Quantum healed?   

Wow.  All I asked was what the 5th dimension was.  Can you explain it?

What if I imagine a universe that operates according to physical laws without any sort of god or supernatural beings?

On other hand the explanations offered by creationist and such are worse. And don't really answer a the questions either...

I chose the first option in the vote since it smells so good.

The coccyx in humans is the rudiment of a tail (most of which has disappeared).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccyx

interlagos, sorry, but you lack even the minimum understanding of the laws of nature.

Go on Khan Academy and watch the Evolution videos, search the website I've already pointed you to...

It's pointless we try to explain you why pigs don't have wings when you lack the minimum understanding of how life works.

The animals you pointed are bad examples because they were artificially selected by humans.

Wings evolve separately in several species because it gave an advantage to the animal, and there is not something like a half-wing, it has always a purpose, wings in their earliest form (in some dinosaur) probably were useful for regulating temperature, slowly the animal was able to use those for 1) escaping predators 2) catching pray, and that characteristic was passed to the next generation and so on...

You can see this progression with every characteristic in the animal kingdom, how the eye evolved, how venom evolved, and so on.

We can't explain you everything case by case, but if you understand the fundamental laws of nature, you will understand why snakes do what they do, and why we walk on two feet.

Because their style of life, consumption, and reproduction does not require them to fly? They went the run fast and be big enough to fight things off route, instead of the fly away route. Plus they are not carnivores, and birds evolved from carnivorous dinos that needed to swoop down on top of their prey.

Penguins used to have wings, but have evolved them into more like fuzzy flippers instead, since in their environment they get more food by "flying" under water than flying through the air. If you ever get a chance to see them doing that at a zoo, do it. They are quite amazing to watch.

Just some food for thought...

Multiverse theories are proposed to counter the anthropic principle, suggesting that the reason the universe is so specifically suited to life as we know it is that life as we know it is suited to *this* universe out of many.. An argument against that idea might be that life is extremely unlikely even in this universe, yet came about in a shockingly short time frame, making this also an unlikely multiverse.

Some suggest life as we know it couldn't have evolved even if the universe were filled with primordial soup, yet we see it thriving on a planet that was too cool for life at the time it's been claimed to have begun, thanks to a faint young sun (a problem which "is not yet solved" according to Nature & Nature Geoscience)

Birds wouldn't evolve wings if they decreased their ability to survive. Birds (or proto-birds) don't need to "know" anything.

Riddle me this: If wings that couldn't provide flight weren't advantageous, why do we have so many species of flightless birds?

Creationists love to cite examples of so-called irreducible complexity...until the complexity is reduced by an evolutionary biologist.

I have yet to see an example of "irreducible complexity" that makes any kind of sense.

@interlagos

Here: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

And our external influence is the Sun.


It's the Panspermia Hypothesis.

And there were other "sentient" life similar to humans, probably a lot, like the Neanderthal, but we were the ones who survive.


You're entering in the deistic perspective here, the problem is this hypothesis makes more questions than gives answers, where did this God came from? Is it conscious? Did it evolve? Is it alone? Are there more like it? Questions that we can't even think how to begin testing...


God of the Gaps Fallacy.

Well, thats not a very good example. 1. You bring personal perspective into it, what you understand under chaos and destruction. If you put a burger into the sun it changes due to it water drying out into the air (where it can help new plants grow, thank to suns energy), flies lay their eggs into it and fungus grows in it. I would not call this destruction.

If you instead put the Burger into an isolated place like open vacuum space with no energy source affecting it. It in fact doesn't change at all.

Imagine you have a bunch of 6-sided dice, which are your "life" that needs to survive and evolve.

1) What you are describing, involving random mutations and entropy:

You throw the dice, get a bunch of random numbers. They don't actually mean anything, since you can randomly pick any numbers as survivors, and toss any other numbers aside. This isn't how evolution works though.

2) Let's say there is still entropy, but now we add evolution, where the results of the randomness have meaning. In this case, anything that is 4 or above "survives," anything that's 3 or below we throw away. This is similar to 4> being a beneficial mutation that helps the creature survive, and 3< being a bad mutation that kills it (like cancer or a defect).

You throw the dice, get a bunch of random numbers. You throw away all the ones that are less than or equal to 3. Now you have a bunch of survivors of 4+. Pick them up and throw them again, you'll have fewer survivors. Keep repeating, and you'll eventually have none left. This is basically a species that exists in entropy, where it's genetic mutations are guided by its environment (evolution), but there is no outside influence to propagate it, so, as entropy states, it will fall appart into maximum entropy.

3) Now let's use the real world we live in. There is still entropy, and there is still evolution, but now there is an outside source of energy, like the sun, which allows this species to survive and reproduce.

As in 2, you throw the dice, throw away anything that's 3 or below, and keep everything that's 4 or above. Now you can use the outside energy source to "reproduce" the dice. For every die that's still around, add another, basically doubling the amount of survivors. Throw again, and repeat. If you are lucky, this species will keep growing in number. If not, it will die out, and some other luckier dice thrown by someone else will take over.

This is the right way to think about evolution: it has a source of outside energy (sun, geothermal, etc) as opposed to being an issolated system of entropy, and although the genetic mutations are random, they are selected and guided by the outside environment, such as longer hair helping survive in cold climates, and harder skin or faster legs protecting from predators. Yes, eventually, once the sun's energy will run out, this system will fall apart as well, just as out actual sun and solar system will.

I meant this. The process of evolution does not happen in an Isolated system. This law in not applicable here.



Earth Environment ≠ the Solar System. I could argue about that but for Evolution it just doesn't matter, unless you want to talk about the creation of the Universe know?

I know it must be hard, because all the Creationist use this as favorite argument, beat science with science. But either they all don't understand this law or they lie to have a good argument, knowing the majority of their viewers / listeners will be more than happy to swallow everything they say as long as it "proofs" their believes.

With evolution certain parts of system get more ordered, but in total entropy increases?

There is energy spend in evolution, that energy can't be reclaimed and it dissipates.

...
Evolution is a process that occurs on a species level.  However one of its driving forces is the natural selection of favorable traits of individuals of that species.  Mutations within DNA can arise from many pathways.  Obviously damage is an easy example such as UV light.  Another is a a mistake during replication that is not caught by a repair enzyme.  Finally, there can be major mutations such as duplication of entire segments of DNA.  These are probably the most useful from an evolutionary standpoint.
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There was an Earth with primordial soup and all that.
Some amino acids were formed and started interacting in various ways.
Given enough time and trial and error, it seems plausible that some biological Von Neumann Universal Constructor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor)-like beings were formed. I guess somebody could calculate the likelihood of such machines being assembled without conscious help. Maybe there ought to have been millions of these things climbing out of every rock-pool?
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You suggest that evolution attempts to decrease entropy. Do we know this for sure? I don't really get the problem with entropy. Say: 2 separate gases are introduced into a common chamber and they're allowed to mix. Even if the only energy in the system is that the gases have a temperature above absolute zero, they will almost always mix and hardly ever become more ordered. The argument seems to be that the 'order' in the beginning is information, and this order is lost -- well, I'm not so sure.
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Not from apes, but common ancestor... I can't really pick that one...

I can give you an answer on what I believe but it doesn't match the polling options you put out, we already know that humanity evolved from apes because of scientific evidence but there's a theory out there I find very interesting where scientists think that we are actually evolved from a foreign organism in an asteroid crashing into Earth, this would also go to some way explaining why after all this time we haven't had other species on this planet evolving into sentient life and developing the same brains and thought process we have.

So far I think this is one of the most intelligent theories I've heard yet, much better than all this created out of nothing bullshit we keep hearing about from religious people etc. it might also go to explaining why we haven't seen any other sentients in our galaxy unless of course we've already made contact and our governments are doing their thing of keeping it from us.

Earth is not an Isolated system as it constantly receives Energy from the sun. And in this case the complete evolutionary process. So there is nothing to explain as you start with flawed assumptions.


Also this thread belongs into Off-Topic as it has nothing to do with Bitcoin.

Running on windows.  Using browser plug-ins or javascript.  What could go wrong?

So, it's similar to RetroShare?

Actually, it works the other way around...

What you're saying is all the magicians out there just perform tricks, but if there are enough magicians, one will make real magic...

C'mon, it's all bullshit, pure charlatans or people with some mental illness.