Well, My Opinion Of The US Public Just Went Down Again...

[Captain Seafort]

Yes, eventually I guess that it could make it so that 'new' species would be formed... eventually... but if that was so, then what would differentiate them? One species from another?

The fact that they can't interbreed - that's the definition of species.

[Sionnach Glic]

Yes, eventually I guess that it could make it so that 'new' species would be formed... eventually... but if that was so, then what would differentiate them? One species from another?

When the changes become so great that they can no longer produce fertile offspring together.

[Aaron]

I know it doesn't have anything to do with life, but the reason I stated that is because I know atheists that believe that everything was just here... and others that think it all came from larger stars, etc... I'm wondering what any atheists believe about how things got here, besides evolution...

The term for the "origin" of life, so to speak is Abiogenesis. Evolution is the change in animals over time due to natural selection. Sorry to harp on this but it's really hard to take anyone seriously in a discussion such as this when they are ignorant of some pretty basic scientific concepts.

I'm an Atheist and it may shock you to learn that I really don't care how or why life came to be here. Maybe life on Earth is the result of space whale poop, maybe it came to be exactly how the scientific community theorizes, maybe the Native Americans are right? My point is though, that I don't much care, it's here and that's it for me.

The thing with Atheism is there is no unified belief other then an absence of belief in deities. You'll find anarchists, communists, fascists, randroids etc, their as varied as the types of insects on the planet. For some reason it's hard for the religious to grasp this.

Now excuse me, I have to go k9ick a kitten, eat babies and impregnate pure chaste Christian women.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Male donkeys and female horses can have offspring (Mules) but these mules are sterile; hence the donkey and the horse cannot produce biologically viable offspring and are deemed separate species (the same is true of lions and tigers breeding to form sterile "Ligers"). This is at the very line of species differentiation; species more widely separated cannot crossbreed at all.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, what determines a species is not just whether they can produce offspring, but whether that offspring can then produce offspring of their own.

[Nickswitz]

Wait... How is it that we as humans are the only animal with the ability to, well, do what we do... if we got this far, shouldn't everything else have to?


And Seafort, can you please explain the rubbing a hand on a rock to get the sahara... It really confused me...

The term for the "origin" of life, so to speak is Abiogenesis. Evolution is the change in animals over time due to natural selection. Sorry to harp on this but it's really hard to take anyone seriously in a discussion such as this when they are ignorant of some pretty basic scientific concepts.

I'm not ignorant of that... I do know that, I meant how things got here... right here, like today, how things came to this point, not how they started... And as stated before, Darwinian evolution is natural selection...

[Lighthawk]

Yes, eventually I guess that it could make it so that 'new' species would be formed... eventually... but if that was so, then what would differentiate them? One species from another?

At any given point in their evolution, nothing. You can really only see evolution over a long, long time frame. Single generation differences are too minor, you have to look over the course of several generations, and even then you're still only likely to be dealing with different breeds, which can be pretty damn diverse. Just look at dogs, nearly all modern dogs are the result of selective breeding by humans. You can see easily in them how, over time, many small changes can add up to some very big differences.

The thing you have to keep in mind about evolution is that it is not a clean cut process. You can't look at it from a " Where is the division, where does this lizard become a bird?" view point. It's all a big, gradual, blurred mess. Evolution is not a neatly ordered thing, doubly so because of the length of time involved.

[Aaron]

Wait... How is it that we as humans are the only animal with the ability to, well, do what we do... if we got this far, shouldn't everything else have to?


And Seafort, can you please explain the rubbing a hand on a rock to get the sahara... It really confused me...

The term for the "origin" of life, so to speak is Abiogenesis. Evolution is the change in animals over time due to natural selection. Sorry to harp on this but it's really hard to take anyone seriously in a discussion such as this when they are ignorant of some pretty basic scientific concepts.

I'm not ignorant of that... I do know that, I meant how things got here... right here, like today, how things came to this point, not how they started... And as stated before, Darwinian evolution is natural selection...

I'm going to have to ask you to be more clear then, your posts are rather hard to understand at times.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Wait... How is it that we as humans are the only animal with the ability to, well, do what we do... if we got this far, shouldn't everything else have to?


And Seafort, can you please explain the rubbing a hand on a rock to get the sahara... It really confused me...

The term for the "origin" of life, so to speak is Abiogenesis. Evolution is the change in animals over time due to natural selection. Sorry to harp on this but it's really hard to take anyone seriously in a discussion such as this when they are ignorant of some pretty basic scientific concepts.

I'm not ignorant of that... I do know that, I meant how things got here... right here, like today, how things came to this point, not how they started... And as stated before, Darwinian evolution is natural selection...

Seafort referred to eroding a rock into sand with your thumb over absurdly long periods of time.

As to humans... if other animals are successful in their evolutionary niches, why should they need to be smart bipeds with opposable thumbs? What determines evolutionary success is simply the ability to survive; how an animal does it is immaterial in the broad sense. It just happened that the path our ancestors took led to homo sapiens with our distinct characteristics, but intelligence in itself is clearly not a prerequisite to success as a species as many very successful species have limited intelligence. Hell, how could one even define the "intelligence" of a plant or bacterium, yet plants and micro-organisms thrive all over the world.

[Captain Seafort]

Wait... How is it that we as humans are the only animal with the ability to, well, do what we do... if we got this far, shouldn't everything else have to?

Evolution is unpredictable. While it isn't random, the individual mutations that combine to produce the larger-scale changes are. Moreover, it's likely that, eventually, and provided they don't get wiped out beforehand, other animals will probably also achieve sapience. Indeed it's possible that some animals, such as dolphins, have already done so. Humanity's advantage isn't just intelligence, but the opposable thumb, without which civilisation of any level would have been impossible.

And Seafort, can you please explain the rubbing a hand on a rock to get the sahara... It really confused me...

If you rub your thumb across rock (especially a soft one such as sandstone) what to you get? Dust. Sand. Repeat the process and you get more sand. This is exactly how wind works, grinding down mountains. Over the course of a day, you'd only get a few grams of sand, but over millions of years, with the wind inflicting the same sort of damage across hundreds or thousands of miles, you'd eventually grind mountains down to deserts.

[Sionnach Glic]

Wait... How is it that we as humans are the only animal with the ability to, well, do what we do... if we got this far, shouldn't everything else have to?

What do you mean? Why are we the only animal that has achieved sapience?

If so, then the answer is quite simple: there's no pressing need for other races to develop it. You have to remember that evolution is not a guided process with a specific goal in mind, it's random. Mutations occur unpredictably, and the ones that help make the animal that little bit better suited to its environment spread through the species as time progresses.

Let's take a lion. What use would sapience be to it? It would be absolutely useless. They've no need for it. They're more than adquately adapted to survive in their current state. Bigger brains would just be a burden.

Humans adapted to their environment by using tools. Other species adapted to it by growing shells, or by having sharp teeth and claws, or by simply growing too big to be attacked.

I'm not ignorant of that... I do know that, I meant how things got here... right here, like today, how things came to this point, not how they started... And as stated before, Darwinian evolution is natural selection...

As I said earlier, you're going to get as many different answers to that as there are atheists.

[Nickswitz]

If you rub your thumb across rock (especially a soft one such as sandstone) what to you get? Dust. Sand. Repeat the process and you get more sand. This is exactly how wind works, grinding down mountains. Over the course of a day, you'd only get a few grams of sand, but over millions of years, with the wind inflicting the same sort of damage across hundreds or thousands of miles, you'd eventually grind mountains down to deserts.

Ok, thank you... that confused me, I understand now...

And I'm sorry if some of my posts make little sense... I'm well... drugged on decongestants... Not good for concentration...

[Mikey]

Indeed, to take Rochey's lion example... a mutation that produced a larger cranial capacity would be weeded out by natural selection, rather than favored by it. A larger cranium would mean a commensurately smaller mandible (and possibly maxilla,) and therefore considerably less likelihood of survival to pass that trait into the gene pool.

[Sionnach Glic]

Not to mention greater food requirements. Brains don't run on positive thinking, after all.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Indeed, to take Rochey's lion example... a mutation that produced a larger cranial capacity would be weeded out by natural selection, rather than favored by it. A larger cranium would mean a commensurately smaller mandible (and possibly maxilla,) and therefore considerably less likelihood of survival to pass that trait into the gene pool.

Indeed, a price humans paid for our immense brains was a significant shrinkage of our jaws to make room for them. Given the success of our species, though, it seems a price worth paying.