Hey, sorry - I didn't intend to drag that dreary debate over here. Just wanted to point out that there are those two camps:

1) Those that believe that we are masters in our own house.
2) Those who believe that the subconscious tumble us about as it damn well please, and we are lost in its waves.

From Shadowstalker16's post, I constantly see this "masters in our own house" belief, this notion that the conscious are in some kind of control: But I don't think debating this is all that interesting. We clearly disagree, so why bother? But a lot of debate stems from those two radically different ideas about how the human mind go about its business. I think it is valueable to have this overall picture of our debates fundamental clockworks. The actual debate, not so valuable, since we're just in disagreement, and that's it.

I would of course go for Option 3 - but with the following 2 provisos:

1) I do not have enough time to read all the journal papers out there. I do not even have time to read all the journal papers in my field. So I have to trust other scientists that have had their work peer-reviewed and corroborated by further studies. A short summary in my professional magazine, or in the Science section of a quality news establishment, would have to be sufficient.

2) I am a Physicist. I only understand publications to do with Physics. In fact, I only understand publications that are directly related to my small sub-branch of Physics. I have absolutely no chance of understanding the technical details of a paper on neurology, genetics or even most bits of chemistry. As a result, I have to trust my colleagues in those fields.

Bear in mind that a lot of things in the universe are actually very different to what your brain tells you is going on - your eyes only see a narrow bandwidth of photon frequencies, the gravitational potential at your feet is almost identical to that of your eyes, etc. And that's before you get to the experimental evidence of Euclid vs Minkowski vs Riemann or Young vs Einstein & Planck vs de Broglie.

Ahhh yes, when it comes to explaining the origin of life, that is the point where religion and science collide.

Personally i am Christian, but i wont pretend the religious explanation of the origin of life is not woefully inadequate. The fact is, even if there were ever people on the planet who knew exactly how it all happened.... even if there were.... you have a story that has to be carried through countless generations through word of mouth.... and we all know what happens to stories carried through word of mouth! Yes eventually written after who knows how long but how likely is it going to match the original story?

It is my personal opinion that it is 'not' common sense to believe every word in the bible is exactly true as written.

The scientific version is also pretty horrendous. The story is strung together with a huge pile of human assumptions, allot of it is not even plausible based on how evolution is supposed to work. Ultimately, if evolution is true, then it should be possible to breed a type of dog that can fly or breathe underwater with only the use of natural selection as a tool to achieve it - if it cannot be done, ever, then there is your proof......

but interestingly, in terms of how natural selection does work, i have wondered why no whales have evolved to breathe underwater? Specifically sperm whales.... Its a very strong natural selection force that whoever can stay underwater longer has the advantage, so it should have happened by now i would expect? But no? Why i say sperm whales is because most other species of whales do not need to dive deep to feed in which case that natural selection force is negated. But most whales evolved to carry oxygen more and more efficiently, in terms of natural selection that is easy, but making the leap to breathing underwater, that is the problem, and it is an example of how evolution fall apart.

Edit: so whales have been on the planet for millions of years without growing gills, but apparently its easy for Kevin Costner??? hahahahahahahaha

Whales had gills.

We all did.

We lost them and developed lungs, not the other way around.

Kevin Costner has both.

What he doesn't have is the ability to act. :P

I would also suggest that most people do not understand what science *is*. Science is the application of the scientific method, i.e.

1) Develop a hypothesis.
2) Make an observation.
3) Does your observation statistically prove (or disprove) your hypothesis?
- if not, go to (2) and make another independent observation.
Repeat ad nausiem until (3) is true.

If your measurements are NOT independent, then you need to include the correlation in both your hypothesis and the joint uncertainty of your measurements.

Since this is statistical-based, you should never hear scientists talking about Truth. They should talk about observations / measurements. Truth is for Philosophers :)

I'm not going into the science vs religion debates, except to say that people should understand what each of them is for. Science is application of the scientific method in order to test hypotheses with measurements. Religion can be defined in many different ways, but not like this :)

As a result, in my opinion, it's ok to teach alternative views of the world such as creationism, but it should be taught in a Religion class. If you teach it in a Science class, then you would have to apply the scientific method to it. So, for example, you can teach in a History class that Norse people in the Iron Age thought that the Sun was pulled across the sky by a chariot, but if you say this idea in a Science class then you would actually have to get your telescopes out and look for the chariot :)

Natural selection does not care what your species had in the past, its a blind force. In nature it answers to only 3 things...

1) ability to maintain numbers as a species
2) competition for food
3) resisting predation

It always builds on what it already has. That means a fish will not evolve to live on land, period. It will get as far as a 'mud skipper' on the tidal flat, but no further because the tidal flat is the superior food zone, so there is no force driving beyond that.... and evolution needs to be driven by something, it wont just 'magically happen' like some Godlike being creating all of life, that's just crazy, it has to be scientific.

Relax, I was just trying to make conversation.

I didn't expect The Spanish Inquisition!

Agree but evolution is so full of human assumptions there is also barely anything to examine and prove scientifically.... I have noticed the way science deals with the fossil records, they pick up a fossil show it too you then pick up another fossil show it too you, then comes the wild assumption "this evolved into this etc etc" no actual proof of anything AT ALL. Natural selection on the other hand is real science.
Huh? i thought it was good conversation too..... where did you pull the Spanish inquisition out from?? lol

Oh sorry.
I had no counter to you because you basically turned my flimsy argument to dust so I decided to post that bit. :P I've had the line in my head all day.

Or you could have said why would the natural selection forces that moved us from gills to lungs have changed?

and my answer would be i don't know? !

When you get into the detail of the driving forces of natural selection, it really is infinitely complex, but there are always fundamental principles that gives Evolution a very hard time to explain how it happened as they claim?

Edit: the idea that the water environment would move us from lungs to gills as depicted by Kevin Costner really shows the general lack of understanding of the majority of the population as to how evolution works.... probably most respectable scientists would have cringed at that movie! lol

Yeah, I would agree with that. As I said above, biology is a foreign language to me, so I don't know too much about it. But from what I have seen, natural selection (and even new species evolving) has been observed in the lab. However, extrapolating to a full theory of evolution is a stretch. But like I say, I am out of my pay-grade on that :)

There are SOME things that science can tell you, e.g. that the age of the Earth is estimated (based on extrapolation of radioactive decays, radiocarbon dating and sea-floor magnetic alignments) to be more than a few thousand years old. We're very confident of these theories since there's lots of independent measurements that back this up.

Age of the Earth.... i have no idea why religion expects to know the answer to that?

Edit: based on the generations since Adam and Eve i guess? hmmm, i have to say, even as a Christian, highly unlikely to be correct.

I also have no reason to believe dinosaurs mingled with humans at any point in time, i am inclined to think not, but am willing to be convinced otherwise, and man that would be cool!

But also, i do not put too much trust in the scientific radioactive dating either. The problem is - similar to carbon dating, we just don't know the long term variations.... we can only observe how it moves in our short time period, who can guarantee that is the rate it moved a million years ago or a thousand years ago? The earth could potentially be a vastly different age than what they came up with, don't be surprised.

Now why the F is the original post downvoted? I just don't get this place sometimes.

edit: nvm, another witch hunt, apparently. great. now i have to upvote all the downvoted posts.

I used to work with someone who thought the world was only 6000 years old and was convinced the fossil record was an elaborate hoax.

-Dinosaur bones?

-Don't be silly. Someone obviously put those there as a joke.

That's an actual conversation we had. XD