>> ^iotic:
Charles Darwin is considered a genius because he was (largely) responsible for an enormous shift in the way intelligent people view the world.


Exactly demonstrating how I would define a genius: someone who has altered our understanding of reality based simply off of the ideas they presented.

I guess this guy is trying, but the things he lists in this documentary seem somewhat elementary....

Frankly, what a dick. Charles Darwin is considered a genius because he was (largely) responsible for an enormous shift in the way intelligent people view the world. Not because he answered some puzzles made to entice people with more money than sense into parting with their cash in exchange for being considered clever.

>> ^entr0py:
So that gives me hope that the infantilized midget rape barrier will be cracked some day.


You just can't avoid taking a quote like that out of context. I just wish Charles Darwin had said it, it would make the creationists much funnier.

>> ^braindonut:
Hehehe, I wonder if this means it will have a diff name when it shows up in America: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974014/releaseinfo

I personally hope they go with "Untitled Charles Darwin Project"

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I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere, This find has now almost been ruined by the overenthusiastic discoverers. Yes its a beautifully preserved fossil, yes it's plausible that its an early primate, yes, its an important find that helps us understand evolution better.

But this is NOT "the missing link" and its NOT "The link" These are simplistic slogans design to spark the interest of the public, but that ends up being a severe dumbing down of the subject, and in the end just make it easier to misunderstand evolution, and thus give creationists an easier time.

The term "missing link" is not only an irrelevant and outdated term from the time Darwin first discovered evolution by natural selection, but it even refers to a completely different transition, and thus a different era in evolution.

When Charles Darwin wrote "The Descent Of Man" he basically described what he had left out of "Origin": Humans and their role in evolution. Darwin used comparative anatomy and geographic distribution and other things to support the idea that we evolved from ancestors that we share with other apes. The idea was that, some time ago, our ancestors would look much more "ape-like" to us. They'd probably look alot like chimps to us, though, of course they wouldnt BE chimps, but the ancestor of chimps as well as our ancestors.

Earlier ancestors again would look more like monkeys to us, like "Ida", and even earlier ones would look lemur-like and so on.

The point is, that even tho the evidence Darwin had was very good, we hadnt actually found the "half-human" fossils just yet, the kind that might or might not be bi-pedal, that had bigger brains than chimps, but smaller brains than us, the kind that had more hair than us, but less than other apes, and so on, it is this transition, "from ape to man*" that is meant by a "missing link"

Today we have found many of these "missing links" and its obvious to scientists, as it probably was to Darwin as well, that there is no "one missing link" but a scattered mess of our ancestors relatives, that are more often than not cousins of the "human line" in the tree of life.

Ida is one of many "links" but she's much further back in time, she's probably quite closely related to the ancestor of ALL primates, not just humans, and that's in many respects just as exciting as later, hominid (big brain, bipedal, hairless) evolution, some would say even more exciting, but these simplistic terms does not make it more exciting, just dumber.

>> ^Fusionaut:
History of the universe:
.... nothing...BLAAAAM!!! PROTONS NUETRONS PROTONS NUETRONS ELECTRONS

.. that's pretty close from what I've read



Let me put it like this: I understand your concern.

The central point, which was the point of my earlier post, is the fact that, however unlikely, outlandish and ridiculous this all sounds, it is based upon, as far as ANY human being can tell, irrefutable evidence, and lots of it.

A famous example, and a favorite quote-mine among creationists is this sentence from Charles Darwin:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

What creationists always omit, of course, is that this sentence is a build-up and an introduction to an explanation of exactly HOW the eye COULD in fact have evolved by natural selection, an explanation that has, in large part, been confirmed by tests and evidence later.

Anyway, the point is this: I could admit, as Darwin partially did, that the ENTIRE theory of evolution, the thesis that every single animal has evolved from a 3 billion old ancestor and thus ALL life, from banana to bacteria to bonobo and even human, has evolved all from a common ancestor, seems freely to be ABSURD IN THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE DEGREE.

So why do I still accept it?

Because of the evidence. The evidence shows, with crystal clear precision, just like it shows that atoms are real, or that bacteria cause disease, that evolution happened, and that, in the grand scheme of things, we humans are more or less closely related to every living thing ever examined.

And this is also the case for the theories about "nothing...BLAAAAM!!! PROTONS NUETRONS PROTONS.........." Its not that scientists really want it to be this way, or that they have some "something out of nothing" fetish, this is what the EVIDENCE tells us. There simply is nothing in that evidence about a guide or god of any kind, and even if there was, we would have an entirely new, even bigger problem to begin with.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'genetics, evolution, DNA, PBS, science' to 'genetics, evolution, DNA, Charlie Rose, Charles, Darwin, James Watson, Edward Wilson' - edited by mauz15

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dawkins, darwin, science' to 'Richard Dawkins, Charles, Darwin, science, existence, evolution' - edited by mauz15

>> ^obscenesimian
Atomic weight (200.59) should be sufficient to tell you that the density of mercury vapor is much greater than that of nitrogen and oxygen, the largest components of air. If the vapors in the video http://www.videograter.com/video/Mercury-vapor-from-dental-fillings were mercury, the vapors should be falling not rising.
Do you need more details?


^Obscenesimian, You're absolutely right.

The air at surface of the Earth is always the coldest, because warm air rises and cold air falls, so no warmth would ever stay close to ground where people live. These currents of air are NEVER able to push or pull ANYTHING along with them, not newspapers, kites, hang-gliders, and ESPECIALLY not other diffused particulate matter, such as vapors or fumes. Wind is just your imagination playing tricks on you half the time, and the other half it is Angels playing tricks on you. Toxic vapors and fumes are never a problem for us humans because the molecules that make up paint, gasoline and ESPECIALLY mercury are ALL heavier then nitrogen, oxygen and all the rest the components of the atmosphere which are always arranged in layers from heaviest to lightest particles and never mix. This is why smoke and ash always fall away from combustion sources and never rises. It is simply not plausible why these different particles would ever WANT to mix, and so they NEVER do. DIFFUSION is a myth created by Adolf Fick in 1855 to confuse good Christians into believing his friend, Charles Darwin's hoax of evolution, published four years later.

Do you need more details?

This must be Turkey's most famous scholar, who I've been hearing so much about.

As scientists around the world celebrate the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's seminal work on evolution, Adnan Oktar, a college dropout turned theorist of Islamic creationism, is working on the fifth volume of a 14-part masterwork that he says will bury Darwinism once and for all.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123724852205449221.html

For those interested, here is the whole documentary:

http://www.videosift.com/video/David-Attenborough-Charles-Darwin-and-the-Tree-of-Life

Because the religions of a society tend to be reflected in the policies made within governments. Or in other words, your religion effects me, so I care about what you believe because I dont want it to.

I live in Indiana and I cant buy any alcohol on Sundays. Not that big of a deal but, the mindset that went into that decision was a religious one. Why then, should I have to deal with that law?

Why should homosexuals be deprived of the right to marry because of one obscure verse in the bible? Our constitution invokes freedom of religion and no one is saying these homosexual ppl should be allowed to be married in a church, forcing the religion to change, just the laws involved.

1/2 of a male couple involved in some kind of emergency wouldnt be able to visit with the other half in a hospital because the rules are that only immediate family can visit. They cant even get a discount on car insurance for their partnership. The law is preventing them from doing that and religion plays a major role in that. THAT is why it is so important to people like us who have absolutely no stake in god.

Your a devout catholic you say, how would you feel if you were forced to take unpaid days off of work for Hanukkah(the way some atheists like myself feel for being forced to take off christmas) Why should I be forced to celebrate your holiday when I would like the day off of work for Charles Darwin's birthday?
Do you see what I'm saying.

Freedom of religion makes the US by law a secular society yet judaio christian ideas are invasive and perverting our government into something other than what the founding fathers intended. I dont want to be forced to believe something I dont, and I'm happy that I live in a country that supports my freedom in that regard, for now.

In reply to this comment by Dignant_Pink:
i'm a devout catholic. i believe in god and his son jesus. i believe that everything that happens, good or bad, is, to quote the joker, "all part of the plan." i dont presume to know that plan, but i believe there is one.

and yet i upvoted. why? because it's funny. too many times, atheists (and i'm not saying all atheists. i'm not bigoted.) expect us to respect them while at the same time, insulting our religion. (yes i realize that catholics do this too, but not all of us. thats the same problem) none of them seem to realize that religion is just one of someone's defining characteristics. god i'm sick of the God/no God debate. why can't people believe what they want?

>> ^Haldaug:
OK, English is not my first language. I simply had to do a follow-through on that one and check out http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=follow+through
At first I thought westy's comment was just a typical westy-comment, bereft of meaning, spelling, syntax and punctuation, but he actually followed through on that one.
Kudos to mrk871 for spilling the beans to me and making me see what I really meant to say.


I think it's OK to say "follow through with x" to express what you intended, but just "follow through" seems to sound more like the other meaning, although other people may differ in how they interpret it. Btw, by no means was my post a sarcastic dig at your language skills or a simple "Ha ha, you made a mistake". I just found the 2nd meaning amusing.