Unofficial Poll- What comes first, the chicken, or the egg?

[ChocolateMouse]

Mouse, I read those references you included. In each case, they include statements such as "The Cambrian is BELIEVED to be ...." so many years old. "These worms are CONSIDERED to be..." man's earliest ancestors. Etc. These are basically unproved opinions. Again, because, as is true in any FAITH-BASED belief system, these statements cannot be proved by the scientific method. They are and remain, hypotheses. They cannot be experientially replicated. Please understand, I am not mocking them. I only seek to reveal them for what they are. They claim to be science, but they are not.

That's like saying "We BELIEVE COVID-19 is related to other corona viruses" or the people who say "The theory of _____ is just a theory!". This is just.... SUCH a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method.

But the easy way to put it is they're covering their butts. :T None of them "believe" this stuff, they KNOW this stuff. They are just leaving room for error because whenever science gets something wrong people go "ooh! Look! Science is all just made up and they don't know what they're doing!" which is just... Not how any of that works. They're just learning more, new things.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Example, what if it wasn't EXACTLY those worms, but some other nearly identical species of worm that made it to being human billions of years later. Maybe these ones were blue and the other ones were black, and the blue ones died out and only the black ones that were really quite similar are the ones that made it but we don't have any DNA or chemical signature to show which is which.

The studies aren't saying that *anything* could be the beginning of symmetrical life forms with a gut, but that a worm very much like this is the earliest thing we've currently found that meets our requirements to have been that creature, and we just don't have the technology to analyze if it was THESE worms, or some nearly identical worm 100 miles away that was the first one. But it sure was ONE of them or something very much like it even longer ago, and this is the example we have on hand.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Well, we got here because a lot of folks have a REALLY uneducated perspective on evolution.... And don't really grasp why it's not something to be "believed" in like a religion is. I'm making an attempt to explain why they're a fair bit different.

Nothingness is a possibility for the space between those particles. There's a lot of string theory that explains it a bit that's way above me. Things about the world forming in specific patterns - like gaps in the weave of a fabric.

But sincerely. Break it down - why do you believe in tiny particles you will never see or experience ever in your life but not friction goblins?

Oof, string theory. That stuff is a headache, and the video that I watched that introduced me to it was only scratching the surface.
The tiny particles can be seen, technically, though it takes quite a lot -- their existence has been proven repeatedly.
I can't remember what these friction goblins are at the moment -- please refresh my memory, because all that I'm getting is this really weird (and amusing) image of tiny little ugly lump monsters getting squooshed between things that are moving against each other, and I'm pretty sure that that's not what you mean.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon, or seen pictures of the strata in it? Ever notice how amazingly FLAT they are? They are supposed to represent millenia of deposits. They cover hundreds of miles. And yet .... having lived in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico and Colorado for many years, I am puzzled. How is it possible that there are no gullies, no arroyos, no gulches, no dips in these layers? Reason tells me that these layers of sediment were laid down virtually instantaneously. In fact, there are places where bones of dinosaurs, and petrified trees, lie not horizontally on top of a single layer, but vertically through more than one layer. This doesn't happen today. If I stuck a tree branch or a bone in mud and came back ten or even two years later, sediment would not be accumulating around it, gradually burying it, much less a thousand or a million years later. It's not even reasonable to assume such a thing. But a flood would make sense, a major flood with tsunamis and volcanic action as described in the Bible. Please note that I did not accuse anyone who thinks differently than me of being ignorant or uneducated. There are plenty of scientists who are creationists as well.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon, or seen pictures of the strata in it? Ever notice how amazingly FLAT they are? They are supposed to represent millenia of deposits. They cover hundreds of miles. And yet .... having lived in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico and Colorado for many years, I am puzzled. How is it possible that there are no gullies, no arroyos, no gulches, no dips in these layers? Reason tells me that these layers of sediment were laid down virtually instantaneously. In fact, there are places where bones of dinosaurs, and petrified trees, lie not horizontally on top of a single layer, but vertically through more than one layer. This doesn't happen today. If I stuck a tree branch or a bone in mud and came back ten or even two years later, sediment would not be accumulating around it, gradually burying it, much less a thousand or a million years later. It's not even reasonable to assume such a thing. But a flood would make sense, a major flood with tsunamis and volcanic action as described in the Bible. Please note that I did not accuse anyone who thinks differently than me of being ignorant or uneducated. There are plenty of scientists who are creationists as well.

I never thought about that before -- interesting!
This has been a fascinating conversation -- y'all are fun!

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Oof, string theory. That stuff is a headache, and the video that I watched that introduced me to it was only scratching the surface.
The tiny particles can be seen, technically, though it takes quite a lot -- their existence has been proven repeatedly.
I can't remember what these friction goblins are at the moment -- please refresh my memory, because all that I'm getting is this really weird (and amusing) image of tiny little ugly lump monsters getting squooshed between things that are moving against each other, and I'm pretty sure that that's not what you mean.

Well, technically things like a proton CAN be seen. But we've never actually SEEN a quark, we only know they're there because of mathematical trajectory of trying to split tiny particles. We calculated where they would have gone if they weren't made of even smaller particles and they didn't travel that way. Then we calculated how they would have traveled if they WERE made of even smaller particles, and the pattern matched. It only worked because of our knowledge of mass and gravity and particle bonding, etc. But YOU certainly haven't seen them. And you probably never will. Yet, we've established that you consider particle physics to be real.

Friction goblins - tiny goblins on the astral plane that hate objects - even molecules - colliding so they light fires on objects to try to stop them from moving, which is how friction (heat from objects rubbing up against eachother) is formed. They're why witches can fly - witches make friends with astral beings and because they're friends they are actually frictionless and can float like in outer space.

Why are these NOT real, even though, like particle physics, they're not something you'll ever see in your lifetime? Both of these are invisible to all senses, and you're just hearing about them from other people. So wherein lies the difference?

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I have a different take on string theory .... (very tongue-in-cheek, okay?). Here it is. When you love somebody, or maybe are meant to be with a certain somebody, there is a... an emotional "string" that connects you. So that you are drawn together, and sometimes you think the same things at the same time, even if you are nowhere near each other. So like, you will think, I should call so-and-so, and you reach for the phone to call them and it rings, and it's them! Because you pull on one end of the string and they feel it. Or you dream of them and then you get a card or letter from them the next day. That's a different kind of string theory. That ever happen to you?

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Well, technically things like a proton CAN be seen. But we've never actually SEEN a quark, we only know they're there because of mathematical trajectory of trying to split tiny particles. We calculated where they would have gone if they weren't made of even smaller particles and they didn't travel that way. Then we calculated how they would have traveled if they WERE made of even smaller particles, and the pattern matched. It only worked because of our knowledge of mass and gravity and particle bonding, etc. But YOU certainly haven't seen them. And you probably never will. Yet, we've established that you consider particle physics to be real.

Friction goblins - tiny goblins on the astral plane that hate objects - even molecules - colliding so they light fires on objects to try to stop them from moving, which is how friction (heat from objects rubbing up against eachother) is formed. They're why witches can fly - witches make friends with astral beings and because they're friends they are actually frictionless and can float like in outer space.

Why are these NOT real, even though, like particle physics, they're not something you'll ever see in your lifetime? Both of these are invisible to all senses, and you're just hearing about them from other people. So wherein lies the difference?

Has anyone ever seen and documented these little things -- drawn how they look or found little flames between two things that are creating friction? No -- but they have documented how molecules generate heat when they move. But there have been no little fires, unless I missed something, or unless you've got way too much friction and some stuff combusts.
Honestly, religion can be weird, but I have to say that science can be really weird, too.
That goblin image still amuses me....

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I have a different take on string theory .... (very tongue-in-cheek, okay?). Here it is. When you love somebody, or maybe are meant to be with a certain somebody, there is a... an emotional "string" that connects you. So that you are drawn together, and sometimes you think the same things at the same time, even if you are nowhere near each other. So like, you will think, I should call so-and-so, and you reach for the phone to call them and it rings, and it's them! Because you pull on one end of the string and they feel it. Or you dream of them and then you get a card or letter from them the next day. That's a different kind of string theory. That ever happen to you?

There... Was a video game about this recently. It was called Death Stranding. It was... Bizarre. Fun, but VERY weird.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Has anyone ever seen and documented these little things -- drawn how they look or found little flames between two things that are creating friction? No -- but they have documented how molecules generate heat when they move. But there have been no little fires, unless I missed something, or unless you've got way too much friction and some stuff combusts.
Honestly, religion can be weird, but I have to say that science can be really weird, too.
That goblin image still amuses me....

Well, no astral plane isn't visible to normal humans so of COURSE you can't see them. And there's no official studies, but I do have an old book of fae that talks about something similar.

It's OK if you need some time to think about it but I want you to decide what makes quarks believable, but not astral friction goblins. But I DO want you to think about it. I know what my reason is, of course. I suspect they'll be similar.