Evolutionary hubris?

[Relayer]

Allow me to try and find some........and I wont go into a lot of esoteric discussion.

The Law of Gravity is an attempt to define the movement of a mass. There is the well known Newtons Law of Gravity which can be said to be restricted to the sphere of the earth. Then there is the equally well known revised Law of Gravity by Einstein, which is based on his work, A Theory of Relativity. Einstein takes Newtons work and extends it into another environment (call it outerspace), where he observed the action of light on gravity, resulting in a few differences that the Newtonian perspective was not able to account for. These are not the only theories ever put forward.

Now I dont agree with everything that Cup of ruin has said, but I do agree with his statement that these things are all theories. They are not 100% proven facts. They are what has been generally accepted in the study of science.

And I would hope this provides more clarity......I think that what you are asking....What is gravity?......is very different from.....What is the Law of Gravity. Neither Newton or Einstein attempt to say what gravity is. They do try to explain how gravity acts. So from my point of view the discussion has gone pretty much in the wrong direction.


So I would ask this question again of everyone.......

What is gravity?


And I do agree with hippiebrian, that this needs to be discussed in such a way that esoterics be eliminated as much as possible. I would only include theoretical concepts when found admissible by those in the discussion group.

[Cup-of-Ruin]

Originally Posted by Relayer

Allow me to try and find some........and I wont go into a lot of esoteric discussion.

The Law of Gravity is an attempt to define the movement of a mass. There is the well known Newtons Law of Gravity which can be said to be restricted to the sphere of the earth. Then there is the equally well known revised Law of Gravity by Einstein, which is based on his work, A Theory of Relativity. Einstein takes Newtons work and extends it into another environment (call it outerspace), where he observed the action of light on gravity, resulting in a few differences that the Newtonian perspective was not able to account for. pted. These are not the only theories every put forward.

Now I dont agree with everything that Cup of ruin has said, but I do agree with his statement that these things are all theories. They are not 100% proven facts. They are what has been generally accepted in the study of science.

And I would hope this provides more clarity......I think that what you are asking....What is gravity?......is very different from.....What is the Law of Gravity. Neither Newton or Einstein attempt to say what gravity is. They do try to explain how gravity acts. So from my point of view the discussion has gone pretty much in the wrong direction.


So I would ask this question again of everyone.......

What is gravity?


And I do agree with hippiebrian, that this needs to be discussed in such a way that esoterics be eliminated as much as possible. I would only include theoretical concepts when found admissible by those in the discussion group.

Well what we witness with such phenomena as the moon revolving around the earth or Hippiebrian's bum not floating off his chair is said to be caused, if we were to apply the universal theory of gravity, by difference of mass of the objects it is said that objects move towards each other, the larger mass object attracts the object of lesser mass. And this lends weight to the objects themselves. This theory is a very poor inadequate one especially when having to explain orbits, in the Newtonian sense, so it was necessary to revise and update the theory with Einsteinian physics to the satisfaction of the scientific establishment it was decided that Newtons theory worked if we imagined space like a sheet of rubber and the mass of an object causing a dent in the space rubber sheet - curving both space and time, then this could then theoreically account for the balanced orderly orbit of one mass object around another!!!!

And basically that is the most ridiculous concept to attempt to explain the attraction of objects, firstly just to put it down to how big they are (Do small birds revolve around large trees?), rather simplistic, but when that fails, just assume that mass is not only exerting a force (proven to be a very weak one) that causes weight and attraction and balanced orbit, but is also curving and bending space and time itself?????

LOL, anything else? oh yea and causes apples to fall on Newton's head! They're joking.

It's like the analogy of Plato's Cave, it's better to feed a slave disinformation and have them accustomed to it by ritual, if they escape they will be scared of the truth and run back to the familar cave environment of lies.

[UmassSteve]

Some fact checking first...

Originally Posted by JojoJaro

Actually, it has been found that antibiotic resistance was conferred by the expression of a single gene, not by the creation of a new gene from mutation. The important thing to remember is that that gene was already in the DNA as part of its structure. It expressed its purpose when needed by some DNA mechanism which we do not know yet. It is vitally important to realize that that bacteria gained resistance not because of some mutation to create a new gene that conferred resistance, but rather by the turning on of what the bacteria already had. And once, it was no longer needed, guess what, the bacteria turned off that gene and the succeeding generations became susceptible again. There was no permanent change. The change only persisted as long as the stressor existed. There was no evolution, only adaptation - no macroevolution, only microevolution.

This is not true in the majority of cases. Rifampin resistance, for instance, there just needs to be one single nucleotide switch in a long stretch of DNA encoding for ribosomal RNA for rifampin resistance to occur. In some cases the bacterium might have a second copy of the resistance-encoding gene, its true. But in almost all laboratory cases, mutation IS the cause of this antibiotic resistance. There are numerous papers and experiments detailing this. There are also dozens of other cases I can draw on to show this. Your statement can be true for some specific cases of resistance, but it is definitely not the normal method. Mutation as the basis for change in bacteria resistance can be shown and proven time and again for many organisms and for many antibiotics. Rifampin, several mechanisms of penicillin or ampicillin resistance (not including beta-lactam degradation methods) quinolone resistance, etc.

Originally Posted by JojoJaro

yes, this mechanism is microevolution only if indeed Chimps and Humans have the "same" DNA. But in fact they have vastly different DNA. You may have heard that Chimps and Human are only 4% different in their DNA. What they don't tell you is this 4% is only the difference for the sections of the DNA the encodes into proteins. In other words, vast sections of the non-encoding DNA are different between humans and chimps. Many people think that non-encoding DNA are 'junk' - evolutionary leftovers. But, recent discoveries have cast significant doubt on that view. "Junk" DNA is not junk. Significant portions of it have been found to have regulatory functions, control functions, structural functions and others. This non-encoding section is what is believed to be the sections that contain information on how genes express or hide themselves, on how proteins fold, on how replication works and on error correction, and on maintaining the structure of DNA. There is so much we don't know, but it is becoming increasing clear that DNA can not evolve according to the mechanisms of Darwinian Evolution theory.

Fair enough, there are a lot more differences between human and chimp DNA than we're led to believe. However, that's actually only more fodder for my macroevolution argument. The more difference in the DNA between human and chimps, the more likely it is that macroevolutionary events were behind the slow divergence between humans and chimps from their common ancestor. Some of those macroevolutionary events were changes to protein coding DNA to give slightly different forms of proteins. Some of those events were in noncoding DNA which then affected which portions of the coding DNA are expressed.

[My Pants Are Cold]

Originally Posted by Cup-of-Ruin

It's like the analogy of Plato's Cave, it's better to feed a slave disinformation and have them accustomed to it by ritual, if they escape they will be scared of the truth and run back to the familar cave environment of lies.

So what you are saying is that you found truth so frightening that you were scared back to the familiar cave of religion?



[quote=Cup-of-Ruin;76022]

It make no difference to my scientific knowledge, but to answer your question, I have, I attended the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and am a building designer and engineer by profession. I was an atheist for most of my life and have researched many scientific theories.

[Cup-of-Ruin]

Originally Posted by My Pants Are Cold

So what you are saying is that you found truth so frightening that you were scared back to the familiar cave of religion?

LOL, no the cave is secular, outside is God, God has all the truth, dont you know that?

[Katwoman]

Originally Posted by Cup-of-Ruin

It's like the analogy of Plato's Cave, it's better to feed a slave disinformation and have them accustomed to it by ritual, if they escape they will be scared of the truth and run back to the familar cave environment of lies.
So what you are saying is that you found truth so frightening that you were scared back to the familiar cave of religion?


It make no difference to my scientific knowledge, but to answer your question, I have, I attended the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and am a building designer and engineer by profession. I was an atheist for most of my life and have researched many scientific theories.

Originally Posted by My Pants Are Cold

So what you are saying is that you found truth so frightening that you were scared back to the familiar cave of religion?

Cute but the sad truth is that at the end of the civil war when the slaves were freed many were so scared at the thought of being responsible for themselves ina world they knew little about that they asked their former masters to let them stay even if it meant continuing to be slaves. This is the sad truth of dependency.......it gets harder to let go the longer and more accustomed to being dependent you become.

[Nehpets]

Before I attempt to explain gravity let me unexplain things you may think you know that you do not.
I do not say this in a snide or demeaning way because much of science is intentionally misrepresented by those who Prophet (pun intended) from that misunderstanding.
The word Theory has many different meanings. One meaning of the word theory has to do with the idea of speculation or guessing how something works, this is well understood by the general public. Another meaning of the word theory is a generally accepted principal used to explain something, this is the meaning of the word as used by scientists.
A great deal of confusion results in the use of this word because we can see that they share a premise but the subtleties can be quite profound.
If I were to say that according to the theory of light, light is composed of particles called Photons. I am really saying “ no knowledge is perfect “ we are currently accepting that light is composed of these particles and we presently have done experiments that suggest that these particles have such and such characteristics. Mathematics is used to “model” these characteristics and as we do more experiments we refine these characteristics and mathematics. We adopt this model and with the passage of time gain increased confidence that there will not be conditions or situations where the model does not accurately represent new discoveries and new experiments. We accept that this model is not perfect, We accept that this model may be proven incorrect in the future. In fact we are wrong all the time. The original model of the atom said that the atom was like raisin pudding in that it had stuff with bits of other stuff mixed in, this turned out to be incorrect and we went to the model which was like the sun with the planets going around the sun. This model was better but still had problems with experiments and the testing with math. Then we went to the orbital model which explained things a bit better and was very useful in chemistry but it still had problems and we went to the model of quarks and leptons and particles that make up the atoms parts. Each model more is more refined and useful in predicting future observations and experiments. Let me clarify something here many scientist and non scientists do not understand at no time do I ever say, there are little suns with little planets revolving around them. I only say that this was at one time a useful model to help us go th the next step of making a better model.
We are using ideas like scaffolding to support us and help us build ever more useful models.
So you see when Scientists' refer to a theory they may be referring to something that has been rigidly tested, that has passed the scrutiny of thousands of experiments and decades of the best minds trying to become famous by disproving it. Could the Theory prove to be wrong ? Absolutely, but it certainly is much more credibility and reliability then some wild guess or speculation.
Now the theory of Gravity. Initial theory was that things have their own place which they belong and want to go there, this was disproven and discredited. Then heavier things fell faster than light things. This had it problems and was replaced by Newtons laws and equations that worked quite well for many centuries then it had its problems. In the last century we have Einstein and Quantum theories that replaced Newtons, complete with experiments that demonstrated how that light seems to be bent by gravity. The current theory is that there is no force at a distance at all, that space itself is bent by the mass of an object and that the objects that seem to be attracted to the mass are actually moving in a strait line and it is simply the bent space they are going through which describes their motion. Could this be wrong ? Certainly, and this theory could be discarded for one that explains what we see even more accurately.
If you think a theory is wrong, you are free to prove it wrong, In fact it will make you rich and famous to disprove a well established theory, but when you say that something is only a theory in a derogatory sense you are demonstrating that you do not understand the meaning of the word in the sense that it is used by Scientists.
In the theory of evolution for example. If you feel that the theory is incorrect, state your objection to why the Theory is incorrect. What factors you find that compel you to have no confidence in it. To simply say that it is only a theory makes you sound like some itinerant hayseed preacher.
“ Alles Ahil Moloch “