Do you believe in the Theory of Evolution?

[Ostroeuropa]

if the bear is trying to kill us, attacking it is the logical option.
Survey the area for weaponry and attack.
If there is no weaponry, go for the eyes.

Definitely, go for parts of the face.

I don't think you're seeing the point: Do you have the guts to go up against the polar bear? The largest land-based predator alive? And even if you did - And I don't think even the spirit of Bruce Lee would attack a polar bear - Would everybody else also have the guts?

Would I go and pick a fight with a bear? No, ofcourse not. that's stupid.
But you are forgetting, bears don't pick fights with us either.
In the event of a fight definately occuring it doesn't matter about bravery anymore, you fight to survive. And yes, go for parts of the face. Almost any animal will back away immediately if you manage to attack it's eyes, it's instinctual to flinch away from the source.
And that's the point. A single human can very easily cripple a bear for life and render it incapable or unlikely to survive and procreate.
That's why very few animals will attack us. Versus a pack of humans? You're fucked.
To prove this to you, if you like, go walking in bear country. AVOID their nests, they will protect the offspring. But go walking everywhere else, including their water sources.
They will run away from you. Go in a pack and they won't even wait around for you to show up.
Humans have the fluttershy stare power too
Stare menacingly at any animal that thinks it might have a chance and most go away.

[Mavorpen]

No it isn't.

Why do you say that?

For one, you'd have to define what "smart" is. A squirrel wouldn't survive well with the brain of a human. Species like them do well with a brain with great memory. Meanwhile humans have a hard time keeping up with their keys.

[Strykla]

Definitely, go for parts of the face.

I don't think you're seeing the point: Do you have the guts to go up against the polar bear? The largest land-based predator alive? And even if you did - And I don't think even the spirit of Bruce Lee would attack a polar bear - Would everybody else also have the guts?

Would I go and pick a fight with a bear? No, ofcourse not. that's stupid.
But you are forgetting, bears don't pick fights with us either.
In the event of a fight definately occuring it doesn't matter about bravery anymore, you fight to survive. And yes, go for parts of the face. Almost any animal will back away immediately if you manage to attack it's eyes, it's instinctual to flinch away from the source.

Fight to survive? Against what amounts to a car running at you? This analogy hardly matters. It might be a T-Rex attacking you. But, like I already said, you only have to outrun the slowest human in the group. That's all I'm trying to say.

[Ostroeuropa]

Would I go and pick a fight with a bear? No, ofcourse not. that's stupid.
But you are forgetting, bears don't pick fights with us either.
In the event of a fight definately occuring it doesn't matter about bravery anymore, you fight to survive. And yes, go for parts of the face. Almost any animal will back away immediately if you manage to attack it's eyes, it's instinctual to flinch away from the source.

Fight to survive? Against what amounts to a car running at you? This analogy hardly matters. It might be a T-Rex attacking you. But, like I already said, you only have to outrun the slowest human in the group. That's all I'm trying to say.

Humans don't work like that. Maybe among strangers sure.
But how often are you in a situation like that with a bunch of complete strangers. It'll be your family and friends or coworkers.
Team bonds make a pack, and attackign a pack of humans will get you killed.

[Maudlnya]

Why do you say that?

For one, you'd have to define what "smart" is. A squirrel wouldn't survive well with the brain of a human. Species like them do well with a brain with great memory. Meanwhile humans have a hard time keeping up with their keys.

Okay maybe not 'smart' bad choices of words to begin with... But what I mean is the ones that can create are inovatetive, and have a greater will to do so, will be the ones that have a higher chance of surviving.

But then again I have no facts to back this up....

[Mavorpen]

For one, you'd have to define what "smart" is. A squirrel wouldn't survive well with the brain of a human. Species like them do well with a brain with great memory. Meanwhile humans have a hard time keeping up with their keys.

Okay maybe not 'smart' bad choices of words to begin with... But what I mean is the ones that can create are inovatetive, and have a greater will to do so, will be the ones that have a higher chance of surviving.

But then again I have no facts to back this up....

Like crows?

[Maudlnya]

Okay maybe not 'smart' bad choices of words to begin with... But what I mean is the ones that can create are inovatetive, and have a greater will to do so, will be the ones that have a higher chance of surviving.

But then again I have no facts to back this up....

Like crows?

OMG Crows, those things are able to take over the world XD

[Ostroeuropa]

Like crows?

OMG Crows, those things are able to take over the world XD

In the event of humans all disappearing, the contenders for the throne would probably be meerkats, dogs, cats, crows, or raccoons.
All demonstrate intelligence.
I'm leaning toward meerkats since they have a large language and a clear social structure, but dogs are also possible, and in some ways would be way more used to the city and how to get around.
Unsure of raccoon social structure.
Crows and cats are too solitary.

[Maudlnya]

OMG Crows, those things are able to take over the world XD

In the event of humans all disappearing, the contenders for the throne would probably be meerkats, dogs, cats, crows, or raccoons.
All demonstrate intelligence.
I'm leaning toward meerkats since they have a large language and a clear social structure, but dogs are also possible, and in some ways would be way more used to the city and how to get around.
Unsure of raccoon social structure.
Crows and cats are too solitary.

You forgot octopi and the other apes

[The Occident]

The point is i have gone to schools in several states and none of them taught evolution.

...You're 13. They usually don't even mention evolution before High School.

The elementary school I went to taught it from grade 3 up. I had known about evolution by my sixth birthday. Before anyone goes, YES I know that's not usual, but I guess that's why it's baffling to me that some people say they didn't know about evolution until their early teens? Isn't that a bit too long to wait to teach it?

[Mavorpen]

I'm leaning toward meerkats since they have a large language and a clear social structure, but dogs are also possible, and in some ways would be way more used to the city and how to get around.
Unsure of raccoon social structure.
Crows and cats are too solitary.

Bitch please.

[Ostroeuropa]

In the event of humans all disappearing, the contenders for the throne would probably be meerkats, dogs, cats, crows, or raccoons.
All demonstrate intelligence.
I'm leaning toward meerkats since they have a large language and a clear social structure, but dogs are also possible, and in some ways would be way more used to the city and how to get around.
Unsure of raccoon social structure.
Crows and cats are too solitary.

You forgot octopi and the other apes

Octopi are too solitary, other apes? Well, I suppose that's possible. But I doubt very much humans would have survived if we were competing with dog-level intelligence in wolves. We'd be screwed

[Post War America]

Yes

[Maudlnya]

I'm leaning toward meerkats since they have a large language and a clear social structure, but dogs are also possible, and in some ways would be way more used to the city and how to get around.
Unsure of raccoon social structure.
Crows and cats are too solitary.

Bitch please.

dying

[Ostroeuropa]

I'm leaning toward meerkats since they have a large language and a clear social structure, but dogs are also possible, and in some ways would be way more used to the city and how to get around.
Unsure of raccoon social structure.
Crows and cats are too solitary.

Bitch please.

Quite right. Prarie dogs too

[Potlimitomaha]

I believe you should distinguish between the theory of evolution and the fact of evolution. They are two different things.
I do think that the theory of evolution represents the best explanation we have so far for the mechanisms of evolution. but I wouldn't call it a fact. It's a theory, like the theory of gravity (but much better understood)

What he said.

[Ovisterra]

I believe you should distinguish between the theory of evolution and the fact of evolution. They are two different things.
I do think that the theory of evolution represents the best explanation we have so far for the mechanisms of evolution. but I wouldn't call it a fact. It's a theory, like the theory of gravity (but much better understood)

What he said.

You don't think evolution is a fact?

[Norstal]

What he said.

You don't think evolution is a fact?

The theory is always changing, just like the theory of gravity. It's fact that it exists, but the theory to explain its existence is always changing until we know exactly what it is.

It's just a pedantic point. Some people who doubt the current theory of evolution aren't creationists; they don't necessarily have to deny evolution doesn't happen. I'm talking about biologists who have their own theories as to how it works, just as many physicists have their own theory how gravity works.

[Hurdegaryp]

Some people who doubt the current theory of evolution aren't creationists; they don't necessarily have to deny evolution doesn't happen. I'm talking about biologists who have their own theories as to how it works, just as many physicists have their own theory how gravity works.

Science, as always, is a continuing work in progress. And that's a good thing.

[Central Slavia]

OIkay, let's move away from philosophy and on to more concrete evidence.

Great. I'll address issues I have knowledge of.

Okay, now to move onto probability:

The science of probability has not been favorable to evolutionary theory, even with the theory's loose time restraints. Dr. James Coppedge, of the Center for Probability Research in Biology in California, made some amazing calculations. Dr. Coppedge

"applied all the laws of probability studies to the possibility of a single cell coming into existence by chance. He considered in the same way a single protein molecule, and even a single gene. His discoveries are revolutionary. He computed a world in which the entire crust of the earth - all the oceans, all the atoms, and the whole crust were available. He then had these amino acids bind at a rate one and one-half trillion times faster than they do in nature. In computing the possibilities, he found that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10, to the 262nd power, years." (That is, the number 1 followed by 262 zeros.) "To get a single cell - the single smallest living cell known to mankind - which is called the mycroplasm hominis H39, would take 10, to the 119,841st power, years. That means that if you took thin pieces of paper and wrote 1 and then wrote zeros after (it), you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could ever even write that number. That is how many years it would take to make one living cell, smaller than any human cell!"

According to Emile Borel, a French scientist and expert in the area of probability, an event on the cosmic level with a probability of less than 1 out of 10, to the 50th power, will not happen. The probability of producing one human cell by chance is 10, to the 119,000 power.

Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, was quoted in Nature magazine, November 12, 1981, as saying "The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way (evolution) is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

Does any of these take into account that the processes aren't pure chance only, that after some initial stage there's a drive, such as enzyme action, for them to happen again? Because otherwise it's like disproving human reproduction based on the probability that a man's dick will end in a woman's vagina, based on the volume occupied by those two organs vs. the volume of the bedroom.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics also goes DIRECTLY AGAINST Evolution without a shadow of a doubt. The second law of thermodynamics states that although the total amount of energy remains constant, the amount of usable energy is constantly decreasing. This law can be seen in most everything. Where work is done, energy is expelled. That energy can never again be used. As usable energy decreases, decay increases. So it opposes evolution because if the natural trend is toward degeneration, then evolution is impossible, for it demands the betterment of organisms through mutation.
.

NO
The second law of thermodynamics states that (Clausius Statement) : "No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature."
Given that our planet gets energy from the sun, this doesn't contradict evolution any more than it contradicts the operation of a car engine.

[Hurdegaryp]

Ah, massive walls of text. I feel a TL;DR coming up!

[Sociobiology]

You forgot octopi and the other apes

Octopi are too solitary, other apes? Well, I suppose that's possible. But I doubt very much humans would have survived if we were competing with dog-level intelligence in wolves. We'd be screwed

dogs are less intelligent than wolves.
they are however better at reading human emotions.

[Unchecked Expansion]

What he said.

You don't think evolution is a fact?

It happening is a fact, our explanation how it happens isn't, because theories aren't facts, they are explanations supported by facts.
Yes, I've just written fact way more than any sentence needs, deal with it.

[Sebbal]

I consider myself a fairly open minded Christian but if Evolution is real - why are there still monkeys around?

This implies evolution is a goal driven process set in motion to produce human beings. It isn't. It is a natural process driven by random events in nature and within the genetic coding of the individuals themselves.

You attitude seems to be that evolution must remove more primitive life forms as it progresses. This is not the case. If such a thing were part of the evolutionary process then why would we still find things like bacteria, lichens, algae and filter feeding aquatic organisms. All of these are clearly more primitive and of a far earlier origin than humans or monkeys.

Those monkeys are still about because we did not evolve from them. Humans and those monkeys evolved from a conman ancestor in the past. From the original population of this ancestor, difference began to arise from macro and micro evolutionary processes. Macro evolutionary processes could have been natural events that split the population up, creating two new isolated populations that could not share genetic information. In these two populations, genetic mutations would occur with every new generation and from other events such has genetic drift and mutation in general. Over the coarse of millions of years (because that's the geological time frame we're dealing with) the differences and mutations compounded until speciation set in.

The result of this is two new species that cannot interbreed any more.

[Hurdegaryp]

Octopi are too solitary, other apes? Well, I suppose that's possible. But I doubt very much humans would have survived if we were competing with dog-level intelligence in wolves. We'd be screwed

dogs are less intelligent than wolves.
they are however better at reading human emotions.

Which is not strange after having joined forces with humans for several dozen millenniums. Many animals living with or near humans have adapted in order to make better use of their relation with the human beast, it's just another example of evolution in action.