Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

I knew I never should've said anything in this thread. Go stupid, stupid me!

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Yeah. Shut up, kid.

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Forgive me, but I don't see how that advocates creationism. If anything, it opposes it.

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"You get the Most Annoying Transsexual I've Ever Spoken To award." -The Zephyr Song

And I think your assumptions are way off. I don't think doubling every 100 years is conservative at all. It would be in modern times, but you cannot extrapolate from modern times to the past. There's lots and lots and lots of stuff to account for. Why, there has to be or you'd have to show why we don't have 2 quintillion people on the planet. First is the obvious fact that unless the average couple has more than 2.0 children (and let's not make jokes wondering about how a couple could have 2.5 children), the population won't grow at all. Then, all these children have to survive long enough to become old enough to make some number of children of their own (and no incest jokes, please). Which is, of course, a hard thing to do if you have constant, bloody wars and genocide going on everywhere. Before they were fruitful and multiplied, they had to first fight just to sustain themselves. It may be I don't have a leg to stand on here after all, but I still think there's something to it. In any case you can't just write a single equation that "answers" the question. All we've proven so far, if anything, is that we may both be wrong, certainly not that anybody may be right.

Of course, in any case I think it's demonstrably provable that there were far more than two people 6000 years ago, or even 10,000 years ago (when the Earth supposedly didn't exist), though some people of course simply ignore this. I'm going to stop arguing about this, though, because it's clear I said this without a clue. It just seems that I'm not the only one here without one.



Nice misspelling of "experiments" there. I'd love to turn that into an ad hominem by observing you probably can't spell this next word either, but I'm nicer than that (except right now I'm in a sour mood, so I'm not), and it's drosophila. Microevolution is a proven fact. It has been observed and it has been verified in laboratories and it has been done without scientists mucking about with genes themselves, and it's been done with drosophila -- fruit flies. Look it up.

Your assertion that all mutations are negative is also a bit laughable. First, you are distorting the definition of "mutation". Down syndrome is not a mutation. It is a genetic disorder caused by a trisomy of chromosomes: a person with Down syndrome has three of chromosome 21, instead of two. This is not a genetic mutation, where genes themselves change, this is having the wrong number of genes. The reason you haven't seen a positive genetic mutation is you haven't seen a mutation at all -- not one you can recognize, at least. The changes are almost always subtle and not observable, piling up over many generations. If you have a means of observing many generations, as scientists do with fruit flies, then you might actually observe mutations.



First you must have an observation to make, which as I've pointed out, you haven't.

- Kef

That is the most important thing you've said this entire conversation. One thing I've learned is that for intelligent debate, our assumptions must be exposed, and agreed upon. If there is no agreement of assumtptions, then all there can be is argument. So, you very wisely get to the root of the disagreement: my assumptions.

The best way to proceed will probably be to agree on something. Is there anything we can agree on? First, I will gladly agree that DNA (or RNA, for creatures that don't have DNA) is the basis for all proteins in each of any living organism's cells. Second, I will agree to selective adaptation through elimination of unsatisfactory alleles by morbidity.


This is one place I agree with you: you can not extrapolate from a modern amount of radioisotope C-14 in the atosphere what the amount was in the past, the fundamental assumption of Carbon-dating.


By that sentence, I observe that you don't have sound philosophy of science. As long as you insist on that kind of reasoning, I don't know how to communicate to you. I recommend a graduate course on Philosophy of Science like the one I took. Or, read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Allow me to reference page 10...

When you talk about "proof," it must be either in the mathematical or legal sense, there is no scientific sense of the word! You can "establish" or "find," and if you're lucky, you get to "investigate" and "discover." But you can not prove. As long as you pretend that science proves truths, you suffer from chronological snobbery and miseducation by your grade-school teachers.


I normally correct those when someone graciously notes my mistake, but since you've referenced it, I will allow it to remain.


Involving random, positive mutations caused "naturally?" Google's top few results come up with lab-induced mutations or lethal random mutations.


Of this, I am aware. Not all living things have the same number of chromosomes, so for speciation, trisomy is absolutely required at some point in the history of DNA. Without any occurance of trisomy in evolution, all creatures from bacteria to corn to cow to man would have the same number of chromosomes.


Correct. Wrong number of genes. Each member of every species must maintain it's right number of genes to be alive and healthy. Since this number can not change, we've got an impediment to evolution.


Have you seen one? Or do you have blind faith?


Nope, a mutation happens the instant an imperfect copy of the DNA occurs. If one generation has a different allele than either of it's parents, then it has a mutation. Genetic information, like computer files, is digital, not analog. With analog information, gradual changes can take place copy-after-copy. DNA has a base-4 digital encoding and each copy is either exact or a mutation. The allele resulting from a mutation may (in some cases) encode the exact same protein, which happens when a codon on the mutant allele is a synonym for the codon of the original: GCT->GCC, for example. In the case that the new allele is not synonymous, then the new allele can not make the correct protein. Fortunately, in sexual reproduction, we usually get two copies of the chromosome, and the other gene may have the allele for the correct protein! Of course, if the protein the mutant gene does code for is toxic, or if the allele on the other chromosome is too recessive, the mutation is manifested.


I do have a means of observing! Written records exist from long ago. The observations of 5000 years are in: humans haven't changed.


I'm not some grade schooler pumped full of ideas by an over zealous Sunday school teacher. I am a man whose looked at both sides, the eveidence they present, and the proponents of both positions. I happen to disagree with your concusions. Please do not try to make this a childish game of opinion-tennis or some presidential debate where your insulting my misspelling or your making claims about my sources being dubious is your main standing point. I really would like to have a healthy discussion where new information is revealed, questions are answered, and each party can grow in knowledge and wisdom.

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You keep forgetting that we've got this kind of stuff going on now. Or haven't you been paying attention to the news? We may not be suffering the consequences directly, but there is plenty of bloody war and genocide available today.

You assumption is that the ancient people had MORE of this than we do. Not true. In fact, genocide and warfare did not start occuring until the earth was populated at least enough for human communities to start needing the same lands and resources. It takes NATIONS to fight wars (families could do it, but it would take a fairly large family to be any good at it).

I have already demonstrated that it requires only about 7.5% increase in population EVERY 20 YEARS in order to reach our current population. That means that each couple would only need to produce 2.15 children.

You also assume a high infant mortality rate. Where do you get that assumption from? Where are your statistics on how many children died in childbirth in the year 586 b.c.? I cannot say for certain, but I am willing to bet that any data leading you to that conclusion is based on numbers from Northern Europe at the end of the Medieval period, during the plagues. But you shouldn't assume that those figures apply to the whole world throughout all the pre-modern eras. What's more, my suspicion is that the warmer southern climes were much better for people's overall health, allowing them to live longer and have more children than Northern Europeans of the late Medieval period.

You also assume that people in ancient times died younger. Perhaps, perhaps not. But people only need to live past their breeding years, which for most is about age 40. The only way early mortality can severely effect population growth is when people consistently die before or during their breeding years. People who live beyond 40 as a group are not going to drastically effect population growth at all.

As it stands we have no verifiable population statistics for the year 4000 b.c. (Unless you do take the second chapter of Genesis literally, but that's a different story).

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I know science doesn't "prove" truths in the logical or mathematical sense. Perhaps I should have simply said "demonstrated". It is true: science does not prove truths (except laws are generally given to be truths, but they're mathematical). That said, a scientific theory is as close to truth as you can get. It is a guess, but a generally accepted theory is a very, very, very educated and very, very, very good guess. Does that prove anything? No. But it means it's hard to dismiss it out of hand, and the burden of proof is on he who would.



I don't think trisomy would be necessary for that. You do raise a good point, though: how do we come to have a different number of chromosomes?



I haven't, no, but I was just pointing out that you haven't either. I do have somewhat "blind faith" in the matter, but as it is necessary for evolution, I think it is reasonable to assume that it happens, because otherwise you'd need a better explanation and, well, I don't think the idea that these creatures came from somewhere else, or a higher power, is it.



I never said it didn't. What I was suggesting was that such a mutation may not be observable. Indeed by itself it may make no difference. Take a small pile of sand. Add a grain, one that looks just like all the others. Makes virtually no difference, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a pile of 1000 grains and a pile of 1001, right? But just you keep adding grains. Every single one by itself makes an imperceptible and meaningless change, but you repeat this thousands of times and on the whole it makes a heap (heheh) of difference.



That's not a whole lot of time, especially for a complex species.

- Kef

Forgive my cluelessness--I've never been very scientifically inclined, and took advantage of the fact that I had no math or science requirements at music school--but what would the kind of imperceptible mutations you're suggesting look like, in real life? (Hehe--imperceptible. Look like. Hehe--nevamind.) Like, stuff on a cellular level? Stuff that just affects DNA but doesn't have a visible result?
And as I've said, I'm pretty unqualified in this discussion, but I'm skeptical of the concept that a lot of imperceptible changes add up to perceptible change. I mean yes, the analogy of the sand makes sense, and that process even makes sense for some mutations (say one species of fly's wings are longer than another's; maybe they changed by micrometers). But let's take the hypothetical transition from a man to a werewolf. In old horror movies, they used to produce this by shooting one frame, adding a little bit of hair, shooting another, adding a little bit more, etc. But what about the usefulness of the mutation to the creature? Being a werewolf is great, but being a human with one extra hair--I don't see that that really gives you more of an edge in survival. It's not like the mutations "know" where they're headed, what the final result they're aiming for is; why wouldn't it go on for generations adding a few hairs, subtracting a few, adding, etc.? Seems to me most "features" of organisms that help them survive in their environment are the sort of things that would happen overnight in a single mutation and then be such a fortuitous idea that that specimen would survive. And again, I'm by no means an up-to-date or authoritative source in this matter, but I thought that in general gradual change is declining in favor and "catastrophic change" is increasing among scientists. (Or maybe I'm just thinking of how it applies to geology...)

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"Good job, The Cheat! Now try harmonizing with the butternut squashes!" ... "Side effects include wine, women, and song."

We prefer the term "lycanthrope."


The fossil record is beginning to force evolutionists toward a catastrophic approach to human development, last time I read The Smithsonian.

Though theists and deists like to call the changes "miraculous" and "providential," the gradual change model is being done away with either way (scientific or religious). Even Hawking's explanation of the inflation model of the universe post-big bang has rapid changes like the "supercooling" of pockets of the universe as they transition into sub-unification energy states.

So, the main group of people who look dumb in the end will be the religious people who assign divine significance to a merely scientific theory and hold on to the theory after science has disproved it.

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Considering that such a tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of creatures that ever lived are fossilized, and a great many of these are never found anyway, I don't think the fossil record could "force" anybody into anything.

Well, that's true. Pretty much the only way to get fossilized is to die in or near in mineral rich water and immediately buried in tons of sediment. That doesn't happen too often.

What I meant by "force" is that the slower theories of evolution are encountering fossil contradictions. Scientists once believed neaderthals evolved into modern humans, but the evidence to the contrary "forced" them to abandon that view, and they now (generally) believe neaderthals went extinct and a different subspecies (africanus, I think?) evolved into modern man.

The Smithsonian article I mentioned found an africanus fossil (well preserved!) in eurasian mountains, much too insuffiently evolved according to the former theory, to be near the tools that were there, to be wearing the clothes he wore, or to travel to europe. Good scientists are reordering the evolutionary theories to take this evidence into account. Bad scientists are sticking to their opinions by blind faith in contradiction to the evidence.

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Well, there go my plans for the afterlife.

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Don't give up so easily. Just write up a will wherein you specify that after you die you want your body to be buried coffinless at the mouth of a mountian stream covered in sediment. They do that, don't they?

Hey, plenty of people are fossils in this life already... and others are just stoned...

(IJ, I love your new avatar! It took me a while to get it, though. I thought, "...left behind? They missed the school bus? and they can't spell 'bus?'")

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"Good job, The Cheat! Now try harmonizing with the butternut squashes!" ... "Side effects include wine, women, and song."

I thought people in this thread might be interested in this: The headline on the cover of next month's issue of National Geographic is "Was Darwin wrong?"

Not sure if it's on magazine racks yet, but definitely worth checking out.

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Heh, great article.

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Evidence of the ol' glassies! Nothing up our sleeves, no magic little Alex! A job for two who are now of job age! The police!

A good blog post if you like people gloating and acting superior. Perhaps I was mistaken about this HRWiki Forum thread; I thought it would be a chance to discuss information, so each side could see why it was the other side sttod where they did, and a place where someone who had questions could get them answered. Self-righteous banter about how one's opponents are retards is pretty much the opposite of what I thought that both the casual reader and the mods wanted to see. I've tried to show you how a grown-up, advanced degreed, well-studied individual can have opinions different than you may have. That blog post sounded like a (shudder) politician or something.

You want me to gloat? I know more science than any of you who still have numbers describing your educational progress. Chances are that I have more medical experience than any of you who haven't been in a hospital in the last week. I have been at an archeological excavation. And I disagree with the macro-evolutionary stand for speciation. So how does self-inflating banter sound when I do it? Think about it.

This is not about "winning" and being all happy that you rubbed someone's nose in it! If you take it that way, we all lose. The only way to win is to challenge yourself and use what others know and contribute to build you up in wisdom. Did National Geo have a good article? Probably... they usually do. But if you think it was bad that Galileo was persecuted for his scientific beliefs, then please don't make the same mistake by tearing into people who have different scientific beliefs than you like the blog poster did.

We all value "tolerance" about trivial things like food and clothes. But do you value tolerance of people who are really different? What about different world views? Different experience? Different morals? Different problem-solving techniques? Different political views?

Rise above, my brothers in Homestar fandom! Use the tools of the electronic age to absorb more than you could have before! Use your powers for good, or for awesome.

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I'm confused, blue man. Was that:

1. A joke, consciously and ironically shallow and curt,
2. An ill-fated attempt to contribute substantially and helpfully to a discussion, or
3. In-your-face rudeness?

I hope it was #1.

[Edit: I started this before Buz posted; I don't want to seem like I'm picking on you. And seriously, I'm not trying to be catty; I just think you should clarify, in case that was intended as humor.]

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"Good job, The Cheat! Now try harmonizing with the butternut squashes!" ... "Side effects include wine, women, and song."

I have to agree with Buz. The blog basically called people like me trailor trash. I happen to hold a Masters degree, and I graduated from college at the top of my class. I am an educated professional care provider, and I don't exactly appreciate a bunch of immature brats insinuating such things about me when they can't even tell the difference between a logical argument and an ad hominem attack.


Most scholars of Galileo will tell you that, though Galileo's theories were unpopular in his day, what really got him into trouble was that, in one of his books, he implied the pope was an idiot.

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Well, good ol' Diddy, you are not part of the majority of creationists according to this man. Which makes sense, if it were only true. Just think of him as an angry, angry man and nothing else.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't most of Galileo's theories already discovered (and proven) by a Catholic priest named Roger Bacon?

As best I can tell, Galileo learned a great deal about optics from Roger Bacon. Much of his astronomical work is based on Copernicus and Kepler.

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Copernicus had already demonstrated that the Earth went around the Sun (which also got him in trouble). However, he was unable to provide a convincing model of the solar system. Occam's Razor didn't hold its sway back in the day: the current system, which was more complex (requiring mathematical fudgings called epicycles to account for the movements of the other planets relative to the Earth) seemed just as good, and since it was also what the Church held, everybody decided to stick with it. Galileo had made observations through his telescope that gave Copernicus' model more credence, however, such as observing the moons of Jupiter orbiting around it. If everything orbited around the Earth, why did these moons orbit Jupiter instead? Then there was Venus, which he found had phases just like the moon. What accounted for that? The evidence just piled up.

Thus Galileo was able to give empirical evidence, by way of the telescope, for Copernicus' theories.

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As I said earlier up the page...

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I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to get at, Buz -- could you please clarify?

The comment was meant for Christians, mostly... so it will not make a lot of sense to people without a similar worldview.

The Church of Galileo's day had adopted the ancient Greek system of astrophysics, for reasons I'm not sure of, and then assigned religious significance to it. They then persecuted several skilled scientists who found contrary evidence. Modern people throughout the world now realize that the whole situation was a dumb one for the Roman See to even take a side upon. That's what I meant. The church took on a worldly viewpoint for worldly reasons, and then stuck to it dogmatically while science moved on.

A similar choice is before us today: a number of Christians are saying things like "let's interpret Genesis as a metaphor, and assume evolution happened, because science seems to say so." Soon, I anticipate that people will start to assign moral, even religious signicance to evolution (Carl Sagan had! Listen to him for 15 minutes and you'll realize he loved evolution with religious fervor.) both inside and outside the church. Then if or when, on scientific grounds, evolutionary theory has to be modified or changed, or even done away with in favor of a better theory, there will be all kinds of resistance from people who "believe" in evolution. The people who get emotional about it. And, I fear, the very Christians who denied their scriptures to embrace it.

For you non-Christians, this is a completely rediculous concern for me to have. But for you Christians, listen to me: hold on to the things of this world with a loose grip. Possesions, influence, ideas, and systems of thought. You will outlast them all!

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Heh, reminds me of Buddhism Except there is no self to outlast anything. As for your general point...

Science is not "moving on" past evolution, nor do I think anything else is for that matter. If it does, it will do so with good reason and I will be with it. Right now it says evolution is real and I am with it. I am not "with it" solely because other people are, but because I understand the way they reason and look at the world and I agree with it.

By the way, I invoked Occam's Razor in mentioning that the epicyclic model was silly and illogical. I'd like to mention that Occam's Razor favors evolution over creationism. If you were to draw parellels between our situation with evolution and Copernicus' situation, then those parallels would actually favor the evolutionists: our "worldly" and "mundane" model is, on the whole, simpler than the "divine" model.

- Kef

I failed to make a point for non-Christians, and that's not fair. So here goes: "I told the Christians not to make the same mistake again that they made with Galileo."


Not many scientific theories have lasted a thousand years, and all the ones we talk about sincerely today are less than 200 years old. Plate tectonics, general relativity, DNA, quantum mechanics, psychology as a whole, urban planning, and so on.


And I don't fault that.


William of Ockham's contribution to the scientific model is a philosophy of science. Meta-science, indeed. But it deals with the simplicity of the unproven assumptions that a theory is based upon, not the simplicity of the theory itself.

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How so? Evolution requires an extensive series of random mutations and adaptations which make certain creatures better able to survive differing climates. Creation requires only the work of God (which could take place in the adaptations, but not randomly).

It seems to me that, with all these random mutations and adaptations, you are looking at a system that is far more complex than that of the creation model. While the evolutionary model removes the necessity for God's intervention, it attempts to replace him with an interlocking system of random factors. This does not simplify the system, but only complicates it.

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I knew somebody was going to ask. I was thinking of going ahead and cutting that one off at the pass, but I decided to wait. (I'm glad I did. This post ended up rather long!)

Creationism does not require only the work of God. What exactly it does require depends on the flavor of Creationism. If your flavor of Creationism is "God created the Heavens and the Earth", then he created a bacterium and said, "Here ya go, get to it", then maybe, though of course it also requires the model of evolution. But since we're discussing opposition to evolution, we're obviously not discussing that possibility.

Let's suppose we take this from the other end and assume a 6000-year-old Earth, generally the most "fundamentalist" Creationist theory and the one most opposed to evolution. This does not require only the work of God. It does require it, but it requires lots of other things. For instance, the dinosaurs. This brand of Creationism requires us to explain their apparent existence millions of years ago. We can assume that dinosaurs were created along with all the other creatures and so they existed about 6000 years ago -- quite a bit of a stretch, but some people believe it so I'll attack that idea in a moment. We can assume that there were no dinosaurs and the fossils have always been there -- why would God do that? And answering "God works in mysterious ways" is a cop-out until it's been proven that it's what he did. Finally, we can assume that there are no dinosaur fossils, they're just fakes, a point of view I can't see as anything other than paranoid ("them scientists is tryin' ta make us follow the devil!").

Now if we assume dinosaurs existed 6000 years ago, we have to account for a lot of other things. We have to account for that the fossils appear in rock that appears to be millions of years old. We also have to account for the rock appearing to be that old in the first place. Did God create the Earth with rock that already appeared millions of years old? Would he be that mischievous? Yes, it's a possibility... MOVING ON!! *bzzzt* ...the rock appears that old for various reasons. There is no single reason, like carbon dating. Rather, we have different methods of estimating the age of rock that all agree with each other. This God must be very mischievous indeed. This just goes on and on and on, with more examples showing that this God must really want to deceive us.

If we are to consider this argument, then, there are two possibilities:

• The Earth is 6000 years old and God really did want to deceive us.
• The Earth is about four and a half billion years old and things are exactly as they appear to be.

The first possibility is troubling because it wants us to assume things, not just one thing but several (actually probably a good number if we consider all possibilities), that are contrary to what we have observed, with no logical basis whatsoever. The story of Genesis is not a logical basis, it is a story. That this story is extremely important to certain religions has no bearing on the facts. Each individual contradiction to our observations by itself isn't much of a stretch, but you add all the problems together and it makes for a rather incredible point of view. Unless there is empirical evidence for this idea of Creation, there is no logical basis for it, and therefore, the idea that the Earth is billions of years old is actually simpler because it follows from logical premises and it involves processes we understand and can observe -- plate tectonics, erosion, carbon decay, all that, not to mention the observed processes of microevolution. Even the creation of Earth itself can be accounted for without needing God. The only thing that cannot be accounted for is the creation of the universe -- even the big bang theory doesn't even try to address where it all actually came from. It may or may not be due to a god (and of course we might as well just ask where he came from -- if a god can "just exist", why not a universe?). That's a big thing to account for, true -- but where the universe came from has no bearing on whether or not Earth is billions of years old and evolution took place there.

That's how Occam's Razor favors evolution over the school of thought that the Earth is 6000 years old. It doesn't mean that evolution is correct, but the explanation is simpler (it requires fewer assumptions that are unverifiable) and therefore more likely. "But wait!", you say, "that's not the only Creationist theory. This is a straw man argument!" And you'd be right, of course, but I think others can be deconstructed in a similar way. Of course you'd rather I demonstrate this and not just say it with a hand-wave, and perhaps I shall, just not right now. This just seemed like a good starting place; if we can't get past this point (that this particular extreme idea of Creationism asks for much more than the Theory of Evolution does) then there's no hope for my argument anyway.

What do you think?

- Kef