Good scientific discussion

[Magrathean]

PS: Did you know that dolphins are the only creatures beside humans that mate for pleasure, not in order to maintain the species?

Or so they say, yes. I'd heard that before.

I'll comment on what you said sometime later.

 

[rahvin]

It does imply, however, that the god(s) who created everything thought up stuff as complex as subatomic physics, evolution, organic chemistry, biochemistry and astrophysics, which is highly unlikely.

i prefer "ineffable" to "unlikely", thank you very much.

actually, i personally don't because i'm not keen in assuming a supernatural creator has or had a will as such, but the objection is weak. you can't second-guess the origin of the universe just because you don't have the result of the equation, that'd be pretty simplistic.

 

[Misanthrope]

BUT, IMO where evolution is screwed is the beginning. Atoms, cells, they had to come from something.

No they didnt have to come from somewhere or something. That is the biggest misconception everyone, even many scientist ( reputable ones, not highschool teachers ) has. The concept of something being eternal just because ( as in with no reason at all to be so ) is alien to most people and deep down inside nobody wants to come to term with that even as a remote possibility.

But I think is naiive to think so: given our limited lifespawn and knowledge making the asumption that everything eventually came from something or had a beginning is unrealistic. Infinite, eternity: this are things that are perfectly reasonable, yet you dumb humans think Life and Death applies to everything when you dont have even the slighest logical reason to asume that.

 

[6 Stringed Fingers]

Well, since everyone said pretty much what I'm about to say (intelligent design and the origin of cells), Í'll cut my words short. One point remains though: virus can mutate, that can be considered a form of evolution. That, to me, demonstrates that the goal of evolution is not to be the most perfect, but to survive the best.