Hobbits are a real species

[angus]

Homo floresensis (As it is usually spelled!) is the name to a skeleton found in October 2004, in Indonesia.  Though it has been described as a tiny hominid that lived twelve thousand years ago on an Indonesian island, and, moreover, claimed to support the existence of proto-pygmies in equatorial jungles worldwide, it is merely a a natural quirk.  It is not a newly discovered species.  Probably a particularly dimunitive Homo Sapiens or Homo Erectus specimen.  The specimen does not pass the rigorous tests for determining whether it is a different species, rather than just an extreme version of what had already evolved.  This is an example of bad science, like the time the Yale Peabody Museum placed the wrong skull (a camarasaurus head) on the Apatosaurus body, and for years it was thought to be a different species than what it was.  [Ironically, all the while the correct head was sitting in a museum storage room.]  In fact, I think the wrong head remained there for about 40 years, giving rise to the term Brontosaurus, which is now known to be the incorrect name of a species already identified as Brachiosaur.  Enthusiasm about science is great!  Enthusiasm while performing science can be disastrous.  We should regard such reports with a great deal of skepticism.

[angus]

The biggest flaw in evolution is that it flies in the face of accepted science.  Things do not move from a less complex state to a more complex state unless acted upon by an outside force.

What? First off, I think that's supposed to apply to physics, not biology. Second, it can be contended that outside forces were present in evolution, regardless of what the statement above is supposed to apply to. For instance, the creation of amino acids in the primordial earth - the chemicals were initially in a less complex form, and the various forces on the planet(heat, other chemicals present, and whatnot) would have provided the proper conditions. Second, a central part of evolution, natural selection, in highly dependent on outside forces - say a change in climate causes species to die off, and other to have parts of them die off while those with the traits needed for survival live. Then there's mutation - mutation can happen due to outside forces as well, such as radiation. The whole reason evolution would need to happen is because the world changes, and since it does change life must change with it or die off. If the world did not ever change, you would see very little change in the composition of the world's biota.

I think y'all are thinking of entropy, which is disorder.  Haven't we gone over this before.  In any spontaneous process, entropy increases.  this is called the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  So, in physics, things do ALWAYS move from a more ordered state to a less ordered state.  Think:  a pile of bricks will not become a building spontaneously, but a building will become a pile of bricks spontaneously.  And the same is true in biology.  Physics is just smaller bits of chemistry, just as chemistry is smaller bits of biology.  If a Law holds for physics, it must also hold for biology, or we have a really big problem on our hands.

Once again, I'll repeat:  Religion and science do not compete.  they operate in different realms.  I have talked to priests who have no qualms with the Big Bang, and scientists who have no problems with the existence of gods and afterlives and spirituality. 

Why must the Left always insult religion?  Why must the religion refuse to accept scientific evidence for the origins of species?  I make it for the same reason.  Exactly the same reason, in fact.  I just haven't figured out what that reason is, being that I'm neither Left nor Religious. 

One other point.  Perhaps some of you have heard of Shiva.  One of the three manifestations of god in what the Hindu call "the trinity"  Shiva is the Destructor.  Entropy, as it were.  Hindu have absolutely no weird juxtapositions when studying physics, and the origin of the universe.  Christians and Jews and Muslims needn't either. 

"free yo mind, and the rest will follow"
 --90s black music lyric (I can't remember the artist)

[angus]

As a born-again Christian I have no problem with science, cosmology or even evolution.  I am enthralled by science.  I have read many articles and watched many programs featuring explanations of evolution and the cosmos.  Some I beleive, some i don't.  I just have a problem accepting theories such as the big bang and macro-evolution.  micro-evolution and linguistic evolution are both proven facts.  That is why we have 200 different types of dogs instead of one wolf and why we all speak different langauges.  There are boundaries for micro andlinguistic evolution.  All human lanaguages operate within certain parameters and follow a basic universal grammar of sorts.

Okay.  I appreciate the response.  I hadn't heard of Gentry.  I'll take a look at it. 

You know about the Miller-Urey experiment, I assume.  There are plausible explanations about how proteins can organize out of the primordial soup.  And on the surface it looks contradictory to the Second Law, or that Shiva was sleeping that day, or something.  But you have to remember to consider universal entropy, not the entropy of the system.

I also think it's reasonable not to get too hyped up in groupthink, by the way.  I think it's probably best that you're a little skeptical about theories.

[angus]

As a born-again Christian I have no problem with science, cosmology or even evolution.  I am enthralled by science.  I have read many articles and watched many programs featuring explanations of evolution and the cosmos.  Some I beleive, some i don't.  I just have a problem accepting theories such as the big bang and macro-evolution.  micro-evolution and linguistic evolution are both proven facts.  That is why we have 200 different types of dogs instead of one wolf and why we all speak different langauges.  There are boundaries for micro andlinguistic evolution.  All human lanaguages operate within certain parameters and follow a basic universal grammar of sorts.

Okay.  I appreciate the response.  I hadn't heard of Gentry.  I'll take a look at it. 

You know about the Miller-Urey experiment, I assume.  There are plausible explanations about how proteins can organize out of the primordial soup.  And on the surface it looks contradictory to the Second Law, or that Shiva was sleeping that day, or something.  But you have to remember to consider universal entropy, not the entropy of the system.

I also think it's reasonable not to get too hyped up in groupthink, by the way.  I think it's probably best that you're a little skeptical about theories.

I've heard of the miller-urey experiment and I don't doubt its conclusions.  However showing something that can be done in a laboratory does not mean it occurs naturally in nature, only possibly that it coud have.  I don't know if "could have" is scientific.

i saw a special on 60 minutes about the genetic engineering of tomatoes and salmon.  scientists inserted a gene from a tomato into a fish and the fish grew double its normal size.  I believe that is what happened in a lab; i have no doubt it can be done.  However, i fail to see how that could happen in nature.

Well, Miller and Urey were showing just that:  the plausibility of the formation of alpha amino acids from reduced compounds and some water. 

That tomato gene inserted into salmon probably has a different goal.  I'm not familiar with that one, but I don't imagine that the investigators are claiming that a tomato can, in situ, insert pieces of its genes into a fish.  Maybe they were examining genetic modification.  And this is at least one reason some scientists from Europe are migrating to the USA.   We don't have, as a society, those hangups about mucking about with nature.  Clearly, we have others.  I, for one, am not too excited about the prospect of creating a race of slaves, or living organ-farms.  That's a bit too Crighton-esque even for my warped mind.