compared to many other animals we are blind, deaf and weak with no sense of smell. We have an absurdly long childhood during which we must be protected or we will die. It all seems like a recipe for failure but look closer. Within those apparent disadvantages are the seeds of our success.

'We take the longest time of all animals to reach maturity'- the human baby is born with an unfinished brain. Having that brain complete its development outside the womb means exposure to more stimuli and more neural connections i.e. smart. The flip side of that is a longer time spent dangerously defenseless compared to many other animals but we are social creatures and do the defending and caretaking for them.

'We are extremely vulnerable'- weak,blind, deaf,no sense of smell, can't fly, can barely swim, run slowly, climb not very deftly etc. But the flip side of vulnerability is adaptability. We aren't a superior fit for any one specific niche but that means we are an 'ok, make it work' fit for nearly all of them. We are the ultimate generalists and can use our brains (those of us that survived dangerous infancy) to 'make it work' in any environment. No fur and it's cold? We'll skin another animal and wear its fur. Weak with no claws? We'll attach a sharp rock to a stick and use it to stab another animal.

Other advantages: we can eat a broad range of food. That also has helped us spread over the planet. We can always find something to eat. We developed flexible language which has allowed us a huge range of communication. Birds communicate with each other via sound too, but they are locked into a handful of bird calls which is very limiting. We can sweat if needed and pace ourselves running so even if we can't reach the top speed of other animals, we can run for a longer time if at a slower speed. We can also adapt and suddenly climb a tree to get away from a faster predator.


I am not denying that we have all these qualities - but tell me HOW ON EARTH these developed via *evolution*, since evolution takes such a long time, BEFORE we were wiped out by predators???


Because there is a big difference between an individual being killed by a predator and an entire species being wiped out. In general, there tends to be a balance between predators and prey. We seem to be the only apex predators in the history of apex predators that have ever wiped out other species.


But does not evolution require some firsts of a species? How did the firsts survive to reproduce? The previous development does not say "oh, whoops, that new development didn't work out, try again." Evolution is not directed, so how can the "right" developments be known ahead of time?



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01 Jun 2015, 10:19 am

nerdygirl wrote:
But does not evolution require some firsts of a species? How did the firsts survive to reproduce? The previous development does not say "oh, whoops, that new development didn't work out, try again." Evolution is not directed, so how can the "right" developments be known ahead of time?


The scaffolding starts with bacteria and they don't eat other bacteria- they eat molecules.



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01 Jun 2015, 10:24 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
As far as holding to an allegedly "harmless world view" - it's questionable about just how harmless that view is, as it's proponents wish to have notions of a young earth, complete without evolution, taught in our public school systems. This is at a time when America risks falling far behind the rest of the industrialized world, particularly in the sciences. We've seen what has happened to societies in the Middle East that have chosen to publicly follow a literal interpretation of Islam. Am I saying that a Christian fundamentalist America could lapse into the fanatical bloodshed of the Islamic world? Absolutely not. But our country could just as easily fall irreparably back into a world of superstition and ignorance that comes naturally with any form of fundamentalism, Christian, Muslim, or any other.


This, Kraichgauer...

Not all proponents of a young earth are trying to set up a theocracy of sorts...

But to call them dangerous is even worse than calling them stupid!

I personally don't think ORIGINS of any kind should be taught in a public school, esp. in K-12. College is a different situation. Study of origins is not necessary for understanding non-specialized science (ie. pre-college level.)



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01 Jun 2015, 10:26 am

Janissy wrote:
nerdygirl wrote:
But does not evolution require some firsts of a species? How did the firsts survive to reproduce? The previous development does not say "oh, whoops, that new development didn't work out, try again." Evolution is not directed, so how can the "right" developments be known ahead of time?


The scaffolding starts with bacteria and they don't eat other bacteria- they eat molecules.


You are still not explaining how the first, extremely vulnerable human beings survived!