Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

I would also point out that even if one believes the Adam and Eve story it forces a belief in evolution to a certain degree -- if we do not genetically change over time in response to the environment, if we never "evolve", then we would not change to any great degree over the eons -- if we were all derived from two people then, we should all look nearly identical to each other. But in reality the variation is considerable, we are many different sizes, colors, etc.

It shouldn't. There's probably just a slight difference in the length of the light path, where the back of the prism falls vs. where the mirror falls inside the diagonal.

An objectivist would say that there is no such thing as good and evil, that they are artificial constructs, words to describe a range of experiences and actions. If what we define as "evil" were eliminated, then whatever the next-most-unpleasant thing remaining would be defined as "evil".

A free-will advocate would simply say that since evil is a descriptor for certain actions of men, that to deny evil would be to deny free will.

A religious person would say that to create us with no such capacity for evil would be to create us more or less perfect, and we would be as gods ourselves.

I have sometimes mistaken dark storms for satellite shadows. There's a few going around on Jupiter.

Mike - there's no risk of any conversions here. Everybody on this forum is too damned stubborn.

We all just like to hear ourselves type. :-)

"religions....... do not change, define or create Reality"

No -- they, more importantly, define our PERCEPTION of reality. People of all religions, including atheism, feel strongly about their core religious beliefs and defend them vehemently when challenged -- why? Because a religion (or lack of it) is large part of an individual's mental model of reality. If you tell someone their beliefs are WRONG, you're telling them they're whole perception of reality is wrong. It's the same as standing next to someone whispering, "You're insane... you're insane... you're insane..."

Satan planted them to lead us astray.

I would wonder and acknowledge all the same things.

I would also wonder why He made this so hard to figure out.

Part 2 appears to me to nearly answer part I, but here's more from pbs's Evolution Library on The Cambrian Explosion:

For most of the nearly 4 billion years that life has existed on Earth, evolution produced little beyond bacteria, plankton, and multi-celled algae. But beginning about 600 million years ago in the Precambrian, the fossil record speaks of more rapid change...

Then, between about 570 and 530 million years ago, another burst of diversification occurred, with the eventual appearance of the lineages of almost all animals living today. This stunning and unique evolutionary flowering is termed the "Cambrian explosion," taking the name of the geological age in whose early part it occurred. But it was not as rapid as an explosion: the changes seems to have happened in a range of about 30 million years, and some stages took 5 to 10 million years.

It's important to remember that what we call "the fossil record" is only the available fossil record. In order to be available to us, the remains of ancient plants and animals have to be preserved first, and this means that they need to have fossilizable parts and to be buried in an environment that will not destroy them.

...Recent research suggests that the period prior to the Cambrian explosion saw the gradual evolution of a "genetic tool kit" of genes that govern developmental processes. Once assembled, this genetic tool kit enabled an unprecedented period of evolutionary experimentation -- and competition. Many forms seen in the fossil record of the Cambrian disappeared without trace. Once the body plans that proved most successful came to dominate the biosphere, evolution never had such a free hand again, and evolutionary change was limited to relatively minor tinkering with the body plans that already existed.

Apparently not without generating a lot of noise.

Philosophy is the art of wondering and speculating and postulating about the origins, nature and purpose of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Involves a lot of speculation, a lot of free-thinking attitude unfettered by preconceptions.

Religions, at least in the fundamentalist or literalist traditions, generally state these facts as they see them, i.e. "It is Written", -- in other words you are told to believe the teachings of a particular group of men, so that you don't have to think on philosophical matters.

It's a fairly incompatible set of approaches to the fundamental questions of existence.