NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm recently going through a period of confusion about the monophyletic/paraphyletic groupings of species and thought this might be a little help.

Everybody got next to each other on a white line and some guy in a stripey shirt fired a gun and off we went!

Well, you see, there is a stork...

Everybody got next to each other on a white line and some guy in a stripey shirt fired a gun and off we went!
roflmao <3.

God shaved a monkey and made the thumbs opposable.

We are all pawns of a massive technological hullcenogenic design created to eliminate and wipe out our minds si that we can't do anything.

Well one day God was bored, so he created us!

*cries* Keruvalia beat me to it. =D

Not sure what you mean by "cell theory"... but I assume that's meant to represent conventional evolutionary theory so I went with that option.

I also believe some God created us, but we also evolve, ie, God created life, we did not just come to be, but we evolved from other forms to be what we are today. When I say God, I am obviously not referring to a religion, just 'the uncreated creator' etc. I base this on the idea of the Big Bang... I am only 16, I study physics, but my teacher was unable to tell me what would have caused the big bang to happen when it did etc. I do however state my teacher is pretty much... crap. If there is anyone who can tell me HOW the big bang would/could have happened, I'll be glad to listen. I was under the impression some energy would need to have been supplied to the mass for the explosion to occur (again, I am only 16, they do tend to lie to us if they think it's complicated or it doesn't need to be taught for the exam), the explosion being the big bang. Yeah, please, if you know differently, don't rape me with knowledge, I did ask, I didn't ask to be patronised. :P Also, I find it hard to believe in a God who has properties (your Christian God etc), because I have no faith although I do study philosophy also and it has made me respect religion much more, rather than scrutinize it, so please, no need to hassle me. Nice thread *strokes the thread* Niiiiiice thread.

Edit: Also is 'spontaneous generation' what I would know as abiogenesis'?

It didn't start, we are still waiting.

http://www.2001exhibit.org/arts/img/monolith.jpg

We were aborted by someone.

God shaved a monkey and made the thumbs opposable.

I agree to the first part, but not everybody's thumb is opposable.

I agree to the first part, but not everybody's thumb is opposable.

I find god illogical. Are you telling me that one day he just said "I'm bored. I think I'll make life."?

<snip>If there is anyone who can tell me HOW the big bang would/could have happened, I'll be glad to listen. I was under the impression some energy would need to have been supplied to the mass for the explosion to occur (again, I am only 16, they do tend to lie to us if they think it's complicated or it doesn't need to be taught for the exam), the explosion being the big bang.The following is a [not quite as] simplified explanation [as I originally intended] of one possible way it could have happened, but it's not just simplified for you, but because I'm also no expert. It is, however, a plausible-sounding explanation to me, with a few refinements that the attempt at analogy doesn't cover...

In a 'meta space' (possibly with a 'meta time') there are effectively loads of soap bubbles floating around. The surfaces of these equate (roughly) to space-time as we know it, but not quite. When two soap-bubbles meet, they quickly form a flat interface between them, and if you can imagine looking at it in slow motion, you see the flat between the two bubbles expanding in size. One version of this (that I'm aware of) has that flat area as our universe and time is time as you'd expect in a (real-world) soap-bubble example, and that'd produce a universe expanding to a limit for infinity (effectively). It had a 'Big Bang' moment (before which, there was no interface) and it expands to effectively infinite size (check out Poincaré surfaces) as if with a universe with not enough mass to make it contract once more into a Big Crunch. Whether the bubbles ever 'pop' (thus disrupting/essentially destroying the flat interfaces) I can't say.

Another possible version, from the same analogy, is that the 'time' dimension is one direction across the interface (from top to bottom, say) and that an external force (like gravity, in a real-word soap bubble) draws 'time' down from the upper part of the circle to the lower, like those newtonian-ring patterns do in bubbles. Then meta-time (as briefly mentioned) might or might not exist in the soap-bubble world, but all we need to be concerned with is a static representation of the interface (it might be a timeless jumble of such bubbles, with flat surfaces all over the place).

So, in this second possible version, bear in mind that the flat surface is (in 'reality') a hyper-sphere (time and three dimensions at a minimum, meaning the soap-bubbles themselves must inhabit at least one more dimension) and can be represented itself (if you view it in one more dimension by 'expanding' a second space direction into depth) look itself like a sphere. This sphere has a north-pole and south-pole, and time is 'flows' down it. There is nothing north of the north-pole, nothing south of the south-pole, and the three (or more) space dimensions of space-time are represented (two of them flattened) as longitude around the sphere. This effectively produces a finite but boundless universe, rapidly expanding from one pole (as you progress through time/down the latitudes of the sphere) until it reaches the 'equator' then drawing back in and contracting to the other pole. A finite universe, representing a universe with enough mass to have Big-Bang and Big-Crunch properties (to the residents, who are flowing through the arrow of time, downwards) and self-contained...

As to what created the meta-'soap bubbles', I'm tending towards treating it as "how the universe is". If we don't need to invoke meta-time dimensions, then a completely external view (should there be any way of obtaining one, though essentially there won't be) will show either a static or rapidly changing set of bubbles.

You can hypothesise various other things. e.g. what happens if two bubbles making seprate interfaces with a third bubble 'swung round' to create a three-bubble combination? The two existing interfaces/universes would lose entire segments of themselves, and a third universe would expand, starting off as a chord-bounded circle. And would a clump of bubbles produce a non-Euclidean interface (pressure differences bowing the interface in various ways?

None of this has the (to me, quite nice) symmetry of Crunch leads to new Bang but, as I say, these are but two of many hypotheses that exist and if I started evangelising about a 'perfect mass' universe that sat at the crux between "massive enough to recrunch" and "light enough to continue outwards for ever" then I'm no better than those that say that it must have been $Deity and fight to convince everyone of that truth.

I'm not saying that's how it all happened, by the way, but it's explanation. And I've over-complicated it, I've realised, during the writing. It all boils down to "imagine two bubbles meeting, we live in the flat bit between them", though.


Edit: Also is 'spontaneous generation' what I would know as abiogenesis'?That'd be "poof, now stands there man" (without anyone, alien, god or whatever, to actually "poof", and no ancestry either), as far as I can tell. Abiogenesis occurs well before the start of the human race in the option I went for (the 'regular' evolutionary option), so that's the only thing I can imagine it is intended to mean...

I'm a theistic evolutionist, Which option do I check?

When a mommy human race and a daddy human race love eachother very much they kiss and go into the bedroom, and that's where human races come from

I'm a theistic evolutionist, Which option do I check?

Hmmm... tricky.

I'd have to say that "co[m]promise" would be your best shot. I know that yours is a popular view, so strange that it not be included by the thread-starter... Or "other".

("intelligent design (by God)" is close, but would probably only apply to 'where does life come from' if the designing being refered to was of the 'evolutionary primers', rather than us humans. On the other hand, "evolution (from aliens)" might work, if you are willing to call God 'alien'.... Well, it's a half-plausible association.)

First there was nothing...

... then I came...

... and then I created you all...

Now I think it was a mistake... :rolleyes:

Minor laboratory experiment got out of hand.

Since then it has all been a cover-up.

Someday those bastards are gonna pay!

I voted other, for "who the hell cares"? Seriously, why does is matter how life started, let's focus on how life's going.

I agree to the first part, but not everybody's thumb is opposable.
Every monkey's is.

The survey said othe so here I go

Macro-creationism, I find the theory of spotanious life a little too far fetched so I believe that something kicked it off, call it God, aliens or what ever else you want, for me its God. Then once something had kicked it off evolution took its course, the theory of God creating a pair of each animals is even more far fetched than that of spotaneus life.

I'll go with the X-files "we're all aliens" thing.

Anyone else wish that punctuated equilibrium hadn't been disproven for the vast majority of cases? Damn that was an awsome theory... although I suppose as we learn more about evolution it may come into favor again.

One day there were apes. A flood hit the apes and divided them up. One group got stuck on an island with lots of trees and eventually became monkeys. Another got stuck in a marshy savannah and eventually became humans.

Sadly it looks like, at least for now, evolution was somewhat more gradual than Gould maintained.