Steevo said:
The genetic mutation is called adaptation, not evolution. Evolution is cancer. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and there are cells in the lungs whose only job is to kill dangerous-mutant cells. God knew what he was doing. We screwed it up.
A wise man said, "If there is no God life has no meaning and no purpose."
I don't get people who say there is no God, then wonder why they get old and sick and die. Who here feels like dying? I know I don't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life
"There are, however, strictly speaking, no scientific views on the meaning of biological life other than its observable biological function: to continue and to reproduce itself. In this regard, science simply addresses quantitative questions such as: "What does it do?", "By what means?", and "To what extent?", rather than the "For what purpose?"."
HA!!!!!
Wow, this thread has certainly taken a turn as far as topics go. Curious, was this post perhaps meant for the thread on ID in the Hard Talk section and put here by accident, or was it meant for this thread?
Anyhow, with random mutations; that wouldn't say whether a change would be good or bad, just that there is a change. Like with anything else, change in and of itself is neither...
The idea would be that natural selection would help to weed out some of the less beneficial traits that would result, so the more beneficial remain. If something were done by "accident", then there could be millions of mistakes before something turns out beneficial. Also changes to regulatory genes could have a wider range of effects, then to a gene that simply produces a given protein. (BTW, DNA, as transcribed into mRNA, or messenger RNA, gives a triplicate sequence where given sequences of 3 nucleotides codes for a given amino acid.) Anyhow, that would be the theory, in part.
perris said:
I know all those things steevo, but the design leaves plenty to be deired
our sense of smell and taste pails in comparison to other animals, our brain allows us to appreciate these sensations, but they are not as well designed as other animals
But would you necessarily want a sense of smell, or hearing as keen as that in a dog?
Let me put it this way. My father had an exceptionally good sense of smell, to the point where working as a chemist he could smell most things before his collegues. His hearing, he was like a literal Bougamil (sp?) from Beverly Hills Cop. We could mumble something under our breath when I was growing up, and without him even standing right there in front of us, well my brother and I got in trouble for it sometimes...
In any case, though to a less pronounced degree, I inherited his heightened sense of smell and hearing; probably through genetics. And as to the smell, I must say there are a lot of things, I would rather not smell...
Yes, perhaps a heightened sense of smell might allow one to smell some of the more enjoyable things in life; a keener sense of smell can also give one a better wiff of someone's body odor, or Ascaras worms (when we disected them in high school biology) were pretty bad. I had to do the disection by the window as I was about ready to vomit from a wiff of the thing once opened up...
If one could hear something several miles away (like a dog) this also means the loud neighbors next door (for those in an apartment); one could make out everything they're doing as well.
The real question, both with the level our senses are able to percieve at, as well as their limitations is, is it really all good or all bad? Or are their benefits that the limits on our senses can bring, as well as hinderances? I suppose if most people could hear everything that went on in the city at a given night (like a dog), many would go crazy, and do more then bark, as dogs many times tend to when hearing a strange noise... Could you imagine hearing every single conversation, every single person living in a radius of like 100 city blocks might be having, all at the same time?
