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Evolution theory cont.
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 Fish |
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I imagine writers have to look at this sort of thing and decide whether to go with the new usage, or with alternate wording that still accomplishes their goals, but has lower risks and is more broadly well received. as for this current phrase, even if many wouldn't give a second thought to "begs the question," I don't know why I would want to use it since it would have some detractors, while "raises the question" reads fine and will find no objections. I suppose that some journalists (or their employers) WANT controversy. So I guess it can depend on what the writer is trying to accomplish. I also bet that some don't recognize the risk and inadvertently alienate some readers. |
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stalhandske 25-Oct-21, 18:22 |
the discussion with Coram is diluted I don't think modern science ever ruled out God being the source of life. How could they have done that? Sure, God may not have been mentioned, but He is not excluded simply because such an exclusion is impossible. <Unless one wants to take the kind of absurd position that God created life, but only the first single-celled organism. Then after creating the first single-celled organism, God kicked back and let the theory of evolution take over.> Why not? Why is this absurd? |
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Stal Why not? None of that is any more absurd than Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Christian mythology. |
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stalhandske 25-Oct-21, 20:43 |
Zorro However, I am not saying, or even suggesting, that this was what happened. My ONLY point is to emphasise that modern science does not (and cannot) refuse religion(s), or God. I know very well that there are people - even scentists - whose writings claim the opposite. For instance Richard Dawkins has written plenty in that direction. Yet, I think he is just 'trying the concept' making various arguments about why he thinks science disproves the existence of God. Whilst the arguments are quite interesting, I am pretty sure that when it comes down to basics, he will also agree that that is simply not possible. |
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stalhandske 25-Oct-21, 21:33 |
Coram's reply gameknot.com I will only reply to the essentials of it. <Don’t you think there is an enormous difference between humans and animals? Is there any question or doubt that humans are much, much more advanced than animals - and I’m not talking about morality, loyalty, ethics, self-sacrificial love etc.; many animals have (and have exhibited) those qualities in spades. I’m talking about intellect, ability to create, ability to solve problems, etc. If the theory of evolution is correct, why is there this incredible gap between what humans are capable of and what animals are capable of?> We agree entirely about this huge difference between 'the crown of evolution' and anyone and all of its predecessors. Yet, if you look with care, you will find analogous huge differences among (other) animals. For example, between the mouse and the chimpanzee, or the mouse and the spider. <I think (at least to me) that humans are far, far more advanced than animals - it’s not even remotely close - and the idea that God didn’t create humans apart from animals is ridiculous.> Humans are indeed far far more advanced than the most advanced animals. There is no question about that even though 'advanced' is actually a very interesting concept here. If we look ONLY at the basic biochemistry and biophysics of humans and apes (or pigs for that matter) there is hardly ANY difference. The point is that they are basically exactly the same! THAT is amazing, don't you agree? <Why I say all this is why I believe the idea that God did not create human beings separate and apart from animals is ridiculous. > Andrew, I can understand your statement in some ways. But don't you agree that in stating that you are interpreting God's intentions in deciding what solution is ridiculous? Apart from my conviction that you don't really know what God intended, for the present discussion I think we can conclude that modern science does not exclude a God. Can we agree on that? |
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Advanced ? We’re different and unique. Just like EVERY other critter. We’re definitely not ‘better’ or ‘more advanced’ than other living things!!! Pure human arrogance. |
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I agree Z Explanation: You are a spaceship soaring through the universe. So is your dog. We all carry with us trillions of microorganisms as we go through life. These multitudes of bacteria, fungi, and archaea have different DNA than you. Collectively called your microbiome, your shipmates outnumber your own cells. Your crew members form communities, help digest food, engage in battles against intruders, and sometimes commute on a liquid superhighway from one end of your body to the other. Much of what your microbiome does, however, remains unknown. You are the captain, but being nice to your crew may allow you to explore more of your local cosmos. 200.000 years ago the Earth was on the other side of our Galaxy. That's just the blink of an eye in Cosmic timelines. In another 200.000 years we will be back over to that other side again. Though we Humans might not be here. Either extinct or completely changed into a different life form. Just like the Lifeforms we evolved from over the past 200.000 years. In poetic Musical terms ;www.youtube.com Happy traveling👩! |
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Quite frankly |
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Hog Snipe hunt en.wikipedia.org |
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Just thinking out loud for a minute... He has a thread entitled 'Science in the Holy Bible'. I read a few of his posts there. I was struck at how effectively they turned the reader's mind away from what the Bible was actually teaching, and instead made up some total distraction in its place. Why would any Atheist want to 'disprove' the Bible, if 'believers' like Coram can turn it into a misleading nonsense instead? So I'm pondering starting up a thread along the lines of 'Fundamentalist Fallacies'. The rules for posting in this thread would be simple:- 1. You need a quote from some self-proclaimed 'Christian' source, asserting a 'scientific truth' in a passage from Bible. 2. You them post against it a proper, scholarly analysis of how the writer and/or the original readers would have understood that same passage. As an example, I paste below a post I recently made along these lines, in response to Coram's insistence that Genesis 1 should be understood as a narrative describing the actual process of Creation.... <Genesis ch. 1 breaks naturally into two parts. Phase 1 Day 1 God creates light and separates Light from Darkness Day 2 God separates the waters above from the waters below Day 3 God separates the dry land from the oceans below Remember that in Hebrew, ‘to separate’ also means ‘to dedicate’. Thus in Numbers 8:14, “You shall separate the Levites from among the children of Israel, and the Levites shall be Mine.” Phase 2 Day 4 God creates the Sun, Moon and stars to populate the Light and the Darkness. Day 5 God creates birds and fish to populate the sky and the seas Day 6 God creates animals and humans to populate the dry land. So the first three days are all about ‘separating’ or ‘dedicating’ the different parts of Creation, like ceremonially purifying different parts of a Temple. The second set of three days is about filling these dedicated parts with creatures. Like putting the worshippers in the body of the building, the choir to either side and the priests around the altar. Everything has been made holy, prepared for the Seventh Day, for the Great Act of Worship which will include all Creation and all creatures in it! This pattern is emphasised by the repeated phrases “And God said…” “and it was good.” This corresponds to the pattern of worship in which a priest makes an announcement, declares a blessing or offers a prayer, and the worshipers answer with a set response. This refers back to the Dedication of the People in Deuteronomy 27:14 - 26 (And the Levites shall declare to all the men of Israel with a loud voice: “‘Cursed be the man who makes a graven or molten image, an abomination to the Lord, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who removes his neighbor’s landmark.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who misleads a blind man on the road.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who lies with his father’s wife, because he has uncovered her who is his father’s.’[b] And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who lies with his mother-in-law.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who slays his neighbor in secret.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ “‘Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’) But you will notice one huge difference; In Deuteronomy the words are a list of curses by the People; here in Genesis it is a chain of benedictions by God. Thus the Creation Account tells the reader that the purpose of all of Creation is a preparation for an act of WORSHIP.> Any thoughts about such a thread? |
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stalhandske 26-Oct-21, 20:24 |
Better or more developed? Pure human arrogance. > I will have to humbly disagree here. Yet, I fully agree about 'us' not being better! That word carries personal evaluation, taste and assessment. I certainly also agree that many animals (and plants, too, for that matter!) have properties that widely exceed those of humans!! No question about that. Nevetheless, we should not either degrade 'ourselves' or the degree of our development. I don't think I need to list the intellectual capacity 'we' uniquely have relative to other animals. It is actually quite obvious. What is sometimes (often?) forgotten, and perhaps less obvious - is that with such 'power' comes huge responsibility! We have the 'power' over all other living creatures on this planet! |
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stalhandske 26-Oct-21, 21:55 |
To Coram Sorry, Andrew, but I don't see that. How does modern science 'exclude the God of the Bible'? Could you please focus on that? Otherwise we won't get anywhere in the discussion. My assumption is that you also want to get somewhere in the discussion. If not, we may stop this right here. |
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Stal 21:55 As far as Coram is concerned, 'the God of the Bible' means the concept of God that he carries around in his own head, which he ASSERTS is 'the God of the Bible'. Other students of the Bible can recognise that he is mistaken, and no doubt many have tried to correct him, but that seems to have little effect. I totally agree with your thesis that 'Modern Science does NOT exclude the God of the Bible'. But my opinion means nothing compared to the overwhelming scholarly opinion among both theologians and scientists, as well as every major Christian Church organisation around the world, who say the same. But even that overwhelming body of expertise fades into insignificance, compared to Coram's confidence in his own discernment to the contrary. Consider a moment; if 'modern science' really did exclude the God of the Bible, why do his arguments rely so much on quoting people whom he says are respected scientists? Even if we grant that respected scientists can (and do!) differ over individual theories, that's a long way from any of them rejecting 'modern science' as a whole! Even those who argue against the mainstream theories do so on the basis of 'modern scientific' methodology! Coram has even claimed himself that his objections to Evolution are not based on religion, but on 'scientific data'! Why would he invoke 'scientific data' if modern science is anti-God? In short, beloved Coram repeatedly undermines his own case because he simply can't think beyond what he already 'knows'. |
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bobspringett 26-Oct-21, 23:01 |
Deleted by bobspringett on 27-Oct-21, 01:28.
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Coram responds! How interesting! I just grabbed one of my Commentaries on Genesis 1 - 15 off my shelf. It is by Gordon Wenham, a VERY highly respected theologian and writer, specialising in the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament). For those who want to check me, it is the first in the 'Word Biblical Commentary', the publisher is Word Books of Waco, Texas and the ISBN is 0-8499-0200-2. This Commentary outlines the schema I listed in my post. Use the Amazon 'look inside' facility and you'll see it on page 7 in the main body of commentary, once you get through the Intro, etc. The Amazon link is www.amazon.com No wonder Coram hasn't heard of him! Coram is too busy writing out longhand a text that he doesn't understand, like a kid who thinks that memorising 'pi' to a hundred decimal places will make him a brilliant geometer. Oh, and Coram also listens to the Prosperity Gospel as propounded by that guy who changed his name to 'Prince'. Apart from Coram not knowing this structure of Genesis 1 that every competent Bible College student should be able to recite off the cuff, his main critique of it is that this structure is so 'out there'! That is what some would consider inadequate as a scholarly refutation. I would believe Coram when he says "not a single Bible commentator (that I’m aware of) shares your interpretation." That would be because Coram doesn't know any Bible commentator except those who support what he already believes. Why read anyone else? They might 'lead him astray', and that would be terrible! Better to stay in his safe, comfortable echo-chamber. |
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stalhandske 27-Oct-21, 02:07 |
Bob |
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What is this thread about? |
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stalhandske 27-Oct-21, 02:47 |
BC |
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Zorro 24 10:57 That is why scientists say proof is for mathematics and alcohol. For what we think we know there are alternate explanations. Granted, the primary theories ARE really good. Most science is ruling out effects. |
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This thread is about: Maybe I shouldn't laugh- maybe I should weep that the process of natural selection have not yet eliminated this person from the gene pool; maybe it is a travesty that this person could still contribute genetic material to the human race. Because it is such a sad, sad little man that is trying so extremely hard to convince himself and real scientists about what the truth is. Aw shame! |
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Bob Why are you guys still wasting your time playing chess with a pigeon? The man is ignorant, arrogant, judgmental, and an a self-righteous ass unable to learn or grow. Seriously. |
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Mapping a fly’s brain This is really interesting!! How to Map a Fly Brain in 20 Million Easy Steps An enormous new analysis of the wiring of the fruit fly brain is a milestone for the young field of modern connectomics, scientists say. Oct. 26, 2021 The brain of a fruit fly is the size of a poppy seed and about as easy to overlook. “Most people, I think, don’t even think of the fly as having a brain,” said Vivek Jayaraman, a neuroscientist at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia. “But, of course, flies lead quite rich lives.” Flies are capable of sophisticated behaviors, including navigating diverse landscapes, tussling with rivals and serenading potential mates. And their speck-size brains are tremendously complex, containing some 100,000 neurons and tens of millions of connections, or synapses, between them. Since 2014, a team of scientists at Janelia, in collaboration with researchers at Google, have been mapping these neurons and synapses in an effort to create a comprehensive wiring diagram, also known as a connectome, of the fruit fly brain. The work, which is continuing, is time-consuming and expensive, even with the help of state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms. But the data they have released so far is stunning in its detail, composing an atlas of tens of thousands of gnarled neurons in many crucial areas of the fly brain. And now, in an enormous new paper, being published on Tuesday in the journal eLife, neuroscientists are beginning to show what they can do with it. By analyzing the connectome of just a small part of the fly brain — the central complex, which plays an important role in navigation — Dr. Jayaraman and his colleagues identified dozens of new neuron types and pinpointed neural circuits that appear to help flies make their way through the world. The work could ultimately help provide insight into how all kinds of animal brains, including our own, process a flood of sensory information and translate it into appropriate action. It is also a proof of principle for the young field of modern connectomics, which was built on the promise that constructing detailed diagrams of the brain’s wiring would pay scientific dividends. “It’s really extraordinary,” Dr. Clay Reid, a senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, said of the new paper. “I think anyone who looks at it will say connectomics is a tool that we need in neuroscience — full stop.” Electron microscope imagery of fly neurons. Computer algorithms were used to pinpoint where individual neurons connect, then researchers checked the computer’s work and filled in missing pieces. Electron microscope imagery of fly neurons. Computer algorithms were used to pinpoint where individual neurons connect, then researchers checked the computer’s work and filled in missing pieces.Matt Staley, Janelia Research Campus ‘Your fly brain is cooked’ The only complete connectome in the animal kingdom belongs to the humble roundworm, C. elegans. The pioneering biologist Sydney Brenner, who would later go on to win a Nobel Prize, started the project in the 1960s. His small team spent years on it, using colored pens to trace all 302 neurons by hand. “Brenner realized that to understand the nervous system you had to know its structure,” said Scott Emmons, a neuroscientist and geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who later used digital techniques to create new C. elegans connectomes. “And that’s true across biology. Structure is so important.” Brenner and his colleagues published their landmark paper, which clocked in at 340 pages, in 1986. But the field of modern connectomics did not take off until the 2000s, when advances in imaging and computing finally made it feasible to map the connections in larger brains. In recent years, research teams around the world have started assembling connectomes of zebrafish, songbirds, mice, humans and more. When the Janelia Research Campus opened in 2006, Gerald Rubin, its founding director, set his sights on the fruit fly. “I don’t want to offend any of my worm colleagues, but I think flies are the simplest brain that actually does interesting, complex behavior,” Dr. Rubin said. Several different teams at Janelia have embarked on fly connectome projects in the years since, but the work that led to the new paper began in 2014, with the brain of a single, five-day-old female fruit fly. Researchers cut the fly brain into slabs and then used a technique known as focused-ion beam scanning electron microscopy to image them, layer by painstaking layer. The microscope essentially functioned like a very tiny, very precise nail file, filing away an exceedingly thin layer of the brain, snapping a picture of the exposed tissue and then repeating the process until nothing remained. Video player loading Researchers cut a fly brain into exceptionally thin slabs, imaged each with an electron microscope, then stitched the images together to allow scientists to trace each neuron’s path through the brain.FlyEM/Janelia Research Campus “You’re simultaneously imaging and cutting off little slices of the fly brain, so they don’t exist after you’re done,” Dr. Jayaraman said. “So if you screw something up, you’re done. Your goose is cooked — or your fly brain is cooked.” The team then used computer vision software to stitch the millions of resulting images back together into a single, three-dimensional volume and sent it off to Google. There, researchers used advanced machine-learning algorithms to identify each individual neuron and trace its twisting branches. Finally, the Janelia team used additional computational tools to pinpoint the synapses, and human researchers proofread the computers’ work, correcting errors and refining the wiring diagrams. Last year, the researchers published the connectome for what they called the “hemibrain,” a large portion of the central fly brain, which includes regions and structures that are crucial for sleep, learning and navigation. The connectome, which is accessible free online, includes about 25,000 neurons and 20 million synapses, far more than the C. elegans connectome. “It’s a dramatic scaling up,” said Cori Bargmann, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York. “This is a tremendous step toward the goal of working out the connectivity of the brain.” Welcome to orientation A population of neurons that is responsible for updating the fly’s internal compass.FlyEM/Janelia Research Campus Once the hemibrain connectome was ready, Dr. Jayaraman, an expert on the neuroscience of fly navigation, was eager to dive into the data on the central complex. The brain region, which contains nearly 3,000 neurons and is present in all insects, helps flies build an internal model of their spatial relationship to the world and then select and execute behaviors appropriate for their circumstances, such as searching for food when they are hungry. “You’re telling me you can give me the wiring diagram for something like this?” Dr. Jayaraman said. “This is better industrial espionage than you could get by getting insights into the Apple iPhone.” He and his colleagues pored over the connectome data, studying how the region’s neural circuits were put together. For instance, Hannah Haberkern, a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Jayaraman’s lab, analyzed the neurons that send sensory information to the ellipsoid body, a doughnut-shape structure that acts as the fly’s internal compass. Dr. Haberkern found that neurons that are known to transmit information about the polarization of light — a global environmental cue that many animals use for navigation — made more connections to the compass neurons than did neurons that transmit information about other visual features and landmarks. The neurons dedicated to polarization of light also connect to — and are capable of strongly inhibiting — brain cells that provide information about other navigational cues. The researchers hypothesize that fly brains may be wired to prioritize information about the global environment when they are navigating — but also that these circuits are flexible, so that when such information is inadequate, they can pay more attention to local features of the landscape. “They have all these fallback strategies,” Dr. Haberkern said. Fruit fly phone home Other members of the research team identified specific neural pathways that seem well suited to helping the fly keep track of its head and body orientation, anticipate its future orientation and traveling direction, calculate its current orientation relative to another desired location and then move in that direction. Imagine, for instance, that a hungry fly temporarily abandons a rotting banana to see whether it can rustle up something better. But after a (literally) fruitless few minutes of exploration, it wants to return to its previous meal. The connectome data suggests that certain brain cells, technically known as PFL3 neurons, help the fly pull off this maneuver. These neurons receive two critical inputs: They get signals from neurons that track the direction the fly is facing as well as from neurons that may be keeping tabs on the direction of the banana. After receiving those signals, the PFL3 neurons then send out their own message to a set of turning neurons that prompt the fly to veer off in the correct direction. Dinner is served, again. Video player loading Compass neurons, which help flies stay oriented, are part of a neural pathway that may help modulate the insects’ turning actions.FlyEM/Janelia Research Campus “Being able to trace that activity through that circuit — from sensory back to motor through this complex intermediate circuit — is really amazing,” said Brad Hulse, a research scientist in Dr. Jayaraman’s lab who led this part of the analysis. The connectome, he added, “showed us a lot more than we thought it was going to.” And the group’s paper — a draft of which includes 75 figures and stretches to 360 pages — is just the beginning. “It just really provides this ground truth for exploring this brain region further,” said Stanley Heinze, an expert on insect neuroscience at Lund University in Sweden. “It’s just enormously impressive.” And just plain enormous. “I wouldn’t really treat it as a paper but more as a book,” Dr. Heinze said. In fact, the paper is so large that the preprint server bioRxiv initially declined to publish it, perhaps because the administrators — understandably — thought it actually was a book, Dr. Jayaraman said. (The server ultimately did post the study, after a few extra days of processing, he noted.) The paper’s publication in the journal eLife “required some special permissions and back-and-forth with editorial staff,” Dr. Jayaraman added. Fly-ing lessons There are limitations to what a snapshot of a single brain at a single moment in time can reveal, and connectomes do not capture everything of interest in an animal brain. (Janelia’s hemibrain connectome omits glial cells, for instance, which perform all sorts of important tasks in the brain.) Dr. Jayaraman and his colleagues stressed that they would not have been able to infer so much from the connectome if not for decades of prior research, by many other scientists, into fruit fly behavior and basic neuron physiology and function, as well as theoretical neuroscience work. But the wiring diagrams can help researchers investigate existing theories and generate better hypotheses, figuring out what questions to ask and which experiments to conduct. “Most people, I think, don’t even think of the fly as having a brain,” said Vivek Jayaraman, a neuroscientist at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia. “But, of course, flies lead quite rich lives.”Peter Yeeles/Alamy “Now what we’re really excited about is taking those ideas that the connectome inspired and going back to the microscope, going back to our electrodes and actually recording the brain and seeing if those ideas are true,” Dr. Hulse said. Of course, one could — and some have — asked why a fruit fly’s brain circuitry matters. “I get asked this at the holidays a lot,” Dr. Hulse said. Flies are not mice or chimps or humans, but their brains perform some of the same basic tasks. Understanding the basic neural circuitry in an insect could provide important clues to how other animal brains approach similar problems, said David Van Essen, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis. Gaining a deep understanding of the fly’s brain “also gives us insights that are very relevant to the understanding of mammalian, and even human, brains and behavior,” he said. Creating connectomes of larger, more complex brains will be enormously challenging. The mouse brain contains roughly 70 million neurons, the human brain a whopping 86 billion. But the central complex paper is decidedly not a one-off; detailed studies of regional mouse and human connectomes are currently in the pipeline, Dr. Reid said: “There’s a lot more to come.” Journal editors, consider yourselves warned. |
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stalhandske 27-Oct-21, 07:30 |
Zorro |
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Stal |
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stalhandske 27-Oct-21, 08:04 |
Zorro <So you have no thoughts about the articles I posted that dispute your false assertion that the “basic biochemistry and biophysics of humans and apes” are “basically exactly the same?” This is the little trick you so often perform when a discussion isn’t going your way.> How full of hatred is this (and the rest of his post)? And how much does it deny known facts? Why would I need to repeat the obvious facts here when they can be found in any schoolboy's biology book? Of course, he refutes the information in those books in his deep wisdom. I don't need any 'tricks' and the 'discussion' isn't going in any way or direction - certainly not in mine; that is true. |
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Playing chess with a pigeon |
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zorroloco 27-Oct-21, 12:04 |
Deleted by zorroloco on 27-Oct-21, 12:04.
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zorroloco 27-Oct-21, 12:07 |
Deleted by zorroloco on 27-Oct-21, 12:08.
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Bob My thinking is that it might be a cool thread, Mate. |
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