Humans came from Asia, not Africa.

[HIT_it_RAW]

It's also interesting to note that the birth-rate seems to often go down in line with a drop in religious beliefs.

ah well

Mr Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics. Filling the bloody
     world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed.

Mrs Blackitt: What are we dear?

Mr Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it...

Mrs Blackitt: Why do they have so many children...?

Mr Blackitt: Because every time they have sexual intercourse they
     have to have a baby.

Mrs Blackitt: But it's the same with us, Harry.

Mr Blackitt: What d'you mean...?

Mrs Blackitt: Well I mean we've got two children and we've had
     sexual intercourse twice.

Mr Blackitt: That's not the point... We *could* have it any time we
     wanted.

Mrs Blackitt: Really?

Mr Blackitt: Oh yes. And, what's more, because we don't believe in
     all that Papist claptrap we can take precautions.

Mrs Blackitt: What, you mean lock the door...?

Mr Blackitt: No no, I mean, because we are members of the
     Protestant Reformed Church which successfully challenged the
     autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century,
     we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue.

Mrs Blackitt: What do you mean?

Mr Blackitt: I could, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with
     you...

Mrs Blackitt: Oh, yes... Harry...

Mr Blackitt: And by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller I
     could ensure that when I came off... you would not be
     impregnated.

Mrs Blackitt: Ooh!

Mr Blackitt: That's what being a Protestant's all about. That's
     why it's the church for me. That's why it's the church for
     anyone who respects the  individual and the individual's right
     to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his
     protest up to the church door in 1517, he may not have
     realised the full significance of what he was doing. But four
     hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear
     whatever I want on my John Thomas. And Protestantism doesn't
     stop at the simple condom. Oh no! I can wear French Ticklers
     if I want.

Mrs Blackitt: You what?

Mr Blackitt: French Ticklers... Black Mambos... Crocodile Ribs...
     Sheaths that are designed not only to protect but also to
     enhance the stimulation of sexual congress...

Mrs Blackitt: Have you got one?

Mr Blackitt: Have I got one? Well no... But I can go down the road
     any time I want and walk into Harry's and hold my head up
     high, and say in a loud steady voice: 'Harry I want you to
     sell me a *condom*. In fact today I think I'll have a French
     Tickler, for I am a Protestant...'

Mrs Blackitt: Well why don't you?

Mr Blackitt: But they... [He points at the stream of children still
     pouring past the house.]... they cannot. Because their church
     never made the great leap out of the Middle Ages, and the
     domination of alien episcopal supremacy!

[Haai]

No doubt lamarck was a genius. And therefore ridiculed. You see a genius understands things nobody else does so when he speaks his mind everyone inevitably thinks hes crazy for they dont(and likely never will) understand it.

I still think Darwin's model holds for at least 90%. The basic principles he discovered are the same principles working in epigenetic evolution which is just a precursor to truly genetic evolution.

I agree about the basic principles, but I don't like Darwin's idea that organisms are struggling for survival. Organisms that are adapted to their environment should be thriving, not just surviving. I think this may be because Darwin was talking about the individual rather than the species. Yes, an organism may get eaten or kill and eat something itself to survive and individual organisms need something to be able to catch prey (if it is a predator) and to escape being predated on if it is prey...all so this individual can survive. However, when taking the whole ecosystem in to account and without people to fuck things up, it should be in balance/equilibrium, but a dynamic equilibrium, due to a constant changing environment with changing environmental pressures. In a balanced ecosystem the different species of organisms thrive, rather than struggle to survive.

I haven't yet done so, but I plan to read something about Lovelock's Gaia theory in the near future.

[Haai]

I should say Gaia hypothesis, not theory.

[Dorothy]

I never liked any religion at all but i agree that those 3 are by far the worst. What usefull things would you say the other religions have brought that couldn't have been acquired without belief in some higher power?

HIT - Buddhism before travelling so widely and taking on some Gods along the way did not include any belief in a Gods or a "higher power".

The extraordinary usefulness of Buddhism is a systematic teaching of meditation so that one can determine for oneself if such things exist or not and how useful they are. The original, earliest Bali texts regarding meditation are a real treasure.

Buddhism is considered "blasphemous" by many because it does not teach a belief in God or Gods. I see it purely as a methodology in it's original form and have found it's instructions on meditation to be one of the most useful things I have learned in my life. Buddha was teaching a "path" a "way" to find out the workings of everything for oneself. He historically would not talk about gods. He only would talk about how one could find out for oneself. I really liked that.

[sabertooth]

I am so glad to have found Universalism . One of its main principles is the understanding that one can learn from the past religions regardless of the scientific validity of their particular deity.

I have learned much from studying the various religions.

I attend a Buddhist discussion group. There is real merit in finding a middle way. If you are wrapped up in the world and abandon yourself to sensuality it leads to hedonistic behavior that can never provide lasting satisfaction. On the other extreme If you renounce the world and its pleasures in order to seek transcendence, you will just be torturing yourself. The Buddha is a middle path that guides one toward equanimity.

I also studied the ancient mythological religions, and believe that their Gods were mainly expressions of different attributes of the human spirit, and may not of been meant to be taken seriously as true beings.

The ancient Hindus understood the multiplicity of the universe. That along with the idea of universal cycles gave them the belief in reincarnation. I think that this Idea has often been misinterpreted by people in the west to mean "instant Karma", the notion that when one dies that ones being is directly held accountable for ones actions and then is reincarnated as a greater or lesser being depending on some kind of cosmic justice. Reincarnation exist but I don't think its an instantaneous transmutation of the soul from one being to another. I think that its something that occurs on cosmically grand timescales. Somewhere half way from now until the end of eternity our world will be reborn and beings like ourselves will live again.

Many basic concepts were realized by the ancients, but like all religion, the kernel of truth that exist at the origin is often forgotten and obscured by time. Then generation after generation most of the original meaning is lost and or degenerated.   

Other point on Evolution.

I think I am coming close to envisioning a more completed and almost religious view of Evolution. We are at the cusp of the formation of a scientifically sound unified theory of evolution that Incorporates the many different forces involved in it. It seems like all the elements are present for a breakthrough, if only there were some accredited group of scientist to bring these new revelations to the forefront.

Think about it "A unified theory of evolution" Whoever can articulate it well enough to present it to the world should deserve a Nobel prize.

Evolution is the end result of a process in which a balance is found between multifaceted forces of natural selection, sexual selection, epigenetic adaption, and mutagenesis reaction.

Its a process so complex with results so magnificent that its no wonder that more primitive ages of man believed life to be created by a God.


   

[raw-al]

I believed completely in Darwin's theory of evolution until recently when I read the book 'Biology of Bielief', by Bruce Lipton.
Now I still believe in evolution, but not exactly how Darwin described it. This is mainly due to the increasing knowledge about epigenetics. Because environmental conditions affect gene expression in an organism throughout it's life, and these changes can then be inherited by the offspring, it resembles more the theory of evolution by the ridiculed Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

Here is a quote from "Connecting Through the Space Between Us" "The Bond" by Lynne McTaggart- pp33

"In the mid-80's, John Cairns, a British-born geneticist at Harvard's School of Public Health, carried out an experiment that would set off on of the largest arguments in modern biology. The plan of the experiment was simple enough: to get bacteria in a tight spot. Cairns selected bacteria with a genetic defect rendering them unable to digest lactose., the sugar present in milk, then introduced them into a batch of petri dishes containing cultures whose only food source was lactose. Without any digestible food, the bacteria faced death by slow starvation.

According to orthodox science and the Neo-Darwinisits view of natural selection, the bacteria would not be able to colonize, without a food source to drive metabolic processes, they could not carry out normal reproduction. Nevertheless in every Petri dish Cairns found a goodly number of thriving colonies.

When Cairns tested for genetic changes in the colonies, he found that a single type of gene had changed: those preventing lactose metabolism.

Identical changes in just those genes had occurred within every new colony in every Petri dish. Cairns had confirmed that none of the original bacteria contained a lactose-digesting mutation prior to the experiment. Through some unknown mechanism the bacteria had activated eleventh-hour mutations in direct response to an extreme environmental crisis, and the mutations had saved their lives. The bacteria had defied the central dogma: they had evolved purposefully, not randomly, in order to restore balance and harmony with their environment. Somehow the extreme environmental conditions had caused changes in genes, enabling the bacteria to digest the only food available to them.

In 1988 Cairns published his findings in the prestigious journal "Nature" under the droll title "The Origin Of Mutants", a flippant nod to Darwin. He proposed that cells within organisms have the ability to orchestrate their own "direct mutation", rapidly adapting to a changing environment. Although Cairns, the discoverer of the structure and replication of the E. coli genome, had great standing among his peers, the Lamarckian assertion that the environment changed genes sparked a decade long protest in the medical literature. The American journal "Science" dismissed his work as tantamount to "heresy". "

So hmm looks like the spaghetti monster is running neck and neck with Darwin.

[raw-al]

Read darwin please. he clearly explains why this is NOT true.

Read something besides darwin please. he clearly explains why this is NOT true.

So Darwin is the absolute........ hmmmm Sounds like a religion thang.

[raw-al]

all things in nature are constantly competing. This is the basic drive behind evolution. The extinction of species due to not being able to compete with their better adapted counterpart is a rather fast (evolutionary speaking) process. when modern man came about Neanderthals quickly became extinct because they could no longer compete. again extinction is a fast process. another step in evolution takes much longer. So yes there were periods when more than one type of humans roamed the earth simultaneously, as confirmed by fossil records. We just happen to live somewhere along the evolutionary timeline where our predecessors have already become extinct while our successor has not yet come along(probably).

If there was/is so much mutation going on, why is it that when humans separated and some went east and made it to North America, as some theories go and some more humans went west to Europe and eventually hopped over to North Am. and then these two human groups were able to breed successfully and studies of human psychology show that there is virtually no difference in how aboriginal NA males and females interact compared to Europeans after taking cultural norms out of the equation.

There was a huge amount of time that passed according to the theory, which would have given time for differences of some sort to crop up.

I still say Darwin's theory makes great reading, but so does the spaghetti monster deal.

[bachcole]

One tooth does make a scientific revolution.

[cherimoya_kid]

According to orthodox science and the Neo-Darwinisits view of natural selection, the bacteria would not be able to colonize, without a food source to drive metabolic processes, they could not carry out normal reproduction. Nevertheless in every Petri dish Cairns found a goodly number of thriving colonies.

When Cairns tested for genetic changes in the colonies, he found that a single type of gene had changed: those preventing lactose metabolism.

Bacteria can evolve a LOT faster than mammals.  Yes, there's such a thing as epigenetics, but it operates a LOT more slowly in mammals than in bacteria.

So yes, Darwinian evolution does indeed happen, simultaneously with Lamarckin-type epigenetics-based evolution.  They can coexist, dude.

[HIT_it_RAW]

Read something besides Darwin please. he clearly explains why this is NOT true.

So Darwin is the absolute........ hmmmm Sounds like a religion thang.

Your automatic assumption that i meant read just Darwin is typical. Of course Darwin's teachings are not absolute. I merely suggested them because they are the starting point in understanding evolution. Of course you should also read the work of both his predecessors and his successors to appreciate the evolution of the understanding of the process of evolution. Personally i read a lot besides darwin and in the proces gaines sugnificant apreciation for the magnitute of his discoveries. His visonary mind and unique aproach presented facts more than 150 years ago that scientists today are still catching up on. Darwin was clearly aware of epigentics and if you read his unmodified manuscrips carefully you'll notice that. He just wasn't aware that some of the things he noticed through research and extrapolation were genetic and some of them were epigenetic. What he did understood was how, through the proces of natural selection, these changes were stimulated and how they were activated through adaptation(either genetic or epigenetic). If Darwin had the equipment we now have to differentiate between genetic and epigenetic evolution he would sure have adressed the issue.

@cherimoya
Off course both Darwinian genetic and epigenetic evolution take place simultaneously. Epigenetic evolution is the predecessor to genetic evolution. They are driven by the same principles, the principles of Darwinian evolution. I'm not implying that Darwin was right in an absolute sense or that the understanding of these processes hasn't evolved further through the work of fisher and others, instead by Darwinian evolution i mean the basic principles discovered by him.

[raw-al]

Your automatic assumption that i meant read just Darwin is typical. Of course Darwin's teachings are not absolute. I merely suggested them because they are the starting point in understanding evolution. Of course you should also read the work of both his predecessors and his successors to appreciate the evolution of the understanding of the process of evolution. Personally i read a lot besides darwin and in the proces gaines sugnificant apreciation for the magnitute of his discoveries. His visonary mind and unique aproach presented facts more than 150 years ago that scientists today are still catching up on. Darwin was clearly aware of epigentics and if you read his unmodified manuscrips carefully you'll notice that. He just wasn't aware that some of the things he noticed through research and extrapolation were genetic and some of them were epigenetic. What he did understood was how, through the proces of natural selection, these changes were stimulated and how they were activated through adaptation(either genetic or epigenetic). If Darwin had the equipment we now have to differentiate between genetic and epigenetic evolution he would sure have adressed the issue.

@cherimoya
Off course both Darwinian genetic and epigenetic evolution take place simultaneously. Epigenetic evolution is the predecessor to genetic evolution. They are driven by the same principles, the principles of Darwinian evolution. I'm not implying that Darwin was right in an absolute sense or that the understanding of these processes hasn't evolved further through the work of fisher and others, instead by Darwinian evolution i mean the basic principles discovered by him.

Can't remember the name of the guy, but my recollection is that Darwin wrote about, but was not the originator of his brand of evolution. ie he did not 'discover' evolution.

[wodgina]

Can't remember the name of the guy, but my recollection is that Darwin wrote about, but was not the originator of his brand of evolution. ie he did not 'discover' evolution.

Wallace I think

[Dorothy]

I thought that Wallace came up with similar things after Darwin so forced Darwin to publish before he had planned. I think originally Darwin wanted to publish post-mortem so as not to make problems with his wife and her family. That's my vague memory from a biography.

[HIT_it_RAW]

I thought that Wallace came up with similar things after Darwin so forced Darwin to publish before he had planned. I think originally Darwin wanted to publish post-mortem so as not to make problems with his wife and her family. That's my vague memory from a biography.

correct far as i know
there were other predecessors to darwin that mentioned the subject in one way or another, it was however darwin who first (dared) to link it to the evolution of all living things.