Metal Reviews

Yes I am ... for picking this example, since I have NEVER experienced a discussion on the topic that convinced ANY single person of the Darwin camp or the Anti-Darwin camp.

Thus: The real joke is, that those who defend theories like evolution constantly act against Occam when they patch the loopholes and contradictions of the theory.

I think it is no coincidence. And i dont think metal depresses you, but what depressed people are looking for in music can be found in metal. That is, anger, sadness, a sense of evil, extreme lyrics. I first got into burzum because i had depression at the time, and i liked it becuase it sounded so sad.

As opposed to what? What happened, God sneezed and we all appeared?

Occam's Razor is perfectly applicable to evolution.

Q: "How does life evolve?"
A: "It just fucking does."

Coming from someone who knows people with severe depression, I think I can speak from some form of knowledge. I've heard anti-depressants refered to as a "chemical lobotomy" and I think that's absolutely true. They just give you a short term fix without adressing the problem. I've had suicidal thoughts several times and it's not fair one the people you leave behind. To round off, quoting something I read in Terrorizer the other day "I'm sick of all these bands fucking romanticizing depression. They've never even had a bad comedown"

I have never heard this theory before but as an Open Mind I have to assess it's likelihood compared to the evolutionary model. So let me recall: It all started with a cosmic fireball that created structures of Hadrons and Leptons. Accidently the mass and distrubution of matter was exactly the way it is needed to have the physical conditions for life later. The forces that kept the matter together to build structures had accidently the right magnitude to allow the formation of Deuterium. A little bit less and this wasn't possible, a littel bit more and the whole thing exploded. The atomic nucleus was accidently formed in a way that neutrons were a little bit heavyer then protons, so that the life span of stars could be long enough to create life later. On the other hand the electric charge of protons and electrons were accidently exactly the same, so that matter could become stable. In short: The four fundamental physical constants have had exactly the right magnitudes to make life possible. If this was by accident we are lucky since the probabilty of this scenario is 1:10^1230. Once the nucleus was formed, the creation of complex matter started. Unfortunately the energy density of the universe wasn't sufficent to build heavy elements but a little accident helped: the catalytic effect of carbon. Lucky that the energy levels of Carbon, Beryllium, Oxygen, and Helium had exactly the ratio that was needed to have the right amount Carbon available. Once the heavy elements were bulit we passed through a stage in which the chemical primodal soup of our solar system was organised to high structured self preserving open thermodynamic systems by itself. To build the first primitve protozoa, able to be reproduced, the DNA double helix had to be combined of hundred thousand nucleotides, of which each was built by 30 - 50 precisely arranged atoms. Plus we needed the double layerd skin and some protein molecules. To construct this by accident is as likely as building an airwothy plain by a hurrican ripping through a scrapyard. The living systems then could subsist from the Free Energy, that is provided by the permanet stream of energy from the sun. In one complex chain this system evolved and brought a connection from the lowest alga to the highest developed predator without any other external driving force.

There is much more, but from this small insight alone I reason that your theory (God sneezed and we all appeared) is far more likely, although I'm afraid I won't adhere to it.

The simplest explanation is the best so I'll go with the god sneezing theory.

Occam's Razor doesn't apply if there's a modicum of evidence for the complex theory.

We can't know whether there's a soul or nt until we've explored every single part of the brain.

This is the same as saying 'we can't know if there's a god or not until we've explored every single part of the universe.'

Which is, of course, incorrect (to my mind).

Maybe so. Skepticism rules.

Life is like a box of chocolates. If you leave it out in the sun for too long it goes all liquid and attracts flies and ants.

depression and that shit..it happens to everyone, but i always feel a bit angry at ppl who commited suicide(note: i'm talking about suicide without a 'purpose') Committing suicide because you a 'saaaad panda' is bullshit, and an insult to life.

Haha "sad panda" references kick ass. Some nice posts in this thread, it is very interesting indeed to see such a high percentage of Metal enthusiasts suffering from depression. I got dragged to church this Easter, and while I was sitting there bored out of my skull I got to thinking about this idea I have had for a while that religion and metal are intertwined. In other words, the search for purity and truth within religion closely parallels that search for what is "true" within metal music. The elitism, the zenophobia, and the factionism of metal culture is eerily similair to Christianity. (For example there are many different variations of Christianity like Pentecostal, Methodist, Lutheran, and so forth.) Anyway, the point of this theory is simply to point out that while much of Metal is about rebellion against religious doctrines and hypocrisies, Metal itself resembles a religion as much as anything.

Having studied evolution briefly, I can assure you that it has more evidence backing it than many of you presume to believe.

Evolution is considered to be one of the top three most provable scientific theories (right up there with gravity and the Earth rotating the sun). No one seems to question the other two...

The fact is, there are literally thousands upon thousands of pre-homo sapien fossils. These are not all ambigious little remains: some of these are half complete skeletons, or slaughter sites with countless stone tools, etc. Evolution is not just Darwin's idea: Darwin's idea was just the raw foundation. The current complex structure that we have for evolution is a result of all of our findings--it is based off what we have found. Unlike religion, we do not have some unyielding faith in Darwin and all that he said.

Darwinism has been the most criticized theory for the past 150 years, and yet, it has stood on its feet the entire time, and has only gotten stronger. All evidence found has not proven to the contrary: no, it has proven that Darwin was right.

Science shows that the Earth is clearly very very old. Anyone who does not recognize this is, to be blunt, ignorant. As for evolution, there are thousands upon thousands of fossils to back it. To boot, we have seen it happen. We can see the diversity within our own species which most of us readily recognize as micro evolution. Also, tests have been done on less evolved creatures, such as certain types of worms. The conditions for evolution were put in place: two groups of a certain type of rapidly reproducing worm (sorry, the name evades me) were segregated, and left apart for around 30 years. They evolved. They became so different that they could no longer produce viable offspring--that's halfway to speciation. This is just one of many examples.

There is simply way too much evidence to back evolution. I wish religious groups would just shut their fucking traps, so this fact wouldn't be so hidden. Seriously, the Christian criticsms that I have heard sound like they're coming from someone with nothing beyond grade 10 science.



EDIT: One more thing, since this seems to be OM's argument. Stop assuming that humans are some amazing end, and that the likely hood to reach that end is too impossible without divine intervention. Evolution occured, and it had to go somewhere. We just happened to be the result of it (here on Earth). It took billions of years, but there was no "plan" to produce humans. Humans are not so fucking special. After 4.5 billion years, the Earth just happened to produce a rather intelligence species: humans. Again, stop clinging on to this romantic notion that we are the "ultimate" species.

Criticism from ignorance! It's the in thing.

Evolution is very solid, I believe it. Actually believe is a wrong word because evoultion has parts of it that are proven, believing is a choice, but not believing a fact is idiotic. However it doesn't really change my mind about how the universe was created, I still believe god. But I have strong doubts about religion.

This doesn't really change the fact that Darwin was a racist son of a bitch and evoulion does have blood on its hands, just like religion.

i agree 100 %.. otherwise i would have an IQ matching the lenght of my penis multiplied with 23.. ( 87 to be exact)

I can't see any argument for divine intervention or the assumption that humans are special in my comments. Not believing in Evolution doesn't make you religious. Being a graduated Earth Scientist I don't have any problems with arguments about the age of the earth and the distribution of fossils. Besides some overwhelming confirmations, many of the theory's loopholes arise from there.

Of course a brief study can not reveal anything else than the rightness of the theory. If it was so obviously wrong it couldn't have survived for so long. There are a lot of scientific observations and arguments against the theory but there are also plausible arguments to rebut most of the critcism. But then, if you dig deeper, there are again arguments against the rebuttal, and so on. This is still being discussed in full activity between scientists (not some religious fanatics) and the discussion is not closed yet, save for those who call everyone who doesn't take a stand pro Evolution a moron.

If Evolution is one of the top three most provable scientific theories, then why is it challenged so often by renowned scientists? (BTW, I think Quantum Mechanics is the best proven theory ever. There is simply no need to put it on such a list because nobody doubts it.)

However, finally it all turns to one question. It seems to be so easy to believe that nothing but energy and matter really existed and exists and conciousness is a side effect of an accidental evolutionary self-organisation. Why then is it so difficult to believe that nothing but conciousness exists and this consciousness formed matter by multidimensional cosmic devolution? Not one single scientific result can disprove this theory, plus it can even give simple explanations in those cases in which the matrialistic world view fails. Why putting such a powerful theory down?

Evolution works. And it has been proven (with worms as said, with tropical snails...). I recomend to read Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, two great science writers.

If God exist (I really doubt it) It created the rules of the universe, including evolution. Not the world, and less the human race.