[alxian]

first off sorry if its been suggested

basically that it may take a billion or more years to evolve the bodies and population, but only a tiny amount of time for civilization to create highly intelligent cultures.

many documentaries and popular theory tell you that life on this planet took ages to develop.

could that have been due to the time it takes terrestrial life (generally aerobic) migrating from continent to continent?

i.e. this planet allowed for rich pocket of life to evolve and inter polinate while preserving the unique nature of cultures

plus the evolution of intelligence (civilzation and technology) our species only took a very small amount of time. bacially sparked by all the disperate cultures connecting up to each other.

some of the newer documentaries though are saying such evolution of life is very rare and perhaps totally unique to earth.

but if any species reaches as large a population as ours, has access to resources and the ability to exploit them, with communication and ability to manipulate their environment shouldn't take an eye blink for them to attain the same technological enlightenment as humans?

i.e. as long as a planet can harbour several patches of evolved life (that would compete for resources), as long as they didn't use technology to kill themselves off its reasonable that they should evolve very quickly technologically.

it would become a question of what would stall their technological advancement, for humans its war and resource scarcity and silly moral quandries.

not that other beings would be immoral (that would preclude a moral aversion to the natural drive to fight for resources.) but that humans arguably aren't exactly moral creatures by default.


so. evolution takes ages, but technological advancement is extremely fast after the culture becomes stable, be that agrarian or what ever is required to support a billion strong (subjective) society living in one spot or accross the face of a planet.

that once a species (or group of symbiotic) races reaches resource stability civilization is guaranteed.

[HydrogenBond]

The evolution of human consciousness, culture and technology might be a part of a quickening in evolution. If one thinks of it these changes have increased life expectancy and hold the promise of getting better results from the DNA that humans and other lifeforms contain; Culture is learning to evolve the DNA. This positive DNA evolution is no longer a random mutation but is due to directed or orderred interaction by humans and technology. This speeds the whole evolutionary process up.

[Guadalupe]

By definition, “evolution”, is classified as an alien to the natural order of creation. Evolution is not a natural process to where creation can evolve by itself, regardless of the time frame. Evolution, is the invader that alters, the original design of creation, by a process of outside modification.

This may strongly suggest that creation came first.

[SunsetClause]

Originally Posted by alxian

basically that it may take a billion or more years to evolve the bodies and population, but only a tiny amount of time for civilization to create highly intelligent cultures.

Evolution has stopped for human males or at least we are evolving but for the worst.
There is a sunset clause on the Y chromosome which will lead to male extinction. Future civilizations will be made up of one sex, female. Internal reproduction will be replaced by cloning of females. With cloning evolution will stop as evolution does not happen over the life span of a human and cloning is just an identical copy. Of course this is what I believe but there are a few others who share my beliefs.

Here's some interesting articles that explain the causes but do not give a possible solution for this future problem.
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/.../trounson.html
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/...ies/s73264.htm

[Christopher]

In Cambrian sea 530 million years ago a the biological singularity occurred suddenly when genetic information reached a critical threshold connected the individual eukaryote cell into complex morphology bringing about cognition.
Just as these cells were connected in the distant past, The technological singularity will occur as the individual human is connected into a cognitive cohesive whole. This whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts.


quote:

catastrophe theory
Mathematical theory developed by René Thom in 1972, in which he showed that the growth of an organism proceeds by a series of gradual changes that are triggered by, and in turn trigger, large-scale changes or ‘catastrophic’ jumps. It also has applications in engineering – for example, the gradual strain on the structure of a bridge that can eventually result in a sudden collapse – and has been extended to economic and psychological events.

[HydrogenBond]

I look at evolution as a movement toward lowering of potential. The formation of stars from a stellar cloud evolved through the natural potential of gravity to create spherical shapes called stars. These shapes lead to fusion. The fusion leads to production of new atoms. These atoms then use natural potentials of nature to form molecules. The background potentials on the early earth led to the natural formation of the soup of life. The changing earth allowed the process to go on further with the evolution of life.

Science has gotten so fixated on genetics and mutations that it seems that something unnatural has somehow overlapped natural forward progress. The DNA template is important but how does the template form itself? The template of atoms, which are the atomic nuclei and orbitals are based on nuclear and EM force. The template of DNA is based on the Hydrogen proton and hydrogen bonding.

If we took away the EM force and the nuclear force, the templates of atoms and molecules would disperse back to sub-particles, i.e, early universe. If will took away gravity the stars would regress back to the original clouds of hydrogen gas. If we take away hydrogen bonding, all life would regress back to the sludgy soup of life. The most abundant material of the universe, i.e., hydrogen, continues to evolve within life and is the potential and orderring principle of life.

One possible theory for such a potential has to do with fusion. When we fuse hydrogen to make other atoms energy is given off due to mass burn. This implies that hydrogen protons are different that all other nuclear protons, in that they contain extra potential. Within the chemistry of life the hydrogen protons are the oldest or the parents of all the atoms and chemicals.

[alxian]

so what you're saying is a higher power created man, but nature wants only women

that i believe is the strongest argument for creationism, at least the sumerian versionm i've ever heard.

it would explain why so many other mammals reproduce sexually while ancient animals like insect reproduce asexually.

god created man and woman, nature prefers cloning. woohoo



if man takes control of his procreation i do not believe evolution will stop. man can and will prefect his genome. creating supermen an chimera of all flavours. hopefully a federal reserve will stockpile all of our (natural) genetic diversity before it is lost for ever.

[Tarantism]

well isnt technology just evolution? in my opinion, a new invention is just someone seeing a need that we didnt naturally develop a solution for, and creationg it. its artificial, yes, but it is making up for what we didnt evolve with (planes fly for us, for example).

[goku]

if evolution were true then there would be many creatures as intellegent as us.
each one would be totally different from the other, dna, appearance, everything.

[goku]

Originally Posted by (((tartanism)))

well isnt technology just evolution?

no, what is the purpose of technology?
all other animals live just fine without it.
technology is another one of the many things that sets us apart from all the other animals.
it is also prof of god. is intelligence natural, no. is intelligence wide spead, no, only humans have it and the means to use it.
notice also that is was the tree of knowledge that adam and eve ate of.
after they ate they began to build.