Viruses are non-living particles made of non-living matter. They manage to meet many requirements for the definition of life, but not all of them. They are fairly simple compared to cellular life, but fairly complex compared to more simple products of various series of chemical reactions. They tend to be a fairly good point to start looking for a bridge between "life" and other compound reactions. How many bio courses have you taken, Vinny? Was it just a year in highschool?

No they don't, but you might think so if you've been arguing in favor of religion.

Can evolution be proved?

And correct me if I'm wrong, but evolution implies spontaneous generation, doesn't it? Wasn't that proven false? And what about entropy of a system?

Enlighten me.

Evolution does not imply spontaneous generation.

Yes.


No, stop listening to fundamentalist pseudoscientists with degrees from diploma mills.


No, stop listening to fundamentalist pseudoscientists with degrees from diploma mills.


The notion that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics is complete bunk. Stop listening to fundamentalist pseudoscientists with degrees from diploma mills.

Can you explain your answers with more than "yes" and "no"? Especially the first one.

I can't believe people still ask this stupid question. The variation in humans, and the gradual change over the past 100 years should be example enough. The obvious similarities, but advantageous differences that correlate with their system is obvious. Polar bears are bears with adaptations suited for the arctic.

To claim evolution can't be proven is to ignore the very clear signs and observable changes in billions of species. It's to ignore that people's kids are born differently, and that if a kid was born with a disorder that caused him to bleed profusely when poked, he might have a harder time surviving, and thus probably wouldn't reproduce and thus pass on his genes. That's all bull**** and it's GOD that decides if the kid lives and if his kid has the disorder, right?

It's like disagreeing with how a car works, and claiming god makes it move instead. It's an obvious and apparent system of natural selection, and it's not even something a scientist needs to observe.

Okay.

Evolution has over a century of evidence behind it. The single best internet source I know of is TalkOrigins. If you have a freshman college biology textbook you could check that too.

The theory of evolution doesn't imply spontaneous generation. I'm not sure how I can make that more simple. Evolution has nothing to do with the origins of life on Earth or anywhere else. Evolution is about the change of life over time.

Abiogenesis may not be as solid as evolution but it's the most likely explanation for the creation of life on Earth, that I am aware of anyway.

The argument that evolution violates entropy is completely silly. It's a combination of a strawman fallacy and plugging one's ears while screaming "NA NA NA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Kirby the evidence for evolution is more than that. There isn't much that can be directly observed for proof of macroevolution, a lot of it is implied from past physical evidence.

Also I think splitting evolution into micro and macro is pretty silly. If genetic mutation and natural selection occur at any level, then evolution is implied.

Yeah, the entropy thing is just plain cute. It's absolute manipulation of uneducated ears. Or maybe they just misunderstood it themselves?

Or maybe when you want to believe something so much, and it's where you start your thinking at, it doesn't matter what the truth is?

I'll check out that link later tonight. Thankyou, though.

I'm sensing some sort of underlying hostility here...

Well, fools make the entropy argument like so:

A straw man fallacy is first used to substitute evolution with abiogenesis. Then a gross misunderstanding of both abiogenesis and thermodynamics is swallowed whole. The result is any number of variations of the entropy argument spewn forth from a random bodily orifice.

random bodily orifice?

Ew.

All of life is a fight against entropy. Life is a means for information to control and order matter - to temporarily reduce entropy within the organism at the expense of increasing it elsewhere. All life seems to violate entropy, but all it really does is move it around. For every bit of order we seem to bring, every bit we seem to fight against entropy, we make it worse somewhere else. The net entropy of the universe only increases, even if local areas decrease. It's really the information in our DNA that is the purpose of life. The preservation and replication of that information.



The other option is, what, a meteor? Biogenesis works in theory. The most common argument against it is 'What are the chances?' Well, they are pretty good. There is a self replicating hydrocarbon molecule. The chances of it occurring 'in nature' are rather slim. Let's say that for every million collisions between large hydrocarbon molecules, one of these molecules occurs. Now imagine the ocean. Full of billions (not even close to how many there are) of hydrocarbon molecules. Sloshing around. Colliding trillions of times every second. There's a **** **** ton of these self replicating hydrocarbon molecules now. They self replicate. There's even more of them! What are the chances that one of them would smack into something, and form a slightly more complex self replicating structure? Lets say it happens once every million collisions...

All this, and I believe in God. This poll needs a transcendental option.

For the curious. Accurate, if somewhat biased. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

You all suck and need to be touched by the furry embrace of the Monkey Lord.

You have Creationism, those who believe that we were created by a benevolent being who formed the earth and the heavens. Then you have Evolution which states that we evolved from lesser beings into our current forms.

The Church of kong Embraces BOTH these theories and strives to unite the those who fight about something so silly. The church of Kong believes this.

God did indeed create man, He created man in his glorious image, That of an ape. Over time we followed our ape lord and learned of the earth, But our ape lord had other plans, more grand plans, and to fulfill them we needed to change, to adapt to the world as the ape-lord saw fit, Thus we evolved from our lowly ape selves to our current and more perfect form, That of the Homosapians.

The monkey-Lord still leaves behind the monkey, apes and Chimps as reminders of our heritage and are honored among Konganits as holy animals.

Living/not living is a distinction that humans make. From a physical point of view, nothing in out bodies is profoundly different from the rest of the systems I mentioned.

Um um BUT EMON WE WOULD NEED SOME MASSIVE OUTSIDE SOURCE OF ENERGY FOR IT TO WORK

also,

OMG THRAWN IS THAT AN ISLAND.

teh

A partial yes. I find that creation is what you make of it, and if you've created something its a thing. I bear this in mind when Im doing stuff in JED and I believe that something that is created can evolve (as you start out with the box and it expands into some thing which has many rooms that are not boxes etc.)

Thats my view anyway :).

that dont' mean nuffink.

True.

RED SQUIRREL! :D:D:D:D:D

even better:

It's really not.

Binturong beats all!

Slow loris is slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww