Ray Comfort, On The Origin Of Species

[sillyking14]

so i agree that we should condense to one thread simply because the two threads hold almost exactly the same arguments. so i brought this quote from daxx over to this thread because there are some things in that thread that aren't in this one.

precisely what are they? because i though i nailed the process of evolution and natural selection pretty well in my first post. and noone tried to correct that so if there is a mistake please tell me. but if there isn't a mistake then exactly what misconceptions are you talking about?

You did do pretty well with the first post, that is true. Unfortunately your misconceptions mostly stem from not having a full understanding of biology rather than evolutionary theory - I'll point them out and then follow this up in the other thread if I may. No use having two threads on the same subject. I am afraid this might be quite lengthy since I have to break this down so much.

in most cases. what im talking about is humans, who are physically weaker/less survivable than most every other species in existence

Not strictly true. We have plenty going for us. We're excellent runners, as I pointed out, we can climb, we have binocular vision, and so on.

as a matter of fact there is little or no evidence that intelligence and free will comes from genetics.

The brain and its makeup is clearly derived from various genetic properties, and has clearly evolved if you look back through the fossil record. Intelligence and "free will" (which probably doesn't exist) are emergent properties of the brain, in the same way that a creature's running speed is an emergent property of its body plan and locomotive mechanism. It honestly is completely disingenuous to claim that there is "no evidence", because there is plenty.

and there actaully may be evidence that "mind and brain are two separate components.

Unlikely, and depends fundamentally on how you define the terms.

Um, no. Humans are not really predators. More like omnivores.

humans are predators. they aren't carnivores only but they do (or at least did before the invention of stores) hunt for their food, that is what defines a predator.

The point is that we are not exclusively predators. We can get nutrition from other sources (scavenging, plants, and so on). Therefore comparing us to creatures which are exclusively predatory doesn't actually make sense.

what makes humans so survivable is that they are intelligent. we have very few inherent adaptation against the environment, especially compared to things like killer whales which live beneath the ice in the arctic circle. the reason that humans can survive in Antarctica is that we build houses and wear parkas.

Humans didn't evolve to fit those evolutionary niches. They evolved (most probably) somewhere in Africa. The human body is actually quite well suited to the African climate.

p.s. i edited to get rid of the arguments that already exist in this post.

[sillyking14]

sorry for the triple post but what i'm doing is im trying to combine the two threads. so i brought over the arguments occurring in the other thread, and now im responding to them.

Unfortunately your misconceptions mostly stem from not having a full understanding of biology rather than evolutionary theory

what exactly don't you think i understand about biology?

Not strictly true. We have plenty going for us. We're excellent runners, as I pointed out, we can climb, we have binocular vision, and so on.

none of this contributes to survivability.
we can run for long distances but the predators that we'd be facing in africa (I.E. lions and tigers and bears 'oh my') are faster then us and (with the exception of bears perhaps) just as agile so we wouldn't escape by running
"we can climb?" so can tigers, panthers, bears, snakes, and well, the vast majority of dangers we would be facing in african jungles.
binocular vision: so we can see better than other animals, so what? how will that help if your being chased by a lioness?

The brain and its makeup is clearly derived from various genetic properties, and has clearly evolved if you look back through the fossil record. Intelligence and "free will" (which probably doesn't exist) are emergent properties of the brain, in the same way that a creature's running speed is an emergent property of its body plan and locomotive mechanism. It honestly is completely disingenuous to claim that there is "no evidence", because there is plenty.

ok but your aren't understanding my point. the brain could have evolved. except that (my point is) the brain does not create intelligence. this is actually a very controversial subject that has not yet been resolved. there are studies going on to determine how the brain creates decisions. scientists have been able to cause arms to move, or sensations to occur n parts of the body by stimulating parts of the brain, they have been unable to cause someone to decide something.
free will does exist. you literally can go and do whatever you want, literally, but then so can everybody else, so if you do something that other people don't like then they can arrest you as well. that is what society is. it is "everybody" conforming to a set of choices that are believed (by the society) to be best.
the last part of that is the assertion that "Intelligence and "free will" (which probably doesn't exist) are emergent properties of the brain." which as i have explained has not been proven scientifically (again according to my psych teacher).

The point is that we are not exclusively predators. We can get nutrition from other sources (scavenging, plants, and so on). Therefore comparing us to creatures which are exclusively predatory doesn't actually make sense.

i never compared us to other predators, i simply sated that we are the "weakest predators" in that if we were to fight any other land based predator on the planet without tools, we'd lose. and i simply was using this statement as an illustration of what i meant when i explained that (if we were created by evolution) we devolved physically at the same time that we evolved mentally.

[quote}
Humans didn't evolve to fit those evolutionary niches. They evolved (most probably) somewhere in Africa. The human body is actually quite well suited to the African climate.
[/quote]

but climate is not the only thing that contributes to natural selection. we also need to evolve to survive predators. and we are physically incapable of surviving the predators we'd be facing (without the ability to think). again this was a point that i made in order to illustrate how we had devolved physically at the same time that we evolved mentally. which is one of the premises to my argument, which i reiterated above. hopefully it is more coherent and understandable the way i formatted it this time.

[sillyking14]

Actually, evolutionary strategies are just shorthand for a collection of traits that species use to survive. The term derives from game theory (quite an important topic in evolutionary biology) where a strategy is a series of choices. The choices don't have to be made consciously or even with purpose, but arise naturally from selective pressure into different niches.

so yeah its true in this case i did take the word "strategy" out of context to suit my purposes so i apologize for that. i do fin it annoying when other people do that and i do apologize

Ah, here's your misconception. This isn't true, not every mutation has to be beneficial to be retained by a population. It just has to not kill you or, more specifically, not impair your chances of reproduction.

Long gestation times are required for the development of intelligence because children in the womb require more time to develop a larger brain. The shorter the gestation time, the less time for the fetus to develop.

i suppose that does make sense, and a longer gestation period would be a sacrifice in that the animal would be vulnerable for longer., however, brain development does not occur in the womb, the brain really begins to develop after the human is born, what happens to the brain is that the building blocks are put into place (at least that's what they taught us in psychology). doesn't really refute the point but it is interesting to note.

also humans don't have a bigger brain in fact there are animals with the same size brain (sorry i can't recall which i think its some water animal or maybe an amphibious mammal) what makes the human brain superior (aside from the mind attached to it) is the network of brain cell that develops in early child hood, our brain is more complex.

It is absolutely necessary. Other animals teach their children all sorts of things. Baby predators learn how to hunt effectively from their parents, other types of animals (primarily intelligent ones like primates and dolphins) learn how to socialise. No-one needs to have "taught the first man" because 1) there was no first man, and 2) intelligence isn't a binary switch - the hypothetical "first man" could quite easily have learnt from his slightly less intelligent parents. This is the chicken and the egg argument taken to extreme - there was no first chicken to lay the first egg; there were animals which were like chickens which laid eggs, and at some point in the evolutionary continuum we decide to define one of these creatures as a chicken.

my mistake i honestly thought you were refering to "school." however, what humans learn through this process in not anymore than most other animals so the thought that it is a sacrifice is silly. we learn the same stuff, only difference is that humans can also figure things out for themselves. as a matter of fact what children today learn from there parents is to speak and to walk mostly, not something that happened all those years ago.

It's absolutely ridiculous, yes. That is because it is what is called a straw-man argument. That is not what I am arguing, because you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the meanings of some quite common words in context. The "sacrifice" made in our development does not have to have been conscious - the sacrifices were evolutionary adaptions that allowed for increased intelligence but unfortunately impaired other traits (hence the word sacrifice).

this is exactly the point of my argument (funny how we've circled back to this) when did the sacrifices occur? now i don't mean to say that they occurred all at once. what im saying is that for intelligence to have developed naturally it would have to happen to way.
first: slowly these sacrifices were being mutated into the genome and as a result slowly human were able to support an intelligent brain.
or secondly: humans began developing an intelligent brain and the physical "sacrifices" were made to support it.

if the first were to happen then how did the creatures survive? without anything to compensate for the "sacrifices" they would have been killed by natural selection. and even if they had managed to survive the fact that it happened slowly would have meant that there would have been of the parent that were almost as intelligent as the humans. and on and on until you have homo-sapien=highly intelligent but really rather wussy. and homeo-predeccessor=slighly less intelligent and slightly less wussy I.E. an even match. so why is it that the humans killed them, completely? a weather change doesn't explain it since the predecessors would be much like us physically just a little closer to being whatever we descended from.
if the second is what happened.....same thing as the first except that natural selection wouldn't have killed them off (probably).

sillyking13, I apologize for my insulting tone.

I find it difficult to carry on a dialogue with someone who dismisses the empirical work of people who spend their lives pursuing knowledge of biology, anthropology, archaeology, etc., with an assertion that uninformed reasoning is superior. It isn't. People sometimes present evidence in a biased way, but that pales in comparison to bias that can affect those who use no check outside of their own heads and common knowledge.

its sillking14

im not dismissing it out of hand, i'm saying that it is useless to use that evidence in this kind of debate since i'm wiling to bet that none of use have actually seen the evidence outside of the class room setting, we've only ever had it taught to us and because of that there is a lot of room for bias. recently i read a book called "case for christ" and i thought that "hey, this is awesome, it proves the bibles true" but at the same time i also thought "there is no way that i can be certain that what they say is actually how it is." they refer to evidence, they say it exists, but i haven't ever seen it with my own eyes, so if i were to take what they said at face value i would be no better than the people that say that evolution created humans, but they only believe that cuz John Doe Phd author of evolution is the truth which was a best-seller for 2 years and won three award nominations says its true. this is why i prefer a logical argument, i prefer not to argue with evidence that i have not seen.  you are saying that there is a lot of evidence, or that they found transitional fossils but you don't give any logical arguments, you just keep piling on the "evidence" in hopes that i will get buried. whereas logic and common-knowledge are pure, they can be abused and slanted, but if you know how to think critically then it doesn't matter how people try to slant there argument, you can see through it.
the idea im trying to promote is this

if you have evedence of something, it doesn't matter how strong the evidence is, if you draw an illogical conclusion from the evidence then you are wrong. period.

Because no evidence of it has actually been found. Everything claimed to be irreducibly complex has been found not to be (see also: the debate around the eye). It's quite simple - irreducible complexity is an argument from ignorance and therefore is not only a logical fallacy but is in fact one with no supporting evidence.

please explain how you can prove that something is not irreducibly complex. recreate its evolution?

[sillyking14]

Okay, I haven't read everything here, but I just have a few things to say, so... IQ test do work this way, however even if someone were to consider this thesting intelligence, they'd be wrong (yes, I know thats not what you're considering it, i just don't want to restate your explanation) because it only tests seven catagories that are related to intelligence. So, this is completly out of the running for testing intelligence just for that fact, unless someone thinks only seven things relate to science.

ummm....sorry but i don't understand whats being said....well, actually, i think i understand whats being said but i don't understand if this is an argument or if you're agreeing. my point was that IQ is an inaccurate and unreliable mechanism for determining intelligence. which (i believe is what your saying) but when you used the word "however" it makes it sound like your arguing. hence my confusion.

The evidence absolutely should matter when making arguments on this topic. When you use irreducible complexity, for example, the only way to refute that claim is with evidence to the contrary. Similarly with a lot of the other points you are raising - because you are factually incorrect, the only way to make a counterpoint is to present conflicting evidence. Otherwise it's just assertion. Sure, we're then just shifting the assertion to the point where we're claiming that the evidence exists, but if you're that paranoid that the whole thing is a giant conspiracy made up by scientists, I don't understand why you're trying to debate the subject. To be fair, I give you more credit than that; I just don't understand how you can disregard large amounts of reputable, authoritative, and useful evidence.

evidence can be anything, it doesn't say anything unless it is interpreted. my argument is not that evidence does not exist, my argument is that the theory of evolution does not logically match the evidence. at least insofar as it relates to the evolution of man. the point of my statement was that the evidence has to be interpreted or it proves nothing.

Sillyking, I hope you don't mind if I break this down point by point so we can take a closer look at your premises and conclusions:

thats why i said it, i really want people to understand exactly what my argument is, because thus far it seems that man people don't understand it.

Depending on the specific species, it can be more (or possibly less) frequent. Where exactly do you get the timespan of thousands of years, out of interest? Otherwise, that's more or less correct.

i was basing this on statistical analysis and basic math. take the cat for instance. ou say that it took about 25,000,000 years to evolve to its current state. so if you assume that there are 500 total genetic differences between a house cat and whatever they evolved from then (on average) there was a genetic mutation every 25000000/500=50,000 years. that is what the law of large numbers is about. although i should have said there is a beneficial mutation every few thousand years. but i didn't wanna get to complicated. the idea is that over time random mutations occur. now i'm not saying these numbers are correct, but you would need to have more than 25,000 genetic differences in order to get a number less than 1000 years.

The second issue is that intelligence as you have defined it is attributing something rather more special than is deserved to the human race.

I think you might be giving too much credit to humans with your definition of intelligence (and again I think the word you're really looking for is sapience),

i'm not giving too much credit to humans. the idea is that we are the only species proven to be able to make choices that are not based on any form of instinct. monkeys, dolphins and the like are smart in that they are teachable, and highly adaptable, but they have never been proven to exhibit these traits.

Sapience, as it is regularly defined, is not directly coded from our genome in the sense that there is a gene which you can turn on and off for sapience. Rather, it is an emergent property of the structure of the brain. All you need to achieve sapience is a complicated and robust neural structure; you don't need a specific mutation to achieve that, beyond ones that simply improve the physiological aspects of the brain.

Amongst others. Specifically, and I think this might be helpful in understanding the problem of intelligence, mutations can (on a physiological level) affect the brain and therefore the emergent property of intelligence.

your argument is that intelligence spawns from a complicated brain (i.e. lots of synapses and such) so what i was saying is that genetic mutations that can make the brain more complicated and therefore produce intelligence, not that a genetic mutation could make any brain intelligent.

Almost certainly incorrect in using the superlative, but intelligence is a large part of the current population's survival strategy.

well ok so i did go a little to far to the extreme (maybe) however humans would still have gotten slaughtered if they hadn't "evolved" intelligence. our bodies are simply adapted to be used to great effectiveness but only if we are intelligent. that is all im saying and this fact alone is only a part of the argument.

There are two problems with this statement. Firstly, your definition of intelligence represents it as a trait all of its own, which is either there or it is not. Intelligence in nature comes in degrees. It is a trait just like "chicken-ness", when we approach the problem of the chicken and the egg. Almost certainly, humans derived their intelligence from their slightly less intelligent ancestors.

Of course, intelligence is not a binary operator

actually intelligence (as i defined it and as it exists in humans) is a binary operator. either you can make decisions without the involvement of instinct; or you can't. there is no 50% of the time you can. or you can make 10% of a decision without considering any form of instinct. either you can or can't. humans can.

As I mentioned above, it's more likely that the mutations either occurred around the same time or there is no distinction between the mutations which caused relative physical handicap and improved mental capacity - that is, they are directly causational. There's no need for the species to be at a disadvantage for a while before improving, or the other way around.

Or in fact, it was one single mutation that led to both the physical handicaps and the improved intelligence itself. There were certainly tradeoffs involved.

not possible (at least according to genetic theory). genes control one specific aspect of the physical body, if something was changed it could change physiology, or physical traits, not both. so something that affects your digestive system will not also affect your brain. they are two separate organs. and even were than possible, the fact that the changes to our system are so widespread, that there would be a lot of genes that have this duel effect, which would only strengthen my argument because it would increase the chances of other intelligent species evolving.

Sure thing. The Red Queen effect is a concept in evolutionary theory which states that you have to "keep running in order to stand still", as it were (referencing the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland). What it means is that species develop relative to their environment, and that matters more than the absolute measure of development. For a simplified example, the Red Queen effect dictates that lions and gazelles continue to run faster and faster, because each exerts a selective pressure on the other for improved speed. Therefore over time, the speed of the pair of species increases. That was what I was correcting for on the graph, because it would have made it much more complicated - but since it is an effect that we can take to be largely constant or at least independent of other factors, we can eliminate its effects in the graph without loss of generality in the argument. It doesn't really have much to do with the argument I was making, I was just pointing out that the argument is slightly more complicated than I presented it.

got it thanks.

Survivability doesn't just count defensive adaptations.

this quote, i believe, sums up that paragraph that it was taken from and so i excerpted it as opposed to the whole paragraph

survivability does not count only defensive adaptions..that's true. my point was that (without intelligence) we have next to no defensive or offensive adaptations. and again this is only part of my argument, not an argument all its own.

being able to run really far can help us hunt, but if we weren't intelligent we would be unable to track, or kill our prey. even plants, which don't seem to be active by themselves, have some adaptations that help save them from "plant predators" (I.E. worms, snails and that kind of stuff). humans don't have any. or at least they don't have enough.

Ultimately this is irrelevant to the discussion because you keep insisting on removing the modern human's greatest asset - the ability to think. No-one is making the point that should a human and a lion going toe-to-toe with the same brain capacity it would do well.You are underselling human physical traits, but this whole point is irrelevant to your argument because no-one is arguing against the idea that we are not adapted to compete on that basis.

i don't insist on removing  humans "greatest asset" time and time again i have said things like "without intelligence" or "if it weren't for intelligence." and the fact that humans without intelligence would die, is fundamentally central to my argument.

2. human being are physically (not counting intelligence) the least adapted creature on the planet.

this is one of the premises that the entire argument is based on, in order to understand why i make the point that we are physically unadapted you have to consider the entire argument.

There's no empirical evidence for anything like a soul, that's for certain.

on the conrary
websters definition of empirical.
1 : originating in or based on observation or experience <empirical data>
2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory <an empirical basis for the theory>
3 : capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment <empirical laws>
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical (ftp://http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical)
there is a lot empirical evidence for the existence of a soul. every time you hear about, out of body experiences, or anything like that is empirical evidence. it may not be strong but it is there. actually there is no "empirical evidence" for evolution, because no-one was around to watch it happen, nor is there empirical evidence for the no-existence of a soul, because no-one has ever experienced not having a soul (although i admit that experiencing not having a soul would be impossible for logical reasons). however if you want to talk about emprirical evidence for christianity, its all over the place. people talking about "seeing angels," or "feeling gods presence," as a matter of fact the entire bible is "empirical" evidence for the existence of Jesus. now im not saying that we should put a bunch of stock in empirical evidence, or that empirical evidence is a good way to prove anything, but you brought it up, not me.

Prove free will exists. I will gladly make a bet with you on this one. Even the world's greatest thinkers have been unable to do so. The best guess is that the universe is relatively deterministic or at least based on some randomness, and that therefore everything in it (including the brain and the emergent property of consciousness and sapience) is dictated by the universe's laws.

to the first part.....you can literally get up from your chair and go and do whatever you want (that is allowed by your physical capacity). there are no "universal police" that will come and stop you for breaking the "universes law". that is free will. you won't get frozen in place or anything you can go and o it. period. and as for the second part, that sounds a lot like "fate" which goes against the argument of randomness.

well your post was really long so i hope i didn't miss anything, but well i may have.

[sillyking14]

You are right. IQ only tells the intelligence of the person. It definitely won't tell who the person is or how they influence others, and nobody claimed it would.

IQ is a measurement of how much you know as compared to people your age, it is not an accurate measurement of intelligence. the theory behind it is that the more intelligent a person is the faster they will learn (which is true. intelligence is all about ones ability to learn). however, IQ fails to take into account opportunity to learn. let me put it to you this way. IQ tests require a certain knowledge base in order to do well on them. for example: a common type of question that is presented in pattern recognition sections of tests is they give you a list of numerical squares and ask you to choose which of the four choices would match this set. however if you were never taught squares then it would be next to impossible for you to answer the question given that many IQ tests have a time limit.
my point is this: even if you have the capacity to understand a specific topic (AKA you are intelligent enough to understand the topic) you may have never been taught that topic. does that make you unintelligent? no. simply uninformed.

IQ is a measurement of how much you know as compared to people your age

since somebody will undoubtedly ask me to back up this assertion....i will.
IQ (as you probably know) is an acronym that stands for Intelligence Quotient.
this implies that its a number based off of division (quotient is the result of devision).
the actual process that they use to determine IQ is: (mental age/actual age)*100
the way they determine mental age is that they look at your scores, and based on that score they decide which age group your brain belongs in. (like if the highest math you know is addition then your mental age might be 8, although i'm pretty sure they don't look at this specifically).

basically they see if you know more or less than the average person the same age as you, if you know more than they assume that you learn better, if you know less then they assume you learn worse. but they don't factor in the possibility that you never had the chance to learn what the average person did. (which isn't surprising since its difficult to quantify such factors)

[The conartist]

Even if no religion exist the fact is that it gives something humankind to be good for, to be happy for, to embrace and love one another through, and that sounds pretty goddamned intelligent to me.

[Belthus]

My impression is exactly the opposite. Biologists are primarily interested in biology. It may be that pursuing a career in biology tends to make one less religious. That seems to be the case for most higher education. However, religion has been more of a roadblock or a minefield than a primary concern for proponents of evolutionary theory. Biologists worked to provide evidence for evolution because it was a powerful and elegant framework that organized a great deal of knowledge in biology.

[Belthus]

people began to think that maybe this was a good way to disprove God and therefore began looking for more evidence with the express purpose of proving evolution to be true.

This is a historical claim. Do you have a reference? I would appreciate dates and names so I can evaluate what you are saying above.

By the way, the word "proof" is a mathematical one. Scientists don't prove anything. Scientists collect data and evaluate hypotheses and theories.

[Daxx]

Yeah, these posts are getting long now.

evidence can be anything, it doesn't say anything unless it is interpreted. my argument is not that evidence does not exist, my argument is that the theory of evolution does not logically match the evidence. at least insofar as it relates to the evolution of man. the point of my statement was that the evidence has to be interpreted or it proves nothing.

I haven't yet seen where the theory doesn't match evidence that has been found so far. The interpretation comes from the theory itself - if the evidence you find matches the results your hypothesis expected, then you have a good working model and possibly a theory. You don't interpret/twist the evidence until it matches the theory, you change the theory to match the evidence you have.

Depending on the specific species, it can be more (or possibly less) frequent. Where exactly do you get the timespan of thousands of years, out of interest? Otherwise, that's more or less correct.

i was basing this on statistical analysis and basic math. take the cat for instance. ou say that it took about 25,000,000 years to evolve to its current state. so if you assume that there are 500 total genetic differences between a house cat and whatever they evolved from then (on average) there was a genetic mutation every 25000000/500=50,000 years. that is what the law of large numbers is about. although i should have said there is a beneficial mutation every few thousand years. but i didn't wanna get to complicated. the idea is that over time random mutations occur. now i'm not saying these numbers are correct, but you would need to have more than 25,000 genetic differences in order to get a number less than 1000 years.

Human DNA has over 3 billion base pairs. I think honestly that you're vastly underestimating how complex this process is and pulling numbers from thin air - though I recognise that you aren't saying they're correct. That said, I think we agree on the general principle that mutations occur.

well ok so i did go a little to far to the extreme (maybe) however humans would still have gotten slaughtered if they hadn't "evolved" intelligence. our bodies are simply adapted to be used to great effectiveness but only if we are intelligent. that is all im saying and this fact alone is only a part of the argument.
[...]
survivability does not count only defensive adaptions..that's true. my point was that (without intelligence) we have next to no defensive or offensive adaptations. and again this is only part of my argument, not an argument all its own.

being able to run really far can help us hunt, but if we weren't intelligent we would be unable to track, or kill our prey. even plants, which don't seem to be active by themselves, have some adaptations that help save them from "plant predators" (I.E. worms, snails and that kind of stuff). humans don't have any. or at least they don't have enough.
[...]
i don't insist on removing  humans "greatest asset" time and time again i have said things like "without intelligence" or "if it weren't for intelligence." and the fact that humans without intelligence would die, is fundamentally central to my argument.
[...]

2. human being are physically (not counting intelligence) the least adapted creature on the planet.

this is one of the premises that the entire argument is based on, in order to understand why i make the point that we are physically unadapted you have to consider the entire argument.

I am not disagreeing with you that humans aren't adapted for the niche of top predator. It is clear that our primary survival strategy relies on our intelligence. I do, however, think you are underselling how much we are otherwise adapted. But seeing as how we agree for the most part, I think we should look at why this doesn't contribute to your argument: It's not a premise that leads to the conclusion you're trying to prove, as we have established that a) your distinctions between human and pre-human intelligence aren't warranted, and b) you're missing the possibility of contemporaneous mutation and evolution. I'll go into those now:

i'm not giving too much credit to humans. the idea is that we are the only species proven to be able to make choices that are not based on any form of instinct. monkeys, dolphins and the like are smart in that they are teachable, and highly adaptable, but they have never been proven to exhibit these traits.
[...]
actually intelligence (as i defined it and as it exists in humans) is a binary operator. either you can make decisions without the involvement of instinct; or you can't. there is no 50% of the time you can. or you can make 10% of a decision without considering any form of instinct. either you can or can't. humans can.

Actually there is no proof that we act in any manner beyond instinct, depending on how you define instinct (I assume you mean acting in a more-or-less deterministic manner). Every decision we make is a product of our brain-state at that moment in combination with its inputs. Stimulus, response - just on a more complicated scale than we are used to from less complicated organisms. This is a fundamental problem with your definition of "intelligence" - it makes no sense to talk about it like that, primarily because your definition is waaaay too loose, and secondarily because in the real world intelligence just doesn't work like that. It's based on degree and emergence, not a binary operator. This is demonstrable just by looking at the modern human population.

It is provable that we are more intelligent than monkeys and dolphins* in terms of degree, but our level of intelligence is, at base, not very different to theirs. They are capable of learning just as we are. They are just as apparently capable of making choices as we appear to be. Similarly we are very similar to pre-humans (that is, our evolutionary ancestors). What does appear to be different are the emergent qualities we express from the higher level of intelligence. Self awareness, sapience, reasoning, creativity and so forth are not distinct from the base animal intelligence that we have, they are products of it. Similarly these qualities are also present to a greater or lesser degree depending on levels of intelligence (this is true within the human population today).

*Unless you read Douglas Adams, of course.

your argument is that intelligence spawns from a complicated brain (i.e. lots of synapses and such) so what i was saying is that genetic mutations that can make the brain more complicated and therefore produce intelligence, not that a genetic mutation could make any brain intelligent.

EDIT: The sentence makes slightly more sense on re-reading.

Genetic mutations can lead to increased intelligence. That is how we evolved to become more intelligent than our ancestors - and it's exactly what I was arguing. But you are wrong to assume that genetic mutations cannot lead to any organism becoming more intelligent - in theory, given enough time and selective pressure in favour of intelligence, any creature could reach our level of intelligence or greater.

not possible (at least according to genetic theory). genes control one specific aspect of the physical body, if something was changed it could change physiology, or physical traits, not both. so something that affects your digestive system will not also affect your brain. they are two separate organs. and even were than possible, the fact that the changes to our system are so widespread, that there would be a lot of genes that have this duel effect, which would only strengthen my argument because it would increase the chances of other intelligent species evolving.

Aha, there's a problem with your understanding of genetic theory. Genes can control many aspects of the physical body, depending on what they control for and how they are expressed. Changing one gene can cause lots of changes - for example, we share 95% of our genetic code with mice. This doesn't mean we are 95% mouse, but that 5% codes for an awful lot of phenotypical changes.

The key issue, however, is that you aren't seeing how factors can be codependent. For instance, genes that code for a certain knee configuration also lead to the expression of a given running speed. Similarly, genes which code for a longer development time in the womb also lead to the expression of greater physical and mental development. Genes which code for particular psychological inclination towards child-rearing also lead to children with more intellectual development. These things aren't independent of each other - one directly leads to the other.

There's no empirical evidence for anything like a soul, that's for certain.

on the conrary
websters definition of empirical.
1 : originating in or based on observation or experience <empirical data>
2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory <an empirical basis for the theory>
3 : capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment <empirical laws>
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical (ftp://http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical)
there is a lot empirical evidence for the existence of a soul. every time you hear about, out of body experiences, or anything like that is empirical evidence. it may not be strong but it is there. actually there is no "empirical evidence" for evolution, because no-one was around to watch it happen, nor is there empirical evidence for the no-existence of a soul, because no-one has ever experienced not having a soul (although i admit that experiencing not having a soul would be impossible for logical reasons). however if you want to talk about emprirical evidence for christianity, its all over the place. people talking about "seeing angels," or "feeling gods presence," as a matter of fact the entire bible is "empirical" evidence for the existence of Jesus. now im not saying that we should put a bunch of stock in empirical evidence, or that empirical evidence is a good way to prove anything, but you brought it up, not me.

When we talk about evidence for something, we don't include every piece of evidence that it is possible to collect. For instance, I could claim that this post I am writing consists of empirical evidence for the existence of a tiny invisible teapot that flies around my head because I make that postulation within this post. Of course, I would be stupid to claim so, because it doesn't constitute evidence in any meaningful way. Similarly, there is no evidence that points towards the existence of a soul/angels/god's presence any more than it points to schizophrenia, mental illness, autoinduced-psychosomatic effects, and so on. You cannot prove that souls exist, partly because the entire concept is unfalsifiable and partly because no collected evidence has yet solely supported the soul hypothesis.

Evidence for evolution, on the other hand, is quite abundant. The fossil record is quite a good one. Then there is artificial selection. Then, there is observed speciation (there are a number of examples for this - evolution in action!). Quite a lot of evidence, on the whole. There is no need for faith on the matter of evolution in the same way as there is that need for ID and creationism.

Prove free will exists. I will gladly make a bet with you on this one. Even the world's greatest thinkers have been unable to do so. The best guess is that the universe is relatively deterministic or at least based on some randomness, and that therefore everything in it (including the brain and the emergent property of consciousness and sapience) is dictated by the universe's laws.

to the first part.....you can literally get up from your chair and go and do whatever you want (that is allowed by your physical capacity). there are no "universal police" that will come and stop you for breaking the "universes law". that is free will. you won't get frozen in place or anything you can go and o it. period. and as for the second part, that sounds a lot like "fate" which goes against the argument of randomness.

1. Does not constitute proof of free will. It does not disprove the stronger hypothesis of a deterministic expression of your mental state as governed by reactions within your brain and the inputs it receives. That isn't free will as it is traditionally defined. Free will is traditionally defined as some nebulous concept of choice - but fundamentally there is no proof that we act independently of the operation of our brains.
2. I suggest you re-read it. Just because you think it "sounds a lot like" fate does not make it fate.

[PuppyChow]

Unbeliavable.. I don't even know what to say to that. It's a disgrace that they can add that kind of "introduction" to the book. I wonder what Darwin himself would say about that.

Someone needs to do something about all these religions in the US (I'm guessing this happened in the US). Crap like that can really hinder the scientific development. It's like the Dark Ages all over again.

I can't believe someone hasn't refuted this yet. I guess nobody knows their history.

Lol @ Christianity causing the dark ages. Christianity was actually the ONE thing that unified Europe and the ONE thing that encouraged learning, aside from the brief Holy Roman Empire, which was also led by a Christian king.

-The only learned ones were Christian monks. Only they could read and write. Elsewhere, reading and writing was VERY rare. And they spent most of their time copying manuscripts from earlier times (like the teachings of Aristotle and the like), as well as the Bible.

-The only schools were created by the Holy Roman Empire or the Church.

-The only reason the Roman Empire stayed alive for so long is that Christianity became a unifying factor when the central government began to fail.

-The "continuation" of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, was predominantly Christian. This empire, and the Islamic empire, were the centers of learning and trade in the world.

-The crusades, though really a black mark in Europe's past, they reconnected Europe to the prospering Middle East (which had been copying Roman and Greek writings that would otherwise have been lost since the monks can only do so much), instigating some trade and reuniting Europe with much knowledge.

Really, the feudal system, inept rulers, and barbarian raids not allowing for any long standing central government were what caused the drop off in learning. Christianity is the only thing that saved it from going over the edge.

Oh, and my source is the AP World History Stearns textbook. It isn't false.

[sillyking14]

nono, like i said, its unprovable because noone records such things because it is un-scientific, it is simply like a "vibe" that i get, not meant to prove anything i just said it so you can understand my point of view.

however, scientists do try to prove stuff as  matter of fact i heard an advertisement on the radio that fits right in here. it literally said "science disproves God." it was about some lecture by some "scientist."
science is not supposed to try to prove anything. but many scientists do try to.

[sillyking14]

thank you. Impression is exactly the word i was looking for. again your talking in theory, in theory scientists enter an experiment completely objectively. I'm saying that in reality i get the impression that many scientists enter into some of these experiments with the purpose of disproving religion.

oh wait on re-reading your post i understand what your saying better, my argument still stands but, its a silly thing to argue about since it is all opinion and not a provable fact (these impressions we've been talking about, not evolution/creationism)