188 réponses à ce sujet

[RyuujinZERO]

Carfax wrote...

Most people refer to the Primal Cause as God.

[Citation Needed]

[JBONE27]

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...

JBONE27 wrote...

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...

Carfax wrote...

JBONE27 wrote...

There is no ultimate goal in evolution.  It is an ongoing process.   

Not sure I would agree with this premise.  All life is fundamentally teleological in nature, therefore it makes sense that evolution itself would also be goal oriented.

As such, it's undoubted that life forms are becoming increasingly complex, and more capable of expression..

The evolution has indeed have a goal. it's 'to reach intelligent and sapient level of life' and it's up to common soul of each race, not to satisfy themselves by just survival. Indeed, it needs it's prerequisites. But how can we be sure that 30 million years ago, there was not a sapient life on earth as hardly anything made by hands can lasts more than 1 million years and firmest of buildings destroy in 20,000 years?

You're being biased towards monkies... unless you mean intelliegent and sentiant instead of sapient.  If that is the case then I'd say you are biased towards intelligence and sentiance.  Take the example of nylonase from earlier.  They've evolved much later than humans, but they did not evolve to be intelligent or aware, rather they evolved to be able to eat something that was invented less than 100 years ago.  The 'goal' of evolution is survival, and since the environment constantly changes (when using a geologic time scale), there can be no ultimate goal for evolution.

Yes I'm biased and I'm proud of it.
Monkeys don't create literature, art, philosophy, government forms and machines. .. U Monkey lover.

Sapian means monkey, therefore sapiant means money-like.

Your bias does not have any bearing on what evolution is, or does.

[Carfax]

RyuujinZERO wrote...

Carfax wrote...

You didn't read my post properly.  I said RANDOM mutations. .

To put it more accurately you have no idea wtf you're talking about :/

Ok, random mutations that arn't beneficial... Try any of this list:
 http://en.wikipedia....netic_disorders 

All of these are caused by random mutations in most cases they are hereditry, if they have kids, their kids may potentially express the same genetic mutation.

Ryu I'll reply to your other post later because I don't have the time right now.  But let me say, that I was asking for an example of how random mutations could create BENEFICIAL traits in an organism.. 

I am familiar with experiments on fruit flies for instance, and how Scientists have used irradiation to drastically increase the rate of mutation in these creatures.

However, despite irradiating countless generations of fruit flies over decades and mutating them, Scientists have never observed any beneficial mutation.

All they've ever ended up with are dead, sick or crippled fruit flies.  If random mutation is truly the catalyst for evolution, then why doesn't it work in this circumstance?

[JBONE27]

Carfax wrote...

Daennikus wrote...

I'm coming back to this thread feeling compelled to answer this question, more out of fear that someone reading it might want to off themselves after listening to too much Emo Goth Electro...

The purpose with living beings is to be happy, and that only really happens when they connect with other living beings and flourish. The only problem is, following the rules of chaos, equilibrium has to be restored when one form of life is becoming predominant, that is why you have "evil" things like adversity and death. The reason why the human life force is so chaotic is because it is too large, and its dominance over its world is too strong. 

Once balance is restored (through massive catastrophes and drastic changes in our global way of looking at nature) only then can we all meet our goal.

If Life has a purpose, then so does the Universe.  The Universe we know for a fact, had a beginning.  If it had a beginning, it must have had a cause.  Life also must have had a cause, because it had a beginning..

Science however, has no materialistic explanation for the what CAUSED the Universe and Life to arise. 

If Time, Space and all material phenomena began with the existence of the Universe, it is logical to infer that the CAUSE of the Universe must exist beyond the current concepts of Time, Space, energy and matter etc...

Most people refer to the Primal Cause as God.

Facepalm.
1.  We don't know that the universe (matter, time, and energy) had a beginning, simply that the universe as we know it had a beginning... The Big Bang.
2.  Simply because we don't know something yet doesn't mean we will never know something.  That is why the god of the gaps argument is a fallacy.

Modifié par JBONE27, 05 avril 2012 - 07:00 .

[RyuujinZERO]

JBONE27 wrote...

Sapian means monkey, therefore sapiant means money-like.

Sapiens is Latin for "wise". ****** sapiens literally means "wise men"... sapient meaning "to have wisdom" not to be mixed up with sentient, meaning to have awareness

Modifié par RyuujinZERO, 05 avril 2012 - 07:01 .

[Tirigon]

Carfax wrote...


You didn't read my post properly.  I said RANDOM mutations.  The examples you suggested are all purposeful mutations, in which the organism adapted by itself to a new food source or to overcome a particular specific obstacle.

NO.
ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY UNTRUE, EVERY WORD YOU SAID.
ALL mutations are random, and they existed before already in a tiny percentage of the population. By changing situations, individuals without the mutation died out and thus it became dominant.

THERE ARE NO PURPOSEFUL MUTATIONS (except for genetic engineering done by humans), AND THERE IS NO ACTIVE ADAPTATION (again, same exception).



Forgive me the capslock, but as a student of biology i just cant stand such blatant misinformation as you (purposeful or for lack of knowledge, I dont know) are spreading.

Modifié par Tirigon, 05 avril 2012 - 07:07 .

[Tirigon]

Carfax wrote...

Most people refer to the Primal Cause as God.

True.

Most people are also aware that such a primal cause does in fact not exist.

[RyuujinZERO]

Carfax wrote...

Ryu I'll reply to your other post later because I don't have the time right now.  But let me say, that I was asking for an example of how random mutations could create BENEFICIAL traits in an organism.. 

I am familiar with experiments on fruit flies for instance, and how Scientists have used irradiation to drastically increase the rate of mutation in these creatures.

However, despite irradiating countless generations of fruit flies over decades and mutating them, Scientists have never observed any beneficial mutation.

All they've ever ended up with are dead, sick or crippled fruit flies.  If random mutation is truly the catalyst for evolution, then why doesn't it work in this circumstance?

*sigh*

You're dead set in ignoring me arn't you.

I'm not talking about scientists blasting stuff with radiation. I'm talking about real deal adaptation. Even if scientists in one example did blast fruit flies with radiation and observe evolution is does NOT in any way invalidate what I told you about adaptation in bacteria to drugs.

I've got a list here as long as my arm of observed and documented examples of speciation, it's not an isolated example and more occured quite naturally... where do you want to begin? bacteria? plants? Insects?  Invertebrates?




The HOW is bloody obvious if you didn't sleep through high school biology. Natural selection and random mutation over a large number of generations in an environment with selection pressures.  I'm not goign to explain it all here this is basic knowledge, like maths and reading. Nothing I can say in a single post could fill in for a subject that takes months to grasp the basics and years to truly comprehend the beauty of.

To truly udnerstand the "how" of mutation you must first understand the chemical structure of DNA, how a copy of the chromosone is made during cell division and how this process is imperfect. Imperfect DNA is subsequently used as a template to create the proteins that build up your body and enzymes, any changes will have a dramatic effect on the amino acids used due to the way polymerase handles the encoding, in many cases the product is inert, but sometimes defective or even effective results can come it. These are your mutations.

Modifié par RyuujinZERO, 05 avril 2012 - 07:23 .

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

RyuujinZERO wrote...

JBONE27 wrote...

Sapian means monkey, therefore sapiant means money-like.

Sapiens is Latin for "wise". ****** sapiens literally means "wise men"... sapient meaning "to have wisdom" not to be mixed up with sentient, meaning to have awareness

It sounds like he/she was mixed up with simian.

/nitpick

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

RyuujinZERO wrote...




The HOW is bloody obvious if you didn't sleep through high school biology. Natural selection and random mutation over a large number of generations in an environment with selection pressures.  I'm not goign to explain it all here this is basic knowledge, like maths and reading. Nothing I can say in a single post could fill in for a subject that takes months to grasp the basics and years to truly comprehend the beauty of.

To truly udnerstand the "how" of mutation you must first understand the chemical structure of DNA, how a copy of the chromosone is made during cell division and how this process is imperfect. Imperfect DNA is subsequently used as a template to create the proteins that build up your body and enzymes, any changes will have a dramatic effect on the amino acids used due to the way polymerase handles the encoding, in many cases the product is inert, but sometimes defective or even effective results can come it. These are your mutations.

High schol biology? He was probably home schooled using Kent Hovind tracts.

You can't argue with a creationist. They'll post their nonsense over and over in the hope that they can seed doubt in others, if not to convince those of us who know better.

This thread is way off topic.

Modifié par Shinian2, 05 avril 2012 - 09:29 .

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

Tirigon wrote...

Carfax wrote...

Most people refer to the Primal Cause as "A Wizard did it."

True.

Most people are also aware that such a primal cause does in fact not exist.

Fixed

Getting back on topic, it would seem that Bioware had this in mind when creating the ending.

[Carfax]

RyuujinZERO wrote...

Small numbers differences over long periods stacks up quickly and allow branching into niches in an eco system.

Indeed, but have Scientists observed small differences over long periods stacking up to create completely new organisms?

DNA does not have protections against this. It has a degree of proofreading in RNA transcription (Which is a different activity to DNA replication), and single-base copy error prevent the DNA strand closing up properly, but full base pair alterations can get under the radar and these are what cause serious alterations. There is enough DNA in an average person that every person on the planet has at least a dozen or more errors but due to gene copy redundancy and "trash" code it is seldom a problem.

It's a fact that DNA has error correction during replication, and most mutation is the result of failure in that regard.

If the proof-readding process was truly perfect, nobody'd ever die of cancer.

I never said it was perfect, so........

Absolutely. bacterial resistance to anti-biotics stems from this rpoperty (Some bacteria in a population have mutations that prevent the drug binding to them. Those bacteria survive and have offspring who also carry the resistance).

 
Wrong, wrong, wrong.  It was first believed that bacterial resistance to anti-biotics was caused by mutation, but subsequent research has found that the bacteria already had these resistances in place.

Link

Fruit flies have been observed under lab control conditions to evolve over many generations to such an extent they can no longer breed with their original stock (true speciation).

Can you provide a link to this?  Were the fruit flies healhty, or were they malformed?

Observing larger changes in larger animals takes much longer as evolution is something that happens over generations so creatures with slow generations like humans, take longer to adapt. But looking at the human genomic record we can already see adaptations that have taken place in recent history.

Scientists have observed millions of generations of bacteria in the lab, and subjected them to increased rates of mutation, yet no substantial evolution has ever been observed.  Bacteria still remain bacteria.

For example the "prototypical" human is alctose intolerant. But in Europe, where argiculture has been important for many millenia now, almost the entire "native"  population has adapted to digest animal milk, environmental pressures existed that meant the ability to digest the sugars in milk actually conferred a survival advantage which in turn gave the population that digest it, a survival advanatge over those that could not.

I agree that small changes like this can be the result of mutations and natural selection.

But to attribute the enormous diversity and complexity of life on Earth as it stands today to the same forces is a hard pill to swallow to put it mildly. 

No Scientist has ever observed mutation leading to the creation of new life forms after all, and if darwinian evolution relies on small, successive changes over lengthy periods of time, why haven't we found millions of transitional fossils? 

Talk Origins lists only 130 or so examples if I recall, when we have millions of fossils.

[Carfax]

JBONE27 wrote...

Facepalm.
1.  We don't know that the universe (matter, time, and energy) had a beginning, simply that the universe as we know it had a beginning... The Big Bang.

Contradict yourself much?  According to most physicists, Time and Space etc had a beginning with the Big Bang.

Link

2.  Simply because we don't know something yet doesn't mean we will never know something.  That is why the god of the gaps argument is a fallacy.

So you have faith just like the bible thumpers you despise....  How ironic..

[SpiffsGhost]

Carfax wrote...

JBONE27 wrote...

Facepalm.
1.  We don't know that the universe (matter, time, and energy) had a beginning, simply that the universe as we know it had a beginning... The Big Bang.

Contradict yourself much?  According to most physicists, Time and Space etc had a beginning with the Big Bang.

Link

2.  Simply because we don't know something yet doesn't mean we will never know something.  That is why the god of the gaps argument is a fallacy.

So you have faith just like the bible thumpers you despise....  How ironic..

Off-topic discussion is off-topic

- Spiff

[Carfax]

Tirigon wrote...


NO.
ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY UNTRUE, EVERY WORD YOU SAID.
ALL mutations are random, and they existed before already in a tiny percentage of the population. By changing situations, individuals without the mutation died out and thus it became dominant.

THERE ARE NO PURPOSEFUL MUTATIONS (except for genetic engineering done by humans), AND THERE IS NO ACTIVE ADAPTATION (again, same exception).



Forgive me the capslock, but as a student of biology i just cant stand such blatant misinformation as you (purposeful or for lack of knowledge, I dont know) are spreading.

OK, so if all mutations are random, and random mutation is the engine that drives evolution, why haven't Scientists been able to create new organisms under controlled conditions in laboratories?

After subjecting fruit flies and bacteria to artificially high rates of mutation, Scientists have never observed neither bacteria or fruit flies become anything other than what they already were.....even after thousands or millions of generations.

[Carfax]

RyuujinZERO wrote...

I'm not talking about scientists blasting stuff with radiation. I'm talking about real deal adaptation. Even if scientists in one example did blast fruit flies with radiation and observe evolution is does NOT in any way invalidate what I told you about adaptation in bacteria to drugs.

I already discounted the bacterial adaptation to antibiotics.

I've got a list here as long as my arm of observed and documented examples of speciation, it's not an isolated example and more occured quite naturally... where do you want to begin? bacteria? plants? Insects?  Invertebrates?

Do you have any observed and documented examples of new life forms being created?  Such as a unicellular life form becoming a multicellular one?

The HOW is bloody obvious if you didn't sleep through high school biology. Natural selection and random mutation over a large number of generations in an environment with selection pressures.  I'm not goign to explain it all here this is basic knowledge, like maths and reading. Nothing I can say in a single post could fill in for a subject that takes months to grasp the basics and years to truly comprehend the beauty of.

So let me ask you again.  Has any Scientist ever observed natural selection and random mutation to be responsible for say, the creation of a completely new life form? 

Do Scientists have an explanation for how unintelligent processes like mutation and random selection can create highly organized, specifically complex, meaningful coded information like what is seen in DNA?

To truly udnerstand the "how" of mutation you must first understand the chemical structure of DNA, how a copy of the chromosone is made during cell division and how this process is imperfect. Imperfect DNA is subsequently used as a template to create the proteins that build up your body and enzymes, any changes will have a dramatic effect on the amino acids used due to the way polymerase handles the encoding, in many cases the product is inert, but sometimes defective or even effective results can come it. These are your mutations.

There are over 5,000 human diseases which are known to be caused by single base pair mutations.  Yet you would have me believe that mutation is the catalyst by which life forms evolve and diversify

Modifié par Carfax, 08 avril 2012 - 10:14 .

[Carfax]

SpiffsGhost wrote...

Off-topic discussion is off-topic

- Spiff

This thread has been off topic for quite some time now..  I'm surprised it hasn't been locked..

[JBONE27]

RyuujinZERO wrote...

JBONE27 wrote...

Sapian means monkey, therefore sapiant means money-like.

Sapiens is Latin for "wise". ****** sapiens literally means "wise men"... sapient meaning "to have wisdom" not to be mixed up with sentient, meaning to have awareness

My mistake, I confused it with simmian.

[EHondaMashButton]

Oh my goodness.. I guess everyone just gave up on dealing with you.

Concept 1: Mutations are already in place, natural selection weeds out the ones that don't have them. Bacteria don't just see an antibiotic and whip out a mutation to deal with it. 99% of bacteria die and the ones that survive become the new 100%.

You didn't discount anything about antibiotics. Our antibiotics are copied from proteins expressed by fungi and plants. Of course bacteria would already have ancient mutations to deal with them.

Concept 2: Scientists induce mutations all the time using radiation and chemicals. Most mutations are unfavorable, some are favorable. Survival of the fittest gets rid of the ones that don't have the favorable mutation.

Your argument ignores the entire existence of an entire branch of engineering

http://en.wikipedia....ing#Agriculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

I'm not even going to get into your confusion on random and purposeful mutations. You're making up terms. There are externally induced mutations (radiation, chemicals, viruses), random errors in replication (cancer, genetic diseases), and inherently "loose" processes that favor shuffling of DNA (Meiosis -look it up)

All of these can result in favorable or unfavorable mutations.

None of this makes any sense when you throw in synthetics with DNA.  Bioware should've known better.

Modifié par EHondaMashButton, 09 avril 2012 - 12:14 .

[Rhome91]

Random Jerkface wrote...

The Grey Nayr wrote...

JBONE27 wrote...

I will try to make this as spoiler free as possible.  Mass Effect 3's Synthasis ending got evolution wrong.  There is no ultimate goal in evolution.  It is an ongoing process.  It is how life-forms adapt to their envoronments, and has nothing to do with combining organics and synthetics.

That is all... Thank you. 

How would we know if there is or isn't a final stage of evolution before we reach it? We don't even understand much about evolution as it is.

Your opinion is subjective.
mp

This is just silly. "Evolution" is a human-devised concept that attets to explain reactive adaptations in living organisms. It cannot have a "goal" since, by definition, it's just the descriptor of a natural phenomenon. If you want to say that living organisms are purposefully being ushered toward some ascended plane of existence, then you'd have a point. But since we have no context (or basis) for that idea, it's just nonsense.

"Ah, 'evolution', the alleged description of how things change and develop to better suit their environment over generations. We have dismissed this claim."

The Grey Nayr wrote...

Tell
me, when you read an X-Men comic, do you say "This is stupid, these
writers don't understand evolution at all"? When you read a Superman
comic, do you say "This is dumb, people cant fly"?

The very
criticism of a fictional universe for not holding up some nonexistent
obligation to be "realistic" is a big joke in itself. Why do you think
they call it "Science Fiction?"

Bolded the key word, for it to be Science Fiction, the science has to be at least plausible sounding. Otherwise it's just fiction or fantasy fiction - which is what they turned Mass Effect into with the Star Child's Galactic Kaboom Nonsense. The Science must at least make sense within the world of the Fiction, and what the Star Child is implied to be boils down to a god - which changes the entire tone of the story. You can have religion in Science Fiction, you can have faith in Science Fiction, but when faith begins to force events to happen "in the moment" (as in, during the course of the book) then you cease to write Science Fiction.

On a related note, I'm putting forward that we refer to the Indoctrination Theory and any event like it (as in, the fans deciding that the ending was **** and trying to force it to be good), "Matrix : Revolutions Syndrome".
Symptoms include, but are not limited to:
-Sudden shifts in the base elements of the story.
-Massive speculation from fans of said story to try and force the ending to fit.
-Bad writing on the part of those sending it forth.

Richard 060 wrote...


Firstly, it's not an open mind
that's needed. That's like saying to someone who 'believes' in gravity
that they should keep an open mind about the possibility that it might
suddenly 'end' one day...

Secondly, evolution is about subsequent generations adapting to better fit the constant changes around them.
If 'other areas' of existence 'continue to improve', they will change,
and unless DNA of ALL life becomes standardised (i.e. identical), then
there's going to be some variation in the genetic patterns of different
lifeforms. Some will be better suited to the 'improvements' around them
than others, and thus will be more likely to thrive, and eventually pass
on their genetic data to their offspring, than those less well-suited.

Or, to put it another way, they will evolve.


As
I said before, the only way to guarantee that organic life stops
evolving is if EVERYTHING stops changing. Permanently. Because evolution
is nothing if not a reactive process, reacting to CHANGE.

Strictly
speaking, there -is- a second way for organic life to cease changing.
If every last bit of organic matter in the universe ceases to exist all
at once it would (if my thought processes are correct) cease to evolve
or change beyond that point.

Frybread76 wrote...





I want to add that we shouldn't be too
surprised that the ME3 writers took such liberty with the concept of
evolution with the synthesis ending. In ME2, Mordin says human beings
are very genetically diverse, which is a crock of you-know-what.

Well, from what I understood of the conversation he meant in
comparison to other species. If you notice, almost all the other
non-human species looked similar as hell or exactly the same to one
another - I figured it's the same deal with ants as it is with them
(yup, speciest [racism via species] but still it was logical). It is
bull**** based on our science and knowledge, but it's also fiction.
Which bull**** is.

lawp79 wrote...

Random Jerkface wrote...

lawp79 wrote...

I'm
sorry but after such an amount of time can I just say I do not get the
star child thing at all! I mean it is the kid from earth at the
beginning right? And the kid from the dreams? So what the frig is he
doing there at the end?! Is it some poorly thought out
metaphor?

The AI or whatever the Guardian is (because that was
explained so well, amirite?) presumably took the form of the figure that
most psychologically affected Shepard.

...Because we were all so clearly attached.

I thought it was possibly that but I was wondering if I was missing some profound meaning, urgh it really was that bad then.

The profound meaning was, "IT'S A KID! IT IS A GODDAMNED CHILD! You will shed X amount of tears over Y minutes because of this child."

poerksen wrote...
Feels more like a cliffhanger than an ending.

Wait, EA not wanting to make money on one of the biggest non-FPS games that we've had in the past six years?
I am so shocked that I can't even put it into text. I'll see a lot of you gents in the MMO, the FPS, Mass Effect 4 through x, the Mass Effect Sports Games, and the Mass Effect Real-Time Strategy Game.


Also, wow this is one helluva long post. I, almost literally, cannot believe anybody would read through this. Kudos if you do. Pat on the back, etc.

[Amberion]

The Grey Nayr wrote...

LOLandStuff wrote...

What I wonder is why Starchild didn't do that in the first place. Why harvest for 10 of billions of years and then offer that option to some random guy who happens to walk in. Besides that the logic is mind boggling.

Because he didn't have the Crucible slapped on to the Citadel.

By his own admission, its why there are more possibilities. Think of the Crucible as an amplifier.

Also the reason why he cant do it himself is probably because he cant interface with or control the Crucible. As it's not a reaper construct or a computer system.

The crucible can rewrite the DNA of all living things, but it needs a template. Shepard is the template. In much the same way that Legion used direct personality dissemination to propagate the reaper code to all geth, Shepard uses direct physical dissemination to propagate his genetic template as a foundation to rewrite the DNA of all living things in the galaxy. That can be either very disturbing or ... okay well it's disturbing.

[Rhome91]

Amberion wrote...

The Grey Nayr wrote...

LOLandStuff wrote...

What I wonder is why Starchild didn't do that in the first place. Why harvest for 10 of billions of years and then offer that option to some random guy who happens to walk in. Besides that the logic is mind boggling.

Because he didn't have the Crucible slapped on to the Citadel.

By his own admission, its why there are more possibilities. Think of the Crucible as an amplifier.

Also the reason why he cant do it himself is probably because he cant interface with or control the Crucible. As it's not a reaper construct or a computer system.

The crucible can rewrite the DNA of all living things, but it needs a template. Shepard is the template. In much the same way that Legion used direct personality dissemination to propagate the reaper code to all geth, Shepard uses direct physical dissemination to propagate his genetic template as a foundation to rewrite the DNA of all living things in the galaxy. That can be either very disturbing or ... okay well it's disturbing.

Especially once you realize that Shepard just basically became every single living and non-living thing's Daddy/Mommy. Double disturbing if you had Shepard romance anybody throughout the series.

[Amberion]

The Grey Nayr wrote...

In ME1, Sovereign specifically described the Reapers as the "Pinnacle of Evolution" and the "End of everything."

In ME2, we discover that Harbinger and the Collectors were using humans to create a new Reaper, and we learn that the Reapers are actually hybrids of organic and inorganic life. Harbinger even specifically refers to the process as ascendence and perfection.

In ME3, we learn that The Catalyst does the Cycle to allow organic life to continue while allowing the old life to ascend and be preserved as Reapers. The Destroyer on Rannoch even says "It is not something you can understand." This directly references and adds clarity to what's been said and hinted at in the past. While the original purpose of the Cycle may have changed at some point, the point about the reapers creation and existence has been consistent from day one.

in ME1, Sovereign was full of it. He was trying to scare Shepard and company. He did an awful lot of lying.

In ME2, Harbinger does call it ascendance and perfection, but you have to consider the source. Neither Harbinger or Sovereign are unbiased. They may THINK they're the pinnacle of evolution, but in fact they are a dead end. They stopped evolving, they stopped changing, and as such, they're being left behind. If the galaxy were ever to build a civilization uncontested, the reapers would come back, and they'd be annihilated. Why? Because they DON'T IMPROVE. They CAN'T. Evolving, improving, changing creatures will always win out over time. That's why the reapers have to cull the advanced civilizations every 50k years. Not just because of the risk of AIs wiping out life, but because if they wait any longer, they run the risk of someday coming back in and getting their clock cleaned by a civilization more advanced than they are.

They're an evolutionary dead end, and they know it. They use 'perfection' and 'ascendance' as an indoctrination trick to make their job easier.

[Carfax]

EHondaMashButton wrote...

You didn't discount anything about antibiotics. Our antibiotics are copied from proteins expressed by fungi and plants. Of course bacteria would already have ancient mutations to deal with them.

LOL you're funny.  Did you even read the link I showed?  Probably not.

You and the others triggered this debate by using antibiotic resistance as an example when you made comments like this:

How the hell do you think bacteria become resistant to man-made antibiotics?

You cited this as an example of how RANDOM mutation could cause an organism to evolve or adapt a beneficial trait that wasn't previously there to begin with.

However, as the article I linked to said, antibiotic resistance predates man made biotics, and so this is a flawed example.  Also noteworthy, is the fact that this resistance comes at a cost, by reducing or inactivating regular cellular functions.

Concept 2: Scientists induce mutations all the time using radiation and chemicals. Most mutations are unfavorable, some are favorable. Survival of the fittest gets rid of the ones that don't have the favorable mutation.

Have these mutations been observed to lead to an enormous increase in information, that would be required for the theory of evolution's assertion concerning multicellular life evolving from unicellular life.

How do we go from bacteria to human beings?  Any examples?

No, I thought not...

None of this makes any sense when you throw in synthetics with DNA.  Bioware should've known better.

This is one thing we can agree on at least.

[EHondaMashButton]

Amberion wrote...

The Grey Nayr wrote...

In ME1, Sovereign specifically described the Reapers as the "Pinnacle of Evolution" and the "End of everything."

In ME2, we discover that Harbinger and the Collectors were using humans to create a new Reaper, and we learn that the Reapers are actually hybrids of organic and inorganic life. Harbinger even specifically refers to the process as ascendence and perfection.

In ME3, we learn that The Catalyst does the Cycle to allow organic life to continue while allowing the old life to ascend and be preserved as Reapers. The Destroyer on Rannoch even says "It is not something you can understand." This directly references and adds clarity to what's been said and hinted at in the past. While the original purpose of the Cycle may have changed at some point, the point about the reapers creation and existence has been consistent from day one.

in ME1, Sovereign was full of it. He was trying to scare Shepard and company. He did an awful lot of lying.

In ME2, Harbinger does call it ascendance and perfection, but you have to consider the source. Neither Harbinger or Sovereign are unbiased. They may THINK they're the pinnacle of evolution, but in fact they are a dead end. They stopped evolving, they stopped changing, and as such, they're being left behind. If the galaxy were ever to build a civilization uncontested, the reapers would come back, and they'd be annihilated. Why? Because they DON'T IMPROVE. They CAN'T. Evolving, improving, changing creatures will always win out over time. That's why the reapers have to cull the advanced civilizations every 50k years. Not just because of the risk of AIs wiping out life, but because if they wait any longer, they run the risk of someday coming back in and getting their clock cleaned by a civilization more advanced than they are.

They're an evolutionary dead end, and they know it. They use 'perfection' and 'ascendance' as an indoctrination trick to make their job easier.

Harbinger and Sovereign are biased, but the guy who runs this whole operation for millenia isn't?  He says "we" when referring to the reapers.  Why trust him any more than Harbinger or Sovereign.