>> ^MINK:

"evolution is the explanation for our existence"
HOW? explain to me how evolution is the explanation for our existence you pompous twat. I watched loads of your videos and all you can prove is that we evolved. From WHAT motherfucker?


apes. or much earlier : a bacteria-like lifeform.
before that?
nucleic acids.
before that?
molecules, many of which that came about from the death of massive stars.
before that?
the big bang.
what caused that?
probabilities.
dawkin's doesn't need to use anthropic/philosophical reasoning though, he uses scientific FACTS for his arguments. which is why everyone fails if they disagree with him - because he's right.

sure... and I was trying to clarify the point that evolution is not a 'belief', it is a 'scientific theory' that explains how the plethora of lifeforms on this planet has come about.

I make this point not to be a dick, but because its an important point to be made; evolution is exactly analogous to every other scientific theory. What does that mean? ...We will never, ever know everything about the universe, so scientists will always, always say the 'theory of evolution' and the 'theory of gravity' and the 'theory of atomic structure', meaning that contradictory and clarifying evidence should always be sought out to form a better explanation...

Evolution is the best we've got; it explains things that have happened and predicts new things we're still finding (in molecular biology, for example). It is a valuable tool in understanding where WE as animals came from, and what 'life' is. And thats all it is... the sum of our rational understanding of life.

What kind of things don't we understand about life? Well nobody (in science) has quite figured out how life got here on Earth, but it stands to reason that if the development of new lifeforms from other lifeforms over time doesn't necessitate a creator than maybe we can keep pushing back the curtain and see that the first exceedingly simple bit of amino acids with a layer of bubbles around it that replicated and divided into more bubbles with more organized amino acids (or whatever) didn't need a creator... but this is well beyond the current theory of evolution.


In reply to this comment by Quboid:
I seemed to spark off something in the thread too and I've clarified and apologised for my misleading comment. As I said in that thread, I do believe in evolution, I just also believe we don't know all that much about the universe yet.


In reply to this comment by bamdrew:
I'm not going to go into it, but towards your second point... to understand what has come before you, design your own investigation/experiment and gather evidence to test assumptions made on previous findings. This is all that Darwin did, this is all that Einstein did, this is all the Newton did. If you drag yourself through Darwin's wikipedia post, for instance, you'll see that the idea of evolution was around for a long time, and all he did was take a few disparate sources like Malthus' book on populations and his own finding of how species are similar to neighboring species in different parts of the world (but different from animals in the same climates in other parts of the world) and figured out a simple method for evolution... 'natural selection'.

Since the time Darwin and Alfred Wallace were around there have been incredible modifications to the story, but 'evolution by natural selection' is still the foundation for all of biology. Not only is it still the foundation, our understandings based on evolution are actively used predictively in research to form hypotheses, design experiments, and even predict things like the development of bacterial and viral strains.

>> ^T-man:
Why the hell did they remake this movie. Gene Wilder is Willie Wonka. He has that devilish quality but he also has that twinkle in his eye that was missing with Johnny Depp.
[And Tim Burton is grossly over-rated as a director.]


I half agree.

The 1971 musical Willie Wonka movie was best. However, I like both Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp's approach. It's sorta like choosing your favorite Bond or Dr. Who. Preference, of course, is Wilder, but I think Depp -- it's been a while (like 15 years) since I read the series -- I think Depp was truer to the original books.

Also, I think Burton is fantastic. Sure, maybe (maybe!) a little over-rated, but not too many directors make the kinds of movies he makes; so there's a little reasoning for why he *may* be over-rated.

Personally, I think carbon-based lifeforms are over-rated.

I look at the scale of this thing and think : what if they run the first experiments, discover something unexpected and say "We need one just a little bit bigger."?

I'm also struck by the though : What if ever 15B years or so some life form builds one of these, miscalculates the consequences, and big-bangs themselves out of existence, only to be replaced by lifeforms doing the same thing the next time the universe cools?

After wiring our planet to self destruct it would be a bit of a lark to take the whole cosmos with us while we are peacefully cooperating in the search for knowledge.

:0
it's a highly-intelligent carbon-based lifeform

The piano gets a bit on my nerves, the soundtrack is too piano-dense sometimes and some of the melodies are overrepeated.

1981 - 1985 - Work progresses on the 'Portal' project. Several high ranking Fatah personnel choke to death on lamb chunks despite the intervention of their bodyguards.

1986 - Word reaches Aperture management that another defense contractor called Black Mesa is working on a similar portal technology. In response to this news, Aperture begins developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system.

1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.

Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.

In many ways, the initial test goes well...

[END]

Siftbot does not answer to you meat bag, you are but bytes of meaningless data compared to the omnipotence of this higher lifeform.

God made people as the pinnacle of his creative efforts and gave them the ability to love. With love comes free will (because without the ability to choose, it really isn't love). People used their free will to essentially say "Fuck you God, we don't need to follow your rules and we're doing things our own way." Selfishness has since worked its way through the ages and the consequences have followed

Funniest statements ever. Talk about dogma. Certainly a human cannot be the "best" an omnipotent deity can come up with!? Hell, humans have almost engineered better and more advanced technologies and lifeforms, hell even human body parts. So, your God is a half-wit if you think Human biology is the pinnacle of God's efforts.

What the fuck is this "with love comes free will"?! YOu sound like Stan Lee or some crap. Does your dog have the ability to choose? Do you still love your dog. Can your dog choose to go outside whenever, and eat whatever it wants? Humans are not saying f-you to fictional invisible man in the sky. You are selfish and half-witted to view religion like this. That is your dogma.

ShakaUVM- i think the principle you're reaching for, the one you've almost but not quite grasped hold of, is what is referred to as natural selection. Not ID. Once you have genes that replicate, the "goal" is to have genes that replicate better.

Fortunately for us, one of the best ways for genes is to encode information about their surroundings. The better an organism fits in its surroundings, the better its chances of passing on its genes. The god, or designer you're looking for is simulacra, or information-encoding. Starting with the beginning of life, the story of this planet has been the accumulation of information- the creation of more and more specific models of the "real world". A polar bear is white because he lives in a white landscape and can hunt better, giraffes have long necks to reach tall leaves, etc etc etc.

The rate of acceleration has increased even further as one species has learned how to encode information in non-dna form- by building tools, and eventually specifically through spoken and written language, religions, etc- and finally the scientific method.

We are witnessing the end of the era of dna dominated information encoding. So far our technology has a better QUALITY of information about the universe than is encoded in the DNA of the species of the earth, but a much lower quantity. This will change dramatically in our lifetimes.

So yes, there is a "force". The force is natural, not supernatural. And it drives the processes that we think of as human endeavor, but are really just continuation of the progress that began when the first strand of RNA drove the synthesis of the first enzymes that made the first protein in the first lifeform on our planet.

Ergo Proxy is a science fiction suspense anime television series directed by Shukou Murase, with screenplay by Dai Sato et al. This is the opening that starts off the show from episode 3, the song is "Kiri" by Monoral. Ergo Proxy features a combination of 2D digital cell animation, 3D computer modeling and digital special effects. The series has some cyber punk elements.

The story initially takes place in a futuristic dome city called Romdo, built to protect its citizens after global environmental apocalypse. In this utopia, humans and androids (AutoRevs) coexist with each other peacefully under a total management system. A series of murders committed by berserk robots infected with the Cogito Virus are starting to jeopardize the delicate balance of the social order. Behind the scenes, the government is conducting secret experiments on a mysterious humanoid lifeform called Proxy, which is believed to hold the key to the survival of mankind.

In an interview, Dai Sato describes his latest project.

"It is set in the future. A group of robots become infected with something called the Cogito virus, and become aware of their own existence. So these robots, which had been tools of humans, decide to go on an adventure to search for themselves. They have to decide whether the virus that infected them created their identity, or whether they gained their identity through their travels. This question is meant to represent our own debate over whether we become who we are because of our environment, or because of things that are inherent in us. The robots are all named after philosophers: Derrida and Lacan and Husserl."

It's not licensed yet so you're allowed to watch it online on various streaming websites. You can catch the first episode on Youtube. Be warned it will be pulled eventually.

<ahref="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FzzZUQuGI8">Ergo Proxy - Pulse of Awakening/awakening 01

I found this to be a very cool and cerebral anime series.

- More @ <ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_Proxy">Wikipedia

Tags changed from "music video" to "evolution,higher lifeform,oilcan" by gold star member theo47.

Yea I always try to wonder if there's a "dead end" to the universe...like if we just keep going and going past galaxies and such, will we ever hit a "wall" or something? Such a strange yet interesting concept. And also the thought of the possibilities of life on other planets in other galaxies intrigues me...and makes me ask, "what are THEY (lifeforms on a planet billions of light years away) doing at this very second?"

wow... i remember D.A.R.Y.L. from when i was a kid... i was already obsessed with sr's and military aircraft in general, being an air force brat, but that movie clinched it for me i think.

data analyzing robot youth lifeform...