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Myths — Page 2

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Daniel B, do you actually believe that Armstrong didn't land on the moon?

I'd think we'd be smart enough to figure out if it was a matte painting.

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Originally posted by: Darth Chaltab
Daniel B, do you actually believe that Armstrong didn't land on the moon?

I'd think we'd be smart enough to figure out if it was a matte painting.
Who said it was a painting? Maybe if Armstrong would even confirm that he did indeed walk the moon, but no. There's also Thomas Baron, he and his entire family died when their car was struck by a train, it was ruled as suicide. He was an important figure because after the Apollo 1 fire he'd reviewed the Apollo hardware and had written a full 500 page report (outlining various problems with it) - which the Judge had seen physically, and read part of. It was to be formally submitted, but since he died his report was never seen again. If it was suicide, he would have had no reason to destroy the report.
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danielB... straws... grasping...
"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."
Qui-Gon Jinn (R.I.P.)
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So what's new?
"I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings."
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hehe
"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."
Qui-Gon Jinn (R.I.P.)
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Come on.

You know if the US had faked the apollo missions, then Gorbachev or Kruschev or whichever Chev was premier at the time would have called us out on it.

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Thats what I was saying.
"I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings."
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me too.
"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."
Qui-Gon Jinn (R.I.P.)
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son of a...
I wrote this nice long post in response to Starboy, and it didn't get posted.

Let me try to sum it up I guess:

1.
Because of natural causes (plate techtonics, erosion, etc.) we have no idea how much of our past history has been destroyed and is now impossible for us to learn. Its possible (though probably unlikely), that the evidence of the dinosaur to bird transition has been lost in this way.

2.
Humans didn't just start evolving all over the world at the same time.
Some of the oldest hominid fossils found were in southern and western Africa. The Olduvai Gorge is where Australopithecus was found by the Leakey family. Hadar, Ethiopia is where the famous 'Lucy' skeleton was found.
If a human-ape missing link is going to be found, most likely it will be in Africa.

Now, that said, the dinosaur-bird missing link is most likely to be found in one area of the world. Indications would point to China, since so many discoveries have been made there already, but there is a lot of territory to search, and for a westerner to get into China for an expedition is NOT easy.
(I think there was some 70 years between the expedition by Roy Chapman Andrews and whoever went next.)
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I will absolutely grant that evolution has not been disproven. I will also grant that it is the best explanation, scientifically and logically, yet proposed. Thirdly, there is significant circumstantial evidence in the form of "related species." Birds and dinosaurs share characteristics, humans and apes share characteristics, and so forth.

As far as I know, there are only three explanations for species:

1) Life developed elsewhere and then species were deposited here by space aliens (the view espoused by Francis Crick, who found both evolution and God ridiculous)

2) Evolution

3) Divine intervention (Creationism, directed evolution, etc.)

Solution 1 solves the problem of no evidence of evolution on earth. Solution 2 has the benefit that you don't have to use the words "God" or "space alien". Solution 3 has no methodological problems but requires belief in the supernatural.

The problems with evolution I've already stated. Another is that the THEORY of evolution contradicts the LAW of thermodynamics (i.e. entropy). Usually that would be enough for most scientists.

Anyway, that's all I have. Starkiller? Closing comments? You get the last word.
If you're going to take forever, then I'm having a hotdog!
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Sort of off topic..

But by the 'logic' of evolution, then Luke blowing-up the Deathstar should produce a better deathstar in several million years.

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So then Palps was messing with the evolutionary cycle by producing a 'new and improved' Death Star too early?

Princess Leia: I happen to like nice men.
Han Solo: I'm a nice man.

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errr... no!
"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."
Qui-Gon Jinn (R.I.P.)
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Maybe he was reversing the evolution of logic, but technological progress is progress.

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As far as evolution vs creationism...i saw this article online about the formation of the grand canyon and how there are creationist groups that saw it happened in the 6000 years or whatever it was since God created life. Not really sure on the exact details, and i cant seem to find it right now.

I see how there is validity to the lack of existence of transitional sekelatons/fossils to be used to discount evolution, but creationism discounts millions of years of earths existence with their theory. Plus there is sooo much land area that has yet to be explored. I mean think of all the areas that these fossils can exist; under bodies of water (especially if you beleive the whole shifting of the continents thing), in forests (how many digs are there in forests? why couldnt fossils get covered over by trees and other foliage), and even just deeper in the earth. Over time things get covered, so maybe we just havent dug far enough to find this stuff, or maybe natrual events, volcanoes, earthquakes, floods...have destroyed, buried, or such these fossils, i admit that events like that would most likely also wipe out the current people, and the current fossils, and there is no reason that what is left is the newer stuff, but it is a possibility. could be why we're missing said links, because parts are destroyed and since the location is the same we put stuff back together incorrectly.

Just some additional food for thought

-Darth Simon
Why Anakin really turned to the dark side:
"Anakin, You're father I am" - Yoda
"No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!" - Anakin

0100111001101001011011100110101001100001

*touchy people disclaimer*
some or all of the above comments are partially exaggerated to convey a point, none of the comments are meant as personal attacks on anyone mentioned or reference in the above post
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But remember you must:

If evolution occurred throughout billions of years of Earth's history, then why has it ground to a halt? Why are there not any transitional life forms alive today, let alone no fossils? If three billion year old monkey species are now humans, then why aren't the 2 billioin year-old monkey species sub-humans?

And that doensn't even scratch the surface of trying to explain the duckbillled platypus!! Besides, the age of the earth is debateable, since there are few reliable records of history much older than 3000 years. Carbon dating and methods like it are fundamentally flawed in that they assume to know the starting quantities of what they are measuring.

Besides, no one is discrediting natural selection itself. It is an observable phenomenon. Creationists do discredit the idea that it can change fish into birds, or apes into people, though.

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every couple billion years the earth passes through some radiation belt that causes people to instantly mutate. Sometimes it works like Magneto's device in X-Men and ends up killing the people (or whatever is living at that time) ala extinctions. and other times it causes crazy monkey things to turn into humans :-p

just a theory...that i made up...as i wrote it...and not a bad one if i do say so myself....maybe ill publish a paper on it...or at least use it as my current belief system

-Darth Simon
Why Anakin really turned to the dark side:
"Anakin, You're father I am" - Yoda
"No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!" - Anakin

0100111001101001011011100110101001100001

*touchy people disclaimer*
some or all of the above comments are partially exaggerated to convey a point, none of the comments are meant as personal attacks on anyone mentioned or reference in the above post
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Originally posted by: Darth Simon
every couple billion years the earth passes through some radiation belt that causes people to instantly mutate. Sometimes it works like Magneto's device in X-Men and ends up killing the people (or whatever is living at that time) ala extinctions. and other times it causes crazy monkey things to turn into humans :-p

just a theory...that i made up...as i wrote it...and not a bad one if i do say so myself....maybe ill publish a paper on it...or at least use it as my current belief system

-Darth Simon
Did you see that thing on Sci-Fi channel too?
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I thought on the Sci-Fi channel it was a giant rock in Austrailia that aliens had used to house a secret machine that would control the worlds evolution, and wipe us all out when we got too evil

Don't you love the value these people place on life?

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I will admit that there are certain conspiracy theories I'll buy into.

Roswell, for example. I've heard/read a fair amount of stuff concerning that. I think there is something more to it than the most recent explanations.
To me, nothing seems to fit any better than the alien story. But then, its been over 60 years, and I'm sure the stories have been embellished somewhat.

However, the stuff about the ancient civilizations, the magnetic belts in space, extra planets etc. I just do not buy into.
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I'm sure there's plenty of things the government isnt telling us, and plenty of secret technologies, but I doubt it involves crashed aliens.

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Originally posted by: starkiller
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Originally posted by: Darth Simon
every couple billion years the earth passes through some radiation belt that causes people to instantly mutate. Sometimes it works like Magneto's device in X-Men and ends up killing the people (or whatever is living at that time) ala extinctions. and other times it causes crazy monkey things to turn into humans :-p

just a theory...that i made up...as i wrote it...and not a bad one if i do say so myself....maybe ill publish a paper on it...or at least use it as my current belief system

-Darth Simon
Did you see that thing on Sci-Fi channel too?


What thing on the Sci-Fi channel? I seriously was just shooting from the hip with that post, you know, making it up as i went along so to speak. Is that actually a current theory?


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Originally posted by: Darth Chaltab
I'm sure there's plenty of things the government isnt telling us, and plenty of secret technologies, but I doubt it involves crashed aliens.


why not? if you think about it its highly unlikely that we are the only 'intelligent' life in the universe. the real question becomes why would these aliens want to engage in communications with us

-Darth Simon
Why Anakin really turned to the dark side:
"Anakin, You're father I am" - Yoda
"No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!" - Anakin

0100111001101001011011100110101001100001

*touchy people disclaimer*
some or all of the above comments are partially exaggerated to convey a point, none of the comments are meant as personal attacks on anyone mentioned or reference in the above post
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Even if there are other species of sapient life, I doubt they are so much more advanced than us that they can travel across the galaxy.

Granted it makes great SciFi, but it seems like a really cliche reality. Cliches normally don't work in real life.

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Ok I really don't want to get back in the habit of posting but I just have to get involved in this discussion about evolution but from what I can tell it seems like a bunch of people just throwing stuff out. please if you were involved in the discussion read all of this post i put alot of time into it, time that took me away from studying for exams. i know its long but take the time and bare with me i only spent as much time as it took to write it so it is unedited asides from a spell check.

I'll begin by stating what I am. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. I believe that god in-fact did indeed create the universe and all that is. I do not believe that he came here the earth specifically and put human beings here and other forms of complex life. I believe that evolution is something that he made so that life could exist and change by itself.

I have debated many people on evolution and so I have heard many if not the large majority of points from both sides.

I will start with one misconception that really makes me mad. It makes me mad because it shows that some one thinks they know what they are talking about when it is obvious they don’t. That is the idea that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution. The fact is that it has nothing to do with evolution. The second law states that many THERMODYNAMIC PROCESSES will only go in one direction (university physics pg 754) e.g. heat will only flow from a hotter body to a colder body, why because the more heat something has the more random it is. if you can imagine a block of matter lets say its water at 0 C if you were to look at the particles in that block even thou the block is solid the particles are in movement even though the block it solid its particles are in random motion they are moving slow but they are still in random motion thus they can be in random places in the block of matter. Now if you looked at this same block at 0 K or absolute zero nothing is moving. The block one could say is in prefect order. Now if you were to vaporize this block of water you would now have particles from that block flying everywhere moving in very random paths. So heat goes from a hotter body to a colder body because the randomness of the colder body will increase, or in other words there is greater entropy. Now that I have told you this entire how does this have anything to do with evolution. The idea of survival of the fittest. It DOESN'T that is why when people bring it up it really annoys me.

Next ill will explain the theory of evolution to people because from what I have read it is not very clear. There are two types of evolution, micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Microevolution is a fact it happens it might as well be a law cus it is the reason we have super bugs (antibiotic resistant diseases) and it is the reason we can make immunizations and so on. The second type of evolution is macro evolution. It should be noted that Darwin’s theory of evolution primarily talks about the above, not macroevolution. Currently there is one theory of macroevolution, and I found it quite funny that one of the jokes on this thread was very close to what it is. I can remember the name of it off the top of my head but it states that at certain times in earths history, for some unknown reason the genetic pool of life becomes unbalanced, this unbalance creating many new species, and then after a very shot time it stops. Evidence for these sorts of unbalances can be found in the fossil records. Some of them occur after mass extinctions. 4 the time of 65 million years ago there were dinosaurs reptiles galore. But after all we see are mammals (galore) why? It’s not known. It is thought that this happened because the death of the dinosaurs created thousands of new niches in the biosphere and in a rush to fill those niches species changed dramatically. The only analogy I can think of is that it was like water breaking a damn, before you have the damn and a reservoir, after the land is changed dramatically. However there are other instances that have been seen where there was not a mass extinction to go with the unbalance an example of this is how for give me on the specifics here I think it was homo habilas however it could have been Homo erectus. anyway what occurred was before a point in history I think about 1 million years ago, there was only homo habilus but within a very short time after that its been found that there were 6 new species of homos(do not laugh) previously never seen before, and after that point homo habilus was no longer found. It was noted that all of these species had attributes similar to homo habilus but were distinct species. It is not know why this occurred however it fits the theory. One possible cause of this break in balance was that earth passed through a strange radiation field. It is also thought that these breaks could be caused but Strong solar flares that hit the earth.

Now for the lack of fossil evidences. If the theory above is correct we will never ever find a transition fossil. Why because of all the conditions that have to be filled for something to be fossilized. Let’s look at my friend Dino. Dino is an animal from 65 million years ago. in order for Dino to die and be fossilize he has to done one of the following, fall into a pit of tar(we won't find him if he does this but he will be fossilized for a time) second die in a desert and hope that he gets covered up quickly by a dust storm. 3rd fall in a lake and home that he is heavy enough to sink into the mud at the bottom b4 the organism of the sea eat him. fall into quick sand.( if he does this we will then we might find him, if we dig in exactly the right place at exactly the right depth.) 4th he can get lost deep in a cave and hope that he is deep enough that the air is stagnate( not sure if that is the right word) he could get covered in ache but he has to be far enough so that he dies and doesn’t get burned and that he is close enough that he will be completely covered in ache, or he could get frozen and if he accomplishes any of these feats now he needs to ensure that his bones decay properly so that they can be preserved in rock. something that is not often know about fossils is that the old the fossil the less real bone is in it, that is why we cant clone a dinosaur with its fossils because there is no bone and thus no complete DNA. Now once he has been fossilized and you can tell it is very hard to get fossilized he has to stay intact to the present day. to do this he must avoid being eaten by the earth through plate tectonics, or being crushed by rock pressure caused by tectonic plates, he has to avoid erosion, and has to be pushed up to the surface with rock pressure caused by tectonic plates at this exact point in all of time so that we can find him also it has to come up at the right place i.e. a desolate place where there isn’t much water or anything. If it comes up in a forest the roots of the plants will destroy it, if it comes up in the ocean we won’t ever find it.

The above is why fossils are rare and why we will never find a fossil proving the theory of macroevolution, because it will be almost impossible to find a specific animal that went through all of the processes above and that existed in a 1000 year gap in a total fossil history of around 1.5 billion years. Let me just say this as a side note if it were easy to be fossilized then we would have fossils all over the place. The fact is we don’t. It also assumed that the fossil record is a complete dictionary of past life. This is not true. I would say that we have probably have a fossil of around of millionth maybe even a billionth of all the life that has existed on earth (excluding bacteria and that is a big extraction.)


one last thing some one asked why dont we see transition fossils today.the other theory of marcoevolution, that things jsut evolved states that there should be transiti
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Originally posted by: Darth Chaltab
Sort of off topic..

But by the 'logic' of evolution, then Luke blowing-up the Deathstar should produce a better deathstar in several million years.
Yes, but only because the death star is designed, and so can be deliberately re-designed. Darth Charta is right, carbon dating is a theory based on more than a dozen unprovable assumptions. Anyone who has faith in something like that really is blind. You're faced with so many contradicting facts. Carbon dating on freshly killed seals, and tree bark. Carbon dating fails miserably under certain known conditions, why should it be so reliable under unknown conditions? You're still left with the problem of the shrinking sun (then again there are some so-called scientists who claim the sun osculates shirking and expanding, back and forth and that it isn't really shrinking). The problem that "the world does not look old". As I mentioned before all life forms alive today, that by the timeline of evolution were alive millions of years ago, have not evolved. I even gave specific examples. When I hear evolution explain how fresnel lenses evolved into fish eye's millions of years ago (when, I might add it had to be invented, designed and created or we wouldn't have lighthouses today) - then perhaps it can hold water. However I know that fresnel lenses are way too complicated to have evolved in an eye. For the simple reason that the "in-between" life forms would not be able to see.