Insects are going to be upset to discover that they are not the most successful and/or dominant creatures on this planet.

Actually, I can agree that in some areas, humans are the most successful and dominant species on earth, but certainly not in all ways. We are (sans technology and industry) one of the most ill-equipped species for survival on this planet in many ways. If you look closely at other species, you might find that they have evolved for success in their environments in utterly amazing ways. Look at all the insect, plant, and animal species that have evolved symbiotic relationships that allow each of them to flourish in a way humanity could never dream of. How are we more successfully evolved than they are?

(September 10, 2010 at 7:08 pm)Watson Wrote: dbp and Min, my two best friends! You're so kind in the face of politeness!

Hey, at least we didn't tell you to go fuck yourself.


This time.

(September 13, 2010 at 11:40 am)Paul the Human Wrote: Insects are going to be upset to discover that they are not the most successful and/or dominant creatures on this planet.

Actually, I can agree that in some areas, humans are the most successful and dominant species on earth, but certainly not in all ways. We are (sans technology and industry) one of the most ill-equipped species for survival on this planet in many ways. If you look closely at other species, you might find that they have evolved for success in their environments in utterly amazing ways. Look at all the insect, plant, and animal species that have evolved symbiotic relationships that allow each of them to flourish in a way humanity could never dream of. How are we more successfully evolved than they are?

Slight nitpick (though overall, I agree with you, but I wouldn't say that insects are the dominant species over humans... I'll explain...):
Insects are not a single species in the same way that humans are. They're an entire class of species - like mammals, reptiles, and so on. So if you're going to compare insects to anything like humans, you'd have to compare them to mammals as a whole unless you pick a particular species of insect - like honeybees, carpenter ants, or termites, all particularly successful species of insect.

I personally rate humans as being the most successful species on the planet partly because humans were originally adapted to live in the savannahas and jungles of africa to live anywhere on earth in addition to preparing to live outside of the planet's biosphere within the next few generations. Our position on our particular food chain within recorded history (i.e. the past few thousand years) has always been #1 and our capability of causing whatever mass extinction we want (many unfortunate species have been hunted or poached to extinction) as well as our capability to actually promote certain species over others (we recently may have just saved bees from the problem that's been plaguing them in recent years.)
Some single species of insects own entire swaths of land over the world, but none seem to cover all of the above bases. Still, certain species are successful for different reasons often despite that fact, so I suppose you can call it different catagories of the same kind of success.

Plus, if we count entire classifications of creatures, bacteria definately have both humans and insects beat - dominating the air, land, and sea - they've certainly the capability of evolving to be capable of mass extinction of entire species or promoting the health of an entire species (such as by developing a symbiosis) and recent theories have allowed for the possibility that bacteria are capable of interstellar travel by simply being in or on a rock and surviving the vast distance if the planet (or whatever) they developed on is blown out into space somehow to another planet (just like how that famous martian rock got to earth to be discovered in antartica.)

Plankton could even be considered a dominant species in the sense that they cover much if not all the ocean (far more area than all land masses) and they form the base of the food chain for much if not the whole ocean. I mean, you're pretty important to the extent that if you die off somehow (say, global warming destroys the ozone layer) then suddently that would result in the deaths of many, many oceangoing species and even certain land species that depend on seafood for sustinence.

Quote:I personally rate humans as being the most successful species on the planet partly because humans were originally adapted to live in the savannahas and jungles of africa to live anywhere on earth in addition to preparing to live outside of the planet's biosphere within the next few generations.

I think you are confusing technological achievement with evolution. 70% of the planet is covered by water. Drop a human in and he will drown, sooner or later. The fish do just fine.

In fact in most of the industrialized world if you cut the electricity off for any appreciable length of time you can watch humanity collapse into a steaming mass of shit.

(September 13, 2010 at 3:44 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I think you are confusing technological achievement with evolution. 70% of the planet is covered by water. Drop a human in and he will drown, sooner or later. The fish do just fine.

In fact in most of the industrialized world if you cut the electricity off for any appreciable length of time you can watch humanity collapse into a steaming mass of shit.

Uh... no.

To your first point, you can argue the 'fish out of water' scenario with any species to the same result. Our technological innovations are a direct result of our own evolutionary development. Discounting that you may as well discount the devleopment of the gorilla's hands or a cat's eyes in terms of their evolutionary ability to dominate in their niche.
You're right that humans are not naturally equipped on their biological bodies to handle living in the water for great lengths of time (though some people certainly can), but a group of humans could develop the ability to do so. Fish can never live out of water, no matter how many of them try.

To your second point, civilization has and often still does exist without electricity. You know as much as I that power has been cut to large swaths of the idustrialized world, then they would (for the most part) simply wait for the power to come back on. If it was more permanent than that (say an enormous EMP pulse fried half the planet's electronics) then there would be a great deal of chaos in the short run.
This is because the industrialized world's technology has allowed the land to support perhaps ten times as many humans as it could otherwise support. This is why the world has nearly seven billion humans on it instead of a few hundred million.
There'd be a mass die-off along with the mass extinction of certain animals as people desperately attempt to feed themselves as the population lowers to a respectable level. Assuming we didn't have to start completely over, then we'd simply rebuild a bigger and better society than the last one after a generation or two of normalizing after a major disruption in our society.
So my point is that shutting off our electricity doesn't completely bork humanity over. Worst case scenario is that we have to start over in a new bronze age and work out way back up after a massive die-off because the support system for our population went away.

Niether of those things is proof that humanity is any less a dominant species now or at any point in the past (say, before industrialization - because the major reason for our overpopulation really began with the development of agriculture - industrialized agriculture just enhanced this.)

(August 23, 2010 at 11:24 pm)NoGodaloud ? Wrote: Evolution Theory - please show the proofs.

Please show absolute and conclusive proof , that the Theory of Evolution is true.

Excluded is Micro-evolution, and speciation. On these is common agreement.

Please show that mutations can cause one species to turn into another.

Hilarious man, you're quite funny...

(September 10, 2010 at 12:05 pm)Watson Wrote: ^I would have to politely disagree with you on that, Zeus. I don't think we're irrational at all.

So you have rational reasons for your belief? Hurry up and spit them out then.

It never fails to bemuse me how theists can continually assert positions without providing argument, example or analogy.

I've provided dozens of arguments, examples, and analogies, VOID. But you have set a trap for yourself and for me. You have put limits and labels on what I am allowed and not allowed to provide you as evidence. It never ceases to bemuse me how uproarious atheists get when they set up a "If God, then why X?" equation, and have it blown away by a new insertion into the equation by a theist.

One funny thing I have noticed is that when provided with an analogy, most atheists tend to then take that analogy literally. But when presented with a literal scenario, they take it metaphorically and twist it into a different analogy altogether to 'prove' their point!

You've given theists a box to work with, VOID, and you've told them how much it can hold. But here's the thing; your box? It's flimsy and superficial and cardboard as hell, and you can't seem to understand why when a theist presents a completely new argument, your little box explodes.

Quote:Our technological innovations are a direct result of our own evolutionary development.

No. I'm going to stop you right there.

Evolution =

Quote:3. Biology
a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
b. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.

We have way to much trouble with fundie assholes around here still demanding to see a crocoduck to let that go by. If we had developed gills to go along with our lungs THAT would be an evolutionary change.

The fact that our brains allow us to build ever more complex gadgets - some of which may one day destroy us....how's that for irony? - is not to be blamed on evolution.

(September 14, 2010 at 3:59 am)Minimalist Wrote: No. I'm going to stop you right there.

Minimalist - you're grossly confusing what it is I am attempting to convey.
I understand that we can't 'evolve' scuba gear to swim with fish.
We have, however, evolved the means in which to develop, build, and use those tools.

That is what evolution has provided us in terms of our technology. We didn't evolve our technology, we evolved the means in which to invent, build, and use technology.

(September 14, 2010 at 3:59 am)Minimalist Wrote: We have way to much trouble with fundie assholes around here still demanding to see a crocoduck to let that go by. If we had developed gills to go along with our lungs THAT would be an evolutionary change.

Their delusions are irrelevant. You know as well as I do that we could present them with an actual crocaduck with irrefutable proof and they'd still deny evolution as an actual thing. Such is the power of their particular brand of madness.

(September 14, 2010 at 3:59 am)Minimalist Wrote: The fact that our brains allow us to build ever more complex gadgets - some of which may one day destroy us....how's that for irony? - is not to be blamed on evolution.

In a wierd sense, we may also become (or 'evolve') into our own technology as machines and humans become less and less distinguishable from one another. Our bodies and the process of evolution is little different from the kind of magic you see in the highly technologically advanced machines we (or future generations) may see in the future. Everything important we already understand has only come from the past few thousand years of recorded history (and perhaps some time before that). It's difficult to imagine what our intelligence will become in the millions of years of time in the distant future.

One of the ways in which we are a successful species is because we have, for better or worse, the ability to create or avert our own extinction. We even now have the power to evolve ourselves and other species in anything of our choosing - a power that grows with every discovery in genetics and biology.

In terms of evolution - we owe everything to evolution. It is the reason we are humans and we have the power to do all of these things and possible far more in the future.