PlaneShift
Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: ajdaha on May 18, 2005, 11:57:07 pm
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Firstly, I was always wondering how on earth life would form. It seems incredibly coplex in comparison to everything else in our universe, like rocks.
Also, what is the point of reproduction. Why does the single living being feel the need to reproduce?
Anyone?
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1.)\"Chance.\" Comforting, isn\'t it? Creationism can\'t have the scientific method applied to it, however.
2.)Any species which did not feel the need to reproduce would die.
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1) the scientists say we do.
2) god says we do...
Well..I think that sums it up.
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Evolution, we didnt start like this :D
the series of events to reproduce, ie intercourse is very pleasurable, why the hell not if it fees good!
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Originally posted by Demarthl
why the hell not if it fees good!
This coming from someone with a magical banana in his avatar :P
This topic is silly. It\'s the kind of topic for postcount++ing because just about all of the philosophical arguments behind it are old and hackneyed.
If you need to ask this question I need to ask this: didn\'t you take biology in high school? =/ Evolution entails that the better genes of an individual will be passed on for generations, eventually creating a more superior being. That\'s all. No magic or wonder - it\'s just a race to be the best of the species.
~Indi
<.<
>.>
postcount++; o.o
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1. Who said things were simple? I mean the creation rocks is also as complicated as to the creation of water from non living / non existed meterial. A theory states that life was simply created from a chemical reaction forming a single cell organism.
Why is it complicated? I dont know, but as humans we somehow have the need to know everything that doesn\'t need to be learned. (go figure)
2. Instict. Most animal species are driven on their natural insticts to reproduce. Us humans can choose if we are to reproduce. But it doesn\'t mean we dont have the same animal instict. Ill just go in the detail of the word \"attraction\". and before it starts, please dont pull up the topic of natural selection and how death tolls even with reproducing.
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How would life form? God was lonely, he wanted some company.
Creationism is the only explanation. If you have no religion, your life is worthless.
Why reproduce? In some families, it is to keep your honor. Some people just want their names to live on. But if I ever get married and have a child, it\'ll be for one thing. Love.
Well, we all have our own beliefs.
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Originally posted by MaidenIndigo
Originally posted by Demarthl
why the hell not if it fees good!
This coming from someone with a magical banana in his avatar :P
actually thats Naruto performing the \'Kage combo Henge mane wonder twin banana-fana bunshin no jitsu\' seal
don\'t diss :p your just jealous cos oyu can only turn into a grape!
>.>
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OH yeah, the question is a bit stupid. Though I care not for the post-count.
The answer to question 2 is so obvious, I have no idea what I was doing last night that caused me to ask it.
Obviously, as someone else said, when the first living-beings were somehow being formed, those that could reproduce (most-likely a-sexually) survived, those that couldn\'t, died.
Do people still call evolution a theory? I mean, its not a theory anymore, I\'m sure. Evolution is just a name used to describe the very logically sound, but sometimes very complex process of what happens. Its very rational, so its not a theory anymore is it?
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Well, you just missed this:
http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/cseol/
it was awesome. So, this is a subject dear to my heart. I love the \"origins\" debate, but I don\'t like making enemies that way. (Other ways are fine)
Look, many people will claim to have some sort of answer they don\'t really have. Noone actually knows how life started. If you\'re interested, examine all the available data and draw a conclusion for yourself. If you do this mystically, fine. However, if you want to be able to make predictions and have a useful model at the end of the day, you\'ll want to do this scientifically.
Of course, the term \"useful\" is subjective. I take here to mean something like curing disease or extending life, which the theory underlying evolution and modern biology has been able to do.
If you want to go into science, you are needed. We have plenty of pundits who want to tell you what they think about the origins of life, but there are far fewer people who can actually prove what they say. Do you want to be the former or the latter?
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Former, sir.
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Originally posted by ajdaha
Do people still call evolution a theory? I mean, its not a theory anymore, I\'m sure.
Since it cannot be proved, it is a theory.
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Respectfully, Uloim, you are incorrect. It is a theory in the scientific sense of the word, like gravitation and electromagnetism.
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Ah. Curse you smart, non-scientifically challenged people!:P
Well, it\'s a theory nonetheless, I was half right! :D
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Originally posted by Uloim
If you have no religion, your life is worthless.
I sincerely hope that was a bad attempt at humor :D
Anyway. Is everyone ready for the truth? The truuuuth! It will astound you.
(http://www.thepaincomics.com/Science%20vs.%20Norse.jpg)
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Nice post Karyuu,
But!
Theorys aways start out as hypothesis. Once they have been proven by conducting an arbitrary amount of experients a hypothesis graduates to a theory. The beauty of science is that it never claims to have all the answers. However people seem to loose sight of this. Scientific theorys change all the time. To claim that science is truth and religion is false, ignores the fact that even science does not claim that theorys are true.
Over the years science certainly has proven its value. But, religion has value as well.
Uloim has a point when he says if you have no religion your life is worthless. Science offers very little on the worth of an individule. Philosophy has several thoerys on how you should live your life, but they are still reguarded as theorys. And philosophers differ on wich one is correct.
I believe the two are not mutually exclusive, you can have both. Where they intersect you will have conflict, but that is what your free will is for. You can make your own choices.
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Ohh eck... just find out what the the great Question to Life, the Universe and Everything is... we already know that the answer is 42 \\o/
Hey ajdaha you are much dazzled with science vs. metaphysics :P just read stuff... science is clear and logical, although sometimes at first it might not seem so... metaphysics.. ohh well about that everyone can say whatever he/she wants about it with not logical at all... my advice: try not to think too much about :P
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If it were not for thinking, all I would be left with would be my body and my huge, huggge genitals.
: )
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Originally posted by derwoodly
Uloim has a point when he says if you have no religion your life is worthless.
Bullcrap ;) My life isn\'t worthless in the slightest. I, for example, have plenty of things to live for, and plenty of things to do and look forward to and enjoy and bask in. And religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I loathe generalizations like that, as they are quite presumptuous and insulting.
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Besides, how do you define worth?
Since there is no such thing as worth, as its \"in the eye of the beholder\"
Anyway, there are suggestions that there is an after-life. I\'m not sure where I read it but with people coming back from near-death were being tested some-how in controled conditions. I think someone proposed a \"hypothesis\" : ) which said that there might indeed be a soul.
Oh yeah, about evolution being a theory. I\'m sure you can prove it, just by describing how it works, because no-one can debate the fact that living-beings mutate, that some die because of their incompatibility with its enviroment, and that those few that have mutated to survive, survive?
What else is there to prove.
Or is nothing ever proven? Because, I suppose we can never be sure of anything, not even our own senses.
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Yeah, when you orriginally asked why it was still called a theory, I thought you meant the theory of all life orriginating from one common ancestor...
@Karyuu: Didn\'t meant to insult anyone...:( and yes I do realize my generalization. It\'s just that I would probably kill myself if I had no religion. I mean, I don\'t see why I\'d want to keep living. If your entire existance only lasts 100 minus years (or so) and you were created on accident, why even bother to continue the species?
As I said before, we all have our own beliefs.
One day we\'ll all know the truth.
EDIT: Neat comic. I never knew much about Norse Mythology.
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I can\'t wait.
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I\'m trying to continue the species mostly because the act of trying to continue the species is very enjoyable. I know this sounds crude, and it is on some level, but it\'s still true. I don\'t need a philosophical reason to enjoy sex.
Fundamentally, the sex drive is extremely powerful. This is probably why most religions try to tame it.
I don\'t want to sound the \"that atheist\" who says religion is worthless. I don\'t employ it, but I know some people who do to great effectiveness. For some reason, I personally don\'t need \"reasons\". I like results. If I can consistently explain traffic by how many crows cross my path in the morning, then I am happy with the Crow-SigAlert Theory.
So things reproduce because it\'s \"fun\" to reproduce. Why is it \"fun\" to reproduce? Well, those who found it fun in the past tended to, well, reproduce. Thus we are all ancestors of things that like to have sex. So we like to have sex.
Asking why the first thing liked to have sex is a tautology. Is there a greater purpose to having sex, like serving some sort of god? I don\'t know. But if that\'s what you\'re thinking about when Angelina Jolie comes bouncing through \"Tomb Raider\", you\'re not going to as likely as I am to create another thing that likes to reproduce.
EDIT: Please don\'t take my near-vulgar tone to imply that I think the point of view expressed by Uloim is invalid. I think he has a very powerful point. I just disagree with his underlying assumption. The world needs diversity, though. If we were all cantankerous mathematicians like me, I would go nuts. My wife and most of my closest friends are artists, not scientists, they\'re more fun to be around.
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ok this will explain it all.
life formed as bacteria and such. if it didnt reproduce, then we would not see it evolved today, it would simply die off an never reproduce,.
so the bacteria that can produce survives yay.
then it evolves. ie.
2 bears, a white one and a black one in the snow. the black one dies as a baby cause it can be easily seen so it never passes on its black gene. the white one does so therefore creating over time a white camoflauged yada yada yada.
reproducing is chemically built into us. that is also what the attraction you get with the opposite sex (or same sex) therefore creating relationships to reproduce.
well that was a hellova post for me
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Yeah, thats basically what I figured. First life which couldn\'t reproduce died after its life. Life which could continued its species. Its obvious.
But, why is it that there was no life that could simply live on forever, would that somehow be less efficient than spliting a-sexually?
I realise that this form would be vulnurable to some diseases but so would be the a-sexua;;y reproducing animal wouldn\'t it?
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Cancer is immortal. It can\'t die of old age.
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Im not sure on exactly how cancer works, but is it an actual life-form, or is it just an occurance in cells?
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isnt cancer a mutation of cells that causes them to multiply constanly without stopping?
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Originally posted by derwoodly
Uloim has a point when he says if you have no religion your life is worthless.
Bullcrap ;) My life isn\'t worthless in the slightest. I, for example, have plenty of things to live for, and plenty of things to do and look forward to and enjoy and bask in. And religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I loathe generalizations like that, as they are quite presumptuous and insulting.
I was not trying to suggest that life is worthless. I was trying to explain that science does not explain why we are here. To my knowledge the working theory is statistical chance. If you have a link to a site, or title of a book or Magazine that does explain please put it in this post. Or if you prefer to explain life, be my guest. By including only one sentance of my post it is you who are generalizing, not I.
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Science does not explain why we are here, because \"why\" requires some sort of plan, which requires some sort of intelligense to have made that plan. Religions can have a \"why\" because they assume that there is a God. Science isn\'t about \"why\", it\'s about \"how\" and \"what\".
As science has shown no sign of a planning intelligence, it makes no sense to ask why. The only intelligence is us (and possibly dolphins, etc), and \"why\" didn\'t become relevant until we appeared as a species. And that\'s where philosophers come into the picture I think, they look for the answer to \"why\" in ourselves, where as religions assume some kind of God to answer it.
But life is not worthless without a religion to tell us why, because we all have our own reasons for living. Reproducing has already been explained, \"because it\'s fun\", and we do other things for the same reason. Why don\'t we just kill ourselves? And miss out on all the fun? No way. Why do we work our asses off every day? Because fun is expensive. Some kinds more than others.
So, if you ask a non-religous problem \"what\'s the purpose of life\", the answer (or at least one answer) is: \"To have fun\".
Why do we play Planeshift? To have fun. Thus can be concluded that the purpose of life is to play Planeshift :D
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I agree with the last post up to this point...
Originally posted by Leeloo
So, if you ask a non-religous problem \"what\'s the purpose of life\", the answer (or at least one answer) is: \"To have fun\".
Why do we play Planeshift? To have fun. Thus can be concluded that the purpose of life is to play Planeshift :D
The answer to the question \"what is the purpse of life\" is science can not answer that because it only answers qualitative questions not ones of philosopy.
I do not know of a philosophy that says the purpose of life is to have fun. There could be one, I just never heard it. I believe that Aristotle\'s philosophy was that life was about doing \"good\".
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Perhaps the meaning of life is simply to have something that we cannot have without life, a physical existance.
I was thinking, wont we eventually become inferior? Most animals evolve when a new predator is introduced etc. but we create technology to evolve for us so to speak. So, even if it does take 10 bazillion years, without technolog we would be inferior.
But thats just a thought.
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Why does there have to be a reason for our existance other than evolution? Can\'t humans accept that we\'re just not special in any way and that if our planet blew up killing us all it\'d make no difference to the rest of the universe? This is the main thing about religion that I don\'t like. Humans seem to need a reason for their existance. Religions say that we were created by a greater power(s), which is a pretty simple solution which we have no evidence for, but it keeps people happy. Having a greater power watching over us makes people believe that they\'re special in their own little way compared to other life forms, and having an afterlife reinforces that because people can\'t imagine not existing.
If there is a greater power who takes us to an afterlife when we die so that we can live forever, then why does he/she/it bother? It would be surely easier just to make us immortal on earth, or to just create us in this afterlife.
Imo the meaning of life if there has to be one is; we are because we can.
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Okay, meaning of life...this isn\'t where I want this thread to go... so basically back to my points.
Why reproduce, why not, instead, just live forever?
So, what did the a-sexually reproducing cells have that was better than an animal who lives forever?
To find the meaning of life you first have to know how to define life? I have no definition for it except to say that everything in our universe is alive for they all do something. There is nothing else that I know of that can define life. Except maybe sentient beings could be called life. But then, there are some things that aren\'t sentient but many call them life.
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So what? Can no-one answer that question?
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you need to define live forever, agewise, impervious to any and everything? cuase if its just age, then one day you get eaten(or fall off a cliff ect.) poof no more you maybe no more of your species even.
on another point, maybe random chemicals couldnt figure out how to live forever so went for the next best thing
or another, a cell appears, really likes itself(egotistical maybe?) and decided \"hey the more the merrier\" and copied itself, so they could compliment each other
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Originally posted by ajdaha
Why reproduce, why not, instead, just live forever?
Can\'t live forever.
Originally posted by ajdaha
So, what did the a-sexually reproducing cells have that was better than an animal who lives forever?
Not exactly answering this question, but!:
Well, if we don\'t continue the species, we won\'t have any new stuff. No new Einsteins, (spelling on his name? I keep forgetting how to spell it...) no new great leaders. Although, I suppose everyone who lives forever could just read every book and try to become geniuses. And how exactly can you stay alive forever? If someone stabs you in the head, how could you stay alive?
Originally posted by ajdaha
To find the meaning of life you first have to know how to define life?
Well...
\"The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.\"
But I think it is more of a religious term. That is just my opinion.
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Lol - the biology-class explanation for life does not do since there are living forms that don\'t perform some of those functions.
But seriously, why would it be hard to live forever? Simply don\'t include the death clock in the cell. I\'m not sure how death works though.
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Heh, that definition came from a Bot on AIM, not biology class! ;)
And to the quesion(s):
Why would it be hard to live forever?
Impossible... isn\'t it? If it wasn\'t, we\'d have three-hundred-year-olds, etc. Again with the fun religion stuff, I doubt God would let it be possible to achieve immortality in this life.
Not sure how death works?
Religious again, your soul is taken from your body (sorta... kinda hard to explain) and goes to Heaven where its fate is to be decided, depending on what you did/didn\'t do in your life (in a sense. Every religion is different about this.).
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I think Ajdaha was talking about the biological aspect of death, Uloim, not religious. I\'m sure that everyone here is familiar with what happens from a religious perspective. So that doesn\'t really answer the question.
As for the question of how death works (in a biological sense), understanding it from a scientific standpoint has long proved elusive. In the past decade, new tools and fresh ideas have started to give researchers a grip on the complex changes that go on within the body\'s cells over time. They even have some inkling as to the \"how\" of aging, the biochemical processes which may trigger these cellular phenomena. But why the body should become more prone to these pressures in the first place is much debated. Aging is one of nature\'s almost universal phenomena - virtually all multicellular creatures, if given a chance, will go through the process - but still one of its most mysterious.
All characteristics of living organisms are the result of natural selection. Aging and its logical outcome, death, have survived. Therefore the implication is that aging and death confer success and are characteristics selected for during evolution. But there\'s that \"Why?\" again. There are several theories of just how the aging occurs (Programmed Theory, Autoimmune Theory, DNA Repair, etc., etc), but not too many answers in the \"why\" department just yet. So it\'s an interesting question, but I don\'t think we\'ve a conclusive answer at the moment.
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Originally posted by derwoodly
I agree with the last post up to this point...
I do not know of a philosophy that says the purpose of life is to have fun. There could be one, I just never heard it. I believe that Aristotle\'s philosophy was that life was about doing \"good\".
I wasn\'t talking about any philosophy, most of us never studied philosophy, and we are still alive. We don\'t generally go out and commit suicide without philosophers telling us why not to. Because if we did, we would miss all the fun.
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Hi
Hmm, many good points everyone. I agree that everything is very complex, despite of how simple it may look, and that we do not know enough to say what is and what is not. I also believe that not everything can be proven by logic. I\'ll not go deeper into that now.
As for ajdaha\'s questions:
There are many ways of \'living forever\', if I\'ve understood you correctly, you mean \'not dying from aging\'.
\"Why reproduce, why not, instead, just live forever?\"
- The organism can still be hurt and die. This kind of life will ultimately be extinct after time, due to eg. natural catastrophes and other species, if it doesn\'t reproduce at all.
\"So, what did the a-sexually reproducing cells have that was better than an animal who lives forever?\"
- Many lifes. If the original organism is hurt and dies, it\'s children will live and reproduce further.
Hmm, let\'s assume that we have life that doesn\'t die of age and does reproduce (either sexually or a-sexually). The exponentially growing number of organisms would need ever growing amounts of food. I think this would collapse the ecosystem, break the circle of life, as there wouldn\'t be any/enough dead organisms to compose into nutrition for plants. No plants, no herbivores, no predators. I think that in the end, a death of one is needed to provide life for the many.
This kind of genetic property, aging, is interesting, as it does not further the success of the actual individual, rather that of the entire specie. Or all the life.
Just my thoughts. Thanks for reading :)
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They don\'t have to grow, just live forever so it doesn\'t have to be less efficient. And why not reproduce and live forever? Surely that would ensure the survival of the species. At least more so?
But I see the general point of this. Cells that can reproduce are in the end more adaptable to life\'s many changes, due to things like cell mutations and the fact that some traits from two surviving bodies are given to the new born (in the case of sexual reproduction, though this was not the case in a-sexual reproduction). But I suspect that in the beginning there might have been many cells that would have lived a very long time and would have been very resistant.
So why was it important that such longetivity be dropped? Was it less efficient to just live as they always live, feeding on the same thing but never dying?
Karyyu could you give me one of those philosophies that try to explain this?
I wish one day logic will prevail and somewhere, maybe underneath Everest we\'ll find a very adaptable, long living, armour-plated animal who can withstand any physical punishment (like meteor impacts) and any diseases. Of course, it would probuably be able to reproduce, but there would be no parter for it, as it alone, would have evolved such a body and the others would have died. The children would not be so effective.
Maybe the earth needs more time. Maybe humans will one day find an animal that they can\'t destroy.
Edit - lol, WTFs wrong with me?
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Well I\'m just sick of these theories of random evolution and how they\'re taught as \'fact\' in schools. I heard that the chances of this happening without God are like your wristwatch exploding and then coming together in the exact same way, with the right time(including additional seconds because of how long it took to do this). I have a whole book on why this is just a bunch of fooey, so ask away, please!
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:rolleyes:
Gee golly. An entire book?
I could spend an agonizing amount of time responding to your post, serpentjoe, but I\'d just frustrate myself, so I won\'t bother with details. What I\'m sick of, personally, are people who do so little studying of evolution as to know nearly nothing about it, read a few books from but one side of the argument, and then think they\'ve all the answers. If only.
I really wish that a few Anthropology courses were mandatory in grade schools around the world.
This discussion is not about evolution anyway, so please don\'t try to steer it to that direction. The subject is controversial enough as is without starting a debate here.
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good stoping there karyuu.
In another thread (IN the LoTR: online forums) this kinda\' discussion got me banned.
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Here\'s a hypothetical situation: Three organisms show up on early Earth one day--an immortal (non-aging) organism, a mortal, non-reproducing organism and a mortal reproducing organism.
They all go for a \"walk\" along treacherous shores. All three get killed by a landslide. Which one do we see today? The last.
Why are there no reproducing, immortal organisms? Well, bacteria exhibit this. Now consider this. If your species is going to be immortal, it must have happened very early in your evolution. So you are something pretty simple, not a walking, talking person, for instance. Now you have mortal creatures all around you. They, because of their rapid evolutionary pace compared to you, discover that you are food before you discover that they are food. You can\'t keep up with their adaptations, so you end up being stuck at the bottom of the food chain while everyone else gets, say, a nervous system.
I\'m not stating this as fact, only possible explanation. I think it\'s possible for immortality to happen in simpler organisms, but the mortal ones will prey on you. They get to change as a species more often.
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Why did immoratlity have to evolve only in simple-celled organisms. It could have hapened in peaceful times with multi-celled organisms as well.
Also, why would these immortal beings evolve at a slower pace than the predatory ones?
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I have to emphasize that I am speculating here, and have no data, but these hypothesis are reasonable.
The second question first. If you are immortal and reproducing, then you will produce copies of yourself. Therefore the population of your species consists of things like you. That is, there are a lot of your immediate children around at all times.
If you are not immortal, you sort of make way for the new ones. If you child has slightly more blonde hair and his child even slightly more, in a billion years you\'ll have a very blonde population. Thus the population or species has \"evolved\". This won\'t happen if the original brunette is still around. Also, consider that you will be fighting with a lot of copies of yourself for food.
For the first question, that\'s trickier. If the species is already complex, why not a \"Highlander\". Hmm, ooops, gotta go to a meeting (really). I\'ll think about this. It seemed clear when I said it.
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Lol, Highlander.
The actor in that had no idea what he was doing.
(Poor Budha, his thread got closed and I think it was my fault. Though I am not sure what I did.) To Karyuu, don\'t twist my words, you know what I said. I said that we cannot be certain that what our senses tell us is true. So we cannot be certain that our world exists this way, that the rules apply. Maybe we are in a matrix world. Of course I don\'t believe this, but I;m just saying its possible. To Moogie, I was just making small talk. : /
Anyway, nothing is pointless everything has the point of being there.
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I\'m sorry. I just wanted to get involved in this thread, I guess. Could you help? =(
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Dude, what did you do? What are you apologizing for, you\'ve done nothing that I can recollect as being anything worth apologizing for.
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Serpantjoe, what you could have done is post a link to the book you were talking about. Was it this one?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6884904/site/newsweek/
I do not know if ajdaha has read any books on Social Constructivism, but it esentually says that we can not know anything for certain.
Karyuu ????, have your read the title? *Why would life form*
\"This discussion is not about evolution anyway, so please don\'t try to steer it to that direction. The subject is controversial enough as is without starting a debate here.\"
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That\'s true. That\'s what I said, put into a comprehendable form. : )
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Derwoodly, the discussion stopped being about the formation of life and became one of immortality and death. I felt that there was no need to return to the previous state.
I do not know if ajdaha has read any books on Social Constructivism, but it esentually says that we can not know anything for certain.
I will repost what I wrote in serpentjoe\'s thread:
\"I think you were trying to say, Ajdaha, that the existence of a world external to one\'s consciousness cannot be established through reason? Transcendental/Universal skepticism is a big mess. If one states that man can know nothing, he or she then will find themselves immersed in hopeless absurdities, for in asserting that there is no knowledge, the skeptic is asserting a knowledge claim - which according to his or her own theory is impossible.
If you meant that man can never attain certainty, you fare no better. Are you certain that we cannot attain certainty, or is it open to doubt as well? If it is known with certainty, at least one thing is beyond doubt, which makes the principle false. If, however, the principle is open to doubt, then on what grounds can one make the original claim?\"
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On the grounds that I am not sure what my brain is recieving is true?!?!?!?
It is not a claim it is a suggestion. So what I say could or could not be true. But because of the fact that we don\'t know if what I claim is true or not we cannot know anything for sure.
????
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I... don\'t think you understood. As far as this is concerned, there is no difference between a claim and a suggestion. I could suggest that manticores exist, but unless I\'d like to sound as if I\'m living in another world, f I better explain why I\'m suggesting this.
On what grounds are you not sure if your brain is deceiving you? What reasons do you have to think such? If you have no reasons, then you have a moot suggestion, a moot point.
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On the grounds that there is no proof that the brain is not decieving me.
Is that good?
Edit -
PS: Thought is the most pure and the final level of mentality, so what I think, not depending on what my senses relay to me, is as true to myself as I can get.
Are you asking me of how I can be sure of that?
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As much as I am enjoying Karyuu\'s solipsistic thread, let me retort.
Get back to what the brain is designed to do: avoid predators, find food, make life easier all around.
I am a dyed-in-the-wool agnostic and I don\'t even believe what my senses tell me. If you\'ve ever had hallucinagens, you know that your tie to \"reality\" is no thicker than your cerebral cortex, and that\'s thin.
Where does it leave you if you can\'t even trust your senses? With your internal model. For instance, if I see rustling in the grass, I assume it\'s a predator coming to get me. Well, the me that lived four million years ago, anyway. I have a model that says large predators sneak up on me in grass. My brain has done its job independently of whether there was a lion in that grass.
So I make models and try out predictions. If my models work, I keep them. If not, I let them go. How simple is that?
Having said that, I submit that it doesn\'t matter if there is a god, a soul or even an external reality. Our internal models have jos they have to do. Even the most die hard zealot learns that there are times when \"god\" is unreliable. So he makes models just in case god doesn\'t magically stop that boulder from falling on his head. The \"get out of the way when something is falling\" model works better than the \"god loves me and will save me\" model any day of the week.
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Its MY thread. Not Karyuu\'s
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certain chemicles mixed and made the most simple life, a brown ooze. some guy found it and found out that he had created life so he published it.
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seriously? :o
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I think Black rose is talking about Miller\'s experiments in the 1950\'s. It wasn\'t quite simple life, it was the ingredients thereof--amino acids and certain carbohydrates. I don\'t know the details, but I bet Google could tell you something with Miller and amino acids...
I was refering to Karyuu\'s sub thread, which was interesting.
Keep asking questions. Read today\'s slashdot.org. It\'s very inspiring.
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I heard about those experiments in a lab in middle school. He used instruments to simulate Earth\'s early atmosphere(C02 and etc) and lightning. Apparently he was resulted with aminos needed to make some proteins. But he didn\'t have all proteins necessary for life. Just a few bricks out of a skyscraper.