Creationism vs. Evolution

[Bdub01 201]

I don't believe in the biblical creation theory however a Creator, God, or a higher power could have set creation in motion through evolution.

[jcluvzgamez 0]

Everyone is just simply judgemental about everything...

  Edited February 21, 2013 by CaptCity  

[Cefien 361]

Everyone is just simply judgemental about everything...

 

I won't put myself in any side now but i just like to throw out to you..

Hang in there, bud. It's not easy being a believer these days. You'll receive judgement from every corner, but don't mind that, and don't blame them. It's not their fault for denying the existence of God. Just as they have the right to deny, you have the right to not deny. No one is forcing anyone around here to believe or to not believe. I tell you this, we will all know the truth sooner or later.

When it comes to science, use your intelligence. But when it comes to religion, use your wisdom.

 

If you don't want them to keep calling you troll. I suggest you now to enjoy the day. Download some awesome stuff from the STEX and then go play SimCity, because you're not registered here only to settle an argument, right?

  Edited February 21, 2013 by Cefien  

[Zukunftstraume 220]

The One true and only God. Not the false gods that some other religions worship... And when all of a sudden did I lose MY right to MY religion?

 

 

EDIT: And about the comment about me only having 3 posts... I usually hang out over at SC4Devotion not Simtropolis, I don't post here normally...

 

You failed to answer my post...

 

You do realize that all those other thousands of confident religions and ideologies would say that your god (instead of theirs) is the false one, right?

 

Any evidence to support otherwise? Or would this evidence also come straight out of the Bible?

 

Because the Mayans can also get their evidence to support their religion from the Popol Vuh, the Buddhists can also do the same by looking the scriptures of Guatama, the Taoists will reference the Tao Te Ching, and the list goes on and on and on. The Bible is the same as those books, and your religion is just that... A religion, exactly like all the others... An idea created by people in times with basic tools to help explain the world around them.

 

So, where's your evidence?

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...

 

No Evidence = Invalid Claim

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The problem with the creationist view is that it is short sighted.  I believe God created the universe.  Ancient writers had no such concept, and since modern people have, so the view must expand.  Once It started the ball rolling, the rest is evolution. 

 

As for the self-serving Judeo-Christian myth, it is no more valid than the Greek or Norse mythologies, or those of the eastern religions.  I do not believe that God is concerned with mankind any more than It is concerned with any other peoples (aliens) who may exist elsewhere and who may or may not have similar mythology.

 

At the moment it is probably good to have a faith in a First Cause, but recent discoveries about the bubble instability of the universe may point to a steady state which simply cycles from one big bang to the next.  This begs a question with an unknowable answer.  If God created the universe, and it is cyclic and time starts anew with each cycle, can there be any measure of the duration of the cosmos?  The answer is 'only in the mind of God' which any astute theologian will tell you is unknowable.

 

There are various myths developed by peoples world wide that started with animism and eventually evolved into belief in various deities.  At best they are approximations, but all of them provide an ethical framework to suppress the predatory instincts of mankind.  So mote it be.

[macvirt 361]

Well, ancient cultures actually did have such a concept. In fact, many ancient cultures shared an awareness of what recent advances in the sciences now call the multiverse. The dogon not only have a celestial charting awareness which has baffled us for ages, their creation myths incorporate the conceptualisation of both this universe and the multiverse it is a part of. Not that this is limited to that tribe or even the African continent though. 

 

The really interesting part is that science is slowly progressing to a point where it is getting very close to what in earlier centuries was immediately dismissed because of centuries of short sighted religious persecution: the concept of prime cause growing ever more in the direction of the concept of prime mover. Even orientations such as the computational universe theories developed in the recent decades, or perhaps even especially. 

 

What we know today of the religion of christianity is that, seperate from the belief system underneath, it is an artificial construct. It was pieced together at several occasions through a man determined process of editing, selecting and discarding. That is not strange though, religion after all is the organised function of belief systems in service of men. It is incredibly prone to being abused. Christianity is in that regard one of the worst possible religions.

 

That is not the same though as the belief underneath. The belief system was misused. That degrades the use of it, and the sharing, but it does not diminish core values or that which lies at the heart of the beliefs themselves. 

 

One of the most common instruments of religions to guard themselves against people noting these distinctions is what is known as the victimisation perception. It is an integral part of the religious education but even more importantly of the storytelling and the symbology. Let's be honest, what is our most common reflex when questions are asked? We feel attacked, questioned, we feel our values are being threatened. Perception management is an integral part of how religions abuse belief. 

 

Belief is individual, shared in and as a group, and tolerant. It does no harm, it does not enforce. Because it is part of the self, and not organised as an institute or instrument of man. Beliefs are never a problem between people, no matter how much one may disagree individually, because face to face there is always the relation of man to man in place. People may make mistakes, may even offend the other, but it remains on that level and thus is always open to an exchange of perspectives. 

 

The organised version of that puts that belief in service of the organisation. That is where things go wrong. The further the distance between people with differences in opinion the easier it is for circumstances to arise which keep those people divided. And ofcourse every organisation innately requires participation, the noses have to point the same way. That is where concepts like hierarchy and authority are introduced, but also where limits on discourse and exchange of information are injected. Every human organisation functions like this. Religions are not an exception in any way or form. 

 

But that is why beliefs reach out to learn, while religions reach out to teach. It is not without reason that religious groups all have their own versions of the Jesuit doctrine of "give me a child for 5 years and he is ours for life". Creationism is not a theory, it could be. In fact our science increasingly finds out as it evolves that there is a lot less divide between science itself and the ancient knowledge contained in the stories and symbologies of belief systems. But creationism is used as an instrument.

 

And that, is what should immediately send up the red flag to anyone with an honest belief in god. Scripture teaches the dangers of the mentality that gives way to using belief in service of power, under many many guises. It is an honest shame that people with an honest belief remain unable to make these distinctions. 

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Raised Christian, but believe in evolution.

 

I find myself stuck in this conundrum:

 

 

I treat the Bible and other holy scriptures as books. The creation story is just that... a story. Something to make you think and maybe have a moral at the end.

 

I couldn't see myself blindly following it... It's human to question stuff. We question rules and law all the time, so why not this?

 

 

EDIT: How is this topic a 'current event?'

-It should be moved to general off-topic or something.

 

Eh... well I sometimes find that just because you believe in God doesn't mean that it goes against evolution.

 

The Bible itself obviously has it's historical inaccuracies, and there's some things that are obviously wrong. It's understandable, no one really knew how the Earth was created or how we came to be in those days, that explains why everyone has their own different creation myth.

 

At times I find that I narrowly escaped some situation perfectly okay, or that very specific dreams I always hope would happen, somehow actually end up happening. I don't know if it's just Deja Vu, the law of attraction, or someone or some force guiding me like a God or "guardian angel", but sometimes I can't help but to wonder if maybe all of those are just the same thing.

 

People are nuts for immediately jumping on the bandwagon by saying "THERE IS NO GOD!!!!", they're just as bad as the insane religious extremists. Just because evolution is true doesn't mean that there wasn't a God behind the creation of the universe, the multiverse, or all of reality for that matter.

 

The only thing is to be real cautious of how much you take for literal in the Bible. Try to deter away from believing the bigger things as being actual history (like the entirety of Genesis). The rest of the book is nice in the sense that it has a lot of history, cultural insight, awesome stories (whether real or not), and quite a lot of lessons in life that the ancient people of the Near-East valued and wanted to share. If not taken literally, the Bible is one of those ancient relics that can be used to bring people together.

[KonstantinII 1,106]

It's not Creationism vs. Evolution, it's Creationism AND Evolution I tell ya! 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The basic problem is that the "creationists" are really nothing more than "fundamentalists".  They believe what they are told by their pastor or imam or whatever.  Because of their lack of world view, they often have no choice in the matter.  People being what they are, most of them take the easiest path, and fundamentalism is a child-like behaviour which indicates a lack of education and/or maturity.

[Bdub01 201]

It's not Creationism vs. Evolution, it's Creationism AND Evolution I tell ya!

I totally agree! I believe a Being 'created' the process of 'evolution'. So how bout a new word 'creatlution' !!!

[KonstantinII 1,106]

No that's not true. Adam and Eve were the first Australopithecus humans who lived in the garden of eden, which was Africa.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

No that's not true. Adam and Eve were the first Australopithecus humans who lived in the garden of eden, which was Africa.

 

What about the parents of Adam and Eve? Were they also like them? You know, Australopithecus and the sort, 3 feet tall, standing upright, and bearing tiny brains and such? But with undetectably small and random differences from their parents?

 

Or were the parents of Adam and Eve incredibly different from them? With their children being born looking drastically different from the immediate past generation in line? Because, you know, evolution from one species to the next totally happens instantaneously in just one generation!!!

 

Or were the Australopithecus Adam and Eve created by God himself, out of dirt, like the Bible says?

[Erle 3]

Greetings, Simtropians. Haven't read all the 59 pages, just wanted to add my opinion. or my mustard, like germans say.

 

I think Erich von Däniken is right.

 

his praeastronautic theories can explain the missing link in human evolution and some strange things archeologists are wondering about.

 

his theorie in short: Aliens came down to Earth and gave human evolution a push, with their superb genetic engineering skills and stuff  : D

 

god? the god jesus was talking about? i think jesus was talking bout live, and how he thinks it's supposed to be or so, smart one

 

sorry forrrr bed Inglisch

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Greetings, Simtropians. Haven't read all the 59 pages, just wanted to add my opinion. or my mustard, like germans say.

 

I think Erich von Däniken is right.

 

his praeastronautic theories can explain the missing link in human evolution and some strange things archeologists are wondering about.

 

his theorie in short: Aliens came down to Earth and gave human evolution a push, with their superb genetic engineering skills and stuff  : D

 

god? the god jesus was talking about? i think jesus was talking bout live, and how he thinks it's supposed to be or so, smart one

 

sorry forrrr bed Inglisch

 

Well, for all we know... Aliens might've come down and given us a push.

 

But, the problem with that is that the idea of a "missing link" is no longer valid, since it's an early 20th century idea that is still sadly around. In short... There is No Missing Link! The idea of the missing link officially disappeared from the scientific community in the 60's and 70's when anthropologists started finding immense amounts of fossils from the early Homininis. The evidence that aliens might've come and given us a push just simply doesn't exist. So, saying aliens came down and gave us intelligence is like saying Big Foot exists... the evidence is simply not there, and whatever "evidence" some people may try to come up with, it's simply too weak to even be considered by any large percentage of real scientists.

 

Nowadays, we have a very solid understanding of the way human evolution flowed in the past 6-7 million years, where at that point in time, we had our last common ancestor with the Chimps.

 

In the first diagram down below, the species at the top right-left corner could be the last possible ancestor for both Chimps and Humans, but we'll probably never have enough evidence to know exactly when the split happened... Should be about 7 million years ago.

 

The purple group is too similar to the previous group to be distinct from the chimp or the human lineage, so they have it listed as a possible human ancestor... They're not too sure where exactly it stands in the evolutionary tree.

 

The yellow group is our ancestor group for sure, but this is still when they partially lived in trees (much like modern chimps).

 

The Orange, Pink, and Red groups all fall under the Australopithecus category, but some people argue they should each be their own genuses, either way they have them separated out in this diagram. The first orange ones are the Homininis that were the first to walk around completely upright, but still had chimp-sized brains, also being no more than a meter tall.

 

And of course, the Green branch, Homo, which are the humans. But there's been a surprising amount of humans around in the past. Over time the successors to the previous species slowly developed larger and larger brains, while also become taller and losing hair to make room for sweat glands (which were to our benefit). The largest brains in the entire lineage belonged to the Neanderthals and us. The Neanderthals even had larger brains than us, but we managed to out-compete them. We were the ones to claim the world, expand, create civilizations, and here we are now, reading this sentence.

 

Feel free to come on over to my Neanderthal thread by clicking

 

But, I tell you... There is no missing link, it's an idea that should've died 60 years ago!

 

Here's some diagrams and pictures:

 

 

 

 

[LexusInfernus 908]

Missing link or not, Aliens could have still come down and gave us a hand with certain things. Who knows, perhaps they were guiding human technological process a bit, making our societies evolve in ways they desired, for unknown purposes. Perhaps the Reapers from Mass Effect are real and they are just guiding us so it becomes easy to harvest us during the next attack!  

 

Though to be honest, I think the whole aliens theory, though its great material for fiction, actually does a disservice to those early societies. Essentially it diminishes the achievements of the Egyptians and Aztecs if you say that they didn't figure out by themselves how to make those great pyramids and other engineering marvels, but actually got help from aliens. Its like we Westerners can't accept that there were intelligent and highly evolved societies at a time when we were still living in primitive huts and attacked each other with simple spears. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I see we've now arrived at speculative fiction.  There is no real evidence of prehistoric aliens.  I think this section of the guessing game has probably come to its fruition.

[Meg 368]

Missing link or not, Aliens could have still come down and gave us a hand with certain things. Who knows, perhaps they were guiding human technological process a bit, making our societies evolve in ways they desired, for unknown purposes.

 

This theory neither confirms nor denies either creationism or evolution.  It merely spreads the process over multiple planets.

 

 

Though to be honest, I think the whole aliens theory, though its great material for fiction, actually does a disservice to those early societies. Essentially it diminishes the achievements of the Egyptians and Aztecs if you say that they didn't figure out by themselves how to make those great pyramids and other engineering marvels, but actually got help from aliens. Its like we Westerners can't accept that there were intelligent and highly evolved societies at a time when we were still living in primitive huts and attacked each other with simple spears. 

 

 

I see your point.   But there are things that imply technology we wouldn't expect them to have.

 

In South America, for instance, there are things that can only be seen from the air, like the Nazca lines and the band of holes.  Then there is the stonework at Saqsaywaman.  How did they get those stones to fit together like that?    What would it take for us to duplicate that?

 

As you say, it's like we can't accept that they could do these things.  Because, if they could and they are now gone, what does that say about what could happen to us?

[Bdub01 201]

God or aliens, one can not prove or disprove either one. For that matter maybe a pink bunny farted us all into existence. Start throwing aliens in them this is no longer about creation vs evolution. It's about whether aliens exist or not and should defiantly be another thread!

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Missing link or not, Aliens could have still come down and gave us a hand with certain things. Who knows, perhaps they were guiding human technological process a bit, making our societies evolve in ways they desired, for unknown purposes. Perhaps the Reapers from Mass Effect are real and they are just guiding us so it becomes easy to harvest us during the next attack!

 

Though to be honest, I think the whole aliens theory, though its great material for fiction, actually does a disservice to those early societies. Essentially it diminishes the achievements of the Egyptians and Aztecs if you say that they didn't figure out by themselves how to make those great pyramids and other engineering marvels, but actually got help from aliens. Its like we Westerners can't accept that there were intelligent and highly evolved societies at a time when we were still living in primitive huts and attacked each other with simple spears. 

 

Could be possible. But it's all speculation. This is where science ends and speculative fiction begins.

 

Sidenote: +1 for a Reaper reference! (though the aliens in ME looked dreadfully humanoid, the idea behind the Reapers was very cool)

 

Yup, I feel like people who strongly believe aliens guided us in the ancient past really take away from how great the Egyptians, Mayans, etc all were. They have these HUGE pyramids!!! Surely these people weren't clever nor dedicated enough to build such things, so that can only mean one thing.... ALIENS!!!

 

^ Logic at it's finest. Kind of like when people were first observing Venus with modern telescopes and saw it was very cloudy and began to imagine all sorts of situations on the surface of the planet.

 

Again, Logic at it's finest... Here's Carl Sagan "proving" that Venus had dinosaurs:

 

 

^He's actually just mocking people with their ridiculous overly imaginative speculations how wild people can get by jumping to conclusions.

 

 

 

 

God or aliens, one can not prove or disprove either one. For that matter maybe a pink bunny farted us all into existence. Start throwing aliens in them this is no longer about creation vs evolution. It's about whether aliens exist or not and should defiantly be another thread!

 

Pink bunny farting us into existence? Well, what about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

 

An undetectable flying spaghetti monster created the universe and sightings occur every so often. Pirates are also the chosen people, and the steady decline in Pirates is what has caused global warming. Pastafarianism is what it's called, and it has quite the following. They celebrate Ramendan (indulging in instant noodles), Pastover (indulging in pasta), Holiday (can be celebrated in anyway), regard Fridays as holy (their prayers end in R'amen!), and The International Talk Like a Pirate Day (self explanatory). They even have their own Bible-like book called The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

Here's an excerpt on Creation taken straight from Wikipedia:

"The central creation myth is that an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe 'after drinking heavily'. According to these beliefs, the monster's intoxication was the cause for a flawed Earth. Furthermore, according to Pastafarianism, all evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster in an effort to test the faith of Pastafarians - parodying certain biblical literalists. When scientific measurements such as radiocarbon dating are taken, the Flying Spaghetti Monster 'is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage". The Pastafarian conception of Heaven includes a beer volcano and a stripper factory. The Pastafarian Hell is similar, except that the beer is stale and the strippers have sexually transmitted diseases."

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Yep, it is definitely silly season, and the March Hares are out.  "I told you butter wouldn't suit the works".

[KonstantinII 1,106]

Or were the parents of Adam and Eve incredibly different from them? With their children being born looking drastically different from the immediate past generation in line? Because, you know, evolution from one species to the next totally happens instantaneously in just one generation!!!

Evolution does not happening all at once!  That's why they call it evolution, not revolution! You deceive. Evolution means physical characteristics changing over a great period of time. For example when humans came out of Africa they began to lose the black color of their skin to adapt to the climate. That's why people have slight anatomical peculiarities such as different color of skin and hair, narrow eyes, shape of nose... Evolution can't occur instantaneously because it is natural selection. 

I consider it my duty to protect people from false information. 

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Or were the parents of Adam and Eve incredibly different from them? With their children being born looking drastically different from the immediate past generation in line? Because, you know, evolution from one species to the next totally happens instantaneously in just one generation!!!

Evolution does not happening all at once!  That's why they call it evolution, not revolution! You deceive. Evolution means physical characteristics changing over a great period of time. For example when humans came out of Africa they began to lose the black color of their skin to adapt to the climate. That's why people have slight anatomical peculiarities such as different color of skin and hair, narrow eyes, shape of nose... Evolution can't occur instantaneously because it is natural selection. 

I consider it my duty to protect people from false information. 

 

If you say evolution doesn't happen all at once, then what did you mean by this below? I'm getting contradicting information from you, and many of your posts are difficult to comprehend. Care to elaborate?

 

 

No that's not true. Adam and Eve were the first Australopithecus humans who lived in the garden of eden, which was Africa.

[KonstantinII 1,106]

Contradicting? I mean that evolution is just a natural process that creatures change a little bit over time. You completely misunderstanding what evolution actually is. It's not like supposed to happen all at once. 

[KonstantinII 1,106]

Yup, I feel like people who strongly believe aliens guided us in the ancient past really take away from how great the Egyptians, Mayans, etc all were. They have these HUGE pyramids!!! Surely these people weren't clever nor dedicated enough to build such things, so that can only mean one thing.... ALIENS!!!

Just stupid garbage. You all pseudo scientists have no place in this forum. You can surely see that the pyramids are no more then the fancy of an ancient dictator who wanted to make a monument for himself. 

 

Yep, it is definitely silly season, 

Moose is right. Pseudo science gets you nowhere. All you pseudo scientists just want something extraordinary such as hollow Earth,civilizations on Mars, Aliens, unicorns...

[LexusInfernus 908]

I see your point.   But there are things that imply technology we wouldn't expect them to have.

 

 

In South America, for instance, there are things that can only be seen from the air, like the Nazca lines and the band of holes.  Then there is the stonework at Saqsaywaman.  How did they get those stones to fit together like that?    What would it take for us to duplicate that?

 

As you say, it's like we can't accept that they could do these things.  Because, if they could and they are now gone, what does that say about what could happen to us?

 

 

 

 

We wouldn't expect them to have these things because we expect our society to be the most advanced, and these societies can do things we only discovered just now. That doesn't fit with our world view so we have trouble accepting it. But we forget that technology is not a fixed line. Its entirely possible for societies to evolve along different paths and thus reach a greater understanding of certain things at a much sooner stage than we did. For example, the Chinese discovered gunpowder much earlier than the Europeans, yet it were the Europeans that adapted their armies on a massive scale first. And since then European based powers have held the absolute advantage in military technology. 

 

 

 

Could be possible. But it's all speculation. This is where science ends and speculative fiction begins.

 

Sidenote: +1 for a Reaper reference! (though the aliens in ME looked dreadfully humanoid, the idea behind the Reapers was very cool)

 

Yup, I feel like people who strongly believe aliens guided us in the ancient past really take away from how great the Egyptians, Mayans, etc all were. They have these HUGE pyramids!!! Surely these people weren't clever nor dedicated enough to build such things, so that can only mean one thing.... ALIENS!!!

 

^ Logic at it's finest. Kind of like when people were first observing Venus with modern telescopes and saw it was very cloudy and began to imagine all sorts of situations on the surface of the planet.

 

 

Have I met another Mass Effect fan?

 

Actually, assuming that they are from planets with similar conditions to earth, humanoid forms likely have an evolutionary advantage when it comes to intelligence. I mean, humanoids are not the fastest (4 legs is faster) nor does their build allow for superior strength. If humanoids want to survive, they need two things, hands that are good at grabbing things, and intelligence. Species like cats evolved to become rather efficient predators and they are fast, a humanoid form cannot outrun any predator that evolved on 4 legs. So height is its defense. That requires hands. Second, their food is likely faster because they evolved on 4 legs in the same environment as the predators that hunt humans, only they can outrun predators. So, humanoids need to hunt in a more intelligent manner, which with a little luck eventually means they end up using tools. Tools promote intelligence even more, thus humanoids slowly evolve to be smarter and smarter, and their tools become more sophisticated until at some point society reaches the point that it can go to space. 

 

Of course, you get the people that say that dolphins are also really smart. Yes, they are, but their intelligence does not allow for the use of tools and thus it are not dolphins that are building rockets to go colonize the moon. 

 

Anyways, it would therefor not surprise me that if we ever meet aliens in flying saucers it turns out they are humanoid in shape. Of course, if intelligent life evolves on a planet which is nothing like Earth at all, this no longer works. Still, this is one reason why I believe Mass Effect is probably the most 'realistic' modern scifi story ever. 

[lhrob 213]

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Contradicting?

I mean that evolution is just a natural process that creatures change a

little bit over time. You completely misunderstanding what evolution

actually is. It's not like supposed to happen all at once.

 

You're the one who claimed Adam and Eve were the first Australopithecus. This implies you're either a creationist or just terribly atrocious at writing in coherent English, and now I'm just flabbergasted to see your opinions radically change all of a sudden.

 

And yes, half the comments you post contradict one another. You also managed to derail my Neanderthal thread by borderline attacking me, and stating outlandish claims that you pulled straight out of the blue without a single drop of evidence or even a link to support those claims. Such as claiming "Neanderthals are the direct ancestors of the Celtics and Ainus." <-- Where did you get that from? An article? A Book? Any Evidence? Or do you know someone who told you that, therefore they're obviously right? You're also pulling numbers and statistics out of nowhere like "There were 500 million Neanderthals", which is absolute bogus for a group of hunter-gatherers that lived in the same niche as Cro-Magnons in merely half of Europe to have anywhere over 70,000 members at absolute most.

 

You've also misread everything I've said, take this thread for instance. It seems like you just skimmed what I wrote and immediately jumped to outlandish conclusions. Lack of reading comprehensions skills much? You even went so far as to accuse me of being a pseudo-scientist, a believer of alien civilizations of Mars, a supporter of the Hollow Earth theory, and a unicorn nut.

 

You also failed to catch any of my sarcasm, which is also a testament to how poorly you interpreted everything. That post you commented in down below, did you read the rest of what I said? Or did you stop as soon as you found something that wasn't to your liking (since you obviously didn't even read what I wrote in any detail). I bet if you did end up reading the rest of it you'll start calling Carl Sagan a pseudo-scientist. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if the next post you make after reading this disregards or (yet again) misinterpret everything I said and start calling me the enemy or some other name.

 

Here's the real kicker though... You claim that it's your duty to protect people from false information, but yet you spread false information left and right. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously or even listen to anything you say if your posts have a gargantuan number of syntax and semantic fallacies? How do you think anyone will even care to pay attention to what you have to say if you immediately bash and condemn people for having even remotely different viewpoints than yourself? You'll never get anyone on your side like that, people will just dismiss you as a loon, and simply skip over any post you make.

 

I'm not bashing on you, since I don't believe in being so one-sided and breaking the peace. I'm just trying to open your eyes to your folly. If you really had read my posts than you would've caught the sarcasm, but instead you've made yourself look rather foolish in front of all these fine people. If only you knew what my major and career plans are...

 

Seriously, slowly re-read my post, and understand what I'm saying without jumping to conclusions. That post itself was mainly about how people jump to conclusions far too easily and ignore all the facts presented to them. I know you're only 15, but please don't turn into one of those people who thinks everything they say is correct and condemn everyone else.

 

 

 

Yup, I feel like people who strongly believe aliens guided us in the ancient past really take away from how great the Egyptians, Mayans, etc all were. They have these HUGE pyramids!!! Surely these people weren't

clever nor dedicated enough to build such things, so that can only mean one thing.... ALIENS!!!

Just stupid garbage. You

all pseudo scientists have no place in this forum. You can surely see

that the pyramids are no more then the fancy of an ancient dictator who

wanted to make a monument for himself. 

 

>>>Yep, it is definitely silly season, 

Moose

is right. Pseudo science gets you nowhere. All you pseudo scientists

just want something extraordinary such as hollow Earth,civilizations on

Mars, Aliens, unicorns...

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Have I met another Mass Effect fan?

 

Actually, assuming that they are from planets with similar conditions to earth, humanoid forms likely have an evolutionary advantage when it comes to intelligence. I mean, humanoids are not the fastest (4 legs is faster) nor does their build allow for superior strength. If humanoids want to survive, they need two things, hands that are good at grabbing things, and intelligence. Species like cats evolved to become rather efficient predators and they are fast, a humanoid form cannot outrun any predator that evolved on 4 legs. So height is its defense. That requires hands. Second, their food is likely faster because they evolved on 4 legs in the same environment as the predators that hunt humans, only they can outrun predators. So, humanoids need to hunt in a more intelligent manner, which with a little luck eventually means they end up using tools. Tools promote intelligence even more, thus humanoids slowly evolve to be smarter and smarter, and their tools become more sophisticated until at some point society reaches the point that it can go to space. 

 

Of course, you get the people that say that dolphins are also really smart. Yes, they are, but their intelligence does not allow for the use of tools and thus it are not dolphins that are building rockets to go colonize the moon. 

 

Anyways, it would therefor not surprise me that if we ever meet aliens in flying saucers it turns out they are humanoid in shape. Of course, if intelligent life evolves on a planet which is nothing like Earth at all, this no longer works. Still, this is one reason why I believe Mass Effect is probably the most 'realistic' modern scifi story ever. 

 

Being honest, I've never actually played any of the Mass Effect games. One of my friends was a real avid fan, even having a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Shepard in his room and an N7 tattoo on his arm. He got me into the series, and the overall storyline for it is pretty awesome indeed.

 

Ah, but see, we're just taking this from our bias. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of creatures on this planet that evolved near-sapience that use different methods of grabbing things, but there are a few. Octopus are the smartest of the invertebrates and can open jars and do many other things using their tentacles. Elephants, being also incredibly smart and very pacifistic in nature, use their trunks like an arm, grab things (like logs, paintbrushes, etc), and use it to move about, sometimes even as a weapon. Dolphins, being also pretty smart, coat their nose with sponges and use them as tools to borrow into the sand and retrieve things hiding underneath to snack on. An entire ant colony acts almost like it's one giant hive-mind organism (as scary and sci-fi-like as it sounds). Crows (being the smartest bird) use their beaks to grasp things, like sticks to pick at locks or reach for things... They have even been known to drop very hard nuts into the middle of a street, wait patiently nearby, and watch the light turn green at which moment cars swarm by and crush the nuts. Once the light turns red, they'll swoop down into the street and collect their prize!

 

It doesn't just have to be hands, and it doesn't even have to be anything remotely similar to an arm, just as long as it's a free appendage to move around, preferably something to grasp with. In fact, if evolution would've been in favor of the crows (and they would've developed sapience instead of us), they might've even had a beak modified to carry all sorts of things. Can you imagine what a sapient crow-like species would be like?

 

Even with this much versatility among the near-sapient creatures, I can only imagine how different alien species will look. We have noticed that things like arthropods, vertebrates, worms, and the cephalopods all evolved separate from one another, but they still managed to have their more important sensory organs and nervous system centralized in one spot... a head. So, I could definitely imagine things that look somewhat like eyes, maybe some kind of sound receptor, or chemiosensors (like taste buds, scent glands, electro-sensors like in Sharks, or some other kind of scent-like sensor for aquatic things) all focused nearby that "head".

 

But then again, we're just taking this from our Earth-bias. We know of no other place where life is possible. Who even said cells had to be the fundamental unit of all life, or that all life had to have the same building blocks as us? Life somewhere else could look and behave unimaginably different then anything we could ever imagine. Tentacles, claws, and 17 eyeballs? No, no... That's far too 1950's sci-fi B-Movie cliche. Something far more awesome and unimaginable. Maybe something that looks metallic, morphs into different shapes, or acts as a vast hive-mind. Who knows, the possibilities are endless!

 

Carl Sagan once said that aliens elsewhere should have different rates of metabolism compared to our own. Like if trying to communicate with one species via radio telescopes, one species might take as long as a year to communicate something along the lines of "hello", while another might have such intense chemistry that they can accomplish this in a nanosecond.

 

I've stumbled across Hard Science Fiction books that had very different aliens than the mainstream media. Intelligence that lives on the surface of a neutron star! Or intelligence made out of dark matter (and since dark matter rarely interacts with regular matter, these beings would be largely undetectable to us and vice versa, an invisible world among us!). Beings that are actually a microscopic virus in essence and stay floating in space in dormancy until they encounter another world and attack en masse! You'll love this short video... Carl Sagan postulates on the possibility of having life on a gas giant planet, like Jupiter... Too amazing! Watch it!!! Do it now!

 

 

 

 

But when you start getting aliens that look unnecessarily similar to humans, like most of the ME races down below... That's when it starts getting a bit unrealistic for my tastes. Asari and Quarians take the cake for being faaaaar too humanoid. Asari look exactly like humans but with a different skin color. Seriously? Billions of years of separate evolution and they come up with that? Salarians, Volus, and Turians look unnecessarily human. The look of the Hanar was completely stolen from a Portuguese Man-of-War. I really feel like the creative designers for the game just got lazy aside from creating the most important races to the storyline and kind of added all the extra races as unpolished side-thoughts. Okay Krogans don't particularly look overly humanoid, still a wee bit too much for my tastes, however I absolutely love their back story, so they're saved from my wrath! Geth look awesome (not in this picture below though)! The Reapers themselves are what made the game for me, they're brilliant, and the idea behind them is menacingly eerie.

 

 

 

Ultimately my favorite sci-fi series definitely goes to Starcraft. The three races are so incredibly unique. So, it's real eye-candy to see the back story and main story play out.

 

 

 

Anyways, i've drifted slightly off topic... So, um yeah... Evolution > Creationism, creationism won't account for such amazing hypothetical creatures that can exist because physics and chemistry allow for such life elsewhere. Creationism is focused only on modern day life in a largely anthropocentric point of view and nothing more.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I do not rule out life as we don't know it.  It is just that current knowledge is limited to our carbon based scenario with the exception, perhaps, of some strange micro-organisms in the volcanic areas in deep sea mounts.

 

Given that we are not explorers of the galaxy (yet), we are not in a position to deny anything.  If Einstein is right, we never will be.

 

{Greetings from the Old Ones of Mars.}

[MandelSoft 2,769]

If you think Mass Effect is unrealistic with its aliens, try Star Trek, where almost every single freakin' alien is a humanoid (often very alike humans)!

(Still a fan of the show BTW...)