" I do know that I was 100% correct on life being all about procreation, and the mandate of survival over anything, never give up, always fight against death, is very a big part the DNA of all living creatures.
how can a species survive if it doesn't care if lives or dies, or doesn't want to procreate. That is the species' only purpose."
This is another one of those; WWHHHAAAATTTTTTTTT!
This is YOUR "opinion" right???? Certainly the Evolutionary world doesn't
point at a Cactti and say it "wants" to "procreate". Or it "cares" if it
"lives" or "dies"
ad hominem inter-thread drift by someone who genuinely doesn't understand natural selection, teleology, or the proper deportment.
When you are a dashing liberal man-about-town it is the hackneyed default position to consider conservatives as Neanderthals incapable of higher understandings in science ,unlike the ever glowing cerebrum of the radical leftist who has embraced 'evolution' as if it were just another political agenda item.
Just got back from one of my favorite adventure sports, and of course I couldn't wait to check in.
I'll address another issue shortly, but beta otherwise encouragement for DT: why not hook up with MikeL - you guys seem compatible in your acumen and attitude - and head over to rc.com or some such - or at least start your own thread - there you could rule - and there you wouldn't have to put up with all the impertinances and grief you get on this thread.
P.S. Dr. F, your title's fine, I think you know that.
Are you sure you want to continue to name yourself after a sugar compound that has been shown to glycate proteins in the human body more than any other.
If I went elsewhere I might miss the glowing cerebrums.
Funny how you don't suggest our overtly religious friends go elsewhere?
Enzyme-controlled addition of sugars to protein or lipid molecules is termed glycosylation; glycation is a haphazard process that impairs the functioning of biomolecules, whereas glycosylation occurs at defined sites on the target molecule and is required in order for the molecule to function. Much of the early laboratory research work on fructose glycations used inaccurate assay techniques that led to drastic underestimation of the importance of fructose in glycation.[1]
Sorry dude, all my sugars are glyscosylated in a highly planned, highly structured pathway. Eat me.
overtly religious friends
Well, if they mentioned nazi or anything nazi related in relation to atheism, the move beyond religions, etc , I'd tell em to f*#k off too, and would so encourage them.
P.S.
Nice to see in your postscript there that you know the difference between glycation and glycosylation. Let me remind you, I've had a year of biochemistry. YOu don't impress.
In the interim, i'd suggest you'd read up on your evolutionary dynamics, there' are many holes in your evolutionary thinking, I'd say, unless you're just posting sloppy as slop, but maybe that's it.
Anyway, my coffee's done. Adios.
.....
Notes
"Mr Sheldrake is a deranged person who believes in a sort of cosmic consciousness, despite there being no evidence for it. He's been looking for years too, so he can't claim that it's easy to find."
Nope, sorry, but you impair the functioning of bio molecules .
Give yourself to Dr. Frykenweenie, he'll bite.
Anyway, my coffee's done. Adios
By which you mean an intermission , after which you'll go back to harassing guys who believe the earth is 6000 years old.
Like shooting fish in a barrel hey?
Dunghole - you're to stupid to know you are stupid.
You are trying to explain, or argue, against the most basic concept and LAW of natural selection with people who have PhDs in the area and have studied it for 20 years or more..
The exact epiphany - THE MECHANISM - that Darwin and Wallace discovered after years of field work and study has never dawned on you....
DNA can't think?
Cactus can't think?
Bahahahaha
You don't understand the basic kindergarten level mechanism of evolution!
Why don't you go and think and read for at least two hours before you try and debate with people who have done so for two decades you obtuse fool..
Do you really think you are fooling anybody with your jibberish?
I was in a hurry when I last wrote, and I was glib and hasty. My apologies. It is my mistake for not giving a response to you more time. I have no good excuse. I know better (especially here, where one needs to be careful).
You wrote:
NOTHING is more important than the propagation of the species. [Then] The first billion years in the evolution were devoted to that purpose . . . .
I see this saying that "importance" is aligned or is the same thing as "purpose."
"Purpose" to me suggests intention, decision making, motivation, design, and control by some form of sentience. People of religion embrace "purpose." People of religion need belief, then they see.
Science does not. Science is a value-neutral discipline. We don't want our scientists to have political or social agendas. We want them to find facts as disinterested observers, we want them to run the numbers and let the data fall as they may, and we want them to be open to fitting explanations--unbiased, objective, without prejudice, and politically disinterested. People of science want facts and reasonable interpretations and then they'll believe.
It's challenging to resolve the two groups' perspectives.
When one uses "purpose" with a scientific theory (evolution), it mixes paradigms.
One CAN mix paradigms. But that presents logical inconsistencies that need untangling.
I disagree that evolution--as found in Nature or in theory scientifically--has a purpose. I say that strictly as an academic.
actually life needs to have a metabolism of some sorts and a means of reproducing...
but I don't know about "purpose"
in the laboratory that is "evolution" individuals that are not successful in reproducing can survive, but they do not provide their particular genetic information on to subsequent generations. Very small differences in survival rate over many many many generations will alter the possible gene population. There is no "purpose" per se, since a gene doesn't "know" if it will survive or not, or what it takes to survive.
rather, attributes which are expressed by the genes may (or may not) convey an advantage to the individual that has them and perhaps they would be a bit more likely to reproduce successfully and pass those attributes on.
on the other hand, attributes which put individuals at a disadvantage (from a survival standpoint) might act quickly on that individual, who might not survive long enough to reproduce.
going back to the beginning, to the "University of the Early Earth" the environment contained a planet wide "test tube" of varying conditions and compositions, those chemical reactions that predate what we know as life, may have existed to reproduce in a very simple manner, but reproduction none the less. and that "starts" evolution because those processes not robust enough to continue didn't. this takes place over a few hundred million years, which is a very short time in terms of the lifetime of the Earth, but a time of unimaginable expanse for most of us, where this stuff is happening, all over the place. we count on that fact "that everything is happening everywhere for a long time" to result in the life forms that we find evidence for in the fossil record.
it's my opinion that we do not have a proper scientific theory that would allow us to understand abiogenesis, but certainly life does create itself out of inanimate stuff... the taste sugar starches of the maize, for instance, is the result of photo-synthesis, an as yet to be fully described physical process that are synthesized from plant nutrients and sunlight, no magic required. this energy runs the plant, which creates a seed and with that seed the necessary "food" to develop into another maize plant, one that contains the essential genetic information that makes it "maize" with a bit of variation thrown in... that variation can exist because, for the most part, it doesn't screw up the life of that maize individual, but over millions of years, the genetic information contained by all of the maize individuals might be broad enough to adapt to changes in the environment, some of those attributes may be more suited than others. the ill suited attributes "die off" and cease to be represented in the population.
I don't see this as "purpose." Once set in motion, the DNA/RNA sequence just executes the chemical reaction, it is highly elaborate already at the very beginning. Further, because of the "great bombardment" during the early history of the Earth, it is very likely that life started more than once, having been wiped out by the incoming meteor mess of the early solar system. this would lead you to conclude that it isn't very difficult to get life to happen... yet we don't have a theory which provides the necessary predictions to lead to insight.
it doesn't bother me to say that we don't know, I fully expect that we will someday.
everything we have was created bottom up
There was nothing that existed until it evolved into existence, no blue prints, no knowledge, no expectations of what may be, not until evolution created it.
Intelligence started at the bottom, and became more intelligent through millions of years of evolution
and then man, the most intelligent life form to evolve, created God to answer the question of where life and intelligence came from, because he couldn't accept that man was the top, and that there was no purpose.
Let us know!