faith and illusion

by teejay 44 Replies latest jw friends

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  Realist

  about the missing links...

  species that are not flexible enough for changes in the environment or species that have too much competition eventually die out. that is what happened to the neanderthals for instance.

  most species are vastly inferior to us in terms of mental capacity...nevertheless they are very successful. thats because they are perfectly adapted to the environment they live in and they have not too much of competition for the ecological niche they live in.

  the neanderthals died out for probably 2 reasons....firstly because of the last ice age...they couldn'T adapt well enough...secondly because of competition from the homo sapiens.

  that the missing links had higher mental powers than the ape linage didn't mean necessarily that they had superior tactics to survive (number of offspring per female, possible food sources, etc.).

  think about it ...after your logic all more primitive species would have died out millions of years ago.

  I'll take your word for it that the universe isn't as complex as it seems.

  the universe is very complex....but you can reduce the complexity to only three or maybe even just one single physical law. all the movements, objects (be it nebulas, stars, planets, galaxies, chemicals, animals) and effects can be explained with it.
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  nowisee

  what is that law??
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  Realist

  there are 3 fundamental forces acting in our Universe: gravity, strong nuclear force and the electro weak force. it seems possible to unite all these force into just one ... to achieve this "great unifying theory" is currently one of the hottest topics in theoretical physics.
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  teejay

  Realist,

  When I started this thread, I had not planned on being educated on the mysteries of the universe or how the human species has developed here on earth over the past 2 or 3 million years, but hey.... you take your lessons where you find 'em!

  Because of you I did a little research to get myself caught up on what happened to the Neanderthals and found a site on the net that partners with a PBS program that I seem to remember seeing. The transcript of the program was especially useful. Seems you were on to something.

  Still, at some point there had to be a leap from "unreasoning" animalkind to humankind, right? Where a baby ape said "Dadda" and, before you know it, within a short ¼ of a million years, humans were speaking in 18 different dialects.

  You might be right but it seems like a stretch to me, but then most new ideas are.

  the universe is very complex....but you can reduce the complexity to only three or maybe even just one single physical law. all the movements, objects (be it nebulas, stars, planets, galaxies, chemicals, animals) and effects can be explained with it.

  there are 3 fundamental forces acting in our Universe: gravity, strong nuclear force and the electro weak force. it seems possible to unite all these force into just one ... to achieve this "great unifying theory" is currently one of the hottest topics in theoretical physics.

  I'm glad you came back and (somewhat) amended your earlier statement that the complexity of the universe can be distilled to just one law. Even as a layman, I thought of enertia, thermodynamics, gravity, matter-antimatter, etc. Face it: the universe is a pretty friggin complex place.
• 

  Realist

  hello teejay,

  great that you get interested in that neanderthal / evolution topic!

  i have to say i am a biologist....so i know pretty much the ideas behind the whole buisness.

  with increasing brain mass and more importantly the number of neuronal connections intelligence increases.

  this is very obvious if you look at animals: insects for instance are nothing more that biorobots. there is absolutely no intelligence. more complex species such as lower primates are pretty clever already but they have no self awareness...as you proceed to higher primates such as chimps and bonobos you see that they are self aware...they have the mental capacity of 2 year old children. they know they exist and they can solve complex problems. then hominids such as homo erectus had already the ability to make simple tools and control fire. we as humans stay at the end of a long developmental process.

  the increase in intelligence with brain size can also be seen in babies. the larger and more complex the brain gets the higher the reasoning abilities.

  about the universe....i don'T think i ever stated that there is only one law guiding everything...as of now the number could be reduced to 3 laws and it just might be possible to reduce it to only one.

  the things you listed (inertia and thermodynamics, gravity etc.) and everything else can all be explained with the understanding of these 3 laws....

  the outcome of this relatively ""simple"" underlying system is however very complex thanks to the diversity generated...no question about it!