If the universe requires a creator then the creator should require a creator = religion is made-up

Pyramids are pretty cool as well.

Yeah to me as a European it is baffling that so many americans are anti-science in a bad way.

Coming from such a low level that you think Darwin is the main man in biology today, the man to pick down if you want to win the discussion - its like the opinions of a five year old child. Because grown ups should be able to infom  themselves about what it is they are talking about, whereas we don't excpect children to be able to do that.

American science BTW got a huge boost after WWII, because so many European scientists fled from Europe. USA got EInstein for instance, and there are thousands more.

But with this completlely anti-science attitude in the population, like they don't even get what it is lol, all they know is that they don't like it, you might pherhaps expect that USA is going to slowly slide down the science ladder some time in the future.

Because I guess the people have some influence on funding and such, and sooner or later you will get a president that gets his votes from replacing science with bullshit people like?

Lots of fossil evidence is missing. Soft bodied creatures do not fossilize well or often. We see evidence of bacteria and single cell eukaryotes. We see no fossil evidence of transitional species. I wouldn't expect to find a fossil of each and every species that ever existed. This is especially true for metazoans but even the record of higher orders of animals that possesed skeletons is largely incomplete. By largely I mean less than 1% of all vertebrate species that ever existed are preserved in the fossil record. On the upside, we keep finding more all the time. On the downside, many times this requires finding even more transitional forms.

Where two radically different ways of embroyonic development exist, what sort of animal represents a transition from protostome to  deuterostome or vice versa? I don't expect to find such a thing. It's just as though someone flipped a switch and started off down what appears to be a path leading to greater capabilities and diversity.

Yeah it's weird the creationist always go about the holes in the fossil records.

It's like they think that each and every animal that dies is just gonna like right there where it died completely intact for 600 million years, until someone goes and picks it up, and if it doesnt, there's definitely something fishy going on :)

I imagine they go OMG OMG OMG WHAT HAPPENED HERE THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE iT SHOULD STILL BE HEEEERE!!!! if they see that a dead bird they noticed by the side of the road is gone when come by the same place a year later.

Look, quantumlee asked for examples of what was missing. I gave him a few examples as requested and then get criticized for doing so. I could could go on and on but I get tired of dealing with smug  critics who wish to bury their heads from facts that all biologists recognize. I told you I didn't expect to find each and every species or even all the fossils that exist. Read what I wrote. You are literate aren't you?

Not sure why you are posting that, but it illustrates my point before.

I don't think Darwin himself thought in "superior" and "inferioir" species. He describes for instance the Galapagos birds, and says they diverges because they adapt to the island they ended up upon.

Birds on island A maybe have a long beak because it is good to eat the stuff on that island, while the birds on island B has a short beak because it is good for the stuff there.

It doesnt mean that long or short beak is "superior", its best on island A and that is that. Like it is best to wear a rain coat when it rains and a t-thirt when it is sunny, and noone in their right mind would claim the rain coat is "superior" and then wear it all the time.

Anyway, yes, a bunch of morons went all haywire on all this superior/inferior stuff anyway. It was a big thing in the beginning of the 20th century.

And it MIGHT exist in a line or two somewhere in Darwin's work, even though I doubt it.

Anyway, today this is TOTALLY removed from modern biology. If you ask an evolutionary biologist to please can he show you a "superior" species he will laugh at you. If he even understands what you mean. No species is better or worse than any other, they are just adapted to different niches, and all species are likely to eventuallly go extinct as ecology changes over millions of years.

“Energetic self-help” was a euphemism for war, praised in unmistakably Darwinian terms.''

It's not a Darwinian term BTW. Methinks the blog writer didnt read a line of Darwin and is just making up what terms he things Darwin used. He probaly means that it is a SOCIAL darwinian term, and writing sloppily so he forgets the important SOCIAL.

The term was created maybe by some German political social darwinian writer? Or maybe by Herbert Spencer?

It's a later version of evolution theory than Darwin's. You can google it.

Darwin didnt know about genes, he didnt know the information for eye color for instance was like a "packet" or information so you either get blue eyes or not.

He thought the parents hereditary information was mixed like mixing a cup of blue water with a cup of brown water.

It cause him all sorts of problems, because if 1 parent had blue eyes and the other brown eyes, the child should get a sort of brown/blue eye color. Which doesnt happen off course lol.

So a big change was dumping Darwins wrong ideas of how heredtary transferring worked and replacing it with Mendel, and then later DNA.

There's been other changes since then, they change stuff all the time. They also added for bacteria that they can exchange genes across species. Darwin had zero idea this was possible, he didnt even know genes existed.

Not all people do off course, but there are much much less anti-science weirdos here.

50% being anti-evolution is just crazy for me :) It's really WTF!

Like you imagine it could be like that in Afghanistan, or some countries with no education and nobody can read and write, but not about USA.

Goodnite my luvd ones. It's been a beautiful Sunday........sleepytyme....

Seems like a cool book http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/history-ideas-and-intellectual-history/darwinism-war-and-history-debate-over-biology-war-origin-species-first-world-war

I'm not sure what you mean with your post?

I think maybe you are confusing neo-darwinism, which is a biological theory that has absolutely nothing to do with wars and history, with some version of social darwinism? But i am not sure what you mean.

And anyway I dont think the term neo-darwinism is very important for scientists today. I hung out a lot with biologists, i worked in a biological department for a couple of years, and never heard then mention the word, ever. They just call it evolution.

If that book gave you the wrong impression that biologist are bloodthirsty warmongerers you can read for instance some of Stephen Jay Gould's stuff. He's leftwing and wrote some scorching criticisms of the social darwinism "superior species" stuff. He wrote an article arguing (for fun) that bacteria are vastly superior compared to anything else :)

"the Creator should require a creator  POST ONE

WHY ? 2.5 billions say yes, 2.5 billions say no.

That is just human thinking, Creator , if existing, may exist with some infinite chain of creators, first solution to the dilemna.

Second solution : FIDES, truth in latin, fidelity etc ... which supposes men accept something exists called creator without understanding it. It gives religionS ... and sometimes wars too.

ReligionS are made-up, certainly, but who made them ?

The Creator or the creature ? since 5000 years nobody knows precisely.

Just a joke now, serious thinking may include smiley too, smiley's people aren't we ?  :

For instance we accept FIDE exists without having met her and/or understanding every decision about FIDE.  And Chess is our touch, our link, our tie, our .....religion ?

Not chess is my religion, but chess is my idolatry 

 interesting nuance what is idol for one is God for enemy.

(Sun Tse, circa 2500 before you)

There cannot be infinite regress. We are here, alive. Thus out of something we were made. If continually regressing then we would not be here as we are infinitely away in creation.

post one : "IF the universe requires a creator ...

Well, but suppose the universe IS the creator  pb solved.

Suppose the time is just invention from the creature , the universe requires nothing, the universe IS, yesterday, tomorrow are fictious during a life time, nothing more. Pb solved.

I agree with you :     Science doesn't need creator. 838.

But beside Science exist other approaches , because in ZEN philosophy (for instance) , one or two billions people think there cannot be science YIN without incon-science YANG. nb  : ZEN is NO religion.

Rabelais (the greatest doctor and scientific in Renaissance, with some relaxe personal religion he got problems for that) said : "Science without conscience is the Ruin".

Beside Science they may think exist sthg else, even Jean Paul Sartre, believing in NO god, said :"there is something to say (-disible) , there is something NOT to say (-indisible trad)." (Bing and nothingness best seller, Nobel Prize).

ZIgy : that's right 840

I remember people sayin' 1793 : 

"Republic doen't need scientific people" it was for sending great chemist LAVOISIER to cut his head. Two months later, those republicans died !

So it goes, before sayin' someone don't need something, just ask if it is not your ex-wife saying "my husband don't need our children" the price to pay is not the same. 

I miss nothing , but with the age I learned that because exist darwin exist other too. Good needs bad, clever need moron, Starsky needs ...., Laurel needs ....? hardly believible, isnt'it ?

It is Zen approach, reconciliating all people for eternity around an immense camp fire, Zarathustra discussing with Buddha, Fuji-Yama with no lava.

When fishing, bring me TROUTFISH, please. It's my engine, TROUTFISH 2.0 is out of date, unfortunately.